flashquake Fiction

The Mystery
by Maggie Mountford

Lizzie curls on a sofa, listening to Bach, a cushion over her face. Glenn Gould is her man, for the moment — a melancholy genius, but a genius just the same, content to immerse himself in his art, to allow in the pain, and then push it out again, transformed into something beautiful. She can hear him, every so often, murmuring as he plays, immersed in the fugue-like variations, the notes clear, separate, like a mountain stream, cascading over rock, or violets in springtime — coming across them on a country walk, imagining the soft, dark, underworld they push up from, damp earth, the scent of leaves, the roots of old trees — mushrooms...

Lizzie would like to cry. But this music is too perfect for tears. How simple it is — really. We grieve, and yet, underneath, there it is, within our reach — order, simplicity, harmony, perfection, and the tears are suspended, just underneath the heart, as the music consoles, and attempts to heal.

Andrew gave her this music, handed it to her, casually, one day.

“You might enjoy this,” were the only words he spoke in recommendation. He was like that, leaving her to find out for herself — in galleries, at concerts, wherever criticism might be spoken, he stayed silent. And Lizzie liked that. In fact, in time, she grew to like most things about Andrew. And then like grew into love, and love grew into something else, as elusive as the music, yet there, always there, like a melody, underneath whatever else happened between them. She hears it now, inside the melody, wistful, yearning, reaching — an enormous and overwhelming "if only" that catches her in the solar plexus, and then takes off again with the notes, dives into a new theme, which is a variation on the old one, only different, the way a new love is a variation, and yet...

“I think I love her,” he said, the last time she saw him.

“Love her? You’ve only known her a few weeks!”

“I know. But I have to be with her. And I’m sorry about it... But that’s how it is, Lizzie. It’s a mystery, how these things happen, but I have to go with it. Don’t you see?”

She didn’t see at first. In fact, she didn’t see for a long time. But you can’t argue with finality. All she could do was watch him walk away, diminishing into the distance, a speck on the horizon, and that speck growing smaller and smaller, until she was finally alone.

“I won’t cry,” she told herself, and then, of course, she did. Huge splashing tears, like raindrops at the beginning of a thunderstorm, like the pianist, when he hammers out a crescendo and it reverberates around the concert hall, and it’s almost unbearable, almost unendurable, yet not quite, because the next passage is gentle, exquisite...as though peace has been found within the terror of utter chaos.

But why should I remind myself? Is it because, within the pain, I may catch a glimpse of that love I felt? The wonder of it, and the failure, woven together, into a tapestry that contains all life?

Lizzie asks herself questions, but she doesn’t hear any answers. Instead, the music flows over her and she submerges, goes under, drowning the thoughts in it, letting memory fall away, seeing blue darkness, scenting the violets, as she drifts down, down, into the mystery, as the disc revolves.

Round and round and round, and round...

Copyright 2002 by Maggie Mountford

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