Meanwhile the cellist drew out the last note, and the street fell silent. Well, silent in terms of music. There were still city noises, which Raymond did not find the least bit welcome in comparison.
“Thank you,” the man said, looking deeply into Raymond’s face. Raymond was careful not to meet the cellist’s eyes. “That’s a gift right there. I can actually get lunch with that.”
A silence. Raymond did not fill it. He was hoping the musician would play again. But he just kept looking into Raymond’s face, as if he had lost something important there.
“Seem like the music made you sad,” the man said.
“I guess,” Raymond replied, still wishing the man would play.
“But you already had this sadness in you before you heard my cello.”
“How do you know that?”
“The cello is an amazing instrument. It can slice right through a person’s walls and pull things to the surface. Why do you think I play it? But it can’t pull out something that wasn’t in there to begin with.”
Then he began to play again. Raymond sat down cross-legged on the concrete and listened. The tears came back, and he didn’t feel able to stop them. So after a while he didn’t try.
It seemed to produce an actual physical feeling in his gut, a sort of ache that rose and fell with the music—that ricocheted around in there as each note faded and died.
When the piece was over, and the man’s bow had gone still and his strings silent, Raymond asked a question.
“If it slices through walls and pulls stuff out of me, stuff that hurts, why am I sitting here listening to it? Why didn’t I walk the other way?”
“Because it’s better to feel it.”
“Not if it hurts.”
“Especially if it hurts. Remember, it was in there to begin with. And as an old friend of mine used to say, better out than in.”
Then he played another piece.
When the bow had gone still again and the last note had faded to no note at all, Raymond asked another question.
“Are you going to be here for an hour or so?”
“Son, I’m going to be here all day.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thanks. I’ll be back.”
“You need to get ready to go out,” he said to Mrs. G. “Please. I want to take you someplace.”
She was slumped on the couch, still in her nightgown and robe, her hair undone and unkempt, the cat purring on her lap.
“Oh, Raymond,” she said, followed by a deep sigh. “Couldn’t you go do the shopping without me?”
“That’s not where I’m taking you.”
“Where, then?”
“I don’t want to say. I want you to trust me.”
“It’s already afternoon. I get tired in the afternoon.”
“I really think it will be worth it,” he said. “Please just trust me on this.”
He knew as he said it that she would not refuse him. Their unspoken deal was that he did as much as he could for her and asked as little as possible in return. When he asked her to do something—if it was a reasonable thing, and within her power to do it—at least she would try.
Another deep sigh. Then she shifted the cat off onto the couch and rose with great effort. Raymond extended a hand to help her, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Fine,” she said, shuffling slowly toward her bedroom. “Give me ten minutes. Maybe feed the cat while you are waiting, please.”
“I had a dream last night,” she said to him on the subway ride to Midtown.
He waited, thinking she would say more. But she seemed to be waiting as well, as if to be sure that he genuinely wanted to hear about it.
“What was it?” he asked after a time.
“I dreamt about my friend Anna. Annaliese Schmidt. She was my best friend in school in Germany. She was the same age in the dream—the age she was when I last saw her. And here I was over ninety and Anna still just a young girl, and yet she spoke to me as if we were peers. She said some fairly harsh things.”
A pause. Raymond almost thought he would have to ask. But then she cleared her throat and continued.
“She said it was very selfish of me to base my participation in the world on whether the world was pleasing me at the moment. She said of course the world can be cruel; this is a given. She asked if I knew what she would have sacrificed to be ninety-two.”
“Whoa,” Raymond said.
She seemed done speaking. He watched the side of her face to see if she was upset by what she was reporting, but her face looked slack and calm.