The Incandescent Threads by Richard Zimler

Author:Richard Zimler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

That night, after making love, I realised that he was right not to ask me to stay with him. I told him that it was a new experience for me to be with a man who respected my independence, and I apologised for provoking an argument with him in the park, and he enfolded me in his arms by way of reply, and his warm, protective strength reassured me that everything would be okay.

When I woke up at just after eight, he’d already left for work, which was a disappointment. But Ewa had made coffee and it smelled heavenly. She was seated on Benni’s rumpled, brick-coloured sofa, and seeing her smile at me made me feel as if I were about to join her on a grand adventure. As usual, Ewa had surrounded herself with the big, colourful silk pillows Benni had sewn for her, and she was reading a novel in Polish that she’d taken out from the 42nd Street library. She and I had almost always conversed through Benni in the past, since her English was so hesitant, though sometimes she had remained in her room on my visits and never come out. Benni had assured me that it wasn’t because she didn’t like me, it was simply that her health wasn’t so good – she had back and hip problems and high blood pressure – and she had to pace herself. This morning, however, we sat together, and she ended up telling me about her farmhouse in Poland, and how Benni used to catch salamanders at her pond, and how once he’d even brought one inside and lost it, and it took them half a day to find it because it had hidden below her clunky old iron stove. We conversed together like old friends, and after I re-filled her coffee cup, she took my hand and pressed her lips to my palm, just like her grandson, and the resemblance between the two of them made me cry, and without knowing why, I told her that I was in love with Benni.

‘I know,’ she said with a smile of complicity. And she whispered with great delight, ‘He also love you.’ She nodded with certainty. ‘I see it.’

After I dressed, she asked me to join her at her upright piano, and she showed me an arrangement of ‘Air on the G string’ for piano and violin, and when she smiled at me, her sharp brown eyes seemed full of sweet-natured mischief, and she said, ‘You play violin part with your flute.’ There was so much eager hope in her voice – and she made such an effort to speak English – that I couldn’t disappoint her.

Her hands stopped shaking the moment they touched the keyboard, and her playing was so calm and trusting that I suddenly realised what it was like to make music with someone who has nothing left to prove.

That afternoon, I took Ewa out for lunch at Arezzo, and she ate her pizza slices with

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