The violin plays softly, notes falling from its cat gut strings like drops of dew from the razored edges of a leaf. They plink and plonk about him, washing about his knees for now, but soon (an hour, perhaps) they will submerge him completely, encapsulating him within a cocoon of music. Cut off, unmoored from his surroundings he will float, rudderless on the bosom of an ocean of sound.
Fitting that he be transported so. The great poet John Keats has flown on the viewless wings of poesy, his boarding pass being handed him by a singing nightingale. He was getting one up on Keats, producing the song of transportation himself.
Musing on Keats was always soothing, and served to lull him further into his melodious trance. Nothing suited the Romantics more, he thought, than a glass of sparkling wine on a summer’s day or a nocturnal serenade from a lonely violin. This was, therefore, both his tribute to them as well as a gift he received from the Masters in return for his homage. Shelley, Wordsworth, Blake, Byron and Keats- they sang to him, he played for them; they were all trapped in the same sublime reverie.
Only, more often than not, his part of the shared space seemed more like a nightmare than a poetry inducing flight of fancy. When the images and memories flooded his inward eye, he tried to shut them out, drowning himself instead in the wordless beauty of a tune.
I wandered lonely as a cloud. There he had been- a lonely young man stranded in an unknown land amidst a sea of strangers. There were times when he had wondered how he’d gotten where he was, in a little university town in the bowels of Arizona. A B.Sc in Zoology certainly hadn’t seemed like it was leading up to this.
There were moments when to be young had been very heaven, he could see that now, peering down that fog laden road of memory. The books, the coffee, and the women- it had all come in a surge. There was a different woman by his side every month, a different face across the table when he wanted to talk ‘literature’. The exotic exterior and (almost) laughable accent had fascinated them, and he never found himself in want of a social life.
At times though, it got trying, and he realized it wasn’t all it had been cracked up to be. His large circle of acquaintances remained just that- acquaintances. The women came and the women went, and none left more than a lipstick smudge on his pillow cases or a stray powder puff in the bathroom. He often forgot how the latest affair had started, or even what her name was until she left him a letter on his desk, coldly informing him that she’d decided she needed more than just sex and poetry. He never felt hurt at these departures, more often than not, it was an odd sense of relief that flooded his being. Cruel and terrible as it may have been, the women just didn’t hold his complete attention. He turned to them more out of a desire to emulate the Poets (Byron at least) than any genuine desire of his own.
Until she walked in and changed everything.
She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies He’d seen her at a get-together, one of those regular excuses to get drunk and delay the submission of papers to supervisors. She hadn’t grabbed his attention at first; it had been her brown-haired friend who’d had that honor. He was already slightly spiffed by the alcohol, and fumbled up his introductory flirtatious statements, putting the friend off. She’d stalked off in a huff, insulted by the inappropriate advances from the vague Romantics thesis writer (she herself had been pursuing a PhD in mathematics if he recalled correctly). Poor Savita had been left to deal with the awkward situation and lie on her behalf.
‘I’m really sorry; my friend’s had a rough week.’
Blinking, he tried to focus on the speaker. She was smaller, plainer, and altogether less impressive than the one who’d swept away. However, she would do for flirt material at a pinch. Besides, she was of Indian origin, or looked it.
‘That’s okay.’ His smile was a trifle bleary, but thankfully did not scream ‘I’m drunk!’ to an unfamiliar viewer. ‘At least she left you behind to make up for it.’
She looked like she didn’t know whether to be amused or not.
‘So where are you from? And can I put a name to you?’
‘I’m Savita. I’m an assistant teacher with the History department.’
‘Ah. Savita.’ Pretty name, and the more he looked at her, the more he liked her face. There was something comforting about it. Familiar and steady- she looked like what Annabella Milbanke, or better yet, Augusta Gordon Leigh must have appeared to Byron.
‘Could I take you out for a coffee sometime, Savita? When I’m less inebriated and have a book of poetry about me?’
A hesitant smile twitched the corners of her mouth. ‘Sure. But why would we need the poetry?’
‘I find it’s a great conversation starter.’
‘But Andrea just proved you wrong on that, didn’t she?’
‘Who’s to say? It got me talking to you didn’t it?’
At that she’d laughed, and he’d known he’d won for the night.
They had married three years later. Her parents were delighted that she’d found a nice Indian boy in the ‘States, his mother was just content that he was finally settling down. They’d both finished their dissertations by then, they’d both added the wonderful hard-earned prefixes of ‘Dr’ to their names. Settled (or attempting to) in the suburban recesses of Virginia, they were a happy couple, to whom marriage was just another game to be played with life.
Silly little fools.
Violent music swirled around him, it rammed itself in its ears, climbed atop his head and sat there, pulling and pulling at the memories of discord. They floated up to the surface, dim and unwilling. He wanted to yell at them Go! Hide! Don’t let the notes fool you! They seemed to understand, but the notes proved too powerful. Soon enough, they were parading before him, shone up and dazzling, blinding him with their power.
The game had turned sour soon enough. Once they both realized that they didn’t want the same things. How clichéd, he thought, sawing away at the strings, that they had been torn apart by the mundane and worldly reason that nearly all couples were. Didn’t want the same things- it sounded so goddamn prosaic. If they’d had to end up divorced, couldn’t it have been caused by something slightly more exciting- adultery perhaps? It sounded so much more adventurous, like they’d actually tried to live. Not wanting the same things, on the other hand, painted for the listener a picture of a crotchety couple who couldn’t come to a compromise about which TV channel to watch.
‘You get home too late.’ ‘I have a job too!’ ‘I just don’t have time!’ ‘There isn’t any food in the kitchen, why can’t you come home once in a while to cook?’ ‘You’d rather read about some old dead men than talk to me!’ ‘Fine, go and have dinner with Dr. Carson, he knows what the tribals of Zuzouland ate for breakfast fifteen hundred years ago.’ ‘Why don’t you just stop and listen to me sometimes?’
And finally:
‘I can’t take this anymore.’
Which one of them had said it first? He couldn’t remember, he didn’t want to remember. What would memory serve to do anyway? The bare fact that it had been thrown out like that, hurled from one mouth to the other’s ear, hitting like a bullet, a shock dart. After that, life just hadn’t been the same, no matter how much they tried to talk it out. He didn’t believe in all the newfangled conceptions of marriage therapy, and neither did she, so a marriage counselor had never been dragged in. He honestly didn’t think one would have made much of a difference anyway. Those things only worked in the movies.
He waited, almost eagerly, for the divorce to come through. It had seemed an eternity; he couldn’t have left the university in the middle of the semester, and he didn’t want to look as though he was running from the final consequence of his actions. She was allowed to retain the house; he lodged himself in the faculty quarters on the campus. Then he left and found a job somewhere new, far away from anything or anyone he’d ever known.
He was even moderately happy here, if a trifle lonely.
Never mind, the music was always around. Waiting to spring up and keep him company.
The violin’s pitch was low and sad. The strings quivered as he laced his bow delicately over them, coaxing out a quavering melody. The notes stole into the air and glided about him, running delicate limbs over his closed eyes. The memories were receding into darkness again, retreating, sheltering within the gloomy caves of no-visitors, and rearranging the cobwebs over themselves. The notes were the pacifiers and the lullaby singers; they tucked the blankets around them and turned their attention to the producer, stroking the care and worry from his broad face, replacing it with a benign and nearly transcendent expression of utter calm.
My mind is a whirling gulf of phantasy and flameThe smoldering ruins of a flame, for now. The inferno was past. It didn’t usually leave him feeling so blank though. Often he would feel tears trickling down his cheeks when those images had finished playing their little reel. He still didn’t understand why that was. Did he feel regret, perhaps?
Oh well, it didn’t matter. Not really. She had moved on. Last he had heard (and that had been from his sister), she was dating someone. An Andrew Barnaby, or something equally unexciting.
Good for her.
He’d tried it too, briefly. There had been someone named Ajita (was it Ajita? It may have been Lalita) his sister had attempted to ‘hook him up’ with.
‘Go ahead! Call her; I think you’ll really like her.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Don’t you trust me?’
The call had been made, more to placate his sister than for any other reason. Ajita (or Lalita, possibly) had sounded a little tired, a little apprehensive, but she’d at least agreed to meet him. His sister had orchestrated the whole event wonderfully, now that he thought about it. She’d managed to coax a fairly orthodox seeming Indian woman, in an Indian setting, to ‘go out’ with a man who was not her son, nephew, grandson, father, brother or husband.
They’d met at a coffee place, one of those numerous outlets of the grand chain ‘Indian Coffee House’. They talked, they laughed, but he was secretly glad to get away, and he thought she felt the same. There was too much pressure and expectancy (from themselves, from the outside) for anything to materialize.
A few coffees, dinners and emails later they had politely parted ways, both deciding that romance was not something that was going to blossom between them. She had been a charming woman- graceful, tactful, intelligent, and not too hard on the eyes. If only he hadn’t felt so damned drained and uninterested, things might have turned out differently. He might have changed her ideas and his. If only... but hypothetical situations were not good ones to examine. Especially when irretrievable.
What is writ is writ It wasn’t like he had nothing going for him. He was a well paid professor at a prestigious institution, he was helping to shape some of the brightest minds in the country (sometimes he had a hard time believing that), he was well respected and (in the case of a few pupils) even liked. In fact, he had a niggling suspicion that one student at least had more than just a healthy share of respect for him. He’d surprised some funny turns of expression in her big eyes upon occasion.
‘Um, sir, could I talk to you?’
He’d stopped, more than a trifle taken aback that this student would actually dare to assail him outside the classroom. Girls really were getting bolder these days.
‘Sure! Something wrong?’ he thought her eyes looked strangely red.
‘No, nothing specific. I’m just…bored.’
So he was her recourse during hours of boredom, was he? He shifted the water bottle from one hand to another as he thought; the feelings and words darting through his brain at lightning speed. Then again, it wasn’t like he wasn’t a trifle dull himself. Perhaps a change of company (from the empty space that usually surrounded him) would be good. Besides, she was smart enough to provide intelligent conversation.
‘Sure, let me just put this darned bottle inside. I’ll meet you here?’
She nodded, and the pact was sealed.
Conversation had followed conversation, and he was pretty sure his charm hadn’t waned over her. He wouldn’t mind admitting to egging her on with book-lends and encouraging speeches. After all, a little ego boost never harmed anyone. And it certainly seemed to be working wonders with her, academically. He was just doing his job.
After all, there was no way he could really allow her to touch him. She was young enough to be his daughter. She could have been the product of a stable marriage with Savita, she even looked a bit like her.
But that was, again, not a path he wanted to go down, not a hypothetical situation he wanted to explore.
A very long overture was now moving steadily towards the crescendo. Tilting his head back he let his hands work away at the instrument, almost blindly. Note after note soared into being, swirled around his hair and then leapt gracefully above, winging its way towards the open window. Note after note, carrying with it the thoughts, the heavy, clod-like thoughts that clung inside him. They vanished into the starlit night. He was in raptures, he was being charioted away, he was actually flying as the poets had, as Keats had, he had escaped…
A last hum, a final vibration. He was poised, listening, awaiting an echo that refused to arrive. He lowered the bow and opened his eyes, reluctantly aiding the dispersal of the magic.
The night was young. The books were open, their pages rifling in the light breeze that whispered through the window. The violin lay cold and still, now dead, in his hand.
He was still alone.
