fic | in time

[solosection]

IN TIME




“Are you listening to my playing, Elio?”

He touched the keys of the old Steinway that had been left, abandoned almost, as if on time-out, in the parlor of the even older country house where he had lived the past month, officially a tenant; unofficially Elio had treated it more like he was a travelling artist or maybe a monk on retreat. He hadn’t made many demands of the place that would host him until New Year, except that it had to have a piano and the piano had to be in good condition, it would have to endure many hours of play every day, after all. His manager had only been able to scour out two options in the immediate vicinity of Paris, since Elio would have to be able to take a train back to the city relatively easily, and this was the only household which had answered his application for residency in time. The decision made for him, then. If he believed in fate, maybe he’d have ascribed it to that.

As it were, Elio didn’t believe in fate.

Rather, he was talking to himself – and in extension, as always, to someone else who wasn’t there, but always near even so. He ran his fingers lightly over the keys, the black and white arrangement of well-polished and much-cared for wood, touched the A0 with enough force to make the string within the instrument vibrate tangibly, but not hard enough to produce actual sound. The low notes took more strength. He’d have to put his whole body into it to get anywhere with that.

Leaning back and relaxing his shoulders, hands flat on his thighs, he listened for the silence, the way you scout the unbroken horizon for any disturbance, any shape or movement out of line. Behind him, the door to the lobby opened softly, carefully, and Elio smiled, blinking a few times down at the spot where the piano cut off his line of sight, leaving him effectively with only half his body. Half of himself. The other half back in B. where his father would be celebrating Hanukkah with Miranda and the boy, his younger brother. Bearing Oliver’s name, so that in spirit, which was probably his father’s reasoning, Oliver would be present as well.

They had invited him to come, of course. At least, this year, Elio had had a legitimate excuse not to. Work, he’d apologized over the phone, I must get these suites tip-top before January.

And as always, his father accepted without comment, though in that silence – like in the horizon broken by black sails – lay a lot of unacknowledged things. Unacknowledged and still unknown, still looking to be found.

The studio recording had been an offer he couldn’t refuse, although if he’d had executive power over the process, it would have happened differently, the outcome would probably have turned out different, too. His label had wanted him to play Bach’s French Suites followed by a concert at the Paris Conservatory for the release, which made sense because he was a foreign worker in France now and his most immediate audience would be his students. But to claim a sense of home, of himself, the half he had left, it had been Elio’s own suggestion to add the Italian Concerto and the Capriccio in B-Flat Major as hidden numbers on the album, only beginning to play twenty minutes after the end of French Suite no. 6.

The producers had been baffled by this, but Elio had simply told them, it’s a private joke, I want to wonder how many have listened to all of me.

What he didn’t say was, I want him to either leave the CD player running and find me there as a reward for his resolve or for him to miss his window of opportunity for good.

Either or. No in-betweens.

“Tea?” Michel asked behind him, coming to a halt at a distance from the piano, Elio sensed, where he could still overlook the whole instrument as well as the man sitting at it, not playing, currently. “Or a single malt with nuts and salted things?”

Either or. No in-betweens. Elio liked how Michel reflected that train of thought back at him, how he took the trip all the way to the last stop. Then, he took the roundtrip, too. Never leaving Elio stranded where he’d stayed behind, Michel didn’t live further away than Paris during the weekdays, if Elio wanted to see him, it wasn’t a matter of closing his eyes and conjuring him up, it was a matter of calling a friend with a car. Or a cab. That simple.

Relations could be very different, that way.

“I’m only just getting started,” Elio told him instead of saying no, because a single malt sounded great, but he shouldn’t be playing Michel’s father’s piano afterwards, that would be a mockery of what the instrument could do, what it had seen, heard in its long life. It’s older than me, Michel had commented one of their first shared nights here, and I imagine it will outlive me as well. Together, they’d been working away at the mystery of Michel’s father’s cadenza for weeks at this point. The detective work had only brought them closer.

Closer than most tenants and landlords probably were.

Close enough that Elio’s father asked about it now, whenever Elio phoned home, because he made the mistake of being completely frank about having met someone. Someone special, his father had wanted to know, meaning: someone better?

You’d like him, Elio had simply replied, you’re the same generation.

Seeing as Michel always went on and on about Elio’s generation. Like their generations separated them, when it was not a collective that threw its long shadow over their shared path, but an individual. One person in particular, the one always there, but also always missing.

“The beginning is a nice place to take a break,” Michel told him and stepped one step closer, then two, to place a comfortably heavy hand on his shoulder. Without thinking too much about it, rather than placing his hand on the keyboard and start on the Bach, Elio reached up and touched his fingers to the back of the other man’s hand, where he knew the spots were scattered unevenly, the signs of age and time. Passing.

“Not if you want to get anywhere,” Elio replied, smiling. Today, it seemed, he wouldn’t be getting very far, although he had a phrase in Suite no. 3 he needed to practice, correct, learn. Relearn.

“Getting somewhere is either totally overrated or it happens on its own,” Michel assured him, squeezing his shoulder softly, kneading his muscle between strong fingers that were too easy to yield to, not that Elio minded that he had, or that he still wanted to. “Any forced progress isn’t truly to be considered getting anywhere at all.”

Is that why you aren’t asking me again, Elio wondered, the way you asked me the first night.

The first night they had spent together in this old house, a week into Elio’s stay, Michel arriving from Paris, landing in directly from work in his tailored suit and striped tie at this place that was neither Brideshead nor Howards End, they had been enjoying a single malt of a type that was new to Elio, because he knew nothing about single malts, barely even what a single malt was aside from the very basics, mixology 101, and they had both felt the tugging bond between them, the sense of affinity and connect, but neither of them had responded to it directly or immediately, both hesitating, until Michel had blurted out, completely out of the blue, let’s get married!

And for reasons unknown to Elio, all he could think about was, my father would approve.

Yet, what he had said was, “That easily?”

“Trust a formerly married man,” Michel had replied, “If one doesn’t get married easily, there’s no reason to get married in the first place.”

Having considered this for a moment, Elio had bitten his lower lip, feeling suddenly cold and stared at the amber hues of his drink, thoughts as always straying – to someone else who seemed to have gotten married very easily. Looks could deceive, though, he was aware, and he only knew of Oliver these days what was relayed to him through his parents, through contacts, through backdoors and detours. They hadn’t exchanged any letters, not even addresses. Elio had never dared to ask.

So, he only could tell for sure that the other man was living another life, separate from his. What kind, who knew, really?

“I’m not ready,” he told Michel, then, obvious about not saying no, just saying not now and ask me again later, the answer might change as they went along. Like that, both Michel’s proposal and Elio’s response to it hung between them, non-jokingly, earnest and totally impulsive. Like the most honest things often were.

“We’re somewhere,” Elio told him, maybe unnecessarily, but the words felt safe and comfortable to form, lips moving, tongue clicking, body yielding continuously to the stroking and the grasp of Michel’s fingers. “Somewhere else than where we were a month ago.”

Michel’s fingers stopped their massage, though he didn’t withdraw. Elio could feel his eyes caressing the back of his head, neck, nape, shoulders, and from there, the line where his body and the piano became the same entity, melted together, blurred. Across generations. Across time. He had done his research; this instrument had been built around the turn of the century. At the dawn of a new age.

How things changed.

Apparently, Michel was of a similar mind, because he blurted out, “A month already? At this rate, I’ll be dead before the year is out!”

“Hush,” Elio told him, laughing but not really laughing. “Don’t say that!”

“What will you rather have me say?” Michel inquired. “There are a fair few things I could think of saying to you like this.” But his hands released their hold on Elio’s shoulders, although only after squeezing his upper arms warmly, and Elio felt cold, chilled to the bone, as distance came between them once more. He turned on the piano stool, swinging his legs out from under the piano, too, and suddenly he had a whole body again, except he didn’t feel the least bit whole, even so. Then again, his father always said, and maybe it was the one thing Michel would disagree with him on, man was more than body, more than limbs, more than matter.

What Michel would say was, man still needed bread and nuts and salted things. Single malts.

“Maybe the question isn’t what you say,” Elio explained, feeling the words overwhelm him, even before they were out in the open. Again, after more than a decade, almost half his life. Half his body still belonged there, back in B. with Oliver in heaven. “Maybe the question is whether you will speak or die.”

On his face, Michel recognized and read correctly the wave of emotion that had overcome Elio and he frowned momentarily, his silence in and by itself saying, the marriage canard, yes? Elio shook his head, but it didn’t mean, no.

“Then, I will speak,” Michel responded, making to sit down on the piano stool as well, though he had to wait for Elio to scoot aside and make room. He didn’t mind sharing with him, however. He didn’t mind this world that had become theirs, this old house with all of Michel’s life packed inside, his father’s mysteries, his own father’s non-intrusive questions on top of it all. Answers were the sole thing missing.

Answers and Oliver.

And for once in his life, Elio didn’t mind not knowing, didn’t mind his own solitude, the space that it created. What that told him, he had no idea. Michel might know. Elio looked over at him. For answers.

“You’ll be leaving me soon.” Elio opened his mouth to say something along the line of that doesn’t have to mean goodbye, it’s just this house, not you, but the older man held up one hand sternly, as if to say, don’t argue, you know it’s true and Elio relented, because he did know. “So, my suggestion is that I buy a grand for my place in Paris.”

“But you don’t play,” Elio said, amused. Are you looking to take lessons, he could’ve added, yet didn’t get to before Michel continued:

“Ah, but it’s not for me! It’s so that you can continue practicing without getting on your own neighbors’ bad side. Mine, they already hate me, it’ll make no difference with a little Bach ten hours a day.”

Elio felt incredibly moved by this, for reasons he couldn’t explain. All he could consciously register was how he sent a thought Oliver’s way, thinking, are you listening to his playing, Elio? Because he was definitely playing at something, if not fibbing, plain and simple.

“Call it a proposal,” Michel finished, with a flourish.

Although their shoulders were touching, and their thighs and their hips a point of connect, too, Elio felt suddenly freezing, chills breaking out on his skin, up his arms, beneath his shirt, down his back, making him shudder. They were back to that, were they?

He could use that tea now. Or a single malt, nuts and salted things and all.

“A proposal,” he repeated, hesitantly. “Of what?”

Not dismissively, but certainly with some nonchalance that Elio felt not a glimmer of, Michel waved one hand, “Time will tell.”

Standing up, Elio moved around the stool, placing himself with his back to the other man, arms wrapped around himself, hugging his own torso, fingers burying into the fabric of his shirt. He remembered Oliver’s eyes, bluer than the sky, colder than glaciers, if you caught him in that mood, red-bathing-suit mood. Steer clear. He breathed, in and out, feeling this familiar setting all around, the old country house an hour from Paris that he was so well acquainted with at this point, his work in the city that had become comfortable routine, new students every semester and playing gratis at his usual hotel for the thrill, one-night stands, leaving before dawn, always leaving.

Don’t let me leave this time, Michel, he thought, but couldn’t speak. Rather die, right? Rather die. Always in a way, with him. With Elio Perlman. Is there anything you don’t know, Oliver had questioned him.

Only everything that mattered.

“You’re scaring me,” he finally said, getting the feeling that even if he hadn’t spoken, Michel would have known, sitting with his legs spread wide, taking up most of the stool now that Elio was gone, his hands on his knees, observing him at whatever distance Elio needed to lay out. For self-preservation. Michel understood.

When he spoke, his voice was low, a murmur, gentle and caring and it brought tears to Elio’s eyes. Like being not only told but given the keys to a box in which lay a great secret that no one else had gained access to before now, except you and the giver. Michel was the giver. Elio was the recipient. “There’s nothing frightening about time, Elio. Time passes, that’s all it does. Like everything else, it passes.”

His first instinct was to say, to my knowledge, nothing passes, nothing I have known and felt ever passed, it stays static, it stays stationary, nothing changes, nothing gets better, but his first instinct frightened him almost as much as Michel’s ‘proposal’, so he instead uttered a slightly jeering, “Much, much too deep for me.”

Thankfully, Michel didn’t buy it. “Too deep?” He laughed, stood up, towering above Elio with his broad shoulders, his mane of grey hair and his warm chest that Elio knew the feeling of, front to front, front to back, that chest had surrounded him on all sides throughout the past month. “Didn’t I hear you go lower just a moment ago? Yes, I could swear I did.”

It was a reference to the A0 key. Although it hadn’t made a sound, nothing but a tremor, to remind you of its existence.

Elio’s turn, in that case, to dismissively wave his hand. “With the help of a newly tuned piano. Not on my own.” At the back of his mind, he could hear Oliver, why are you always putting yourself down?

So you won’t do it first, Elio, he replied, saying nothing. Moving restlessly to the side, back stiff, muscles tense, he walked over to the nearest window and looked out where you could glimpse the nearby village rooftops, you could make out the bushes and low, gnarly trees growing around the lake. How he would miss this old house. Yes, how he would miss the flow of time, river-like, musical, as it played out here. More D-minor than A-major, why else would Michel have masturbated in every single room? If not to break the mood, fasten the pace.

Still, Michel wasn’t Oliver, Oliver wasn’t here but Michel was, and he would have none of it. He didn’t sound impatient, but something about his voice made Elio think of, if not his own father, maybe not him, but every piano teacher he had ever had, that kind of stern. It begged that you listened. It would not accept a no, even less so a rash no. Elio wondered if he was going to ask him to marry him again, next, and whether he would have a choice in the matter, on second attempt. Second attempts were trickier, after all – he had enough experience out in those to say. As well as in thirds, fourths, fifths.

What number in the row was Michel? Or was Michel outside of the line-up altogether? With this house, and the single malts with nuts and salted things, his father’s piano that had lived its own, separate life from all Elio’s sun-soaked memories. The piano at which Michel had just been sitting would never know B. Would never know Bach’s Capriccio, at the departure of a beloved brother.

At least, Elio hoped. Hoped it would never know.

Michel said: “Why do you think I made that proposal in the first place? Will you hold it against me that I’m trying to help?”

The piano had been abandoned, then, at this stage. It looked lonely like that, or was it Elio projecting? He turned away from the window, moved over to the instrument, still with the distance between himself and Michel that a trepid foal would keep to its mother’s keeper, familiar but unknown, and placed a soft hand, fingers splayed out against the side of it. Black, lacquered wood. Polished within an inch of its life. He suddenly wanted to know if Michel had also masturbated at the piano.

“It’s only that – with music, I’m never alone.”

“And with me?” Michel no longer respected the space Elio claimed. It was like he had realized something Elio was late in realizing. Elio looked up at him as the man drew closer, towering over him, all presence, he wouldn’t allow Elio to be alone anymore, that was what his body said and Elio reached for it without thinking about it, naturally, unquestioningly, stretched out his arms and slipped them around the other man’s waist. Stepping up to him, pressing his cheek to his chest, closing his eyes, he muttered:

“You’re not letting me be alone either. Stubborn as you are.”

The proposal was still just a piano, ten hours of Bach every day. At the same time, it was so much more. People who didn’t get married easily shouldn’t bother to marry at all, Michel had said. Take it from a formerly married man.

“Is that a ‘yes’?” Michel’s arms came up around his shoulders, back, embraced him. Held him tight, rocking him gently against himself like a child and Elio felt incredibly loved, cared for, he felt above all safe. From what? Age? Time? Nothing scary about it, it would pass.

Smiling despite himself, he kept his eyes closed. No, truly nothing to see here. “Time will tell, Michel.”

A chuckle that turned into a satisfied hum, Michel disentangled himself slowly, not forcing their separation, if it could be called a separation in the first place – and with a large gesture, in his typical fashion, he showed Elio back to the piano stool. “Good. We have time. Now play for me.”

Go deep, Elio thought to himself, sitting down gingerly and making no introductions, started playing Muczynski’s Toccata Op. 15, postmodernism at its finest or at its worst, but it stayed in the present and it didn’t shy away from the low notes. He could tell as he listened. Likewise, he could tell Michel was also listening. The man would insist he knew nothing about music, bad student that he’d been, and Elio would dare to claim, he obviously knew about this, regardless.

Thus, Elio, in the manner of Muczynski’s Toccata that touched on the A0 several times, wasn’t going to be afraid either.