ELEVEN
Zalman, 1958
He could hear the music even before he turned the key in the lock. The dulcet tones of Debussy’s piano piece, “Clair de Lune,” floated in the air, mesmerizing him, and, combined with the scent of beef roasting in garlic and onions, made him forget the day at work and placed him at ease.
Dropping his case filled with drawings against the sofa, he sat down and leaned against the blue-striped pillows. If she noticed him there, he was not sure, for she continued to play, her long fingers dancing across the keys. She was, he knew, as hypnotized as he.
His mother had preferred the old Yiddish melodies, but looking at Esther now, he was transported to the two-bedroom home in Raczki, his mother letting the dinner go cold as she was coaxed to play yet another tune, which would wash away the cares of a young boy who studied perhaps too many hours and worried perhaps too much about an increasingly hostile world that he was still too young to comprehend. Zalman had a vague memory of his father and older brother being there, too, all listening as she sang the familiar ditties, her voice light and jovial. But it was Mama he remembered most, and today he could see her in the slope of Esther’s back, the rise and fall of her hands against the keys. The way her skirt, a bright crimson, fell draped over the bench. The song was different, “Clair de Lune,” but it did not matter. He was with Mama again. He was home.
It was Esther’s favorite and almost the only thing she played as the day turned into a fine evening mist. Zalman almost always arrived before Jacob, who kept late hours at work back in the city. Several months earlier, he had listened again to the dreamlike melody that, as her fingers moved along the keys, reached a sweet crescendo. It was aptly named, he had told her—“Clair de Lune”—the light of the moon. She seemed surprised that he knew so much about the song and the poem it was named for, which ended, “The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone/That makes to dream the birds upon the tree/And in their polished basins of white stone/The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.”
She stared at him then, amazed for some minutes once he had finished reciting the poem he had long ago learned by heart. Finally, she asked, “What else is it you know, dear Zalman?”
“Oh, not very much at all, but I do know a bit about very few subjects which are often of no interest whatsoever to most people.”
She turned her body away from the keys and pedal to face him fully.
“I’m interested. I would say I’m quite interested.”
“Well,” he continued, lowering his head as he tried to remember the details, “I know that Debussy was something of a child prodigy and studied music at the Paris Conservatoire at age ten, where he remained for some time. He was a brilliant, an extraordinary pianist. But some consider his personal life, like many of the other masters of his time, much more interesting.
“He was close friends, shall we say, awfully close friends, with a young woman who was a singer, and of course a married woman. Well, as you can imagine, the two embarked on an affair. But nevertheless, Debussy remained good friends with the husband. I don’t recall the man’s name, nor even the woman’s. But it was actually the husband who introduced him to French writers, one of whom was Paul Verlaine, the author of the poem which gave rise to the song you were just playing. Debussy had a few scandalous affairs after that. He married twice, had a child—a daughter, I believe, who died a year after he did. This is all the stuff of gossip, I suppose, and perhaps that is why I enjoy it so much. But the music, well, the music is the real pleasure here. Don’t you agree, Esther?”
Esther listened intently to the history lesson as it had been delivered, partially in English, part in his native Polish, trying to let all that was said sink in. Finally, she could do nothing but utter, “I like the song, and I play it so often because, well, I just like it so much.”
“Well then, that’s really all that’s important, right?” he exclaimed, slapping his knee before urging her to play the song yet again. And so she did, again, and often each week, as the year when the three of them lived together in this, Jacob’s castle, drifted on. And before any of them realized it, they had lived in the house together for two years.
And now, as her fingers struck the high chords of “Clair de Lune,” Zalman could not help but feel his heart soar again into that magical place, led by the enchanting song. Listening to Esther play never failed to transport him to a feeling of contentment and peace. He had tried moving out on more than one occasion. He was now an established architect with, thanks to Jacob’s connections, numerous clients of his own. Yet he knew, and so did Jacob and Esther, that those attempts were halfhearted at best. He contributed, of course, to the upkeep of the home and had even, thanks to his farming experience, taken over the landscaping and gardening so that lilacs and gladiolus bloomed at every turn. He insisted, too, on paying rent to the couple who, though they objected at first, relented if it meant keeping their boarder and friend within the home.