Music Of The Mind
I remember the sound of my mother's hand, as it displaced the air, moving so fast, coming down upon me; there was no feeling, at first, when the blow connected; there was only that noise, that slight whistle of the air, and then the solid reality of the slap. It was drumbeat loud, the first of many, martialling the unseen troops of my shattered obedience, calling them back into place, forcing them to behave. The pain did not come till later, and I only remember being mesmerized by the sound.
I don't remember what I had done. Something terrible, by the reaction it caused, by the punishment it seemed to merit- I don't recall being a bad child, but certainly I must have been an unruly one. From the beginning I suppose I had a mind of my own. This seems to me now the sort of thing a parent would wish in a child; I do not, however, have much experience with children, hardly having been one myself, and I suppose it is likely that close contact with a young person would cause me to alter this opinion.
Regardless, this I remember.
She would call me to rise in the morning; exceptionally early, not even a hint of the sun showing over the horizon, limited as it was by the buildings in front of our home. I would bathe myself in the basin, having first gone to draw water from the rusted pump just outside the door. That was as far as I was allowed to go in the mornings, before I was dressed for the day. Having washed myself, shaking water from my face and hands, I turned next to my clothing; trousers first, shirt to slip on over my thin arms trembling from the cold, fingers not yet dexterous, fumbling at the buttons. I buttoned my shirt inside out for years. No one had ever taught me the correct way to do it.
Jacket. Ragged and patched, mended, retorn and mended again. It had no cloth at the elbows.
Shoes. They were tight, they pinched my feet. Rainwater seeped in when I stepped carelessly into a puddle. I caught cold constantly.
Mask.
They say its not possible for a person to remember their first year; the mind is unformed, the memory not yet functioning properly, perhaps. I say they are wrong, in my case. I remember two things from before my first birthday:
Warm darkness, close around me, better than a blanket, more comforting than anything I have ever known. The first, last, and only time I ever felt truly safe,
that I truly was where I belonged to be. My mother's womb, and her hands on the other side of the soft dark walls, loving caresses before she knew what I looked like.
The second, the day I was born. Lying there, a sheer whiteness above my head, a glimmering light. An awful roaring noise that was only the air assaulting my ears. This terrible feeling of being utterly helpless, so completely unable to do anything for myself. What was this, this coldness all around? This oxygen invading my lungs. Forced instantly into hell, and the freeze of the air burned hotter than any fires.
Then a face loomed over me, words were spoken. A piece of cloth was laid down then, over my face.
No holes to see or breathe out of, not then.
"Let me not see it!" my mother had cried, and they were only trying to placate and humour her. If I died of suffocation so much the better; there would be no need to worry about me thereafter.
But I did not die.
Thinking about it now, I regret.
I did not know what I looked like for a very long time. I had no concept of myself at all...all I could see, my hands and feet, were hardly linked, in my mind,
with the appearances of others. My mother was beautiful; my only idea of beauty was her, and this did not last long. She was young, I know that now, but she seemed so old to me then, so distand and so ancient and so coldly perfect.
She smiled at herself in the mirror, and I hated her reflection, smiling back. There were no smiles for me, only the grim set of her lips and that strange fear in her eyes.
Every morning, her voice floating from behind her closed and locked door, an airy drift of sound that I stood still to hear. Later I would take the noise, duplicate it in my head and force it from my lips, that light and feathered voice.
"Are you dressed."
Not so much a request for information as simply waiting for confirmation of the daily routine. I must have my mask on. There was no other way.
But still she would wait.
And I would reply.
"I am, mother."
The door would open, and she would come out, an odd innocence in her faith in me. Such a child she was, spoiled in a way I would never be. Children we were,
unable to communicate and unwilling to complicate our relationship with compromises.
I listened to the pad of her foosteps down the hall, bare feet white in the cold, tiptoeing, small heels, concentrate on the sound, Erik, the sound.
The sound.
I heard her breathing, soft breath pushing in and out of soft lips, governed by a heart beat, joined by the the rhythm of my own. I heard the tentative movements of her fingers as she gathered the previous night's dishes together. I heard the stirrings in the bedroom of the man who was not my father.
"Erik."
This was my cue to take myself out of sight; I rarely needed to be told more than once.
One of the mornings that I stayed after she told me to leave, the man (giant, broad as a tree, looked down at me as though I were nothing, and he were God) spoke, and his voice was low and powerful, the deepest, most beautiful thing I had yet heard.
He called me a demon, and my mother a slut who slept with the devil.
Concentrate on the sound, Erik, the sound.
Days afterward I tried to bring that growl to my voice, standing in my room, hands twitching, neck tense, constricting the muscles of my vocal cords, forcing it, forcing it. Forcing it.
Collapsed from lack of air.
Lay on the dirty floor and muttered into it.
"Demon. Slut. Devil. Accursed."
The mask got dirty.
I concentrated on the sound.
Later, the whistle of air as her hand moved through it, a beautiful arc, perfectly planned to meet up with my cheek.
"Have I raised a pig?" she said she snarled she sang, her lip curled in anger, a ghastly parody of a smile, her pleasure at my pain. "A pig to wallow in dirt, a child with no consideration for his appearance?"
She would have gone on, I know it, but my hand had caught hers on the next downswing. Only seven, I was already strong, though deceptively thin. I held on to her long enough to make her look into my eyes. She never looked into my face, but my eyes she could not escape.
"What is my appearance?" I asked.
Only the mask. Only the whiteness of the mask was my face; as far as I knew, when I took it off at night, I was invisible to the world. But the whiteness, sullied now from my lying on the floor, was not an answer I could accept any longer.
She let me look in the mirror, the forbidden silver glass. She made me look in the mirror, accepted at last that her hands could not give me pain, but that my fright at my face would keep me in line; she hoped, she prayed, for she was at her wit's end. I got in the way, I did not listen or obey. She held my head in her clawed hands, forced me to look at it, forced me. It looked back at me, and it looked frightened, this demon child. It did not smile as her reflection did, it gaped open its mouth and screamed and screamed.
I concentrated on the sound, that high-pitched heartbreak of a terror cry, utterly unrecognizeable as my own voice.
Acceptance comes in the night, creeps in as though afraid of what reception it will recieve. I slept and had the most horrible nightmares, but it was me doing the killing and the maiming, and the horrid, hellish face was nowhere to be seen.
In the morning I went about the usual routine. I was shaken still from the night before, but my hands betrayed none of it; for once they performed their tasks smoothly and deftly; I even admired the perfection of long fingers, still childish but changing rapidly even as I did. Trousers and shirt buttons and the winching sound of the rusted pump and the concentrate concentrate. The sound, Erik, the sound.
The piano belonging to the neighbors: when I climbed up the fence and peeked over the edge, I could see it, there in their living room. I knew what it was, I knew what it did, I knew what it would sound like when I pressed the keys. I craved it, loved it lusted it.
I took it.
They were gone; I had seen them leave earlier, the father headed down the street, the mother and her two little daughters, both younger than I, headed up. I climbed the fence and I slipped through the unlocked window and I spent the most blissful half hour on that piano, experimenting and caressing and with my ear to the keys as I played, first high, then low, then my favourite keys just on the left side of the middle, these as-yet-unnamed sounds enwrapping me in light. Nothing that sounded so beautiful could ever come from the demon I had seen in the mirror.
When at last I left, so reluctant such longing glances cast behind at the hulk of the piano in the early morning light, I slipped back into the house and heard my mother's voice.
"Are you dressed."
I called back that I was.
She emerged from the room, hardly sparing me a glance as she shuffled towards the kitchen; she'd spent the night alone, and was fully clothed. I crept behind her as usual, watched the soles of her feet as they were white smudges in the gloom, looked up to see her stopped dead still. The light from the window shone on my bare face.
Ah, that was it.
My sin, this maskless horror.
She flew at me, and the pain this time was severe... I counted blows for as long as I could, and then could no longer hold the noise in my head. It disappeared in a rush and left me empty, the first time I'd been this bereft since before I was born.
The sight of her hand was not enough to warn me.
I could not hear.
Days afterward, I crept back into the neighbor's house, having waited for them to leave it empty once more. I stepped in front of the piano, and I looked at the cool white keys, so enticing just beneath my chest, just beneath my fingers, the pedals waiting a few inches beneath my dangling feet. I hesitated, I believe-- unsure of what reception the instrument would give me this time, unsure if it had all been a dream, unsure.
I pressed my fingers down, and I felt the thrum of music through the ivory and wood and strings, and I heard nothing, I could not hear.
Any other child-- let us assume for the moment that there is another child such as this, and that he is cursed with the same troubles and sorrows and longings as I-- would have thrown a fit, flung himself at the piano, demanded its voice.
I played serenely for an hour or two, unheeding of the passing day, unheeding of the fact that my mother in the house next door could surely hear what I was doing. In perfect bliss I played, the notes surrounded each other and marched like soldiers, entwined like lovers, sang like angels, danced like demons. It was there, I knew, the sound. Concentrate, Erik, concentrate.
If it sounded as beautiful as it did in my head, nothing that lovely can come from the demon face in the mirror.
I cannot hear.
It has not stopped me from making music.