Chapter 4

The nuns of the teaching order that ran the college took the girl in, promising to help her retrieve her things from the camp. This resolution of the girl’s situation, however temporary, struck Hance as something that would have happened two hundred years ago, before the invention of public agencies to succor the indigent. People of the 21st century never sheltered strangers in their homes. To shelter a stranger was to risk thievery, assault, murder. But homeowners risked the same possibilities two hundred years ago, didn’t they? Hance wished the nuns well with their guest and prayed the girl was as harmless as she was helpless. It would gut him to think their charity was a symptom of gullibility.

For a little while after that night, Hance attended to classes, rehearsals and ordinary department business with little concern about the girl. He expected to see her in the hallways, or to hear her mewling through a voice lesson with Celeste Warren, the retired opera coach who always ended up with the less talented voice minors. He imagined she would find him at his office and tell him how nice it was to live on campus; to have hot meals every day; to have a soft bed, with clean linens; to have clean laundry; to not worry where she would sleep the next night. Yet on the other hand, he also expected one of the nuns to tell him the girl had run away, taking blankets, plates or other useful objects along the way. He felt he had made a mistake. He could not say why.

A vision after a particularly trying Communion showed him. It came as the excavation in his head diminished, and he feared the server, a yawning frat rat, might discern the reddish sheen of his face owed itself not to the warmth of the chapel, but to the blood in his sweat. In the vision, he was driving the girl back to the campus, determined to be rid of her, just as he had done the night he had discovered where she lived.

This time, discreetly leeching the blood that maintained him on this earth, he knew without thinking in words that he had not helped the girl; he had abandoned her. She was the icon of the irrevocable, irremediable selfishness that had marked so many mendicants he had known on the Continent. In those days it was fashionable for God-fearing people to befriend mendicants––men and women, not affiliated with religious orders, who had renounced all worldly concerns and traveled among the shrines of Europe and the Holy Land, living like hermits without a cave. Contrary to the popular notion, mendicants were not beggars. They never begged. They trusted God would send them helpers. He had befriended a young mendicant in Rome and enjoyed hours debating Aquinas and Augustine with him. The man refused the food Hance brought him and eventually, inevitably, starved to death.

Despite his desire to know about the girl’s progress, he refused to ask about her. He sensed he should wait. She would come to him. Perturbed souls always came to him, whether he wanted them or not.

By the first week of November, the college’s small choir was rehearsing for the Christmas concert, an annual affair that attracted newspaper stories by reporters who always asked Hance the same question: How do you reconcile being a priest with a career as a conductor? It never mattered that he was a college professor, like the unknown number of teaching priests before him, or that the first great universities of Europe were staffed by clerics. Some people simply could not grasp the notion of priests doing something of value in the world unless they, like Dario, dabbled in obtaining social justice for the oppressed.

The choir, which consisted of 16 singers, was preparing the Mozart Mass in C Minor. It was the kind of rehearsal that was so good it should have been the actual performance; it could never be repeated.  Some parts of the Mass are scored for two choirs. One of the parts is the Gloria. Hance, who was conducting from the piano, had the choristers stand around the piano randomly, not with their particular choir or section. A soprano from the first choir was likely to stand between a tenor from the second choir and a baritone from her own choir. The idea was to force everyone to listen to his or her part, and to understand how that part fit in with all the rest. “Listen to yourselves, listen to each other,” he repeated as contrapuntal lines chased each other and overlapped in voluptuous harmonies.

Hance felt the singers pick up the tempo, like a horse rebelling against the snaffles. With a nod, a glance, a word, he collected them into a restrained but energetic whole that made him feel he was indeed on horseback, cantering over unknown ground. The Gloria dwindled to its gentle conclusion, the students smiling. Hance knew they felt they had discovered something rare. They had yet to discover the rigors of trying to emulate success.

He told them to take a well-deserved break and greeted Celeste Warren, who had been waiting in the doorway. “I’ve got a favor to ask, John,” she said as she approached the piano. “I’d like you to approve a change of secondary instrument for one of my students, from voice to anything other than voice.”

Hance suspected the wording of the request. “What’s the matter? Has she lost interest? Would she prefer another instrument?”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Professor Warren intoned before Hance finished speaking “It grieves me to say this, John, but the child is horrendous. She’s a music education major, and her primary instrument is piano, which I understand she’s got to learn for teaching purposes. I’ve been subtly suggesting she switch to organ or a wind instrument, but she insists she wants to continue with attempting to learn to use her voice in something that suggests a musical manner.”

Hance regarded his colleague, a woman who had the grace not to color her white hair or spread artificial color across her creamy but delicately crinkled cheeks. “Am I to understand, Celeste, that you would prefer not to have her as your student any longer?”

“She just failed her mid-term exam with me, and I believe she’ll fail for the semester. I don’t want to flunk her, but I can’t help her any more.”

“Why do you think I can teach her better than you?”

“I’m the grandmother of six. You’re young and you’ve got hair. You’ll command her attention.”

Hance blushed at the inferences behind the knowing, deadpan delivery. Girls––and women––had been nursing infatuations with priests for as long as he could remember. Why? What was there about lusting for the unattainable and the unavailable? He reached for a notepad. “When is her next lesson?”

“Tomorrow morning at eight.”

Hance winced. “Is that her usual time? You’ve been asking her to sing first thing in the morning, without having had time to warm up?”

“We’ve all sung first thing in the morning. We’ve got to, on occasion.”

“True, but it’s torture for the least experienced among us.”

“With all respect, John, listening to her is torture for me.”

Hance almost laughed. “Tell you what. Leave her a message asking her to come here at that time. She’ll have her lessons with me. What’s her name?”

“Emmy Kydd.” Celeste spelled the name as Hance wrote.

“What’s her range?”

“Hard to tell. She swallows her voice instead of projecting it.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Some students are shy and afraid of making mistakes, but she says she likes to sing. Perhaps she just dislikes singing in front of people.”

"Perhaps. I'll find out."

"I shouldn't sound so optimistic if I were you."

The student's voice was the least of Hance's concerns.

He now knew the girl's name. She was coming to him.