Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

“I give the breath of angels to mere men.” The old man swept his hand behind him like an impresario. Back against the wall between two windows sat a phonograph cabinet. It had seemed out of place to Danny as soon as he’d entered. It was made of fine-grain mahogany, designed with ornate carvings that made Danny think of European royalty. The open top exposed a turntable perched on purple velvet inlay, and below, a two-door cabinet looked to be hand carved and had nine shelves, enough to hold several dozen disc records.

The metal hand crank was gold plated, and while the disc record played, you could barely hear the motor. It produced a richness of sound unlike anything Danny had ever heard in his life. They were listening to the intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, and Danny knew if he’d entered the apartment blind he would have assumed the soprano stood in the parlor with them. He took another look at the cabinet and felt pretty sure it cost three or four times what the stove had.

“The Silvertone B-Twelve,” Federico said, his voice, always melodious, suddenly more so. “I sell them. I sell the B-Eleven as well, but I prefer the look of the Twelve. Louis the Sixteenth is far superior in design to Louis the Fifteenth. You agree?”

“Of course,” Danny said, though if he’d been told it was Louis the Third or Ivan the Eighth, he’d have had to take it on faith.

“No other phonograph on the market can equal it,” Federico said with the gleaming eyes of the evangelical. “No other phonograph can play every type of disc record — Edison, Pathé, Victor, Columbia, and Silvertone? No, my friend, this is the only one so capable. You pay your eight dollars for the table model because it is less expensive” — he crinkled his nose downward — “and light —bah! — convenient —bah! — space saving . But will it sound like this? Will you hear angels? Hardly. And then your cheap needle will wear out and the discs will skip and soon you will hear crackles and whispers. And where will you be then, except eight dollars the poorer?” He spread his arm toward the phonograph cabinet again, as proud as a first-time father. “Sometimes quality costs. It is only reasonable.”

Danny suppressed a chuckle at the little old man and his fervent capitalism.

“Papa,” Tessa said from the stove, “do not get yourself so …” She waved her hands, searching for the word. “ … eccitato.”

“Excited,” Danny said.

She frowned at him. “Eggs-y-sigh …?”

“Ex,” he said. “Ex-ci-ted.”

“Eck-cited.”

“Close enough.”

She raised her wooden spoon. “English!” she barked at the ceiling.

Danny thought of what her neck, so honey-brown, would taste like. Women — his weakness since he’d been old enough to notice them and see that they, in turn, noticed him. Looking at Tessa’s neck, her throat, he felt beset by it. The awful, delicious need to possess. To own — for a night — another’s eyes, sweat, heartbeat. And here, right in front of her father. Jesus!

He turned back to the old man, whose eyes were half closed to the music. Oblivious. Sweet and oblivious to the New World ways.

“I love music,” Federico said and opened his eyes. “When I was a boy, minstrels and troubadours would visit our village from the spring through the summer. I would sit until my mother shooed me from the square — sometimes with a switch, yes? — and watch them play. The sounds. Ah, the sounds! Language is such a poor substitute. You see?”

Danny shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

Federico pulled his chair closer to the table and leaned in. “Men’s tongues fork at birth. It has always been so. The bird cannot lie. The lion is a hunter, to be feared, yes, but he is true to his nature. The tree and rock are true — they are a tree and rock. Nothing more, but nothing less. But man, the only creature who can make words — uses this great gift to betray truth, to betray himself, to betray nature and God. He will point to a tree and tell you it is not a tree, stand over your dead body and say he did not kill you. Words, you see, speak for the brain, and the brain is a machine. Music” — he smiled his glorious smile and raised his index finger — “music speaks for the soul because words are too small.”

“Never thought of it that way.”

Federico pointed at his prized possession. “That is made of wood. It is a tree, but it is not a tree. And the wood is wood, yes, but what it does to the music that comes from it? What is that? Do we have a word for that kind of wood? That kind of tree?”

Danny gave him a small shrug, figuring the old man was getting a bit tipsy.

Federico closed his eyes again and his hands floated up by his ears, as if he were conducting the music himself, willing it forth into the room.

Danny caught Tessa looking at him again and this time she did not drop his gaze. He gave her his best smile, the slightly confused, slightly embarrassed one, the small boy’s smile. A flush spread under her chin, and still she didn’t look away.

He turned back to her father. His eyes remained closed, his hands conducting, even though the disc record had ended and the needle popped back and forth over its innermost grooves.

Steve Coyle smiled broadly when he saw Danny enter Fay Hall, the meeting place of the Boston Social Club. He worked his way down a row of folding chairs, one leg dragging noticeably after the other. He shook Danny’s hand. “Thanks for coming.”

Danny hadn’t counted on this. It made him feel twice as guilty, infiltrating the BSC under false pretenses while his old partner, sick and unemployed, showed up to support a fight he wasn’t even part of anymore.

Danny managed a smile. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

Steve looked back over his shoulder at the men setting up the stage. “They let me help out. I’m a living example of what happens when you don’t have a union with negotiating power, you know?” He clapped Danny’s shoulder. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Danny said. For five years he’d known every detail of his partner’s life, often on a minute-to-minute basis. It was suddenly odd to realize he hadn’t checked in on Steve in two weeks. Odd and shameful. “How you feeling?”

Steve shrugged. “I’d complain, but who’d listen?” He laughed loud and clapped Danny’s shoulder again. His beard stubble was white. He looked lost inside his newly damaged body. As if he’d been turned upside down and shaken.

“You look good,” Danny said.

“Liar.” Again the awkward laugh followed by an awkward solemnity, a look of dewy earnestness. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

Danny said, “Don’t mention it.”

“Turn you into a union man yet,” Steve said.

“Don’t bet on it.”

Steve clapped him on the back a third time and introduced him around. Danny knew about half of the men on a surface level, their paths having crossed on various calls over the years. They all seemed nervous around Steve, as if they hoped he’d take whatever afflicted him to another policemen’s union in another city. As if bad fortune were as contagious as the grippe. Danny could see it in their faces when they shook Steve’s hand — they’d have preferred him dead. Death allowed for the illusion of heroism. The maimed turned that illusion into an uncomfortable odor.

The head of the BSC, a patrolman named Mark Denton, strode toward the stage. He was a tall man, almost as tall as Danny, and rail thin. He had pale skin, as hard and shiny as piano keys, and his black hair was slicked back tight against his skull.

Danny and the other men took their chairs as Mark Denton crossed the stage and placed his hands on the edges of the dais. He gave the room a tired smile.