That’s probably what’s so wonderful about sports, she guessed as she pulled herself to the landing above. Here there was more light, and from here the other shore seemed not so murky . . .
The Professor made his way along a crooked slippery pipe to an angled bollard and sat down on it. Two rusty rails hung in the air to the right, about six or seven feet away, but he decided not to attempt the jump. He sat morosely, intent on trying to comprehend how he had managed to wind up in this absurd, entirely fantastic situation. The wind blew from somewhere below, the bollard swayed, and everything was enveloped by a nasty, damp, oppressive cold.
“Maybe it’s a dream, after all?” The Professor returned to this redeeming idea for the umpteenth time. He ran his fingertips across his face and head. He touched his gums with his tongue: his dentures were missing! How had he not noticed earlier? Where could those fine dentures made at the Fourth Department’s dental clinic have gone?
He sat in a strange and uncomfortable pose, dressed in his best suit, wearing all his medals, but without a single document, and having lost his dentures. Or had someone pulled them out of his mouth? This is awful . . . Awful . . .
“Have I really died?” His fidgety brain, which had studiously avoided the word, suddenly slammed right into it . . .
In the dim fog to the Professor’s left a familiar bald spot flashed by.
“Listen! Your Eminence!” shouted the Professor, and Skinhead immediately headed in his direction.
“Now, we need to gather our strength and, without rushing . . .” Skinhead began in his always low-key voice, but the Professor grabbed him by the sleeve of his white shirt and bawled.
“Will you just tell me finally, did I die?”
Skinhead stared with a lingering gaze at the cringing Professor and said exactly what the Professor did not want to hear from him.
“Yes, Professor. I can’t keep it from you any longer. You died.”
The Professor shuddered, and then he sensed a burning emptiness in his chest familiar from his heart attacks. His hands and feet grew cold. All these sensations were obviously signs of life, and this calmed him, and he began to laugh, placing his hand in the area of his heart.
“You’re joking. But news like that really could kill me.”
“I’m not joking. But if putting it another way makes you feel better, you can consider your worldly life over!”
“So am I in hell?” The Professor fidgeted on his bollard. “Keep in mind that I don’t believe . . . in any of that!”
“Yes, I myself don’t believe in hell. But for the time being you’re going to have to reconcile yourself to the current state of affairs. It’s very important right now that we make our way to the other shore . . .”
Skinhead took two large strides in the direction of the rusty rails, pushed them lightly with his foot, and they immediately fell in line with the bollard. After which Skinhead walked off.
The Professor sat in stunned silence. The fact was that Skinhead strode with his wide feet in their canvas surgical booties right through the air. His steps were sure and fast, and it seemed like the whitish fog yielded slightly beneath his feet, while he himself swayed like a circus performer walking a slack rope. Maybe there was a rope?
The Professor stepped cautiously onto the unsteady rails . . .
Longhair just rocked and swayed, and there was nowhere for him to move: the nearest landing was about ten yards away. The movement of the pipes he stood on had a certain complex rhythmic pattern to it, but he could not figure out what it was, despite his sensitive musical ear. For some reason he knew that as soon as he understood the numeric formula he would be able to direct his movement. He listened closely to his feet, to his tibia and femurs, to his thirty-two vertebrae-conductors—and the resonator of his skull . . . He was beginning to make something out . . . a kind of polytempo, one line superimposed on the other . . . Five thirds . . . That was it. His body responded and adjusted. Falling in step with the rhythm, he sensed that the swinging poles beneath his feet had become controllable to an extent. The amplitude of their motion around their axis increased. But this movement occurred parallel to the closest landing and did not bring him in any way closer to it. In addition, the second tempo got in the way and grew ever more recognizable . . . He had it: seven-eighths! The second axis of motion appeared immediately . . .
Something swung him violently, and he almost dropped his case. But he held on. He pressed it to his chest. He stroked it. His canvas glove kept him from feeling it, and he wanted to remove the glove. Swinging back and forth with a nervous, broken trajectory, he attempted to undo the ties on his left hand. The knot was tight and tangled; he bit at it with his teeth . . . He felt unexpected help coming from the air itself. It was helping. The familiar vortex was spinning around him once again, but it seemed to have fingers and lips, even a woman’s loosened hair curling under its own wind. This vortex of air turned out to have a woman inside.
The knot loosened and undid itself. Longhair dropped his left hand, tossed off the glove, and felt that the knot had loosened on his right hand as well.
“Quickly, open it up, open it up,” sang the living plait of animated air. It was warm, even hot; it coaxed, caressed, nestled close, and hurried him . . .
His movement corrected itself of its own, directed itself, and little by little brought him closer to the landing. Longhair pressed on the latch, the mechanism clicked, the vortex pulled the wonderful thing from its case, and placed it in Longhair’s hands.
“Play . . .”
His hands held an instrument. An instrument for . . . With the help of which . . . It was the most important thing for him, but he did not know how . . . His right hand placed itself where it should go: his fingers fell in place and recognized the keys. His left hand searched . . . It was followed by tormenting confusion.
Hot fingers ran along his neck, his chin, and touched his lips.
“Play already, please. It’s still possible to go back.”
The wooden mouthpiece nestled against his lips . . . And the swinging pipes carried him back and forth, the rhythm of their motion penetrating his body and insistently demanding his complicity. His total complicity. He gathered air through his nose, relaxing his diaphragm to fill his lungs completely.
The vortex subsided and hung in the air. Longhair pressed his lips around the wooden mouthpiece: there was the promise of pleasure, of the most subtle part of it. His lower lip nestled against the wooden stem, his tongue touched the plastic reed. All together it was like a missing part of his body, an organ from which he had been separated. He was exploding from within: with his breath, with his whole self he needed to fill this queer creation of metal and wood that was as much a part of him as his lungs, his throat, and his lips . . . He exhaled—carefully, so as not to frighten away the emerging miracle . . . The sound was music, the intelligible word and living voice all rolled into one. The sound made the center of his bones ache sweetly, as if his bone marrow were responding with joy . . .
Poor humans—a head and two ears! Malleus and incus . . . Stapes and habenula . . . Three turns of the cochlea, the middle ear plugged with wax, and the Eustachian tube filled with scales of dead skin . . . Ten clumsy fingers and the crude air pump of the lungs . . . Music?! The shadow of a shadow . . . The approximation of an approximation . . . A suggestion suspended in the dark . . .
The most sensitive wipe away the tear spreading under their lower eyelid . . . A yearning for music . . . Suffering for music . . .
Lord God, come among us! He came. And stands behind the impenetrable wall of our earthly music . . .