Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro

Author:Kazuo Ishiguro
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Anthologies, Musical fiction, Short Stories, Short Stories (single author), Fiction, Literary, Musicians, Music, English, General, Short stories
ISBN: 9780307271020
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-09-22T10:00:00+00:00

THE CAFE HAD CLOSED by the time I came down from the hills. Maggie and Geoff looked exhausted. Maggie said it had been their busiest day yet and seemed pleased about it. But when Geoff made the same point over supper—which we ate in the cafe from various left-overs—he put it like it was a negative thing, like it was awful they’d been made to work so hard and where had I been to help? Maggie asked how my afternoon had gone, and I didn’t mention Tilo and Sonja—that seemed too complicated—but told her I’d gone up to the Sugarloaf to work on my song. And when she asked if I’d made any progress, and I said yes, I was making real headway now, Geoff got up and marched out moodily, even though there was still food on his plate. Maggie pretended not to notice, and fair enough, he came back a few minutes later with a can of beer, and sat there reading his newspaper and not saying much. I didn’t want to be the cause of a rift between my sister and brother-in-law, so I excused myself soon after that and went upstairs to work some more on the song.

My room, which was such an inspiration in the daytime, wasn’t nearly so appealing after dark. For a start, the curtains didn’t pull all the way across, which meant if I opened a window in the stifling heat, insects from miles around would see my light and come charging in. And the light I had was just this one bare bulb hanging down from the ceiling rose, which cast gloomy shadows all round the room, making it look all the more obviously the spare room it was. That evening, I was wanting light to work by, to jot down lyrics as they occurred to me. But it got far too stuffy, and in the end I switched off the bulb, pulled back the curtains, and opened the windows wide. Then I sat in the bay with my guitar, just the way I did in the day.

I’d been there like that for about an hour, playing through various ideas for the bridge passage, when there was a knock and Maggie stuck her head round the door. Of course everything was in darkness, but outside down on the terrace there was a security light, so I could just about make out her face. She had on this awkward smile, and I thought she was about to ask me to come and help with yet another chore. She came right in, closed the door behind her and said:

“I’m sorry, love. But Geoff’s really tired tonight, he’s been working so hard. And now he says he wants to watch his movie in peace?”

She said it like that, like it was a question, and it took me a moment to realise she was asking me to stop playing my music.

“But I’m working on something important here,” I said.

“I know. But he’s really tired tonight, and he says he can’t relax because of your guitar.

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