So I got off the elevator, had my key ring out probably from the time I got into the elevator and pressed the button for the seventh floor or maybe even before I went into the building and walked up to its revolving door, ready to stick the key into her door lock, when I thought Wait. Don’t go in yet. Listen to her play. This is a special moment. The music’s beautiful and she plays it so delicately. Stay out here for as long as the music lasts. I’d never heard her play this way, meaning with me on the other side of the door. I put the key ring back into my pants pocket. Or maybe I didn’t till the playing stopped and I decided to go inside. I’ll explain that in a moment. While I listened to her play I said to myself, How lucky can you get? Having a woman you love who loves you and who can play such beautiful music so beautifully? Something like that. Then I just stopped thinking, I could almost say. Just listened. Listened without thinking, I could almost say. The beautiful playing. The beautiful woman who was playing. That she loves me. That I love her. That she’ll be happy to see me when I finally open the door and go inside. Then I’m going to tell her I stood outside her door for however long it was and was mesmerized, enchanted, rapt — some word or words, but not one of those — by the music and her playing. So, actually lots of thoughts. But mostly, I just listened. Then her playing stopped. The piece seemed over. As I think I said, I don’t think I ever heard that piece before. Not just her playing it — that I know I’d never heard — but also the piece itself. I’ve heard it many times since. On the radio, and a recording of it and other Brahms’ piano pieces I bought a short time later. Rudolf Serkin. And, after the first time I listened to her play it from the hallway outside her door, she played it a couple of times while I was in the apartment and also a couple of times or more in the house we bought in Baltimore fifteen years later, after we had the piano moved there from our apartment in New York. I’m sure she also played it a number of times in the apartment when she was still learning it and I wasn’t around. Then, I don’t know why — I’m saying, after she finished playing it that first time and I waited to see if she was going to play it again or start something else — instead of using the door key she gave me, I rang the bell. Would I have stood behind the door listening to her play the piece again or something else? I’m not sure, but I think I would have, at least for a minute or two. Some movement appeared in the peephole a few seconds later and she opened the door. She was smiling, glad to see me as I thought she’d be, said “Hiya, Sweetie,” and held out her arms. We hugged and kissed. I told her I was outside her front door listening to her play for about ten minutes. “You played the piece so beautifully. I’ve said it before: you have a special light touch. But I never before heard you play a piece so beautifully and ethereally as you did.” “Oh, I don’t play well,” she said. “And I was only practicing.” “What are you talking about? You play exceptionally well. I was completely taken in by your playing. If you had started something else, and maybe even if you had played the same piece again and I was still in the hallway, I would have stayed out there and listened to that too. What’s the name of the one you played? I want to get a recording of it. Or maybe I won’t and I’ll reserve the experience of hearing it for when you play it.” “Get it if you want. It might be good to hear the difference of a real professional playing it and me. Brahms, an Intermezzo, opus one-nineteen, in—” and she gave the key it’s in. “But you’re only saying all this because of how you feel towards me, which is very nice; you’ll not hear me complaining. But you don’t have to, you know. I’ve no illusions about my playing.” “My feelings for you, sure,” I said, “though that’s not why I’m saying it. Believe me, I was truly entranced. The music, your playing, my being the only person listening: everything was just right.” “Oh, come on. Like some tea? I was just about to make myself some. And I bought chocolate lace cookies at Mondel’s this morning, and you like them, so let’s have cookies and tea.” “All right,” I said. And that was it. I’ve done this once before. I love remembering it. Those wonderful ten minutes or so. And then, of course, ringing the bell and her opening the door with a smile, because she’d looked through the peephole and saw it was me, and putting her arms out for me and me going into them and our hugging and kissing. One hug, one kiss. And then the cookies and tea and her asking, while we sat at the table, how come I rang the doorbell instead of using the key—“Did you lose it?” I said “I don’t know why I rang the bell. Maybe I just didn’t want to break the mood or something, and opening the door on my own might have startled you or been like barging into your apartment. Not that ringing the bell wouldn’t also jar things. So I really don’t know. It seemed the right thing to do at the time, and I was rewarded with your beautiful smile and outstretched arms and a kiss. Anyway, I don’t think music has ever had such an effect on me before. No, I really can’t think of anytime that it did. It didn’t make me cry but it sure made me feel good, and I still feel good. I feel great.”
The Dream and the Photograph
He puts down the newspaper, brings the glass he’s been drinking out of into the kitchen and washes it and puts it upside down in the dishrack. He makes sure the door’s locked and turns off the kitchen light. He’s about to go to bed. It’s a little past nine, around the time he almost always goes to bed, but he needs a book to read there. He finished a book this afternoon while he was having lunch and doesn’t know what he wants to read next. He sees Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn lying flat, cover up, on a bookshelf in the living room. He read it about ten years ago, remembers liking it. He’s liked all Sebald’s novels, Austerlitz the most, but that one he loaned to someone, he forgets whom, and never got it back. So maybe he’d like reading Saturn again, something he doesn’t do that much — reread a book — or just start it in bed and if he doesn’t think he’ll want to read any more of it, put it back on the shelf or in the bookcase with the other Sebald books tomorrow and look for another book to read. Or he can drive to his favorite bookshop in Baltimore, only a few miles from his house, and look for a book there. He’s done that a number of times at this shop, scanned the titles on the fiction shelves starting at “A” and a couple of times at “Z” till he found a book he wanted to read or at least start.
He opens the Sebald book to read the first page or two and a photograph drops out of it to the floor. “Damn,” he says, “what the fuck’s going on?” because so many things he grabs or even touches these days fall to the floor, forcing him to bend down and sometimes to get on one knee to pick up. He bends down and picks it up. The back of it says “6/07.” So it was taken in June, six years ago to the month. The photograph has several people in it, all facing the camera. He, Abby, two of his colleagues at school, one standing beside his wife, his arm around her waist. Also the two administrative assistants of his department at the time, and three women he doesn’t recognize. They must work in the Rare Books and Special Collections unit of the school’s library, because that’s the room the photograph was taken in. The occasion was the first day of an exhibit, timed to coincide with his retirement from teaching at the school after twenty-six years, of his original typescripts and first editions of most of his books and photographs of him doing several things related to his writing — sitting at his typewriter at home, reading to a small audience at his favorite bookshop in Baltimore, dressed in a tux at an awards ceremony in New York when he was a finalist for a prestigious literary prize, Abby standing next to him, holding on to her walker, and so on. The exhibit was up for two months. Sometime later, he forgets where he bumped into her, he asked the librarian (she must be one of the three women he doesn’t recognize in the photo) in charge of the exhibit and collecting his finished typescripts and working manuscripts and letters and such — even the unrepairable manual typewriter he must have written a dozen of his books on and which was also behind a display case in the exhibit — how many people came to it. “The usual,” she said, “or maybe a bit less, as it was summer and few students and faculty were around. Nine or ten? Maybe five more who didn’t sign in or were in the room for other reasons but stopped to look.” In the photograph Abby’s in her wheelchair and he’s behind her, hands tightly gripping the handles of the chair, which he always did when he stood behind it, afraid it’d roll away. She looks as if she’s trying to smile but can’t quite get it out. That doesn’t sound right. She was forcing herself to smile. Didn’t want to spoil the photograph — everyone else in it smiling as if they meant it — by looking how she really felt. That doesn’t get it either. So what is it? Photograph was taken a year and a half before she died of pneumonia. She was very sick the previous year, twice almost died of pneumonia. She was still weak when the photograph was taken. Who took it? Probably someone else who worked in Special Collections, or a professional photographer hired by the library so it could publicize the event in its newsletter and on its web page. She hadn’t had the tracheotomy done on her yet — that was a half year later. He knows she never would have consented to be photographed with the inner cannula, was it? — the trach tube, or just “trach”—sticking out of her neck. She doesn’t look that weak, though. Her face is full and there’s some color in her cheeks. Her hair is unkempt. Maybe it was hot and humid that day — Baltimore can get like that in June — so the sticky weather could have done that to her hair — it had plenty of times before — and they might not have had the time or any place to brush it once they got to the library, and brushing her hair was something he usually did for her by then. He puts the photograph back in the book, makes sure the porch door is locked, shuts off the living room light, and brings the book with him to his bedroom. Doesn’t read much of it. Two pages; less. Keeps pulling the photograph out and looking at it. Why does she look the way she does in the photograph — sad, really; dejected? Because she’s in a wheelchair and everyone else is standing. Because she’s sick and weak and they’re all healthy and strong. Because she had to be pushed there in the wheelchair — by this time, she couldn’t even move it a few feet on her own — while everyone else in the photograph is able to walk and run and so on. In other words: they get around on their own while she’s dependent on other people. Because she’ll probably be dead in a year or two, the way she’s going, and half the people in the photograph will probably be going to her funeral or memorial or whatever they’ll go to for her. Because she probably needs to go to the toilet, or will soon — it’s been more than two hours since she last went — and she’ll have to be wheeled there and lifted on and off the toilet seat and have her pad changed. He doesn’t remember doing any of that, but he probably did and all of it so she wouldn’t wet herself on their way home, or if she did, she’d have a dry pad on. Because she could already be wet and is uncomfortable and doesn’t want to say anything in front of all these people or she just doesn’t want to pull him away from this room right now. Because she didn’t want to come to the exhibit but did because he urged her to. It won’t be the same if she’s not there, he told her. “They’re making it into such a big deal,” he said, or something like it, “that there’s going to be a photographer there and I want you to be in the photos with me.” Because sometimes she just wants to die and she has a look that gives the impression that’s what she’s thinking and maybe some of the other things. “I hate being photographed,” she might be saying to herself while the photographer’s photographing the entire group. “I look so awful and sick and weak and ugly and my hair’s a mess, while before I got sick I was pretty and had an attractive figure because I wasn’t squashed into a wheelchair most of the day and I always took care of my hair myself.” He puts the book on the night table, places the photograph on it, and turns off the light.