Where Music Becomes Light. Tom 1

Sometimes almost blindly, sometimes with a bad head, sometimes with a heavy body that resisted every movement.

He would find a phone, a sheet of paper, a laptop — anything. He would write down a line, a rhythm, a colour, an image. Not always notes. Notes were only a part of it. Sometimes it mattered more to catch the shape.

“Low black circle under the voice.”

“Blue light from above, as after a storm.”

“Guitar — rusted iron, but a warm line inside it.”

“Woman’s voice far off, like flame behind glass.”

“The bass should not sound. It should press on the chest.”

Anyone else seeing such notes would probably have decided that this was not music but the raving of a tired man.

For Dmitry it was a working language.

He did not merely hear.

He saw.

Sometimes a song opened in front of him like a building.

A verse might be a narrow corridor with damp walls.

A chorus, a high hall where the sound rose like smoke.

A bridge, a crossing over dark water.

An outro, a door closing slowly and leaving nothing behind it but a low hum.

There were songs that had a taste.

The bitterness of things left unsaid.

The metal of anger.

The sweetish warmth of a memory.

The dry dust of an old grievance.

The cold of rain on the tongue.

He had long since stopped being surprised by it.

Synaesthesia was not a talent and not an ornament. It was rather a way of existing. Sometimes a gift. Sometimes a punishment. Because the world rarely asked whether he wanted to see more than everyone else.

He saw.

And it was not always beautiful.

Some sounds had the shape of pain.

Some voices left a dirty trail behind them.

Some melodies seemed false not because there were wrong notes in them but because the colour did not match the intention.

Dmitry felt a lie in music almost physically.

That was exactly why he could not write by halves.

If a song was born out of pain, the pain had to be real.

If out of love, the love must not pretend to be easy.

If out of anger, the anger had to have a cause and not be a pose.

He did not know how to make a simple “track”.

He made a space that he walked into himself.

And then Ksyusha appeared.

And the space changed.

Imperceptibly at first.

He would be writing something dark — the familiar thing, deep, with a heavy bottom end, with pressure, with the inner gloom he knew how to walk in. The guitar would sit densely. The bass would go down. Electronic noise would gather at the edges like a city night beyond the windows.

And then, somewhere inside that gloom, a warm reflection would appear.

Unasked for.

He would take it out, and the sound would go dead.

Put it back, and the song would begin to breathe.

Dmitry would sit in front of the screen, frowning, playing the same passage round and round, and understand: it was her.

Not in the sense of a song about her.

Not necessarily.

She had become a frequency that got in even where he had not planned any light.

Before Ksyusha his music had often been like a man standing in a dark room and speaking to emptiness. After her a window appeared in that room.

Not always open.

Not always large.

Sometimes only a narrow bright strip under a curtain.

But the window was there.

One evening he was working on a draft that began with a heavy riff. Slow, dense, almost angry. There was something in it of a long walk across a wet city, when the lamps are reflected in the tarmac and inside you there is neither the strength nor the wish to explain to the world why you are still walking.

Ksyusha was sitting not far off, wrapped in a blanket, scrolling through something on her phone. In fact she had stopped reading long ago. She was simply pretending to be occupied so as not to disturb him.

Dmitry saw it.

He saw a great deal in her, in fact, even when he was looking at a screen.

“Are you listening?” he asked.

Ksyusha looked up.

“Of course.”

“And saying nothing?”

“You are working.”

“It matters to me.”

She put the phone down.

“Then play it from the beginning.”

He played it.

The room filled with a low guitar sound. Not loud — he had learned long ago to listen to drafts at a moderate volume so as not to deceive himself with sheer pressure. But even quietly the riff had weight. Behind it came the 808 bass, deep and slow, like the pulse of an enormous animal. Over the top, a barely noticeable synthesiser, cold, almost transparent.

Ksyusha listened seriously.

Dmitry was looking not at the screen but at her face.

She knew how to listen without technique. Not like a musician who goes straight after mistakes, frequencies, structure. She listened with her whole condition. And she sometimes noticed what Dmitry himself missed because he was too close to the material.

The passage ended.

“Well?” he asked.

Ksyusha said nothing for a moment.

“Heavy.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. It is just that he seems to be walking alone.”

Dmitry frowned.

“Who does?”

“The man in the song.”

He sat back in his chair.

“Alone?”

“Yes. As though he is walking through a city and nobody answers him.”

Dmitry turned slowly back to the screen.

She had got it.

That was exactly what he had felt and had not put into words. The riff was strong, the sound dense, the atmosphere right, but inside there really was the emptiness of a single figure moving.

“And what is missing?” he asked.

Ksyusha thought.

“I don’t know. Not joy. There shouldn’t be joy. But there ought to be light somewhere. Not so that everything turns out well, but so that he knows where to walk.”

Dmitry said nothing.

Ksyusha grew slightly embarrassed.

“Perhaps I am talking nonsense.”

“No,” he said quietly. “Not nonsense.”

He picked up the guitar.

Not the electric one — the acoustic. It stood beside him, as it always did, because Dmitry did not like to put instruments away where he could not reach them. Music sometimes came suddenly, and while you were fetching a guitar from another room you could lose the most important thing.

He tried a few notes.

Softly.

Carefully.

Too beautiful — he took it out.

Then again.

One note lay over the heavy riff strangely, almost wrongly. But it did not destroy the riff. On the contrary — it opened a depth in it.

Dmitry played it again.

Ksyusha looked up.

“There.”

He stopped.

“That?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She shrugged.

“Because now he is not entirely alone.”

Dmitry looked at the strings.

Sometimes her simple words did to the music what hours of technical work could not.

Now he is not entirely alone.

He recorded the acoustic line. Then added a thin layer of synthesiser, almost unnoticeable but warm. A copper-gold thread appeared inside the heavy song. Not the main thing, not insistent, but without it everything went empty again.

Ksyusha sat quietly.

Dmitry played the passage from the start.

Now the music went differently.

The same riff.

The same bass.

The same night.

But somewhere far off, behind wet glass, a light was burning.

“That is you,” Dmitry said.

Ksyusha looked at him.

“What is me?”

“That line.”

She smiled, a little at a loss.

“Did I sound as strange as that?”

“You did not sound. You shone.”

Ksyusha shook her head.

“Sometimes you talk in a way that leaves me unsure whether to believe you or laugh.”

“Better believe me.”

“And if it is funny?”

“Then laugh. I like it.”

She laughed.

And Dmitry suddenly understood: here it was, the real music. Not only in the speakers. Not only in the riffs. Not only in frequencies that can be measured. Music is also the moment when a person laughs in a half-dark room and you realise that for the sake of that laugh the whole chorus can be rewritten.

That rough melody would not necessarily become a finished song later on.

Dmitry had a great many fragments that lived on their own. Not everything had to turn into a release. Some pieces of music were like private photographs: not for the public, not for the stage, not for a cover. Simply proof that on a certain day, in a certain room, something between two people had been real.

But that evening he understood clearly for the first time:

Ksyusha did not merely inspire him.

She was the co-author of the light inside him.

Not because she sat beside him and said which note to put where.

Because she changed the very need for that note.

Before her he had often written in order to bear pain.

With her he began to write in order to keep the warmth.

Those were different reasons.

And different songs.

A few days later Dmitry woke before dawn.

This time without anxiety.

Usually the night melodies came at him sharply, almost imperiously. They woke him, pulled at his shoulder, forced him up. This one came differently. It was already near when he opened his eyes, as though it had been sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for him to wake.

Outside it was a dark blue morning. Not night, but not yet day. At such times the world seems unfinished: the houses are silent, the roads empty, the sky slowly remembering light.

Ksyusha was asleep near him.

Her hair was spread across the pillow in dark copper. Her face was calm. In sleep she looked younger and more defenceless, but Dmitry knew how much strength there was in her. It was simply that Ksyusha’s strength did not always look like armour. Sometimes it looked like the ability to smile again after pain.

He lay and listened to the silence.

And then, inside him, it sounded:

Ksyusha, you are my one star…

The line was simple.

Too simple, if you looked at it with a cold mind. Almost like a child’s declaration. But Dmitry did not push it away. He had known for a long time that the most honest things often arrive without a complicated form. The complication comes later, when a man begins to defend himself against his own sincerity.

He got up carefully so as not to wake her.

Pulled on a T-shirt, went into the kitchen, put on a dim light.

Wrote down the first line.

Then the second.

In this world without a trace…

He stopped.

A world without a trace.

Yes. That was it exactly.

A world in which people pass one another leaving noise behind them but no meaning. A world with too many grey days, faceless faces, empty conversations, other people’s expectations. And in that world Ksyusha was not simply a woman he loved.

She was a mark of eternity.

He wrote further:

You are eternity held in silence,

my only fire in the dark.

The words fell into place at once.

Not perfectly, not finally, but alive.

He did not see this song as a dark one, though there had to be weight in it. At its base were concrete jungles, grey days, a crowd, an industrial sound, an 808 bass, synthesisers. But above all of it — her.

Not as an ornament.

As the centre of the light.

Dmitry closed his eyes.

The music opened in front of him with volume.

First a grey city. High walls. Concrete. Cold air. A low bass somewhere underground. Faceless people moving past like shadows. Time melting like dew on glass, and nobody noticing.

Then her look.

Not the harsh light of a spotlight. Not a flash.

Lightning.

It pierces the dark without destroying it. It simply shows that the dark is not absolute.

In the chorus the colour changed.

Grey became a deep blue. Then gold appeared in it. Then copper. Then fire — not a blaze but a steady flame you could hold in your palms if you were very careful.

Dmitry began typing out the structure.

Intro — heavy 808, industrial synthesiser.

Verse — concrete, crowd, fate, a look.

Pre-chorus — lighthouse, clouds, time.

Chorus — Ksyusha as a star.

Bridge — guitars, a synthesiser fracture.

Outro — a whisper, where her name dissolves into the music.

He wrote quickly.

Sometimes he stopped so as not to lose the breathing of the song. Not every word was final, but the direction was exact.

This was not simply a song about love.

It was a map.

A map of the world before her and after her.

Before — grey.

After — fire.

He was so absorbed that he did not hear Ksyusha come into the kitchen.

“Not sleeping again?”

Dmitry looked up.

She was standing in the doorway, sleepy, in her house clothes, her red hair tousled. She was screwing up her eyes against the light. On her face was the expression he adored: a mixture of displeasure, tenderness and the familiar understanding that arguing with his night music was useless.

“It is morning already,” he said.

“Is that the excuse you have invented for yourself?”

He looked out of the window.

“Nearly.”

Ksyusha came closer and looked at the screen.

“What are you writing?”

Dmitry felt suddenly embarrassed.

It was strange. He could talk about difficult things, about pain, about texts, about fears. But showing her a song with her name at the centre of it turned out somehow to be more frightening.

Because it was too open.

“A song,” he said.

“I can see it is not a shopping list.”

He gave a short laugh.

“About you.”

Ksyusha was silent.

The sleep went out of her face.

“About me?”

“Yes.”

She looked at the screen.

Read the first lines.

Dmitry watched her as closely as if not the song but his right to feel depended on her reaction.

Ksyusha slowly sat down beside him.

Read on.

Then said quietly:

“You are my only fire in the dark…”

He nodded.

“Too simple?”

She looked at him.

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Dima.”

“What?”

“Don’t hide behind complication.”

He smiled, and something tightened in his chest.

She was reading again.

This time Dmitry looked at her hands. At the fingers lying beside the keyboard. At the small movements as she scrolled the text. It became clear to him all at once: the song no longer belonged to him alone. The moment she read her own name inside those lines, the music became theirs.

Ksyusha reached the chorus and was silent for a long time.

“Is that really how you feel me?” she asked.

Dmitry did not answer at once.

Because he could have said yes.

He could have put his arms round her.

He could have made a joke.

But he wanted to be exact.

“Sometimes I feel you more strongly than I can explain,” he said. “To me you are not simply a person near me. You are a… a bearing. A lighthouse. Only the word is worn out by now. But that is the sense of it. When it is dark inside, I still know where the light is.”

Ksyusha lowered her eyes.

An expression appeared on her face that Dmitry did not often see: not gladness, not embarrassment, not sadness. Something deeper. As though the words had touched a place she guarded herself.

“I am not always bright,” she said.

“I know.”

“I can be angry.”

“I know.”

“I can be difficult.”

“I know.”

“I can be wrong.”

“So can I.”

She looked at him.

“Then why a star?”

Dmitry leaned a little towards her.

“Because a star is under no obligation to be convenient. It simply is. And you can find your way by it.”

Ksyusha said nothing.

Then, very quietly:

“Write it.”

“Write what?”

“The song. To the end.”

He looked at her.

“Do you like it?”

She smiled.

“It frightens me.”

“Why?”

“Because it is beautiful to be seen like that. And frightening if one day you don’t match it.”

Dmitry took her hand.

“You don’t have to match a song.”

“What then?”

“Yourself. The song will adjust on its own.”

Ksyusha laughed quietly.

“You are talking strangely again.”

“But clearly?”

“To me, yes.”

And that was enough.

That day Dmitry hardly left the music.

He worked in pieces. Now writing words, now finding a riff, now looking for a synthesiser layer, now taking out everything superfluous. Ksyusha went off to her own affairs and came back, listened, asked questions, sometimes simply sat near him.

The song grew.

In the introduction the heavy bass was to appear at once, as though the pressure of a grey world were rising out of the ground. Industrial synthesisers — concrete, metal, electricity, a city with no face.

The verse lower, almost restrained. A man in a crowd. Grey days. Faceless shadows. And suddenly a look that cuts through a fate.

The pre-chorus, the air before an opening. Time melting, a world without end, and somewhere a lighthouse appearing.

The chorus, not too fast. Not brightly commercial. It had to be strong, wide, almost hymn-like, but with a heavy foundation. Because Ksyusha was a light to him not in an easy world but in a dark one.

That mattered.

Light in a bright room is hardly noticeable.

Real light is seen in the dark.

By evening the first version was ready.

Not the final one. A draft. With rough places, with parts that would still have to be rewritten, strengthened, cleaned. But the song already had a body.

Dmitry played it from the beginning.

They sat near each other.

Ksyusha listened in silence.

When the chorus came she did not smile. On the contrary, she became very serious. At first Dmitry was afraid something was wrong. Then he saw: she was simply taking it in.

Sometimes a person needs time to accept love that has been said too directly.

In the finale, where the whisper was to dissolve into the synthesisers, Dmitry had not yet recorded a voice. For the moment there was silence there and a rough pad.

But he could already hear it:

Ksyusha… you are silence in the storm,

the light that keeps my dreaming warm…

He did not say it aloud.

He could not yet.

Ksyusha turned to him when it finished.

“It is not only about me,” she said.

“What else is it about?”

“About what you are like when you are near me.”

Dmitry thought.

Once again she had been more exact than he had.

The song was called by her name, but inside it there was not only her. He was in it too — a man who had found light and was now trying not to lose it. A man for whom love had become not an ornament to a life but a way of surviving without turning bitter.

“Possibly,” he said.

“Not possibly. Certainly.”

He smiled.

“Very well.”

“And one more thing.”

“What?”

“Don’t make it too dark.”

Dmitry gave a short laugh.

“You are saying that to a man who writes heavy music?”

“I am saying it to a man who sometimes forgets to leave the light in.”

He looked at the screen.

“I shall leave it in.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

She nodded.

“Good, then.”

Later, when Ksyusha had fallen asleep, Dmitry sat down at the project again.

He listened to the chorus at low volume.

“Ksyusha, you are my one star…”

The line repeated itself without wearing thin. There was something almost prayerful in it, though he did not want to make the song religious. It is simply that the name of the person you love sometimes becomes a private prayer, even if you never say it in front of an altar.

He remembered India.

Remembered the ancient texts in which names were not accidental. A name could be a key, a formula, an address, a way of coming nearer to a power. In another culture, in another context, in another world he had worked for many years with words that people pronounced not merely for their meaning but for their action.

Now he understood that love creates such words as well.

Ksyusha.

To strangers, an ordinary name.

To him, a sound that opened an inner door.

He repeated it in his mind.

The music answered with golden light.

Dmitry wrote another note:

“Do not overload it. The light must breathe. She is not an effect, she is the centre.”

Then he added:

“No borrowed beauty. Only her. Red fire. Freckles. Liveliness. Warmth. Not a perfect picture — a real one.”

He was not thinking yet about covers, about a visual style, about the fact that in time the project would have a canon of its own. But he already felt that if a song ever became a picture, there could be no accidental woman in it.

Because an accidental woman would destroy the truth.

Ksyusha is Ksyusha.

You cannot replace a person with an image, however beautiful.

You cannot replace a living face with a perfect mask.

You cannot replace the woman you saw before you met her with the one somebody else’s imagination has drawn.

Dmitry closed the laptop only towards morning.

Before going to bed he went over to Ksyusha.

She was asleep with her hand tucked under her cheek. Her hair covered part of her face. He moved a strand carefully, trying not to wake her.

“My star,” he whispered, almost inaudibly.

Ksyusha did not wake.

But she smiled faintly in her sleep.

Perhaps by chance.

Perhaps because she felt it.

Dmitry lay down beside her.

The room was quiet. Outside a new day was beginning. Somewhere far off the city was preparing to make a noise again, to demand, to argue, to thunder with roads and voices. The world had not grown any softer for the appearance of a song in it.

But inside Dmitry something was different.

He understood that while this woman existed, while her name shone in his music, while her hand could find his in the dark, he did not belong to the darkness altogether.

He belonged to the road.

And the road now sounded with her name.

Chapter Seven

Dimka

Ksyusha called him by different names.

Sometimes Dmitry.

That came out when a conversation turned serious, when something arose between them that needed a level voice and exact words. “Dmitry” sounded grown-up, almost stern, as though she were addressing not only him but the whole of his past: India, the manuscripts, the illnesses, the strength, the mistakes, the weight he had carried in himself so long that he sometimes confused it with part of his body.

Sometimes Dima.

That was simpler, warmer, more domestic. It was what she called him in the morning when he would not get up. It was how she said his name in the kitchen, setting a mug down beside his hand. It was what she wrote in messages when she wanted to say something tender but not too open.

And sometimes Dimka.

That name was a different matter.

There was nothing official in it. No age. No heavy past. None of the layers through which Dmitry was used to looking at himself.

“Dimka” was who he was to her.

Not a man fifteen years older; not a scholar of ancient texts; not someone who had come through pain.

Not Nexxe, inside whom the music built its dark cities.

Simply her Dimka.

The one whose eyes sometimes softened when she was near.

The one who could be strong and still need warmth.

The one who thought too much but could be silent in a way that turned silence into presence rather than emptiness.

The one whose hands she would have known in the dark.

Ksyusha loved the name.

There was something almost childlike in it, though nothing weak. Something of her own, rather. As though in him she found not only a grown man but the boy who had once dreamed, been ill, dug his heels in, refused to give up, taken an interest in medicines, wanted to understand how a body is made, how sound is made, how the world is made, and why a person sometimes lives through pain and still goes on looking for light.

She did not think of this at once.

At first love was closer to the body.

To his shoulder beside her; to his look; to the way he straightened his collar; to his voice when he spoke more quietly than usual at night.

To the way he held her hand — without gripping it, without showing any power, as though asking permission to stay.

Then love went deeper.

She began to notice things in him that are not visible at a first meeting.

How Dmitry grew tired, for instance.