Chapter 76 - The Farm in Irttat
Chapter 76: The Ship of Exile 10
Lesley pulled out a volume titled A History of Contemporary Music in Kenting, flipped through it, and laid it open to a particular page.
"Franka's early work was already celebrated for its bold and fantastical quality. Every introductory book on contemporary musicians was obliged to mention her name. After her scores were banned, the coverage in books gradually pushed her to the margins. This is what it looks like now."
Lucita followed the direction of Lesley’s finger. A short entry, no photograph, tucked into the corner of the page.
“A mysterious figure: Franka.
In her youth, she fell under a corrupting influence and became a figure of fear and madness. Until her final moments, Franka's repentance brought salvation to her soul. She received true absolution and went calmly to her death, choosing peace at the last.
Like the marsh swan in the old story, she became the devoted rose at the foot of the stone tablet before the dawn sun rose. So long as the heart is faithful, the divine will always forgive us.
Records of her life are difficult to find, but her piece To Lucius opened the era of contemporary Romantic music. We conjecture that Lucius was one of her lovers.”
At the very top of the entry, in a sensationalist tone, a single line had been written:
“The nightingale of her youth, the madwoman of her middle years, the devotee of her final days.”
Lesley's voice was cold: "Many people know this account is false. But in at most ten more years, the false will become the true, and Franka will lose her name entirely."
Lucita relit the hearth fire. In the crackling of the flames, Lesley sat with her head slightly bowed and spoke in a calm voice, telling Lucita what she knew of Franka.
Franka had studied under Menoria, the most celebrated musician of the contemporary era, and had made her name in the musical world ten years ago with a piece called "To Lucius."
"To Lucius" had been first performed at a coming-of-age ceremony of a marquis' son. Franka had improvised this warm dance piece on the spot as a tribute to this Viktori jewel making his formal entrance into high society. It made him the most sought-after beauty in the capital that year, and earned Franka her ticket into the upper echelons.
But this was only the beginning.
Her boldness was astonishing. Under the disapproving eyes of traditional musicians, she broke away from the long-established orthodoxy of music devoted to religious praise, royal authority, and theological themes, and for the first time composed from a purely human emotional standpoint, creating a series of works rooted in desire.
Her extraordinary emotional force made her the darling of countless music lovers, and Romantic music made its first appearance on the stage of the Jonquil Concert Hall.
She became the most celebrated young musician of the age, a regular at the Jonquil Concert Hall, the nightingale of the capital, renowned for her fantastical and Romantic style.
By this trajectory, she would have become a major figure in musical history. She might even have been invited by the royal household to become an honored court musician, remembered forever as the founder of Romantic music.
But all of it was interrupted in the winter when heavy snow sealed the city, when she premiered her new piece, The Overwintering Bird, at the Jonquil Concert Hall’s final performance of that year.
If "To Lucius" represented the glittering beginning of Franka's musical career, then "The Overwintering Bird" represented the portent of her fall.
"The Overwintering Bird" was the most representative work of her second creative period, released six years ago in what had been an exceptionally brutal winter.
Lesley had been twelve at the time. She had grown up with Franka’s music from childhood.
When everything happened, she was still too young to fully understand.
The fires of industry blazed across the continent. Kenting, triumphant for only a few years, was developing at extraordinary speed. Sugar and milk had arrived at the middle-class table, yet the workers at the forefront of this new civilization were still dying of cold in the streets, lacking even warm cotton clothing.
That winter had been unbearably cold.
Frequent snow and relentless wind, extreme weather not seen in decades.
Bodies and the dung left by tramcar horses were collected together by cleaners in the night. The next morning, there was still the wide road, the bright sun, and the glittering prosperous city.
Franka sang of that winter through the eyes of a starling that had failed to fly south in time, trapped in the northern snow, singing of struggle, despair, and final death.
If that had been all, perhaps it would have been tolerated. Concert-hall audiences would only have admired the musician’s beautiful, compassionate soul.
But she sang other things too.
She sang of how brutal that great snow was, and how it lured new starlings in with the beauty of its flakes, trapping them in yet another winter. She sang of the starlings’ final charge, and their final song.
The fire of freedom, the fire of life, spreading and burning from already-dead bodies.
It was the starlings' hopeless overwintering. And it was the workers' hopeless overwintering.
According to the diary in Lucita's hands, this was the first time the young diarist had ever seen the Jonquil Concert Hall fall into that kind of total silence.
This nightingale of the capital received, for the first time, not a wave of applause but a long silence, followed by a polite scattering of tepid response.
It was also the last time Lesley saw Franka in the concert hall.
People of standing did not berate or reprimand. Those with power did not even need to act. They merely voiced a few diplomatically worded concerns, and Franka never walked through the Jonquil Concert Hall’s doors again.
Her musical career seemed to have been cut off, but this musician known for her daring had not conceded.
When her boldness could no longer bring pleasure to the great people, it became something that irritated the eye.
Franka did not stop composing. She wrote more songs. Those winding, fierce melodies flew out of the Jonquil Concert Hall and descended from the strings of cellos and harps to the vielles and harmonicas of wandering bards.
The complex, ornate techniques grew less frequent in her work. What replaced them was moving simplicity, and pain.
Harvests swept into castle storerooms. Orchards were seized. Tall buildings rose. Children died of illness in the slums. And beneath all of it, the absurd inch-by-inch paving of streets.
Franka's name flew out of castles and gardens too, traveling from perfumed, well-dressed conversation into the mire of those who bore the heaviest yokes.
But gardens can be torn down, earth endures forever.
More and more people sang Franka. Something subtle shifted in the eyes of those crowds who had been as docile as lambs.
The foolish nobles, who had seemed to know only music and wine, appeared to sharpen suddenly, displaying an extraordinary sensitivity on this point, and issued the first prohibition against Franka.
What followed was relentless persecution, defamation, and suppression.
"Do you think five years is enough to make people forget a person's name?" Lesley said. "It's hard to believe, but I've seen it happen. It is enough."
"Enough power can even falsify the memory of a flock."
"No one remembers her now, including me. No one wants to become a second Franka. Everyone keeps a triple seal on their lips. Her scores have been burned to nothing. Our memories are the last resting place those pieces have."
"When people like us are all dead, history will no longer remember that a Franka ever existed."
Violence cannot match civilization, but it can destroy it.
People draw wisdom slowly out of ignorance. The shepherds, however, prefer to keep them in the dark.
The whole world is one vast fool's ship, people wrapped in the lies that are used against them, with nowhere to escape.
Young Lesley leaned back in her chair. She looked neither meek nor frightened now, as though layer after layer of masks had been stripped away, leaving only the tired face beneath.
Five years ago, Lesley had been full of sharp spines of anger. But five years later, in the prime of her life, she had been worn down by the soft warm breezes and the flowers. What courage she had possessed was ground to nothing; only this secretly preserved journal and the hand-copied scores remained, hidden by her in a section of the library that no one visited for years, with a futile fantasy of being discovered some unknown number of years in the future.
But that day had come far too early, early enough that the presently powerless Lesley now seemed to be facing serious consequences.
She had spent a full week steeling herself, and ultimately decided to accept it all with equanimity.
Wordless silence flowed like water.
Lucita pushed the battered notebook forward toward her: "Take it back."
Lesley looked puzzled. But then Lucita pushed the evidence that could have destroyed her back toward her once more: "This final piece, you can transcribe that as well."
She opened her mouth, and took the familiar notebook in her hands, her expression complicated.
Lesley truly did love music. In her room she kept a precious piano, polished so often it looked as though it were cared for daily.
Lucita struck one incongruous note, then pulled out the piano bench.
"My little sister tells me the piano has a very wide range, it's worth trying." Lucita blinked. "Would I have the honor of being the first audience to hear this piece written five years ago?"
Lesley startled, and moved hurriedly to close the window: "You …"
"There's nothing to be afraid of." Lucita's expression softened. "No one has heard the melody of Sparks, have they?"
Lesley came to her senses, was silent for a moment, and ultimately allowed the score to draw her in. She sat down on the piano bench.
"Forgive my shortcomings." She inclined her head slightly, and pressed the first key.
Dong —
The melody written by a prisoner beneath a final night sky, sealed for five years inside that page that might never see daylight, began to flow again.
The sanatorium director's words drifted back: "Heretics whose souls have been corrupted by demons cannot enter the divine realm even after death. To save them, they are set adrift at sea, to let the waters cleanse their souls at last."
Who declared them mad? Whose verdict was it, the divine’s, the king’s, or some absurd claim to truth?
In a trance, Franka's form seemed to rise slowly from the piano.
Lucita seemed to see the light of that final night’s stars reflected in Franka’s pupils, this woman whose face she could not make out. The starlight refracted in her eyes pierced through five years of time: the steadfastness and reason that could be read straight from the music.
Franka who would last forever. Franka who, in all the records, had "fallen"...
Was she still alive?
Starlight is always dim. But in the last hour of night, even the faintest starlight can burn like boiling fire.
If the torch being passed goes out, relight it with the fire of fury.
Go and be the stubborn rock the waves of the age cannot wash away. Go and be the heretic who will never be “reformed.” Go and take up the rusted iron sword, or if there is none, use two hands of blood and flesh, and go topple the ancient walls.
I can only sing with a voice already hoarse, but may this song cross through the dense forest and reach your ears.
I will die before the dawn, but my audience, my compatriots a thousand miles away who I have never met —
May you live. May thousands of you wake from darkness.
Comments
Post a Comment