The Cost of
Music: Brief Synopsis
David Hutto
Eve Elfweather,
an elderly woman living in Atlanta, smokes cigars,
listens to jazz, and is actively seeking to
understand what causes evil. Eventually, as
part of her search she begins to keep lists
of the evil that people have committed over
the centuries. As she says, "If God was
watching he’d throw us in a fire like cockroaches.
But that’s not pessimism. That’s cynicism."
While looking for the source of evil, she talks
with a psychotic killer, attends a Ku Klux Klan
march, and talks to a man who fought in World
War II. Eventually, however, she suspects evil
is closer to home and wonders if it is in herself.
Julius Neznawicz, the 40-year-old son of Eve,
is remembering a romantic failure, but while
he is working as an interpreter during the 1996
Olympics, he meets and falls in love with a
stripper. As that relationship is developing,
Julius spends his days working at the Olympics,
which he considers as evidence that we can learn
to live in a peaceful world. He is amazed by
what he considers the cynicism of his mother,
Eve, and he tells her, "This is the biggest
thing the human race has ever done peacefully.
It’s like a message." Julius himself, however,
has to face the evil of terrorism when a bomb
explodes in Olympic Park. Lilith Donusz is the
stripper who Julius meets, and who he eventually
marries. Although Lilith is still working as
a stripper going into her 30s, she gradually
becomes strong enough, in part from talking
with Eve, to begin fighting the demons from
her past who have kept her crushed since she
was a girl. After Lilith says to Eve that "people
wouldn’t think of somebody like me going to
college," Eve encourages her to go. Lilith
then begins taking classes at a local college,
where she reads poetry, studies history, and
as part of a class visits a monastery near Atlanta,
where she meets the elderly monk Brother Joe.
In the end, Lilith starts to understand her
relationships with her father and an old boyfriend.
At the same club where Lilith dances, Jerome
Christian works as a cook. He is 23 years old
and from a small town in north Georgia, a young
man who loves cooking and opera, and who wants
his fruits and vegetables to be absolutely fresh.
Jerome is perplexed about whether his future
should follow his conscience, to become a lawyer
and fight for racial equality, or his heart,
to become a chef. As he says to Masompe, his
South African girlfriend, "I’d like to
be a lawyer, but would I love it? I love cooking."
The monk Brother
Joe, 101 years old, meets all the other characters
during the course of the story, though he never
leaves his monastery. As their lives weave in
and out with one another, Brother Joe contemplates
and comments on the fears and hopes that make
all of them human. Brother Joe is aided by Moisés,
a novice monk who is a friend of Jerome. As
Moisés comes by every morning, Joe says
of him, "Brother Moisés is also
checking to see if I’m still alive, but when
I ask him that he won’t admit it." In conversations
with Moisés, Brother Joe talks about
the evils that the other characters are trying
to deal with, saying, "At the same time
that we see terrible things all around us, we
can find goodness all around us. It’s perplexing."
Brother Joe also talks about the yearning that
Eve, Julius, Lilith and Jerome have for love,
telling Moisés, "It’s a powerful
thing, sometimes an enigmatic thing. Losing
love can almost destroy someone." In the
end, as Brother Joe considers his own life,
he realizes "that I’m nobody, but I have
human dignity."
Writing Excerpts
[The beginning
of the novel]
I’ve been a monk
at this monastery for 71 years. There were twenty
of us, Benedictine monks, that came here from
Kentucky in 1944, on St. Benedict's Day in March.
We started this monastery the same year the
bombs fell on Monte Cassino, St. Benedict’s
monastery in Italy. The local people here in
Georgia were pretty surprised to see a group
of monks get off the train in Atlanta, to head
out into the countryside to start a monastery.
With our white robes some people even thought
we were members of the Ku Klux Klan. I was thirty
years old when we left Gethsemani Monastery
in Kentucky, and I’ve never been back, even
though I’m 101 years old now. After so much
time in this quiet monastery, sitting out in
the Georgia countryside, I’ve gradually learned
to listen. I listen to the rise and fall of
the notes as the monks sing in our choir, I
listen to the moments of silence in the cloister,
and as I’ve gotten older, I think I can hear
the faint, distant music of the universe. I’ve
read about Pythagoras, who gave us the idea
that the universe is made up of concentric spheres,
one inside another. As the spheres turn, they
create music, like a giant musical scale beneath
all of existence, and sometimes now I think
I can hear the music of the spheres.
Since we came
here, I’ve only left the monastery twice, to
go to Mama’s funeral and to attend the funeral
of my brother Dan. I haven’t seen the world,
or lived much in the world, but I’ve traveled
the world in my books and thought a great deal
about it. So many babies have come into the
world during my long life, to learn the languages
and the customs that will belong to them. So
many hopeful young people have fallen in love,
to marry and make more babies, or to lose love
and end up carrying the heavy chains of sorrow
and loss. So many people have looked at the
world and wondered why they were there, looked
for God and wondered if He exists, or looked
around anxiously for comfort and kindness. Our
monastery is near the city of Atlanta, and in
my long life I’ve wondered sometimes how much
love and hate is in that city, how hard the
people there struggle to find happiness or some
meaning in being here in this world. I wonder
what their lives are like, but I never go there.
When I was a
boy I never could have imagined that I would
live this long. I can remember thinking that
forty years old was nigh time to die. But I
was born in 1916, during the First World War,
ancient history, and here I am well into the
twenty-first century. When I was a young one
I probably could have imagined being President
of the United States sooner than I expected
to be a monk. At least I knew what the President
was, but growing up as a Methodist in Wheeling,
West Virginia, I never heard of monks until
I was thirteen. We lived a short piece outside
of town, in a small house on the river, where
we could see Ohio on the other side. I still
remember the tub with red wooden handles that
hung on a nail beside the front door, out on
the porch. That was Mama’s tub and we learned
not to mess or gom with it. Mama loved flowers,
and in front of the porch that was on the house
she made a little flower bed where she tried
to grow all kinds of things that I never knew
the names of. I didn’t care much about flower
beds when I was a boy, but I helped Mama if
she told me to, with digging or watering, only
it wasn’t any kind of job I volunteered for
because I liked it. Poor Mama didn’t have a
green thumb, though, and she liked to never
got those flowers to grow like they should,
only one good summer. Mama’s flowers never flourished,
not like the woman who lived down the road,
whose yard looked like the Garden of Eden, full
of roses and sunflowers and I don’t know what
all, but a lot of it. That woman down the road
used to take bouquets of roses to church, which
people loved, but sometimes I recall after a
service on the way home Mama would sort of casually
say something like, "Hits a shame roses
fade so quick."
________________________________________________________________________
[The elderly
Eve goes to talk with Paul Rush, who is accused
of murdering a child.]
Human souls have
music, all kinds of music, jazz, country, flamenco,
mbalax, morno, salsa, merengue, polkas, opera,
soul, heavy metal rock, blues, gospel, reggae,
rhythm and blues, swing, marrabento, sono, cumbia,
calpyso, baroque, classical, Celtic ballads,
samba, soca, tejano, shaabi, joik, smoky torch
singers–some souls, however, only hear a cacophany,
like a multitude of brass horns blowing all
at once. Paul Rush, a cacophany sufferer sitting
in jail, agreed to see this unknown woman who
wanted to talk to him. Two days later, feeling
a little strange about what she was doing, Eve
caught the bus down into the darkness, arriving
in a cavern of incomprehensible evil, where
Paul Rush/Satan sat before her on a chair made
of human bones, still running sticky with blood.
His face loomed forward with bright yellow eyes,
looking now like Paul Rush, now like Adolph
Hitler, now like Joseph Stalin, now like Jack
the Ripper, now like Mao Zedong, now like Ted
Bundy, the metamorphosis moving in waves of
change across his face. When Paul Rush spoke
Eve could hear the rustle of dead leaves, the
moan of the wind through the eyesocket of a
caribou’s skull lying on the tundra, the laughter
of a drunken cowboy reaching for his gun, the
whisper of a man in the darkness as his fingers
close around a terrified mouth. Around the feet
of Paul Rush crawled snakes, over his arms swarmed
cockroaches, lice dropped from his hair. Corpses
decaying leaned up against the dark stone walls
with ice stuck to their faces, down distant
corridors echoed hysterical faint screams. "What
do you want?" Paul Rush asked, and as he
opened his mouth a thin stream of blood dripped
onto his chest.
In reality Eve
sat on a metal chair facing a glass wall at
the city jail. As she sat there waiting she
noticed that a previous visitor had left a card
lying on the counter. She picked up the card,
which was an advertisement for fixing leaking
roofs. It reminded her that she was glad she
no longer lived in her own house and had to
worry about such things. A minute later she
heard a noise and a guard brought Paul Rush
to a seat on the opposite side of the glass.
He was a black man with dark skin, his hair
in braids and in need of washing, and with a
slight mustache. He squinted a bit as he looked
at Eve, as if he needed glasses. He sat down
and leaned slightly forward, looking at her
through the glass.
"Are you
Paul Rush?" Eve asked. She looked in surprise
at the little man in front of her.
"Yeah."
He coughed. "I’m him."
Eve sat for a
moment, unsure now what to say to him.
"Why’d you
want to see me?" he asked.
"I wanted
to ask you about the crime you’re charged with."
She began to wonder if what she was doing here
was foolish.
"I don’t
know how much I oughta say about that."
"The newspaper
said you admitted to it."
"Yeah, I
guess I did."
"Why did
you kidnap the girl?"
He didn’t speak
right away, but sucked his teeth. "I always
have liked kids," he said. "I always
liked kids better’n adults. They more...they
easier to get along with."
"But you
killed her."
________________________________________________________________________
[Julius Neznawicz
is staying late at the liquor store he owns,
after working as an Olympic interpreter earlier
in the day.]
Julius stayed
two more hours, even though he didn’t really
need to be there. He didn’t want to go home
to his apartment and be alone, so he hung around
late bantering with the guys at the store, talking
about the Olympics, about women. The other three
men all considered themselves experts on women,
in spite of having wildly different ideas. Julius
figured that was the last subject he was any
kind of expert on, after breaking up with Katherine
and then feeling stupidly alone, and after his
guilt and depression over having sexual problems
with her. How could something that can bring
such joy cause such misery and unhappiness?
What a shitty irony. There had been times when
Julius worried so much about getting an erection
that neither drugs nor alcohol nor Aphrodite
could have dissolved his anxiety to make his
dick hard. He remembered nights of Katherine
crying, thinking he didn’t find her attractive,
times of his own miserable unhappiness at being
unmanned while still so young. And he remembered
discussions with Katherine about having or not
having children. She wanted them and he did
not. And here were Dog Johnny, Ittybitty and
Walter talking so confidently about their opinions
and grand exploits and sexual heroism that would
go down in history. What a bunch of fucking
liars they must be. Surely. Surely, they must
be liars, mentirosos malditos. But Julius
did like them anyway, and talking to them appealed
to him more than going home to watch TV.
________________________________________________________________________
[Lilith, who
uses the name Flame at work, has just finished
a dance on stage at the strip club where she
works.]
"You’re
dancing awful nice tonight, Flame," Marty
said. "How about a little show right here?"
"You want
a table dance?" she asked. This was one
way a dancer could really earn some money.
"How about
a table dance for your buddy Marty just as a
friend?"
Lilith stood
puzzled for a few seconds, not sure what he
meant. "You mean a free table dance?"
"Hey, why
not, once in a while? I’m a regular here, right?
Besides, you and me are friends, I come to you
every time I come in here."
He wanted a table
dance for free? Did he understand that this
was her job? "It’s against house rules,"
she said. "We’re not allowed to give free
table dances."
He leaned forward
conspiratorially toward her and lowered his
voice, though no one could have heard him even
if he raised it. "Well, they won’t know.
Since you’re my friend, we won’t tell them."
Lilith felt surprised and angry. No, they weren’t
friends, he was a paying customer, even if he
seemed like a nice guy. And now he wanted her
to dance nude in front of him and not pay her
for it, after he had just said that his business
was doing well.
"I’m sorry,"
she said, trying to smile and look pleasant,
"but I could risk my job."
"Some of
the other girls do free table dances."
"I don’t,"
she said, and turned and headed for the bathroom.
If he wanted tits in his face for free, maybe
he should get a girlfriend.
________________________________________________________________________
[Jerome has
gotten a call that a childhood friend died,
and he goes home for the funeral.]
Spring comes
a little slower in the North Georgia mountains
than it does down in the city of Atlanta. As
the evening temperatures become more tolerable
in the city, they are still too chilly to sit
on the porch in the mountains. Down in Atlanta,
as the trees in this unusually green and forested
city splash into bloom, as the azalea bushes
and dogwood trees fling out color to leave you
stunned and amazed that a city can do such a
thing, the buds are still forming in the mountains,
still getting ready. But the air in those mountains
smells of the earth, of black dirt and red dirt,
of earthworms, of robins and tufted titmice
and chickadees, of poplar trees and pine trees
and oak trees with sap running up like syrup,
of cold streams and moss and lichen thick on
the sides of trees, of jonquils in rows along
driveways, of irises, of deer jerking their
heads up to sniff the air. The deer smell things
we’ll never know, but even us humans, as we
get out of our cars, with the radio suddenly
silent after we have driven up from Atlanta,
even we can smell that whoever created the earth,
whatever name the deity goes by, that deity
lives in the mountains, not in the city.
Jerome stepped
out onto the gravel of his mother’s driveway
and reached up to check the knot on the dark
gray tie he was wearing for James’s funeral.
His mother had bought him this tie when he graduated
from high school five years ago, graduated with
James, and he was still using it. He took a
deep breath. Thank you, God he thought
that I’m still alive and can enjoy this.
The air was slightly chilly, but it was noon
and morning mist had burned off. He saw that
his mother was not home from church yet, but
she knew he was coming, and he went up to sit
on the porch and wait for her. He knew where
the key to the house was. On the screened in
back porch was a refrigerator, and the key was
always inside the butter dish in the refrigerator,
but he wanted to sit and look at the hills that
were trying to green themselves.
The funeral was
sad and a little frightening, reminding Jerome
that even a young life can suddenly be over
with the heavy weight of death. James was such
a good guy, it was very very hard to get hold
of the idea that he was really dead. It just
seemed...how could it be true? How could someone
so alive and interesting and fun, someone you
personally knew, be dead? After the funeral
it was good to see people from school that Jerome
had not seen in a while, but they should have
called each other before now. You couldn’t even
really enjoy seeing them, give special handshakes
and shout "Hey, man, how you been?"
It seemed like you weren’t supposed to be happy
to see people if it was at a funeral of a friend.
________________________________________________________________________
[Brother Joe
and Moisés are talking.]
"Why are
you smiling, Moisés?" I asked him.
"I was remembering
some jokes Brother Patrick told me," he
said.
"I’d like
to hear them," I told him. I used to be
able to remember jokes, but now I can’t."
"They’re
baseball jokes," he said. "I used
to play a lot of baseball. Did you ever play,
Father?"
"As a boy
I did," I said. "We played some in
a field."
"OK,"
Brother Moisés said. "These are
also religious baseball jokes."
"People
who love baseball might think baseball jokes
are sacreligious," I said.
