A Certain Music by Walters & Spudvilas Read Free Book Online

her bodice as the child entered.
    'Can we try our dress on?'
    'Our dress?'
    'Yours too. Pleeeeease?'
    The woman took the gowns from their pegs. She held hers to her body. Frau Schwarz was right, cream silk against primrose lace did make her cheeks glow.
    'You're beautiful,' said the child.
    'So are you, Liebling .'
    They giggled. They glided like swans. They waltzed across the floor. Princesses on stone ...
    ' Mutti , you've dropped a letter.'
    'It's from Papa.'
    The child continued to waltz. 'Did you tell him?'
    'What?
    'About the dress?'
    'Papa is proud,' the woman answered. In her hand the paper was cold. Cold, and as bleak as the message it contained would most certainly be. She would read it but not speak of it.
    The child danced on. Everything would be all right. God was all seeing and all powerful. Her teacher said ...
    'I'll make a picture for Frau Schwarz of us dancing,' she chirruped. 'And one for Papa too ... '
    She went in search of paper and crayons ...

Twenty-three
    At the house in the Reinerstrasse the man was writing. An empty flask rocked to and fro along the floor. The night was wild, and papers fluttered in a draught of wind.
    It was a frenzy of writing ...
    '... as I reflect upon my miserable life,' he wrote, 'I am God's unhappiest creature. Not to hear ... If I belonged to any other profession, it would not be quite so bad; but in my profession this is a terrible affliction ... All hope of being cured has faded like the fallen leaves of autumn ... As for my music I am filled with dread ...'
    The pen fell from his hand. The darkness deepened.
    Suddenly he sat up. Something was different. It was the light. He pulled back the curtains and opened the window. It was snowing. Sheets of snow fell from the trees and the rooftops, and on the ground, carriages and carts ploughed furrows deep as trenches.
    He heard the town hall clock strike midnight, and as it did, a phantom-like creature in a black cloak appeared beneath his window and beckoned to him ...
    The man stepped from the door. It was cold. His boots sank in the snow, but the hand kept urging him on. Everywhere there were people, lots of people, stamping their feet and beating their hands on their chests in an effort to keep warm ... He moved on, keeping the black cloak in sight. From time to time he stumbled in a drift of snow.
    The strange creature had turned into a building, a place so derelict it was falling down; its beams splayed like fingers against the sky.
    The man followed. Along corridors through which snowflakes circled he went. At a door that hung from one hinge the creature stopped. He pushed against it.
    The room was big. From broken beams and gaping glass snowflakes swirled, they filled each crevice and corner.
    In the room there were chairs, hundreds and hundreds of empty chairs, and gathered together, grumbling and mumbling, was a crowd of phantom-like creatures similar to the first, in black cloaks.
    As the man stood there, two of them started to sing but since they couldn't be heard above the mumbling and grumbling they began to sing louder and louder. They raised their voices and bellowed like bulls. The man put his hands to his ears, for strangely he could hear everything.
    When he looked up the hand was beckoning again. He moved forward, and as he did the black cloaks parted to reveal what looked like a piano. It was exactly like a piano but it had no keys. The man recoiled in terror, for now all the people who had been in the snow had gathered in the room and were chanting 'Play, play, play ... Play, play, play ... '
    'I can't.'
    'Play, play, play ... '
    'There are no keys –'
    One started to laugh, and then another and another and now the whole room was rocking with laughter. Laughter, loud and terrible ...
    • • •
    The man blinked, he opened his eyes. He was in his bed. He was in his clothes, but this was his bed. There was sweat in his eyes and on his hands ... He staggered up, shuffled through food and paper and clothes