Light and the City

Light and the City The beggar was unshaven and even at 100 degrees wore an overcoat. But the old man, always gauging hidden worth, felt something else. Something rare, something valuable. Dabo stood silent, eyes down, humbled and uncertain. Three months on the street had hardened his features but softened his eyes. Forfet felt something else in him. His business was listening to lies. “She don’t need this ring,” or “He’s finally got a job if we can just make it to the end of the month,” or “Just take it, I never loved her anyway.” His currency was the lies that people tell themselves just to get through one more week or month or year. And so he could not help but feel the truth whenever it stumbled into his shop. Some things, he knew, can’t help but tell the truth. Small children, old dogs and drunks. Truth, he knew, has a tone, undeniable as a church bell. And now looking at this beggar before him, Forfet could feel that low tolling resonance, incapable of misrepresenting itself. This beggar had the unmistakable remains of great suffering and so the unwanted bearing of grace. He mopped his brow and sighed. “Something you want mister?” Dabo stood still as stone. The old pawnbroker came from behind his counter and stood before him. “Maybe you got something for me? Something you found?” Dabo glanced up and slowly stepped forward. He reached into the overcoat’s pockets spilling handful after handful of coins on the glass counter. There were dimes and subway tokens, slugs and quarters. Dabo spread them out before the old man. He reached down, pushed off a shoe and unfolded a sweat-stained dollar bill, carefully placing it among the coins. As he did the old man saw the camp tattoo on his arm and for just a moment flinched, like it was too close. Like heartache, sleeping in the skin, might leap across for him. Forfet cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I am, but I don’t know what I can do. For you . . . sir.” For the first time Dabo looked up into the old man’s eyes, then raising his tattooed arm, pointed to the violin in the window. “That old fiddle?” the old man said. “It’s German. Antique. The violinist that left it said it was the work of a master. He never came back. More things than you can imagine get abandoned in this world." "He said a violin is like a shovel, you must learn to dig with it. What does that mean? I don’t know. It’s been waiting now unplayed for, let me see, nearly 4 years now.” Then looking at the beggar and the coins spread before him, “But mister, you don’t have anywhere near enough for that.” Dabo pointed to the fiddle again and then his ear, the dried blood caked on it. Then touching his heart he slowly sank to his knees, head bowed and held out his hands. The old pawnbroker paused for a moment then swallowed hard. In the distance the bell at Grace Church began to toll. And seeing the numbers again on his outstretched arm, he gently said, “All right. All right. Just this once.” He walked toward the display, retrieved the violin and whispering to himself, “Humans. . . they’ll break your heart every time.” As he held it out to the beggar, Dabo rose to his feet and reached forward. “Just a few minutes,” Forfet whispered. Outside the heat rose and dusk descended, and the crowds on the avenue swept along trying to find some way to breathe. In the stores and apartments that lined the streets, air conditioners whirred, trying in vain to find enough power to beat away the summer heat. Dabo raised the fiddle to his chin. It had been years since his ears had heard what played every minute in his blood. The lights dimmed then flickered. “Oh no, not again,” Forfet groaned. Dabo closed his eyes and saw his father. His mother’s lost voice swam up from the darkness in him. And once more he heard the sound of his teacher call into the night as they led him away. Rattling his chains with each step. The beggar leaned into the bow and the old man held his breath, arrested by the sound. It was a voice Forfet had heard only late at night in his own unsteady heart. A whisper trembling beneath the weight it carried. Outside a group of ladies, hearing the sound, stopped beneath the shade of the awning and stepped closer to the open door. And suddenly the city itself seemed to halt, lean in and listen. With each note Dabo beat against his own heart until it gave up its ache exposing something else, something undeniable buried inside it. "You must rattle your chains," he heard his teacher call, "before you can break them." As Dabo reached down into the black of his memory, a trickle of blood dripped from his ear. The lights flickered once more and the city seemed to tremble. Suddenly all the avenue went dark. People stopped, held their breath and, looking for any light, stared up into the evening sky. The only sound that remained was this beggar, searching the strings, trying to raise something holy and forgotten, something like a hymn, from beneath the pain. Longshoremen walking to the subway heard and drew closer. A drunk stumbling from a bar into the street was drawn to a sound of a wound, pouring from the pawn shop, filling the air and beating against the darkness that surrounded it. A woman who had lost her child that year to typhoid stood shivering uncontrollably and began to weep. The fiddle beat down chord after chord, until something incandescent, finally free, began to rise from beneath the sound. It stretched out the door, into the streets, touching all the people waiting, lost in the darkness. In the distance, for the first time in weeks, thunder rumbled. Weary faces turned up to the sky. Inside the darkened pawn shop, the beggar felt a chain break in himself, and some voice, quiet as death for so long, began to sing under the strings. At that instant a bolt of lightning cut across the black, heaven let go, and beneath, the lightless city rattled. The streets flooded with rain, soft at first, then drenching everything beneath it. Children splashed in puddles and grown men danced. The fiddle moaned once, then chasing some higher power, the sound changed. As it did, the lights began to flicker. And something electric surged through the city until all of it, the dim alleyways and darkened pews, the soup kitchens and saloons and shadowed apartments, all of it was once again a city of light. Dabo, breathing hard, dropped the violin from his chin. Outside the crowd that had gathered stood still silently watching with a kind of reverence for something each felt but none could understand. Then one by one they each stepped in and dropped a dollar on the floor. A drunk pushed past and stood before Dabo. He emptied his pockets and reached out a hand toward the strings. Then afraid, he turned and walked away, dancing in the rain down the avenue. An old woman retrieved her purse and added two more dollars. The longshoreman tossed in two bits. Soon there was a pile of bills and coins. Forfet closed the door, looked from the pile of money on the floor to the beggar before him. And quietly he said, “Maybe we can make a deal.” WLM