The Music of Us (Still Life with Memories Book 3) Read online

  And once I am there, I will sit at my white piano and give a little nod to the bust of Beethoven, which is always smiling to me. Then I will lift my hands over the keys, in wait for that perfect moment, when music comes.

  I’ll be Dreaming You

  Chapter 2

  I must hide the difficulty, with which Natasha is now coping, from our son, until I fully understand the nature of it. My wife agrees with me, in her own way. Even in her confusion, she keeps telling me that there is no need to cause him unnecessary alarm.

  “Let him be,” she says, and I am relieved to see the look in her eyes. This morning, it seems a bit more lucid than it has been for days, which gives me some hope.

  “You’re right. No need to burden him with worries,” I say, trying to sound cheerful. “It’s just us now.”

  “Yes,” she says. “All we have to rely upon is each other.”

  For a minute I am unsure if it is us she is talking about. And just as I begin to trust that she is, Natasha gets up from the bed and steps in front of the mirror, turning her back to me.

  Her fingers brush across the decorative woodcarvings along the side of the frame. “All we have to rely upon,” she says again, facing herself, “is each other.”

  This is not the first time she notes her reflection as if it were another woman. It happened yesterday too, so I should not be all that surprised. To remind her of my presence I murmur, “I’ll take care of you, Natasha. You can rely upon me, always.”

  And when she says nothing I add, ”You look so lovely, dear.”

  “And so does she,” says Natasha, pointing at the glass. “So pretty, isn’t she?”

  In place of an answer I rise up and put my arms around her slender waist. Gathering her to my chest I catch, by accident, the tired gaze of the man on the other side of the mirror. There is no glint in his eyes. He has a deep pleat in his forehead, which contorts his expression into an odd kind of anger, into defeat.

  I don’t want to look at him, don’t want to see the wet trail running down his chin, dropping into her hair, finding its way around her ear, down the long lines of her neck. He wraps his hand around her throat, perhaps trying to help her wipe her neck dimple, where his tears stay awhile, glistening.

  In a flash she takes a step forward, flailing about as if to defend herself.

  “Come back to me, Natasha,” I whisper.

  Looking at me through the mirror she asks, “So? What about this woman? D’you like her?”

  I turn her around to face me, simply to prevent her from talking to herself again.

  “It’s you I care for,” I say, brushing my fingers through her unkempt hair. “Only you.”

  ❋

  My son, Ben, has been gone for a month now, staying in some youth hostel in Rome. If I call him, if I stumble into revealing how scared I am that his mother is losing her mind, he may listen. He may heed my fears, grudgingly, and come back here, not even knowing how to offer his support to me. Should I ask for it?

  The last thing I wish to do is lean on him for help. He is not strong enough, and whatever the problem may be with her, I can grit my teeth and handle it, somehow, all by myself. Besides, I pray for a spontaneous change in her. I mean, her memory may take a turn for the better just as quickly as it has deteriorated.

  Given this hope I decide that for now I will not schedule the head X-Ray that her doctor recommended for her. I figure she has been through so much—so many checkups, so many exams to rule out depression, vitamin B deficiency, and a long list of other possible ailments, so many types of medications. And in the end, all these attempts to cure her, or at least to understand what she was going through, have been in vain.

  Up to now, the results have failed to produce a conclusive diagnosis, and this new X-Ray will be no different, because from what I have read, Alzheimer’s disease can be determined only through autopsy, by linking clinical measures with an examination of brain tissue. So this new medical hypothesis is just that: a hypothesis. One that cannot be proven; one that cannot go away. An ever-present threat.

  Perhaps all she needs is rest. Time, I tell myself. I must give her time. Meanwhile I resolve to keep her condition secret from everyone, especially from my son. Let him enjoy his time away from home, his independence.

  Since his departure I called him only once, three weeks ago, and said little, except for blurting out the mundane, “How’s Rome?”

  “Great,” he said vaguely, adding no particulars.

  I could not help myself from asking. “So, what about your plans?”

  “What about them?”

  “D’you have any?”

  “For now I have none,” he admitted, and immediately changed the subject. “How’s mom?”

  “Fine.”

  “Is she?”

  “She is,” I lied, hoping that the sound of my voice would not betray the tensing of my muscles, the tightening of my jaws.

  “Oh good,” he said. “Really, really good.”

  There is only one thing more difficult than talking to Ben, and that is writing to him. Amazingly, having to conceal what his mother is going through makes every word—even on subjects unrelated to her—that much harder. I find myself oppressed by my own self-imposed discipline, the discipline of silence.

  And what can I tell him, really? That I keep digging into the past, mining its moments, trying to piece them together this way and that, dusting off each memory of Natasha, of how we were, the highs and lows of the music of us, to find out where the problem may have started?

  To him, that may seem like an exercise in futility. For me, it is a necessary process of discovery, one that is as tormenting as it is delightful. If the dissonance in our life would fade away, so will the harmony.

  Sometimes I go as far back as the moment we first met, when I was a soldier and she—a star, brilliant yet illusive. Natasha was a riddle to me then, and to this day, with all the changes she has gone through, she still is.

  I often wonder: can we ever understand, truly understand each other—soldier and musician, man and woman, one heart and another? Will we ever again dance together to the same beat? Is there a point where we may still touch?

  ❋

  Unsure how to overcome the distance between my son and me, I wonder at the apparent ease with which my father seemed to communicate with me, starting at the time when I was drafted to the Army, nearly thirty years ago.

  At the time, this ease surprised me, because back home, talking to the old man had become next to impossible. He had been growing hard of hearing and—even worse—refusing, in his own stubborn manner, to admit it.

  “Can’t you raise your voice?” he would ask. “Why d’you keep whispering like that? What’s the matter, you afraid to speak out?”

  And when I repeated my words, louder this time, he would respond by cupping his ear and blurting out at the top of his voice, “Eh?”

  But then, once the conversation was transferred to paper, it started flowing. I found myself waiting eagerly for his letters and care packages, but would never admit it to him, which is something that today, I regret.

  In 1940, the idea of the United States getting involved in WWII was unpopular, yet it became real overnight, when Congress passed the Selective Service Act. A year later, in October 1941, I became one of the lucky recruits. To me, it felt like an opportunity for adventure.

  I boarded a Long Island train, and when it pulled with a whistle into the large brick station at the induction center, I was eager to begin my three months basic training. It was intensive: march, drill, read manuals, tend to your rifle. The instructor was all muscle, and the first thing he said was, “I’m your mother, father, and uncle, and you’d better respect me. Anybody who doesn’t believe me, step out!”

  I didn’t believe him, but stayed in line. So did the others.

  “The Marine Corps,” he said, “is one of the most elite fighting forces in the world.”

  More or less in unison, we said, “Yes, sir.”
/>   “We serve on U.S. Navy ships, protect naval bases, guard U.S. embassies, and provide an ever-ready quick strike force. You know why?”

  Not one of us dared to ask, “Why, sir?”

  So he went on to say, “To protect U.S. interests anywhere in the world. That’s your mission. And as for mine, you know what that is?”

  “No, sir.”

  “To beat you into shape.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  After that, we had to get our uniform tailored. Your blouse had to be form fitting and your pants should not be hanging. I was issued my new uniform and equipment, which made me wish, “If my dad could see me now!”

  Meanwhile, my father rushed one care package after another to me. Looking now at the shoebox where I stored all of his letters, it’s easy to figure out what connected them, what connected us.

  Knowing my fascination with the stars, and especially with movie stars and with performers of both classical and popular music, he sent me a constant stream of news and magazine clippings. Among other things there was a tape of a song titled I’ll be Dreaming You. Being bashful at the time, I had no girlfriend at the barracks, nor did I have one left behind—but even so, the lyrics evoked a painful longing as if I had one, as if I recalled the sweetness of her lips:

  The magic of your kiss. your eyes

  And now like then, the bells do ring

  Was it the spell of sunrise

  Or the scent of spring?

  The fading tremor of the train

  Who knows if we shall meet again

  In another envelope, where the corners have frayed and the paper has browned in one crumpled spot and another, my father attached a carefully cut clipping from a Newsweek article, which announced, “Today, with Europe’s musicians reaching for guns instead of violins and trumpets, with opera houses and concert halls dark in many foreign cities, the United States is expected to experience an even bigger music boom.”

  I remember writing back to him, asking for a photograph of the famous Wagnerian soprano of the Metropolitan Opera company, Lotte Lehmann, whose voice had fascinated me before she disappeared, for quite a while, from the airwaves. Before Germany annexed Austria in 1938, she had emigrated to the United States—only to be declared an enemy alien here. In my eyes, this injustice made her seem like a damsel in distress, which added to my infatuation with her.

  Dad had little to tell me about Lotte, because apparently, the promised musical boom had to silence certain talents, talents that were not deemed American enough by those who orchestrate public opinion. Such, I learned, was the sacrifice demanded by patriotism in times of war.

  Instead of the photograph I requested, which must have been difficult to find at the time, my father sent me a clipping from LIFE magazine, dated August 1941, showing a movie starlet named Rita Hayworth, whose hair I imagined as red despite the fact she was black-and-white.

  Kneeling seductively on a soft bed, she wore a white, silky nightgown that hugged her slim waist and stretched over the roundness of her hips. The black lace trimming her low-cut top gave away the curves, the ample curves of her breasts. She must have taken a deep breath just before the shot, which made her cleavage more pronounced and her allure—ever more provocative.

  And her eyes, oh, the sultry look in her eyes! It was directed just a bit over me and off to the side, making me wish she would turn and once, only once, bring me into view. I pinned her above my bed, so Rita may visit me in my dreams, and promptly forgot all about Lotte Lehmann.

  Then came the day I unpinned Rita Hayworth and replaced her in my thoughts with another redhead, even though I had no photograph of her to hold close to my heart.

  It all started with a misdirected shot.

  ❋

  The M1 Granad, with which our company was practicing shooting skills, is a semi-automatic, shoulder-fired rifle loaded by inserting a metal clip that contains eight rounds into the receiver. Once the eighth round has been shot, the empty clip automatically ejects with a notable noise, a ping that would cost the lives of many soldiers, as it would provide the enemy with a clue as to their whereabouts, especially in close-combat fighting.

  That morning in training camp it was not the sound of loading, nor was it that distinct ping that alerted me to danger, but the whisper of blades of grass tearing asunder, falling with a whoosh left and right as the bullet came flying straight at me. Like a thunderbolt, it hit my shoulder. There is nothing friendly about so-called friendly fire. Searing pain started spreading to my arm, my entire quivering body. I staggered into a spin and fell onto the soft soil of the earth.

  My mind drifted in and out of consciousness. At some point I felt a stretcher bouncing under me, and realized I was being carried somewhere, perhaps to the army hospital. I heard someone ask, “Is he still breathing?”

  Wincing in pain I tried to answer, but my tongue would not move.

  I recall hands, many hands touching me, grasping my arms and legs, lifting my body onto some hard surface. Then they started to apply direct pressure and elevate my limbs, perhaps to control the bleeding.

  I passed out. I came to.

  With the bullet isolated from the flesh and pulled out, splints and dressings were applied to immobilize the injured area, which was then wrapped with a dressing. I glanced at my left side. It was beginning to look like a mound of white gauze.

  I got a glimpse of the sterile table next to me. It was littered with empty syringes, clamps, and a heap of cotton swabs, most of which were drenched in blood. And there, in their shadow, lay surgical Mosquito forceps. Normally they would be used for halting flow in small blood vessels, but right now they were holding something between their delicate, serrated tips. A bullet.

  I passed out. I came to.

  ❋

  A couple of weeks later, one of my friends, who planned to apply to the Juilliard school upon completing his military service, came to my bedside to say goodbye, as he would be transferred the next day to a naval base in Pearl Harbor, Honolulu. At hearing this I cursed myself for my misfortune. The injury robbed me of the opportunity to travel to an exotic place, to see the world. How could I prove myself, now?

  “Get up,” said Aaron. “Enough moping about. Tonight, we’re going to celebrate!”

  “Why?” I asked, sulking. “What is there for me to celebrate?”

  He winked. “Jane Russell is coming in, to entertain the troops.”

  “Really?”

  “Nope,” he said. “And Betty Grable—”

  “Yes? What about her?”

  “She’s not coming either.”

  “I get it. Next you’ll be telling me about Rita Hayworth. She’s staying out there in Hollywood, I bet.”

  “Yes, but,” he said, “we do have a performance at the camp tonight—showgirls, musicians, a band, and what not! Quick, get up, get dressed! We’re going to go see it!”

  “Haven’t you noticed? I’m injured,” I said, pointing at the dressing that bulged over my shoulder. “This thing is huge, and so is the pain!”

  “Enough,” he said. “No more moping about.”

  “I won’t be able to move my arm, let alone put it into the sleeve of my shirt.”

  “Your legs still work, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts,” he said. “Stand up!”

  I leaned on him as he helped me into my russet-brown leather-soled service shoes. Having tied my laces Aaron took off his olive drab cotton field jacket and wrapped it loosely over my shoulders. He tried to straighten the notched lapel collar, but the mound of gauze towering over my right side forced it into an odd shape.

  “Oh well,” he said, and gave a final pat over the buttoned shoulder loops.

  I tried not to cry, “Ouch!”

  “Relax,” he said. “Lopsided is a good look for you. Seems muscular on one side, vulnerable on the other.”

  “Really?” said I, wishing for a moment that my father could see me now. After all, I needed someone to be proud of me—o
r, failing that, have pity on me in my weakened state.

  “Really,” said Aaron, in his most reassuring tone. “The girls at the show, they’ll fall head over heals in love with you, especially that redhead kid.”

  “What redhead?”

  In place of answering, he asked, “You like classical music, don’t you?”

  Which forced me to repeat, “What redhead?”

  “Relax,” he said. “Like I said, she’s just a kid. But from what I hear, no one can match the way she plays the piano.”

  Moments later, before the nurse would come on her rounds to check my vital signs, I hobbled out of the hospital gate with my friend. The air was cold and it started forming into slaps, sharp slaps of wind. From afar, the outline of the auditorium, where the show was about to begin, seemed to hunch its shoulders under the weight of the clouds. The closer it came into view, the giddier I grew with excitement.

  As a child of the depression era I could never afford going to a live show. With a meager allowance, frivolities were deemed too expensive, so the only glimpse I got of glamor up to now was from afar. How much more brilliant it would be when for the first time in my life I would witness the spotlights, feel the beat, and let my heart open to the passion of onstage performers!

  I was especially amazed that a classical pianist would be selected for a show at a military center. Conductors, percussionists, and brass players had a decent shot at playing in a military band—but singers, string players, and pianists found themselves confronted, lately, with the question of how their talents might be used to benefit the Military. I figured that this kid must have been gifted at her craft, or else volunteered to take part in the show for free.

  I had no idea what played in Aaron’s mind when suddenly he asked, “You know how to tell that a girl is a virgin?”

  Unsure what to say I shrugged, which was a mistake, because it made me feel my wound more sharply than before.