Green Book Of Meditations Volume 6 The Books of Songs - Student ...

“I was offering an interpretations of events that might bring
you peace, should you choose to believe it. How could I know
what you felt?”
“You knew what I did.”
“That is not the same thing. Besides, is it not the role of
priests to bring comfort to the dying?”
“Not this priest. I’ve never wanted comfort. Comfort keeps
you from facing the truth.”
“Facing the truth just got you killed.”
“Bullshit. Hiding the truth got me killed. Owning up to it
just let me die- that and your damned questions. And don’t
expect me to thank you for that either!”
“I don’t. Believe me.”
Raskin coughed, exhausted by the effort.
“Why did you do it, anyway?” He asked.
“For Juliana.”
The preacher was silent.
“I heard her play, you know. At the concert. A friend of a
friend told me about it. That’s how I found you. She is good. If
God loves music you may not have done such a bad thing.”
“She has thrown her whole life into the harp,” I responded.
“I only hope she forgives me that.”
“If not, it’s nothing worse than what I’ve done.”
“No? You only hid the truth. I let her believe a false one.”
“That’s not as bad as murder. Maybe I will see you in Hell
after all.”
The pale Christmas sunshine sidled slowly down the wall.
Church bells caroled in the steeple outside.
“Why did you want to see me?” I asked.
The old man chuckled.
“Who else was I supposed to talk to? Juliana? My flock?
Haven’t you read your Nietzsche? All friends lie. Only your
enemies will tell you the truth.”
I smiled ruefully. There was nothing I could say to that.
“Speaking of which,” said Russell sharply.
I stilled my features. Dying as he was, this man could still
wound me.
“I’ve heard it said that Juliana sold her soul to play the way
she does. Do you know anything about that?”
“There are different ways to sell ones’ soul,” I answered
very carefully. “One can drive a supernatural bargain, one can
destroy some thing or quality central to ones’ identity, or one can
commit ones’ self so completely to a single pursuit that
everything else must be neglected. Out of countless paths Juliana
has chosen one- and never left it. She has never explored
anything else, never tried to discover other worlds, other loves,
other things she could be. She has brutally pruned her own
possibilities, and thus accomplished something practically
impossible. In that sense she has sold her soul. To me that is an
admirable and terrifying choice.”
Juliana’s father watched me very quietly.
“There was nothing supernatural involved?”
“There was nothing supernatural involved.”
Russell grunted. It could have meant anything.
“What a strange way to think,” he muttered at last.
Minutes drifted by. Raskin's breaths were getting weaker.
“Is Sam alright?” He asked me suddenly.
“A few stitches. He will be fine.”
“Good.”
A certain tension went out of him.
“Last request time, isn’t it?”
428
I bit my lip, nodded.
“Tell Juliana she can perform at my funeral.” He grinned
savagely. “Bet she always wanted to play me to death.”
“I’ll do that.”
Russell Raskin glared up at me. His grey eyes burned,
dimming.
“….Thrice damned Druid… Take care of my little girl for
me.”
“I will,” I whispered, and he was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
Very few people can manage a funeral and a wedding in the
same week with any sort of grace. Sam was one of those few.
Watching him move amongst the wedding guests and the
mourners from Russell’s church, I realized what it was in him that
my lovely harpist loved. Juliana Spring Raskin Hammersmith
refused to have the wedding put off. She put on all the requisite
roles and played at both events.
There was something new in her music now. In her triple
guise as daughter, widow, and angel of death, she played at the
funeral something I had never heard. There was grief in it, and
longing, forgiveness, surcease and healing. She was burying both
her parents that day, though none but we three knew it. She
played what she played, and the gathered mourners wept, longed,
suffered, and forgave, without ever understanding what it was for.
“What was that?” I asked her later.
“The music in my dreams. I just sat and listened and played
what I felt. It is the first time that has happened.”
“Maybe it was worth it,” she added.
She was staring at nothing at all as she spoke. I knew not if
she addressed myself, or the grave.
“Juliana,” I began.
“No.” She stopped me. “I am not the best in the world yet.
Almost, but not yet. That might not be so important now, but this
new thing is. This is a thing I need to explore.”
She rose and left me where the wind played games with the
snowflakes and the headstones, the memories and the souls.
At the wedding she played love, but that is an impoverished
word to call what was in her music. She played the passion of the
newly wed, the depth and humor that comes of knowing another
life and mind through twelve long years. She played the tender
care of a parent- and this from someone who had never had a
child. And she played something else. A thing too powerful to
name, that choked me with a private longing. It reached inside to
drag out notions I had sworn I would never entertain, and left me
shaken with its passage. Juliana’s eyes caught mine as she
touched the strings, and she smiled at me for the first time since
the concert.
At last she released us and took Sam’s hand in hers. The
guests gaped, daring only to breath. The pastor stood slowly at
the head of the chapel. He stretched forth tremulous arms and
raised his face to the heavens.
“Amen!” He exclaimed.
And that was the wedding.
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