Richard Powers - The Time of Our Singing

In October, he bailed. He came to me waving an invitation to a monthlong music residency in Magdeburg starting before Christmas and running past New Year’s. “You gotta love this, Joey. The one-thousandth anniversary of the establishment of the archbishopric. The town is gung ho on reviving their one brief moment at the center of civilization.”

“Magdeburg? You can’t go.”

“What do you mean ‘can’t go,’ bro?”

“Magdeburg is in East Germany.”

He shrugged. “Is it?”

I may have used the term Iron Curtain. It was a long time ago.

“So what’s the big deal? I’m an invited guest. It’s a special occasion. Practically a state function. Their foreign service or whatever it’s called will get me a visa.”

“It’s not about getting in over there. It’s about getting back in over here.”

“And why, exactly, would anyone want to?”

“I’m serious, Jonah. Aid and comfort to the enemy. They’ll hassle you over this for the rest of your life. Look what they did to Robeson.”

“I’m serious, too, Joey. If there’s a problem coming back, I don’t want to.” I couldn’t bear to look at him. I turned away, but he spun a little impish pirouette to keep his face in front of mine. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mule. This country’s totally fucked up. Why would anyone want to live here if he didn’t have to? What choices do I have? I can stick around and tote bales, and if I stay out of trouble long enough, they’ll let me be a certified black artist. Or I can go to Europe and sing.”

I grabbed his flailing wrists. “Sit down. Just. Sit. You’re making me nuts.” I took his shoulders and shoved him down on the piano bench. I chopped at him with my index finger — performers’ obedience school. “Europe is fine. Musicians…like us have been going that route forever. Germany? Why not, for a little while? But go to Hamburg, Jonah. Go to Munich, if you have to go.”

“Munich hasn’t offered to pay my way and put me up with a healthy honorarium.”

“Magdeburg’s doing all that?”

“Joey. It’s Germany. Deine Vorfahren, Junge! They invented music. It’s their life’s blood. They’d do anything for it. It’s like…like firearms over here.”

“They’re using you. Cold War propaganda. You’re going to be their showpiece for how America treats its—”

He laughed out loud and doused his hands into the keyboard for a Prokofievian parody of the “Internationale.” “That’s me, Joey. Traitor to my country. Me and Commander Bucher.” He looked up at me, both corners of his mouth pulled back. “Grow up, man! Like the United States hasn’t been using us our whole lives?”

The United States had offered him the lead in a premiere of a new Met opera. Yet he could be an artist only if he’d wear the alien badge. Music was supposed to be cosmopolitan — free travel across all borders. But it could get him into the last Stalinist state more easily than it could get him into midtown. I looked at him, begging, a black accompanist, an Uncle Tom in white tie and tails, willing to be used and abused by anyone, most of all my brother, if we could only go on living as if music were ours.

He rubbed my head, sure that we’d always bond over that ritual humiliation. “Come with me, Joey. Come on. Telemann’s birthplace. We’ll have a blast.” Jonah detested Telemann. The man’s greatest claim to fame is turning down a job they then had to give to Bach. “You wouldn’t know it from our bookings in this country in recent months, but we two do have a salable skill. People will pay good money to hear us do what we do. It’s state-subsidized over there. Why shouldn’t you and I get in on a little of that action? Rightful descendants, huh?”

“What are you thinking? Jonah?”

“What? I’m not thinking anything. I’m saying let’s have an adventure. We know the language. We can amaze the natives. I’m not getting laid anytime soon. You’re not getting laid, are you, Mule? Let’s go see what the Fräuleins are up to these days.” He examined me long enough to see what his words were doing. It never occurred to him I might say no. He changed keys, modulating faster and further afield than late Strauss.

“Come on, Joey. Salzburg. Bayreuth. Potsdam. Vienna. Wherever you want to go. We can head up to Leipzig. Make a pilgrimage to the Thomaskirche.”

He sounded desperate. I couldn’t figure out why. If he was so sure of Europe’s embrace, why did he need me? And what did he mean to do with me once the requests started pouring in for concert work, solos with orchestras, and even — the grand prize he’d set himself — opera? I held up my palm. “What does Da say?”

“Da?” His syllable came out a laugh. He hadn’t even thought to tell our father. Our father, the least political man who’d ever lived, a man who’d once lived a hundred kilometers from Magdeburg. Our Da, who vowed never to set foot in his native country again. I couldn’t go. Our father might need me. Our sister might want to get in touch. No one would be here to take care of things if I let my brother drag me away for months. Jonah had no plan, and he didn’t need one. He didn’t really need anything except, for reasons that escaped me, me.

I weighed how much he expected me to throw away. When I didn’t step forward with a ready yes, it seemed to confuse him. His look of friendly conscription rippled with panic, then narrowed to a single accusing question: “How about it?”

“Jonah.” Under the pressure of his gaze, I slipped out and looked down on the two of us. “Haven’t you jerked me around enough?”

For a second, he didn’t hear me. Then all he could hear was betrayal. “Sure, Mule. Suit yourself.” He grabbed his cap and corduroy jacket and left the apartment. I didn’t see him for two days. He came back just in time for our next gig. And three weeks after that, he was packed and ready to go.

He had his visa, and an open ticket. “When are you coming back?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We’ll see what comes down.” We never shook hands, and we didn’t now. “Watch your back, Mule. Keep away from the Chopin.” He didn’t add, Decide your own life. He’d do that for me, as always. All he said on that score was, “So long. Write if you get work.”

August 1945

Delia’s on the A when she sees the headline. Not by law a Jim Crow car, but the law’s just a tagalong. Car color changes with the blocks above ground. Safety, comfort, ease — the cold comforts of neighborhood chosen and enforced. Choice and its opposite shade off, one into the other, so fluidly these last days of the war. She has come to know, close up, the blurred edge between the two — things forced upon her until they seem elected; things chosen so fiercely, they feel compelled.

Tuesday morning. David is home with the boys. She runs out, just for a minute, to buy an ice bag for the little one. He has fallen down the front steps and hurt his ankle. Not one cry from him after the first. But the ankle is a swollen dark stain, thicker now than her wrist, and the poor child needs the comfort only cold can bring.

She rides two stops, to the pharmacy she knows will serve her. They know her there — Mrs. Strom, mother of small boys. Two stops — five minutes. But she reads the headline in a flash, no time at all. Three fat lines run across the length of the page. They’re not as large as the headlines last May, declaring an end to Europe’s Armageddon. But they come off the page in a more silent burst.

A deep sable man sits next to her, poring over the words, shaking his head, willing them to change. The night has brought a “rain of ruin.” One bomb lands with the force of twenty thousand tons of TNT. Two thousand B-29’s. She tries to imagine a ton of TNT. Two tons. Twenty — something like the weight of this subway car. Now ten times that. Then ten times, and ten times that again.