The Books: “A Severed Wasp” (Madeleine L’Engle)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Next book on the shelf is A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle.

Yeah, whatever, this is my first post using MY NEW MAC. Whatever. It’s not a big deal to me, or anything like that. I am totally OVER my NEW MAC. Yawn. It’s just like any other day over here in Sheila’s world. Time to do a new book excerpt. So I have a new Mac, so what?? Whatevs.

I’m just trying to pretend everything is normal when I know in my heart that everything has changed.

But: today’s book excerpt is from A Severed Wasp – and this will be, sadly, my last Madeleine L’Engle excerpt. I have no more of her books. I think the only things I am missing are her volumes of poetry (I have no interest in those) – and maybe some of her children’s books. I know she did an illustrated version of Jonah and the Whale. I don’t have that. But I know I have all her major works … and Severed Wasp is the last one on the shelf.

It is a sequel to her first novel – written 40 years after that first book was published. Which is kind of amazing, if you think about it. Katherine Forrester was 22 at the end of Small Rain, and when Severed Wasp opens she’s in her 70s, I believe. What has happened to her over the intervening 50 some odd years? We find out in Severed Wasp. It goes back and forth between the present and all these different events in Katherine’s life. Her marriage to Justin Vigneras (the piano teacher in the excerpt from yesterday). Their horrific experiences during WWII. Vigneras put in a concentration camp. He survived – but his hands had been broken – so that he no longer could play the piano – and I believe he sustained some sort of injury that had rendered him impotent. He emerged, after the war, a broken man. I haven’t read the book in a long time so I can’t remember the ins and outs of this whole thing – but I know that he encourages Katherine to sleep with other men – and also – to choose men well, men who could get her pregnant – so that she and Justin could then have children to raise. This is so against who Katherine is, her values, her morals- she hates Justin for even asking … but eventually, she gives in – and they do eventually have children, fathered by a couple different men. Men who know what they’re getting into, by the way. It’s awful in a way, and life-affirming in another way. This whole book is full of stuff like that. Horrible events … alongside transcendent ones.

Katherine in her 70 year old present-day – has finally given up her concert career – and has retired. She has moved back to Manhattan, and moved into her old apartment on Tenth Street, the one she lived in when she was in her 20s. Somehow – she runs into an old old OLD friend – (from the first book) – Felix somebody. Felix was a flighty bohemian dude in Small Rain – kind of corrupt – fun to be around, but not trustworthy at all. Felix is now in his 70s as well, and is a Bishop. A Bishop!! Anyway, through reconnecting with Felix, Katherine becomes ensconced in the world of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Felix convinces her to give a charity concert, even though she is not a charity concert kind of person. She begins to make new friends – in her 70s. And Katherine is kind of a prickly personality – always has been. She needs solitude. She has her own private sorrows (which we learn about in the flashbacks – a son who died, and more horrors) – stuff which she does not share – and the jostle of a social life is not for her. But here she is in her 70s – coming out of her comfort zone – because life never stops challenging you, or never SHOULD … and doing things which seem completely against her nature. She goes to dinner parties. She babysits. She befriends a young sullen girl named Emily who is supposedly a good musician. She is asked to speak about her long life and career at various events. She is old, she is set in her ways, but she finds herself saying “yes” to all of these requests.

The Cathedral is so lovingly and beautifully rendered in this book – it is definitely another character in the story. I used to live up in that neighborhood, too, and believe me: the Cathedral is ever-present. It is a part of the landscape at all times, and you always sense its presence.

There’s way more to this book than just the plot and I probably haven’t done a good job making this sound like a good read – but I’ll just say this: I believe this is one of her best books. Plain and simple. It’s very different from the books that have made her FAMOUS – it’s not science fiction – and also; there are 50 characters to keep track of, as opposed to 5 or 6, like in her other books. But she manages it. We go back and forth in time effortlessly – the characters are consistent, and they have the breath of life in them … Everyone is flawed, everyone is doing their best (which sometimes is … just not good enough) … and everyone has their little quirks and foibles. Even minor characters. L’Engle has NEVER been in such good form.

It’s a great read. I highly recommend it.

Here’s an excerpt from the book. Emily is a young girl, maybe a teenager – whose deepest goal in life is to be a pianist. (Oh – and her mother?? Is Suzy Austin, Vicky’s younger sister. Suzy Austin is now a doctor.) Actually, wait: Emily’s first goal in life (or vocation) was ballet. Member how I said L’Engle is best with people who have vocations, even if they are small children?? It’s totally true. Anyway, Emily was a ballerina. This isn’t just like kids ballet recitals – this is like – she was on her way to being Anna Pavlova. It was that serious, and she was that gifted. And then – hmmmm. I think she was hit by a car. And lost the use of her legs. She was 11, 12 years old – and she had to give up the dearest dream of her life. She is a different kind of child, because of that heartbreak. She has now switched her passion to being a piano player – something she works her ass off at … and her idol is the great Katherine Vigneras – and lo and behold – suddenly Vigneras comes into her life, peripherally, and omigod, she is her idol, etc. Emily is not a likable child. That’s flat out the truth. She’s way too serious, she’s awkward, she’s way too intense … People feel protective of her, rather than love her. There is something fragile in her intensity – and it makes people uncomfortable. Including Katherine Vigneras – who senses this girl’s idolatry of her – and wants to put a stop to it pronto. Katherine is afraid to hear the girl play … what if Emily is bad? How will she critique the girl? And you just know Katherine by this point … you know that she would be physically unable to praise someone (especially a pianist) if they didn’t deserve it. No mollycoddling in Katherine’s serious world. But then comes the moment …. –

The way the scene unfolds is typical L’Engle beauty, in my opinion. Just sit back and enjoy. Lovely excerpt. It makes me want to cry. L’Engle gets that for some people – art is “Life-and-death”. Even if you are only 11 years old.

Excerpt from A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle.

As she passed St. Martin’s chapel, which Felix had said was always open for prayer, she paused, sensing a sound. Huddled in one of the chairs was Topaze, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with sobs. She hesitated, wondering if she should go in to him, and then decided that whatever caused it, his grief was private. He could hear her at the piano; if he wanted her he could, and probably would, come to her. She returned to the Bosendorfer.

When she played the Hammerklavier Sonata she could always hear Justin’s voice, sometimes gentle, sometimes shouting at her in excitement, crying out that a single note could be, all by itself, a crescendo. “You are part of the piano,” he often said. “Each movement of your head, of your body, is as much a part of what you are playing as your hands on the keys. You never saw Rachmaninoff play. He counteracted the most erotically emotional of his work by sitting at the piano as still as marble, no movement of torso, or head. That balance was part of his playing, part of his music.:

He took her to the ballet. “Your movements must be one millionth of a millimetere of what you are seeing, but it must be indicated. Every slightest movement of your head, your neck, says something.”

For a while he had her take ballet lessons. “You are not comfortable with your body, and the things I had hoped to teach you I cannot teach you.” She studied with a friend of Justin’s at the Ballet Russe and learned quickly to take delight in the disciplines given her body. The ballet lessons stood her in good stead. She was not slumped.

They made friends with many of the dancers in the company and Justin began to compose music for the ballet. He made a quick success with a ballet to Moliere’s La Malade Imaginaire, but comedy was not his forte, and both he and the company were happier with the music he composed for Sophocles’ Antigone.

The study of ballet was reflected in Katherine’s playing. She acquired a new understanding of cross-rhythms with syncopations and sudden sforzando, but the old problem with her hip caused the actual dance lessons to cease.

“You have learned what you needed to know,” Justin said with no sympathy. “You are comfortable with your body; you are beginning to understand it. Stop being sorry for yourself. You were born to be a pianist, not a ballet dancer. Now pay attention to the crescendo. You are not listening, you are not understanding. Where are your ears? Don’t you hear that the crescendo doesnt’ lead to a fortissimo but to a pianissimo? Play it, and let me hear.”

He never stopped teaching her, she thought, sittin gin the shadows of St. Ansgar’s chapel, striving to push her as close to perfection as the human musician can get.

A movement disturbed her and she looked toward the pews to see Emily Davidson, eyes tightly closed, her expression one of intense concentration. When the music did not continue, she opened her eyes. Katherine fluttered her fingers in the child’s direction. “How long have you been there, little mouse?”

“Oh, a while. When I used to watch ballet – especially the prima ballerinas – I saw what they were doing, and why, and how. I think I hear what you’re playing, but I’m not sure why or how. When a ballet dancer does something unexpected, I expect it. I understand it has to be that way. But you do things and I don’t expect them. I know they’re right, but I don’t expect them.” She spoke with unselfconscious intensity.

“How do you know they’re right?” Katherine asked with curiosity.

“Because they are right. Do you know anything about ballet?”

“A little.”

“Sometimes you’ll see a dancer move up into the air so slowly you wouldn’t think anything that slow could be up; and then the coming down is even slower. You do that with your music. Especially in – I think it was Le Tombeau de Couperin.”

“Close,” Katherine said. “It was some of the original music Ravel used in Le Tombeau.”

“Oh. But then you’ll do something I don’t understand at all, and I wonder if I’m just fooling myself when I think I can give up being a dancer, just like that, and be a pianist instead.”

It was not just living in New York, as Dorcas had suggested, that made Emily need to be something. The child had not only exotic beauty but extraordinary determination and drive. Katherine said, “Talent in any one of the arts usually indicates understanding and talent in other branches. You’ve just shown that you have real understanding of music. Why don’t you play for me now?”

The color drained from Emily’s bronze skin. In the odd lighting of St. Ansgar’s, her face took on a greenish hue. She murmured, “Maybe it’s better this way, before I have time to work up a panic.”

Katherine rose from the piano and Emily took her place. She played with technical competence a fairly simple Handel minuet. Then a Beethoven sonatina. She played well, as she had played when she accompanied the family. She listened to the music. Her wrists and her fingers were well placed. But the quality which John displayed when he merely picked up the violin was missing.

Katherine’s heart sank as she stood by the piano. She could not lie to the child. Neither could she destroy her. What could she say?

Emily began a new piece, something Katherine did not recognize. It started out sounding like a piano rendition of one of the songs Yolande had sung, but then, instead of going into fear and sadness, it became lilting, merry, then dropped into wistfulness, and ended suddenly with a major arpeggio which flew all the way up and off the keyboard.

“What was that?” Katherine asked sharply.

Now color flooded Emiliy’s cheeks. “Oh. It’s one of Mrs. Undercroft’s songs. Tory has a tape of it and plays it till I could scream. I like the beginning, but then it does things that give me the heebie-jeebies, so I changed it around so it says something I like to hear, and then I let it dance off the piano.”

“You mean it’s your own composition?”

“Well, it starts off with something Mrs. Undercroft–”

“Have you composed anything else?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Play me something, then.”

Emily hovered her hands over the keyboard as though thinking through her fingers, very differently from when she was about to start something from the classical repertoire, and then played what began as a derivative seventeenth-century minuet, and suddenly changed rhythm and dashed into extraordinary leaps up and down the keyboard as she modulated from one key to another and finally dropped back into the prim little minuet.

Emily’s playing of her own compositions had a freedom it totally lacked in the pieces she had obviously studied with a piano teacher.

Trying to hold down, for a moment, her enthusiasm and relief at Emily’s talent as a composer, Katherine said, “Does your teacher encourage you to write your own music?”

“Oh, no, he doesn’t like it. But I thought maybe you would.”

“And your parents?”

“Oh, they like it, all right, but they’re both so busy they don’t have much time for –”

“First of all,” Katherine said in her most authoritative voice, “you will change piano teachers. Whoever you have is all wrong for you. Then you will learn harmony and counterpoint. The more you know of the old disciplines, the freer you will be to go off on your own. I’m not sure about you as a pianist, Emily. Your teacher has taught you some dreadful habits. Thank God you break them when you play your own music. But you are a composer. On the other hand, you need exposure to every kind of music possible. When I think of what you did with Yolande’s–”

Emily interrupted. “You think I have talent?”

“I know you have talent.” Katherine looked at her watch. “It’s time for Llew or somebody to come and take me home. Are your parents going to be in this evening?”

“I think so. Unless one of them has an emergency.”

“I’ll call them. As for the piano lessons themselves — would you like to study with me?”

Emily’s voice was small. “I’m already sitting down.”

Katherine made a conscious effort to keep her tone level. “I’m a hard taskmaster.”

“Madame Vigneras, I’m not afraid of work.”

“I know you’re not. But you have a lot to unlearn, and that will be very hard work.”

“Do you really mean it?”

“Hard work? Yes.”

“That you will teach me?”

“I’ll speak to your parents and if they can arrange transportation for you to come to me, we’ll start at once.”

“Madame Vigneras –” There were no dramatics in Emily’s voice. “This was life-and-death for me.”

Katherine spoke softly. “I know, my child.”

“I could have been dead, and you’ve made me alive.”

“It’s your own talent, Emily. All I can do is help it grow.”

“I can’t say thank you. It’s too–”

“You’ll thank me by working.” It was too intense. Katherine turned in relief as someone said, “Madame Vigneras,” and she saw Mother Cat coming in. Emily gave a small curtsy, and Katherine marveled that she made so little concession to her artificial leg.

The nun smiled at them in greeting. “Madame Vigneras, a special chapter meeting has been called, something to do with Bishop Juxon’s death, so Llew can’t drive you home – the organist is part of the chapter. But Sister Isobel is waiting outside with the car. Are you planning to come to us on Sunday?”

“Yes, of course.”

“One of us — I hope I’ll be the one, but I’m not positive — will be down for you around four-thirty. I hope that will be convenient.”

“Fine.”

“And we’ll get you home at a reasonable hour. We need to sleep, too. Will you be all right on your own, now?”

“Of course.”

“The steps don’t bother you? I should get back to the meeting, but –”

“I’ll help her down the steps,” Emily said.

The nun nodded. “Thanks, Emily. And then go on home, please.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Emily bobbed again. Perhaps manners were coming back at last.