Richard Powers - The Time of Our Singing

Jonah was booked to leave just after graduation. The night before commencement, he came into the kitchen to help me wash dishes. He seemed transfigured, lighter than he’d been in weeks. I thought it was his approaching departure.

“Mule, you go. I’m sitting tight for a while.” I laughed. “Serious.” My mouth sagged, waiting for him to come clean. “Serious, Joey. I’m not going. You know why. You know everything, brother. The last few years have been perfect hell, haven’t they? For both of us. You knew that all along, while I waltzed around, pretending…”

“Jonah. You have to go. It’s all arranged. They’ve put themselves out for your sake.”

“Help a colored boy see the Vatican.”

“Jonah. Don’t do this. Don’t throw this away.”

“What am I throwing away? They’re throwing me away, damn it. Everybody has plans for me but me. Imagine what I’d be after six months of Europe. Their charity case. Their trademarked act. Indebted to my sponsors forever. Sorry. Can’t do it, Joey.”

He looked away, avoiding my eye. A muscle in his cheek twitched at a hundred beats a minute. For the first time in his life, my brother was afraid. Maybe not of failing: Failing would have been a relief. Afraid of who he’d be, if the problem of who he was was solved for him.

His teachers were furious. They had pulled strings for him, and he was walking away from their protective benefice. Agnese wasn’t accustomed to having his generosity trashed. He threw my brother out of his studio and refused to talk to him. Grau, the longer-term architect, sat him down, hostage for a few more minutes, and made him say just what he wanted to do instead.

Jonah threw his palms in the air. He was just that age, emerged adult, with adolescence’s pupa still clinging to him. “I thought I might sing a little?”

Grau laughed. “And what have you been doing for the last four years?”

“I mean…sing for humans.”

The laugh went sharper. “Humans, as opposed to teachers?”

“Humans as opposed to, you know, people who are paid to listen?”

Mr. Grau smiled to himself. He folded his hands in front of his face and said with theatrical neutrality, “By all means, go and find your humans.” Neither blessing nor curse. Just: Go see.

Da was more confused than I’d ever seen him. He kept shaking his head, waiting for reality to clear itself up. Then the disappointment set in. “If you want to stay in this apartment after graduating, then you must look for work.” Jonah had no idea what such a thing might mean. He typed up a ridiculous résumé and peddled it to a few low-skill employers — midtown department stores, uptown restaurants, even Columbia Operations and Maintenance. He managed to list just enough of his cultural attainments to sabotage any interest.

He decided to go out for auditions. But no ordinary tryout would do. He combed the music trade press, hunting down the perfect coming-out opportunity. He found a contest tailor-made to showcase him. He came to me with the listing. “This is the one we’re doing, Mule.”

He held the paper under my nose. America’s Next Voices: a national competition for singers with no prior professional recognition. The thing carried a jewel of a prize. Trying for it seemed reasonable enough. The first round was months away, just before I was slated to do my own senior recital.

“I’m with you, brother. Just let me know when you want to get started.”

“When? No time like now.”

Then I knew what plans he had for me. “Jonah.” I put my palms out to slow him. “My lessons. My recital.” My degree. My life.

“Come on, Mule. We’ve already worked up the whole program, for my recital. You’re the only player who knows me, who can read my mind.”

“Who’s going to coach us?”

Jonah got that manic twinkle he usually saved for the stage. “No coach. You’re going to be my coach, Joey. Who else is going to do that blood-brother thing? Who else can I depend on to be absolutely merciless? Think of the stakes. If we come from nowhere and walk away with this?”

“Jonah. I have to graduate.”

“Jesus. What do you take me for? I’m not going to thwart your education, for Christ’s sake. You’re a growing boy.”

I never did graduate. But I suppose, technically, Jonah never thwarted my education.

He told Da we needed a place to rehearse. “What’s wrong with here? It’s just your sister and me. We know all about you.”

“Exactly, Da.”

“What’s wrong with your home? Home is where you always made your music, since you were little.”

“We’re not little anymore, Da.” Da looked at me as if I’d changed sides.

Jonah outdid me. “This isn’t home, Da.” Home had burned.

“Why don’t you rehearse at school?”

Jonah hadn’t told Da the details of his break with Juilliard. “We need privacy, Da. We have to nail this contest.”

“This is just another audition, my boys. You’ve taken these before.”

But it wasn’t just an audition. It was our entry into the deadly horse race of professional music. Jonah didn’t mean merely to enter this contest. He meant to walk away with it.

Da understood nothing, except what Jonah said he needed. He sat us down at the kitchen table after Ruth went to bed. “A little money came to us when your mother…” He showed us some papers. Jonah made some pretense of decoding them. “This is not a fortune I’m speaking about. But enough to start you. This is what your mother would want, what she always believed for you. But you must know: When this sum is gone, no more comes along after it. You must be sure you’re doing what you need with it.”

Certainty was always Jonah’s vice of choice. He found a studio ten blocks from our apartment, on the edge of Harlem. At considerable expense, he rented a piano and had it moved in. It suited me: The room sat just a few blocks from where I’d seen the woman I was going to spend my future with. During our breaks, I could go stand on the corner where she’d disappeared and wait for her to materialize again.

Not that Jonah planned many breaks. He figured that once we set up the space, we’d pretty much camp out there. He picked up a half-sized refrigerator and a couple of old Boy Scout sleeping bags secondhand from some real boys. He planned to work straight through until the first rounds of the competition, that fall.

I had my own lessons, with Mr. Bateman. To Jonah, my continuing to study with the same teacher proved I wasn’t learning anything. It came down to a choice: Jonah or school. Mr. Bateman was the best teacher I’d ever have. But Jonah was my brother, and the greatest musical talent I had any chance of working with. If he couldn’t bring Mama back alive, what hope had I?

I applied for a leave of absence. I told Mr. Bateman it was a family emergency. He signed off without any question. Wilson Hart was the only one I leveled with. My friend just shook his head at the plan. “He know what sacrifice he’s asking you to make?”

“I think he sees it as an opportunity.”

It took all the man’s judgment not to judge me, not to say what he should have. “More like a gamble, far as I can see.”

Worse than a gamble. But so was singing. Will and I both knew one thing: With this much riding on one throw of the die, I wouldn’t be coming back to school, whatever the outcome.

“You listen here, Mix. Most men?” Wilson Hart reached out and cupped my chin. I let him raise my head. His fingers grazed my Adam’s apple. I wondered whether a blind person could tell race by touch. “Most men would kill for a brother like you.”

He made me sit and play, while I was still in the neighborhood. Who knew when I’d be back through? We played through a four-hands version of the chamber fantasy he was working on, an eerily consonant, sepia-toned piece full of tunes I should have recognized but didn’t. Jonah would have called the piece reactionary. But Jonah didn’t have to know.