When I think back on it, I realize it was — and still is — The Book, and only The Book, that keeps me going. It might be the only thing keeping this old bag of bones moored to the planet. It isn’t a particularly heavy book but it has always had the effect of anchoring me right here to the bed, not even for a second allowing me to close my eyes and lift up and float away.
I feel like I am always reading The Book, have also always been reading it and will be reading it till time immemorial and forevermore. It is told through a series of occurrences. I choose that word very carefully, for calling the words of The Book prose as in a novel, or letters as in an epistolary, or stanzas as in poetry, etc etc etc, would be a grave injustice against the work. The occurrences vary in form, meter, length, font, and sometimes — in the case of some of the smallest ones — language. They progress linearly over The Man’s life, beginning in the high school years, and continuing until — Well... Continuing until it does not anymore. This is why I must keep reading: from a point farther ahead, I may be able to look back and remember the end.
I am reading the occurrence of The Man’s first encounter with his first love; they meet in English class when she forgets her book. The Man kindly offers to share and scoots his desk a foot to the left. She scoots hers to her right until the faux-wood surfaces are touching and they lean towards each other. An inch of air remains between their shoulders, charged with a magnetism that pulls his skin closer to her skin. The Man has to suppress a shiver as he feels the small hairs on his shoulder rise up and press against the inside of the sleeve of his T-shirt.
The teacher strides around the center of the room in an impassioned speech.
“Fiction, not water,” he pauses dramatically, “is the universal solvent. We read to be immersed and then dissolved. We read to get sucked up into the medium and forget ourselves completely.”
The Man stifles a giggle. The teacher, while universally beloved by the class, has a habit of being almost intolerably pretentious. The teacher continues.
“And to do so, the work must be such that the reader can inhabit the story just as much as any character can. The players of a novel strut around, carrying out whatever plot is needed, but while they do so they must be locked into their world with the same emotions that lock us all into each of our own worlds. A character’s pain must be the reader’s pain and so on. If you cannot place yourself inside the book in your hands, it will not ring true. It will not persist. It will not be remembered.”
Later, at the town’s cheapest diner, The Man and his future first love will laugh together and discuss the words of the teacher. As I read this occurrence, I think about the teacher’s words too, and I feel myself inhabiting the emotions of The Man. I am there in that class and at that diner. I am not sitting next to him or behind him; I am him. I live in his body and breathe his air. I hear what he hears and see what he sees.
I somehow know that this first love will not be The Man’s last love, even though I have not yet reached the occurrence of their eventual separation. I pause in my reading to rest my eyes. These days I can barely make it through a single occurrence without the pressing weight of the surrounding air slowly shutting my eyes. I rest.
I am reading a later occurrence. I can’t tell you how many have passed since The Man and his first love met. He now sits down at the piano in his local mall to practice the piece of music he had printed out at the library.
The notes of the composition come just a little easier than the last time he played and the music flowing out of the piano is pure. The Man plays with his full concentration on his fingers and the keys, oblivious to the world around him. Only when he finishes does he look up and realize that a small crowd has gathered. An older couple smiles at him. A young girl offers a few tentative claps before returning to her shopping.
I look up from The Book for a moment. A close voice to my left speaks.
“What part are you reading?”
I pause and turn to see an older woman with kind green eyes sitting in a chair to the left of my bed. She must have been there the entire time. I often find myself getting lost in The Book, oblivious to the world around me.
“He has just played for his first audience,” I say. She smiles knowingly and murmurs that she loves that part. Surely she is also reading The Book. I see her look away and follow her gaze. There is a man in the room, sitting further away near the door. He is young and strong and stares at me with an intense look in his eye.
As we look at each other I find myself unwillingly frowning back. I cannot help but resent his youth. After a few moments he matches my frown then stands and leaves. I did not mean to insult him, but I clearly have. I am less sure of myself when I am not engrossed in The Book. The outside world confuses me so I turn my head back down to continue to read.
The Man sits at the piano bench at the mall and smiles. He begins the piece again but plays the notes with more space between, so he can put certain power behind the ones he likes. I keep reading the page in front of me but I slowly start to fade.
In the next occurrence I find myself reading, The Man is again seated at a piano bench. Much time has passed since the last occurrence I read. He is no longer playing on the old public piano in the mall. He is in Manhattan now, playing an upright Yamaha in a deserted ballet studio. The acoustics of the room cause the chords and notes to echo around after he releases the keys; this is a room in which to play slow, haunting music.
He plays here most nights until the cleaning crew comes in to sweep. Even then, sometimes, he will keep playing if the janitor of the night allows it. When he is asked to leave, or finds it impossible to keep his eyes open, he walks upstairs to his tiny apartment. The building provides asylum-like rooms for low-income tenants like himself.
Between his notes The Man can hear the rumblings of a party going on two floors below; the building also serves as an event space for weddings, lectures, galas, etc etc etc. Tonight he is playing Gymnopédie No. 1. As I read, I can hear the piece with unsettling clarity in my head. It is a salve to the usual fuzziness and pain of my thoughts.
The door to the dance studio slides open quietly and a woman in a green satin dress enters. She stands silently across the room and watches. Briefly, The Man’s eyes flicker up to see her, then back down to the keys in front of him. As he finishes he lets the last notes linger, and looks again.
“May I stay?” the woman asks softly. He nods. She glides over to the piano and sits to his left on the edge of the bench. At such a close distance he notices that her eyes match her dress. He continues on to play the Gnossiennes.
As I read my shoulder tingles. I feel what The Man feels, and I know that he is once again perceiving the magnetism that first touched him in that distant English class, which is now brought on by the proximity of the woman sitting closely next to him on the piano bench. Not so close as to touch but close enough that the warmth from her body creeps across the chasm between their bodies.
I want to hold on and read the next occurrence. I somehow know that it involves the woman inviting The Man downstairs to the party, and then later involves The Man inviting the woman back upstairs to his cramped room. But try as I might, I slowly lose myself and drift off into space.
I am on a new occurrence, this one told in a flurry of excitement. The sentences are incomplete and the thoughts are half-formed before they escape The Man and splatter onto the page before me. His wife has gone into labor.
Together they whirl about the apartment, gathering the pre-packed bags and the scattered necessities. Out of habit The Man gently runs his fingers over the tops of the keys of their piano as he passes by towards the door. They depart to Mount Sinai Hospital.
Their son is born. I am filled with such emotion as I digest the scene. The Man started with so little and now he has found such fulfillment in life. My heart is racing and I have to share the moment so I say aloud in little more than a whisper, “his son, Erik.” I look over at the woman to my left and she beams.
“Yes,” she says, “what a wonder. Would you read to me?”
I nod and start speaking. My voice is weak and it is a tangible effort to make it heard, but The Man’s writing is forceful enough to carry me through the recitation. I lean my head back and continue narrating as long as I can before I feel myself slipping under again.
Another occurrence. They are back at Mount Sinai. I know that time has passed because his son is there too, and at this point he has grown into a young man. The doctor is speaking, but the occurrence only captures bits and pieces.
“We can’t be sure when it will start,” the doctor says, “but the important part is that it is inevitable and I am sorry.” The doctor looks at The Man’s wife and murmurs something about a caregiver.
I do not like this occurrence and I feel myself breathing at an elevated pace. They are discussing tactics and strategies like healthy eating and exercising. The doctor suggests crossword puzzles.
“But above all else,” says the man in the white coat, “I would advise journaling. It has had the most effective results for many of my other patients. It can help to slow this down, and when it is too late to slow down, it can help to bring back things that might have been lost”.
My rattling hands shut The Book and reopen it to the title page. These words appear in pen: Remember yourself. Under them is a signature of a name which could only be my name, written with a hand that must once have been a stronger and steadier version of mine. Instinctively I trace the lines with a ghostly pen and the movements feel intrinsic to the muscles and tendons of my fingers.
Again I close The Book and I turn it sideways on my lap in front of me. I gently place my hands on top of it with my wrists resting against the leather, my palms arched up, and my fingertips curled downwards again so that they are all making individual contact with the surface. I lift my right index finger an inch into the air, then purposely bring it down, striking the cover with a tap. And I hear it. Middle C. The sound rings clearly in my mind. I play the note again. I play a scale. If my eyes were capable of tears I know I would be crying.
A noise, this one coming from the real world, pulls my gaze up from The Book to the door of my room which is now filled with a body. It is the strong man with the beard. As he walks to his chair, he notices me watching him. His gaze falls to my hands on The Book, then rises to my face, where my eyes are perhaps proving that they are still capable of tears.
“Did you finish The Book?” he asks, his voice wavering.
I nod.
“And you know who I am?”
I begin to nod again, but instead breathe out a word: “Erik.”
He hears me. Now it is his turn to nod.
He slowly approaches the bed and takes my hand in a gentle grip. I tighten my weak hand around his and hold on with all my might. Maybe if I can hang on tight enough I can keep this realization just a bit longer, and the memories won’t slip back into the ether like fine sand sliding through the narrow aperture of an hourglass. The woman sitting to the left reaches over to take my other hand. Even though I know that eventually my strength will wane and my grip will loosen, the beauty of this instant is fierce and it is not lost on us. That the memories will fade again is unimportant, because this brilliant moment has occurred, and nothing can undo that.