the record from the turntable and meant to slip it into its jacket when it was grabbed out of my hands and I heard it shatter on the floor. The Victrola was yanked away and heaved against the wall. Without knowing what I was doing—it was instinctive, an animal impulse, like the swat of a bear’s paw but something lazier, a sightless man’s distraction—I swung my fist through the air and hit something, a shoulder I think, and for my pains received a blow in the solar plexus that sent me to the floor gasping. I heard Langley shout, He’s blind, you idiot.
And so ended the weekly tea dance at the Collyer brothers’.
——
WE WERE CHARGED with running a commercial enterprise in an area zoned only for residences, serving alcohol without a license, and resisting arrest. We notified the lawyers who were the executors of our parents’ estate. They would act promptly enough but not in time to save us from a night in the Tombs. Grandmamma Robileaux went downtown with us as well to spend the night in the women’s detention.
I couldn’t sleep—not only because of all the noisy drunks and maniacs in the adjoining cells—I couldn’t get over the vindictiveness of the police who had raided the premises as if we were running a Prohibition-era speakeasy. I was outraged that I had been punched and didn’t know by whom. There was no way to avenge this. There was no appeal. There was nothing I could do about it except suffer my helplessness. I don’t know of a more desolate feeling than that. For the first time in my life I felt the incomplete man. I was in a state of shock.
Langley was calm and reflective, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be sitting in the Tombs at three in the morning. He said he’d saved a whole box of records from destruction. At that moment I couldn’t care less. You go along with the faculties you have almost as if you are normally equipped. And then something like this happens and you realize what a defective you are.
Homer, Langley said, I have a question. Until we began playing records for the dancers, I never really paid much attention to popular songs. But they’re powerful little things. They stick in the mind. So what makes a song a song? If you put words to one of your études or preludes or any of those other pieces you like to play, it still wouldn’t be a song, would it? Homer, you listening?
A song is usually a very simple tune, I said.
Like a hymn?
Yes.
Like “God Bless America”?
Like that, I said. It has to be simple so that anyone can sing it.
So that’s why? Homer? So that’s why?
Also it has a fixed rhythm that doesn’t change from beginning to end.
You’re right! Langley said. I never realized that.
Classical pieces have multiple rhythms.
There is art to the lyrics too, Langley said. The lyrics are almost more interesting than the music. They boil down human emotions to their essence. And they touch on profound things.
Like what?
Well take that song where he says sometimes he’s happy sometimes he’s blue.
“… my disposition depends on you.”
Yes, well what if she’s saying the same thing at the same time?
Who?
The girl, I mean if her disposition depends on him at the same time his disposition depends on her? In that case one of two circumstances would prevail: either they would lock together in an unchanging state of sadness or happiness, in which case life would be unendurable—
That’s not good. And what’s the other circumstance?
The other circumstance is that if they began disynchronously, and each was dependent on the other’s disposition, there would be this constantly alternating mood current running between them, from misery to happiness and back again, so that they would each be driven mad by the emotional instability of the other.
I see.
On the other hand there’s that song about the man and his shadow?
“Me and My Shadow.”
That’s the one. He’s walking down the avenue with no one to talk to but his shadow. So there’s the opposite problem. Can you imagine a universe like that, with only your own shadow to talk to? That is a song right out of German metaphysics.
At that moment some drunk began to cry and moan. Then other voices began shouting and yelling at him to shut up. Then just as suddenly it was quiet.
Langley, I said. Am I your shadow?
In the darkness I listened. You’re my brother,