Page 58 of Theo of Golden

That gift would forever be one of Lamisha’s most prized possessions. She kept it beneath another of her most prized possessions — her dad’s portrait — on the end table beside her bed.

Throughout his year in Golden, Theo visited the little girl. She returned to school, but remained in physical therapy and made regular visits to Dr. Ikande. Whenever treatment or prosthetics were required, Theo made certain she was provided for as if she were his own, sometimes in open and obvious ways and sometimes quietly through the agency of Mr. Ponder.

Early on, in his weekly rides on bus number 37, Theo looked a bit out of place, but, in time, other passengers who rode the bus daily became accustomed to his presence. Before long, he knew a number of them, and they knew him, by name.

1 The full text of “The Princess of Titalamish,” read by the author, is available at www.allenlevi.com. Anyone choosing to read it aloud themselves is advised to do so with a Portuguese accent, in the presence of a child, with appropriate gestures and dramatic pauses. The truly brave will also attempt to do their own illustrations.

CHAPTER 33

The grape harvest at Quinta das Carvalhas was abundant in 1942. Ten-year-old Theo — no stranger to the hard work of the vineyard — was tanned and muscular from long days spent in the Portuguese sun.

In addition to the modest pay he earned, the little boy had been promised by his father that, when the harvest was completed, they would take a five-day trip to Lisbon.

It would be Theo’s first-ever visit to the big city by the sea. His world previous to that had been confined to Pinhão and nearby villages on the Douro. Childhood in those places had borne in him a love for nature and a preference for quiet that would remain with him the rest of his life.

But the trip to Lisbon changed Theo forever.

It was late October when the party of four — Theo, his parents, and his grandmother — boarded the train in Porto and made the journey south. For five days, the inquisitive mind of the young boy was on full-intake mode. He was awed by the architecture at the monastery of St. Jerome, by the stonework at St. George’s castle in the Alfama, by the triumphal arch at the yard of the royal palace, and by a hundred other sights that he observed in a rush. But when he entered the National Museum of Ancient Art, his gait slowed to a crawl as he walked through halls of splendor. Canvas after canvas, tapestry after tapestry, sculpture after sculpture — it was too much to take in. And how, he wondered, does anyone make objects and images of such intricate beauty?

Theo’s parents and grandmother, intrigued more by Theo’s fascination with the artwork than the art itself, did not rush the boy. They knew his thoughtful disposition and respected his propensity to ponder. They could not feel what he felt, but they knew he was under a spell as he moved slowly from room to room.

At one point in that crawl, sounds of music drew Theo and his family to a large, resonant hall. There, a string quartet — cello, viola, two violins — played what, to Theo, seemed the song of angels. He stood motionless for a song that had no name, no human author, no category. (Music students might have recognized it as Bach’s Art of Fugue.)

When the performance was over, Theo’s eyes stung and his ruddy cheeks were wet.

He returned to Pinhão after those five days with ears full of Bach and a mind full of art. He had seen the wider world and knew there was much about it that moved his soul. His life, thereafter, was clearly delineated into Theo-before-Lisbon and Theo-after-Lisbon.

Back at home, there was little he could do to fan the spark that had awakened within him. There were no libraries, no televisions, no radio, no phonographs, and no orchestra nearby. Nonetheless, the spark never died and when he finally left his boyhood home, he made up for lost time. Wherever he lived as an adult, he became a patron of the symphony, with a more than casual interest in the music he admired.

The lives of composers, the historical contexts in which they wrote, the structure of their compositions, the instruments that made the sounds, and the conductors who brought the sounds to life — Theo wanted to know it all.

For him, a concert was simply the final step in a long progression that included seed and forest, logger and craftsman, ink and paper, player and audience, mind and body, heart and soul, heaven and earth. Music was a microcosm. It was portraiture in sound.

No surprise then, that, while Theo was in Golden, a friendship between him and Simone sprang up from their common fondness for the cello.

During the school term, the young cellist was a regular face among Promenade pedestrians. Once you learned Simone’s routine, you could almost set your watch by his morning stroll to class. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays during the semester, he would strap his cello on his back, leave his apartment, descend a flight of stairs, exit onto the sidewalk, and begin walking three blocks south to the music school, listing slightly forward, as if fighting a headwind, under the load he carried. He took careful, deliberate steps, staying as close to the storefronts as possible to avoid unintentional collisions with other pedestrians. His head was full of music as he walked.

He had the almond-shaped eyes, broad nose, and dimpled cheeks of his Samoan mother. The full head of dark, tightly curled hair, the coffee-brown skin, and the lean physique were traits of his Congolese father.

He was friendly and conversational if need be, and unafraid to meet the eyes of a stranger. But he was otherwise on the quiet, introverted side of the personality spectrum.

Each morning, he made a stop at the Chalice, where Shep or one of the other baristas, in anticipation of his arrival, stood ready to prepare a breve latte with a garnish of nutmeg. Simone would navigate through the door, still fighting headwind, and take cautious steps to the counter at the back of the shop, mindful that an abrupt turn left or right might strike a chair, a table, or worse, a skull. He would pay for his drink (student discount) and then slowly pivot to retrace his steps toward the exit and out to the sidewalk.

By eight fifteen, he would be sitting in the rehearsal studio, cello in place, when an equally punctual Professor Gobelli would enter the room for their one-hour, one-student class.

Simone had already completed an undergraduate degree at the state university in Washington by the time he came to Golden. He had chosen U of G for further studies largely because of the venerable and celebrated professor and also because he was given a full scholarship with a stipend to do so. He was a serious student with less concern for nightlife and city sizzle than for the purity of his craft. Schools in Chicago, San Francisco, and Baltimore had all courted him for their graduate programs.

But only Golden had the renowned Gobelli.

Simone’s parents and family lamented his choice of school, given the distance it placed between him and them, but they understood his decision and were confident it was simply another step toward his eventual renown as a master cellist.

Peering into the rehearsal room on a typical day, one might see Simone’s strong hands dancing up and down the cello’s neck, his slender fingers sprinting from one note to another in obedience to whatever score was in front of him at the moment.

The good professor would listen, nod, compliment, and correct. He gave instruction with confidence that it would be accepted and acted upon.

After class, or whenever Simone returned home at day’s end, he walked a bit more leisurely than he did in the mornings.

It was on one such stroll, early in his first semester at U of G, that he met Tony the bookseller, a meeting that, like so many in the South, began with a moment of eye contact and a nod of the head.