Avram believed a chord existed containing the secret architecture of creation. He had heard this from an old cantor in Vilnius who had heard it from a violinist in Krak\u00f3w who claimed to have heard it from a rabbi who never played an instrument. That made the story more convincing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The chord contained ten notes corresponding to the ten sefirot, and if they were sounded with the correct intention a musician might hear, for one instant, the original music from which the world had been assembled. Avram was more than a wee bit obsessed. He covered his apartment with manuscript paper and diagrams connecting notes to planets, Hebrew letters, intervals, colours and the names of angels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He decided D represented wisdom, G he assigned to forgiveness because it seemed willing to take everybody home, and B-flat belonged to prophecy, the older kind that makes you certain something has already happened somewhere and you have simply not been informed. For seven years he searched. He tried ten-note chords, eleven-note chords in case somebody miscounted, chords requiring both elbows and once, disastrously, his forehead. No angels appeared. Downstairs, the bakery continued making bread. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally Avram travelled to see Menacham Mendel, an old teacher reputed to understand Kabbalah and accordions, subjects nobody had previously thought necessary to combine. Avram explained his search. Mendel listened then asked, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Why do you want to hear the chord of creation?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“To understand God.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Why?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Avram had prepared answers concerning divine unity but suddenly they sounded like grant applications. “I suppose I want to know why I’m here.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mendel nodded. “Play me C.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Avram played C. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Again.” He played it again. “Again.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the seventeenth C, Avram became irritated. “When do we begin?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You began seventeen notes ago.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“But they’re all the same note.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mendel looked genuinely surprised. “Are they?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Avram played another C. This one began loudly and decayed. Another contained the faint rattle of a loose piano hinge. Another arrived simultaneously with a wagon passing outside. Another caused a bird on the windowsill to leave. Another seemed somehow sad, although Avram knew perfectly well that C had no personal irony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mendel said, “There is no secret chord.” He shrugged, “there are thousands. That’s the secret.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Avram returned home disappointed. Seven years of diagrams into the drawer. He accepted a wedding job because the bakery owner was threatening to increase his rent. At the wedding the bride’s grandfather asked him to play an old melody Avram barely remembered. Halfway through he forgot a chord. His hands stopped. The room waited. A baby laughed. Somebody whispered the first words of the melody. The grandfather began singing alone, and then the bride joined him, then her mother, then half the room. Avram found the chord and entered underneath them. He heard everything at once: the voices, the crying baby, the old piano trembling, the grandfather singing half a tone flat, the bride laughing through her tears, and underneath it something he could neither name nor reproduce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Avram stopped playing. The music continued without him. That was when he understood why he had never found the chord. It had never occurred to him that he might already be inside it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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