Richard Powers - The Time of Our Singing

Then Jonah hit the windup. “‘That said, Mr. Strom’s painterly highlights, his crisp articulation, and his brilliant, if dark, purity already stand up well alongside the best of contemporary European lieder singers his age. Predictions are always risky, but it is not difficult to imagine Mr. Strom becoming one of the finest Negro recitalists this country has ever produced.’”

Jonah dropped the pages to the bed.

“Let it go,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter. The rest of the article is a total love letter. He’s handed you a career on a platter!”

He tried to wrap his head around the generous insult: “Predictions are always risky.” He worked each word, turning the promise of the phrase into menace. My brother had never tried to pass, but it staggered him to discover that he couldn’t. I braced for Jonah’s contempt, knowing it would spill over in my direction.

But he was lost to contempt, working on that word, that one fat adjective hanging there in the paper of record, describing something, something as real as lyric, or spinto, or tenor. He was balancing the slap-down qualification against finest ever. Finest this country has ever produced. He wavered between tenses, feeling, for the first time, what it meant to kick open doors that kept closing, no matter how many legends had already passed through. Feeling what it meant to be driven out of the self-made self, forced to be an emblem, a giver of pride, a betrayer of the cause. Feeling what it meant to be a fixed category, no matter how he sung.

“Da and Mama should have named me Heinrich.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference.”

He’d been “niggered” before, more brutally. But not from a major music critic in the country’s leading paper. He lay in bed in his red-and-green-plaid bathrobe, covered in newspaper, shaking his head. Then perplexity turned to rage. “Of all the condescending… Who does this bastard think—”

“Jonah! The thing is a triumph. Howard Silverman’s talking you up in the New York Times.”

He stopped, surprised by my force. He went back to staring up at the ceiling, at all the people who’d never get through even that separately labeled door. He saw our mother coming home from her conservatory audition. The finest recitalist he’d ever know. He rolled his head through a weary arc. He looked at me, doing that performer’s trick with his hazel eyes. They don’t get close enough to check your eye color when they come to burn down your house. “You’re one of those big-smile, Satchmo gradualists, aren’t you?”

“You’re the one who wanted to close with the damn spiritual.”

There was an awful pause while we searched for the tempo. He could have killed me by saying nothing. For a long time, he did. When he spoke, it was with full Dowland flourish. “Don’t argue with me, human. I’m one of the finest Negro recitalists this country will ever produce.”

“‘Has ever produced.’ Big difference. Ask your father.” We both resorted to jittery giggles. “Finish the article. The condescending bastard saved you a big finale.”

Jonah worked through the last sentences aloud with his studied diction. “‘If this exciting young tenor has a limit, it is perhaps only that of size. All the other fundamentals are in place, and his every note rings with exhilarating freedom.’”

Exactly the kind of hedged praise critics loved to deal in. Who knew what it was supposed to mean? It was more than enough to launch a career with.

“I’m the Negro Aksel Schiotz. I’m going to be the Negro Fischer-Dieskau.”

“Fischer-Dieskau’s a baritone.”

“That’s okay. I’m liberal. Some of my best friends are baritones.”

“But would you want your sister to marry one?”

Jonah appraised me. “Know who you are? You’re the Negro Franz Rupp.” He swiped up the article and poured through it again. “Hey. He doesn’t even mention the accompaniment.”

“Good thing. If you have to mention the accompaniment, there’s something wrong.”

“Mule! I owe you so much. I wouldn’t even have been out there if…” He considered the thought and didn’t complete it. “How can I repay you? What do you want? My Red Ball Jets? My old seventy-eights? All yours. Everything.”

“How about you get dressed and buy me breakfast. Okay, make it lunch.”

He crawled out of bed, doffed the robe, and padded around the uncurtained room, showing off his welterweight body to every passerby. As he threw on briefs, chinos, and a golf shirt, he asked, “How come Ruth wasn’t there?”

“Jonah. I don’t know. Why don’t you call her?”

He shook his head. Didn’t think he should have to. Didn’t want to know. Couldn’t afford the answer. He sat back down on the unmade bed. “Dark purity: C’est moi. Only question is: Who’s going to be the white Jonah Strom?”

“Put your shoes on. Let’s go.”

He never got his shoes on, and we never went. While he was puttering, the phone started to ring. The Times was detonating in a million kitchens, reaching every acquaintance we’d ever made. Jonah fielded the first thrilled congratulations. The second wave rolled in as soon as he hung up. The third call came before he could recross the room. It was Mr. Weisman. He’d received a recording offer. The Harmondial label wanted our recital pressed into vinyl, exactly as we’d performed it.

Jonah called out the details to me as Mr. Weisman gave them. My brother hooted at the invitation, ready to sign and do the recording that afternoon. Mr. Weisman advised against it. He suggested that we do two more years of concertizing, make a few high-profile appearances, then try for a longer-term arrangement with a better recording company. He mentioned RCA Victor as within the realm of possibility. That slowed Jonah for a moment.

But Jonah was zooming away from earth at speeds old Mr. Weisman couldn’t gauge. He was set on jumping into other people’s futures, and recording gave him the chance. To turn the moment permanent, spread the dying now out lengthwise into forever: Jonah didn’t care who was offering. Harmondial was a young, small company, two strikes against it in Mr. Weisman’s book, but a selling point for my brother. He and they could break into the game together. At twenty-four, Jonah was still immortal. He could crash and resurrect as often as he liked, drawing on endless time and talent.

“You only start once,” Mr. Weisman kept saying. But Jonah could make no sense of the warning. Harmondial’s bid went beyond anything Jonah imagined. None of Mr. Weisman’s objections could change Jonah’s sense that the offer had no downside. It was a giveaway, a lottery prize that cost him nothing to try.

We flew to Los Angeles to record. Harmondial used their California studio mostly for their catalog of pop and light classics. Jonah said it would give him exactly the presence he wanted. We flew out at the beginning of August, two kings in coach, giggling like criminals all the way across the continent.

We crossed L.A. in a waking daze, driving around Hollywood and Westwood in a rented Ford Mustang. Kids were everywhere, glued to their transistors as if to news of an alien invasion. The invasion, in fact, was already in its advanced stages. We’d missed the signs, back east in our barnstorming. Now we cruised down Ventura, paralyzed latecomers to an epidemic. The sound was everywhere, past our ability to take in.

“Jesus, Joey! It’s worse than cholera. Worse than communism. The absolute triumph of the three-chord song!” Jonah trolled the car radio dial for the same tunes we could hear beating from every corner, in a hurry to sample the thrill so long kept at bay. Some of the songs were venturing far beyond tonic, subdominant, and dominant. Those songs were the ones that scared him. Those were the ones he couldn’t get enough of.