The Harpist
Courtesy of Rawpixel.
The townspeople speak of Ms. Eliades the way townspeople, once, somewhere, might have spoken about God. As with all gods, the parable of Ms. Eliades is greater than the sum of its facts and fictions. As the legend goes, she began to play the harp when she was two, and before her fifth birthday she was sent to France to learn from the world’s best harpists. She grew famous in Paris; now, she is the choice performer for the international elite, who pay for her hotels, her flights, for her meals at the most expensive restaurants, even for her clothes, in exchange for the privilege of her performances. In hushed voices, the townspeople fog the air with rumor: there has never before been a harpist like her and there never will be again, and she lives in our own town.
Every Sunday morning in the diner where Martha waits tables, Ms. Eliades orders a late breakfast and flips through paperback novels or glossy magazines. For all of the reverence that the townspeople speak of her with, the harpist is not much different than Martha’s other customers. She has a low, polite voice and speaks directly, always knowing what she wants: “A medium coffee with extra milk, and the blueberry pancakes, please.”
Martha’s manager pulls her aside early one Sunday as she ties the white half-apron around her waist. The chef is cleaning the hot griddle with soapy water. Steam collects in the narrow corridor behind the counter and condenses on each cold surface it encounters.
“You know who that woman is, right? The one you wait on every week?” he asks.
Martha nods.
“Don’t cut any corners with her. Extra syrup, sweep under her table. We don’t want a bad rap, okay?” He squeezes her shoulder. “You know she played a royal wedding last week?”
Martha does as she’s told. She wipes the flecked linoleum tabletop with a damp rag before Ms. Eliades arrives and refills her coffee mug unprompted, for which she is always thanked courteously. Martha is continually surprised at how the harpist appears utterly undistracted by the grease-spattered bustle of the diner, seeming almost to hover over the din and sweat and whiny children. The dresses that she wears, too, are a little bit unusual: they are gauzy, reach her feet, and have swirling patterns and balloon sleeves, the fabric not quite settling according to the normal demands of gravity.
Still, Martha would not think twice about the harpist in the diner, except for the unusual gifts that she begins leaving alongside her receipt each Sunday. They are odd and lovely, and they both startle and touch Martha with their smallness. The first thing was a pressed, parchment-colored daisy, left on the coldest day in January. Martha didn’t know what to do except pocket the flower, feeling its miniscule weight in her apron. Later, she placed it in the windowsill of her bedroom.
As winter wears itself down, more things appear: thimble-sized vials of iridescent glitter, fabric swatches in paisley and damask, pieces of seaglass with worn edges and radiant, oblong gemstones.
Martha keeps it all in a cardboard box under her bed, all the dust and tchotchke of a minor god. She feels a little odd about holding a shrine for a stranger. But the harpist gives freely and without asking anything in return. Besides, Martha can't quite bring herself to throw any of it away.
***
Sometimes the harpist asks Martha about school. Martha tells her that in history, they are learning about ancient civilizations, and how places like the Roman and Mayan empires, they believed in gods who were loyal to a certain locale. Ms. Eliades nods as if she already knows.
“People rely on myths like that,” she says, and takes a syrupy bite of her pancake. “Our entire worlds are created around our stories.”
“I don’t read very much,” says Martha.
“You don’t have to read. All we ever do is tell stories, really,” she says, and resumes her novel, which is Martha’s cue to descend once more to the bustle of the diner. She moves through her shift while thinking that the stories, too, rely on their readers and believers in order to remain as the living, breathing creations that they are.
That day, Ms. Eliades leaves a page torn from a book in an unfamiliar language. Martha looks up a few of the sentences online after work. It’s in French, a page from an old children's story. Martha wonders if Ms. Eliades learned it while studying in Paris. Martha wonders if it's true that she was brought overseas before she entered kindergarten, a prodigy looming in the body of a young child. She wonders if anybody read stories to her, in French, in English, or maybe in another language altogether. Or was she like the ubiquitous child of the classic fairytale, shut away in a tower while plucking away at a child-sized harp? Moving at such a young age must have been hard. Martha decides that, someday, when she works up the courage, she’ll ask her.
***
One Sunday, when the town’s hydrangeas bear their first green leaves, Martha finds a single ticket left underneath her receipt, printed on heavy paper with gold embossed lettering: Geraldine Eliades performs Debussy’s Preludes for Harp, Tuesday evening. At its bottom is a single line of cursive: Thank you for all the pancakes. I would be honored. G.
***
In the glow cast over the sweeping granite staircase, Martha watches the well-dressed concertgoers glide up the steps, easily, as if they’re in their own homes. She tugs at the bottom hem of her dress that now seems like a childish choice and wishes that she'd borrowed her mother’s high heels.
The tuxedoed attendant in the vast entryway takes her ticket and gestures her into the lobby of glittering glass chandeliers and refined chatter. She thanks him. Her seat is in the first row. The program is printed on the same cardstock as her ticket. She skims the brief biography of the harpist. Besides the words is a glossy color portrait, where she is posed on a balcony before an unfamiliar city skyline, her harp poised against her shoulder.
The lights fall. The audience descends to a hush. When they emerge onto the stage, Martha thinks for a moment that Geraldine and her harp look like a pair of royal beings themselves, just like the ones that they must perform for all the time. Then, the harpist begins to play.
Somewhere far inside of herself, passive awe, Martha wonders how a person, a being bound by the ticking laws of the world, can produce from within herself something that transcends such rules. The harpist must not be merely a person after all, must not be a person but something closer to lore, dust, and holiness.
Coming home is mechanical; Martha does not care to notice or remember the trip. She is filled with new worlds of ancient cities, of original gardens, of long-lost rivers upon which the harpist raises golden dawns, resurrected easily because time bears no force upon the harpist's realm. On that night, crossing the threshold from wakefulness into sleep brings with it no difference. Martha is riveted, roaming the places that she herself has come to contain.
***
“Your concert was beautiful,” says Martha, keeping her eyes downcast, unable to meet the eyes of the woman, because she has not stopped thinking of the concert for five days, because the ticket with the single line of handwriting has not left her pocket since its happening, because now she is always dreaming of Ms. Eliades’s music.
“You came,” says the harpist.
“I really loved it.”
“I’m glad.”
“How did you—I mean did you always—well—how long have you been playing? You must have worked really hard,” Martha says, the marvel in her voice childish to her own ears, “to get that good.”
“I’ve been playing for as long as I can remember,” says Ms. Eliades. “I would not have a life without music.”
“You just made it look so easy. I couldn’t believe it.”
“It’s both the hardest thing and the easiest thing in the world. Martha, do you play an instrument?”
“No. I couldn’t—I’m not like you. I couldn’t be like that.”
Ms. Eliades nods thoughtfully.
“You made it feel like there was no one else in the room. Like we were just talking or something. Like you were telling me a story. Like you were making worlds and putting them into my hands.”
“For someone who isn’t a musician, you understand perfectly.” When Ms. Eliades smiles it is mostly with one side of her mouth. “The pancakes are delicious. Thank you.”
So Martha hurries onto the next table, abashed and stumbling, understanding suddenly her role in the harpist’s world is not like the place that the harpist has come to occupy in her own.
On that day, Ms. Eliades leaves her an unmarked brass key with a large engraved ring on its end. It is her favorite gift so far, and rests heavy in Martha's palm, its weight as cool and as lush as a faraway land.
***
Atlas of Ancient Rome. Courtesy of the Magazine Antiques.
The townspeople have heard of Ms. Eliades’s performance downtown; she is written about in the arts section of the local newspaper. Martha reads the review while her boss opens the register, a thread of envy hidden in a gush of praise: rumor has it that our town's best and brightest captured the delighted hall with her fabulous performance—if only she had saved a few seats for all of us!
The cook is heating up the griddle. It is warm out this morning. Outside the windows that face Main Street, hydrangeas placed between concrete squares of sidewalk have simultaneously come forth in uniform, pristine white blooms. Water vapor condenses on the newspaper. The page falls limp in her hands.
“You’d think she might give a local performance,” her boss says. “It’d be a nice gesture. Giving back to the community and all.” Martha looks down as she ties her white apron neatly around her waist, says nothing about what has been given to her and her alone. The townspeople in the diner say iterations of the same. They’re disappointed in their god. Martha balances plates and says nothing, rising above the steam and grease.
***
Martha buys and listens to Debussy’s Preludes for Harp. She finds more pieces for harp and listens while she reads about the Renaissance for her World History class: rebirth, belief in the human and the secular over the preordained and the divine, newfound artistic and intellectual accomplishment. The melodies that hum from her speaker linger in her bedroom. History has become her favorite subject. In her textbook are abstract, fantastic worlds that Martha can bring to life within herself and adorn with the beautiful objects that she is given.
Her collection of sacred objects outgrows its cardboard box underneath the bed. Each week Martha is left more breathless by the gifts: a flight of white origami sparrows tied together on golden embroidery thread, an iridescent figurine of an angel, two silver spoons with leafy branches engraved in their oval heads. Martha replaces this box with a small, ornate wooden chest she found in the attic. She likes how it feels in her hands, weighty and storied, and she thinks Ms. Eliades would like that it is beautiful. Spring announces its predictable charm over the town, instructing the hydrangeas to set out their modest pale buds. Martha hardly notices the bland and subtle exchanging of seasons.
***
The front page news details the robbery: In the early hours of Thursday morning, the home of Geraldine Eliades, the town's noted harpist, was broken into. Several valuables were taken. Ms. Eliades, who will be touring in Europe over the summer....
“It’s a shame,” her boss says, as though commenting on the weather, while counting the cash in the register. The paper warps in Martha’s hands. It’s the first truly hot day of the year. The heat coming through the diner’s front windows is relentless. “I guess people got jealous. Thought she was above us all.” He slams the register shut. “Those dresses are meant to draw attention. Anyway, I can assign another server to her, if you’re worried about gossip. You know how it can be.”
“It’s alright,” says Martha. She drops the limp paper onto the counter. The front-page image is an ugly, blurry photograph of two shattered windows. “It won’t bother me.”
But the harpist does not come back. The townspeople in the diner talk about the robbery for a week with garish intensity. As rumor would have it, Ms. Eliades is terrified to leave her home and wants to sell the house as soon as possible. Her role as pedestaled protectorate is wiped from the town’s collective consciousness. Martha knows better than to allow any of this to touch her. Debussy’s Preludes have become the backdrop of her life. She knows how the best of things can’t be stolen.
***
Courtesy of Fine Art America.
One Sunday in June, Martha comes outside for her break to find the harpist gazing intently into the pages of her magazine. An enormous relief comes over her in seeing the familiar dress, the same half smile that graces the harpist’s face as she looks up at Martha.
“I’m sorry that—I’m sorry about what happened,” Martha says, joining her against the faded outer facade of the diner. “I’ve missed you.”
Ms. Eliades waves her hand and the whole affair is forgotten. “Nothing of importance was taken. I just wanted to tell you I’ll be leaving next weekend. I thought a last thank-you was in order.”
“Where are you going?”
“Madrid. Rome. Paris, if I'm in the mood, which I rather feel I will be,” she replies effortlessly. The exhaust fan from the kitchen wheezes old steam out into the eight-car parking lot. Below the fan is a row of hydrangeas. The dull, ugly white bulbs drip with dirty moisture. The scent that’s set into the town is cloying and unavoidable, and will stick through the long summer as Martha waits tables full-time.
“I wish I could come,” Martha says, without thinking. She looks down. Last night there was a summer rainstorm, and the pavement has turned dark and glossy.
“So come.”
Martha opens her mouth and the sound catches in her throat.
“They'll pay for your flight and rooms if I ask,” says Ms. Eliades. “Clothes, books, museum tickets. I’d love a companion. Maybe I'll find something new in all these tired places. Young eyes on old scenes.”
They are the same height; Martha has always thought of Ms. Eliades as much taller. It must have been an optical illusion, conjured by all of those long swirling dresses.
“Can I go to your shows?” asks Martha.
She smiles and shrugs. “If you feel like it. For someone your age, there are much more interesting ways to spend evenings.”
“I can’t imagine anything more interesting than your music,” says Martha. She leans against the wall, dizzy suddenly in the drenched heat, a fantasia of a summer piecing itself slowly and surreally into being. “Ms. Eliades, I don’t know what to say.”
“It makes a nice story, doesn’t it, these last few months?” Ms. Eliades says dreamily. “You couldn’t write a better one, really.”
“Europe will be a better one,” says Martha. “But only if you’ll really have me.”
“I would be honored,” says the harpist, forming her mysterious half-smile. The day has rolled over itself into a new one. Martha doesn't remember this kind of heat ever coming to town so early, and is unfamiliar with the kind of faintness that is now possessing her body. She will have to go inside to complete her shift soon. Maybe she won’t. Maybe all of the rules governing the ticking of her tiny life have been suspended in the iridescent mirage that hovers over the pavement, born of heat and the night's rain, luminous, shimmering, so palpable that Martha wonders if she might, assuming she can emerge from within herself for long enough, reach out and touch.