ruffled his hair as he stared up. The sky was incredibly beautiful. He wanted to sing to it.
1980
The piano keys were bone-smooth and cold under his fingers. He loved the starkness of them, black on white against the deeper black lacquer of the piano. The room was stark too, purposely so. The piano and its bench were the only objects in the room. The floor was of dark polished wood with a honey-golden undertone that made it seem to glow.
He sat with his back to the long window which nearly filled the rear wall of the room. His house sat on a cliff overlooking the sea. When he stood at the window, he could look down at waves crashing and disintegrating on jagged rocks. But he sat on the far side of the room. If he had turned to face the window, he would have seen only a long expanse of gray-blue sky broken by the three heavy crossbars of the window.
It might have been an early morning sky or an early evening sky or a sky about to storm; he neither knew nor cared. He slept whenever he was tired and spent most of his waking hours at the piano. His face, bent over the keys, was serene and nearly expressionless. At thirty, he was almost as boyish as he had been at ten: his body was slim and compact, his unlined pale face overhung by a soft mop of dark hair, eyes like limpid black pools, a serious, sad mouth.
He let his hands wander across the piano keys. The notes rose, clustered, broke away from each other and drifted back down to melt into the golden floor. As they touched his ears, he smiled faintly. It had taken him so long to realize he could make this kind of music.
1960
His neck wasn’t broken. Having it wrenched so sharply had pulled a muscle, and while he was in the hospital he had to lie flat on his back, as nearly motionless as possible, with a thick metal-and-foam collar holding his neck immobile. He learned the position of every crack and speck on the ceiling. At times the boredom was almost tangible.
He learned not to cry because the tears would trickle down the sides of his head and make the hair behind his ears unpleasantly damp; he couldn’t lift his hands high enough to wipe the tears away.
After the first two days he discovered that singing relieved his boredom. Even better, it made him forget his pain and his experience in the alley.
One night a nurse heard him. He stopped when she came into the room, but she asked him to go on, and after a bit of coaxing he sang her a song. He had composed the words and the tune himself, while lying in the hospital bed. He could see trees and a piece of sky through his window, and he longed to be outside. He had rhymed “trees” with “breeze.” It was the work of a ten-year-old, although the poetry showed promise.
What mattered, though, was his voice. His neck was strained and padded; by all rights his voice should have sounded stifled, weak. Instead, it was glorious. He sang high and hoarse and sweet, tile voice of a child, but hidden in his song were hints of darkness, intimations of fear and pain.
As the nurse held his hand and listened to him, tears started in her eyes. She had remembered a night nearly forty years ago, when her parents had gone on a shopping trip to the city and forgotten to leave the front door unlocked for her. They were three miles away from their nearest neighbors, and she had huddled in a corner of the front porch, tiny and sick with terror, until the familiar car had finally turned into the driveway. Nothing in the boy’s pretty little song had suggested this, yet she recalled it so vividly that her stomach twisted with childish dread.
The memory hurt her, but the boy’s voice was so beautiful that she called the other nurses in to hear him sing. They held their breaths until he had finished. One of them, a girl barely twenty-one, ran out of the room sobbing. She explained later that she didn’t know what had come over her; she supposed she just felt sorry for the poor child, lying there so pale and thin.
The boy listened
1980
The piano keys were bone-smooth and cold under his fingers. He loved the starkness of them, black on white against the deeper black lacquer of the piano. The room was stark too, purposely so. The piano and its bench were the only objects in the room. The floor was of dark polished wood with a honey-golden undertone that made it seem to glow.
He sat with his back to the long window which nearly filled the rear wall of the room. His house sat on a cliff overlooking the sea. When he stood at the window, he could look down at waves crashing and disintegrating on jagged rocks. But he sat on the far side of the room. If he had turned to face the window, he would have seen only a long expanse of gray-blue sky broken by the three heavy crossbars of the window.
It might have been an early morning sky or an early evening sky or a sky about to storm; he neither knew nor cared. He slept whenever he was tired and spent most of his waking hours at the piano. His face, bent over the keys, was serene and nearly expressionless. At thirty, he was almost as boyish as he had been at ten: his body was slim and compact, his unlined pale face overhung by a soft mop of dark hair, eyes like limpid black pools, a serious, sad mouth.
He let his hands wander across the piano keys. The notes rose, clustered, broke away from each other and drifted back down to melt into the golden floor. As they touched his ears, he smiled faintly. It had taken him so long to realize he could make this kind of music.
1960
His neck wasn’t broken. Having it wrenched so sharply had pulled a muscle, and while he was in the hospital he had to lie flat on his back, as nearly motionless as possible, with a thick metal-and-foam collar holding his neck immobile. He learned the position of every crack and speck on the ceiling. At times the boredom was almost tangible.
He learned not to cry because the tears would trickle down the sides of his head and make the hair behind his ears unpleasantly damp; he couldn’t lift his hands high enough to wipe the tears away.
After the first two days he discovered that singing relieved his boredom. Even better, it made him forget his pain and his experience in the alley.
One night a nurse heard him. He stopped when she came into the room, but she asked him to go on, and after a bit of coaxing he sang her a song. He had composed the words and the tune himself, while lying in the hospital bed. He could see trees and a piece of sky through his window, and he longed to be outside. He had rhymed “trees” with “breeze.” It was the work of a ten-year-old, although the poetry showed promise.
What mattered, though, was his voice. His neck was strained and padded; by all rights his voice should have sounded stifled, weak. Instead, it was glorious. He sang high and hoarse and sweet, tile voice of a child, but hidden in his song were hints of darkness, intimations of fear and pain.
As the nurse held his hand and listened to him, tears started in her eyes. She had remembered a night nearly forty years ago, when her parents had gone on a shopping trip to the city and forgotten to leave the front door unlocked for her. They were three miles away from their nearest neighbors, and she had huddled in a corner of the front porch, tiny and sick with terror, until the familiar car had finally turned into the driveway. Nothing in the boy’s pretty little song had suggested this, yet she recalled it so vividly that her stomach twisted with childish dread.
The memory hurt her, but the boy’s voice was so beautiful that she called the other nurses in to hear him sing. They held their breaths until he had finished. One of them, a girl barely twenty-one, ran out of the room sobbing. She explained later that she didn’t know what had come over her; she supposed she just felt sorry for the poor child, lying there so pale and thin.
The boy listened
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