Where Music Becomes Light. Tom 1

Not simply physically. Physical tiredness he knew how to manage. His body was not an enemy to him but a territory of permanent negotiation. He knew when to hold out, when to force himself, when to say nothing, when simply to get up and do the thing because there was no other way.

But tiredness of the soul came differently.

It did not always make him weaker. Sometimes the opposite — he became still more collected. Too calm. Too exact. Too far away inside.

Ksyusha learned to see it.

If Dmitry began speaking in shorter sentences, if he stared at one spot longer than usual, if he did not answer simple questions at once, then his invisible mechanisms were working again. Music, memory, pain, responsibility, unfinished thoughts, old fears — all of it could be moving in him at once, like the wheels of a great clock.

Once she would have taken offence.

It seemed to her that he was drawing away.

Then she understood: he was not drawing away from her.

He sometimes drew away from himself, so as not to fall to pieces.

And then she learned not to demand an immediate answer.

She simply came closer.

Sat down near him.

Touched his shoulder.

Sometimes she said:

“Dimka.”

He would look up.

And in that one word there was more than in a long conversation.

“I am here.”

“I see.”

“You need not explain everything now.”

“But don’t go far.”

“Come back.”

One evening he sat over the music again.

Outside it was a late, warm dusk. Not summer yet, but no longer winter. The city was gradually losing its sharpness. Lights were coming on in the windows. Somewhere in the courtyard children were laughing; then a door of the block banged; then a car went past, leaving behind it the quiet hiss of tyres.

Ksyusha sat on the sofa with a blanket over her knees and watched Dmitry.

He was at the table. In front of him a laptop, a guitar, a notebook, several sheets with broken-off lines. The light of the desk lamp fell on his face from one side, deepening its features. He listened to something in his headphones, then took one off, wrote down a couple of words, went back to the sound.

Ksyusha loved watching him at such moments.

A particular concentration came over him — almost priestly. As though music were for him neither entertainment nor work but a place you must not enter with dirty hands. He could be harsh about a result, dissatisfied, exacting; he could spend hours hunting for a shade of sound that another person would not even have noticed.

But she noticed something else.

When Dmitry wrote about pain, his face closed.

When he wrote about her, it softened.

Even when the music was heavy.

She did not know whether he understood this himself.

Most likely not. Dmitry was aware of a great deal in himself, but not of everything. Sometimes he looked so hard into the depths that he failed to see the simple light on the surface.

Ksyusha got up quietly and went to the window.

The glass reflected the room: his figure at the table, her own outline, the soft light of the lamp, the dark window in which the city seemed distant and almost unreal.

She looked at Dmitry’s reflection and thought that she loved him differently from the way she had once imagined love.

In youth love seems a bright and straightforward thing. A person arrives and everything becomes beautiful. The heart beats, the world sings, the words find themselves. You want it to be easy, with no difficulties, no past, no wounds belonging to somebody else, no need to explain, endure and learn.

But real love turned out to be otherwise.

Deeper.

There was happiness in it, yes. A great deal of happiness. So quiet that it could sometimes go unnoticed if you were waiting only for loud celebrations.

Happiness is hearing him walk about the room; happiness is knowing that he will come back; happiness is seeing his mug beside your own; happiness is touching his hand under the table.

Happiness is when he says your name not even aloud but somehow inwardly.

But beside happiness there was responsibility.

Not heavy, not forced. The kind a person takes on himself, because he loves.

Ksyusha understood that to love Dmitry meant loving more than his strength.

That is too easy.

Plenty of people could love his strength. A serious man, a deep look, a hard body, intelligence, experience, an unusual life, music with something strong and dark in it.

But to love truly means seeing where that strength has cracked.

And not pressing there.

She turned from the window.

“Dimka,” she said.

He took off one headphone.

“Yes?”

“When did you last eat?”

He looked at the table, as though food might be there among the cables and the sheets of paper.

“I don’t remember.”

“Then it was a long time ago.”

“I have almost finished.”

Ksyusha smiled.

“You said that two hours ago.”

Dmitry looked at the clock and was so genuinely astonished that she laughed.

“Really?”

“No, I made it up to get you fed.”

“Cunning.”

“I am learning complicated systems from you.”

He smiled.

It was a small smile, a tired one, but real.

Ksyusha came closer and ran her hand over his shoulder.

“Come on.”

“In a minute.”

“No. Now means now.”

He wanted to object, then looked at her and changed his mind.

“Are you giving orders?”

“I am looking after you.”

“It sounds the same.”

“Get used to it.”

He stood up.

In the kitchen she warmed up the supper, put a plate in front of him and sat down opposite. Dmitry ate in silence, but it was clear from his face that only now had his body remembered itself.

Ksyusha watched.

“When you go off into the music, it is as though you forget you are alive.”

He looked up.

“It happens.”

“And I need you alive.”

He went still for a second.

Then nodded.

“I remember.”

“Not always.”

“Which is why you remind me.”

She propped her chin on her hand.

“I don’t want to be your alarm clock.”

“What do you want to be?”

Ksyusha thought.

The question had sounded light, almost joking, but the answer inside her was serious.

“A home, I suppose,” she said.

Dmitry stopped eating.

“A home?”

“Yes. Not walls. Not housekeeping. A place you come back to not because you must but because there you are allowed to be yourself.”

He looked at her for a long time.

Ksyusha felt slightly awkward at her own frankness.

“Too grand?”

“No,” he said. “Too exact.”

She smiled.

“You see, I can be exact as well.”

“You can.”

“I just don’t show off about it all the time.”

Dmitry laughed.

And Ksyusha felt the warmth rise inside her. She loved it when he laughed. Not a half-smile, not a corner of the mouth, but an actual laugh. Then part of the weight went out of him, and she saw not only a man with a past but a living person to whom joy could still be given.

After supper they stayed in the kitchen.

The tea went cold, but neither of them hurried. Dmitry held his mug in both hands. Ksyusha looked at his fingers. Strong, but neat. The hands of a man who could hold a guitar, iron, an old manuscript, her palm — and did each of them differently.

“What were you writing today?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

“How can that be?”

“Sometimes I understand later.”

“But what is the mood of it?”

He thought.

“Warm. Oddly warm. A heavy song, but not about pain.”

“About what, then?”

Dmitry looked at her attentively.

“Possibly about somebody holding me on the ground.”

Ksyusha lowered her eyes.

“Me?”

“You.”

She said nothing.

She wanted to answer, but for some reason the words would not do. Love sometimes becomes so dense that any phrase seems thin and papery.

She got up, went to him and put her arms round his shoulders.

Dmitry laid his hands on her waist.

They stood like that for several minutes.

Without music, without conversation, without explanations.

Simply a kitchen, an evening, cold tea, the light above the table and two people still learning to be for each other not only passion but peace.

Later, when Dmitry went back to the laptop, Ksyusha did not go straight to bed.

She sat down near him and opened a notebook.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Writing.”

“Writing what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He looked at her with interest.

“So that is how it starts with you?”

“As though it is different with you.”

“Mine is more complicated.”

“Naturally.”

She took up the pen and for a few seconds simply looked at the blank page.

It felt unfamiliar.

Dmitry wrote constantly — verses, notes, structures, musical images, strange phrases that later turned into songs. For him paper was a working space. For Ksyusha it was more a place where one had to be honest, and honesty is sometimes more frightening than a stage.

She wrote the first word:

“Dimka”.

She looked at it.

The word turned out to be very much alive.

Not “Dmitry”, not “Nexxe”, not “my man”, not even “my love”.

Dimka.

And everything gathered round it at once.

His eyes, his voice in the morning, his tired shoulders, his habit of taking too long to find the right words.

His hands, which became surprisingly gentle when they touched her face.

His seriousness, which she sometimes wanted to shake loose.

His pain, which he did not always admit to.

His light, which he saw in her for some reason without noticing that he shone as well.

Ksyusha began to write.

Slowly at first.

In my soul, Dimochka, you are like a song…

She stopped.

The line was simple. Almost naive. But it held what she felt. There was no need to complicate it. Dmitry could turn sound into three-dimensional spaces, hunt for shades, see music in volume. She wanted to say it plainly:

you are like a song inside me.

Not beside me.

Not outside.

In my soul.

She wrote on:

Your eyes are like a sky gone blue.

And she saw his look at once.

Not literally blue every time — the light changed, the mood changed, tiredness changed his face. But in her sense of him it was exactly that: deep, blue, sometimes stormy, sometimes clear, sometimes shut behind cloud.

She wrote, and it grew easier.

As though what had lived inside her for so long had finally found a way out.

Dmitry did not interfere.

He only turned his head now and then and looked at her. In his eyes was that mixture of tenderness and astonishment which appeared every time Ksyusha opened a new door in front of him.

“Don’t peep,” she said, without looking up.

“I am not peeping.”

“You are looking.”

“That is different.”

“Naturally.”

He smiled and turned back to the screen.

But he was listening.

He listened even to her silence.

Ksyusha went on:

With you, my dear, I have become

someone entirely other; now I believe in heaven.

She stopped.

That was the truth.

Before Dmitry she had not been a different woman in any literal sense. A person does not change entirely. But beside him parts of her opened that had seemed to have no place before. Tenderness grew bolder. The wish to care for someone went deeper. Belief in closeness became possible.

He had not made her different.

He had helped her to see what was already in her.

Sometimes that is exactly how love works: it does not create a new person, it lights up the one who has been standing a long time in half-shadow.

Ksyusha wrote on.

Dimka, my one and only,

you are my most tender one…

She smiled.

Tender.

Somebody seeing Dmitry from outside would not have reached for the word at once. Strong, yes. Serious, yes. Closed, deep, complicated, stubborn — perhaps.

But Ksyusha knew his tenderness.

It was not sugary. Not for show. Not the kind handed out at the beginning of things in order to please.

His tenderness showed itself in small matters.

In the way he pushed her hair back when a strand fell across her face.

In the way he asked whether she was cold, even when she grumbled that he fussed too much.

In the way he brought her tea when she was tired.

In the way he listened when she spoke of something that to others might have seemed a trifle.

In the way he could apologise — with difficulty, not always at once, but honestly.

In the way he stayed near after a quarrel.

In the way he held her at night when words were no longer enough.

Yes, he was tender.

Her most tender one.

She wrote faster and faster.

Dmitry saw her face change. Saw concentration give way to warmth. Saw her smile now and then at a thought only she understood. Saw her red hair fall across her cheek and her push it back impatiently.

He asked nothing more.

He wanted her to reach the end by herself.

Half an hour later Ksyusha put down the pen.

“There.”

“May I?”

She looked at the page, then at him.

Suddenly she was frightened.

To sing or to write about love is not the same as saying “I love you” on an ordinary day. In a song the feeling becomes open. It can be heard, remembered, repeated. It stops belonging to you alone.

But Dmitry was not a stranger listening.

He was the one the lines were about.

Ksyusha held out the notebook.

“Only don’t analyse it.”

He took it carefully.

“I shall try.”

“Not ‘try’. Don’t analyse it.”

“Very well.”

He began to read.

Calmly at first.

Then more slowly.

Ksyusha watched his face.

She knew how he read texts: attentively, deeply, sometimes too deeply. But something else was happening to him now. He was not assessing the structure, not looking for weak places, not thinking about rhymes.

He was taking it in.

Line by line.

I love you with my whole heart and my soul,

you became a part of me, my fate…

Dmitry stopped.

Ksyusha tensed.

“What?”

He did not answer at once.

“Nothing.”

“Dima.”

He looked up.

In his eyes was the expression that made her heart contract at once: openness without defences.

“Nobody has written about me so plainly for a long time.”

Ksyusha was silent.

She had not expected it.

She had thought Dmitry strong, deep, used to words, to declarations, to complicated meanings. But now she saw: being loved openly was unfamiliar to him as well. Perhaps even harder than loving.

Loving he could do to the point of pain.

Accepting love he was still learning.

She came over and sat down beside him.

“Get used to it,” she said quietly.

He gave a short laugh, but his voice was hoarse:

“Giving orders?”

“Looking after you.”

He nodded.

“It sounds the same.”

“Good, then.”

Dmitry read to the end.

When he reached the lines:

You are my lighthouse in the misty air,

my brightest one, my dear one,

he did not close the notebook at once. He held it open a few seconds longer, as though afraid that if he closed it the feeling would go.

“This is a song,” he said at last.

Ksyusha let out a breath.

“Do you think so?”

“Yes.”

“A bright one?”

“Very.”

“Don’t make it gloomy.”

He looked at her and smiled.

“That is your line now.”

“So you remembered it.”

“I remembered.”

She took the notebook back and pressed it to her chest.

“I want it to be warm. With a guitar in it. Not weight. Well, perhaps a little of your weight, but not so that it presses down. So that it is… like a sunset. Like air. As though I am singing not to everyone but to you.”

Dmitry listened.

“And at the end,” she went on, bolder now, “could the music go out slowly? Like the sea. And I say: ‘Dimka, Dimochka, my beloved…’”

She grew embarrassed.

“Too tender?”

Dmitry shook his head.

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Ksyusha,” he said gently, “all my life I have written pain as though it had a right to be loud. Why should love be ashamed of its own tenderness?”

She looked at him.

The sentence became important to her.

Why should love be ashamed of its own tenderness?

Indeed.

People are often ashamed of speaking plainly. They are afraid of seeming naive, weak, too open. They hide feeling behind irony, behind a complicated form, behind a cold aesthetic. But sometimes the truth is precisely in the plainness.

I love you with my whole heart.

What could be more exact?

Dmitry took up the guitar.

“Shall we try?”

Ksyusha nodded.

He played the first chords.

Softly.

Too sad — he took it out.

He tried another picking pattern.

Ksyusha closed her eyes.

“That is closer.”

“Like this?”

“Yes. Only warmer still.”

He changed the movement of his fingers. Put more air between the notes.

“And like this?”

She opened her eyes.

“Yes.”

And then she began to sing, quietly, almost uncertainly:

“In my soul, Dimochka, you are like a song…”

The voice was cautious at first.

Not a stage voice. Not a trained one. Not aggressive, as in the songs where she was supposed to be a frontwoman, sharp, strong, almost defiant.

Here the voice was domestic.

A woman’s.

Real.

Dmitry went on playing, trying not to knock her off. He was hardly breathing.

Ksyusha sang looking not at him but somewhere in front of her, as though following an inward image. Perhaps she saw the sea. Perhaps the sky. Perhaps his eyes. Perhaps all of it at once.

When she reached the chorus her voice grew surer.

“I love you with my whole heart and my soul…”

Dmitry felt a wave rise inside him.

Not even music.

Gratitude.

There are things a man can wait for all his life without admitting it to himself. Not because he is weak. Because he understood too early that waiting is dangerous. But when the woman he loves suddenly sings about you as though you had become her fate, a place opens inside that has long been shut.

He played.

Ksyusha sang.

The room gradually disappeared.

Only the voice, the guitar and the warm light of the lamp remained.

There was no mysticism in the song in the usual sense. No ancient texts, no night visions, no complicated symbols, no dark rites, no enigmatic signs. But there was another mysticism, quieter and perhaps stronger.

The mysticism of one person becoming a home for another.

When the last sound dissolved, Ksyusha fell silent.

Dmitry did not take his hands off the strings at once.

They both sat quietly.

Then he said:

“Thank you.”

She was surprised.

“What for?”

“For my not being heavy in that song.”

Ksyusha looked at him tenderly.

“You are not only heavy to me.”

“What am I, then?”

She smiled.

“My blue-eyed one, my own.”

He closed his eyes for a second.

“That has to stay.”

“What has?”

“That line.”

“It is already there.”

“Then it is right.”

Ksyusha laughed.

Then she went to him and put her arms round his neck.

“Dimka.”

“Mm?”

“You really are my bright one.”

He wanted to object. To say that there was too much darkness in him to be anybody’s bright one. That she saw him better than he was. That he should not be idealised.