Danilo.
The love of my life.
And the even greater love of my death. Or my life-in-death.
Gone, now. And yet still with me, there in my blood.
It seems to me that death has always been with me, death and sadness. And fear. But they have hardly been with me in the way they are now.
My father died when I was four years old and my mother a year later. The relatives who raised me told me she died of grief at his loss, which I think was supposed to make her sound noble or tragic or something. But all it told me was that she valued him and her love for him, and not me. When I was still a boy I was able to see through sentimental rot like I Remember Mama. A hard lesson to learn when you’re that young, but that’s the way it was.
I was raised on a farm outside Ebensburg by a cousin of my mother named Millie. She and her husband took me in more out of obligation than anything else, but at least they did it. Their “Christian obligation,” I should say. I still remember them reading the Bible at me, and even the apocrypha, though I was never much interested and didn’t try to hide it.
There was a small trust fund out of my parents’ insurance, administered by a law firm in Pittsburgh, so all their expenses were covered, with a bit more to reward them for their trouble. They made sure I was fed and clothed properly, and there were Christmas and birthday presents. But they had their own kids. I don’t remember anything warmer than indifference from them most of the time.
From junior high on, I swam. First time I went in the water, I took to it. Breaststroke, butterfly, I was never much good at the backstroke, but I was good enough overall to be one of the stars of the school team. Not that it counted for much. Central Pennsylvania is football country; the rest of the school athletes barely got noticed unless they won especially big. Which we did, now and then, but nobody paid much attention anyway, once football season started.
In high school I met Tim, Tim Johanssen. He was my first love. Two years older than me, captain of the swim team in his junior year. Tall, blue-eyed, black-haired, pale-skinned. He had what everyone calls a swimmer’s build, of course, since that’s what he was. Lean smooth body, as beautiful as anything I had ever seen.
Not long after I made the team, we were in the locker room alone one day, showering. He smiled at me. “You’re good.”
“Thanks.” He was a senior and the team captain, I was a tenth grade rookie. I didn’t know what to make of his attention.
“You need to work on your backstroke, though.”
“I know. I’ve never been any good.”
“You’ll get better. Why don’t you let me work with you? The backstroke’s my event.”
And so we worked. There was so much physical contact between us, in and out of the water. Coach Harrison watched us, quite approvingly. At night in my room I made imaginary love to Tim. He had a girlfriend. Every time I saw him I went numb with love and fear.
Love and fear. It was the first time I had felt either. Now they are constants.
My other passion was the piano. I honestly don’t remember how or why I first put my fingers on the keys, but I know that it felt right to me, instantly. At first, I played very badly, of course. All I could do was try and imitate what I heard on the radio, bits of Chopin, Mozart, the simpler Beethoven.
But as I said, it felt right, and I couldn’t not play. After trying for months, and knowing how bad I was, I finally got up the nerve to start taking lessons. I persuaded Paul Kowalski, my trust fund administrator, to let me buy a battered old spinet so I could practice. It wasn’t an easy step. The other kids listened to hip-hop, house, techno, metal, anything but Chopin, and I was different enough already. Millie made me put the spinet in the basement.
When I got good enough to play even a bit well, when my fingers and my mind were limber enough, I can’t tell you what a thrill it was. For the first time in my life I was free to express myself.
It was Chopin I loved most. Not the lighter stuff, the “Minute Waltz” and such. It was the dark, agitated Chopin, the nocturnes, that I loved. It seemed to be the music I had been hearing all my life without knowing it. And then there I was, playing it myself. When I played, I thought of Tim.
One winter day we practiced late, just the two of us in the pool. Somewhere, I’ll never know where, I found the courage to kiss him. I was terrified what he’d do. But he kissed back. Should I take the next step? I couldn’t stop myself.
“Tim, I think I’m in love with you.”
He said nothing. It seemed to me he was actually shaking. Then he kissed me again. “Jamie.”
I read the life of Chopin. Then I went on to read his letters. There among them were the ones he wrote to his friend, his lover, Tytus Woyciechowski. He always ended them, “I send you big wet kisses on the mouth.” Somehow I had always known. At my next piano lesson, I told my teacher, Mrs. Crevanti, what I had discovered.
“Nonsense. Chopin was not like that. He couldn’t have been.”
One afternoon late in the school year Coach Harrison caught Tim and me. We were making love in the shower. Our passion must have been obvious to see. For a moment he just stood and watched, and we froze when we realized he was there.
“Dunn! Johanssen! What are you two doing?”
We were too scared to answer. Finally, Tim stuttered, “N-nothing.”
He took a few steps toward us and pushed us apart. Then he rounded on Tim. “Johanssen, you just won a scholarship. You want to lose it?”
Tim was terrified. His family was poor. Without an athletic scholarship he’d never be able to go to college. “No, sir.”
“Then don’t do any more of this shit. Hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you, Dunn. What are you, a fucking girl?”
“No, sir.”
“Maybe you ought to quit the team and stick to your dainty little piano.”
“Please, sir, no.”
“Both of you get your clothes on and don’t let me catch you like this again, you hear me? I catch you even staring at each other and you’re off the team.”
Silently we got dressed. Tim avoided looking at me. He was still trembling. Outside I tried to talk to him, but he turned his back and walked away. I wanted to cry but of course it was not something I could do then and there. Later, in my room…
That night I sat at the piano and played through the Chopin nocturnes and forced myself not to let what I was feeling show, except in the music.
Tim barely talked to me again for the remainder of the school year. He made a big show of keeping company with his girlfriend. Then school ended, we didn’t see each other at all, and he finally left for college.
When I was a senior, I outgrew Mrs. Crevanti and started commuting to Johnstown for more advanced lessons. That spring I gave my first recital. Some Chopin, one of the Bach English Suites, a few Prokofiev waltzes. I went online and found Tim’s address at the University of Western Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh and mailed him an invitation, with a handwritten note that said, “I’ll be playing the Chopin for you.” He never came.
One day I saw Coach Harrison having sex with one of the new kids on the team. He realized I was there, watching, and he glared at me. There was a threat implicit in it, and I understood what it meant. I never told anyone.
There were a few news stories about some mysterious murders on the West Penn campus. Young men had been found stripped naked and mutilated. Others had gone missing. I remember vaguely hoping Tim would be okay there. Then I promptly forgot about them. It certainly never occurred to me that one day I would become involved with them in the way I did.
There were two scholarships for me, both partial, one athletic and one for piano, so I could go to school without draining my trust fund. I decided West Penn was the right school for me. Tim was there, and I tried to tell myself that wasn’t the reason I chose it, and I had no reason to think we could be lovers again, but…
I was not one for illusions, not one to dream or imagine things. Reality had forced itself on me early and never left. And yet I knew what I wanted, and I knew love was a part of it.
I hardly understood what to make of myself or my feelings or my talent till I met Danilo, and he showed me so much that was thrilling, so much that was dark and so much that was very, very frightening. He took me on a journey of discovery, not just a physical one to France and Germany and Egypt—to the secret chambers of the Louvre, and to ancient hidden tombs—but an interior journey too.
Love and fear again, but both of a different kind from what I’d known before. Life without death. And, oddly among them, hope. Those were Danilo’s gifts to me.
And I will not go back.