The Accordionist
A gloomy, dismal November day. The Saturday shoppers were plodding along, some laden, some empty-handed, their faces reflecting the gloom of the day. There was chatter but it sounded quarrelsome: the fretful child scolded by a parent, the youths, menacing in their designer jackets and close cropped hair (one even sported a pattern in his hair). Their conversation was littered with profanities and their laughter was cruel, often directed at some innocent individual who met with their disapproval.
As I watched this parade I began to feel cross and frustrated at these people who jostled me, invading my space. People brushed past me, roughly, and I caught snippets and phrases of their banal chatter.
I continued in this frame of mind as I walked towards the shopping centre and suddenly, rising above all the inanity around me, I heard music. For a moment I was confused, perplexed. I couldn't locate the source of the sound, a sound so incongruous to the surroundings.
I looked to my left and saw him. A man of indeterminate age, unkempt and threadbare, playing a small accordion. The tune was not one I recognised but the lyrical melody of It immediately lifted my mood. I stopped and stared. I was jostled by irritated passers-by but they could not move me from my pitch. The man looked like a street dweller. He was wearing a grey coat many sizes too large. On his hands he wore fingerless gloves and his trousers, a sort of blue serge material, were worn through.
But it was his hands that drew me, and the music they made. Flying up and down the keyboard, his fingers drew the music from his instrument as an artist paints the softness of clouds or a child's smile. I stood transfixed and let the music warm me.
All the while, the man remained expressionless yet the air was alive with emotion around him. The jostling crowds seemed to melt away and I was coccooned in the music from the accordion.
There was a shabby cap upturned at the man's feet with a few coppers and the odd bit of silver in it. I found myself reaching into my pocket and drew out a handful of change. I dropped it into the cap. The man let a smile of recognition flash across his face but the flow of music didn't falter.
He had changed the tune now, effortlessly letting the new one issue from the first. This tune had a mournful sound to it. It told of a green land and a girl with golden hair looking out to sea from a high cliff, knowing in her heart that he would not be returning. Or it told of a small child clutching a toy, her tear-streaked face telling of cruelty and neglect.
After a few moments, his tune came to an end. I stood, disappointed, as the hum of voices encroached on me and grew in intensity. I wanted his music to go on forever.
I looked around and saw only the jostling shoppers. The accordionist had gone.
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A Travelling Man
He arrived in the village today.
His shabbiness stood out against the prim, manicured hedges and the crew-cut lawns. He was of indeterminate age, a face obscured by his beard and experiences.
I saw him first by the old cross. He was sitting in the sun, staring at the sky and I could see his lips moving, perhaps in prayer or madness: I was too far away to hear what he was saying so I moved closer.
He saw me and I looked away instinctively. I didn't want him to think I had been staring although I had been.
As I drew closer, I could hear him speaking. He was incoherent, at first, I thought he was rambling drunk. Then, as I drew closer, I seemed to recognize what he was saying, but not the meaning. The language seemed familiar but strange.
He looked at me. 'Good morning, nice day.'I attempted to start a conversation in the oh so very English way. His response was to cease his mumbling and stare uncomprehendingly. I sensed no aggression in his manner. In fact, a strange calm seemed to emanate from him.
I backed away, left him then to go about my business and leave him to his.
That evening, I heard from friends the man had been seen around the village during the day. Everyone commented that, although he was a stranger, he seemed familiar. And everyone reported the sense of calm that seemed to flow from him.
I thought no more of him until I saw him again three days later. Where had he been? Had he been staying somewhere, perhaps sleeping in the open, in an outbuilding? Where? Why had he decided to stop here on his journey?
That evening at the village meeting , some voices were raised in discord:
'Lowers the tone of the village.'
'Will encourage others like him to come.'
'Can do without his sort here.'
But the accusations were half-hearted. They knew he had done nothing but chosen our village as an interruption in his travelling.
The next day I saw him by the old cross. There was a group of children surrounding him. I was sure they were harassing him. I drew nearer. I could hear laughter, childish laughter. The children were engaging with him animatedly. He seemed to have a, strong almost childlike rapport with them.
I watched for a while from the edge of the excited group of children. After what seemed only a few minutes, but in fact, had been over an hour, he painfully stood up and began to walk away with a rag-tag procession of children in his wake, their laughter carried on the soft breeze.
As he reached the edge of the village, the children stopped and waved him on his way. He continued without a backward glance and disappeared from view as the road bent away to the south. The children scattered and the square was empty apart from me. I found myself looking longingly in the direction he had gone.
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The Solitary Child
That evening I had taken a wrong turn. It was strange really. I had been following the same route for years. It was as though I was being drawn to that part of the town, some external power manipulating my sub-conscious.
It was a few moments before I realised I was walking down unfamiliar streets. My surroundings first came to awareness through the smell. It was a hot evening, sultry. Typical of that time of year. Piles of decaying rubbish were flung haphazardly every few paces, festering contents spilling out onto the pavement. The smell was sweet but not pleasant. It was that kind of sweet smell that causes a lump of nausea to lodge itself in your throat. A flash of movement to my left caused me to turn my head. I am certain I saw a hairless tail flick away into the lengthening shadows.
I stopped and took in my unfamiliar surroundings. I was in a neighbourhood of tenements. Decaying edifices scarred by graffiti and boarded up windows and doors. Gradually my hearing too became attuned to my surroundings. Voices seemed to be coming from all around me and above. I could detect many unfamiliar languages as well as the more familiar. Of the discordant voices - I couldn't describe them as conversations - there was a rich and harsh lacing of profanities.
I felt chilled even in the humid air of this early evening. This was not a part of town to find oneself alone in. I quickened my pace and made it a priority not to make eye-contact with anyone I passed by: the ragged woman pushing a shopping trolley piled high with old newspapers and plastic bags, the youths propping up a wall, cleaning their nails with flick-knives whose blades flashed savagely in the setting sun. Then there was the man in the filthy leathers and greasy hair who muttered at me as he passed by. I didn't make eye-contact with any of them.
Something then made me look up. At a grey window with a cracked pane I saw the face of a child. It was a first-floor window and I could see the child quite clearly but the child did not seem to see me. And her face - I surmised it was a girl - was staring out beyond me and her eyes were expressionless, although I sensed a great sadness in the small features. She was no older than three or four. Something compelled me to stop and look up at her. I found myself willing her to look at me but she continued to stare out of the filthy window at something beyond me. After a few moments, she turned away from the window and disappeared from sight. I assumed she had been called by someone inside.
I snapped back to full awareness and hastened on my way, wanting to leave the area as quickly as possible. I saw the light of a main road ahead of me and felt a great sense of relief once I found myself in familiar surroundings. But I couldn't get the child out of my mind.
It was a few days later when I found myself returning to the area of town I had found myself in accidentally the other day. Work had prevented me from going back the next day but not from thinking about the child at the window.
The same collection of people were there although it was earlier in the day than my last visit. I spotted the ragged woman on the other side of the road but the youths were still rooted to the same spot as before. And the stench was the same too. I swallowed down the lump in my throat.
As I approached the tenement where I had seen the child, I became aware of my heart beating faster. I reached the building and looked up at the grey-grimy window but there was no sign of the girl. Was it the same window? I felt a sense of tremendous disappointment. Then I saw her. She was sitting on a step outside the front door of the building. I hadn't noticed her at first because of her diminutive size. She was as grimy as the building she inhabited and the look on her face; a combination of incredible melancholy and that blank, distant stare.
I wanted to approach her, talk to her but couldn't bring myself to draw near. At that point, I heard a voice calling from somewhere inside the building. It was obviously someone calling the child because she turned her head at the call, a harsh, barked order littered with profanities, then stood up and went inside letting the door slam to behind her. I didn't catch the name the disembodied voice used to call her in.
I felt cheated of the opportunity to communicate with the child and continued on my way feeling disgruntled and dissatisfied with myself.
I thought about what it was that drew me to the child as I walked home in the heat of a summer's afternoon. Was it her solemn, melancholy expression? Was it her blank, distant eyes? Was it her appalling surroundings? These thoughts spilled into all my activities the rest of that day and the next day I found myself back on her street. Again, my heart was pounding as I approached the building and I found myself looking up and longing for the child to be there.
I saw her now familiar small features framed in the window and I couldn't help but smile to myself. This time, the child must have seen me because she smiled back. I felt an enormous sense of elation and even though she turned away from the window a few seconds later, nothing could take away that feeling. I walked home feeling positively buoyant determined to try and speak to her the next day.
I don't know exactly what time it was the next day when I returned to the street but I know it was in the morning. I had had a sleepless night thinking about the child. As I neared the building, I saw a police car and an ambulance parked outside her tenement. I was filled with a sense of awful dread. I walked by the tenement not daring to look up at the window and hurried to the main road. I felt light-headed and realised I had been holding my breath.
I staggered up the stairs to my flat and slumped down in the armchair. The blinds were drawn against the harsh glare of the sun and the room was in semi-darkness. I welcomed it.
My mind was in a turmoil of thoughts and as is natural, they were all of the worst kind. My heart was crashing against my rib cage and my palms were clammy. I turned on the television.
The newscaster's voice was sombre when he reported the discovery of the child's body. He added that the child's mother was in custody. And then they showed a picture of the solitary child.
I felt numb. Numb and then angry. Angry with the newscaster for reporting her death, angry with myself for my inability to save her, angry with whatever supreme power that had allowed the child to die.
I went to the cupboard and took out the bottle of Scotch and sank into its depths finding oblivion there.
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