last song

‘How?...’ her fingers covered her eyes and I couldn’t tell if she actually knows that I am standing next to her. I have remained silent and immobile, a mirror reflection of the shadow I was casting to her feet.

‘This is that, isn’t it?’ she looked directly into my eye and for a moment the only thing I could’ve seen was the pale blue of her iris. I knew, even without checking, that they were the exact colour as the sky above us. The day was just about to begin and even though it was still quite cold, there was a promise of the close warmth: in the way sunlight was touching our skin, slowly heating up the blood in our veins. I could have imagined how sun rays first shutter into small pieces, then into dust and after that – they travel with air into my mouth and for a brief moment, not a very long one – just two heart-beats, I can taste the Sun...

Her cold, long fingers wrapped around my wrist and pulled me. I followed without saying a word - lying to myself I am ready for whatever comes (because I wasn’t and I knew that very well). I don’t think any of us was.

+

We’ve met for the first time few months back. It was late at night and she was a friend of a friend, or maybe not even that. At some point we’ve found ourselves on our own. We stood among the half-drunk people outside the club and smoke cigarettes in silence. I liked that. When she was done she tilted her head towards me, made a hard to distinguish wave with her hand and went back inside. I don’t think that we have exchanged even one word that night – but somehow it seemed OK. I followed her after a while – into the dark and loud belly of the beast. And then, for the very first time, I saw the real her…

+

We were walking now through half-awaken streets. She was still holding my wrist in a tight grip but I don’t think it was to lead me, rather because she needed to feel that I am still with her. And I was. Sure as hell – I wasn’t going to leave her today. When we had to stop at some point on the red light I only allowed myself to move down her hand. Her fingers immediately wrapped around mine – and this is when I’ve realised how terrified she was.

+

There wasn’t much light inside – few dimmed spot-lights, few fluorescent signs on the walls and very raw and weak light above the bar. People mostly appeared as contours – distorted and without the faces. And in the middle of the dance floor – there was she. Completely unaware of the bodies fluctuating around her, with half-shut eyes, moving to the sound of the music as if it was an electric current running through her, a dangerous, high voltage force that can’t be stopped. I stood there for a while, simply watching. I saw a moment in which her hair-band completely gave in and nearly in slow-motion, her hair scattered in every direction. I like to think that this is how Medusa would look like if she would ever be seen dancing. I wasn’t alone watching her from afar. Few brave or maybe rather dumb sons of the bitches tried to approach her but either she wouldn’t even notice them or, with the visible annoyance, she would only stare at them for a bit just to roll her eyes in the end and go back to twisting and turning of her body. I can’t tell how long it lasted before she decided to stop and started making her way to the exit. I think my face tried to rearrange itself into smile when I’ve noticed she is moving towards me. I still didn’t know what I should say if she would have stop next to me. So I stood there, in this amber of the moment, unable to escape it. Then her fingers wrapped around my wrist, the same gesture that she was going to make few months later on one cold morning, and pulled me out of this dark room, into the starry and cold night.

+

You may wonder why exactly I was following her today: silent and obedient as I was; why haven’t I yet try to fight her, make her stop; why wouldn’t I do something. Why wouldn’t I grab her and shake until she starts to listen or until she loses consciousness? Obviously it has crossed my mind; to be more exact it was crossing my mind regularly like a tidal wave, yet – every time – I’ve opposed it, I’ve stopped myself, I’ve ignored it. And so – we were walking together like a silent machine and an angry automaton, only from time to time allowing ourselves for a sigh or nervous twitch that changed our faces for a second. Her icy fingers were burning my hand but even then I haven’t said a word. Once in a while I would look up, at the sky. Every time I have done it, I thought that it has exactly the same colour like her eyes. But, it had to - especially today. We kept on walking.

+

We kept on walking for a while, looking ahead, never at each other. No-one was really leading the way. I felt as if my body was burning in the fever – I did wonder if she could feel this heat, the same way as I could feel the piercing coldness of her hand. We have got to the river bank and this is where we stopped. She threw away her cigarette and turned to me. This was one of these moments that allow you to realise that bravery is actually a product of the biggest cowardice. I was so scared that she will simply walk away if I won’t do anything, that – in a moment of the sheer panic combined with bravado – I’ve kissed her. She allowed to be kissed. She’s kissed me. We’ve kissed. (Practical application of the conjugation.) It seemed as everything around us became more vivid, more real. It definitely wasn’t the matter of an old, well-known butterflies and similar shit that plastic and washed up pop stars sing about on the radio. Maybe it was a little bit like seeing the Garden of Eden for the first time: seeing all of its beauty with all of the marks that were left by the snake – broken and twisted blades of the grass, shed skin, rotten apples scattered under the trees…

+

We’ve got to the brick wall and she stopped, a little bit confused. She looked at me, at our intertwined fingers, and at the wall once again. I guess I have smiled, in normal circumstances I would. I slowly entangled our fingers and let go of her hand - only for a moment that I needed to lift her. ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall…’ she murmured to my ear and for a brief moment there was a shadow of a smile on her pale, almost de-saturated face. But I wasn’t smiling anymore. Never before she has felt so light, so small and so fragile – in this morning sun, with a heavy wind pulling strands of her hair in all of the directions and shaping them into a dark and unkempt halo - she looked much more like a bird that forgot how to fly than a girl that forgot how to be. I climbed the wall and sat next to her. I looked ahead at the river, but all I could see in that moment was a giant silver snake slowly but persistently slithering into the city.

+

It wasn’t far from where I’ve lived. Truth to be told - it was never far to anywhere in this God-forsaken joke of the city. It was already dawn, sifting a pastel light through the blinds, when we made the first break in this old as time war between the man and the woman. She started making lines, while I was looking for an ashtray and cigarettes. I came back to the room and looked at her silhouette, a dark contour on my bed, leaning over the music sheets that covered most of the flat surfaces. ‘I should have known’ she said and that was the first time I’ve heard her voice. She spoke very quietly with a faint and hard to recognise echo of the accent. She passed the plate and the rolled note to me - avoiding the eye contact and looking somewhere above my right arm. This is probably the moment when I noticed properly her nearly colourless eyes and violet shadows underneath. I studied for a brief moment arches of her eyebrows and shape of her lips. This image, her face softened by the morning light on this winter day, is the one I always have inside my head when someone mentions her name - so vulnerable and calm, willingly surrendered. ‘What did you mean – that you should have known?’ I asked putting a plate away and passing her a cigarette. ‘That you are a musician. I have always had a soft spot for those’. ‘But you didn’t know in fact – not until now’ I brushed her cheek with the tips of my fingers and lifted her chin so I could look into her eye. ‘Technically - yes, but maybe it's a weird case of a time warp… Or – and that would be much more probable – I have been in fact stalking you already for a while and I was actually completely aware with whom I am going home last night’ she said very seriously and without a shadow of a smile. ‘Or – maybe it was actually me who was stalking you for a quite some time and I knew very well that music sheets here and there can make a one night stand become a more lasting affair…’ I replied. She smiled in a sort of a crooked way and while racking up more of the white powder she said: ‘There is also a third possibility – we are both mentally ill, though obviously not very bright, stalkers…’ She leaned forward and picked up one of the pages. ‘How does it sound?’

+

When I was small my grandfather would often take me for long walks and during those - tell me equally long stories. I could have never be sure, whether they were true or made up. But it didn’t really matter – not in the grand scheme of life and all of its adjacencies. Without much hesitation and very consciously I chose to believe everything and not to trust any of it. In a way - it was a simplistic and practical application of the rules governing fuzzy logic - and it actually worked. As an outcome - I knew and at the same time I didn’t know that my family arrived to this country few generations ago, fleeing from the fire and explosions consuming the continent. Father of my father may or may have not been a descendant of the Tatar tribe and he may have (or may have not) met his pale, blond and blue-eyed wife (who was or wasn’t a  daughter of a German colonel) in the rural area of Normandy. Father of my mother was or wasn’t a Polish logician who escaped Warsaw to work on the Enigma code with the Brits. My mother’s mother might have been a Russian girl that used to attend his lectures before the war and, first as his lover, later on as his wife, never left his side – but she also might have not been all of that. Obviously I knew for a fact that all of my grandparents spoke fluently in several languages (the combined number was close to twenty) so I probably could have assumed that at least part of the family history is more or less accurate. However the details would sometimes change – from one story to another (like the time when the logician granddad haven’t made his way to UK only after concentration camps were freed by the yanks) and I quite liked the fact that it’s left entirely to me what I am going to believe (or almost believe). One of my friends once said I should have checked his wrists (as long as I remember my grandfather was wearing long sleeves, even in the summertime) but it never even crossed my mind. I liked better the world that allowed him to have and not have inked forearm. And for this reason I also I've decided I shouldn’t ask - if he never speaks of it himself. This way of narrating life (rather than passing on the facts about it) was exercised by my whole family, not only by the Mongolian granddad, but it was him that always gave me the most detailed and vibrant accounts of it. After he died it was decided unanimously that I am the one that should deliver the eulogy. ‘True or false – no-one cares’ grandpa used to tell me many times ‘What’s most important is that you keep your story interesting’. And every time he would say that his eyes would become even more slant, and his smile transformed into the one of the Cheshire cat. On the day of the funeral our living room filled very quickly with people dressed in grey-scale, breathing heavily and playing with their buttons, wrist watches and jewellery. I knew I should but I couldn’t really recognise anyone. Someone in front of me was using the music sheets from our piano as a fan. I knew for a fact that this is Prokofiev’s Sonata no 7. My fingers started moving by themselves. And I started to talk.

+

I’ve put my arm around her and my fingers started moving on her ribs as on the piano keys. Neither of us made a sound. With the last non-sound she nodded and said ‘It was beautiful’. Sunlight flooding my bedroom was much more vibrant and much brighter by now and I saw clearly milky tone of her skin, details of her tattoos and those few straight and in any other circumstances - almost invisible scars. I’ve consciously made an effort not to follow them with my fingers. The same way she didn’t ask why I don’t play my music in any audible way anymore, I didn’t have a right to ask about them. It was clear to me that one day she might tell me a story and maybe it will be about an unfortunate attempt to climb a fence (and how she fell and how branches and rusty wires left their marks on her) or maybe it will be a story about sadness and how it left these marks on her. For now it didn’t really matter. For now we were in the middle of the war. It was probably long after the noon when she stretched like a cat and started putting on clothes. I didn’t want her to go but I didn’t say a word. I’ve got up and started to put on my clothes as well. She gave me a startled look and froze for a moment. ‘I am going to walk you home’ I said without turning and put on my trainers. Later on someone once told me that they have never saw her smiling. Trust me when I tell you that - they've missed something truly amazing.

+

Time was passing neither slower nor faster than usual - as if this day was completely normal and no different from any other day. I kept on staring ahead of me, trying to calm down my loud and nervous breathing and trembling hands. I gave up after a while and shifted all of my attention to her. Something in the way she frowned looking straight at the Sun, with her long fingers that seemed to be moving to some silent, known only to  her song - reminded me of my grandma Lenka.

+

She never spoke unnecessarily and usually just sat or stood in the shadow, nearly always with a book in one of her hands. She observed the world around anxiously. This inner silence and nature of a wild and cautious animal made me horribly curious and more and more often I would find myself standing next to her - attempting to see my surrounding with her eyes (and maybe one day - discover what frightens her so damn much). I was ten when - still without saying any unnecessary word, she pointed at the chair opposite her and between us appeared chessboard. She was fast, sharp and undefeated. The more we played, the longer our games were, the better I was becoming – but even then - I could not defeat her. All this time, Lenka hasn't graced me with even one word. I've figured that maybe, if I'll start making some colourful and dramatic mistakes - she may let me hear her voice... Yet again I have underestimated her. Instead my grandmother – in her usual and a bit awkward fashion – joined me in the game of mistakes. For the outside our games looked like not a very good ones: full of small and big mistakes and missed opportunities. However, on the deeper level, known to the full extend only to both of us - our game had now even more layers and nuances than before. Every bad move, every mistake - had to look like one; what’s more – none of us would ever simply use it to lose (that would be distasteful).

+

It crossed my mind that this is what we are doing at the moment – playing to lose (because how could we possibly win in all of that?). I could feel her heartbeat – so fast and violent. A brutal and perfect metronome for what I have written for her. I started silently playing my last song on her skin.