The Shattered Memory

‘The Shattered Memory’ is a symphonic ballet (if performed to accompany a choregraphed ballet) or symphonic tone-poem (if given a concert performance) which depicts the following extracts taken from the prologue to Donna Tartt’s novel ‘The Little Friend’:

Days later, lying in the shuttered room, a thought flickered across Charlotte's mind beneath a mist of pills...

…tossing in her bed at night, trying restlessly to trace events to a possible first cause...

…what she needed was some small final memory to slip its hand in hers...

…the clean shirts out on the clothesline flailed and twisted and threw up their arms in despair at the coming rain...

The air smelled fresh and tight…

Laughter and talk within the house...

…the querulous voice of Charlotte's old aunt Libby rising high and plaintive for a moment...

Ida Rhew, the housekeeper, was in a foul temper. Sullenly she moved around the kitchen...

...pouring iced tea into tall glasses...

Robin ran outside, shrieking with laughter..."EdieEdieEdieEdieEdieEdie"...

But, oh, how Charlotte's mother loved Robin...

…running madcap across the lawn, screaming with delight.

“EdieEdieEdieEdieEdieEdie”...he sang it out across the yard...

…and when he saw the camera around Edie's neck he was off and hiccupping with laughter...

…he was skittish about it, sharp elbows and kneecaps scrambling to get away...

…she raised the camera and snapped it at him anyway...out of focus...in the corner of the frame a blurred shadow of Robin...

…as he ran out across the hazy lawn to meet his death which stood waiting for him - almost visible - in the dark place beneath the tupelo tree...

…dry thunder rumbling in the distance...

All day long she stared at the bedroom ceiling until the shadows slid across it...

To think about his last moments was soul-destroying, and yet she could think of nothing else...

…she was struck by the conviction that something was wrong...

She jumped up and ran out onto the porch...

...the volume of the gospel program turned obstinately loud... softly and tenderly…

The screen door banged shut... Jesus is calling, calling to you and to me…

…she had felt these dreamlike flashes of panic before...

…scanning the darkening horizon, "come home, Robin come home" she called...

…she turned and headed toward the backyard... See on the portals, He’s…

…a ravelled wire of lightening flashed in the black clouds... waiting and watching…

…she could still hear Ida's gospel program... watching for you and for…

…a strong wind, cool with the coming rain, swept through the oaks overhead with a sound like giant wings and the lawn rearing up all green and bilious and heaving about her like a sea...

…she turned and ran back, quick, quick, but not quick enough.

…ringing from nowhere, and somewhere, and everywhere at once - the rich, unearthly vibrato of Edie's screams.

Come home, sang the radio choir melodiously.

…everything strangely lit beneath the stormy sky...

He was hanging by the neck from a piece of rope, slung over a low branch of the black-tupelo tree.

Excerpts taken from the prologue to The Little Friend, Donna Tartt, Knopf, 2002