Counterpoise

Evening writing exercise

The lights slowly dimmed to dusk. Some dink in the front row kept coughing. Every three or four seconds, he’d fire off one or two short, quick coughs, trying to keep them quiet. The concert hall was church-like, funeral-like. Thirty rows of forty seats angled up and back from the stage, where four slender performers were striding out from wings to seats. I wondered why no one was clapping.

The dink was a geezer, probably someone who’d been supporting the concert hall for decades, some rich lifer trying to spend his frail and feeble twilight years shivering along to music older than he was. It was strange, how a man’s cough sounded different from a woman’s. A cough had no words, but it still had a voice. I tried to remember what Jennifer’s cough sounded like. Was it hoarse? Smoky? Smooth? I almost wanted to ask her — she was sitting right in front of me, and had no idea I was there.

After a pause, the musicians began to play. First the violinists, then the cellist, then the viola-ist, who caught my eye immediately. Pretty in a professional way. She had her hair pulled back in a bun, so tight I could almost see her roots straining to hold their place as the drumming vein in her temple threatened to snap them. Her back was so straight it seemed to tremble with the effort of holding the pose, or maybe that was just my imagination. Her fingers glided acrobatically up and down the viola’s neck, picking out one perfect note after another.

She’d been training for decades, and probably playing this one piece for months, and I, who’d paid several hundred dollars for my seat, wasn’t listening. I was looking at Jennifer — at the curves of her face as viewed from behind and a little to the right. The cheekbone I’d rested my fingers on. The ear I’d caressed. The corner of her eye, bearing a few new lines in the skin. There was no new man beside her, but rather a woman I’d never seen before. Maybe a friend, or maybe Jennifer had switched postures, inverting her sensibilities in a final, ugly coda to our marriage. In my jacket pocket, someone’s fingers, not my own, rested lightly on the lacquered wooden grip of my father’s handgun.

Suddenly, the music changed. All four instruments paused briefly, and before the last note had fully faded from hearing, they launched into a furious doubletime saw. Right on cue, the dink coughed. I came back to myself. At least this was exciting. I hadn’t made up my mind about when to pull the gun, and decided to relax and listen a little while more.

What bothered me about classical music was that there were no words. There was no message. It could communicate nothing. It sounded beautiful, but really it was ugly and dumb, and people only said they liked it because they pretended it had meaning. You could no more find meaning in a movement of classical music than you could take shelter in a painting. The faster music was good, though. It made me think of a car chase.

Jennifer had always loved classical. Her head was gently nodding along to the music, the cheekbone and ear and eye corner gently reflecting the dim light to reveal new dimensions of themselves. Thirty years we’d been married, thirty years she’d had to learn to live with me, and in a matter of minutes she’d thrown it away and left me crumpled on the floor. So here I was, preparing to blow the back of her skull to pieces, vaporizing that unknowable interior place that had ruined me. The hand that wasn’t resting on the gun rested on my thigh, tapping in time with the music. Daring Jennifer to hear me and turn around.

The viola-ist rocked back and forth, arching her eyebrows as if she was in pain. Whatever held her together seemed to be half as thick and twice as tense as one of the strings she pulled long, low notes from. The program said her viola was 482 years old. That I could appreciate — the age of the thing, the distance it had traveled, its craftsmanship. It was a beautiful instrument, smooth and shiny, the grains of the wood so clear that I could see them from all the way in the back row. I couldn’t judge the sounds, but I could judge the thing that made them. I wondered what was inside — if it was hollow, or if there were other pieces at play where no one could see them.

The tempo slowed, and the dink coughed. The gun. It was my father’s. I’d never fired it before. This would be my inaugural act of violence, never to be repeated. A hard, fast, singular event that would conclude as quickly as it began. One quick, precise blow to the back of the head — hair today, gone tomorrow. The song now was morose, meandering, drawn-out notes drawing out to other notes. A chorus of moaning from a choir of catgut. I was bored. My fingers curled around the gun. Now. It had to be now.

But something occurred to me: that some composer whose name I’d long forgotten had once used cannons as instruments. How much did that cost, to fire off a cannon in a crowded room? And how did the crowd not run for the exits? Because they’d paid, and didn’t want to lose the money? No, that wasn’t it. It was because someone had rehearsed for weeks, or months, preparing to fire that cannon at the one right moment. I couldn’t appreciate classical music, but it was a miracle whenever a room full of strangers sat still and silent for an hour to listen to a man fire a cannon at the right moment. A good revelation to have, the moment before I brought someone else’s life to rest.

Before I could pull the gun from my jacket, the dink coughed again. The viola-ist sprang from her seat and jumped into the front row and smashed her 482-year-old instrument over his head. With a sigh, he slid to the ground. The other musicians stopped playing, their final notes screeching to a gut-churning halt, and stared at her open-mouthed.

The viola breaking sounded like the smell of blood. I heard it in my nose. My grip on the pistol relaxed. Though I hadn’t made a sound, Jennifer’s head began to turn, its curvature revolving until her face revealed itself and looked me in the eye.

For a perfect moment, there was perfect silence.