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It was beginning to feel like a comic duet. January played and spoke over the music, and heard himself sounding more and more as he did with his students.
“This is Desdemona’s motif” – the notes were light and trilling, like a young girl’s laughter – “and this is Emilia. Slightly lower, since she’s an older woman and Desdemona’s foil. The music gives each character a voice -”
“Like they talk to each other. Not just in the actual words, then, but in the music too?”
“Yes, that’s it. And the contrast between the characters, the way each of them sounds, is one of the things that the music adds. Now this” – he played a few bars – “is Othello in his earlier scenes. Much lower and more forceful, you see; a man’s voice, a general’s.” He almost fancied Herr Kovald’s accents were beginning to creep into his voice.
Shaw’s eyes were narrow with either interest or scepticism. “His voice changes later on, then.”
“Because he’s a complex character. The one I just played shows his character, his strength and nobility, but there’s a thread of doubt that becomes stronger, and after his duet with Iago later on it begins to dominate. I can’t do it properly on my own – we’d need a whole orchestra, or at least Hannibal, to approximate the full effect.”
“An’ them singers.”
January grinned ruefully at the thought of Drusilla d’Isola’s Desdemona. “Them, too. But this is Othello beginning to doubt in the next act - and this is his motif, his voice, after the murder. Jarring, to show his madness; completely different from the way he sounds in Act I. Do you see the difference? And then it changes again, just before he stabs himself.”
“Be useful if we could find the man that stabbed Belaggio just by his voice.”
It would be, of course. January turned back to the notes, schooling his face into his least impatient teacher expression. “Now this – I’ll at least try to do it justice – is one of the best parts of the opera, one of the best pieces of music I’ve ever heard, for just that reason – the emotions and the use of contrast.” He played the great duet between Othello and Desdemona from beginning to end, resisting the temptation to sing since there was no one to do the woman’s role. Then he looked up and realised, a little embarrassed, that Shaw had been watching his face.
“What do you think?”
“Is that when he kills her?”
“Just before. But this, I think, is what somebody doesn’t want the audience at the American Theater to see, or to hear. The contrast that shows love at first, and then in this scene she’s pleading while he rages, but he really wants to believe in her innocence. The contrast between them: accused and accuser, husband and wife, male and female –“
“Black an’ white,” finished Shaw. “So this is somebody’s reason for tryin’ to expedite Belaggio’s funeral, you reckon?”
“I reckon so, “ said January. “And as I said, I can only show you a small part of it with my piano and my voice. But the point is, when you add music to the words you add power – a world of it. It’s much worse than if Belaggio wanted to put on the original play, because all this love and despair and hate is there in the music. And, well, people do kill each other because of those things.” Desdemona’s love might actually be the worst of them.
Shaw turned around; January followed his gaze and saw his landlady, Madame Bontemps, in the doorway. There was no telling how long she’d been standing there and peering at them; sometimes she joined in when he sang with his students, but other times she would just stand and watch, unmoving as a spider in its web. Madame Bontemps did not want Americans in her house, and today this category seemed to include January, for some reason. Rather than arguing with her, he collected his hat and coat and followed Shaw, hoping she would recognise him when he returned.
“I guess this ‘s the first time you been throwed out the back door for the sin o’ bein’ an American?”
“Depends on how you mean, “ January replied. “I’m asked to go in or out through the back door with some regularity, although most often it’s because of my complexion, not my nationality. And usually it’s not by Madame Bontemps.”
There was a jambalaya stand on the opposite side of the street, and January steered his steps toward it; he thought briefly about offering to get a bowl for Shaw as well but knew it would be turned down. He felt annoyed; Othello’s and Desdemona’s voices still twined around each other in his head, rich and sweet and painful. Then the image of Madame Bontemps singing Emilia to La d’Isola’s Desdemona came unbidden into his head – and wouldn’t I be the right Othello to match them? – and he grinned at the woman as she finished ladling up his meal. She scowled back; probably men grinned at her more often than she enjoyed, young and pretty as she was.
He ate sitting on a nearby bench. Shaw stood beside him, chewing on what seemed to be an especially large chunk of tobacco and occasionally turning his head to spit; January wondered if he was trying to stave off hunger so as not to have to eat with him.
“It’s quite good.”
“Thanks, I’ll wait a bit.”
No surprises there. January ate in silence and thought about music and the way it spoke to the soul, and about Drusilla d’Isola and her fussy lover and their respective talents, until the other man interrupted his thoughts.
“Half the time we’re called out to the Swamp to pull somebody’s knife outta some other man’s hide, turns out they had words over some gal – it don’t take much to set them off, ‘specially with some whiskey in ‘em. As you have reason to know.”
“I know.”
“You also know – better than most – that this town is kind of touchy about certain subjects, slavery bein’ probably the worst.”
“Othello killing Desdemona would be worse than talking about slavery,” January said. “That’s bad enough on its own – and the fact that he’s a war hero doesn’t improve anything – but the worst thing is their love, the way the whole work resounds with it. Even after he kills her. That’s what you can’t put on a stage.”
“An’ like you say, the music might add oil to that fire,” Shaw mumbled. He spat, then tipped his hat to January. “I’ll take my leave, maestro, as they’s some folks I need to speak with ‘fore the next performance.”
January set his bowl down on the bench and watched him go. “Let no such man be trusted,” he muttered under his breath. But he’d done his best.