Dark Days Under a Black Sun

THOMAS AQUINAS

This is confirmation, Sam. You were meant to be at the truck stop. I was meant to give you a ride.”

“Right! Confirmation?”

“So last week, I was driving and turning the dial on the radio and just…boom, right there, on NPR, this amazing sound, like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was right at the start of the second part. You know what I’m talking about?”

“Yeah—with…the strings.”

“Exactly! Suddenly I didn’t even remember where I’m going or what I was doing. It didn’t matter, I just had to hear this. So I pulled over by the side of the road and listened. It was everything I’d been thinking and feeling. Everything. It was the Army, Mattie, my kids, my shoulder, all of it, right there.”

“Right, okay, right.”

“Listening to it, somehow I knew, something’s going to happen. I don’t know what, I don’t know anything, just something in the music. Got me so excited, chills down my back, even though I didn’t know what I was waiting for.” Sam didn’t either. It had been years since he’d heard the quartet. Back when he had CDs: Only the Best of Bach, A Rough Guide to Romanza, Classics of Classical, If It Ain’t Baroque. “I thought I heard it, but it was gone so fast. And then again and gone, back and forth, and I’m getting anxious—I needed it, whatever it was. But it felt good, too. Needing makes you alive, you know?”

“Yes, alive.”

“I felt alive. And right when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, it suddenly got really intense, and loud—the violins get louder and louder and then boom! It happened! Everything was together, all at once, and it was perfect! It was perfect. Nothing’s perfect, but this was. It felt so good, I was so filled with everything.”

“When the cello comes in.”

“Yes! You heard it too!”

“It gets louder and louder, then the cello comes in, and boom, fireworks.”

“Yes!” Marvin slapped the dashboard. “Yes! Ah ha! Tell me—tell me you aren’t supposed to be sitting right where you’re sitting, right now, in this car on this road, at this time, talking with me about this shit!”

“Yes. Yes! Yes, I am!”

“Sam the man. Sam the man.”

“Yeah!”

“Oh, shit, I tell you. Aw, yeah, now we definitely gotta listen to it.”

“Great!”

“But first, I have to tell you what I found in it—you’ll hear it, too.”

“Great.”

“See, I read about it online. Did you know Schubert wrote this when he was dying? These were his last four quartets. How beautiful is that?”

“Yeah, really.”

“It’s actually sad at first because it’s about Death coming to take the Maiden, and about how she doesn’t want it, and she’s fighting it.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, you can hear it, the way the music comes together and goes apart. Like sometimes she’s fighting Death and sometimes she’s dancing with him—right? And all the time she’s getting closer to Death and doesn’t even realize it. And then she does, but it’s too late, she can’t fight anymore. And it’s okay because in her heart she knows it has to happen. Death is a part of life. You can hear it when she gives in. The music gets soft like she’s getting weaker, and weaker. And then she’s done. She lets go. It’s beautiful, to be able to do that.”

“Huh.”

“But then the music picks up, gets loud, and right at eleven minutes it happens, that perfect moment when everything comes together, and then boom, there He is—God in full, revealed to the Maiden. That sound, that perfect part, that’s her reward. For doing her service to God on Earth, and then letting go when it was time. And then the music comes apart so sweet, as her soul flies up.”

“Huh.”

“I know, right? I’m not talking—I mean the Bible can suck my dick, the Koran too. I’m talking about divinity, right? With music, there’s no translation, you hear it directly, the direct forces, you know? Right from the source, the stream, the artery—drinking it straight from the heart.”

“Mmm, yeah.”

“That’s that real shit, that old-time religion.”

“Yeah, right.”

“And not even the God my grandmother prayed to for eighty-five years. I mean the God she found in her last minute, like the Maiden, when all that other bullshit was washed away and it was just Him and her—that God.”

“Mmmm.”

“Then it hit me.” Marvin lowered his voice, almost a whisper.

“What did?”

“I realized, all along it wasn’t just Death and the Maiden who were fighting and dancing—God was there the whole time. Because Death is just God guiding you home. God is Death. See? All the time the Maiden’s dancing, it was God, killing her.”

“Oh. Shit.”

“Yeah, sounds different that way, right?”

“Huh.”

“And you know what?”

“What?”

“The timing, it’s perfect, tonight. You and me, we’re joined.”

“Joined?”

“And it makes sense.” Marvin nodded. “It really does.”

“What does?”

“My sins. I gave the army thousands of soldiers. Took good, decent men and ripped their souls apart, so they could kill on command. And they do. My work’s killed more people than I can imagine. And I knew it. I knew all along what I was doing. And I kept doing it—because I liked it. I liked teaching. I liked making monsters with people inside. And I don’t even feel guilty about it—even right now, at the end. I don’t know what that makes me. But it’s something…not right.”

“But that doesn’t—”

“For my sins, it’s only fair. So God sent you to ride with me tonight, so we could do this together.”

“Do what, Marvin?”

“I’ve done all the work the Army needs from me, dropped my evil seed all over the world like Genghis Khan. And now my task is done. It’s time to go home”

“But Marvin, what do you—”

“Let’s listen to the music.” Marvin touched the screen of his phone and the four musicians began to play.

At first, Sam could barely hear it, the quiet stirrings, the initial trepid bowing, above the ambient noise in the car. The subtleties of the opening bars were lost. But then in one full drawn motion, the music escalated and filled with anxiety. And then speed. And more. Then the violence. The threat of discord emerging, of everything falling apart—almost. But then the sounds were gathered and mastered. Sam listened carefully, as though the music would instruct him. So many times, it would climb and almost take shape, before abating, until Sam thought he couldn’t take it anymore. And then it happened, just as Marvin had said. It might have lasted twenty seconds, so full, so entirely complete—layered, entwined, but each instrument was distinct as they slid across each other. It was perfect. And then the quartet let go, burst apart, gaily cheering their own success. And Sam was overcome, exhausted, feeling nothing but that he was entirely inside the gale. Then it was over, and before the next part could begin, Marvin touched the screen.

“Beautiful,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“It makes me so emotional. I haven’t even listened to the rest of it. Just that second track over and over.”

“You should listen to the rest of it. Should we listen to the rest of it?”

“I was a teacher, Sam, a leader of men, and I didn’t protect my students from destroying themselves. Time to pay up. I just have to hope when I’m through, God’ll forgive me. And if not, then that’s His plan and I have to accept it and—”

“Well, wait, hold on Marvin, that’s…see Marvin, I can see where you’re coming from, with that, I definitely do. I understand. I understand how on a certain level, I can see how there’s an argument—an interpretation. But something you also have to consider—”

“Hmm?”

“See there are different interpretations that you have to understand fully before you can fully understand everything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you don’t have it yet. That’s why I’m here, that’s why He put me here—so we can figure this shit out together. Because I hear it! You called it right, He’s in there, in the music. But it’s one thing to hear His voice, a whole other thing to understand what He’s saying, right? People spend their whole lives trying to understand His—His will, and we’re trying to do it all tonight?”

“I’ve tried, man. I’ve listened over and over and over again.”

“But we haven’t even listened to the whole thing. How do you know there isn’t more in the rest of it?”

“Huh.”

“And even what you have listened to, Marvin, I’m hearing things I don’t think you’re hearing.”

“Like what?”

“Like a lot of things. Like, I mean there’s so much, like—oh, did you know it wasn’t even called Death and the Maiden until after he died? By someone who never even knew him?”

“But Wiki—”

“Notoriously unreliable on classical music. No, no, no, that title’s just bullshit commercialization by publishers and lawyers—fucking lawyers! Just trying to sell sheet music. It’s actually just called The Four Quartets. I mean, Schubert was dying, right? You have time to fuck around with titles when you’re dying? That bullshit title was never Schubert’s intention. Instead, to get it right, to really understand the music, we just have to—no words, right? No translation, like you said. You just have to listen and feel it—just the music, Marvin, just the music. Ignore all that other shit. And tell me, what do you have when you just listen to the music? What do you really feel, in your heart? What does—I mean, what’s in your soul?”

“You mean, I hear…God.”

“Yes! Exactly! Exactly right! And what do you know?”

“What do I know?”

“Yeah, like the way philosophers, you know—knowing and knowing, right? Philosophers like Gandhi and Moses and Aquinas. And you know what Aquinas said?”

“No, what did he say?”

“He said, I’m just saying, if you want to start with a good place to start, think about what he said, right?”

“What did he say?”

“Multiple worlds! Theoretical infinite universes! Yes, Thomas Aquinas! Way before his time, Aquinas. It was like, he said that because the universes, because they’re infinite, everything that can happen happens, and because God is who He is–he’s God–we know we’re living in the best one, the best dimensional vortex. Aquinas said–it’s especially beautiful in Latin–he said, to quote in translation: ‘I don’t always know how to please You, Lord, but I want to and I know You know it. And I don’t always understand, but that’s why I believe, so I’ll just go with my heart to guess which of the infinite universes and multiple dimensions You have created is the true and righteous path for us, Your children, and that all is bound by Your love in peace and harmony.’”