touching the cold
bronze of the
una corda
pedal, spittle drooling down my cheek. The evening
sun was coming through the two-paned window, shafts of it warming the wood, and
warming my mother’s orange kaftan and warming the pale brown carpet where I lay my
head. The soft pedal remained cold, unmoving. I don’t know how long I lay there
until I was picked up and brought to bed. It seemed like infinity, but then again
this happened long ago, before I learned to measure time, each begrudging second,
hour, and year of it.
She never quite got it right. Each rendition was a
diamond with a different flaw. I didn’t mind. Like an idiot savant, I craved
routine. The routine of sun falling on my mother and the Gymnopédie, the routine of
drizzle soaking the unmown grass in our front garden and the Gymnopédie, the dying
elm shedding its last leaves as the Dutch beetle gnawed away at it from the
inside—and the Gymnopédie—
“I’ll get it,” my mother would call out, “I will,
you’ll see.” Then she would fling her head back and laugh, and the light would catch
the fine hairs on her neck, her neck that was able to arch so elegantly and make my
father catch his breath. Dearbhla says I don’t remember properly, after all I was
very young and children idealise things a lot, don’t they? But then again, rare
things are easy to recall by virtue of their rareness—and happy memories of my
childhood are rare indeed.
I don’t know why Dearbhla still visits me,
week in, week out. I should be the last person she wants to see. She is a joy to
look at through the Perspex panel: those tapering, gloved fingers are still
beautiful, their clasp of the thin, unlit cigarette irreproachably filmic. They will
never touch a piano again. But even in late middle age she retains the proud cheeks
and prominent eyes that captivated her audience as much as the pieces she performed
for them. The last time she came, she brought a letter in a vellum envelope. Typed,
of course; she can hardly write by hand now. I haven’t read it yet. I want to hold
off as long as possible to make the anticipation all the keener. Prison has taught
me discipline, the ability to ration pleasure. She arrives again tomorrow: I will
have read it by then.
She has forgiven me much, Dearbhla, or perhaps she
visits me out of need: I am the only surviving witness of the great tragedy of her
life. As long as she blames me, she is safe. She can duck responsibility for her one
failure.
Perhaps she is correct. Perhaps it is my fault.
When
Dearbhla first came to the house, the laughter was different. It was laughter that
sounded as if it were trapped in a bad sitcom and never let out. It banged crossly
against the china my mother brought out for her visitor and rat-tatted irritably
against the walls.
Dearbhla sat on the edge of one of our armchairs, her eyes
eager, hands holding her cup in a way that spoke pure elegance. My mother, her face
white and strained, her hair still pulled back in the grubby ribbon, had lost her
look of girlishness. Her belly rounded out a little and her neck no longer arched
the way it used to. When my father propelled me forward to Dearbhla and boomed at me
to say hello, I was crushed in silk and perfume and Dearbhla’s slightly harsh voice
breathed affectionately in my ear, “Well,
there’s
the darling.”
Her
presence unsettled me. It was as if something alien, wondrous, and scary had come
into our little cottage, enveloping it with an aura I had never experienced before.
When I had lain under my mother’s feet back then, I had felt such security, but in
Dearbhla’s arms I sensed danger and excitement. Her embrace was too cloying and yet
delightfully warm, her fingers wrapped around me and dug in like claws. I looked
over to my mother’s fingers, which were lacing and unlacing each other in tension. I
saw how short and spatulate they
bronze of the
una corda
pedal, spittle drooling down my cheek. The evening
sun was coming through the two-paned window, shafts of it warming the wood, and
warming my mother’s orange kaftan and warming the pale brown carpet where I lay my
head. The soft pedal remained cold, unmoving. I don’t know how long I lay there
until I was picked up and brought to bed. It seemed like infinity, but then again
this happened long ago, before I learned to measure time, each begrudging second,
hour, and year of it.
She never quite got it right. Each rendition was a
diamond with a different flaw. I didn’t mind. Like an idiot savant, I craved
routine. The routine of sun falling on my mother and the Gymnopédie, the routine of
drizzle soaking the unmown grass in our front garden and the Gymnopédie, the dying
elm shedding its last leaves as the Dutch beetle gnawed away at it from the
inside—and the Gymnopédie—
“I’ll get it,” my mother would call out, “I will,
you’ll see.” Then she would fling her head back and laugh, and the light would catch
the fine hairs on her neck, her neck that was able to arch so elegantly and make my
father catch his breath. Dearbhla says I don’t remember properly, after all I was
very young and children idealise things a lot, don’t they? But then again, rare
things are easy to recall by virtue of their rareness—and happy memories of my
childhood are rare indeed.
I don’t know why Dearbhla still visits me,
week in, week out. I should be the last person she wants to see. She is a joy to
look at through the Perspex panel: those tapering, gloved fingers are still
beautiful, their clasp of the thin, unlit cigarette irreproachably filmic. They will
never touch a piano again. But even in late middle age she retains the proud cheeks
and prominent eyes that captivated her audience as much as the pieces she performed
for them. The last time she came, she brought a letter in a vellum envelope. Typed,
of course; she can hardly write by hand now. I haven’t read it yet. I want to hold
off as long as possible to make the anticipation all the keener. Prison has taught
me discipline, the ability to ration pleasure. She arrives again tomorrow: I will
have read it by then.
She has forgiven me much, Dearbhla, or perhaps she
visits me out of need: I am the only surviving witness of the great tragedy of her
life. As long as she blames me, she is safe. She can duck responsibility for her one
failure.
Perhaps she is correct. Perhaps it is my fault.
When
Dearbhla first came to the house, the laughter was different. It was laughter that
sounded as if it were trapped in a bad sitcom and never let out. It banged crossly
against the china my mother brought out for her visitor and rat-tatted irritably
against the walls.
Dearbhla sat on the edge of one of our armchairs, her eyes
eager, hands holding her cup in a way that spoke pure elegance. My mother, her face
white and strained, her hair still pulled back in the grubby ribbon, had lost her
look of girlishness. Her belly rounded out a little and her neck no longer arched
the way it used to. When my father propelled me forward to Dearbhla and boomed at me
to say hello, I was crushed in silk and perfume and Dearbhla’s slightly harsh voice
breathed affectionately in my ear, “Well,
there’s
the darling.”
Her
presence unsettled me. It was as if something alien, wondrous, and scary had come
into our little cottage, enveloping it with an aura I had never experienced before.
When I had lain under my mother’s feet back then, I had felt such security, but in
Dearbhla’s arms I sensed danger and excitement. Her embrace was too cloying and yet
delightfully warm, her fingers wrapped around me and dug in like claws. I looked
over to my mother’s fingers, which were lacing and unlacing each other in tension. I
saw how short and spatulate they
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