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

  Thinking the address must be fake I neglected to blot it out. Instead I pulled out the letter and unfolded it, noting how unusually delicate it felt between my fingers. The first three words on it astounded me. They were, Forgive me, Lenny.

  Up to this point I had been convinced that what lay before me was nothing but a farce and wondered how to discredit it, or failing that, how to play along with whoever contrived it, so as to regain control of this game and avoid making a fool of myself—but now I hesitated. After all, no one in his right mind could compose such a thing to pretend that it was a celebrity writing to an admiring nobody, a soldier. It was crazy, too crazy to be fiction. Therefore, this letter was genuine. Without a doubt, it was from Natasha.

  How did she come to know my name? And why on earth was she asking my forgiveness?

  Forgive me, Lenny, for not answering your letter right away.

  At this I heard myself cry, What? I had written to Natasha? Why—when had I ever done such a thing? Not that it was such a bad idea, mind you! I wished I had thought of it in the first place, but apparently someone else had, and doing so he hadn’t used his name, but mine.

  Not knowing what he might have conveyed to her about me I had to gather every clue I could from what she wrote next:

  I thought of explaining that mama hid your letter at the bottom of the stack of fan mail, assuming I would never get down to it, and that I found it only a few days ago, upon my return from the Catskills, where I had been on a long tour. While true, these are not the real reasons for the delay.

  I’m not going to tell you the real reason because... Well, because I don’t quite understand it myself. Besides, nowadays soldiers are being deployed to new places, so you may not even be in Camp Upton to receive this, and what I write here may never be read. I think I almost prefer it this way.

  At reading this I asked myself, Who in Camp Upton could have pretended to be me, and at once the answer presented itself. Aaron! No one else but him knew of my infatuation with this girl. No one else would contact her on my behalf, which he did on the eve of being transferred to Pearl harbor.

  In a blink I felt him step forth from a place far beyond, awakening in me, winking as if to ask what’s a little joke between friends, and not to be angry with him because really, what’s the worse that could happen, and he was simply tempted to use my name, it was for my own good, but I shouldn’t ask him anything about it, because he couldn’t explain things, not yet. Not ever.

  In a strange way, the first three words she said could have been his. I heard his voice as a faint echo behind hers.

  Forgive me, Lenny.

  Then he faded, and she went on to say,

  I was truly moved by what you wrote. It must have touched a nerve, yet I couldn’t bring myself to reply, at least not immediately, and not in my safe, bland manner, I mean, the manner in which I thank all my other fans. Instead I had to gather my thoughts before putting pen to paper.

  Do I remember you? Yes, I do.

  I must admit: that night, when I first laid eyes on you, I could barely stop myself from giggling. I laughed not because you were handsome, and not because you seemed, at first glance, to be so hilariously funny, hopping all over the stage like a clown, marching behind me and in front of me and around me, but because you confused me. I found the closeness a bit sudden.

  I suppose that to a stranger I may look like a regular teenager, someone who chats with her girlfriends and giggles a lot. I do, but don’t let that mislead you. I feel utterly apart from them. My work is done in solitude—practicing my piece for hours on end, till I know it by heart, forward and backwards—but it’s only when I face the crowd that I am reminded of my isolation. Even so, this is where I live and breathe. This is my joy.

  I wondered, of course, why your right shoulder bulged to such a degree under that odd, unbuttoned shirt, but thought it a costume, meant to get a chuckle. I figured, like everyone else, that yours must have been part of the act, and had no idea you were suffering an injury. So thank you for mentioning it, which you did to remind me who you are, and which brought back something I had known about myself: the reason for painting a smile on the clown’s face is to mask away any visible traces of pain.

  You were performing that night and so was I, but not until holding your letter in my hands did I sense that perhaps, as you came to stand there beside me at an arm’s length, for the duration of less than a second, just before you leapt off the edge, your loneliness was beginning to align itself with mine.

  I’m revealing too much, too soon. At the same time I keep asking myself, Am I mad? Why am I doing this?

  At reading this I wanted to tell her, I have no idea why you’re making me so lucky as to hear you, hear your most intimate thoughts. Whatever the reason, keep doing it.

  As if she heard me Natasha went on to say,

  The safest thing for me would be not to mail this letter. Perhaps I should toss a coin in the air and let luck decide if it should be destroyed. Burning it to ashes will be such a relief. It will allow me to go on writing, simply to examine my thoughts in full light, in honesty. And then, poof! Let it all go up in flames!

  I didn’t question what your act meant that night. After all, I rarely question any of the strange things I encounter in show business. I rarely even pay attention to how I get to this or that recital hall. This may seem strange to you, because you expect my life to be full of glamor. But facing the spotlight, all these places seem ablur. Towns, streets, numbers...

  Someone, usually Mama, drives me to where I need to be. Someone guides me to the stage and there, there is the piano. You wrote that you admire the way I play, but in truth music is the only thing for which I’m trained. It’s the only thing I know.

  And so, what seems perfect to you feels awkward to me.

  You asked how old I am. I have just turned sixteen, Lenny. A sweet time, right? At least, this is what everyone says, but I don’t feel it. Instead I sense a danger, still unformed, still somewhat vague, but already present here, inside of me, lurking underneath what is supposed to be a time of blossom.

  The paper rustled between my fingers at the mention of danger. Even without knowing what she meant by that I could not help but care for her. I wanted to gather her into my arms and protect her, shield her from any and all threats, no matter if they were real or imagined.

  The more she let me into her thoughts, the more I discovered how different she was from everyone I had known until then. To my surprise she had a moody outlook on life, a seriousness that was far beyond her years.

  As if to prove me right Natasha added,

  Being so different from other girls my age I often wonder about my future. My papa, who used to be a brilliant musician and a conductor, succumbed to Alzheimer’s in the last years of his life, which makes me think... It makes me wonder.

  If I ever lose my mind there will be no way for me to recover, as I don’t have the skill to find my way.

  So whoever seeks my friendship should consider this fault in me, because I depend on those closest to me, which may become a burden to you if we ever meet again, because you’re unprepared for it.

  Only when I lift my hands over the keys do I feel at home. Then I tell myself, I am here to sweep the audience away, let them take a wild leap with me into another sphere. And usually I believe this, even when it’s hard, even in front of a yawning audience, some of whom seem to be in dire need of sleep, or else in the grip of boredom. I must believe in my purpose. I wish to inspire you.

  I am music.

  Yes, I whispered. This is what you are.

  At the bottom of the page, scribbled in smaller letters in a somewhat hurried manner, perhaps because her mama was calling her to dinner, was the last paragraph:

  If I ever send this letter, and if you happen to get it, this is the one thing I want you to take away from it: I enjoyed your stories and would love to read more of them. Your words touched something in me, which is why I can’t stop writing. But now I will.

/>   And you, Lenny, you should become a writer.

  At reading the last sentence I could not help but sigh, because it meant that from now on—should I be so lucky as to engage her in conversation—I would have to live up to a literary talent that did not even belong to me.

  Even so, the next few weeks flew by in a delirium that by day, tempted me to leap into the arms of the officer, twist his mustache upwards, just for a change, and wet his cheeks with kisses, with or without his permission, and by night, made the crawling of snakes and the buzzing of insects combine, magically, into a rhythm, an amazing rhythm that could only be described as something entirely new to me: happiness.

  It was interrupted by one thing: the fear that if I reply, Natasha might wonder about my handwriting. It looked distinctly different than Aaron’s. Should I admit that it was his hand that had written the first letter? Or else, should I report the healing of my shoulder, as a way to explain away the change in the slant of the letters and the smoothness of my pen-stroke?

  Meanwhile I discovered that the style of my writing was the least of my problems. The one that was the most pressing was this: in my haste to read her letter I had neglected to blot out the wet spots. The ink on the envelope was, by now, quite smudged, having flowed from one stain into another and swirled all about.

  I realized it would not be easy to decipher what had been written there. The only clear glyphs were her city and state, Summit, NJ. As far as I knew it was a far cry from LA, where by all accounts you could meet stars simply by getting a manicure in the middle of the day when real people are at work.

  I cursed, cursed, cursed myself for messing up the one chance I was given to contact the girl of my dreams.

  Then I figured out a solution of sorts. I created several copies of my reply and sent all of them to Natasha, each one to a different version of her address, according to a different guess, a different connection made while trying to find the pen marks down there, in the layer under this amorphous, inky puddle.

  This was an exercise in uncertainty.

  Would any one of these envelopes reach her? And if she would get them all, would she think me excessively obsessive with her? Would she deem my letters repetitive, even boring? Would she answer?

  I braced myself for the wait.

  Those Green Eyes

  Chapter 6

  Every evening, the officer would get back at me for the little rebellious mishaps in my otherwise obedient behavior. Ordering me to do pushups was no longer good enough for him. Instead he opted to torture me by playing the same record, which he had purchased some time ago, over and over again, and preventing me from listening by talking loudly over it. It was the English version of the Spanish song Those Green Eyes2.

  He was a stocky, middle-aged man with a pointy mustache, who was bent on proving how well informed he was on all things popular, and quick to tell me, in his booming voice, that this song had been written back in 1931 but had not become a major success until now, because what made it a hit was being performed by the Jimmy Doresey orchestra and being made into a record, which reached the Billboard charts on May 9, 1941 and to this day it still held on to its number one rank, because the bottom side of it was Maria Elena, which was just as popular as the song on the top side, making it a phenomenal double-sided hit.

  While trying to block out his incessant flow of information, the lyrics stirred something inside of me, they brought to mind an image of a certain redhead, the twinkle in her bright, emerald eyes, which I had caught for barely a second, just before her Mama had stepped in-between us, back in Camp Upton, to wave me away.

  I could just see those green eyes and felt the sadness they had left in my soul, because I knew she would never be close enough for me to kiss them.

  After four weeks of listening to this song—just as I was beginning to give up hope, thinking that all the variations, the permutations of her address, to which I had mailed my letter, must have been not only convoluted but downright incorrect; just as I was beginning to accept that I would never, not ever, get another chance to be noticed by her, because as a star she must have had a million other admirers; and just as I was growing moody again, in a bigger way than ever before, cursing, cursing, cursing myself for being such a fool in love and in everything else and for having accidentally ruined her envelope, succeeding in nothing else but turning my good luck into a flop—the incredible happened.

  Her letter arrived.

  Unlike the first one, it was rather terse. Her tone seemed cold, as if to tell me not to bother about a reply. Was this really her intent? If so, why would she spend even one penny on an envelope, let alone on stamps, simply to tell me that?

  In the first paragraph she said,

  I got those letters from you, Lenny, all five of them, which is an odd thing in itself, and even more so considering they’re all exact copies of each other. Perhaps you meant to approach five different girls, all of whom are named Natasha, and all of whom are in show business, and decided to save time by means of repetition, which makes me wonder. At any rate it seems excessive. And on the flip side, perhaps it’s a good thing you said nothing, absolutely nothing about all the foolery I’ve written.

  I’ve been too naive to share my thoughts with someone who’s practically a stranger.

  Having written to me at considerable length before Natasha must have been taken aback by the single sentence I had sent back—but really, for me there had been no other choice. I had to be careful with words. I had to use as little of them as possible.

  I mean, what else could I have done in response to her praise, her heartfelt praise for my style of writing, when this so-called style was not even mine? It belonged to my best friend, Aaron, who without asking for my permission had done me a favor—or so he had thought, having the hutzpa to write to her on my behalf. I suppose he expected me to be grateful, which in my own way I was, to the point of grinding my teeth and swearing that if he wasn’t already dead I would have killed him for that with my own hands.

  On second thought I wished that his ghost would come back, that it could somehow be here to whisper in my ear, to hint at the secret of his fine way with words. Months after he had perished in Pearl Harbor I would imagine, from time to time, that I could still sense his presence. So now, half-seriously, I begged him in my mind, “Teach me your craft—or at the very least tell me how to fake it.”

  I waited. I waited a long while. There was no sign, not the slightest clue. He answered with silence, to which I replied, “If you could use my name I wouldn’t hesitate to write in your voice.”

  And for the last time I pleaded, “Don’t leave me, Aaron. You’ve set the bar too high for me, so now she expects humor, anecdotes, and fine adventure stories. No one can do that better than you. How can I compete with a shadow of myself?”

  There was no one to hear me, no one to answer. There I was, alone, utterly alone, staring at her letter, not knowing if she had responded to me or to him.

  In the second paragraph, which was also the last, Natasha noted,

  This time, your handwriting... Well, it’s different, which I should’ve expected, because your shoulder injury, which I hope has completely healed by now, must have affected the way you handled the pen. Still, the contrast is quite stark. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but somehow it did.

  With that, she drew herself to a stop, and left her signature.

  I wondered if Natasha suspected anything, if she guessed that it had not been my hand that had written to her the first time. From now on I should be even more cautious, because any ill-placed sentence, any superfluous word might betray that truth. Truth, for me, was the enemy. I figured I must make every effort to continue covering it up. And so I wrote back,

  Please forgive the brevity. Life here in Camp Lejeune is incredibly tough, leaving me little time and little energy to compose something as beautiful as your first letter, which I must confess, touched me deeply. I said nothing, simply because I was still absorbing it.

 
I had no inking what the life of a pianist must feel like, traveling to one place after another, and how you might respond to see the deterioration of a loved one. So sorry to hear about your papa.

  I considered signing off with, “To you I am a stranger. Even so, this you must trust: I want to know you,” but decided against it, for fear that it might seem too direct, too intimate, and worst of all, too simple, especially coming from a supposedly erudite man, a man who according to her must have been well-versed in bookish, exemplary expressions.

  Below my signature I added an explanation, which at second glance looked a bit clunky, of how I had sent not just five but twenty-two exact copies of my letter, trying out different spellings of her street address, because her first envelope had accidentally become illegible, on account of being soaked with water, as a result of the extra care I took to lift the gummed flap without causing a tear.

  To my amazement Natasha wrote back. She said that my explanation sounded unbelievable, so unbelievable in fact that she decided it must have been true, because who in his right mind would come up with an elaborate, tortuous excuse such as that.

  And so we embarked on an exchange of letters, which started slowly. Then, over time, the intervals between one letter and the next grew shorter.

  First she told me about changes affected by the war effort:

  Mama read in the magazine: “Rationing has been introduced not to deprive you of your real needs, but to make more certain that you get your share of the country's goods, to get fair shares with everybody else. When the shops re-open you will be able to buy cloth, clothes, footwear and knitting wool only if you bring your food ration book with you. The shopkeeper will detach the required number of coupons from the unused page... You will have a total of 66 coupons to last you a year; so go sparingly. You can buy where you like and when you like without registering.”