Chapter 15
Late one night, in those quiet hours when old people find themselves inexplicably restless and awake, Theo got out of bed, put on his robe, poured a glass of water, and sat on the balcony in hopes that sleep would eventually overtake him.
At such a moment, well past midnight and beyond even the energies of the most ardent revelers, the town gave way to profound serenity.
It settled into the subdued plainness of brick, iron, and glass, a plainness that almost tempted Theo to prefer nighttime in the city over day.
Beneath him, the Promenade slept like an infant, at peace in the faint glow of street lamps and traffic signals.
In lieu of the normal soundtrack of Broadway, a welcome silence, a coda to the clamorous evening, lay claim to the thoroughfare.
The falling water of the Fedder held forth an incessant whisper, like the white noise people stream through devices into their bedrooms to help them sleep at night.
A careful listener like Theo might also have heard, or imagined, the faint sounds of the river in the distance, snaking around boulders on its southward journey.
The old man was of a growing persuasion that the world had become a much too noisy place, too full of manufactured sounds, unruly speech, and angry voices.
And he was pleased, in these unsought moments of sleeplessness, to sit and surrender to the silence, his mind free to take him wherever it wished.
He found in such moments the chance to draw upon memory and recall scenes from his long, storied life.
He never knew, when he was alone like this, whose face from childhood, which town from adulthood, which agony or ecstasy from his past, or which hope for the future would assert itself in his thoughts.
Invariably, the susurrus of the fountain and the calmness of night would lull him back, unresisting, into dreams.
If, as sometimes happened, human voices broke the hush along the Promenade, Theo would strain to hear what was being said and try to complete the larger conversation of which he was catching only a line or two.
Hadn’t he, as a younger man, been a late-night voice himself on too many occasions to count?
Whose reverie might he have disrupted once upon a time?
It was on one such night, when the streets were utterly still and empty, that Theo first heard the song.
He had assumed, mistakenly, that the faint sound of music was coming through the open window of a nearby apartment.
Maybe someone had fallen asleep with a television on.
Perhaps a merchant had forgotten at closing time to switch off the stereo in his business.
Or could it be — what time was it, anyway?
— that someone, Shep perhaps, had arrived unusually early to prepare for the workday. But no, it was none of those.
Four o’clock in the morning.
It was a soft voice, barely audible.
Female.
Gentle.
Not, despite Theo’s first suspicions, the boisterousness or slur of inebriation.
Where is it coming from?
He leaned forward to hear better. No need to stand. At such a still hour, sounds carried eerily far, with almost frightening clarity, down the length of the median. And then, he saw her.
A woman.
Alone.
On a bench beside the fountain.
A bicycle.
A large hat.
She was not singing to be heard, and she might have been surprised to know someone was trying to listen to her, an effort made difficult by the spray of falling water.
Nonetheless, Theo strained to block out everything but the singer’s haunting, thin, tender voice.
He was able to discern a melody and fragments of words.
Try as he might, however, he could make no sense of them.
The song was soft and slow. A lullaby, perhaps? A fado? A hymn?
She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her neck and shoulders bent slightly forward, a posture suggesting weariness.
Her eyes were fixed on the pool of water, occasionally on her hands.
She never looked left or right or behind.
Theo could not imagine her reasons for being alone at the fountain at such a late hour.
Such a forlorn sight, he thought. Alone, lonely, small, inscrutable, hiding. But also longing, singing, seeking something. Heaven?
After a while, there was more silence than singing, until the singing subsided altogether. The woman mumbled to herself, or to an absent someone, in tones too hushed to be understood. She seemed at home in the isolation of darkness.
When a lone police car drove by and slowed down at the fountain, she did not acknowledge its presence, nor did the patrolman disturb her.
Acquaintances, perchance?
Theo watched her, how long he couldn’t say, until she rose, walked her bicycle to the street, mounted, and rode away, heading south. She paused but did not stop for the traffic signal at Light and Broad. She pulled ahead and dissolved, like a ghost, into the night.