Finn is late for work. He’s cycling madly across town, hoping to hell he doesn’t get hit by a car or, worse still, a bus, and knowing that – no matter how fast he goes – his legs aren’t able to get him to the school on time. He’s late because he always stays too late in the morning, playing. Although, he’s not simply playing, he’s also watching the woman (actually, the women) who come outside every morning to stand in their gardens and listen.
Having another point of attention while he plays is entirely new for Finn. He’s always been completely and utterly focused before, to the point that major natural disasters could have befallen his surroundings and he’d never have noticed. He’s always put himself so completely into his playing, feeling the birth of every note quiver through his fingers and every echo hum long and deep in his chest. It’s the very reason Finn loves to play – loves it more than any other experience he’s ever had, even sex, though that’s admittedly been a limited foray so far – because when he plays he forgets himself so entirely. It’s almost, though Finn isn’t a religious person, a spiritual experience – in that he feels his body disappear and his spirit rise up to merge with and melt into wherever it has come from, the energy that had created everything in the first place. Playing music, for Finn, is so much bliss, joy and ecstasy all at once that he’s never had an orgasm to match it and he certainly doesn’t want to dilute it.
And yet, he can’t pull his attention away from the woman with red hair who floats above the grass at the end of her garden, looking up and listening to him so intently. And actually, far from diluting Finn’s experience, it strangely seems to enhance it. He feels the intensity of her listening so deeply that it’s almost as if she’s touching him. It feels as if her fingers hover just above his bare skin, so he can feel the heat of her, then she strokes her fingertips along his body, unwrapping him like great swathes of silk, until she’s able to reach in and take hold of his heart so it lies warm and beating in her hands.
And, as she listens, his playing takes on fresh force so that the music becomes his fingers and with every note he reaches out, very gently and very slowly slipping her clothes off, until he’s caressing her, tracing his touch through the spirals of her hair, along the arc of her cheek, the slope of her neck, the swell of her breasts, the curve of her belly … He feels himself stroke his fingertips over every inch of her soft body, as the notes begin to wrap themselves around her, draping over her shoulders, curling tenderly around her chest, until her whole body is enveloped by his music, his touch, his spirit and his soul.
By the time Finn finally pulls himself, with paralysing reluctance, away from his violin, his skin is slick with sweat and his heart pounds against his ribs. When he drags himself away from the window, catching sight of the alarm clock and knowing he can’t postpone his departure a second longer, he has to bite his lip to stop from calling out to her. He hasn’t the nerve. Because he’s terrified, that she’ll either turn away and never return or – more likely – that she’ll prove to be a transparent, floating figment of his imagination. And Finn will gladly put off that moment of disillusionment for ever – even if the woman isn’t real, even if her presence is putting his job in jeopardy, he doesn’t care.
Ava is giddy. Every morning she wakes before her alarm, her eyes snapping open, her bare feet already on the floorboards as she hurries towards the bathroom. Her new neighbour plays every morning as the birds start to sing and she needs to be outside to hear him so she doesn’t miss a single second. She wants to soak up every note, every sound. She wants to close her eyes and let the music sink deep into her body. She wants it to flood through her, the pure tones cleansing her blood, healing her spirit, clearing all the thoughts from her head.
Ava doesn’t understand the strange, hypnotic influence the music and the musician have over her but neither does she care to analyse it. She feels so brightly and suddenly alive, so sharp and so soft all at once, as if she’s being born and dying in the same breath, opening her arms to embrace everything in the world while letting it all go. Listening, Ava feels entirely serene, as if she has all she could possibly want and needs absolutely nothing more. She has all the joy her heart can hold, so it overflows to her feet and dampens her toes, so it floats in the air around her, returning to her with every breath.
Perhaps the best thing about the enchanting music is that Ava carries it with her throughout the day. The rich, deep, sweet notes echo until her fingertips buzz and her lips quiver with the resonance of all that vibrant beauty so that Ava has a sublime soundtrack to backlight her life. The main result of this is that Ava no longer carries her crossword clues tucked safely and snugly into the corners of her mind, she no longer retreats behind her eyes, ferreting away for answers to cryptic questions in the nooks and crannies of her encyclopaedic knowledge. Instead, she is borne through her days on an exalted river of sound.
Now Ava smiles at the students who take out textbooks for their essays and exams, she looks at her colleagues, nodding as they chat about their lives, listening to their complaints and concerns. And, although she doesn’t go so far as actually replying or responding in kind, Ava does feel a slight sense of connection with herself and the outside world beginning to ignite. And the idea of speaking with people, of allowing them to see who she is and how she feels, no longer feels quite so terrifying as it once did.
Of course, it’s not simply the music that pervades Ava, but also the musician. Thoughts of him bob up and down on the river of Mozart, Vivaldi and Beethoven. She wonders where he came from, what he does every day and whether or not he has love in his life. Does he have a woman he kisses every day? Does he make love as passionately as he plays? Would she faint dead away if he ever touched her? What if she simply held herself while he held his violin, his fingers vibrating over the strings, would it be enough to give her the greatest pleasure of her life? Ava blushes at these thoughts. She’s never had anything like them before. Nor such dreams.
The musician and his music visit Ava every night. And her visions of him are so vivid, the sensation of his touch so strong, the sound of his playing so sensational, the feeling of their emotions so overwhelming, that she wakes after every dream – heart hammering, skin wet with sweat, tears streaming – believing that he’s there in bed with her.
Ava is astonished at how he’s transformed her life, so suddenly, so completely. How can it be that, now, even her dreams are far more passionate and powerful than her days ever were before? How can it be that all her senses are heightened: sights brighter, sounds clearer, smells sharper, tastes richer, touches acuter? And, so it seems, she is feeling so many things for the very first time. She’ll be stacking bookshelves and, all of a sudden, realise that her cheeks are wet with tears. She’ll be checking out books and start grinning, for absolutely no reason at all but the sheer delight of sliding them across the counter. Occasionally she’ll get some odd looks but, mostly, Ava just receives smiles. And, usually, now, she’ll smile back.
For her part, Greer spends more time than she strictly should listening to the musician. She doesn’t think about him when he’s not playing – since she doesn’t seem to have any type of extraneous thoughts at all, nothing that doesn’t pertain to the present moment she’s actually in, rather like a baby – but every morning she finds herself materialising by the ancient apple tree and watching him until he disappears. And, each time, she’s mesmerised. Hours dissolve in several sweeps of the musician’s bow, but time also stops as he plays. So Greer feels as if death has enveloped her again and she’s suspended in infinity, only with every molecule of her spirit now resonating to the tune of his music.
When she’d suddenly found herself standing again at the bottom of her own garden, Greer had been more than a little surprised. One instant she’d been in – well, she couldn’t quite recall – and the next she’d been home again. How long had it been? Again, she can’t remember. How had she returned? She isn’t quite sure. Why has she come back? How does she feel about it all? Greer doesn’t really know. Or at least, if she does, she’s unwilling to admit it, even to herself.
When Greer listens to the musician she feels as if she should be able to float right up to his window and touch a transparent finger to his chest. She feels as if she should be able to fly, swooping above the apple tree, soaring over the flowers, diving with the swallows and alighting with the blackbirds next to their nests. She can hover a few inches into the air, after all; indeed, she can’t seem to touch the ground even if she tries, so why shouldn’t she be able to fly? And his music seizes her spirit and lifts it upward towards the sun, so it should only make sense if her transparent body followed suit. But then, admittedly, nothing much of being dead seems to make much sense at all.
Greer imagines that she must have come back for Edward: he is – or, rather, was – her husband who, by all accounts, has been willing her to return ever since she left. Though, despite what she said to reassure him, Greer doesn’t really understand why that would be now instead of any time before. And why does it feel that she was pulled from the other side by the power of the musician’s music? Perhaps it’s a combination of both? But, whatever it is, Greer only knows that she feels a sharp twist of guilt in her ribs every time she shimmers away from Edward’s side each morning to materialise again in the garden. She feels even guiltier when he asks where she’s been and she lies, saying she doesn’t know, claiming that every now and then she’ll disappear and reappear without remembering where she’s been or gone.
‘It must be part of the whole being dead thing,’ Greer will suggest with a casual shrug.
‘I suppose,’ Edward will say. ‘Still, it’s strange.’
‘But it’s all a bit strange. This,’ Greer will say. ‘Don’t you think?’
And Edward will admit that it is. And then Greer will change the subject.