that’s it.

Conversation with our friend the writer, last Saturday, 19 May 2024

I thought it was a good concert, but then I heard the results 

I find things disturbing. Not music, but in life. Anything that is a distraction; what is not needed. 

I do not find myself likeable 

That’s it. 

“I knew a man who ended his life like this. He was a great man, Ernest, a kind man; a wonderful pianist. He had called us- his friends and relatives- to his home, had said this, and for ten minutes afterward he rested his head in his palm. He was so skinny, Ernest, so frail; his jaw wavered, his eyes glimmered, his cheeks so hollow… 

And then he sat there, Ernest, weeping. At the end of his life he was weeping, because it had taken him 86 years to say these words. It was his psalm, or history, and his final act- born of no motive, not as to question- was to hand this history to us.  I remember these words, and I remember not his weeping, but how it felt to watch him weep, to play; how the air floated around him. These words, Ernest, are so heavy, like vessels, or love, and they have touched my life like nothing else.

His whole life he was a silent man, or an angry man, or a man tormented by his own shortcomings. He would walk from the stage, to a standing ovation, with his head hanging, would not hear the applause, would say always,
“but then I heard the results.”

When he left us with these words, uttered without calculation, without thought, on a quiet Thursday under a winter’s sun, he changed all of our lives in ways unknowable. Do you know what I thought, Ernest? Do you know what I think now?

Let me also weep on death’s doorstep.

He left this world not knowing if it had been worth living, not understanding why he had suffered so quietly, so privately. Weeping, Ernest, because he had thought, almost until the very end, that it would all be made sensible; that something would float down, touch his shoulder, not to take away his pain, but to say; here is why you have suffered. And three days before he died, he finally understood that he would not be touched, that his hands had not been reaching upward, but inward, toward his own soul. His own soul, Ernest; not that of a God, but that of a man. He wept not because he was sad, not because he regretted, but because he understood.

And so he stepped, toward the block, down the sea’s throat, the illegible stone. He sighed, and his soul departed; his music, his torment. He left us in silence, Ernest; his final words

I do not like myself. 

He left us in silence, and then music, for every night, Ernest, I come here, and I listen to that Sonata, and I am taken to that room; I recall the timber chair, how his shirt clung to his feeble arm; how large his hands were. His words, 

Weeping

And not knowing. 

Or…

I…

But go, quickly, and don’t say hello to anyone you meet on the way to town.” 

Our writer took me gently by the arm and led me to the back door. I whistled and Gracie the Australian Shepherd came outside with me. I walked by a dead bird, around whom no flies had yet gathered, and found myself in a paddock with cows and chickens. I resolved to walk it for a while- to the pond- not yet wanting to return to town. And then I heard the front gate unfasten, and a moment later, muffled exclamations. Well? Do you blame me? I circled back toward the rear door, found a small window, and watched in on the living room. 

It was the girl from the pool. In a pale blue dress, her golden hair falling over her cheeks, smiling. 

For a minute, neither of them moved or said anything, and then our writer walked over to her and calmly, he knelt. 

Gracie barked, they were engaged…