On Beauty Read online

  ‘What’s this?’ said Zora, pointing to the ground. ‘Marshmallow?’

  ‘Please. This ain’t America. You think this is America? This is toy-town. I was born in this country – trust me. You go into Roxbury, you go into the Bronx, you see America. That’s street.’

  ‘Levi, you don’t live in Roxbury,’ explained Zora slowly. ‘You live in Wellington. You go to Arundel. You’ve got your name ironed into your underwear.’

  ‘I wonder if I’m street . . .’ mused Howard. ‘I’m still healthy, got hair, testicles, eyes, etcetera. Got great testicles. It’s true I’m above subnormal intelligence – but then again I am full of verve and spunk.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dad,’ said Zora, ‘please don’t say spunk. Ever.’

  ‘Can’t I be street?’

  ‘No. Why you always got to make everything be a joke?’

  ‘I just want to be street.’

  ‘Mom. Tell him to stop, man.’

  ‘I can be a brother. Check it out,’ said Howard, and proceeded to make a series of excruciating hand gestures and poses. Kiki squealed and covered her eyes.

  ‘Mom – I’m going home, I swear to God if he does that for one more second, I swear to God . . .’

  Levi was trying desperately to get his hoodie to cover the side of his vision in which Howard was persisting. It was surely only seconds before Howard recited the only piece of rap he could ever remember, a single line he’d mysteriously retained from the mass of lyrics he heard Levi mutter day after day. ‘I got the slickest, quickest dick –’ began Howard. Screams of consternation rose up from the rest of his family. ‘A penis with the IQ of a genius! ’

  ‘Dat’s it – I’m gone.’

  Levi coolly jogged ahead of them all and tucked himself into the swarm going through the gates into the park. They all laughed, even Jerome, and it did Kiki good to see him laugh. Howard had always been funny. Even when they first met, she had thought of him, covetously, as the kind of father who would be able to make his children laugh. Now she tweaked his elbow affectionately.

  ‘Something I said?’ asked Howard, satisfied, and released his arms from their folded pose.

  ‘Well done, baby. Has he got his cell on him?’ asked Kiki.

  ‘He’s got mine,’ said Jerome. ‘He stole it from my room this morning.’

  As they filed in behind the slow-moving crowd, the park gave off its scent for the Belseys, sap-filled and sweet, heavy with the last of the dying summer. On a humid September night like this the Common was no longer that neat, historic space renowned for its speeches and hangings. It shrugged off its human gardeners and tended once more towards the wild, the natural. The Boston primness Howard associated with these kinds of events could not quite survive the mass of hot bodies and the crepitations of the crickets, the soft, damp bark of the trees and the atonal tuning of instruments – and all this was to the good. Yellow lanterns, the colour of rape seed, hung in the branches of the trees.

  ‘Gee, that’s nice,’ said Jerome. ‘It’s like the orchestra’s hovering above the water, isn’t it? I mean, the reflection from the lights makes it look like that.’

  ‘Gee,’ said Howard, looking towards the flood-lit mound beyond the water. ‘Gee gosh. Golly gee. Bo diddley.’

  The orchestra sat on a small stage on the other side of the pond. It was clear to Howard – the only non-myopic member of his family – that every male musician was wearing a tie with a ‘musical notes’ design upon it. The women had this same motif printed on a cummerbund-like sash they wore around their waists. From an enormous banner behind the orchestra, a profile of Mozart’s miserable, pouchy hamster face loomed out at him.

  ‘Where’s the choir?’ asked Kiki, looking about her.

  ‘They’re underwater. They come up in like a . . .’ said Howard, miming a man emerging with a flourish from the sea. ‘It’s Mozart in pond. Like Mozart on ice. Fewer fatalities.’

  Kiki laughed lightly, but then her face changed and she held him tightly by his wrist. ‘Hey . . . ah, Howard, baby?’ she said warily, looking across the park. ‘You want good news or bad news?’

  ‘Hmm?’ said Howard, turning round and finding both kinds of news were approaching from across the green and waving at him: Erskine Jegede and Jack French, the Dean of the Humanities Faculty. Jack French on his long playboy legs in their New England slacks. How old was this man? The question had always troubled Howard. Jack French could be fifty-two. He could just as easily be seventy-nine. You couldn’t ask him and if you didn’t ask him you’d never know. It was a movie-idol face Jack had, cut-glass architecture, angled like a Wyndham Lewis portrait. His sentimental eyebrows made the shape of two separated sides of a steeple, always gently perplexed. He had skin like the kind of dark, aged leather you find on those fellows they dig out, after 900 years, from a peat bog. A thin yet complete covering of grey silk hair hid his skull from Howard’s imputations of extreme old age and was cut no diff erently than it would have been when the man was twenty-two, balanced on the lip of a white boat looking out at Nantucket through one sun-shading hand, wondering if that was Dolly stood square on the pier with two highballs in her hand. Compare and contrast with Erskine: his shining, hairless pate, and those storybook freckles that induced in Howard an unreasonable feeling of joy. Erskine was dressed this evening in a three-piece suit of the yellowest of yellows, the curves of his bumptious body naturally resisting all three pieces. On his small feet he wore a pair of pointed Cuban-heeled shoes. The effect was of a bull doing his initial two-step dance towards you. Still ten yards away, Howard had a chance to switch his position with his wife – quickly and unobserved – so that Erskine would naturally veer towards Howard and French would go the other way. He took this opportunity. Unfortunately French was not given to duologic conversation – he addressed the group, always. No – he addressed the gaps between the group.

  ‘Belseys en masse,’ said Jack French very slowly, and each Belsey tried to ascertain which Belsey he might be looking at directly. ‘Missing . . . one, I believe. Belseys minus one.’

  ‘That’s Levi, our youngest – we lost him. He lost us. To be honest, he’s trying to lose us,’ said Kiki coarsely and laughed, and Jerome laughed and Zora laughed and so did Howard and Erskine and after all of them, very slowly, with infinite slowness, Jack French began to laugh.

  ‘My children,’ began Jack.

  ‘Yes?’ said Howard.

  ‘Spend most of their time,’ said Jack.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Howard, encouragingly.

  ‘Contriving,’ said Jack.

  ‘Ha, ha,’ said Howard. ‘Yes.’

  ‘To lose me at public events,’ said Jack finally.

  ‘Right,’ said Howard, exhausted already. ‘Right. Always the way.’

  ‘We are anathema to our own children,’ said Erskine merrily, with his scale-jumping accent, from high to low and back again. ‘We are liked only by other people’s children. Your children for example like me so much more than they like you.’

  ‘It’s true, man. I’d move in with you if I could,’ said Jerome in return, for which he got the standard Erskine response to good tidings, even minor ones like the arrival of a new gin and tonic on the table – both of Erskine’s hands placed on his cheeks and a kiss on the forehead.

  ‘You will come home with me, then. It is settled.’

  ‘Please, take the rest too. Don’t dangle carrots,’ said Howard, stepping forward and giving Erskine a jovial slap on the back. He then turned to Jack French and put out his hand, which French, who had turned to gaze upon the musicians, did not notice.

  ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Kiki. ‘We’re so glad to bump into you two. Is Maisie here, Jack? Or the kids?’

  ‘It is wonderful,’ confirmed Jack, putting his hands on his slim hips.

  Zora was elbowing her father in his mid-section. Howard observed the moon-eyes his daughter was making at Dean French. It was typical of Zora that when actually faced with the authority figure
she had been cursing out all week she would simply swoon at said authority figure’s feet.

  ‘Jack,’ tried Howard, ‘you’ve met Zora, haven’t you? She’s a sophomore now.’

  ‘It is an unusual visitation of wonder,’ said Jack, turning back to them all.

  ‘Yes,’ said Howard.

  ‘For such a prosaic and,’ expanded Jack.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Howard.

  ‘Municipal setting,’ said Jack, and beamed at Zora.

  ‘Dean French,’ said Zora, picking up Jack’s hand and shaking it for him, ‘I’m so excited about this year. It’s an incredible line-up you’ve got this year – I was in the Greenman – I work on Tuesdays in the Greenman, in the Slavic section? And I was looking at the past faculty reports like for the past five years, and every year since you’ve been Dean we just keep on getting more and more amazing guest lecturers and speakers and research fellows – myself and my friends, we’re just really psyched about this semester. And of course Dad’s giving his incredible art theory class – which I am so taking this year – I’m just so over whatever anybody has to say about that – I mean, in the end you’ve just got to take the class that will most develop you as a human being at whatever cost, I truly believe that. So I just wanted to say that it’s just really exciting for me to feel that Wellington’s moving through a new progressive stage. I think the college is really moving in a positive direction, which it needed, I think, after that dismal power struggle in the mid-to-late eighties, which I think really dented morale around here.’

  Howard did not know which piece of this horrible little speech the Dean was capable of extracting from the rest, of processing and/or replying to, nor had he any idea how long this might take. Kiki once again came to his rescue.

  ‘Honey – let’s not talk shop tonight, OK? It’s not polite. We’ve got all semester for that, haven’t we . . . Oh, and before I forget, God, it’s our wedding anniversary in a week and a half – we’re gonna have like a shin-dig, nothing much, some Marvin Gaye, some soul-food – you know, very mellow . . .’

  Jack asked the date. Kiki told him. Jack’s face gave in to that tiny, involuntary shudder with which Kiki had, in recent years, become familiar.

  ‘But of course it’s your actual anniversary, so . . .’ said Jack, meaning to have said that to himself.

  ‘Yep – and since by the fifteenth everybody’s crazy busy anyway, we thought we might as well just have it on the actual day . . . and it might be an opportunity to . . . you know, everybody say hello, meet the new faces before semester begins, etcetera.’

  ‘Although your own faces,’ said Jack, his face alight with private delight at the thought of the rest of his sentence, ‘of course, will not be so new to each other, will they? Is it twenty-five years?’

  ‘Honey,’ said Kiki, laying her big bejewelled hand on Jack’s shoulder, ‘confidentially, it’s thirty.’

  Some emotion came into Kiki’s voice as she said this.

  ‘Now, in the proverbial way of things,’ considered Jack, ‘would that be silver? Or is it gold?’

  ‘Adamantine chains,’ joked Howard, pulled his wife to him and kissed her wetly on her cheek. Kiki laughed deeply, shaking everything on her.

  ‘But you’ll come?’ asked Kiki.

  ‘It will be a great –’ began Jack, beaming, but just then came the divine intervention of a voice over a tannoy system, asking people to take their seats.

  7

  Mozart’s Requiem begins with you walking towards a huge pit. The pit is on the other side of a precipice, which you cannot see over until you are right at its edge. Your death is awaiting you in that pit. You don’t know what it looks like or sounds like or smells like. You don’t know whether it will be good or bad. You just walk towards it. Your will is a clarinet and your footsteps are attended by all the violins. The closer you get to the pit, the more you begin to have the sense that what awaits you there will be terrifying. Yet you experience this terror as a kind of blessing, a gift. Your long walk would have had no meaning were it not for this pit at the end of it. You peer over the precipice: a burst of ethereal noise crashes over you. In the pit is a great choir, like the one you joined for two months in Wellington in which you were the only black woman. This choir is the heavenly host and simultaneously the devil’s army. It is also every person who has changed you during your time on this earth: your many lovers; your family; your enemies, the nameless, faceless woman who slept with your husband; the man you thought you were going to marry; the man you did. The job of this choir is judgement. The men sing first, and their judgement is very severe. And when the women join in there is no respite, the debate only grows louder and sterner. For it is a debate – you realize that now. The judgement is not yet decided. It is surprising how dramatic the fight for your measly soul turns out to be. Also surprising are the mermaids and the apes that persist on dancing around each other and sliding down an ornate staircase during the Kyrie, which, according to the programme notes, features no such action, even in the metaphorical sense.

  Kyrie eleison.

  Christe eleison.

  Kyrie eleison.

  That is all that happens in the Kyrie. No apes, just Latin. But for Kiki, it was apes and mermaids all the same. The experience of listening to an hour’s music you barely know in a dead language you do not understand is a strange falling and rising experience. For minutes at a time you are walking deep into it, you seem to understand. Then, without knowing how or when exactly, you discover you have wandered away, bored or tired from the effort, and now you are nowhere near the music. You refer to the programme notes. The notes reveal that the past fifteen minutes of wrangling over your soul have been merely the repetition of a single inconsequential line. Somewhere around the Confutatis, Kiki’s careful tracing of the live music with the literal programme broke down. She didn’t know where she was now. In the Lacrimosa or miles ahead? Stuck in the middle or nearing the end? She turned to ask Howard, but he was asleep. A glimpse to her right revealed Zora concentrating on her Discman, through which a recording of the voice of a Professor N. R. A. Gould carefully guided her through each movement. Poor Zora – she lived through footnotes. It was the same in Paris: so intent was she upon reading the guide book to Sacré-Coeur that she walked directly into an altar, cutting her forehead open.

  Kiki tipped her head back on her deckchair and tried to let go of her curious anxiety. The moon was massive overhead, and mottled like the skin of old white people. Or maybe it was that Kiki noted many older white people with their faces turned up towards the moon, their heads resting on the back of their deckchairs, their hands dancing gently in their lap in a way that suggested enviable musical knowledge. Yet surely no one among these white people could be more musical than Jerome, who, Kiki now noticed, was crying. She opened her mouth with genuine surprise and then, fearful of breaking some spell, closed it again. The tears were silent and plentiful. Kiki felt moved, and then another feeling interceded: pride. I don’t understand, she thought, but he does. A young black man of intelligence and sensibility, and I have raised him. After all, how many other young black men would even come to an event like this – I bet there isn’t one in this entire crowd, thought Kiki, and then checked and was mildly annoyed to find that indeed there was one, a tall young man with an elegant neck, sitting next to her daughter. Undeterred, Kiki continued her imaginary speech to the imaginary guild of black American mothers: And there’s no big secret, not at all, you just need to have faith, I guess, and you need to counter the dismal self-image that black men receive as their birthright from America – that’s essential – and, I don’t know . . . get involved in after-school activities, have books around the house, and sure, have a little money, and a house with outdoor . . . Kiki abandoned her parental reverie for a moment to tug at Zora’s sleeve and point out the marvel of Jerome, as if these tears were rolling down the cheek of a stone madonna. Zora glanced over, shrugged and returned to Professor Gould. Kiki returned her own gaze to the moon.
So much more lovely than the sun and you can look at it without fear of harm. A few minutes later, she was preparing to make a final, concentrated effort to match the sung words with the text on the page when suddenly it was over. She was so surprised she came late to the clapping, although not as late as Howard, whom it had only just awoken.

  ‘That it, then?’ he said, springing from his chair. ‘Everyone been touched by the Christian sublime? Can we go now?’

  ‘We have to find Levi. We can’t go without him . . . maybe we should try Jerome’s cell . . . I don’t know if it’s on.’ Kiki looked up at her husband with sudden curiosity. ‘What, so you hated it? How can you hate it?’

  ‘Levi’s over there,’ said Jerome, waving towards a tree a hundred yards away. ‘Hey – Levi!’

  ‘Well, I thought it was amazing,’ pressed Kiki. ‘It’s obviously the work of a genius –’

  Howard groaned at the term.

  ‘Oh, Howard, come on – you have to be a genius to write music like that.’

  ‘Music like what? Define genius.’

  Kiki ignored the request. ‘I think the kids were quite moved,’ she said, squeezing Jerome’s arm lightly but saying no more. She would not expose him to his father’s ridicule. ‘And I was very moved. I don’t see how it’s possible not to be moved by music like that. You’re serious – you didn’t like it?’

  ‘I liked it fine . . . it was fine. I just prefer music which isn’t trying to fake me into some metaphysical idea by the back door.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s like God’s music or something.’

  ‘I rest my case,’ said Howard, and now turned from her and waved at Levi, who was stuck in the crowd, waving back at them. Levi nodded as Howard pointed to the gate where they should all meet up.

  ‘Howard,’ continued Kiki, because she was happiest when she could get him to talk to her about his ideas, ‘explain to me how what we just heard wasn’t the work of a genius . . . I mean, no matter what you say, there’s obviously a difference between something like that and something like . . .’