Anthony The Absolute. Merwin Samuel

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      She did. But it must have been after quite a. long time, for I realized afterward that my feet ached and that the arm I held up against the door frame had, as we say, gone to sleep.

      Finally there came another creaking. She was getting up. Doubtless she was quite too restless to lie down long. Again I heard the quick, light sound of her feet moving about the room. Then the voice again. And again it was that saddest and most exquisite of songs.

      she sang, very low. I felt nearly certain that she had slipped naturally back into the key of f-major, but not absolutely certain.

      It was disturbing, this partial uncertainty on my part. No person in the world – not a single living being – has quite so great a need for absolute pitch as I. With that, coupled with my ear for intervals, I would stand as the one scholar perfectly equipped for my own line of investigation. As it is, I am not unlike an astronomer with enthusiasm, exhaustive knowledge, a fine mathematical brain, and a marvelous seeing eye, but with a very slight – oh, – very slight – touch of color-blindness. And I never before missed this one attribute quite so keenly as I miss it now, out here on the ground for the great first-hand investigation of my whole life.

      So at last I had to give up my effort to place precisely the key in which she was singing, and sound the fork. As I supposed, she was right again. There was no doubt now. Not the slightest. As I have already written down, she has it – a sheer, prodigal gift of nature. And, of course, it is of no particular value to her. She is not even, at present, a professional singer; and, if she were, she could do very well without this precise gift… I have supposed for years that I had a philosophy. I long ago realized that to waste time and tissue in concerning myself with the one defect in my equipment would be simply by that much to impair my actual effectiveness. But to-day my philosophy failed me, as I thought of that sad little woman who has what I lack, and who does not need it. I even had a wild notion of knocking on the door and making myself known to her.

      As for what actually did follow, I think I will try to set down just as simply and naturally as I can, reconstructing the curious scene more or less coolly as I recall it now, with my excitement spent and my mind reasonably steady. That is surely the best way, in the case of such an extraordinary occurrence – just write it down and let it go at that.

      She was silent for a little time, perhaps standing at her dresser. I wonder if it is like mine, a rickety chest of drawers, sadly in need of paint, with a narrow mirror above it. My mirror is broken in the right-hand lower corner; and at that point I see, instead of the reflection of the dingy room, only an irregular triangle of pine backing. I should like to think that hers is at least a little fresher and brighter, and that the mirror is not broken. These things mean a great deal to a woman, I think. I might have observed all this for myself, doubtless; but at the moment I was too full of the thrill of my discovery to indulge in a single personal thought.

      I was still standing there by the door, my left hand quite numb, my feet a little cold from remaining motionless so long, when she began lightly to run over those remarkable exercises of hers.

      She began by striking octaves. Her voice flew ever so lightly, yet firmly and surely, from lower a to middle a to upper a. Then the two octaves of a-sharp. Then b. And so on, until she was touching, in that same light, sure way, the d-sharp above high c.

      Next she sang an ordinary chromatic scale, no differently from the performance of other singers I have heard excepting perhaps for the remarkable evenness and firmness and pure, floating quality of her pianissimo tone. It was after all this that the remarkable gift that amazed me came to light.

      She returned to singing octaves. Only, as if testing and trying her own precision of pitch, she began striking the upper octave note, in making the leap from the lower to the higher, first correctly according to the accepted tempered scale of the Western world, then a fraction of a tone fiat, then a fraction of a tone sharp, then back to the normal octave. She played with, these fractional tones as easily and surely as the ordinary good singer plays with mere semitones. She actually took them in succession, quite as easily as she had, a little earlier, taken the semitones of the chromatic scale.

      This was too much. I could not stand still any longer. In all my experience I had never found a white person with anything approaching my fineness of ear in merely hearing close intervals.

      But I can not sing them as I hear and know them. I have no voice at all; my vocal chords will not obey my will with any degree of precision. Yet here, in this queer, rather unpleasant little French hotel in the great, barbaric city of Peking, in the next room to mine, is an American woman who can actually sing the intervals that I can only hear.

      I knocked on the door.

      There was instant and utter silence in the next room.

      I knocked again.

      She must have been holding her breath. I could not hear so much as the rustle of her skirt.

      I spoke, in what I suppose was an excited whisper.

      “Please let me speak with you,” I said. “Please let me speak with you!”

      Still no sound.

      Then it was that I opened the door – the shrunken door that would not lock.

      Hôtel de Chine, Peking, April 5th – or 6th

      TIS sometime in the very early morning. Peking is still. Even in this rookery of night birds every light is out but mine. I had to stop writing a while back and go for a long hard walk – around the Legation Quarter, outside the walls. But now I shall force myself to write down the rest of it. I shall not go to bed until it is done. It is too absurd that a scientist of proved ability and of highly trained will power should be overcome by his emotions in this way.

      I have just tiptoed to the shrunken door that so inadequately separates her room from mine. I heard her irregular breathing: and, while I stood there, caught a low jumble of words spoken with the thick tongue of the sleeper.

      And she stirs restlessly in her bed. Even from my chair I can hear that.

      But I must tell what happened this afternoon.

      I opened her door. I was quite beside myself.

      Behind it not quite blocking off the opening, the unpainted, dusty back of her bureau confronted me. I looked through the narrow space between the mirror post and the door frame, and saw her.

      She was standing by the foot of the bed.

      I laid hands on the creaky old bureau and moved it aside. It was heavy, and it had no castors. I had to exert all my strength, tugging and pushing at it. Then I had to wait a moment to recover my breath.

      She was standing rigidly, very white, holding with one hand to the bent iron tube over the foot of the little bed. She has long, slender fingers.

      She never moved. Her wide eyes were fixed on me.

      The sweat was breaking out on my forehead. A drop fell on the right lens of my spectacles. I took them off and fumbled for my handkerchief. Then I said —

      “You have absolute pitch!”

      She did not move or speak.

      “But that is not all,” I went on, more rapidly. “You have СКАЧАТЬ