PROLOGUE
A dying man gifted me this blank book so I could write my thoughts, but my thoughts are birds, winging wildly toward the sky, hounds baying below them. My mind is a cemetery full of hideous sounds created by the hungry trees surrounding me. Then I hear your voice and the birds of my thoughts return to my head. I want to ask you, before I forget again, what is your name?
My name changed frequently in my life, almost every time I crossed a border or entered a new city. Many days I forget what I call myself. Then I remember a name and write it in this journal which ties me to a better world.
My name is Paul.
Forgive me. Such a terrible way to introduce myself. My words may frighten you. Do not be afraid. Please do not be afraid. One of us must be without fear. Let me start again.
My name is… but I have written down my name, at least the one that I remember.
So let me begin with a proper beginning, the beginning to the stories we whisper in the dark to comfort children. Let me start again with a sentence to hold back the night terrors. Let me speak it out loud and drown out the baying of the hounds and the whispering of the trees.
“Once upon a time, something happened. If it had not happened, it would not be told.”
Let us start there. I remember so little, but I know in my bones how to start a story, even a story as strange as mine. All my life, I have listened to stories. I have taught myself languages by listening to stories.
A creaking graybeard recited “if it had not happened” every night when we were all packed together in a boxcar rolling across a vast steppe, packed as tight as fleas on a well-fed dog. The men on the outer edges of the crowd fell asleep and did not wake. We rolled their frozen bodies out the doors in the morning.
But the rest of us sat shoulder to shoulder so the old man stayed warm in the middle as the train clacked on and winter settled over all of us. His tales quieted the fear. His stories kept us alive.
I have lost so much out of my head, but I remember his tales of the wonderful twins with stars on their foreheads.
I have not seen stars in such a long time. When I first looked up here, I saw only darkness, a night without stars. So I kept my eyes on the ground. Until I heard the howling of the hounds, their terrible baying, and then I ran.
I am still running. I run through cities. I run through time. This something happened to me, but it must be told to you.
CHAPTER ONE
“Isn’t it beautiful, Raquel?” my aunt exclaimed as she ushered me out of her Rolls Royce and pointed me to her latest business. The long two-story white building occupied nearly the entire length of the street. The sign high overhead proclaimed in large letters the name of the Diamond Dog. Posters plastered on either side of the double doors promised dances with live entertainment.
Snow swirled through the air while the clouds above looked like a bruise, but the glow of lights outlining the marquee made the whole street seem warmer and welcoming. The rest of the town, from what I’d seen when we’d driven across it, looked like it once modeled for an old-fashioned Currier and Ives print. With snow gilding the rooftops, and even along the edges of the well-shoveled walks, it appeared like a scene from a Christmas card.
My aunt tipped her head back to smile at the lights brightening the gloom of the December afternoon.
“Kingsport,” said Aunt Nova with a look of pride that I had come to know in recent weeks, “never had a place like this. It’s all the best inside. Wait until you see the ballroom. And–” she pointed to a small door further away, “–we built the radio studio right there. We broadcast one show every day at noon and then live from the dance floor four evenings a week.”
“But if they can hear the music at home for free,” I said, following my aunt through the double doors and into the Diamond Dog, “why would anyone pay to come to dance here?”
Nova laughed. “It’s because they hear our broadcast that they’re wild to come to the Diamond Dog. Why, the phone rings off the hook during every broadcast with people asking if they can come the next week to the show.” She pointed out the box office inside the lobby, a glass and brass kiosk where couples could buy tickets that allowed them an evening of frolics inside. Prices were posted on a fancy printed card resting on an easel. I noticed tickets for Friday and Saturday nights were slightly higher than Wednesday and Thursday. All promised tickets included dancing until midnight and a light refreshment during the evening.
Seeing the direction of my gaze, my aunt explained, “We have a buffet supper around 10 pm for the dancers. Just sandwiches and soup, along with coffee, tea, and other beverages.”
“No liquor?” I said. Supper clubs in Boston, especially private clubs that required tickets or membership, were notoriously false fronts for the sale of illegal booze.
“No liquor,” promised Nova as she walked me through the lobby. “I run a dry house in Kingsport. Not that the police completely believe that. We’ve had a few raids and they’ve looked mighty embarrassed to come up with nothing but a kettle of fish chowder and coffee on the stove.”
On another easel, a separate printed poster showed pictures of the house band, extolling the keyboard virtuoso Billy Oliver and the chanteuse Harlean Kirk. Across the bottom of this lobby card, printed in red ink with letters as large and flamboyant as those spelling out the performers’ names, the poster proudly proclaimed: “As Heard on the Radio.”
We crossed the lobby and entered the ballroom itself. The room ran the length of the building, with a gleaming wooden floor, small tables ringing the outer edge, and a stage for the band built along the side closest to the radio studio. I’d been to public ballrooms in Boston as well as many college dances; the dance floor appeared as fine as any of those, with a very pleasant spring underfoot and beautifully polished to a honey glow.
The red velvet curtains swathing the back wall, the crystal chandeliers gleaming overhead, and the white and gold walls decorated in the art deco style showed that Aunt Nova had spared no expense in her creation of the Diamond Dog. The only question was how she could afford so luxurious a place as the owner of a small cafe known for its chowder and its apple pie.
Music swelled through
the room, a welcome distraction from the niggling questions raised by even a brief walk through the Diamond Dog. I told my conscience to hush its nagging and turned toward the band.
On the stage the band was practicing, a mix of men and women playing together with exuberant style.
Oh, the music! I could not only hear the notes ricochet off the white plaster walls, but the tune shook the very floor until I felt it throughout my body. Since my illness earlier in the summer, I avoided symphonies, concerts, and even the college’s tea dances. In short, I tried to never be in the same space as someone performing on the piano. The Black man on the piano played with brilliant technique as the singer beside him belted out “It’s All Your Fault,” one of my favorite Eubie Blake songs.
“My poor heart is aching, it’s almost breaking. And it’s all your fault,” the song concluded with a crash of emphasis from the piano.
Aunt Nova walked across the room and said to the pianist, “Billy, I’m not sure about that one. Isn’t it a bit old?”
The young man spun around on the piano stool and bounced to his feet. “Hello, Miss Malone. Why, no song ever sounds old, not when Billy Oliver plays it. I make everything sound like it was composed this morning! And everyone can dance to it.”
“Oh, leave it in the program,” said the singer, a slender woman who topped the dapper Billy by nearly a foot. She was a platinum blonde, with a figure so long and lean that she’d look elegant in anything that she wore. She draped one arm across the shoulders of the piano player. “I love a good heartbreak song. I heard Miss Sophie Tucker sing it once and never forgot the performance. I asked Billy to add it to tonight’s list,” she added.
“Harlean sings it better than Miss Tucker,” declared Billy, “and everyone will love it.”
“What does the rest of the band think?” said Aunt Nova with a nod toward the woman playing the saxophone and the man behind the drum set.
“It swings,” said the saxophonist. “The people listening to the broadcast will recognize it.”
The drummer just gave a crash of cymbals and a nod.
Aunt Nova nodded. “I hired you to play the music so I should trust you to pick the songs.”
“It will be a spectacular evening or I’m not Billy Oliver,” said the piano player, reaching behind his back to give a glissando of the keys with more of a bop at the end than I’d ever heard in any concert or dance hall. The sound made my fingers itch to try it. “Who is the pretty lady? Is she here to help the radio boys with their broadcast?”
My aunt turned to me with a smile. “Come over here, Raquel, and let me introduce you to the band.”
Billy Oliver hopped down from the stage, to be followed more slowly by the two women, while the drummer stayed enthroned behind his drums. From our very first encounter at the Diamond Dog that day through all the years that
I sought him out wherever he was playing, I never saw Billy move slowly or even stand still for more than a minute, whether on stage or off it. When he played, all his sizzling energy poured out of him and into the piano until his audience could practically dance on the music streaming through the air. His technique dazzled me. I doubt the world will ever know another virtuoso like Billy at the piano.
“Billy Oliver,” he said with a twinkle, “which you may have guessed. This is Harlean Kirk and Ginger Devine. Up there on the drums is my pal Cozy.”
“We call him Cozy because he likes to be comfortable and warm. This time of year, he hardly ever ventures out beyond that drum set,” said Ginger, shaking my hand. “His real name is Charles Lane, and he comes from Georgia. The New England winter has been a terrible shock to his system.” The drummer gave an impatient double tap on the top of the snare drum. “He’s not much of a talker either. So I do the talking for both of us.”
“We call her Ginger,” said Harlean, “because she is spicy hot on the saxophone.”
Ginger laughed at this comment and gave Harlean a little wink. Then she said to me, “Is Billy right? Are you here to help with the broadcast?”
“No,” I said. “I’m Nova’s niece, Raquel Gutierrez. Why did you think I was with the radio station?”
“Because of the headset, of course,” said Ginger with a nod to the gadget sitting on top of my head.
I really had forgotten that I was wearing it. Or rather, I wanted to forget I was wearing it as all eyes turned to the strange contraption. Like a home radio headset, there was a metal disk covering my left ear that amplified conversations picked up by the microphone. The earpiece was held in place with a hair band going right across my head. The round microphone swung like a pendant across my chest.
Another wire snaked into the purse over my arm which held the battery pack.
This latest model was designed for a lady, according to the salesman who looped the wires around my head and neck. He said it looked like jewelry with art deco trim covering the microphone and earpiece. “Please note this battery fits in any handbag,” the man bragged as he fought to squeeze it into a new leather purse that my aunt purchased for me. My own handbags were far too small for the battery.
We purchased the listening device in New York after several doctors said it was the only solution. The thing was hideously expensive, but Aunt Nova paid for it without complaint. Everyone told me how lucky I was to have an aunt willing to give me such a marvel.
I hated it.
The hearing aid did amplify sound in my left ear, which was the better of my two ears at this point. I could hear certain people better with the hearing aid turned
on than off. But the device also buzzed in my ear and created a jumble of noise which was more distracting than not hearing anything. I often reached into the purse and turned off the battery just to give myself some peace.
But I couldn’t tell Aunt Nova how I felt.
Her kindness, her generosity, and her sheer enthusiasm for the hideous device made it impossible to do what I wished to do: tear it off my head and stomp it under my feet.
So I wore it. And tried to forget I was wearing the hearing aid even as the headset rubbed my ear, the microphone pulled on my neck, and the battery banged awkwardly against my hip no matter how carefully I moved.
“No, this isn’t for the radio,” I said and hoped to avoid further explanations. I still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that a simple bout of fever left me with a significant loss of hearing in both ears, a loss the doctors predicted would only become worse. Because what was more useless than a piano teacher who couldn’t hear?
“It’s a hearing aid,” Aunt Nova boomed. A big woman with a big voice, I could hear her with or without the device. She draped an arm around my shoulders and gave an affectionate squeeze. “The very latest technology.”
This was greeted with an awkward silence as everyone stared at me.
“I could hear you even without it,” I said to the musicians. “When you were playing. I felt it in my body. I’ve never seen anyone handle a piano like that.”
Billy Oliver’s face split into a wide grin while the two women groaned. “Now you’re in for it,” said Ginger with a shake of her head.
“I was born to play,” Billy replied. “From the time I was a little baby, my hands were dancing across the keyboards. I am on this earth to make music.”
“I would love to hear more,” I said, and I meant it.
“You are a beautiful lady with a rare appreciation for my musical genius,” said Billy with a smile so sweet that his boast was obviously meant to make people laugh. “I would be happy to play for you.” Billy hopped back on the stage and seated himself at the piano.
I chuckled at his comments as he intended. I loved music in all forms and flavors and was intrigued by how Billy played. However, I knew I wasn’t beautiful. The fashion in 1926 was for tall flat-chested women like Harlean or little sprites like the movie star Betsy Baxter. As a tall woman myself, I easily matched Harlean for height, but all similarities ended there. I was broad across the shoulders, and curved in all other places, just like my Aunt Nova and my own mother. What would have looked magnificent when they were young women in the nineties definitely did not suit the current fashions. Instead of trying to look like a flapper, binding my chest and bobbing my hair like one of my college students, I draped myself in sensible sweater sets and tweed skirts. I looked like what I used to be: a piano teacher, although hopefully a young and stylish college-educated teacher, not
drums. Billy set off with his hands flying up and down the keys of the piano. For nearly an hour, he played through a medley of songs, the latest jazz pieces and old standards made new by his improvisations. Harlean and Ginger danced on the floor to his music, pulling Nova and me into an impromptu circle. Other employees came out from the kitchen and radio station next door with a whooping shout: “Go, Billy, go!”
He just grinned and waved. The music swelled through the room. The songs shook my worries out of my head. All the anger and frustration, all the sorrow, flowed away as people grabbed my hand and swung me through the dance. They shouted their names at me, welcoming me to the Diamond Dog.
Then Billy started a boogie-woogie version of “Jingle Bells” with everyone hollering the lyrics at him as they swayed across the floor. I dropped panting into a chair beside Aunt Nova, who’d wisely left the dance floor earlier to sit on the side of the room and sip a cup of coffee.
“I never liked that song before,” I said to her. As a child, the verses always disturbed me. So jolly but also so sinister, with the line about “Misfortune was his lot.” However, the rest of my family adored the song and I could play it in my sleep. I certainly never played “Jingle Bells” like Billy did, and his jazz rendition made my toes tap against the floor.
Nova smiled at the raucous group gathered near the stage. “Billy can make any song into a party,” she said. “Some nights he takes challenges from the floor, to see if they stump him with a tune that can’t be danced to. Never have, so far. I went all the way to Chicago to recruit him for the Diamond Dog. I’m glad I did.”
“He is amazing,” I started to say, but the sound of barking distracted me. It sounded like a large hound in considerable distress, so I looked around the room trying to spot it. I couldn’t see any dogs. I tapped the earphone of the hearing device with one finger, followed by a similar tap on the microphone. I doubted either gesture did anything for good or ill, but it made me feel better to fiddle with it, as if I controlled the device and it did not control my ability to hear the world around me. A second glance around the room confirmed no dogs, but the howls grew louder. Certain sounds, amplified by the hearing device, could mimic other things as I had found to my confusion while staying in New York. Once I believed that I heard the singing of a canary. It turned out to be a poorly oiled hinge in the hotel dining room. A fact I discovered after questioning the waiter several times and causing looks of amusement or pity throughout the dining room.
Still, this did sound like a hound baying. The deep cry started very low and very far away. When I shifted in my seat, I could swear I heard wind whistling through trees and the call of the hound grew closer. Perhaps the animal was penned up outside and echoes of its barking were sounding in the ballroom.
Just as I turned to Aunt
Nova to ask her if she had a pet, the door at the far end of the hall flew open. A tall man dressed in an impeccable suit came striding in, followed by a policeman in uniform.
The music came to a crashing halt. Everyone stared at the intruders.
The newcomer pushed his glasses higher on his nose and then proclaimed with a shaking of his finger, “Do you see? I told you that they were holding illegal dances here.” He pointed at Aunt Nova with her coffee cup half raised to her mouth. “And serving alcohol. Do your duty! Arrest that bootlegger.”
INTERLUDE
Let me try another beginning. This one I learned from a man in the trenches of a war that I wish I could forget. Why so much of my life is lost while the memories of mud drenched in blood remain, I don’t know.
“In olden times, there once was a very poor man who had no coat.” My fellow soldier in the trench began his story just so.
Where I am now, I wandered for a long, long time without a coat. Before I became lost in the terrible place, I had a coat, nothing rich or fancy, just a plain black coat like a tramp might wear on a summer day. There was a reason for wearing the coat. Somebody handed it to me and asked me to wear it, but I do not remember why.
But then the hounds pursued me. I barely escaped their sharp teeth and claws. They rent my coat from my shoulders, tearing it with their bloody mouths. I ran away through a forest of trees without leaves, bare branches stretching over my head and a misty starless sky above those hungry trees.
The hounds bayed behind me, horrible mournful cries full of every sorrow in the world and every promise to destroy me. I found a track circling under the trees and ran down it. Eventually the cries grew farther and farther away. I stayed on the muddy path going deeper into the forest despite my terror of the trees.
Have I said yet that the trees here bite? They snatch at you with long twiggy fingers and try to pull you into their open trunks, all lined with teeth and oozing green sap. Twice I narrowly missed being ground up to nothing by their ravenous mouths. I learned to stay on the path and never try to leave it. If you leave the path, the trees will eat you.
Finally, I dropped to the ground in exhaustion and woke up in an alley, surrounded by brick buildings and ashcans. In my ears was the cheerful whistle of a tune, ...
one of those old ladies in lavender and lace.
Cozy gave a tap of the
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
