The
pianist
 |
| Photo by Marta Santos |
It was
raining as if there will never be an end. It was a thick, strong
rain... almost a water curtain. Most of the village locals were
watching the show sheltered under the arcades in the plaza, except
for him. He wanted to watch it closely. He didn't mind being poured
to his entrails by that celestial cascade.
He stepped
ahead and got a little bit closer. The water was flowing and bubbling
through his hair, pouring out by the edges and soaking his back
completely. Everybody was looking at him but he didn't care too much.
His face was so wet that it was impossible to distinguish the rain
out of his tears. His resemblance was unshakeable, and honestly, it
was very hard to realize that he was crying. More to say, it was
impossible, as there were no traces of life in that stony face...
only two cold, wide opened eyes staring at the view of the piano
getting dissolved in the middle of the plaza.
It was a
gorgeous grand piano. You could say that, only the sound produced by
the keys could overtake the elegance in its appearance. However,
people were smiling while it was melted like butter under the tapping
water drops. It was being hurt and destroyed by them, they were dying
all the keys grey and dissolving the piano insistently, as if it was
a wet carton. People were looking at it with curiosity and
morbidness. They were having fun with that. Public executions have
always kept people happy. The major knew it and that was the reason
why he was nodding in content while the piano was falling down
completely under the destructive strength of the rain.
He was the
only one crying for the grand piano, staring displeased. That
instrument was his life and with its death he was also dying… or
better to say, his soul was dying. His body was standing poured and
motionless with the impotence of those who contemplate their own
suicide.
That was a
sad town. That was a grey town. Nobody spoke in Silence Village. The
streets were always mute. Only the melody that instrument sang under
his fingers confirmed him it was alive, in the long mornings, the
long afternoons. The long nights. It will always be winter now. Those
thin and long fingers knew it very well, that is why they were
contracting hardly in a fist. It will never be day time again for
them, even when it stopped raining.
The gloomy
and absentminded inhabitants of Silence Village started leaving the
plaza bit by bit as soon as the piano was completely dissolved. Like
puppets with no strings, like shadows with faces... they retired to
their grey houses. That rainy November afternoon, only one man stood
in the centre of the plaza, getting soaked under the rain. His name
was David, but they called him ‘the crazy chap’.
Nobody
understood that he refused to do anything apart from spending hours
and days in front of that thing he called piano, pressing that sort
of white and black teeth again and again... sometimes very slowly,
other times so fast that his hands seemed to disappear above the
keys.
He didn't
use to labour the earth, he didn't get drunk in the tavern and he
didn't go stealing apples with the young boys of the town, nor spying
the girls when they took a bath in the river.
He was like
an alien. That ‘piano’ seemed to be absorbing his soul, and there
was no way to make him have some fun with others. That was the reason
why the neighbours of the town spoke to the major and the decision
was taken among them together, to condemn the piano to disappear
under the rain.
This was
the reason why that cold and grey November afternoon, David lost his
soul.
Nobody
missed the prodigious melody that wrapped the town in summer and
winter. Nobody missed the celestial music which danced among the
leaves of the trees in Silence Village. Nobody was saddened because
the wind didn't sound in half and eighth notes any more.
There was
no grief, no sorrow that cold and grey afternoon, because all the
inhabitants in Silence Village were deaf.
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