Sara Paretsky: Body Work

When I got back to my own place, my melancholy mood settled on me again, and I found myself writing a long e-mail to Jake. He had finished his tour with the contemporary group, playing Berio’s Sequenze in Berlin, and was heading to London with his early-music group, High Plainsong. The Raving Raven had flown over on Wednesday to join them with her historically correct, unamplified period instruments.

I’d written Jake once, briefly, to tell him the highlights of Sunday’s show, trying to make it humorous. Tonight I wrote more honestly. Or maybe with more self-pity. Hard to tell, sometimes.

The fact that the Guaman kids turned to me in a time of trouble should make me feel better, but the truth is, I don’t know if I do more harm than good. Cristina Guaman said I treated her family like a stage full of puppets, and maybe I’ve done that again, finding a lawyer for them, promising to get Ernie his own dog.

Sometimes I think the fact that I’m so willing to act is a danger to the world around me. Like Sal’s criticism a few weeks ago that I seem to put myself on a plane above everyone else. It’s not that. I don’t. I think I’m driven more by despair, even, than confidence, especially the despair of seeing so much misery around me. And then I leap into action and make it worse. But at least Ernie will get his dog. Surely that will be better, but the law of unintended consequences, that’s what seems to bite me time and again.

I wish you were here or I was there. I wish that my life had followed a calmer path.

I hoped to hear back from Jake the next day, although between the time difference and his work schedule I knew he might not even be looking at his mail. I went to the gym and took part in a pickup basketball game. I went to my office but decided I was sick of work. I went to a spa in my neighborhood, got a massage, lounged in the pool.

When I got home, I found a message on my machine from Lotty.

“Max and I are coming over for breakfast tomorrow. Be up by a quarter of seven.”

When I called her back, she only laughed and told me to be up and have my computer turned on. Before I could beg or wheedle any other information out of her, she hung up.

Sunday morning, I was so curious I got up early enough to run the dogs. When we returned, Max was just pulling up across the street from my building. He and Lotty followed me up the stairs, exchanging reminiscences about wartime concerts in London, a night at Wigmore Hall when they’d held candles for their performing friends because the power had gone out.

While I made coffee, Lotty unpacked a hamper with fruit and rolls, and Max fiddled with the Internet on my laptop. A jangling Prokofiev concerto was coming to an end, and then an announcer stated the time, just after one o’clock, and the station, BBC Radio 3. He read the news, and then said he was turning us over to the Early Music Show.

The presenter’s rich contralto filled the kitchen. “Today we’re delighted to have the American group, High Plainsong, in the studio with us.”

I felt myself grinning in surprise. “You knew! How did you know?” “Jake called Max when he knew they were going to do it and asked us to surprise you.” Lotty smiled at me.

The presenter introduced the members of the group. They discussed their instruments-Jake played a bass viol for High Plainsong-and the special repertoire they’d prepared for the trip. Trish Walsh, the Renaissance Raven, sang and played an ancient lute, one that didn’t have a power cord stuck into it. It was odd to hear her speaking in her “highculture” voice after listening to her heavy metal performance at the Golden Glow on Sunday.

“We’re going to start with works by some of the trobairitz, the women troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,” Trish said. “There were several dozen of them, but very little of their work survives, and out of that whole group we have music for only one poem. However, we’ve taken some of the surviving poems and set them to the music of the period.”

“I chose the first song Trish is going to sing,” Jake said. “The words are by Maria de Ventadorn. I’ve always loved the poem itself-a dialogue Maria wrote with a poet named Guy d’Ussel. She tells him that a lover should respond to a lady ‘as toward a friend’ and ‘she should honor him the way she would a friend, but never as a lord.’

“I put together the music as a salute to a lady of my acquaintance. Like the trobairitz, she’s a woman of high courage. She just saved a girl and rescued a soldier, and did so with all her usual spirit and guile. V. I. Warshawski, I hope you’re listening.”