|
BECKIAN FRITZ GOLDBERG
He Said Discipline is the Highest Form of Love
All three girls were in love with their music teacher.
At a lesson, he told one: You wear your heart on your sleeve. Then the
other came in, dark hair parted in the middle like a black book. She had
the longest most promising fingers, but he did not love her. The third
girl did not come until the next day. In the night she dreamed that he
spread his arms out behind her and then wrapped his left arm to hers holding
the instrument, and folded her fingers so they touched the strings. His
right arm crooked with her arm holding the bow. They were just one violin.
Every time she practiced after that she felt his limbs
on her limbs, his breast at her back, like a man-shadow cast by her small
girl body. An hour would go by like an arrow. That's what was hardest:
what love did to time. The Brahms fell apart like a glass. His shoulders
over her shoulders. Even when she grew up, which happened in a night,
and was happy, she could still conjure him, this love skin.
This whole petal of him.
When she came to her lesson the next day he tapped
the lip of her music stand with a baton, tic-tic-tic, four-four time.
She felt—a bit, a bit of his ankle in her ankle, and then the knee
above that, floating. She wondered what he was like with the book-haired
girl. She knew he loved those long fingers. Maybe that was enough. In
time. 
return to top
|
