Dagmars Daughter (18 page)

D
onal set the yellowed box at Nyssa’s feet, the music in his wide pocket, his return post haste to his restless fiddler achieved and she still there.

Open it, he said.

Nyssa lifted the lid and folded back the old shelf paper. She had never had a dress in a box before. She lifted the material and couldn’t see which end was which. The bodice had no shoulders and zipped up the side. The skirt fell full and was cut on the bias from a nipped-in waist. Nyssa held it in front of her, then dropped the few ounces of fabric to the floor, slipped out of her familiar jeans and shirt and slithered on her knees into the centre of the dress like a child crawling into a tent. Squatting, she tugged up the bodice until it lay over her breasts and she twisted sideways to do up the zipper. Then she stood in a single motion, swept back her hair and tied it up on itself to reveal her full naked shoulders and back, the skirt clinging silkily to her thin hips and muscular stomach. Donal looked at the smooth skin over her clavicle and admired the round firmness of her upper arms.

Turn around, said Donal.

Wait, said Nyssa. There’s something else in the box.

She lifted out a pair of brocade boots in gold and cranberry and blue. She undid sixteen gold ball buttons along their sides and slipped them on her feet with delight.

They’ll fit when I do them up, she said, lifting her foot and clacking down the heel.

She reached into the box for the button hook. Slowly she pushed the little curved end inside each button hole and slid it around, looking for the button to pull through with a tiny pop. When she was finally finished, she straightened up and danced, then leaned over again to admire the boots, raised gold threads of swirling leaves wrapped round her ankles and feet.

She twirled, humming a strathspey, lifting up the full skirt and stepping, listening to the clatter of those curved heels, mocking the dress and adoring her boots.

He watched and imagined how the muscles of her back would throb when she was finally persuaded to stand still, to let the fabric hide those peculiar boots, to gravely lift her violin and play. He admired how the silky black cut a straight line under the lovely V that ran from her shoulders to her breasts firm and hidden, her neck’s curve fleetingly glimpsed through kinky hair when he asked her to let a few tendrils down. He imagined how she would be angled slightly toward their audience, lift her violin and play. The eyes of strangers would glimpse the nakedness of her arms and back and clavicle, the concentrated tilt of her head and the clarity of her brow. Strangers would hear what he heard and watch what he possessed, music and muscles, sinew and flesh.

T
he wake-robin Nyssa picked for Dagmar died and hung brown and folded over on the bedside table. Bed mites collected on the leaves’ waxy surfaces and the stem shrivelled. The water was dried and gone.

Norea shook her daughter, wrapped up in bed, and said, Dagmar, I’ve been dreaming of your father.

Mother, he’s been dead sixty years, said Dagmar, pulling herself up. I never met the man.

Of course you did. He loved you like you were his own skin. Don’t you remember the little deal cradle he made you?

He didn’t, Mother. You told me that this morning, and yesterday, snapped Dagmar.

Norea saw the little cradle. Her three youngest brothers had all slept in it. She stopped, perplexed. But stubbornly she said, Of course he did—you just don’t remember.

Dagmar saw the blue ridges around Norea’s lips. I’m taking you to the school. It’s too cold to leave you here.

This is my house and I’ll do in it as I please and I won’t leave it! With stiff hands Norea swept away the bits of dried petals lying on the table beside Dagmar’s bed. If you don’t like it, get your own house!

She thrashed at the rest of Nyssa’s dead plant and Dagmar snapped, Don’t touch that. Don’t talk to me like this!

Norea heard the axe edge in her daughter’s voice but she could not remember who Dagmar was. With a forest animal’s instinct she spat out, Filthy shrine, and knocked the small vase to the floor.

Stop it! Dagmar got out of bed and crossed the room. She looked back and saw the strange old Irish woman mumbling something in a foreign tongue and she sat down and sobbed.

Norea heard her little girl crying and her memory came back again. She went over to her, caressed her head, crooned, Don’t carry on. It hurts my eyes to look without seeing you. Then memory flickering back confused, she said, No one can cross the river when it is full of ice. Wait till the melt and then we’ll go get her. Let her go, Dag, a girl has to go. You did!

No! raged Dagmar, brushing her old mother’s hand away, It is not the same. I never left the island. I could throw a pebble from Colin’s house to yours. I hear the throbbing of her voice in the storm. A girl must have a way back.

She left the room, went into the kitchen, threw on her coat and walked outside. Alive, Nyssa had disappeared into darkness. Ice fell and the sky cracked. Dagmar could no longer retrieve the details of Nyssa’s nose, her lips, her cheeks. She could not finger her hair or look into her green eyes. She could not smell her or hear the sound of her voice. She could only feel the pain and easing of a baby latching to her breast.

She lamented, Nyssa, my daughter, my dolour. Nyssa child of mine.
Air faìl irìnn ì rirìnn
. Nyssa, where are you? Speak daughter, any tongue. Long-limbed, spinning steps and fiddling fingers, one cocked eyebrow under all that kinked hair, doom-eager. You cannot disappear, free creator of yourself. Earth will stay frozen to its core until my eyes rest on you once more.

T
ogether Donal and Nyssa listened as the ground bass set out the melody of the “Passacaglia” in a stately triple metre, nimbly followed by the violin with its playful polyphonic variations. Fiddle tripping, bass embracing, daa ta daa ta daa ta daa, fiddle dancing, bass leaping, each seizing hold of the other in grace, in delight, in melancholia and teasing. They parted and returned, sometimes sensual, sometimes in strife, playful, grave, tender, restrained and released by form, their two different beings one in the last variation, golden threads made divine in the music until they were torn asunder and rendered silent. Dominant to tonic, Handel’s shantih and amen.

Donal marked up the score while Nyssa rested on the floor, hearing the music inside. She rose and traced her finger across the notes, absorbing the sound through her eyes, through her whole naked body. She picked up her violin and picked out bits of its melodies, the witty plucking, the dramatic crescendos. Together they worked through the music, hour after hour, becoming the notes, becoming the dance, their instruments ringing together.

Handel, she sniffed when they were done. I want something fresh. Play that harmonic for me again.

Twenty-five days she’d been gone, she figured by the moon. He talked of concerts on the mainland and of playing for strangers. He wanted her to play her Tartini, and he his Bottesini. He wanted to dress her. He wanted to end with their “Passacaglia.” The sounds of these words tripped like precious little chirps from his lips and offended her. What about a set of reels? she had said. He shook his head. Not fancy enough for you? she scoffed. I’ll show you what I’ll play for them. She lifted her little fiddle under her chin and played a long drone. On top of it three clear harmonics, then she stepped a little dance.

The world will beat a path to our door, he said when she was done, but not for that.

She laughed at him and said, Who cares for the world at the door? When it comes I turn it away.

What do you want, then? he asked.

She stopped, then said, I want to write the music I hear and cannot yet play.

His brow furrowed and he said, And what is this music?

She hesitated. I heard it once when I slipped and fell under an ice pan into the harbour. I’ve heard it when I’m up on the gaze with Moll. I hear it under pine needles on the rocks.

Moll! He scoffed. What does she know about music? You can play Tartini. Precious few can.

He watched Nyssa’s eyes go blank and made himself stop. Then he said, Let’s talk about it more later. Come, let’s work on our breath.

She relented once again and sat facing him cross-legged, knees dropped loosely on the floor, the palms of her hands resting open on her knees. Stiffer Donal sat hips taut, chin tipped, and showed her elaborate breathing routines he had invented to match the phrasing of the music. Nyssa practised taking short inhalations to mark new phrases.

Don’t get involved with your breath, said Donal, but know where it begins and ends.

She let her breath out. She could see her mother’s rare flax spreading its ocean of blue blossoms toward the sky.

Donal watched her nostrils go soft and said, Good. The breath holds the tempo, projects the sound.

Annoyed by his intruding talk she stopped suddenly and flung her feet in front of her. I’m sick of this! she said. I’ll breathe how I want!

She jumped up, raised her fiddle and played a difficult passage, holding her breath. When she was done, she dropped her violin and said, sucking in air, There!

Donal said, But it didn’t ring. Intonation is the most important element of volume and projection. It improves with the breath.

Leave me alone! she said.

Donal reached out to stroke her lovely bowing biceps and the smooth muscles of her thighs. He touched her neck with kisses, whispered apologies, promised not to correct her ever again. He wanted the taste of her salt tears as much as he wanted her other briny flavours. She wondered how the flat emptiness inside had come. She had entered him as a swimmer enters death.

Her body still tingling and wretched she left for her own room. There she rocked on her heels and stared out the window. She examined the astrean light on the trees. Who knows I am not dead? she thought. Does my mother think of me? I am completely lost in him. Smelling the earthy odours of their lovemaking between her legs, she thought, Is this love? No sooner did she sponge him off in tingling ice-melt than he came to find her and they were wrapped together again. My body, she thought with disdain, is a grave that accepts anything. He plays it over and over and over. I despise it and then when I have been away a little I want him again. I am suffocated by him. And freed. She stared into the darkness.

All things in nature have a latent song, things dreaming until a breath gives them voice. The tune in the hollow reed, the echo in the cave. Breath in. Breath out. With each breath, new life.