The Composite Man

Here for your reading pleasure is my story 'The Composite Man', which I submitted to the Sunday Star Times short story competition last year. Enjoy!

The box from within the box looked out into my bedroom. I turned down the volume of Rossini's 'La Promessa'. Night had encroached and without warning altered the landscape from the inside out. 

As the sound faded, the remaining notes bounced off the glass animals in my cabinet: seals and squirrels, cheetahs, lions, birds; a menagerie of tiny taxidermy.

These miniature replicas of living things evoked days at play that seemed to stretch on and on, where every room extended an invitation to install some childhood fantasy. I'd created hundreds of items for the miniature inhabitants of my toy towns: pairs of shoes, necklaces and earrings made out of clay.

College came and saw boxes arrive: more and more was packed away. I'd visited my childhood home many years later after my parents died, only to discover things had moved in and out of storage, and my entire room had been rearranged. 

On that visit, I also discovered that, being unmarried for too long, I was now referred to as being "on the shelf." I imagined myself like my glass animals, sitting out of reach of everyone, in a state of suspended animation. 

I had a lot of new space since I had cleared out mum's boxes that had been sent over from England.  I was going through the last of our things that she'd kept since we were little, unpacking and polishing the glass. I wiped across the keys of the laptop where opera was playing - Maria Callas singing ‘Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore’ - I have lived for art, I have lived for love. After starting my piano studio, I'd given up singing, but I still listened to Callas almost every day.

I set out a new outfit on the bed for the next day. I even had one student online now, and was very careful to look my best for the days when I would be speaking or playing piano on the webcam. 

During the day I would listen to piano competitions live streamed from distant locations - Seattle, Hamamatsu. Hour after hour performers from around the world were eliminated until the final victory lap. Some would raise a fist in triumph or defiance. Some would lower their heads in a display of modesty, or shame. Others would throw their arms open to receive the audience. The announcers would usher them in: We are witnessing the birth of a brilliant talent...heir apparent to Gould...heralding a new era of expression…prodigiously gifted. The winners, however, might pronounce themselves as Fortunate, as Blessed. It’s a miracle. I’m so lucky. As is their success was bestowed by the gods of chance.

"Please welcome a young pianist from Iowa, only 21 years old..."They had so much time. Now I was older, I found I was careless with time. Hours fell by me, irretrievable. Time spilled from my piano keys, onto the floor, into the carpet; I let it run over my feet as I sat at my piano with the heavy drapes pulled around me. 

I played Chopin Ballade no. 1 to an empty house. I could sense that the surfaces where I lived and ate were cluttered with debris. I yearned for quiet, without distraction.

The shadows were moving across the walls as the evening light spilled in. I looked through the gap in the curtains as the neighbours arrived home from work.

I got up to answer a knock at my door and peered through the viewer. A police officer was standing in front of two tall street lamps. 

"I’m sorry to interrupt your evening ma’am. We've had a report of a home invasion in this street last night at around 7pm, and we're just calling in to the houses on this block so everyone is aware of what's happened. We're canvassing the neighbourhood to see if anyone might have any information."

"Oh...I see. Well, I do have another appointment, a piano lesson here actually...but would you like to come in for a moment?"

"Thanks for the offer, but I can't stay - this shouldn't take long."

"Of course. A break-in, on this street you say?"

"Just a few houses down. There’s no cause for alarm – we believe this was an isolated incident. The suspect’s a young male, medium build, in his early twenties; from the reports we've received we've created a composite sketch. Does anything spring to mind when you look at this?"

"Nothing immediate. It could well be that I've come across him in my travels..."

“From the information we've already gathered, we don't think he's a local."

"I certainly don't recall seeing him before."

"Would you happen to recall seeing anything unusual at all, last night around 7pm?”

"I was out last night, at a potluck dinner for the church. But I don't recall anything out of the ordinary occurring."

"And you were home yesterday, during the day?"

"I was – I had company."

'I see; and do you live alone?"

"Well, I often have visitors. If I'm not here, I'm usually out and about in the village, or at the church, or picking up something for my tea. I'm rarely alone."

"And you don't recall seeing anyone that looked like this man, in this vicinity, yesterday evening – perhaps when you arrived home after dinner?"

"No, but I did get back quite late. Look. I'm terribly sorry, but would you please excuse me? I really must go, the house is a terrible mess and I have a guest arriving very soon..."

"Of course; thanks for your time. Don’t worry at all about what I've told you - just keep taking the usual precautions with your home and belongings. You can keep that picture too - if you see anything, if you remember anything – anything at all – please don't hesitate to get in touch."

I closed the door, annoyed at the lost moments standing and talking to the police officer. I decided I felt sorry for him, this composite sketch of charcoal and black lines and tattooed words.  I felt certain I would recognise him in a crowd, impossibly lost and alone. Frightened. I would approach him…

I am an RAF pilot, dropping the leaflets from crowded skies during wartime. The man's face covers every inch of ground. S.O.S. Have you seen this man? Your Country Needs You.

I could hear that the TV had been switched on in the other room.

"Gordy?"

 'Hullo Anthea. Brrr, nice weather we're having!”

"Gordy! For heaven's sake; you scared me!"

 "I've been here a while Anth. I knew you’d be busy getting ready for your lesson – didn’t want to disturb you. No breaking and entering was involved, I swear."

"Breaking and...you know there's been a break in on this street, less than 24 hours ago!"

"I know, Anth. I heard you talking to the policeman just now. I was joking."

"A strange sense of humour! And I didn't hear you come in at all - you could have said something. If you're here, make some noise about it - don't scare me half to death!"

"Oh, I'm sorry Anth - I know how you are before your piano lessons with that Russian chap. Don't be like that - I'll be good. Will you let me make it up to you...some tea as a peace offering?"

"No thank you. Another thing - you broke my terracotta flower pot, last week, traipsing around the back garden with your big boots. Try and be more careful!"

“Jawohl, Herr Kommandant!” Gordy clicked his heels and stepped to the sink to fill the kettle. He stopped by once a week to help with the tasks: defrosting the freezer, fixing the garbage disposal, things that I couldn't do so well any longer. He also helped out with the gardening. He knew all about cottage gardens: sasanqua, daphne and lavender. He would come by and harvest the rose hips as the days drew out. Said he was going to make a fortune creating a serum- was certain he'd found the fount of eternal youth.

"C'mon, Anth - sit down. I've made us some tea. A hot cup's brewed just for you."

"I suppose I have time for one cup. While we're about it, why are you here so late tonight?"

"I'm not late...oh, and by the way, it's Mary’s birthday Anth - we talked about it, remember? I had to sort out the booking for the restaurant on the way here....you know that I'm leaving early, don't you?"

"Arriving late, leaving early - why even bother coming at all Gordy? Well, it suits me actually - I have my friend coming over tonight for piano lessons..."

'I know, Anth, I know."

"I’m very busy getting ready. I hope you can amuse yourself.”

Gordy grinned. "I'm sure I'll figure something out."

I left Gordy and checked the grandfather clock in the lounge. It said 5:30. Bela was now half an hour late. I'd finished carefully cleaning the piano before he finally arrived.

"Hello Mrs Anthea."

"Good evening Bela - please come in, sit down." 

"Thank you."

"Now Bela. You know that I always see you at the same time every Tuesday. I know you work, very hard, during the day, and you battle traffic to get here...but would you mind arriving as close to time as possible next week?"

"Ah…I am late?"

"I'm afraid so, half an hour at least."

"Forgive me for my correction - but I do believe it is now only 5 pm, precisely...and that this clock is incorrect, no?"

I looked at the grandfather clock, then at Bela's watch. "Well, so it is! My apologies, Bela...Gordy only finished fixing that clock last week. Seems it's stopped again."

"That's OK, I'm just glad that I am not late."

"Right. Well, let's not waste anymore time, shall we? Where would you like to begin today?"

"I have been practising movement II of the Beethoven 8th."

"Good; let's start with that."

The familiar sonata began. Bela was restrained, the graceful ascending and descending cantabile melody steady and calm, before he broke into a steep accelerando, then returned to the refrain of the motif, the coda, and the final cadence. His breathing slowed with the mechanical heartbeat of the metronome. The grandfather clock stirred and shuddered to life, chiming as the minute hand hit the hour.

"That's excellent, that's wonderful, real control there Bela. Just watch your phrasing here; you've almost got it. Keep this theme more legato, and don't slow down too early here."

Bela's smile flashed momentarily before me. In the brilliant light, I saw the man from the poster lit up. “Playing here, for one night only...please welcome to the stage…” I heard the Beethoven sonata playing from the distance. The hall was empty. I strained to hear - the music seemed to be coming from outside. While the man pressed his hands to the keys, no sound came out. He played on and on, his hands flying furiously across the silent piano.

I looked into Bela's eyes, and saw the face of the condemned man staring back. As he looked at me, there was David singing onstage, his mouth moving but the music disembodied, while the condemned man played on a piano with no sound. For a brief moment, I allowed my mind's eye to linger there, near enough to reach him, to touch. I placed a hand gently next to Bela's on the keys.

The music stopped. "Madam?"

I quickly withdrew my hand. "I'm sorry - please pick up from bar 10."

Afterwards, we brought the score into the kitchen. We were discussing the left hand in the third measure.

"This has improved - your dynamics are more varied here Bela. There is more gradation of tonal colour."

"Yes, I understand...and I worked hard on this section this week.”

"That's very good Bela."

"I think you are a very good teacher - too good for me to keep paying you only in limes." Bela placed one on the table and reached for his coat. "Soon I will get better job, will be able to pay you more, real money...I think it's only a matter of time, yes?"

At night I sometimes talked to a community of musicians online. In exchange for piano lessons, Bela was teaching me some Russian, and I often practiced with the online musicians from Eastern Europe. One of them told me before he'd left Russia, he had sung at a church service in Moscow, with Putin in the third row of the balcony. In his travels, he told me he'd met people who, while they lived and breathed and appeared human, were melting from the inside out. "Where I come from," the singer told me, "we would call these people ‘stoneskin men.'"

I imagined these stone men walking among us, burning alive. As they walked, they spread poisonous fallout, slowly being engulfed in their own Chernobyl. 

I wondered if I could spot these stoneskin men walking the streets of London, where I came from. When Gordy had set up my laptop, he'd shown me how to look up satellite images of the places I’d grown up on Google. Street after street from my childhood loaded onto the page.

 I'd thought London looked post-apocalyptic on screen. Faceless bodies in freeze frame sprung out from the photos like the haunted musicians of my memory, their internal body temperatures rising beneath their stone exterior.

Gordy tried to show me an image of the house I grew up in, but it was unrecogisable to me. 

"Gordy, could you take another look at the grandfather clock?" I asked later. "It's stopped again."

“Let me tinker with the fabric of time", Gordy would say as he stopped to fix many things but especially that clock which never seemed to work properly since my husband passed away.

"Why don't you get rid of that old clunker? You should upgrade.” Gordy always rolled his eyes every time the clock stopped. "Why are you still stuck on analogue technology?"

"It's just a few small repairs", I said. "Besides, I like owning something I can keep up with."

After dinner Gordy was still talking about the home invasion.

"A break in on this village, here of all places. Never thought it could happen on this street."

Gordy watched ‘Fox News’ obsessively. There was an item about a boatload of asylum seekers capsizing, then it was Iraqi insurgents, and something about a Pentecostal Minister charged for assaulting a black woman on a plane but later being let off. The headlines seemed to aggravate the anchormen; their colour changed to bright red, their bludgeoning speech was punctuated by pulsating veins in bulging necks. The men and women were blond and polished, with big, American teeth. They didn't look like Bela's or David's teeth. Gordy would have said Bela and David had "Iron Curtain teeth."

Gordy sneered at the sinking boatload of women and children: "Look at this," he muttered. "Future terrorists! No sooner have they tossed a whole bunch of these nutters out, a whole lot more are trying to get in! It makes me sick."

"Turn that rubbish off," I say.

Gordy should be going home soon. My family only send him because they don't have the time to visit me and they feel guilty. I just want some peace. I take my rosary in one hand and close my bedroom door behind me.

I am thinking about David. At night-time memories are more vivid, and he comes to life. I sometimes imagine him emerging from the books I read, a creature dreamt by Pushkin – but he never reappears. Other things had grown dimmer but I still sensed the warmth as his expressive hands pulled me close in the final scene… it was Traviata - Violetta’s death throes… “Alfredo…Alfredo…I will live…!”  Those tsarian eyes. Standing in his presence made me feel so small, almost otherworldly. 

We took tram rides each day through London when we were both students at the Royal College of Music. On these trips together there were vague stories about harried departures, families torn asunder, ripped out from geographical pockets during diasporas in Belarus, in Lithuania, flung this way and that, before falling to the hard earth. 

'I am lost to the world

And I rest in a quiet realm.

I live alone in my heaven, 

In my love and in my song.'

I hear refrains of memory within Mahler, and David returns to me.

Gordy is planning a Cold War era theme party for this weekend and was sending out invites from my laptop. The posters he has created for the party are spread across the kitchen table. Everything is exaggerated for effect:  tank-sized guns, 50 foot moustaches. Gordy has come up with slogans to accompany the pictures of spies, famous movie stars, historic figures. 'Quit Stalin'. 'The Time is Mao'. 'Bond...War Bonds'. It's mass murder reimagined as a t-shirt slogan. Irony. We're poking fun; having a laugh at history's expense. 

On the kitchen table, a poster of Lenin sits next to my Edmonds cookbook. The subheading reads: 'Sure to Rise.'

Dead men rise again. 

The silent TV news plays a loop of asylum seekers sinking into the ocean over and over. 

They do not rise. 

Will history turn them away?

I am thinking about all the faces of guilty men, all those posters in the London Underground, melting the walls. Acrid faces burning through concrete to the outside world. These smiling assassins. These are the real criminals.

"Have you seen this man?"

I pick up the flyer to take a closer look. Though it's hard to make out, the man has David's eyes. I walk over to the collage and find the glue. I am careful to not disrupt the other work I have done.