Twelve Days of Christmas: Music

This is my entry for the third day of the 12 Days of Christmas Bop: Music.

“Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.”
– Ludwig van Beethoven

The moonlight spilled over his windowsill.

Age-creased hands tapped rhythmically at a keyless keyboard that sounded only in his mind. Dark clouds fled swiftly across the sky, scattering the light. A storm was coming.

He was not there. He was lost in a summer, 24 years ago. The glow of Giulietta, her fire, her elusive smile. He’d written her a sonata. He could not hear her voice, but he remembered the touch of her hand: the slight pressure and then slipping away, a sylph of light and air.

An octave in the left hand and a triplet in the right, repeated, repeated, as he felt the thrill through his veins again. He played his windowsill piano, feeling the Adagio Sostenuto pour through the tips of his fingers. A brisk wind was kicking up and he felt, rather than heard, the distant thunder.

“Delicatissimamente,” he murmured. Italian always captured Giulietta better than the dissonance of the German.

The rain started then, thick drops spattering the sill. Heedless, he played on.

His face, that rough-hewn clay, held little attraction for such a lovely young Countess, but his playing had always drawn her like a moth to the flame. She would sit beside him on the bench, whispering into his unhearing ears. He would rest his hand atop her small one and guide it through the roll of her sonata.

The blanket tucked around his legs fell away. The thunder cracked its bass and the wind lashed his face with water. He rose, with the intoxicating spiral of the final swell, her only kiss on his lips.

They found him the next morning, crumpled by the open window, a faint smile remaining for the music only he could hear.