Wittgenstein Sits at the Piano after the Long Cacophony of the War… - Matt Kendrick
Wittgenstein Sits at the Piano after the Long Cacophony of the War and Contemplates Past, Present, Future, Love, Loss, Obsession, Poise, Determination, Pain, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Acceptance and Everything Else Wrapped within the Meaning of ‘Can’t’
The notes sound in his head. Five of them. The first ones he played as a boy, legs dangling like crotchet stems beneath him. He reaches forwards with his left hand, slows, pauses, pulls back. His hand falls heavy in his lap.
The second try, he rests his fingers on the keys and is shocked by the veil of dust, the cold, unfamiliar feel of the wood, the black keys’ hard edges. When his legs were finally long enough to reach the pedals, he told Mutti the piano was as much a part of him as an arm or a lung. He laughs at that. A bitter laugh. Mourns for the young man at his grand debut whose storm-surge cadenza forecast concerts and concerts and concerts...
Then the gun shot, the stretcher, the field medic’s tent, the leather strip between his teeth. In his inside jacket pocket, he has Mutti’s letter in which she asked, What will you do? She meant, Now that you can’t tie your laces, can’t write your name, can’t play the simplest of children’s preliminary etudes.
His throat is a parched riverbed.
He smashes the heel of his left hand into the keys one, two, three, four, five times over.
The echo is more than the notes. It is early morning scales slipping into sight-reading, memorising, meandering improvisations, mud-slumped memories of war.
He breathes.
He closes his eyes.
He imagines a thread pulling straight his spine, imagines the bridge of separation between the piano and himself mending like knitted flesh over an open wound, an audience, their top hats and tiaras – they are crowding forwards – and he starts to play, sketches an idea, a chromatic progression that burbles upwards in quavers and semiquavers and semidemiquavers, a second line interwoven with the first, with trills and grace notes, all quickening and crescendoing, twisting, cascading, until his fingers, four fingers and a thumb, are rapid white-water rippling so fast across the keys that it is difficult – no, it is impossible – in the precise moment of watching him, to know whether he has two hands or one.
Originally published by Reflex Fiction in June 2021
Matt Kendrick is a writer, editor and teacher based in the East Midlands, UK. His work has been featured in various journals and anthologies including Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, Cheap Pop, Craft Literary, Fractured Lit, Ghost Parachute, and the Wigleaf Top 50.
Website: www.mattkendrick.co.uk | Twitter: @MkenWrites
