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Alzheimer's Sonata |
The pendulum clock strikes seven: He is startled: In former days it was in the winter garden, beside the grand piano. He pushes his head higher onto the wine-red bolster, one of the few things from the apartment that had followed him voluntarily, and he stares at it and at the two pictures at the southern wall. Dali’s clocks. Shrunk. Without any souls. Hung up. And van Gogh’s blue chair, before he cut his ear off.
The pendulum clock shows a quarter past seven. He sees himself in the blunt mirror and talks to himself with that rolling R: I have no ear missing. And my old clock is still working. Why am I here then?
He had always wanted to stay in his home, to play the moonlight sonata for his guests. A threefold suspicion begins to grow: Only because I confused “Clair de lune” for the moonlight sonata and only because I did not remember my aunt’s name, only because I did not know how to peel an apple…
The pendulum clock strikes eight, he reaches out for it with his slender hand: what time is it, five or seven? Your name is Eliza, isn’t it? I dedicated my moonlight sonata to you, didn’t I?
Don’t you remember me?
The pendulum clock strikes fast, nine, ten, twelve times one after the other.
He flings his arms around his head, pulls a face. When he defends himself against this inopportune bombing and says: “You are mean, Eliza, do you know that? And so unmusical!”, spittle runs down his chin and necklace.
Then he turns, with his eyes facing the wall and he falls silent for a while.
The pendulum clock also seems to understand the senselessness of its bustling swinging to and fro. It stops exactly at three o’clock with a metallic jingle. He realizes this unexpected clock silence. And not only the silence. He again pushes himself higher in his bed, moves his hand over his head. The earlobe trembles. Somebody plays his grand piano. A reverie emphasizing the light colours, preludes in his fingers and warms his body, as has not happened for a long time. Down to the shrunken spheres of his soft parts. He fevers, is jubilant. The moonlight sonata! I am playing the moonlight sonata! And all of you have come!
A short revival and then the knowledge is tiredly spreading, his joy is crumbling: But I am lying in my bed, thus I cannot be sitting at my piano. I am not like that pope, forgot his name again, who was seen at several places at the same time… And even if it is me, for whom am I playing? Since three o’clock Eliza’s heart has no longer been striking for me. It is as if I was at a place not recognizable and falling out of time.
He enjoys thinking of speculations: seemingly I do not lie in bed, but on the keyboard. Who would have thought that drowsy joints and buttocks can play the piano so well: ascending trills lead to the cheerful excitement of the final allegro...
He admires himself and knows to comfort himself: the wrong minor chord wrongly played by his left foot, well you know, that might even happen to Mr. Horowitz. But Mr. Horowitz and his grand piano would never be so interlocked like we are.
He gets up, opens the door and shouts: Why am I here, why am I not at home?
Your medicine, Mr. Wiese! The answer comes fast. Open your mouth wide! One more candy!
Yes, no, wait! He clears his throat, feels harassed by that night nurse with her stubborn words in her mouth. At home he never drank such disgusting pap, there he did not have to transport a milk sugar lump from his tongue to his palate and from one cheek to the other.
His uneasiness is still growing when the night nurse puts an ampoule with an oily liquid on his grand piano. Take that away! Never put anything like that on my piano!, he protests. They burst into my room and dishonour my piano, so that the moonlight sonata will stink of their fucking oil.
He bends down so hastily that his head collides with the edge of his iron bed. Even heavier than on Golgotha! He suppresses a moan, creeping on all fours, in the attempt to manoeuvre the grand piano to the door and he only stops when his spine is cracking and threatens to break like an icicle.
His depressed mood persists, he sighs: At home my music smelled of lemon grass and elderberries.
“Lemon grass hours,” that’s what he called the only night of love with the dancer. At home he was the griffin whereas here he is watched like a warbler.
Do you understand that?, he asks the night nurse, while he is playing some trills with his fourth and fifth fingers while standing. Sound pictures that want to be only odour!
But she is no longer where she was a moment ago, she calls at him from the bathroom where she flushes the toilet. “Mr. Wiese! You have forgotten to flush the toilet again!
Mr. Wiese? Who is Mr. Wiese? Don’t you confuse me! he grumbles while he is pouring the liquid over the pendulum clock. For you, Eliza! He whispers. For your forgetfulness. Hear me, sister? Your medicine acted fast, Eliza goes tick-tock again.
I know, my bride, it is very late for us: three, four, five, five, five, please continue striking. Let us dance! How do you like these triads? Those four thirds piled one above the other?
He is holding the pendulum clock in his arms and dancing waltz pirouettes. Faster and faster and wider and wider, out of the room, through other rooms and corridors, between fridges and wheel chairs, through bathrooms, around the computers, around dusty palm trees in the entrance hall, crucifixes and ceiling lamps.
I knew it! the night nurse complains. What do you want to do with that heavy pendulum clock on the fire escape? You will come down at once, Mr. Wiese, won’t you!
Mr. Wiese does come down all right. But Eliza and I will go home in this moonlit night.
My grand piano knows the way.
copyright 2006
Francisca
Ricinski-Marienfeld |
