service of art, the art that you love, and I love. But if in my lifetime in service to art, surrounded by it, moved by its beauty again and again, I have learned one thing, it is that in its every expression and in its every utterance it is adoring of the human soul and the human heart. If I had left Rosanna in the laundry, her life itself may have been a work of art greater than the sum of all the songs she has ever sung.”
They don’t understand. They never understand. Why would they? They have not intervened, as I have. They have not interrupted the course of things. They have not broken apart lines. Or, at least, if they have, they seem not to care. I am now old enough to choose where I stand at the last, and though my friends and acquaintances in the world of music may not understand or approve, I stand on this. I see clearly. I know what I have done. And I know, finally, what is right.
In the gondola, on the Grand Canal, I felt that I was borne back toward where I had started, not by the power of the gondoliere and not merely withthe gentle flow of the tide, but as if on a river that, though running into darkness and oblivion, was running swift and bright.
Soon after pushing off from the dock at the Celestia, we passed under the Accademia bridge. I strained toward the Rio Terrà Foscarini, but heard nothing, only the water and the noise of the crowd. It felt like sitting in a dark room, and I looked ahead as if I had lost every chance in the world.
But then, as if the lights of a room had come up, or the great and powerful lights of the stage were pushed to the full so that the rouge on the singers’ faces looked like roses in the summer sun, I heard her as she began to sing.
Her voice, not even a full day later, was more powerful, more masterful. She had ascended from her very high position at least a step or two, and her song was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, far more beautiful in its promise, despite a younger and less accomplished voice, than any song Rosanna has ever sung, for, you see, Rosanna was not allowed to bloom.
And as I passed over the waters and heard this song that she sang on a side street, it said to me that no matter where you lead or you are led, no matter how the waves may break upon you, and what sins you may unknowingly commit, it is true that by the grace of God you can sometimes make amends.
Reconstruction
T HE MOST DIFFICULT of the dinner parties I ruin are usually around Christmas, and always those of the younger members of the firm, who, no matter how well they have done, have yet to find their place because they have yet to fall from grace and restore themselves. They know I have built and rebuilt, that, quite apart from my military history, I have, in corporate terms, come back from the dead. That very thing, though I did not ask for it, is what they fear the most to get and fear the most in me.
It is why, while I sit still and merely smile, they hold forth in a volume of words that would blow up a tire. You would think that because they talk as enthusiastically as talking dogs, they would win. While they say everything, I say nothing. I am shown the second-tier paintings, and harried children who can play Mendelssohn, and from the corner of my eye I see the ineluctable Range Rovers, the Viking stoves, and the flower boxes perfectly tended by silent Peruvians with broken hearts.
Still, I win, they lose, and I couldn’t throw the game if I tried. They just don’t know. They’re younger than my sons and daughter. I find their claims embarrassing: I don’t care where they went to college; I don’t even care where I went to college. I want only to spy the youthful graces they cannot see in themselves, and encourage them to do well and spend more time with their children than I spent with mine. They won’t. I didn’t. They can’t. I couldn’t.
“We’ve just come back from Venice,” said the lady of the house, the wife of one of our foremost earners. He is
They don’t understand. They never understand. Why would they? They have not intervened, as I have. They have not interrupted the course of things. They have not broken apart lines. Or, at least, if they have, they seem not to care. I am now old enough to choose where I stand at the last, and though my friends and acquaintances in the world of music may not understand or approve, I stand on this. I see clearly. I know what I have done. And I know, finally, what is right.
In the gondola, on the Grand Canal, I felt that I was borne back toward where I had started, not by the power of the gondoliere and not merely withthe gentle flow of the tide, but as if on a river that, though running into darkness and oblivion, was running swift and bright.
Soon after pushing off from the dock at the Celestia, we passed under the Accademia bridge. I strained toward the Rio Terrà Foscarini, but heard nothing, only the water and the noise of the crowd. It felt like sitting in a dark room, and I looked ahead as if I had lost every chance in the world.
But then, as if the lights of a room had come up, or the great and powerful lights of the stage were pushed to the full so that the rouge on the singers’ faces looked like roses in the summer sun, I heard her as she began to sing.
Her voice, not even a full day later, was more powerful, more masterful. She had ascended from her very high position at least a step or two, and her song was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, far more beautiful in its promise, despite a younger and less accomplished voice, than any song Rosanna has ever sung, for, you see, Rosanna was not allowed to bloom.
And as I passed over the waters and heard this song that she sang on a side street, it said to me that no matter where you lead or you are led, no matter how the waves may break upon you, and what sins you may unknowingly commit, it is true that by the grace of God you can sometimes make amends.
Reconstruction
T HE MOST DIFFICULT of the dinner parties I ruin are usually around Christmas, and always those of the younger members of the firm, who, no matter how well they have done, have yet to find their place because they have yet to fall from grace and restore themselves. They know I have built and rebuilt, that, quite apart from my military history, I have, in corporate terms, come back from the dead. That very thing, though I did not ask for it, is what they fear the most to get and fear the most in me.
It is why, while I sit still and merely smile, they hold forth in a volume of words that would blow up a tire. You would think that because they talk as enthusiastically as talking dogs, they would win. While they say everything, I say nothing. I am shown the second-tier paintings, and harried children who can play Mendelssohn, and from the corner of my eye I see the ineluctable Range Rovers, the Viking stoves, and the flower boxes perfectly tended by silent Peruvians with broken hearts.
Still, I win, they lose, and I couldn’t throw the game if I tried. They just don’t know. They’re younger than my sons and daughter. I find their claims embarrassing: I don’t care where they went to college; I don’t even care where I went to college. I want only to spy the youthful graces they cannot see in themselves, and encourage them to do well and spend more time with their children than I spent with mine. They won’t. I didn’t. They can’t. I couldn’t.
“We’ve just come back from Venice,” said the lady of the house, the wife of one of our foremost earners. He is
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