The dark makes me even more glad that Ruen is here.
22
THE COMPOSER
ANYA
Yesterday I went to the adult psych unit to talk to Cindy about Alex’s piece of music. She was reluctant to see me. I overheard her conversation with the nurse through Cindy’s open door.
There’s a lady here to see you, Cindy. Dr. Anya …
A sigh. Tell her I’m not well.
… she says it’s about your little boy. Alex?
Why does she keep coming here?
After a few moments the nurse emerged from Cindy’s room. She told me I could go inside.
Cindy was seated beside the window, glancing out at the rain. Her hair was unwashed, her nails bitten to stumps. I waited at the threshold of the door, waiting for her permission to enter.
“Hello, Cindy,” I said warmly. “May I come in?”
“Please yourself,” she muttered.
I lifted a chair by the bed and set it down close to her, though not too close. “I know you have an art session,” I said. I started to take off my raincoat, then thought better of it. “I won’t keep you long.”
She flicked her eyes at me. “I’m not going to no stupid art session.”
I paused. “No?”
She bit her nails in response and locked her gaze on the window, drawing one bony knee up to her chest. “So what you here for?”
I kept my voice light. “I wanted to ask if Alex ever had piano lessons.”
“That’s why you’re here?”
I nodded.
She sighed again. “Not to my knowledge. Couldn’t afford stuff like that, ya know?”
“You have a piano at home, don’t you? Do either of you play it?”
“No. It was a family heirloom. Hadn’t played a note in years.”
“What about at school? Does Alex take music classes?”
“He’s much more into building models of castles, stuff like that. Boy stuff.”
“So he couldn’t have written this, then?” Tentatively, I held out the music. Cindy took it from me and glanced at it.
“No,” she said. “He’s never written music.” She tapped the writing at the top of the page with her finger. “That looks like his writing, though. Can I have a closer look?”
“Take your time,” I said. She pulled the page closer to the gray light from the window and leaned in.
“Actually I’d say this is Alex’s writing.” She looked up at me. “Imagine that! My kid, a composer. Not that I’m surprised.”
“Why doesn’t it surprise you?”
She shrugged and changed legs, drawing the left knee up to her chin. “Alex has always done things beyond his age. Stuff I never taught him, he just picked up somehow. You’d never think he was my son.”
I nodded. “Alex says someone else wrote this.”
“No, it’s definitely his writing …”
“I know. Alex said he wrote the music down, but someone else composed the music and told him to write it.”
She looked puzzled, then gave a shrug. “Well, if that’s what Alex says, I’d believe him.”
“Even if Alex says that person was a demon?”
“What’s wrong with him copying some music out? Just because he didn’t actually compose it doesn’t mean he isn’t clever …”
“I didn’t say that …”
She thrust the music back at me, her face angry and scared. “Here,” she said. “Stop asking about our damn piano, okay? It’s none of your business.”
I took the music and put it back into my briefcase. She watched me intently, her hands still restless.
“They don’t let you smoke in here, do they?” I asked.
Her face softened. “No, they don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I’d give you a kidney for a cigarette right now.”
I smiled and pushed at the diversion of her frustration from me to they. “If I had one, you’d be welcome to it.”
“Thanks,” she said, smiling weakly. Whatever emotion had been triggered by my questions was visibly lessening its grip. I bent to retrieve my briefcase.
“Still, you’ll be out of here soon enough.”
She glanced at me. Something in her gaze made me stop mid-rise. “Won’t you?”
She was back to chewing her nails. I sat back down in my chair, sensing she had something left to say. After a few moments, she leaned forward, her eyes furtive.
“You have kids, don’t you?” she said.
“What makes you ask?”
She scratched her head. “Trudy doesn’t have any kids, so I don’t think she understands. But you know what I mean, don’t you?”
“About what?”
She pulled her chair closer. “That sometimes it feels like they’re the parent and you’re the child. You know? Like they have more answers than we do.”
“You mean Alex seems older than his years?”
“He’s always been so independent, you know? Like he didn’t even need me.” At last, her hands settled on her stomach, at rest. She turned her head toward the window, glancing up at the clouds. “I never wanted to be a mother. Not a nice thing to say, is it? Then when Alex was born I fell totally in love with him. I was his number one fan. He’s so amazing I can hardly believe he came out of me.”
I waited carefully as the weight of her words settled into the silence. It was beginning to rain when I spoke. “Cindy, I think you and Alex should take a little vacation when you get out of here.”
She looked puzzled for a moment. “When I get out of here?”
I nodded. “It doesn’t need to be anywhere expensive. But I think it would be a good idea for the two of you to have some fun together. Have you ever had a day at the beach together?”
She shook her head, then laughed. “How crazy is that? Three miles from the beach and we’ve never been. Then again, it’s never sunny, is it …?”
“Even if it’s snowing,” I replied lightly, returning her grin. “When you get out of here I think you should make spending time together a priority.”
She lowered her gaze and her hands started to flutter again. “Yeah. When I get out of here.”
This morning I woke, having finally fallen asleep at dawn on the floor of my bedroom, with the sound of Alex’s music in my head. I had to play it. I had to hear Poppy in the notes, to feel her close again. No, not just to feel close—to find answers. The echo of her composition in Alex’s piece had rung out a series of echoes that filled my small flat.
When Poppy was born, she didn’t breathe for two minutes. The doctors were frantic, flapping at the bottom of my legs with a suction machine, counting—one, two, three, come on, sweetheart—until finally a midwife plucked her up by the ankles, held her upside down, and gave her ass a firm spank. She screamed, and I felt as if a flood of relief had poured across me.
Now the trauma of that moment had a new echo—was that what caused it? Had the lack of oxygen at her birth somehow caused something in her brain to go wrong? Did schizophrenia lurk in my gene pool, striking my mother, then skipping over me to reach Poppy? Was it something I had done?
And what else could I have done to save her?
I checked my phone. Missed calls from Fi and Michael, and a number I didn’t recognize. I tried calling it back, but got a busy signal. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, I called Melinda at the university School of Music.
“Hey!” she said when she heard my voice. “The maestro! How’re you doing?”
I asked if it would be all right if I used one of the university’s practice rooms for an hour or so.
“Yes, yes, sure,” she gushed. “Absolutely. No prob. Come on over and I’ll get you booked in. We’ve a Steinway in the main practice room, how’d that be?”
“That’s perfect,” I replied and I hung up. My fingers were already restless. I was aching to play that music. I was searching for an answer, a missing piece of the puzzle, and I didn’t even know the question.
I arrived at Melinda’s offi
ce clutching a Coke and a chocolate muffin the size of a ball of Aran wool. I had decided that my period was due, that my hormones were raging, hence the reason I was slightly off kilter. That, and another temporary fling with insomnia. Melinda made drooling motions at the sight of the muffin, then took me to the practice room.
It was empty, except for a piano stool and a shiny black Steinway grand. At the sight of the NO FOOD OR DRINK sign, I tossed my Coke and muffin into the garbage pail.
Melinda frowned. “I wouldn’t have said anything,” she said, but I shook my head. I had no appetite, I told her. I just wanted to play.
When she shut the door behind me I began with a few arpeggios to warm up. In the last four years I had touched the keys no more than a dozen times. What intrigued me was that despite such neglect my hands retained the ghostly fingerings of the pieces I used to play over and over again. I could no longer remember the key of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto, nor could I see in my mind’s eye the notes for Ravel’s “Pavane pour une Infante Défunte,” but my fingers found their way to the right chords without hesitation. I felt like a puppet in reverse, my whole body tugged and jerked by the strings of the instrument.
Finally, I unfolded Alex’s piece of music from my pocket. Though the melody echoed in my brain, my fingers were unfamiliar with it. I scanned the piece again, remembering Poppy’s head bent over our piano.
I love you, Mummy.
I creased back the page until it leaned against the music stand, then slid my fingers on top of the notes. I began to play, an emphasis on the B of the right hand, a waltz in the left. I hadn’t made it past the first bar when I stopped, lifting my fingers an inch off the keys. My heart was clanging in my chest at the echo of the music in the cold empty room.
This time, the memory stirred by those opening notes filled not only my head but my veins. My skin was alive with the softness of her skin when I’d held her the first time, cheek-to-chest, her whole head fitting neatly in my palm. The sensation of it was so real that it shocked me. But it was tantalizing, too. I laid my hands back on the keys and continued to play. This time, I felt the L-shape of her shoulder blades pressed into my palms as I held her after a fall from her bike. It was as if the music was a conduit between me and that moment.
I played on.
Rising up in my fingers, through my arms, and into my whole body was the warmth of her, molded against me in my bed after a nightmare, her feet tangled with mine, her perfumed hair against my chin.
By the time I had finished the first section of the piece, my heart was running and yelling through the streets of my body.
I was a few bars from the end when there was a sharp knock on the door. I stopped. “Come in,” I called.
Very slowly, the door opened.
I expected it to be Melinda, or a music student who had overlooked my name written on the booking sheet pasted on the door. Instead, it was a small and very old man, hunched, dressed in a very shabby tweed suit with a yellowing shirt and muddy brown tie. I started to explain that I had permission to use this room until the hour was up, but then I stopped, realizing that something about him was intensely familiar. I struggled to place him. A deeply creased, gray face, his mouth jutting forward slightly. Bald, except for a thick, snow-white bunch of hair. He shuffled over the threshold.
“Can I help you?” I asked politely.
He stopped, straightened up slightly, and smiled. I jerked back. Even for a man of his years, he was distinctly repugnant.
“Your right hand is a little too staccato.” His accent was impossible to place. “Didn’t you heed the phrase marks?”
I turned to the piece of music in front of me. “Do you mean this?” I asked.
“I am the composer of the music you are playing.” He bowed deeply. “I wished to introduce myself.”
Stunned, I watched him as he turned slowly and closed the door behind him.
“You wrote this?” I said, when I could manage to speak.
“But of course I did,” he replied, stepping forward. “Do you like it?”
I pushed back the piano stool and stood, bewildered.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
He was circling the piano now, arms folded behind his back, stopping occasionally to peer inside the instrument. I bent instinctively to pick up my briefcase. When I looked up he was inches from me, suddenly tall enough to meet my eyes. Only, his eyes had no irises. They were solid, cataractous, like gray marbles. I gasped and took a step backward.
“Anya,” he said, watching me inch away. “Anya.”
I could feel my heart pounding, my hands trembling. I glanced at the door.
“Would you like this piano?” he asked, grinning at me. “Or one like it?”
He was pacing around the piano once more, tracing the black wing with his twisted fingers. I stood perfectly still, my body cold, my mind struggling to work out what was happening.
“You said you wrote this piece?” I said, curiosity rising up in me despite the feeling of threat he had brought into the room.
“Yes. Aren’t you going to play some more? I’d love to hear you play it.”
“Someone else I know said he wrote it,” I said. The man peered at the sheet of music and grinned.
“Do you know Alex?” I asked, watching him carefully as I edged toward the door.
He glanced up at the door. I swore I heard it lock.
“Just give me a moment of your time,” he said serenely, sitting down in front of the piano. “I promise you won’t regret it.”
I could feel sweat prickling my back and under my arms, and I was telling myself to stay calm, to stop freaking out. He was at least eighty years old and if I could not defend myself against a man his age, then twenty years of circuit training had been a waste of time. But I felt myself being stripped, seduced somehow, and the light in the square little room seemed to have dimmed. Shadows were closing in on the corners, thickening.
I remembered my mobile phone. My fingers trembling, I pulled it from my pocket and began to dial. A second later, the screen went black. The battery had died.
“Alex says you’re a demon,” I said. The words sounded ridiculous in the heavy air. “Not a nice thing to call a family friend, is it? Why would he think you’re a demon?”
He smiled.
“You go to university to become a demon?” I said, inching for the door.
In a flash, he was behind me, pressing against the door, his face twisted and menacing. I let out a sob. Something was very, very wrong. For a moment I believed I was having a psychotic meltdown, my hands shaking quite violently now, the floor beneath my feet turning to water.
“Are you all right?” I heard him say.
I felt myself curl up into a ball on the floor, toppled by a pain in my heart I’d felt only once before. This is what I’d felt the moment I saw Poppy at the window, and I lunged forward, but once again I am a half second too late, my hands empty, the momentum of my reach continuing in everything I do now—her absence a space of reaching.
And then, the pain stopped.
It felt as though someone had filled my body with sunlight. My eyes were still tightly shut, but the darkness retreated. I felt myself lift as if someone or something had scooped me up, then I felt weightless.
In my mind’s eye, I no longer saw Poppy at the moment of her death. I saw her anxious, beautiful face right in front of me, her hands on my shoulders, shaking me. It’s okay, Mum. I’m here. I’m right here. I wanted to open my eyes but didn’t, for fear she would fade if I did so. Instead, I saw my own arms reach, cupping her face.
She turned her head slightly to kiss my hand.
“Mum, you haven’t lost me. It’s all really okay, you know?”
I pulled her to my chest in a tight embrace, my chest heaving with both relief and disbelief. Eventually she leaned back and looked at me. She seemed older, a teenager, her chestnut hair so long it draped around her face in Botticelli curls, her brown eyes calm and utterly without fe
ar. Without darkness.
Go back, now, she said. I love you.
When I opened my eyes, Melinda was standing over me, slapping my face and shouting my name. I felt myself take an enormous, greedy breath, as if I’d just surfaced from the depths of the ocean. My legs and hands were numb and my brain fizzed like a bad hangover. I caught a strong whiff of Melinda’s heavy patchouli perfume and landed back on earth with a sharp thud. The look on her face melted from horror to sheer relief when I struggled upright.
“Oh man—sweetie, I thought you were dead!” she cried.
I shook my head to confirm that, despite how I may have looked, I was pretty much alive. My body was tingling now, as if I’d just emerged from a warm bath or a day in the sun. “I saw her,” I told Melinda. “I saw Poppy.”
She threw me an odd look. I reached a trembling hand to my mouth.
“It’s freezing in here!” she exclaimed. “Did you open a window or something?”
I shook my head, though the concern in her voice made me smile. It reassured me that I was safe. She laughed nervously.
“You’ll never guess what,” she said as I rose to my feet, leaning on the edge of the piano for balance.
“What?”
She folded her arms and grinned widely. “That music you showed me. It’s one hundred percent genuine.”
I nodded in acknowledgment, glancing distractedly around the room.
“That kid is a genius,” she continued. “A total child prodigy!”
I looked at the piano, then searched under it, around the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Melinda said, frowning.
“It’s gone,” I told her. “The music has gone.”
23
THE THINGS THAT ARE REAL
ALEX
Dear Diary,
What did Pope Julius II say to Michelangelo? “Sure, come on down, son, we’ll paper it.”
I woke up really early today because today was a Saturday and I was going to see Mum at ten o’clock. It felt like Christmas morning. I set my alarm for seven so that I’d have time to get a shower before the others woke up and brush my teeth and clean out my ears and cut my nails. I was also afraid in case the laundry people forgot to wash my clothes so I made sure I’d have extra time to wash and dry them myself, but it was okay because when I checked my closet my shirt and trousers and waistcoat were all there, really clean and nicely ironed.
Boy Who Could See Demons Page 22