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TO DANCE WITH THE WHITE DOG

Winner of the Southeastern Library Association’s Outstanding Author Award

“Terry Kay is a perfect writer for those who love to read; his prose contains music and passion and fire. His work is tender and heartbreaking and memorable.”

—New York Times bestselling author Pat Conroy

“This short book moves like poetry. … A loving eulogy to old age. … A tender celebration of life, made poignant by death being so close at hand.”

—Los Angeles Times

“Memorable.… Terry Kay has created a tender and bracing tale. … A deftly shaped and vivid book.”

—The New York Times Book Review

And look for Terry Kay’s newest heartfelt novel

THE VALLEY OF LIGHT

Available now in hardcover from Atria Books

“Terry Kay writes wonderfully of the reasons people stay together as well as of the things that push them apart.”

—The Washington Post

SHADOW SONG

A Selection of The Literary Guild

“[SHADOW SONG] is just like a wonderful meal… rich, satisfying, and delicious.”

—Fannie Flagg

“Both The Bridges of Madison County and SHADOW SONG are middle-aged love stories, sweet and highly romantic.… But Kay’s book is bigger in scope.”

—Cincinnati Post

“Elegiac and beautifully sustained from first to last. If you are looking for a love story that is intensely romantic… SHADOW SONG should be ideal. Read it, if you can, in the mountains, next to a fire—you, too, may hear the music.”

— Greensboro News & Record (NC)

“A nostalgic look back at a more innocent time and a grown-up love story.”

—Milwaukee Journal

“[A] lyrical testimony to the indomitable spirit of friendship and the tenacity of true love.”

—Booklist

“This sentimental romance pulls on the heartstrings as it tells a bittersweet tale of thwarted love.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A heartfelt paean to love.… Terry Kay has a gift of knowing the beauty in life and people.… Bittersweet at times, bursting with ecstasy at others, SHADOW SONG is… yet another bit of magic from this deft storyteller.… Kay’s characters are small-town, down-to-earth, someone-you-probably-recognize people.… This is a human novel… a story about the most profound kind of loving— loving with joy, with the whole heart.”

— Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)

“Engagingly written, cheerfully sentimental, and generally charming.… Kay has a talent for choosing detail that is telling… and in establishing a cheerfulness that can sometimes flash with humor.”

—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Rich in humor, joy, and wisdom, SHADOW SONG tells of love, relationships, Southernness, old age, how to live and the effects of death. … It is best not to read it quickly but to savor it, to read it thoughtfully, taking time to move into the ocean-deep channels of feeling.… Readers of Terry Kay’s earlier books will find the same compassion, tenderness, and infectious humor.… Terry Kay is both a memorable tale-spinner and a master of the craft of writing.”

— Anderson Independent-Mail (SC)

”Entrancing.… The words are poetic, the message one of longing evocative of yesteryear but as up-to-date as your latest heartbeat.”

—Southern Pines Pilot (NC)

“Warm, beautiful, sad, and funny—a perfect romance. Terry Kay tells this story of passion with a clarity of feeling that is simply breathtaking.”

—Mark Childress

“I laughed out loud, chuckled and felt very thoughtful at times. … It surprised and pleased me.… This book was such a joy.”

—Barbara Bush

“Kay is a gifted, insightful writer with a simple, gracious style. … A tender, bittersweet, and memorable tale of obsession, friendship, love, and destiny.”

—Toledo Blade Citizen (OH)

“Terry Kay has created a magical place full of love, laughter, sadness and expectation, where time stands still and hope is always on the horizon.”

—Cathie Pelletier, author of A Marriage Made at Woodstock

Also by Terry Kay

To Whom the Angel Spoke: A Story of the Christmas

To Dance with the White Dog

Dark Thirty

After Eli

The Year the Lights Came On

The Runaway

Shadow Song

A NOVEL

TERRY KAY

Copyright Page

Washington Square Press 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used ficitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1994 by Terry Kay

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Washington Square Press, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kay, Terry.

Shadow song / Terry Kay

p.   cm.

ISBN 0-671-89260-6

eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-2213-6

I. Title.

PS3561.A885S48 1994

813’.54—dc20

94-15369

CIP

First Washington Square Press trade paperback printing October 1995

15  14  13  12  11  10  9  8

WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected].

Dedication

A few years ago, two friends—cohorts in the business where I was then employed—appeared in my office not long after the publication of one of my novels, and they said, in jest (or maybe half-jest), that they did not understand the story I had written, that it was interesting but complex. They wanted me to write a novel of romance for them. I promised that I would. Someday, I said. When I found an intriguing story. Two years ago, while visiting the Catskill Mountains of New York for the first time since 1957, I found that story. It had to do with an opera singer named Amelita Galli-Curci and some wonderful ghosts from three summers of working in a resort hotel.

And, so, this book is dedicated to:

Patty and Elaine

Because a promise is a promise.

Shadow Song

CHAPTER

1
 

ON THE MORNING THAT HE DIED, AVRUM FELDMAN CAME CALLING. He said he would, and he did. He had promised it would be his last act on earth before meeting that old faker, God, and, as he often reminded me, I, of all people, should know how eager he was for that encounter. God had been hiding from him long enough, up there in his smoke screen of clouds and in his dazzling cluster of stars, pulling off his cosmic tricks like a cheap magician.

“But before I find this God, this Houdini, I will try one last time with you,” he had said repeatedly. “One last time to see if you will listen.”

When Avrum came calling, it was in a ghost-whisper, a premonition. He came in a warm shiver that swept over my shoulders and neck like a sudden puff from the sun on a bright and cheerful morning.

I remember because I arched my shoulders to nuzzle against the shiver.

It was early morning. I was in the art studio of the private school where I taught, watching a gifted young man intently studying his painting of the leaves of autumn. The painting was beautifully, brilliantly colored, rendered in rich, thick swipes of oil that seemed to lift up and curl off the canvas, as leaves of autumn do when they first touch the ground.

And I was thinking of Avrum. Or I could have been.

The last time that I had seen him—nine months earlier—the leaves of autumn in the Catskill Mountains were curled on the ground, beautifully, brilliantly colored in their cups of red and yellow and orange, looking very much like the painting by the gifted young man who stood before the easel, his darting eyes searching for a spot to put the one glistening dot of oil that was on the tip of his brush and in the center of his imagination.

And the warm shiver that struck my shoulders and neck—the knowing before the knowing—was Avrum’s way of gently teasing me with his dying, telling me about it in the instant that Brenda Slayton, secretary to the headmaster of the school, said from the doorway of the studio, and in a voice so soft I knew something was wrong, “Bobo, you’ve got a call from New York that you need to take.”

When I speak of Avrum’s death in the years still before me, I will say, “Yes, I knew.” And it will not be a lie, or a fancy thought, because, in life, Avrum had had a wondrous power to be where he wanted to be merely by wishing himself there. If such power had been so simple in life, getting around in death would have been a trick as effortless as a finger snap to him.

“It is easy to do, ja,” Avrum had boasted. “So easy.”

I have never argued that such claims by Avrum sounded anything but crazy. They did—his claims and his stories. And he was called that—called crazy—by a lot of people who knew him, or thought they knew him. I was one of them. When I first saw him, I mean.

He was sitting on a sidewalk bench made of concrete and heavy timbers in the small village of Pine Hill, New York, in the Catskill Mountains. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back. A soft smile was on his ancient face. He was listening, Harry Burger told me, to Amelita Galli-Curci.

“Who?” I asked.

“An old opera singer,” Harry explained.

“I don’t hear anybody,” I said.

“So? Do I hear her? Does anyone hear her? Only Avrum. What can I say?”

The people who knew him, or thought they knew him, muttered smugly that Avrum was an old fool preoccupied with romantic nonsense. Who could hear a voice when there was no voice? Who? It was nothing, they declared. Nothing but Avrum Feldman’s way of getting and keeping attention, this hearing of voices. An old man’s begging to be seen. Nothing more.

But the people who scoffed at him, who ridiculed him, did not know of Avrum’s wondrous power to be where he wanted to be merely by wishing himself there. He could do that—could transport himself—as freely and jubilantly as a dreamy child. He could will himself back through memory, leaping time like a joyful, streaking star, back to a night when all that he had been and all that he was and all that he would become gathered in serene harmony, and a voice—one that was both within and without, one that entered him and surrounded him— spoke with such absolute command, Avrum could only obey it.

That night was January 28, 1918, one day past his thirty-first birthday. Because he loved the opera, his wife of eighteen months had presented him with two tickets in the least-expensive section of the balcony at the Lexington Opera House in New York City to hear Amelita Galli-Curci sing the title role of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s spirited Dinorah.

Avrum’s wife was a Polish immigrant who had Americanized her name to Marina. She disliked the music of the opera. “I would play my recordings and she would complain,” Avrum reported. “ ‘Such squealing,’ she would say, and I would tell her, ‘You do not listen. Listen, and the voice of the music will speak to you.’ But she would not listen. She did not believe in the voice of the music. If you do not believe, you cannot hear.”

On January 28, 1918, sitting beside his annoyed wife, listening to Amelita Galli-Curci sing the Ombra leggiera—the “Shadow Song”—the voice of the music spoke to Avrum, and the power to wish, to dream, was released in him and he became another man, a man that people would call crazy and an old fool preoccupied with romantic nonsense.

When he spoke of that night—as he often did during the thirty-eight years I knew him—it was always as though he were living it for the first time, as though the experience were something that had occurred only hours earlier.

It was a cold night, he remembered, a night whipped with snow and sheets of rain and wind that howled out of the lungs of Manhattan skyscrapers. After the performance, standing outside the theater, with his wife quarreling about the thinness of her winter coat, Avrum heard the voice of the music again. The voice ordered him to walk away, and he did, leaving his wife shouting angrily at him as passersby shook their heads in disgust.

Avrum did not return home that night. He wandered the streets dazed, with the echo of Amelita Galli-Curci’s magnificent voice ringing joyfully in his memory. Twenty-four curtain calls for the “Shadow Song,” he vowed emphatically when he told the story. He had counted them. And sixty for the final curtain. Yes, sixty. And Geraldine Farrar, the great prima donna, had stood in her seat in the theater and cheered.

“And my wife, my wife. Do you know what she said?” Avrum would hiss. “She said, ‘So much money for such squealing.’ ” And then he would add, in a bellowing of anger, “She would not stand for the ovations.”

In the morning, at sunrise, taking coffee in a small coffee shop, Avrum read the reviews from newspapers left on tables by other readers. The critic from the Times had written: “The voice that this shouting audience heard for the first time is one of those voices that ‘float.’ At the end of its principal demonstration last night it wasn’t a woman’s voice but a bird’s swelling throat…”

After his coffee, Avrum folded the newspapers under his arm and went home. Marina had left early for the bakery where she worked. She had placed a note on the kitchen table against the sugar dish: Where did you go? What did I do? Avrum tore the note in half and went into the bedroom and packed his belongings into two suitcases and left.

It was what he had to do, he explained. It was what the voice of the music told him to do.

I never tired of hearing the story, though he told it always in the same manner, with the same words, the same intonation, like a script memorized and perfected over many performances. It was romantic and bizarre, the kind of story that old people are likely to tell when they have locked onto a solitary moment in their life, allowing that moment to seize and command them. Still, there was always something compelling about it. Over time, I began to believe that Avrum repeated it because he wanted me with him when he made his leap back to that night. I think he wanted me to understand something that he believed essential for the good feeling of happiness, or contentment. In everyone’s life, he instructed, there was one moment of change—one grand, undeniable moment of change—that was so indisputable and consequential it never stopped mattering.

And with Avrum, that moment was the night he heard Amelita Galli-Curci sing at the Lexington Opera House, and the voice of the music spoke to him.

Until he died on July 12, 1993, at the age of one hundred and six, Avrum Feldman devoted his life to the celebration of that moment. It was a life of innocent fantasy and sweetly endured anguish.

It was, as Avrum often confessed, a life wholly wonderful, but not quite complete. “It is very painful,” he would warn me, “to love someone and believe you can never be with them.”

He would add, with a sad smile, “I chose the right person, but I am the wrong man.”

The caller was Sol Walkman, administrator of the High-mount Home for Retired Citizens, where Avrum had lived for thirty years. I knew Sol’s voice immediately—a thin, almost impersonal voice. Though I had met him a few times during my visits with Avrum and he had tried to be pleasant, I had never really liked him, because I have never understood why people who have no apparent compassion choose to work in a profession that begs for it.

Sol told me that Avrum had died at some hour between midnight and dawn.

He said, “According to Mr. Feldman’s records, you were to be notified of his death. There’s nothing to indicate it, but I must ask: Are you his son?”

“No,” I answered. “Just a friend. He had no children, or any other relatives that I’m aware of.”

“I see.”

“I can be there tomorrow morning,” I suggested.

“He was very specific about his wishes. He wanted to be taken immediately to the crematory. It’s very clear in his instructions, very clear. I’ve just finished reviewing them.”

“Then take him,” I said.

There was a pause. “You don’t wish for us to wait until you arrive? Is that what I understand? I spoke to the funeral director. He—”

I interrupted. “It’s all right. Do as he wished.”

Again, there was a pause, then Sol said, curtly, it seemed, “Very well. It’s not a Jewish custom, but as a gentile I thought you may wish to view the body.”

“I have no reason to,” I replied.

“You probably wouldn’t know him. Frankly, he looks bad.”

“I’m sure he does. He was old.”

“Yes,” Sol sighed. “Old and helpless. He required a lot of special attention.”

“He was a special man,” I said.

I could hear Sol Walkman inhale, then he countered, “All of our residents are.” His voice was barely controlled.

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” I told him.

The telephone clicked into a hum.

By late afternoon, I was at the airport in Newburgh, New York, slightly off-balance and groggy, like someone awakening from a disturbed sleep. The day had been a blur—arrangements at school for a substitute to take my classes, flight reservations, hurried packing, the expected and irritating argument with Carolyn, my wife. She had complained about my rush to leave, about the expense of the trip, about forcing her to juggle plans that included both of us. It had been an uncomfortable confrontation. I did not blame Carolyn and, yet, I resented her for not understanding. She had never accepted my friendship with Avrum. To her, it was an odd and ridiculous and embarrassing relationship. What could I possibly have in common with an old man who was as batty as the Mad Hatter? For years, she had accused him of using me, and she had accused me of not having the nerve to call an end to his demands.

“Now that he’s dead, maybe you’ll put all that nonsense behind you,” she had said.

“I didn’t know it was nonsense,” I had replied.

“What else do you call it?”

“Friendship.”

“Good God, Bobo,” she had sighed.

I had wanted to call her immediately after talking to Sol Walkman. I had wanted to tell her about Avrum and how he had warned me by his presence in my classroom. I had wanted her to understand about the shivering and to reply, in her softest voice, “I’m sorry, Bobo. I know he meant a lot to you.”

I could not make the call then because she could not give me the answer I needed. Carolyn was the last person I had called.

The quarrels between us over Avrum were ancient and tiresome.

I rented a car at the Newburgh airport and drove to Kingston and checked into a motel. I had dinner in a small, nearby restaurant, then bought a bottle of brandy from a package store and returned to the motel. In my room, I poured a shot of brandy over ice and took the complimentary Kingston newspaper and propped against the pillows of the bed.

There was a story on the front page of the newspaper about Avrum’s death. It did not reveal much about him. It said he had been born in Germany in 1887, that he had immigrated to America in 1907, that he had worked as a peddler, a furrier, a teacher, and, finally, as an interpreter for the United States Immigration Service at Ellis Island. It said he had retired to the Catskill Mountains and had died there in the Highmount Home for Retired Citizens, which was supported by Jewish charities. It said he had been the Home’s oldest resident and, perhaps, the oldest citizen in the state of New York.

The story was six paragraphs long.

I thought: Newspapers know so little about people.

I wanted to read that Avrum Feldman loved music as other people love God, that he could recite passages from the librettos of operas as easily as schoolchildren could recite the poetry of Kipling, that, though he could not read music, he could be seized by its power and, in a stroke of inspiration, lift a twig from the ground and conduct imaginary orchestras with such conviction and tenderness that passersby—even those who thought him crazy and an old fool preoccupied with romantic nonsense—would stop and watch and become so enthralled by the majesty of his performance they would believe they heard violins from the voices of birds.

I wanted to read that Avrum had had a gift of insight that was rare and astonishing in its simplicity and in its accuracy. At least, it had been with me.

I wanted to read that when people had laughed at Avrum, the sound of their laughter was the sound of fear, that their voices had trembled because he made them uneasy. I wanted to read that when they walked away from him, they had stopped and lifted their faces and listened, wondering if they, too, could hear the voice of Amelita Galli-Curci.

I wanted to read that Avrum Feldman had accepted as his friend a boy of the rural South, barely seventeen, and that he had declared it destiny that we should meet. What else could it be? he had reasoned. Why would he, a Jewish immigrant from Germany, almost seventy at the time, meet, and like, a boy of the rural South? And in the Cat-skill Mountains of New York? Why? Destiny, Avrum had pronounced.

He had heard horror stories, he told me that summer, in 1955, of Southern men in white bedsheets burning the cross of their Christ on the lawns of the Jews. He knew, as fact, that Jews had been lynched for nothing more condemning than the sounds of their names. He had read of it, he raged. He had heard the rabbis speak of it. He knew that, in the South, Jews were ostracized, that their rights, like the rights of the Negroes, were denied them.

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