The Low Doors

Modesta had the best voice in the village choir, and almost no one knew it, because she sang it inward, in an undertone, hidden among the other voices, in such a way that it was never heard alone, never stood out, was never noticed.

She was, when this story begins, a good fifty-some, a woman who had sung in the choir her whole life and who had grown old in it, always the best voice, always hidden. And there was a new urgency in her life, though she did not yet give it that name: the urgency of one who understands that the time for singing is not infinite, that the voice, with age, will one day fail, that if she does not let it out now perhaps she will have no occasion later, that it is growing late to give what she never gave. The years advanced, and with them the chance of letting out the voice went on narrowing, because a voice has its time, and Modesta felt, without saying it, that her time for letting it out drew near its end, that if she went on hiding it the day would come when she could no longer let it out even if she wished, when old age would take it from her unsung. And that urgency, that of a time that narrows, was one more reason to change, and it would weigh, when the change came, because one thing is to put off what one can do always, another is to put off what one is running out of time to do, and Modesta began to understand that she was running out of time to let out the voice, and that to put it off more was to risk putting it off forever.

Those who knew voices, and there were those who knew, knew it: that there, in the midst of the choir, there was a voice different from the others, fuller, more in tune, more beautiful, a voice that, if they let it loose, would make the whole church stop. But Modesta never let it loose. She always sang beneath, measuring the volume to stay below the others, hiding her voice within the others' voices, like one who hides a jewel within a handful of common stones so that no one notices it. And she managed it, almost always: most of the village heard the choir and did not distinguish Modesta's voice, because Modesta saw to it that it did not distinguish itself, that it dissolved into the whole, that no one could point to her and say that one, that one sings well.

Those who knew voices found it strange, because they knew that the best voice in the choir was Modesta's and that the solos always went to worse voices, and did not understand why the best voice hid and let the worse ones shine; but Modesta understood, and it was simple: she had a dread of standing out, and to sing a solo was to stand out, was to rise, was to be noticed, and that, for Modesta, was the most dangerous thing in the world.

And there was, in this hiding, a thing no one saw and that was perhaps the saddest of all: that Modesta loved to sing more than anything. She was not a woman indifferent to music, who sang out of obligation and to whom it was all the same whether she sang or not; she was a woman who loved to sing with her whole soul, for whom music was the most beautiful thing in life, who lived for the rehearsals and for the Masses, who felt, when her voice came out, even in an undertone, a joy that nothing else gave her. And that was the height of the tragedy: that the thing she most loved in the world, to sing, was the same one she most forbade herself to do freely; that she had an enormous love for music and an enormous fear of showing it; that she lived, in relation to singing, in a permanent torment, between the love that pulled her to let out the voice and the fear that forced her to contain it. Modesta did not hide a thing that was indifferent to her; she hid what she most loved, and there are few sadnesses greater than to have to hide, and contain, and diminish, precisely what one most loves, to live with bound hands in relation to one's own passion.

The solos, those, she always left to others. When the choir's conductor looked for one to sing the part alone, the part that stands out, the part in which one voice sings alone and the whole church hears it, Modesta lowered her eyes, shrank, made herself invisible, and the solo went to another, to a voice worse than hers, and Modesta sang beneath, in the choir, accompanying, relieved at not having been chosen, at not having had to rise and sing alone before everyone. And those who knew voices found it strange, because they knew that the best voice in the choir was Modesta's and that the solos always went to worse voices, and did not understand why the best voice hid and let the worse ones shine; but Modesta understood, and it was simple: she had a dread of standing out, and to sing a solo was to stand out, was to rise, was to be noticed, and that, for Modesta, was the most dangerous thing in the world.

The way Modesta sang said everything, and only one who stayed at her side knew it. Rosária, who had shared the music stand with her for thirty years, understood it without ever having said it to her: that Modesta listened to her, to Rosária, more than to her own voice, and measured herself by her. If Rosária rose, Modesta measured herself so as not to overtake her; if Rosária sang at one volume, Modesta stayed a half-hand's width below her, always, on purpose. There was a time, at a Lenten rehearsal, when Rosária, with a cold, barely had a voice, and sang low, almost a whisper; and Modesta found herself whispering too, smothering herself still more, to keep below a voice that was barely heard, and understood, with a shiver, what she was doing: lowering herself to the level of a woman with a cold, so as not to run the risk of being heard. At the break, Rosária, blowing her nose, said to her without malice: oh Modesta, today neither you nor I, the two of us are whispering. And Modesta smiled, and did not say that she, unlike Rosária, had her whole voice and was hiding it on purpose. That was her work at every rehearsal, not to let out the voice but to contain it, to watch it, to hold it back, and it was a tiring work, because within the voice wanted to come out, wanted to fill the room, and she held it back, always; and she came out of the rehearsals more tired than she had entered, from the effort of keeping small a voice that was great.

Because Modesta had learned, as a girl, a lesson that governed her life: that to stand out costs dear. That to rise, to show what one has of best, to shine, to be noticed, brings punishment, envy, danger; and that safety is in making oneself small, in not standing out, in passing unnoticed, in letting others shine and staying in the shadow. She had learned to lower her head, to shrink, to diminish herself, to pass through life like one who passes through a low door, stooped so as not to strike her head, always smaller than she was, always hiding her true height so as not to run the risk of showing it.

There was a particular sadness in the rehearsals, that only Modesta knew. Because it was there, in the rehearsal, away from the village, with only the choir and the master, that she was nearest to letting out the voice, and sometimes, in a rehearsal, forgetful, she let it come out a little more than she should, and the whole choir heard it, and the master looked at her, and for an instant Modesta's voice filled the rehearsal room with its beauty; and at once Modesta understood that she had loosed it too much, and held herself back, and went back to the undertone, and the instant of beauty shut. And those instants, in the rehearsals, when the voice nearly came out and at once was held, were for the master and the choir a promise never kept, the promise of a voice that announced itself and never gave itself entire; and they were, for Modesta, the nearest she came to singing in earnest, and so the saddest, because they showed her, herself, what she could be if she loosed it, gave her to taste, for an instant, the joy of letting out the voice, and at once took it from her, in holding back. It was like opening a door onto a lit room and at once shutting it: the instant of light made the dark that followed darker, and Modesta lived off those instants of light at once shut, of the voice nearly loosed at once held, of the nearest she came to singing and that never let her get there.

And the worst is that Modesta called this humility, and the village too, and they even praised her for it. Oh Modesta, so humble, so demure, not at all full of herself, she boasts of nothing; and Modesta received the praise and straightened herself a little within, because to be humble was the only good thing she thought she was, and to be praised for it confirmed to her that she did well to hide herself. There was a way of distinguishing the two things, true humility and fear disguised as humility, and Modesta only learned it in the end: true humility is at peace, and fear is not. One who is truly humble gives what they have with simplicity and stays at peace; one who hides what they have out of fear does not stay at peace, they are left with a restlessness, a dull sadness, the sensation of a thing undone. And Modesta, beneath her supposed humility, was not at peace; she had, always, a restlessness, a sadness, the sensation of a debt, of a thing to be given; and that lack of peace was, if she had known how to read it, the proof that what she had was not humility, that humility gives peace, and she did not have it. Fear disguised as humility betrays itself so, by the lack of peace, by the restlessness it leaves, by the sadness of a thing undone; and Modesta lived with that restlessness, with that sadness, without understanding that they were the sign that her humility was false, that beneath it there was a fear and a debt, the debt of a voice to be given that did not let her, despite all her supposed humility, be truly at peace.

But it was not humility, that, or not only; it was fear, it was the fear of standing out disguised as humility, and there is an enormous difference between the two things that Modesta had never made: true humility does not hide the gift, it uses it without boasting; fear hides the gift, buries it, wastes it, and calls that humility so as not to have to call it fear. Modesta buried the gift out of fear and called it humility, and the village, which confuses the two things, applauded her, without seeing that it was applauding the waste of one of the most beautiful voices the village had given.

One summer morning, with the windows open onto the yard, Modesta was hanging out the washing and singing, forgetful, without thinking that anyone heard her; and the voice came out as it was, full, free, filling the yard and the street above the wall, a beauty. Senhor Anacleto, the postman, was passing just then with his bicycle, and stopped. He leaned the bicycle against the wall and stood there, on the other side, listening, because a voice like that makes a man stop halfway along his road. And Modesta, on reaching the end of the line with a sheet in her hands, saw above the wall Anacleto's hat standing still, and understood that she was being heard, and fell silent in the middle of the note, as though caught in a fault, and made herself busy with the washing until he had gone. Anacleto went on his way shaking his head, and said at the shop, later, that he had heard Modesta sing as he had never heard her in church, that she seemed another woman; and no one believed him, because the whole village knew that in the choir Modesta was barely heard. They did not know that it was the contrary: that the choir voice was the feigned one, the contained one, and the yard one was the true one, the one that came out when she forgot to hide it. Modesta's true voice only came out when she did not notice it; scarcely did she notice herself being heard than she held it; and that was the measure of her prison, that her own voice was only heard when she forgot to be afraid.

The village had of Modesta a fixed image, that of the discreet woman, and that image was, itself, one of the walls of her prison. Because a village grows used to seeing each one in a certain way, and it saw Modesta as the discreet one, the humble one, the one who is not noticed, and that image, repeated across years, had become an expectation: it was expected of Modesta that she be discreet, and anything she did outside that image would be found strange. And Modesta felt the weight of that expectation, felt that the village wanted her discreet, that to rise would be to contradict the image they had of her, and that bound her too, because it is hard to leave the image others have of us, to break the expectation, to surprise those who had us tidied away in a certain manner. The village had tidied Modesta away in the drawer of the discreet one, and Modesta felt that to leave that drawer, to rise, to sing, would be to disarrange the village, to contradict what they expected, and that difficulty of leaving one's own image, of contradicting the expectation of others, was one more chain, perhaps one of the subtlest, because it did not come from within, it came from outside, from the weight of the image others had of her and that she felt she had to confirm.

And so Modesta lived, with her voice in an undertone, her hidden jewel, her buried gift, and passed for humble and was, at bottom, a frightened woman, a woman who had made herself small to protect herself and who lived far below her height, stooped beneath doors that perhaps were not even low, hiding a voice that was perhaps the most beautiful thing she had to give the world, and that the world would never hear if she went on singing it inward, in an undertone, afraid to let it, at last, come out.