The White Piano (Still Life with Memories Book 2)

by Uvi Poznansky

  In spite of the marks of time, and the change of place, she seems to have gone back, and frozen, somehow, in that moment.

  I remember: I had just come back from school, and pulled my bike up the stairs, and flicked the kickstand, which made the chain rattle. And my algebra book landed, suddenly, with a smack on the floor, but I left it there, because I was eager to tell mom about scoring an A—and in biology, no less—and to ask her about her upcoming performance, because it was to be Beethoven’s fifth, which to this day, I find deeply moving.

  I found her sitting in her usual place, the bench down there, in the living room—but this time, she was turned with her back to the bust of Beethoven, and to the white piano.

  My father who, for some reason, must have come early from work, and was watching her from some distance away, sitting by his tape recorder on the balcony, turned to me and—before I could utter a single word—made a subtle signal, putting his finger to his lips, indicating silence.

  And without a sound, his lips formed the words, Careful, Ben, slow down. You can see she is tired, very tired today.

  So I started backing away, and very quietly, picked up my book from the floor. And after a while my mother, still looking outside as if in thought, said in a flat voice, “Did you finish your thing, your homework? Did you practice already? Don’t cut it short, or your playing will suffer. Mark my words—or for sure, you will come to regret it.”

  I remember. Then—as now—she might as well have been staring at a brick wall, rather than out of a pane of glass.

  So now I force myself to forget the bent figure hanging over her, and I kneel down before my mother and breathe deeply and say, “Mom?”

  And I wait there on my knees for a long while, and change my position to a squat, hoping that eventually, she will come up with something to say, because she did so that last time.

  And I wish that in her heart, she is as exhilarated as I am at this moment, because that can easily explain why she is sitting there, speechless.

  “Mom?” I whisper. “It’s me, Ben.”

  I never prayed before, so now—while trying to balance the combined weight of my body and of the album—I am looking for words, the right words to call on Luck, or Fate, whatever: Please, give me a sign. If my mother can catch sight of me, if only she can laugh, I think all will be well.

  “Here I am, mom,” I press on.

  What was I thinking, I ask myself. Of course it will take some time before she turns to look at me, before she smiles, even, and takes me into her arms, to make me feel warm again. Years, years have passed since mom heard my voice. To her this moment feels, perhaps, as if it came from another lifetime. Still, I must trust that she will, somehow, find a way to forgive me, forgive my long absence; which is not an easy thing to do, for a woman as proud as she is—I mean, as she used to be.

  “I am back,” I tell her. “Mom, look at me.”

  The young staff member cuts in, calling me from across the room. “You better sit,” she says. “You better get comfortable.”

  “Thank you, I will,” I say, and adjust the album, which is covered right here, under my waterproof jacket, and secured in place by both arms.

  “And” she adds, “if you need anything, my name is Martha.” Then her eyes turn away as if to say, Whatever it is, I have seen it all.

  I watch her picking up some wet tissues from the floor, and stuffing them into the bulging garbage bag. Only now does it hit me: The smell, the pungent smell of chlorine bleach from the nearby toilet, and of stale water from the vase, and of withered flowers from the belly of the bag, and most of all, of soiled diapers.

  “Here,” says Martha, dragging a chair towards me, “grab this one.”

  So I make an effort, an uneasy effort to get comfortable, by flopping myself into the seat, and unzipping my jacket, and taking out the photo album, and then putting it in my lap, closed.

  I bend over to my mother, saying, “Look here, I brought you something.”

  There is no way to tell if she has heard me. Her gaze is fixed, as steadily as before, on the same small pane of glass, through which the sun is blazing; which makes it hard to figure out what she sees out there.

  I push forward, aiming to view it, somehow, from her angle, which at first, is too hard to imagine:

  In my mind I try, I see a map, the entire map of her travels around the world. A whole history. It has been folded over and again, collapsed like a thin tissue, into a square; which is suspended there—right in front of her—a tiny, obscure dot on that window.

  And inside that dot, the path of her journey crisscrosses itself in intricate patterns, stacked in so many papery layers. And the names of the places, in which she performed back then, in the past—London, Paris, Jerusalem, San Petersburg, New York, Tokyo—have become scrambled, illegible even, because by now, she can no longer look past that thing, that dot. She cannot see out of herself.

  She is, I suppose, confined.

  I take my eyes off the flash in the glass and then, pointing at the photo album, I beg my mother.

  “Look,” I say, “can you remember—”

  Which is when, in the blink of an eye, I notice that those fingers, above her head—the bony fingers that keep playing with her curls—have halted for a second, midway through the hair.

  And there, leaning towards me over mom’s shoulder is a lifeless face, in which the cheeks are sunken, the eyes are ringed by shadows, and the spirit—starved, desperately starved, perhaps for some regard, some human exchange, some token of attention—even if it is intended for somebody else.

  “Mine kind,” he pleads, with bewildered passion, seemingly convinced that he knows me, because—wherever he is—this soul, I guess, is already lost.

  It is sad to say, but he is no longer hampered by a sense of reality, nor by memory; both of which must have dimmed in him, a long time ago. I have no idea how best to react, because how can you push someone back who is barely standing on his feet, and how can you tell him to go away, when he is far from being altogether there.

  “Give me,” the jaws open in his skull-like face, and the arms come for me.

  And I hesitate, unsure if he wants to give me a hug, or to get the thing out of my hold.

  To my relief, Martha rushes over and—gently but firmly—wraps an arm around the old man’s waist, where the edge of the diaper peeks out from the loose pants. And she leads him away, leaving me in the corner to face my mother, alone.

  Then, to the sound of the thin, painful voice in the distance, breathing the words, Though I know not... What you are... Twinkle, twinkle... Little star, I glance at my mother.

  I wonder if what I am going to say about this or that photograph will make any difference, because now I am starting to lose heart. I doubt we can ever find a way—be it a way back, or a way forward—to connect to each other.

  The time I remember is no more than a wrinkle for her.

  And so, vacillating madly between hope and despair, I sit there for a bit, utterly still. Then I make up my mind. I clench a hand over the cover, the antiqued leather cover of the album, and feel the intricate detailing, the raised spine, and the spot of rust right here, on the metal clasp holding it all together. I unlock it, and lift the cover. And when I look down I realize that it has fallen open to the very last page.

  This, now, is where I have to begin.

  She Is Looking Out The Window

  Chapter 8

  These photographs take me by surprise, because only now, in this cold, high noon light, I can see how badly they have deteriorated, and because in each one of them a teenage boy, whom for a second I cannot recognize, looks back at me. He is standing a bit awkwardly, pressed there in between him and her, those out-of-focus figures, which look so much like my parents—only younger.

  The boy is tense. There is a crop of fresh zits on his brow, and his hand is held, for some reason, to his chin. The page sways in my hand. Its gilded edge turns, catching the sunlight. The photographs bend softly wit
h it and give a sharp glint, which is when something leaps back to mind and I know who he is, and why he is doing it.

  Holding it open I raise the album from my lap, and peel away the clear plastic sheet to expose the page. I tilt it to my mother, saying, “Remember? You warned me, weeks before my Bar-Mitzvah, that pictures will be taken, no ifs and buts, that’s the way it is, and to make sure I have a nice complexion when the moment comes, so that one day, when I grow up and stop misbehaving, and stop being so immature, we can all look back on the good times; which scared me, mom.”

  She is looking out the window.

  And so, I continue.

  “So then,” I say, “in the synagogue—utterly mortified in front of the crowd—I had the presence of mind to hold my chin. I held it there for dear life, held it all through the ceremony, because of this pimple, you see, which began to bud right there, on my skin, and because I had been stricken that morning, in the most vigorous manner, by a fear of looking at myself.”

  I listen to my voice and suddenly hesitate, wondering if I should describe these pictures to her. Why should I talk? Why should I play what I remember, when mom might have recorded the same scenes herself—but in an entirely different way? I mean, she sensed them from a different angle. Indeed, she must have a different story to tell, a different story about which to be silent.

  I know that what I am about to say should be about her—not me. I strive to make it so. But I doubt I can.

  “Look here” I urge her, thinking I have just caught her blinking. But when I raise my eyes to her, she is looking out the window.

  “Look,” I implore, “this is you, mom, sitting there, in the front row, during the service. On one side of you is dad, looking away, maybe at me or, more likely, at the Rebbitzin; and on the other—an empty seat, in memory of grandma, who had passed away less than a year before.”

  “Your hair was pinched up, see? Just perfect, mom—not even a loose strand. And you wore that ice-blue, long sleeve dress, which was simple, deceptively so, because it made you look so elegant.”

  “And here,” I point out, “is your pearl necklace. A minute later—I mean, right after they snapped this picture—you rose to your feet, because up there at the podium I had just finished reading my Haftora. And the pearls, they scattered to the floor, and were dinging all over the place, because the clip had snapped. Or maybe because you had forgotten to fasten it properly, again.”

  “And so aunt Hadassa, who was sitting there, in the next row, directly behind you—see there? You can tell, this knobby thing can be nothing else but her nose—she clapped her hands and jumped up and made everyone laugh nervously, by yelling, Mazel Tov! But at that moment, it was unclear to me if she said it because of the pearls, or because after all, it was my Bar-Mitzvah.”

  “Look! This is a closeup,” I press on. “A closeup of your hands, almost touching the challah cover, which was white velvet, I think—but in the picture, it looks beige, almost. Maybe because of the blemishes here, all over the surface.”

  “And dad was right here, by your side, the moment you lifted the cover away—even though his face is cropped out somehow. Now, if you focus—right here, next to the edge—you can get a glimpse of him. Can you tell? This is the fabric of his sleeve, right here, around your shoulders.”

  “And his eyes, they were shining—remember?—because he stood there, admiring the braiding of the challah, and explaining in great detail, to everyone around us, how cleverly you had measured out the dough and baked it, so that its weight would be just right. I mean, it would be exactly the same as my weight at birth, which was somehow symbolic, I suppose—but in my anxiety that day, I could make no sense of it at all. It only made me realize that I was no longer hungry.”

  By now I have run out of things to say about this page, so I turn it, flipping back to an earlier place in the album. There I can see a freshly dug grave, with a pot of flowers—but decide to skip it, because this is about grandma, I mean, about her passing away. I have nothing to say about that.

  So I glance sideways at my mother. A beam of light draws her profile, sketching the line of her nose, barely touching the curve of her cheek. If I wanted to, I could just extend my arms and hug her, because there she is, opposite me, and the distance... The distance, you see, is so close—but I hold myself back.

  She is looking out the window.

  Perhaps she is immersing herself in the grays and purples quivering there, on the other side of the glass, reaching a blur in the cold October sunlight. Perhaps, with great patience she is waiting there, waiting for the night, for the darkest hour, which is when her image may finally appear. It will come to the surface in front of her as if it were a sunken spirit, rising from the deep. Out of nowhere.

  For now she seems lost, searching for something—perhaps her reflection—in vain.

  I worry about mom, about the little things, which to someone else—someone who does not know her as I do—may seem trivial, insignificant. I worry she is missing her pearl earrings. I must find them for her. The little hole in her earlobe has shrunk away, turning somehow to flesh.

  In a whisper I say, “Mommy?” and wonder how the air vibrates over the tender membrane of her eardrum, how it changes into noise, how she gets it when pitch rises, when it falls.

  Can she sense the change?

  At what point does it translate, somehow, into meaning? By what path does it penetrate, going deeper? Does it excite the nerves, fire signals up there, between regions of her brain? Does it make some sense, at least at times? Is there any point in talking to her? Is she listening? Can she detect the thin sound—scratched like an old, overused vinyl record—which is coming faintly from behind, from the far end of this space? Can she understand the words? Is there sorrow in her? Is there hope?

  Then the traveller in the dark... Thanks you for your tiny spark... He could not see... Which way to go... If you did not twinkle so...

  And before the last sounds tremble away, I turn to look at the direction of that voice, and see an old, seated figure, stooping there over her hands, which are nestled in her lap. She stares at them as if to ask, Why are they empty? What was I holding? When did I lose it? Then her eyes break off. They are rambling now, wandering about, as if to call for help. Why am I here? Who is there? Who are you? And a minute later: tell me, where is home? Would you take me there, take me back, to the place where I belong?

  Meanwhile I sense a crisp sound, the sound of fabric rustling here, in my ear, and the staff member, Martha, is leaning over my shoulder.

  She takes a glimpse of the album and says, “This you?”

  And I say, “Yes.”

  And she points, “And this, your mom?”

  And I say, “Yes.”

  And Martha says nothing at first. She rolls up her sleeves, the light blue sleeves of her nurse uniform, and comes over, driving a large mop across the floor, which she ends up pointing at my shoes. So I get the hint, somehow, and lift them in the air, so she can wipe the floor under my chair, after which I can relax. Now Martha rests the mop in the corner, against the frame of that window, and comes back to stand here, in the patch of sunshine in front of me. And with her plastic glove she rubs out the sweat, because it seems to tickle her forehead, and run down the side of her nose.

  She studies the photographs for a bit, at the end of which she says, “You want her,” meaning, my mother, “to take a look?”

  And I say, “Yes.”

  “Let her hold it,” she suggests.

  And I say, “What?”

  And without bothering to explain, Martha pulls the disposable gloves off her plump fingers, and grabs the heavy album from my hold, which makes it close suddenly, with a loud slap. Then she brings it across the divide, so now it rests in my mother’s lap.

  “Now, let her open it,” she says.

  And I say, “What? How—”

  “Like this,” she says, and wraps her chubby hand around my mother’s fingers, which are laying there limply, so fragile,
so delicate. Martha presses them somehow into the photo album, letting it flip open where it may, which happens to be somewhere there, in the middle. She winks at me and then, turns away. This, now, is where I have to go on.

  My mother is still. She is looking out the window.

  For all I know, by now she might have found an outline, a faint trace in that square of glass, running though it in zigzag, this way and that, like a fine, hairline crack. Perhaps she is dreaming of her double, her other self floating there, pale, nearly transparent, over the fuzzy colors of fall: on the outside, looking in.

  For a second I wonder if I, too, can spot that mirror image. I search for an eye—but even without detecting it I reflect on what it may see, watching us from a detached, neutral position, out there. It may look carefully into us—or rather, into them: a withdrawn, aging woman; a young fool. One has been forgotten, the other—deceived.

  Something, perhaps a ray of sun, flickers across the floor between them. There they are, hanging at the edge of that pool of light in the corner. Careful not to touch, not to step, not to drown in it.

  This scene, I figure, can be altered not only by the point of view—but also by the medium, the clarity of the lens. And so I imagine that eye, observing us through the imperfections, through the thick and thin of the glass, trying to account for the distortions, judging what is true and what is false in us: us, who are distorted.

  The eye is studying, perhaps, the way we—no, they—are slumped: two strangers in two chairs across from each other, hesitant, unable to grasp for the real version of themselves, unsure of the bond between them: a mother and a boy.

  I think I can see that eye. It looks in, unblinking. It can read the signs of our silence. I want to speak—but find myself unable.

  And she, she is looking out the window. May God help us both.

  I bend over to point at a picture, there on the open page, which brushes against her bosom.