Anjali Sridharan. Lucky No. 11. Grade 12. 1,619 words

Transcription

1 Anjali Sridharan Lucky No. 11 Grade 12 1,619 words

2 I used to love the blues. Glinting like onyx, the high walls of of my childhood home were scaled with the vinyl records of jazz royalty; the King, the Duke, and every artist in between. Those were the days when lazy strains of music would waft through the hazy afternoon air while I traced the pitch patterns on the gleaming ivory of my piano, the crisp ping of the keys contrasting sharply with the languid, raspy sounds of musicians playing well- worn instruments in the streets below. My youth was a twisted, ongoing ragtime beat with, for a time, the accompaniment from the steady baritone of my grandfather. Shrewd and skilled, here was a man who would travel the length of the earth to find success.he was the very reason for our opulence, his sweat and blood the foundation of our gilded lives. Though originally an artist by trade, the minimalistic lifestyle of the European craftsman failed to appeal to his fantasies, and he traveled far from his home to chase after the slim hope that he could break a trend of four generations worth of carpenters. After indulging in odd jobs and a few back-alley schemes in order to appease the landlord, he stumbled on his Magnum Opus. As he had told me many a time as a toddler bounced on his knees, he was browsing through a local hardware and furniture store, when he was so overcome with the disgust at the commonplace workmanship that he went home and built his own company, highlighting the influences of the melting pot he was raised in.

3 In the days of a divided society, where business where forced to chose between rich and poor, my grandfather chose to tailor to a wider audience. Soon, 11 warehouses of his stock had been built, managed and filled by a rising crescendo of workers. To the less than well -traveled, his work brought an aspect of culture to the common man s home, as if the foreign wood and intricate designs could tell stories of far away lands. And it was the novelty; the feeling of power one felt when men carried boxes stamped with his seal into the house that brought the wealthy flocking to my Grandfather s shop. Satisfied with his efforts, my grandfather finally put down some roots, marrying a slip of a girl, and buying several houses to raise a workforce of offspring. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for my father), he only produced one heir before his wife died (though sources say that a woman bearing remarkable resemblance to my late grandmother was seen leaving town with an unsavory character). With the money that poured in from the fruits of my grandfather s labor, my father bought himself a world class education; immersing himself in the spheres of biology, entomology, astronomy, and to top it all of, archeology. The brilliant but eccentric son of one of the wealthiest men in the city, my father possessed a light in his eyes, almost maniacal.he was a serial collector; his trinkets covering almost every inch of free space in our house, forming a shroud of wealth around the prize of his hoards, his trophy wife. As for happiness? For me, the child, it was difficult to understand any emotion other than contentment. While it was true that my mother was more satisfied with a glass of wine in one hand and a society member in the other than playing with her son, and that

4 my father had a chronic case of wandering eyes, I had always been given everything I had asked for. Hardly anything brought any disorder to my sheltered life. The one and only exception of this has been permanently engrained in my mind; it was on a crisp fall morning, I had walked into the large entryway only to find the windows splayed open and a man seated comfortably in front of the prized piano, facing away from me. Dressed in scruffy slacks, an overlarge shirt, and a cap (once tan) the color of the ebony of the piano, he was what the men in my grandfather s warehouses would describe as a piss-poor thief. He was much older than I, and despite his impoverished state, his hands moved over the keys with a finesse that my private instruction had not taught me. Stay back he said hoarsely, then he lifted his hands. Even though a part of me was filled with rage that he put his hands on that instrument, that soon faded away as he broke into a strain of incredible jazz. He did not turn his face once. I came back to find the keys shined, and one of one of my father s tiny Olmec artifacts gone from a shelf. He came back almost regularly, though never when my grandfather came around, and each time a piece of a precious artifact would be gone, traded in for a half hours worth of the best music in the Upper East Side. My father never noticed any of these blatant robberies; then again, by that point my father hardly noticed much at all. For all his brilliance, my father could never quite grasp the glaring weakness in our lives. By this point, my grandfather had grown quite

5 acclimatized to his lavish life, trusting my father with his empire. And my father continued the steady production of goods, unaware that we lived at the mercy of a time of changing opinions. My grandfather s vision was simply a novelty that would fade away. The rise of nativist sentiments and a general turn away from everything foreign caused one warehouse to close, followed by another, and another. Until finally, the day I turned twenty-one, the last warehouse, once called Lucky No.11 by a doting grandfather, closed its doors. My father, too far-gone to understand the concept of compassion, had ordered a band to escort out the the crowds of recently-unemployed. Yet the wailing brass and moaning sax could barely cover the tormented cries of the 10,000 workers who were put to the streets that day. Standing by the side of the road, I could faintly hear the sound of a piano through the open windows. This time instead of jazz, the phantom pianist played the sombre chords of the Dies Ire, followed by a slight pause, and then another tune that I didn t recognize, one full of pain and anger. I didn t see the man after that, yet his song still haunts the far recesses of my mind, resurfacing ever so often to tie me to the past. Gone were the glory days. My father, like the subject of a popular jazz tune succumbed to the jaws of death- by- alcoholism, my mother ran away with the first man that would take her. There was no fever in me to regain my wealth, and no name for me to defend.

6 It was then that I realized how sickening I found the sound of music. Worst of all was blues. How each piece was like a reflection of my life, of my family and its failure. Today, this is where I stand, far away from the place I once called home. I am a wastrel, slipping from town to town like a phantom. Today it is a crowded establishment in a large southern city, tomorrow, who knows? I smile humorlessly as I hear the dyeing chords of a song, the singer s voice keening I keep traveling, What have I got to lose, and ignore the slight squeeze in my chest from her words. The humid southern heat is stifling. There are excited murmurs as another group steps before the crowd. First a man sits before the piano, his group assembles around him, and then they begin a melancholy but energized piece. I gulp down the spirit in front of me as they go through song after song. I block out the rhythm, the skill of the musicians, the bliss of the audience, drowning it all out with sip after sip. As they take their final bow, I lean out of my chair, and stagger out, crashing into the lead musician as I do. He flashes me a look of annoyance, no doubt recognizing the scent of enough alcohol to burn a small village, before it changes to recognition. Grabbing my shoulder and pulling me into the street none to gently he begins to hum the very song that has never deserted my mind. I look at the man, recognizing the dark hair, and above-average height. But instead of ragged pants and a scruffy cap, he is polished, he look of a man who has earned his place in the world. He lays a firm hand

7 on my shoulder and turns to his fellow musicians, and says, This kid here was my first sponsor, and a hell of a pianist. When I open my mouth to protest, and admit that he has never even heard me play, he simply reaches into his bag, and pulls out a slightly rumpled score. I recognize the opening bars- it is my personal Dies Ire, more ornamented, and with lyrics, but the tune is the same. Seeing my discomfort he nods Time for you to move on. Rehearsal always starts at 8. If you re good - he pauses- and sober, you ll have a place with us And before I can say another word, he leaves. I look over the lyrics, my food tapping for the first time in almost a decade. I never told you but you saved my life Never got to thank you for my fate Tell me that our lives can go on Tell me that I m not too late