...behind my forehead, Phantasia rages, with her cruel jokes.
- Francois Villon, 1456
I won't blame him; he is my husband. He has been, and for a quarter of a century, he has preferred television to music-the TV, where mastodons throw footballs and frat boys of summer hit smaller balls on the diamond field. He would not go with me that night, either. True, I hadn't got the tickets in advance, but I had learned about the program too late. It was to be Virtuosi Pragenses, with a young Yo-Yo Ma playing Dvorák's Cello Concerto and Mozart's Sonata in A Minor, both of which I loved. While I was leaving the house, and obese multi-millionaire on the TV was tossing a baseball at somebody else-tossing it well, I assumed, because the one who shall remain un-named threw his fist into the air ("Yes!"), his gaze not leaving the TV screen to acknowledge my departure.
I had arrived early but got only a ticket for standing room in the gallery. The concert hall, my church (I have to confess), hummed with subdued voices and susurrant shuffling of feet as in a cathedral before the entrance of a priest. I felt that expectations that night were higher, since Yo-Yo Ma was the highest of cello-priests. Polite smiles covered the pleasurable tension of acquaintances greeting each other. Muted conversations.
I climbed up to the gallery, which consists of several wide steps under the organ. It had been half-filled by students already, but I managed to find a good place on the second step, with a short fellow in front of me. I felt odd, at first, since I was a decade senior to the proletariat in the gallery. I watched the audience arriving, deep down on the main floor. Women in the colors of night butterflies were led, gently, by their naked elbows, by men with dark eyes, suited in dark colors. I looked up at the ceiling supported by Greek columns with Doric heads and gold and ivory frescoes that would receive the tones and return them to the cochleas, past pearl and brilliant earrings, perfectly enhanced. I half turned to observe the immense organ pipes looming above the gallery like a silver castle built of exclamation marks.
At the moment, a girl found a place just behind me, on the same step. I looked at her, and she smiled briefly, politely, I thought. I cannot remember many details of her face, only that she was quite beautiful. Her face was creamy white like the faces of Urgofins, untanned, and the eyes must have been pale too. Her lips were not painted. That is all-only an impression, an image with an absence of darker hues, framed in light chestnut hair that flowed freely onto her shoulders.
I turned back facing the stage where members of the orchestra had appeared. Some exchanged sentences, rearranged their stools and inch, touched the strings of an instrument while tilting it sideways. A bass player turned with his bow. Two violinists leaned toward each other and smiled, whispering. The instruments created the tingling cacophony that precedes the coming of the conductor; I have always thought its discordant sounds magical, not knowing why. At such moments of enchantment I became pleasantly aware of myself. I straightened up, raised my chin a little, felt my hips hugged tightly by my gray satin skirt (I still have it), felt the lightness of the rosy sweater on my shoulders.
The music began. The space filled with the lofty, hounding melody from Antonin's homesick imagination, the cello cried, and the strings answered with cheering shrills. I listened, silently happy without exuberance, as almost always in this sacred hall.
It happened at the beginning of the second movement of the concerto.
I felt a hand laid on my hip from behind. It remained there, motionless, exuding heat. At that moment the music ceased to exist; I could not breathe or move. The hand then slid, slowly, gently, over my smooth satin onto my buttock. I inhaled deeply then, and breathed again. The pleasure I felt had been unknown to me before; it would be difficult to describe. I remember only that my breasts became all nipples. The girl behind me increased the pressure at her fingertips, moved her hand lower, then removed it.
That was all.
It lasted a century.
It has remained with me and in me, so perfectly clear, as if it just happened a minute ago. Meaningless. Nothing? But in my memory-field of forget-me-nots and bitter roots, it is the solitary sunflower. I have gathered a few pretty blossoms in my memory, but it is this sunflower to which I confess my fantasy.
When the performance ended, there was only a vacant place behind me. Leaving the concert hall, I stood by the entrance, waiting. When the last person had left, I went home to my husband. He remains a poltergeist in my life, but I don't want to age alone-not alone.
© 2006 by Jarda Cervenka.