Free Richard Powers by The Time Of Our Singing Page A

leaning posts in the halls of Hamburg and Berlin.
    But so unlikely is the tremor in such a monument that Strom can’t at first give it a name.
    He turns and looks out across the crowd, following her glance. Humanity spreads so far over the Mall that her sound will take whole heartbeats to reach the farthest ranks. The numbers undo him, an audience as boundless as the ways that led it here. Strom looks back to the singer, alone up on her Calvary of steps, and names it, the ripple that envelops her. The voice of the century is afraid .
    The fear coming over her isn’t stage fright. She has drilled too long over the course of her life to doubt her skill. Her throat will carry her flawlessly, even through this ordeal. The music will be perfect. But how will it be heard? Bodies stretch in front of her, spirit armies, rolling out of sight. They bend along the length of the reflecting pool, thick as far back as the Washington Monument. And from this hopeful host there pours a need so great, it will bury her. She’s trapped at the bottom of an ocean of hope, gasping for air.
    From the day it took shape, she resisted this grandstand performance. But history leaves her no choice.
    Once the world made her an emblem, she lost the luxury of standing for herself. She has never been a champion of the cause, except through the life she daily lives. The cause has sought her out, transposing all her keys.
    The one conservatory she long ago applied to turned her away without audition. Their sole artistic judgment: “We don’t take colored.” Not a week passes when she doesn’t shock listeners by taking ownership of Strauss or Saint-Saëns. She has trained since the age of six to build a voice that can withstand the description “colored contralto.” Now all America turns out to hear her, by virtue of this ban. Now color will forever be the theme of her peak moment, the reason she’ll be remembered when her sound is gone. She has no counter to this fate but her sound itself. Her throat drops, her trembling lips open, and she readies a voice that is steeped in color, the only thing worth singing.
    But in the time it takes her mouth to form that first pitch, her eyes scan this audience, unable to find its end. She sees it the way the newsreels will: 75,000 concertgoers, the largest crowd to hit Washington since Lindbergh, the largest audience ever to hear a solo recital. Millions will listen over radio. Tens of millions more will hear, through recordings and film. Former daughters and stepdaughters of the republic.
    Those born another’s property, and those who owned them. Every clan, each flying their homemade flags, all who have ears will hear.
    NATION LEARNS LESSON IN TOLERANCE, the newsreels will say. But nations can’t learn lessons.
    Whatever tolerance graces this day will not survive the spring.
    In the eternity that launches her first note, she feels this army of lives push toward her. Everyone who ever drew her on to sing is here attending. Roland Hayes is in this crowd somewhere. Harry Burleigh, Sissieretta Jones, Elizabeth Taylor-Greenfield—all the ghosts of her go-befores come back to walk the Mall again, this brisk Easter. Blind Tom is here, the sightless slave who earned a fortune for his owners, playing by ear, for staggered audiences, the piano’s hardest repertoire. Joplin is here, the Fisk and Hampton jubilees, Waller, Rainey, King Oliver and Empress Bessie, whole holy choirs of gospel evangelists, jug banders and gutbucketers, hollerers and field callers—all the nameless geniuses her ancestors have birthed.
    Her family is there, up close, where she can see them. Her mother stares up at Lincoln, the threatening, mute titan, appalled by the weight her daughter must carry for the collected country, now and forever.
    Her father sits even closer, inside her, in the shape of her vocal cords, which still hold that man’s mellow bass, silenced before she really knew him. She hears him singing “Asleep in the Deep”