They will bury you, I am assured, beneath the cathedraloutside Marseille. You can sing your longed-for vespers, you can wear yourgirlhood veil. You are not getting loose from me, you are only transforming; inthe rooftop garden of a cramped city apartment, my daughter will skin her kneeand hyacinths will bloom.
The Women Who Sing For Sklep
The composer stoppedwhen he came to the hillside overlooking the village of Sklep. He asked hisassistant to photograph the squat little houses of wattle-and-daub, sipped fromhis canteen, and looked upon the landscape with approval.
He rode into the village posting to his horse’s trot, stiffin the saddle after many hours of riding. His assistant was fortunate; hisassistant got to walk. His assistant’s name was Triglav, after the old Slavicgod, which the composer appreciated.
Sklep had no Sunday market, so the main road into town wasempty, besides a woman who sold goat’s milk in glass bottles on one side of theroad. The composer did not ask her where to find the town magistrate. Healready knew. The house at the end of the road was taller and narrower than anyof its neighbors. Already he had seen a dozen villages arranged just the sameway.
In front of the tall, narrow house, the composer dismounted,put his horse’s reins in Triglav’s hands, then walked to the door and knocked.The horse nibbled hopefully at the dust in front of the house. Triglav arrangedand rearranged their luggage. The composer waited, his arms crossed like two intersectingbars in front of his ribcage.
Inside the tall and narrow house, the town magistrate servedcoffee from an Arabic carafe. The composer’s eyebrows lifted at this display ofworldliness. They were on the Hungarian plain. Last year the composer had livedwith a tribe of people who spoke their own language and played instruments madefrom freshly sanded pine.
“I want to study the music of your people,” the composersaid to the magistrate. “I want to live beside you and understand what inspiresyou.”
The magistrate did not say why, not aloud, but hisbrow furrowed deeply.
“Go see Magdalena,” he said.
“Magdalena,” repeated the composer.
“Come to the Cemuk festival tomorrow. I will introduce you.”The magistrate was still frowning. “What is that thing?”
He was gesturing to the camera, a cloth-covered lump inTriglav’s lap. The composer nodded to Triglav, who obediently removed the coverand peered down the telescopic lens at the squat, wind-whipped man sittingacross from him.
“Please, not me,” said the magistrate, and rose to his feet.“I don’t have any.”
The composer was an expert in his field, so he could not askfor clarification.
◊
The composer and his assistant showed up to the festivalbefore anyone else did. They spent two hours photographing and recording andtranscribing the gathering of wood by the young men of Sklep, who timidlydarted back and forth from a thicket of birches to the field where they laidtheir kindling. At dusk, the boys lit a cluster of bonfires.
As the sky darkened, the people began to emerge from theirhouses. The girls wore white robes and had fern fronds braided into their hair;the children were barefoot. Everyone was shivering.
The composer made a note of the festival’s taxonomy: Christianalteration of a pagan summer fertility ritual. He stood at the front of thecrowd, beside a birch tree covered in ribbons and beads, and watched the girlsshuffle into formation. In a few minutes they would sing, opening the sky, andrain would come to the village of Sklep. The other tribe he had lived with hadtold the composer about this miracle so many times that he believed theirstories must have some basis in truth.
No one asked the composer who he was or why he had come. Noone spoke. After a while the composer saw the girls open their mouths in unisonlike they were singing, but no sound came out. He shut off his wire recorder.He watched their lips form words he couldn’t recognize, their throats ripplingwith effort, their chests rising and falling.
Meanwhile Triglav winked into the camera and shot photoafter photo. Triglav must either be hearing sound or had expected not to hearsound. No one acted surprised by the silence. The composer felt deeply andprofoundly uncomfortable.
The girls shut their mouths in unison. The one on the endexhaled heavily as though all of the not-singing had tired her. Withoutspeaking, they formed a line and walked into the birches. The young menfollowed at a respectful distance, heads lowered. A boy of eleven or twelvetried to go with them, but his father restrained him. The boy made a littlechoking sound of frustration. When he saw the look on his father’s face, hefell silent.
As the last of the boys disappeared into the trees, thecomposer tucked his trousers into his socks and set out after them. Theprocession had split the woods like a part, pressing down the undergrowth. Thepath left behind was easy to follow, and no one stopped the composer or hisassistant from following. Beside the composer, Triglav shouldered the cameraand photographed the backs of the girls’ heads and the boys’ shoulders frombetween the birches.
They walked for close to an hour. A few of the boys playedscuffed brass instruments. Chromatic scales in irregular minor keys.Melancholy, dirge-like music. The music had no discernible tempo, but the boysall walked as stiff and regular as soldiers. The composer made a note to askwhether they practiced the ritual beforehand.
The boys glanced nervously into the trees sometimes; thegirls too, though with less fear on their faces. Things with rope-like arms andlegs shifted in the branches but never came down. Slick sounds came from thecanopy. Presently the procession came to the side of a thin black river. Theboys put their instruments down, and the girls laid candle-topped wreaths ofpine and yew branches on the surface of the
