Ludwika, sitting in her bedroom with a mug in her hands and a blanket about her shoulders, listening to the rain outside. Crying, a bit. It's the day after the funeral and she doesn't know what to do now, what to make of the life that's going on without him. Her daughter is asleep in the next room. Ludwika hasn't eaten in three days.
And then she hears it. Piano chords, soft and haunting and eerie, so trembling and uncertain that she does not, at first, think they are real. She's hearing things. It happens more and more these days. But it keeps going, building into song, into budding, breaking beauty and she gets up, softly, pads over to the door. Across the hallway is Fryderyk's room, the door shut, the lights off, bur she hears it. She hears it. With a shaky hand she turns the knob and steps inside.
It's dark, just after sunset, and the room is filled with the last of the blue, rainy-day light that reaches beneath the drawn curtains. She can see almost nothing—the empty bed, the unlit lamps, the piano standing on the far end where they had brought it in for Delfina. There is nothing there. She aches.
And then she hears it again, music coming from somewhere, somewhere very close and she turns, almost falls to her knees at what she finds there. Fryderyk. Fryderyk seated at the piano and playing, pale and translucent, the same color as the dirty Paris rain outside. She starts to cry.
She will tell this story later and they will pat her shoulder with condescending hands, whispering, Yes, dear, I'm sure you did see him. I'm sure he's with you right now. Would you like another cup of tea? And it will annoy her, make her want her brother again because then she could roll her eyes at him and he would laugh, grey hair and white teeth and everything would be alright again. But for one moment, for one glorious, breath-taking moment, she believes in God.
She takes one step toward him, asks, uncertainly, "Fryderyk?" He turns toward her, young, young like she hasn't seen him in years, broad-shouldered again and strong-armed and she wants to hug him, she wants to pull him to her breast like she did when he was just a little boy. "I… is it really you?"
"Have you missed me?" he asks, and his voice sounds different but still the same somehow, sort of quavery and distorted like they're speaking through water or heavy glass. She puts a hand to her mouth.
"I didn't—you, you died, Fryderyk. You died and I—" And my world stopped turning, she thinks. You died and everything I ever loved went with you. He smiles, blue hair, now, and white teeth.
"I came to say goodbye."
She reaches out with shuddering hands and touches him for the first time, the last time in a very long time. Her hand meets suede and sinew, the softness of the coat he's wearing, the starchiness of his collar, and she just brushes it back and forth for a moment as she tries to think of what to say. Once she would have given anything for this, and now that it's here she feels it slipping away. "I, are—is… is everything healed, now? Are you… healed?"
He turns on his piano stool and she can see through him, can see the piano keys on the other side of his coat. It frightens and fascinates her by turns. "Yes," Fryderyk says, and his voice is warmer now and more tender, not graveled by years of coughing fits. "Everything is beautiful, Ludwika. I wish you could see it."
"I… believe you," she answers, because she does not know what else to say. How could anyone conceive of heaven who has not been there before?
"Flowers," he whispers, smiling, "bigger than you are. Rivers, oceans so blue you wouldn't believe there were fish in them. Perpetual springtimes. People who spend all their time falling desperately in love."
"Have you made acquaintances with God yet?"
"I don't know." He lifts his hand, intertwines it with hers, and he is cold and damp and she's never felt anything like it before, it's like holding onto mist made man. "There are so many people, sister. All of them living their own lives in their own time, baking bread and raising children and making love under billions and billions of stars. It is nothing like we imagined. It's so much better than we could have ever conceived."
And she believes him. God help her, she does.
I wrote this instead of my term paper. I just - I have a lot of feels about Ludwika.