Liebestraum No. 4

I spent most of the '60s walking.

Through parks, down alleys, from Greenwich Village to Bushwick...anywhere I could think of until that unmistakable itch told me dawn was approaching. Some nights I'd catch a late movie if the theater was empty enough. Other nights my less human needs necessitated a detour. But mostly I had no destination. With most of my time spent in a damp basement, fresh air (or what passed for it in the city) was a novelty.

I also had this idea that I could still outrun what I was. As if one night I'd rack up enough miles that my feet would ache again and I'd walk straight through the sunrise. A deluded sort of flight instinct had hit me years too late, and I had nothing better to do than give myself over to it.

That night, I'd barely gotten started at 8:30. I’d been so tired of looking at mildewed concrete that I hadn’t waited for the last embers to burn out on the horizon, and even the grimy summer air made my stinging skin worthwhile.

Before I'd covered much ground, I ducked into an alley to light a cigarette. I missed the crackle of electricity I used to feel when the nicotine hit my bloodstream, but they still smelled the same.

As I took my first drag, a door opened into the alley, flooding it with light. A lanky man in a too-big tuxedo strode out and propped the door open. I didn't acknowledge him, but he walked up and faced me.

"I saw you through the window," he said, gesturing at my cigarette, "I'm fresh out and hoped you'd take pity on me."

I risked a glance at his face. He was young, about the same age I had been, with unruly straw-colored hair and eyeglasses held together by clear tape. A certain earnestness in his expression stopped me from ignoring him and walking away.

I nodded and passed one to him. He held it out for me to light, his oversized sleeve hanging off his wrist. I avoided his eyes while I raised my hand to his.

Even swimming in the cheapest-looking tuxedo I'd ever seen, he was handsome. Before, I would have asked why he was dressed up, and seen if he'd responded with those particular looks and phrases that answered the questions I couldn't ask outright. I already suspected he and I spoke the same language.

That night, I didn't dare look up from the grimy cement. At this distance, it wasn't hard to see that my skin was more gray than pale, or that I moved too quickly. There were underground places where that didn't matter, otherwise I would've starved by now, but I'd learned how careful I had to be out in the open.

I liked how the cinnamon in his aftershave mingled with the tobacco in the air. Not in a predatory way--I took no pleasure in that gruesome business. I just didn't want to move yet.

When I finished my cigarette, I stamped it out and turned to leave.

"Wait," he said to my back, "How will I repay your kindness if you leave now?"

I cleared my throat. "It was nothing."

The sound of my own voice surprised me.

"Not to me. You've saved my whole evening."

I half-turned back. "With one cigarette?"

"Yes. It's a crucial part of my ritual."

"Your ritual?"

He grinned, one of those unselfconscious smiles that took up a whole face. "Come inside—I'll show you."

I still can't rationally explain why I didn't turn back then. Some blame could be ascribed to that fatal combination of boredom and loneliness, but I think it had more to do with him than me. There was something so disarming about him—I could already tell he was entirely what he appeared to be, without pretense. Maybe I hadn't learned how to be guarded around a person like that. 

It didn't matter. My feet moved to follow him before I'd registered there was a choice to be made.

We made introductions (Harry—it suited him) and he led me down a shag-carpeted hallway. We passed a warmly-lit room with a vanity and an upright piano surrounded by piles of sheet music. We kept walking until we were in what looked to be a small concert hall. A few people were strewn around, but almost every seat was open.

Harry stopped. "I can't believe you actually followed me. I mean, I'm relieved you did! Playing for five people would have been humiliating, but six is almost respectable." One corner of his mouth turned up.

I kept my eyes on the carpet. "Ah. So that's why you wanted me to come in. Do you find all your audience members in alleys?"

"Obviously. And I think the results speak for themselves." He gestured grandly at the near-empty auditorium.

I laughed.

"Well," he said, "I have to go back. Can't be seen fraternizing with the audience like this--it's terrible etiquette. Probably why I can't fill seats! Anyway..." I felt his eyes searching for mine, though I still hadn't looked up. "Find me afterward. If you want."

He turned back and I walked up the aisle towards the last row of seats. The lights dimmed. 

Before I could feel the weight of every lapse in judgment that had brought me here, the stage lights flickered on and Harry strode out. He took a perfunctory bow before walking over to the grand piano that took up most of the stage. 

The moment his body hit the bench, his fingers took off in a flurry of keys.

I recognized Beethoven's Waldstein sonata, though I'd never heard it played so quickly. The sixteenth notes blended into one indistinguishable block that obscured scales and themes alike. I'd taken lessons as a child and, though I'd never approached Harry’s level, I knew I should have been able to make the notes out. 

He continued on through Mozart, Chopin, and Debussy, all at a speed that was as impressive as it was unmusical. He didn't even take proper breaks between pieces--there wasn’t time to applaud one before the next was underway. If I hadn’t known the music I would have thought Harry played one sonata in many disparate styles.

Of course, it's easy to be critical in hindsight. Even if his adagio was more of an allegro and his allegro was unmeasurable, in the moment I forgot where I sat. What I was.

The fast-falling notes and the hypnotic blur of his fingers took me out of myself. It reminded me of how I'd felt the first time I'd gotten drunk--like the barrier between my inner being and the world had dissolved. A state of oneness with the air around me.

He had absolute confidence that his fingers would land wherever he commanded them to. His hair flopped into his eyes, and his crudely taped glasses always appeared in danger of falling, but he never faltered. He didn't completely lift his fingers off the keys until he'd hurtled through several pieces, moving between them as easily as a bird gliding on a shifting breeze.

Finally, he went still. A smattering of applause started up, but my hands stayed by my sides. I wasn't ready to return to myself, to be reconfined to the sharp edges of my body after such a short reprieve. I was glad when he lowered his hands onto the keys again and the opening arpeggios of Liszt's third Liebestraum rang out. 

I wasn't usually one for Liszt. All that maudlin romanticism never rang true for me. When I'd played, I'd considered myself a serious musician, which meant I'd played mostly Bach. His counterpoint and fugues were feats of engineering rather than sentiment, and I'd marveled at how neatly the pieces fit together. Back then, music had given me the same cold satisfaction as solving an equation.

But now that Harry had taken a reasonable tempo, there was something tender about the way he separated the melody out from the underlying chords. His hands seemed to sing rather than play. 

I forgot that he wasn't the first to put these notes together, that they didn't spring organically from him. The once-cloying emotionality was now not only authentic but inevitable--how could it not sound exactly like this?

As I’d known they would, the final notes came too soon. But this time I was clapping as soon as the last echoes had ceased.

Whatever force had taken me out of myself while Harry played kept me in its grasp—I made my way to the dressing room without a second thought. 

He hadn’t come through yet. He was probably accepting the praise of another well-wisher, some friend or family member. They’d follow him in here, their happy conversation trailing off when they saw the stranger lurking at the edge of the room. A veritable specter at the feast.

Had Harry not meant that I should actually ‘find him afterward?’ I’d always taken words too literally, even before my social awareness had atrophied to nothing. And, if he had been sincere, he’d never mentioned the dressing room—that had been my own presumption. 

If blood had still coursed through my veins, the thought of being caught here uninvited would have made it run cold. Somehow the possibility of being perceived as a little strange scared me more than the ever-looming threat of exposure. I could abide risking my safety, but the anticipation of social discomfort was too much to bear. Vestiges of humanity clung to me like gristle to bone.

I turned toward the door to the alley, but I was already too late. Harry (alone!) rounded the corner as I stepped into the hallway.

“Oh!” He started. “You did stay.”

My relief at his pleased expression was downright embarrassing.

“Well…” I trailed off.

“I hope you weren’t waiting too long. The horde of admirers wouldn’t be put off—you know how it is. The life of an artist!”

“Really?”

He laughed. “Of course not. Some old lady who’d wandered in off the street told me I looked like her dead husband and kissed me full on the lips. I felt like I had to put her in a cab.”

He walked through to the dressing room. He didn’t turn back, or gesture for me to follow him, but I knew I was meant to.

“So,” he said, plopping down on the piano bench in the corner, “what did you think?”

I hovered, unsure if I should step in. “It was…impressive. Very impressive. I’ve never seen someone play so fast.”

He winced. “Too fast, right?”

“No?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Maybe a little. I couldn’t always make the notes out. And sometimes it felt like pieces ran into each other.”

I must have looked nervous, because he put his hands out in a placating gesture. “Don’t worry—my teacher agrees with you. That’s why he’s having me play these little halls before I try my luck on the recital circuit. He says if I can just slow down, I’ll be the next Horowitz. Can you believe that?” He rolled his eyes. “As if it were that easy.”

“Wouldn’t playing slower be easier?”

“You would think so, right? But it’s like I’m running downhill. I can’t fight the momentum.”

It made sense—Harry was a one-man perpetual motion machine. He fiddled with the buttons on his jacket, then brushed his hair away, then adjusted his glasses, all with an urgency that left me vicariously breathless.

“But,” I said, “the Liebestraum was perfect. Not too fast at all. The best I’ve ever heard—better than Horowitz. I don’t even like Liszt, but it was…” I shook my head.

He looked at me for a moment before asking, “Do you play?”

“I used to.”

“Thought so. Stop skulking over there and come show me something.”

I stepped into the room, but stopped short of the piano. Even in the dim lighting, I could now make out the brown flecks in Harry’s greenish eyes. Who knew what he might notice about me?

Maybe my self-destructive streak was wider than I’d realized, but the thought only gave me a moment’s pause.

“I don’t think I remember anything,” I said.

He gestured at the sheet music around him. “You can read, can’t you? 

I thought he’d stand to give me the bench, but he only scooted over a few inches and looked at me expectantly. I was becoming increasingly sure that my first impression of him had been correct—that we were alike, trained in the same sort of espionage. It had been a long time, but I knew a signal when I saw one.

On autopilot, I took the last step to the piano and squeezed in next to him, making myself as small as possible. But we were both tall men, so our legs lay flush against each other. I felt a pounding in my chest—my heart raced like a phantom limb might ache.

All at once I understood what he had meant about running downhill. Because when his eyes softened behind his glasses, and when he moved his hand from the keys to rest lightly on my knee, I was as powerless to fight the momentum as he was.

He leaned in, or I did—the picture in my memory has degraded like an old reel of film. But we were face-to-face, so close that our noses touched. His breath still smelled of tobacco.

One of us initiated the kiss. Another frame warped beyond recognition. Maybe it was both of us, running downhill together, falling at the bottom in a heap of tangled limbs. I didn’t have the presence of mind to be afraid that he would recoil at my cold lips, disgust distorting his still-flushed face. I could do nothing but yield to his insistent warmth, at once soft and searing.

I don’t know how long it was before I felt that telltale fullness in my mouth. Harry’s warmth turned molten, burning me from the inside out. Something deep and ancient told me to hold on, to bear down until the heat liquified and drenched the flames lapping at my throat.

My every cell cried out as I jumped off the bench, almost pushing Harry to the ground in my haste to get away. I was distantly aware of him asking what was wrong, if I was alright. 

But I was already gone.

***

Without consciously meaning to, I kept up with Harry through the years. It wasn’t difficult—he was everywhere. Playing Tchaikovsky on the radio, bowing with Bernstein on TV, smiling in his lopsided way on concert flyers. He’d managed to slow down after all.

Last week, I bought a seven-dollar magazine just to read an article about his new house. With retirement looming, he’d built a villa in the Italian countryside where his husband, a famous tenor, had grown up. In the cover photo, they grinned at each other over their custom marble breakfast nook, bright and sun-drenched.

Maybe that was why I now found myself sitting in the audience as Harry played the first stop on his farewell tour, some fifty years after we’d met.

Though I hadn’t seen him again until now, time had dulled the fear that had followed me after that night. Eventually I’d accepted that I’d gotten lucky, that I hadn’t revealed what I thought I had.

I was sat near the front row, in clear view of the stage. Such risks were nothing to me now—after decades of living cautiously (save for one night), I had become almost hopeful for exposure, for the destruction that would follow. At least it would be something new.

To my surprise, though, I was bored for much of the performance. Harry wasn’t as I remembered him—he played slowly, laboriously. His hair was too neat, his face too serious. I’d been expecting the adrenaline of being near him again, or at least the pleasant ache of nostalgia. But the man on stage was a stranger to me.

He finished the second encore to thunderous applause, and rose to bow. But as he bent down, his eyes finally landed on mine in the audience. They lingered, widening, recognition dawning. 

And though I’d sat here in the perverse hope of being seen, now I wanted nothing more than to hide, to cover my unchanged face.

I couldn’t remember why I’d acted so recklessly, why I’d risked tainting my most-revisited memories. Whatever horrified expression was about to cross Harry’s face would replace his smile in all of them. All I could hope for now was that he didn’t trust his aging eyes.

But neither disgust nor doubt came. Instead, he inclined his head in my direction. One corner of his mouth turned up—fifty years disappeared in an instant.

I knew I should smile, give some acknowledgement. But I was frozen, thinking about the aftermath of that disastrous kiss. How he couldn’t have mistaken what had happened, not with everything else he must have noticed. Yet he hadn’t seemed scared, or even surprised.

It wouldn’t have changed anything. Not in any way that mattered.

 But all those nights I’d walked until my shoes gave out, the sounds of the city falling away as I replayed it…to have missed something so simple every time. I’d held on to as much of him as I could, preserving him in my memory, believing myself to be safely shrouded in darkness. But he had seen me.

The sound of people murmuring broke me from my reverie. They hadn’t expected a third encore, yet there Harry was, settling back onto the piano bench.

Before his fingers hit the keys, I knew he’d play the Liebestraum. He’d lost his agility, and the arpeggios sounded more like plunking rain than cascading waterfalls.

But nothing had changed. Not in any way that mattered.

In the dark concert hall, a warmth settled over me that felt so much like sunlight I thought I would burn up in my seat.

I closed my eyes.