Miriam. What did she look like? What could I say to my daughter? That Miriam was beautiful no doubt to others, the plane of her cheekbones, her nose high-bridged, brow level, the lips at rest slightly open, while to me the cheek, the nose, the mouth, were beautiful because they were Miriam’s alone? That in dreams even now that mouth presses itself against mine, as if starved for the air in my lungs?
And so I would lie, saying, “That’s just what she looked like, Clem, like you minus me.”
SIX
Mathieu had said she was a singer, une choriste, that she earned extra money during her studies by singing in choral ensembles. So I knew she was a graduate student in philosophy and a singer, that her name was Miriam Levaux, and that was all I had. It would have been easy enough to ask Mathieu her telephone number, but I did not. I could not, not because I was shy or ashamed, but because in some way I knew that the Miriam I would find with Mathieu’s assistance, or anyone else’s, would not be the Miriam I sought. The Miriam with friends, with acquaintances, at the center of her own history, would not be the Miriam I had seen in the caged interior of the elevator, not her body, knowledge of whose compact wholeness leapt like a spark from her palm to mine when she shook my hand. Miriam. Moi, je m’appelle Miriam, she had said, as though to say: “You will only find me if you find me alone.”
And so I set to my work. Newspapers from the corner kiosk yielded a bewilderment of choral listings: Eastern Orthodox choirs, American gospel, madrigal ensembles, a “Missa Flamenca,” a Palestrina festival. Attending events across the city, I slipped into back rows and pews, slipped out early when I’d determined she wasn’t there. I think now how slender the odds were that I would find her. How could I be sure she was even in the city? But I was sure. I knew it was only a matter of time and in the event not very much time at all, perhaps a week, perhaps ten days.
The concert where I found her was a program of music by Tallis and Allegri, the venue a church not more than half a kilometer from my apartment. The place was more crowded than I had anticipated, and the view from my pew was partially obscured by a pillar. It was only by leaning to the side that I could make out the faces of the singers in the choir.
Was that her, small and dark, in a plain dark dress, standing in the front row? Someone behind me hissed when I leaned over farther to see. I do not remember what the first pieces were; the music seemed to pass through my person unimpeded, like radio signals. The concert concluded, however, with Allegri’s Miserere, whose first stately notes seemed to restore to the church its extinguished purpose. I cannot describe or explain the feeling, but it was as though the music I heard was at once music no one had ever heard and music I had always loved. Was Miriam’s voice among those blent in that solemn current? I was certain it was, but I could not see her. Monsieur! my neighbor hissed again when I tried once more to see around the pillar. I closed my eyes and listened.
Miriam, I learned later, was not one of the robed figures visible at the front of the church. Hers had been a solitary voice, separate from the choir, sequestered with two or three other singers up in a loft or gallery. Hers was the single soprano voice set apart for the ravishing upper flights of the Miserere’s refrain, the voice that detached itself, every other verse, to hang for a harrowing instant in the ether before swooping to a lower octave.
She did not recognize me after the performance when I approached her on the street. I repeated my name twice before she remembered where we had met. “Ah, Daniel! Excusez-moi!” she said, and it was perhaps still in a spirit of apology that she agreed to join me for a glass of wine and to humor my hobbling French. Nevertheless, she accepted a second glass, and those were followed by two more glasses, until it grew late and the café waiter began to bang chairs onto tabletops and sweep around the base of our table.
Standing by the cash register to pay (the waiter now assiduously ignoring me), I watched her smoke her cigarette, watched her reach out to stub it in the ashtray but then hesitate, lifting the cigarette again to her lips to take a final drag before stabbing it out. She had kicked off a shoe, and her foot, resting flat on the tile, looked small and sure, as though accustomed to nakedness.
Would I be in Paris a little longer? she asked, lighting another cigarette, when I returned to the table.
Not long, I said. My flight to the States would leave in a few days.
Ah, dommage, because maybe I could have helped her with some translations, as I had helped Mathieu. A friend of hers had composed a series of songs, settings of Irish poems that Miriam was scheduled to record. She wanted there to be good translations in the liner notes, better than the French translations she had found. Did I know much Irish poetry?
I did not.
A shame,
