The Note

(C) Mark Burgess 2024.

Once upon a time ... isn't that how stories begin? Well, sometimes it is. But what about when time itself is part of the story? Then it's more complicated. For some stories are "stories within stories", some even left unfinished. And this began as one of those.

== Theme ==

On a foggy day in central New York, a young Italian-American composer from a far away coast stared back at the entrance to the Carnegie concert hall. She was of middle height with mousy blond hair, curled into a ball, though her daughter's hair was darker and straighter.

She held the daughter's hand in one of her own, and a leather bag containing an operatic musical score in the other.

No one here wants to hear a story like this, especially from a woman, she scowled. I have no name, but a story needs a name to be told.

As she drew herself together, she tried to imagine what their daughter's life could be like here, without a father, with no great riches. Would her life be interrupted too? Would anyone listen to her passions? It couldn't be easy for her either way - not with such a history. But she'd teach her.

I have no name, she repeated, and he had no name. A part of her wept for her loss.

== The BIRDS ==

Looking down on them from a ledge on high, two birds were clawing at the unwinding threads of her composure. Troubled by the rejection of her music, and the injustice weighing down, the composer failed to see them. But in the surreal fog, which was no ordinary occlusion by any means, their fates became entwined, as if marking a page in the great book of time.

She kneeled down to hug the girl spontaneously, dropping the bag of music onto the ground, scattering the papers. The two birds squawked at her and flew off into the mist.

== THE FOG ==

Three score years later, no pun intended, pages had flipped past in time's own book.

Somewhere between Hell's Kitchen and the red bricks of the meat packing district, another mist began to roll in from the waters of the great Hudson river, casting a gloom over the sparkling winter morning.

Sixty years on, a greying version of the daughter--striking now with straight shoulder length hair, stepped off the ferry at the waterfront, into a conduit she was entirely unaware of.

Only a hint of age was visible in her gait, but she felt a twinge of anticipation, perhaps rheumatic cold, and pulled her coat tighter. She gripped the bag her mother had given her so long ago. She began walking towards the subway--purposefully, her breath blooming in the moist air. She had a date with a library.

Two Ravens sat on the sea wall, watching her.

Her bag, the same one her mother had carried, was worn now, but it held papers sandwiched between a hairband and a carefully wrapped bagel. This was to be the embryo of a new version of her father's ordeal, laid out in between the pages of her mother's musical adaptation. After so many years, she still didn't have all the right words, all the depth. The spirit of the story, while alive in her, hadn't yet entered into its own telling. Something was missing. It needed wings to fly.

A gust of wind blew waste papers around on the street. One of the ravens took to the air and darted past her, pulling at her bag. She cried out startled, and then a second followed pulling it from her shoulder, sending it tumbling a few metres. In shock she stumbled. Some of the papers fell out and blew around. The first bird took a few pages and flew off, while the second turned its head back to her as if challenging her to stay put.

Then it too flew off after the first. ( A fog horn sounded.)

== FIFTH AVE ==

Uptown, twin auburn pony tails exited a bus at the bottom of central park, into what seemed like a day glittering above melting snow. From the international school bus, she reckoned she ought to go straight home, but instead she took a detour hoping to see the window display of Japanese fashion on 5th avenue.

From the park, where the bus had left her, she dashed along 7th, past Carnegie Hall, and made a left. Noriko or Nori to her friends took the scrunchies out of her straight black hair so it could fall freely and keep her ears warm.

As she crossed 6th, the remnants of snow were already succumbing to the city's steamy temper, and dark clouds had begun to gather. It became oddly misty.

Dazzled for a moment by reflected light, she discerned a bird flying towards her. It was carrying something extraordinary in its beak.

A huge bird, coming at her, from 5th avenue.

== THE DOCKS ==

Back at the docks, the older woman came to her senses. A homeless man called out from his sleeping bag nearby. Are you okay lady? But she was still in shock, confronting her loss. She scrabbled for her things. Crucial pages were missing from the manuscript, from the score! The reference she had written down! Where was it? No! No! She'd only slipped for a second, but now...

As if fate had planned to ruin not only her day but her whole reason for being, now her note was gone. She might never find it again. She let out a cry and threw her hands up into the air in exasperation and despair as the mist began to clear. Now what? She couldn't go to the library now...

The missing sheets had opened a wound, a crucial hole in the narrative! She could only turn around and go home to start all over again. Maybe I should just give up? It wasn't just society and political men who weren't interested in her story, the universe itself had dismissed her efforts!

More of the ugly birds came, one by one, lining up on the iron railing of the street. Each of them swallowing a piece of her hope with its apparent disdain.

The Hoboken ferry sounded its horn.

Clouds were beginning to gather, sucking the light out of her world. The telling of one story was broken. Yet, what she couldn't see was the where it was going, on the wings of these avian interlopers. She turned back to the dock. What else could she do?

== THE QUESTION ==

Nori squinted. Was that a crow, a blackbird -- now, in the city, in winter? It seemed to be carrying something large and white--a piece of cloth? So weird! It swooped past her and the cloth--no, paper!--fell to the ground at the side of the street. She ran towards it, hoping to rescue the object before it blew away. But as she reached it, the bird was gone somehow, flying off southward towards Bryant park.. And on the ground was something looking like a piece of wet leather... She bent down to pick it up.

She turned the crumpled paper over. It contained printed words, and some musical notes. This wasn't just junk, it looked important to someone, written neatly by hand. Too beautiful to throw away.

She went to a billboard nearby to flatten out the pages. By some strange chance, the edge seemed to fit exactly where someone had torn the poster advertising a native American exhibition at the MoMA. A single word jumped out at her. HELP! And a scratched out word "injustice" oddly lined up with the text of the MoMA poster. No way, she thought. Did the bird tear a piece of this? But no, it was a totally different thing. Weird.

She felt a single drop of rain.

== Raining on cold coffee ==

Darkness was closing in quickly. The sun that had warmed her face just moments ago was gone and a black cloud was forming. Large drops of rain began to fall. She hurried onto fifth avenue, running around the panicky New Yorkers in her way, and ducked into a nearby Starbucks to shelter from the rain.

Treated herself a matcha latte she squeezed into seat at the window, where she could dangle her legs and watch the impending downpour.

Rain came out of nowhere, clearing away any traces of snow, wiping the slate, and painting the road red and green with the reflections of traffic lights and cars. A new world closed in, as if she were suddenly inside a bottle.

Sitting in the window, pools of water were forming on the street. For a moment she almost forgot the papers in front of her. Luckily they weren't wet. But there they were. The pages looked handwritten--- not a copy. This must be important to someone, she thought.

Further down, she recognised what looked like Kanji from her Japanese classes. Like a message for her specifically! Whoa...

There was a sheet of music, quite complicated, an address partly torn away. Lincoln P? The Lincoln centre? They had music right? No, Lincoln Park? Wasn't that a rock band? It didn't look like rock music. The Kanji could be a name, a partial English transliteration. N. Taka.. something

The word HELP did nothing to reassure her! Whose cry for help could it be?

Outside, on 5th, the reflection in the water caught her eye. A bird was there again, outside the window. Was it the same one? Did it want its paper back? Perhaps she was hallucinating. The shadow of the bird in the puddle shimmered..

For a moment it was as if the reflection in the puddle were trying to speak to her. She let out a little gasp. The apparition seemed to take aback as if surprised. It didn't seem threatening, but ...

The shape of a man, almost asian looking, perhaps Native American? From the exhibition? Now she was going crazy.

== The library ==

She pulled out her phone and started to search for keywords.

The title of the music, the name of the composer. There was a possible match about a New Jersey writer who had been in the local newspapers trying to tell a historical story about prisoners of war. She'd submitted papers documenting her story to the library, but not much could had come from it. There were no further references. The book itself was too old to be available online, but it mentioned that it had been donated to the library by the composer herself.

Now she was onto something. But where on earth had this come from. And what about that stupid bird still watching her. Could it be an omen? She knew enough manga to know that helpful animal spirits like maneki neko would sometimes visit people to bring fortune... sooo cool

She scowled at the bird. It squawked at her and flew off, once again in the direction of Bryant park. Somehow, she knew the answer lay there somewhere. At the library. Now she was curious.

She grinned. This is a job for an intrepid investigator. It wasn't quite what she had planned today, but maybe more interesting. A lucky adventure. Something designed just for her. She needed to talk to some lions. So much for the fashion exhibition, and the bookstore.

== The Answer ==

It wasn't too far to the library. The two lions guarding it might well have escaped from Buckingham Palace. More animal spirits!

It was quiet there. They were closing early, but she sneaked past a librarian and ducked into a room where she could find a secluded index computer. She didn't exactly know where to begin, but there were surely clues here, in the name, in the music. Lincoln....the president?

Someone was calling out closing time, but she snuck into a corner and settled. This wouldn't be easy, but she was no pushover.

Roaming the shelves for a special volume, she didn't quite know where to begin. Would it be under music or literature? Donations? First, check out the clippings from the news.

All she could find was an old story from a New Jersey newspaper. This was some seriously last generation stuff!

Cross referencing sources, she worked through the possibilities until...there it was! Her mouth fell open. No, way! It couldn't be! A tale began to unfold.

The musical story had begun during World War 2 with the loss of a husband from a loving family. A handsome writer from Osaka married a beautiful Italian-American pianist and composer on the pacific coast, but when war came to America, a capricious president, frightened by the vile atrocities committed by Japan during the war and egged on by financial greed, had decreed that Asian immigrants should be stripped of their belongings and cast into camps along with Jews, Hispanics even some Italians. It was a dark moment for the united states.

Pregnant with their daughter, the writer's wife had stayed close by, unable to see him except from a distance, through a fence from a nearby road. She sought solace in her music...until one day she lost him, when he died in the camp from an untreated infection.

Driven by grief, she fled as far as she could to the East Coast and became a teacher, and hopeful composer.

Nori was horrified.

== THE STORY ==

As she read, past and future merged into a single story, and the flapping pages carried her through decades and centuries of similar travesties, committed in the name of righteousness. It wasn't the first time such a victim had fallen off the pages of history. Only this time to be scooped up out of the fog on hopeful wings.

After fleeing California for a safer environment, the composer had happened to be standing at the entrance to the Carnegie concert hall, holding the hand of her young daughter, when a twig of her passion pierced a blurry fog and was caught in the beak of time's guardian.

There, at that nexus, an angel of history had peered into her bag and felt that scar of injustice. A disfigurement of civilisation that cut from past to present through the anger of a frightened daughter.

She is like me! Nori realized. I could have been her. And I found this, like a message in a bottle, with my name on it.

Like her father, that little girl had become a writer herself. And when her mother eventually passed away, leaving a home near Lincoln park, across the river, she had kept the house and sought to tell the story her parents had endured.

What it needed was a new injection of life, a reason for youthful passion to be restored. And it found her.

== Delivering the message ==

In the days that followed, Nori felt a stirring within , as if the story was growing inside her. She needed to return the dropped pages somehow. That was the least she could do! That small note was clearly the key the writer had been looking for. She plucked up the courage to seek out the address. Was it still the right one?

That the proclaimed beacon of freedom and democracy, could imprison innocent foreigners just on the basis of their race was shocking to her. The family had only wanted to draw attention to the plight of people wronged.

She knew what she had to do. The address was there in black and white. She would return the missing pieces of this jigsaw puzzle to their rightful owner. And maybe ... she could write about it for the school paper... maybe online

FOR NOW, Her job was simply to put it back where it belonged. To return it to its rightful owner, with a smile.

The rain was gone and clouds were breaking up. The future looked bright.

I may be an uptown girl, she thought, but it's time to visit that downtown world. Time to jump on the path train.

== CODA ==

The rest, as they say, would become history.

Not to cut a long story too short, Nori found the house in Jersey City. White wooden boards with a small garden in front. Two large birds seemed to watch her, like lions sitting on a pointed fence as she rang the bell.

An older woman opened the door; the composers daughter greeted her wide eyed as if seeing herself in the mirror, young again. Time plays tricks on us, for sure.

The daughter's name? Her name of course WAS Noriko - version 1.0. Noriko Takahashi-Ravenna .. meaning the chronicle of the raven bridge!

She clutched the returned papers with loving gratitude, but inside she knew that the real prize was--not the missing notes, musical or written, but rather the young visitor who had been drawn to her out of nowhere. Youth follows old age and gives it new life.

I've worked on this story for so long, she told her. It's time for a fresh perspective.

On the piano, she played a little of the music her mother had written. She served green tea and chiffon cake and showed her stories to dazzle the imagination. She had books, so many books, reaching up to the ceiling in the old house. It was a virtual library. You can come anytime, she told her. These stories here are meant to be known.

Noriko 2.0 was impressed. Perhaps I'll become a writer, she thought.

== Epilogue ==

And so once upon a time, once within a time, there was a bridge between worlds, healing a wound of the heart. So whenever you see a mist settle out of nowhere, ask yourself -- who could be there, lurking in the fog, waiting to cross from mere imagination to become a living story.

All it really takes is a simple note.