The House with Three Glasses

On the afternoon he lost his future, Professor Tomescu had two apricots in his pocket, and a tram ticket punched twice. The second hole followed his remark that, in such heat, even the dead ought to stay indoors.

“At least they don’t complain about the fare,” the inspector replied.

Tomescu enjoyed jokes about death, provided they didn't require changes to his schedule.

It was July. Bucharest smelled of softened asphalt, spent linden blossom and diesel. He was returning from a lesson with Lavinia Voiculescu, seventeen, who played impeccable scales and detested every exercise. That afternoon she had shown him a melody of her own, a phrase circling towards a note without quite reaching it. He had almost called it beautiful. Instead, he corrected her wrist.

Now he was humming it. Reaching for his briefcase, he found only his knees.

He had left it on the Voiculescu’s piano. Inside was the sonata he had begun twenty-seven years earlier. The opening bore the dedication “To Elena”. The remaining pages contained coffee stains and beginnings of further beginnings.

He got off. The overhead wire had snapped.

“How long?” he asked the driver.

“Until they fix it.”

Tomescu walked. Emilia expected him at seven to help roast aubergines; her right hand had begun to hurt. He had promised while watching a programme about musical instruments. People and vegetables waited with a patience he took for granted.

That morning, his former colleague Bălan had invited him to a teachers’ recital. “Bring something of your own, even unfinished.” Tomescu had put the note under the sugar bowl. He wasn’t going to make a fool of himself at his age.

At a passageway, he stopped. Beyond the wall came the bitter smell of chestnut leaves. The air was cold, like a cellar where someone had split a watermelon.

Between a pharmacy and a phone shop stood a gate he had never noticed. On the plaster someone had written ALL PAPERWORK UP TO DATE. Beneath it: WHOSE?

An enormous chestnut shaded a house with green shutters. Tomescu sat on the veranda.

“If you’re from the land registry, nobody lives here,” a young woman said.

“I’m not.”

“Then we do. I’m Rada.”

“Tomescu. Piano teacher.”

“I mend little things. Irons, radios, destinies. No warranty on the destinies.”

Inside, a clock struck four. His watch said twenty past five.

“It’s wrong.”

“It keeps Grandmother’s time. Those two have never agreed.”

He followed her through rooms smelling of sherbet and waxed wood. A painted horse turned its head as he passed. He blamed the light.

An old woman in a blue dress sat before three glasses and a thick ledger.

“The gentleman with the sonata,” she said.

“Do we know each other?”

“Not yet.”

“Grandmother Anica,” Rada said. “She talks to the plumber like that too.”

“At least he admits when he hasn’t got the part.”

Yellow light trembled in the first glass. The second was misted over. The third appeared empty but left a wet ring.

“Which is water?”

“All of them. From the first, you drink what was. From the second, what is. From the third, what might be.”

Tomescu rose.

“I have things to do.”

A piano began behind him. Four bars, then F sharp instead of F. Elena always made that mistake when hurrying towards her favourite passage.

He sat down.

He had last seen her at twenty-four. He remembered waiting in the rain at the Conservatoire. She had not come. Later, a letter said she was leaving with a violinist. He had decided that nothing after her could be worthy of him.

Six years later, he married Emilia.

“If I drink, will I go back?”

“Where you keep going in your thoughts,” Anica said. “But the time must come from somewhere.”

“Where?”

“From time you could spend doing something else.”

“That’s where everyone gets it.”

“Which is why we’re still in business.”

“There’s tap water in the kitchen,” Rada said.

He ignored her.

“How much?”

“We’ll settle up when you leave.”

Normally, that would have sent him straight outside. But Elena laughed in the next room and said his first name.

He drank.

Rain ran inside his collar. He stood outside the Conservatoire holding carnations wrapped in newspaper. His wedding ring was gone; his fingers were supple.

The porter, dead for twenty years, smoked beneath an umbrella.

“You again? You said you were leaving.”

“I came back.”

“Well done. One of us is getting somewhere.”

Upstairs, Elena was closing her music case. Twenty-two, with an ink stain beside her thumb.

“You came.”

“I never left.”

“Yes, you did. When I told you about the scholarship.”

He remembered it differently. Only the rain was certain.

“Don’t go with the violinist.”

“Sorin? He’s going to Brașov to bury his father.”

“Your letter…”

“What letter?”

Rada appeared in a school uniform, wearing the same mismatched earrings.

“Don’t skip the dialogue. You’ll only blame the story afterwards.”

Elena seemed not to see her.

“The scholarship is mine. Six months. I asked you to come to the station tomorrow.”

Shame returned before memory. He had demanded she choose, certain that choosing him over music would prove her love.

“I’ll come.”

“No speech?”

“No speech.”

The sun appeared, though raindrops still hung outside the window.

“Tomorrow’s through here,” Rada said.

At the station, Elena carried a small suitcase. He kissed her, promised to write, and watched the train leave. He had changed things.

“Want to see what happens next?” Rada asked.

He stepped towards her and entered his mother’s kitchen. A letter lay on the table: Elena’s foreign city, her teacher, the room above a bakery. What was he composing?

He began a reply. It must not sound provincial or jealous. He crossed out a sentence. When he looked up, five letters lay there.

Elena came home for a week.

“You didn’t answer about the concert.”

“I wanted to write more.”

“You only had to say you were pleased.”

“I am.”

He sounded like a man paying an unjust fine.

“I always have to come back smaller to fit in here,” she said.

He found his reply too late. She vanished. A door stood in her place.

He opened it onto the rainy evening.

This time he offered to leave with her. Then he tried without flowers. Then he kissed her before speaking. He ceased wanting things to go well for Elena. He wanted an evening in which nobody could reproach him.

In one version she stayed. A year later, she stood at the stove, staring into an empty saucepan. She had sold her piano: there was no room.

“We could get a smaller one,” he said.

Her laughter was not what he had drunk the water for.

Doors multiplied. One said KEEP TRYING; another, COME BACK LATER. Both returned him to the same room.

In a mirror, his face was young, his body old. One hand had age spots; the other held carnations.

“There must be a good version.”

Rada was repairing a radio.

“There is. It has bad days too.”

Emilia’s voice emerged: “Put the aubergines on, please.”

“In a moment,” he snapped.

The radio fell silent.

He pushed through a bright doorway and emerged into the courtyard, fully dressed. His watch still said twenty past five. His apricots lay shrivelled on the bench.

Outside, the phone shop was a dental clinic. At a kiosk he asked the time.

“Ten to nine.”

“In the evening?”

“For the time being.”

At the Voiculescus’ apartment, a stranger answered the door. A neighbour appeared.

“They moved after the girl’s wedding. Eight years ago.”

“I was here at five.”

“Come inside. I’ll get you water.”

He recoiled and struck the banister.

In the street, he read a newspaper’s date three times.

Twelve years.

Along the margin, double glazing was on sale.

His money was no longer valid. A woman paid his tram fare. His reflection was twelve years younger than it ought to have been; behind it flowed a city that had learned other routes.

A pregnant woman opened his apartment door.

“Emilia?”

“She doesn’t live here.”

“I’m her husband.”

The woman called her husband. They seated Tomescu where his piano had stood. An unassembled cot occupied the space.

“We bought from Mrs Tomescu six years ago. All the paperwork’s here.”

They gave him a telephone number. He could not understand why it frightened him more than the house.

At the corner tavern, Dinu put on his glasses, then took them off.

“You’ve lost weight.”

“I’ve been gone twelve years.”

“Obviously you haven’t been eating here.”

He poured brandy. Tomescu pushed it away.

“From the bottle,” Dinu said, taking a drink first.

The burning reassured him.

“Emilia rang hospitals, then police, then hospitals again. She came every Thursday. For years she asked whether I’d seen you. Afterwards, she just asked how I was.”

“Did she marry?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“A man who comes home.”

Dinu covered his mouth.

“Forgive me. I don’t know where you’ve been.”

Emilia recognised Tomescu by his breath before he said hello. She arrived forty minutes later. Short hair, a scar above her eyebrow. She held her bag in her right hand without difficulty.

“You had the operation?”

“Nine years ago.”

“I would have come.”

“I know what you mean.”

She listened to the story. At the sound of Elena’s name, she looked away.

“I thought you were dead.”

“Perhaps I was.”

“Dead people don’t say ‘in a moment’ and disappear for twelve years.”

“I wanted to put right a mistake.”

“Which one?”

“The way I let her go.”

Emilia nodded.

“What were we, then?”

No answer escaped her.

“It took three years to go to the seaside alone,” she said. “I thought you’d come back and find nobody home.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want those years back. I couldn’t live through them again.”

Then she asked whether he was hungry.

Her kindness made him cover his face. She ordered soup and offered to pay for a guesthouse, to help with his paperwork.

“Aren’t you coming home?”

“Someone’s waiting at my home.”

She gave him Lavinia’s number. The girl had kept his briefcase.

“Emilia, that day, the aubergines…”

“I roasted them. Burned them a little. I kept going onto the balcony.”

The next morning, the police clerk asked for proof that Tomescu was alive.

“I’m talking to you.”

“I see that. But you’re deceased in the system.”

“I had you declared dead after seven years,” Emilia said. “Otherwise I couldn’t do anything.”

Outside, she bought two bread rings and gave him the less burnt. He stepped beside her, ready to walk home.

“I’m going the other way.”

He picked a white hair from her shoulder.

“You have a dog?”

“A cat.”

“You didn’t like cats.”

“You didn’t.”

He remembered everything about Emilia he had called “ours”: holidays, music before dinner, no pets.

A man waved from a car. Tomescu would have preferred someone coarse and stupid. This man merely looked worried she was tired.

“Is that him?”

“Yes.”

Tomescu raised a hand. The man returned the awkward gesture.

“Thank you,” Tomescu said.

Emilia kissed his cheek.

He wished she had remained alone. He had always imagined regret brought a claim upon the person regretted.

Lavinia brought his briefcase to the guesthouse. She now had the face of a woman who asked no permission to speak.

“I kept your exercises. You shouldn’t come back from the dead unprepared.”

“Do you still play?”

“And teach. Accounting too. We can’t all survive twelve years without an income.”

In his notebook, her aunt had written a police case number. Lavinia had added, “Perhaps he’ll come back.” Later entries grew smaller, more heavily pressed.

“My aunt died two years ago. Still owed you for two lessons. Said if you appeared at the Last Judgement, you weren’t to mention the money.”

A printed invitation fell from the notebook: his name, “Sonata for an Afternoon”, a date two years after his disappearance. A wet ring marked its back.

“I didn’t put that there,” Lavinia said.

Applause sounded. The dining room remained unchanged, but the end of his sonata came from the kitchen. He recognised it without ever having heard it. So simple it hurt.

He followed it. A woman was washing glasses. The applause stopped.

Back at the table, the invitation was blank.

“Your melody,” he said. “Did you finish it?”

“Of course.”

“It was beautiful.”

“It would have helped to hear that then.”

Her school needed a beginner’s teacher. He could practise there.

“First I must go back somewhere.”

She slipped the address into his briefcase.

Rada was sweeping green chestnuts beneath a flowering tree.

“Took you a while.”

Anica sat before the glasses. His was still full.

“Put right what you’ve done.”

“One hundred lei.”

“You took twelve years!”

“You stayed.”

“I was there hours.”

“You wanted another try. And another.”

“You didn’t tell me the cost.”

“That’s true.”

For a moment she was merely an old woman in a cold room.

“And if you had?”

She did not answer.

Rada handed him his briefcase.

“Take it this time.”

Elena waited by the drawing-room window. The curtain’s pattern showed through her hand.

“Are you dead?”

“For a long time.”

She touched his cheek. Pleasantly cool. How easy to close his eyes.

“Were you waiting for me?”

“I stay here. You kept coming.”

Outside stood a black carriage.

“Coming?” the driver called. “I can’t wait here.”

“You haven’t been allowed on the road since 1938,” Rada said.

“Precisely. Let’s not draw attention.”

Elena smiled. She was beautiful, tired of a role he had assigned her without asking.

“Where would we go?”

“Somewhere you no longer have to choose.”

He looked at the third glass.

“If I could just see first…”

Rada covered it.

In the silence, he heard a tram, someone calling a child, onions frying. Everything seemed terribly fragile.

He took his briefcase and left.

At Lavinia’s school, the cleaner let him in. The room smelled of damp chalk. Paper suns covered a wall, each with a different number of rays.

He sat at the piano and opened his notebook.

The dedication to Elena remained. He turned the page and wrote the date. He waited for the phrase from the guesthouse, the perfect ending to a life he had never lived.

It did not come.

He began from what he knew—made a mistake—kept playing.

Stopping to write, he saw a chair occupied in the narrow mirror above the piano. He turned so quickly his neck hurt.

The chair was empty.

He laid his hands on the keys. This time, he played to the final note. At last he could let the past keep its ending.

Elena’s ghost had not been the most frightening thing in that house. It was the future he had lost: years he would never live, people he would never know, ordinary days that could no longer become his. A ghost could return. Those possibilities could not. He had finished the sonata, but no music could restore the life he had surrendered trying to change what was already over.