Dr. 09-01, among the academicians, stands above the rest in my recollection for his affection shown to myself and to my mother; also, in that regard, I remember fondly my music-master, 13-04.
The music-master was a young man, thin and clean, whose bright silk waistcoats belied the gravity of the rest of his vesture, which was black and brown. Now, upon reflection, I suspect that he did not have moneys sufficient to dress as he wished, and so settled for being but half-dandified. The effect was somewhat awkward — but I can say this only because my habiliments were paid for, and I was often dressed in silks; my frock-coats, as well as my waistcoats, tended to the florid before I had any choice in the matter. 03-01 chose such colors as he said offset the duskiness of my skin and tended towards picturesque effect.
13-04 had studied in Italy himself with the great masters. He taught my mother the art of playing the harpsichord, and, when I was four or five, began to tutor me on the violin. Together, we played not only the music of the moment, but music of the past, which I grew to love, though it was unfashionable. We played the sonatas of Mr. Handel and Dr. Boyce, of Locatelli, Tartini, and Gluck. My especial favorites were those autumnal sonatas of Signor Corelli, which had made such a stir in the century previous. We played them in the evenings as the sun set over the steeples of Boston, casting broad, brazen rectangles of light across the fraying rugs. We spun out the somber passages, our violins singing one to the other as my mother played upon the harpsichord, and perhaps this is as much of her sadness and joy as I shall know.
As I have been told, one evening when I was very young, Mr. 13-04 was lingering below-stairs, discussing harmonics and Pythagoras with 03-01 and 09-01, when he heard my mother singing me some lullaby from her homeland through an open door.
None of them spake. They sat, unmoving, while she sung, and then, without excusing himself, 13-04 rose and rushed above-stairs, and sought her out along the corridors.
He asked if she could recall other songs of her race. She had been gone then but two years, perhaps, and could. He asked her whether she would sing them for him, and allow him to write them down, so that they might not be lost. In this, she agreed.
I do not believe, had he asked her even a year later, she would have given her assent. As I have said, there was a reluctance in her to speak of the kingdom of her birth, or to allude in any way to knowledge of its practices; and this reluctance grew swiftly in the years of my childhood.
So, as I understand it, in exchange for his lessons on the harpsichord, she sang him the songs of her homeland — my homeland, if my homeland were not these drab and rocky coasts, these marshes, these plains cut flat from forest for the growing of corn.
I cannot doubt that at first his interest in her songs was forensic, nothing but fodder for an article to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Philosophical Ephemera of the Novanglian College of Lucidity. As he listened to her Africk monodies, though, their unaccountable rhythms, their outbursts and their alien allusions, he grew passionate about them, and would often importune her to sing them again; which she did not, after she reached the age of sixteen or seventeen. She would always demur, saying, “You would not hear those olden, shrieking things.”
“From your lips,” he said, “even a shriek would be the very call of the nightingale.”
“And a howl,” she said, behind her fan, “like the song of the titmouse.”
“You mock me, Mademoiselle.”
“Don’t tire me, sir. We’ll sing something about cheeks, roses, and the garden swing.”
On one occasion, 13-04 took me aside and requested that I try to coax her to sing the songs in private, and record them in my memory. I was perhaps eight.
That night, when I was brought into her presence before my bedtime, I asked her if she would sing for me. She said she would, one song, one aria for her darling son — which reply made the men in the sitting-room murmur, “Ah! Music!” and clap. She bowed her head before them graciously. She asked me for a request, and I said I would hear the royal songs of Oyo.
“You have been, I see, speaking to Mr. 13-04.”
I remained silent.
“Have you not?”
I said not a word.
“Come along with me. To your bedchamber.” She turned to the scholars, and said, “You must excuse my absence, sirs; if I favor this young gentleman above you, it is only because he wants manners you have already been taught. And he is prettier.” She kissed me coyly upon the forehead. I was sensible of danger in the air. She was trembling with anger.
“Mademoiselle,” said one, in the dry and oft-repeated jest, “to see you depart from our circle is to see the sun cast off its planets and roam. What shall we, massy bodies, do, left bereft?”
She pressed me towards the door. “You flatter me, sir. If there is any wayward sun, it is this boy here. Move along, Mungo.” She snapped me at the base of my wig.
As we left, they clapped at her jest.
When we got to my bedchamber, her smile was gone. She helped me off with my frock-coat and sat me down. “Tonight,” she said, “a reading from the Book of Psalms.” And she drew down my Bible from the shelf, leafed through with her thin fingers, and began to recite:
“By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion. On the willows there, we hung up our harps, for they that carried us away captive required of us songs, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’
How can we sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land?”
She removed my wig, and laid her hand on my bare scalp. Then she continued:
“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
O daughter of Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall be he who requites you with what you have done to us!
Happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the stone.”
Her hand was spread on my bald scalp like a compass rose; and I was astounded, and did not know what country lay there described.