The moment that Gwyneth began to play, I recognized Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” and I came to my feet, shaken, because of all the music that Father and I had listened to on our CD player, this was the one piece that moved us equally, that we could never hear too often. It is music that speaks to the deepest reaches of your soul, and you are lifted higher, ever higher, by the adagio, in my opinion more so even than in any of the masses that Beethoven composed.
I went to the wall of windows and stood gazing out at the snow, which fell no less heavily than before. The wind had abated somewhat and had become capricious, though lazily so. The flakes were no longer driven at an angle through the street. Instead, they gathered into half-formed figures that dissolved a moment after they took shape, an eternal procession of spirits, settling softly to the Earth like crystalized notes of music, bringing the melodies of a higher sphere.
The title “Moonlight Sonata” had not been Beethoven’s, but had been appended to the piece by a friend to whom the music brought to mind the beauties of Lake Lucerne as one glided across the water in a boat, by moonlight.
In the night, through the snow, came three Clears, the same that earlier I had seen on the roofs of buildings across the street, two men and a woman, she dressed in hospital whites and they in hospital blues. As Clears sometimes do, these three didn’t merely walk into view, but glided through the air, standing upright, as if being flown by wires in a stage production.
Two of them touched down in the street and stood looking this way and that, but the woman floated to the windows, as if drawn by the music. When she passed through those panes, a few feet to the right of me, no glass shattered. She walked now as if gravity limited her, when obviously it did not, and as she crossed the room, she was a lamp from which darkness shrank before creeping back in her wake. She stepped out of the living room, through the dining area, through the open archway to the kitchen, where she moved out of sight. She must have gone into other rooms, because shortly she returned, not by a door, but manifested out of lath and plaster, passing through a wall as easily as I could stroll through curtains of fog.
The Clear went to the piano and stood gazing down at Gwyneth, neither smiling nor frowning, watching with calm interest. The girl wasn’t aware of being observed, nor could she see the soft glow of the Clear, which fell upon her and across part of the keyboard. She played as if only I and the memory of her father were with her.
After a moment, the visitor turned from the piano and walked toward me. Obeying Father’s admonition, I looked out of the window, avoiding her eyes. I imagined that meeting her stare might transform me as, in classic mythology, meeting the stare of Medusa could turn flesh to stone. Father had never explained what would happen to me if I insisted on being eye-to-eye with a Clear, but he had been wise in all things, and I had no reason to doubt his advice.
The radiance of the Clear settled upon me and silvered the windowpane. I was aware of her face mirrored in the glass as she looked over my right shoulder, but I dared not meet the eyes even in reflection. After a hesitation, she passed through me, through the window, into the night, and I thought that perhaps she lived in a different dimension from mine and was capable of exploring this world, though I could not cross into hers.
She drifted down through the falling snow and joined her two companions. They walked along the street in the direction that the man and dog had gone earlier.
The sonata came to an end, but Gwyneth must not have wanted praise for her playing. After the briefest silence, in the thrall that follows the final note of any soul-felt piece of music, she brought forth another melody from the keyboard. As quickly as I had recognized “Moonlight Sonata,” I knew this piece as well, but not its title. These were the beautiful but sad strains that, on certain nights, found their way into my windowless rooms and haunted me, the music for which I’d never been able to identify a source, as though it issued from another world invisible.
I crossed the room and stood behind and to one side of her, still at a respectful distance, so that she could continue to imagine she was playing only for herself and her lost father, but near enough that I could feel the music as well as hear it. Music is sound, sound consists of vibrations in the air, and these particular vibrations resonated with the marrow in my bones, with the tissues of my heart.
When Gwyneth finished, she sat with her head bowed, her hands resting on the keyslip, her face blushed by trembling candlelight.
She said nothing. I knew that I should give her silence as long as she wanted it, but I asked in a whisper, “What was that music?”
“The first was Beethoven.”
“Yes, I know. ‘Moonlight Sonata.’ But the second?”
“It’s my own composition. I wrote it in the week after my father died. It’s an expression of the pain … the pain of losing him.”
“It’s beautiful. I didn’t know you had such great talent.”
“Don’t be so awed. It’s just a thing I can do. A gift. It’s not work to me. I didn’t earn it.”
“You must have recorded the piece you just played.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s music only for him and me. And, this time at least, for you.”
“But I’ve heard it before.”
“You can’t have.”
As she began to play it again, this time pianissimo, I said, “But I have heard it many times. In my rooms under the city. And I can never trace it to a source.”
I stood in silence as she played the piece through to the end. The last note traveled away from us like a slow bird floating higher on a warm current of air.
After a silence, I said, “I really do hear it some nights.”
“I believe you.”
“But if you’ve never recorded it and no one else ever has …”
“Nevertheless, you’ve heard it. I don’t know how. But I think I might know why.”
I didn’t quite follow the logic of not-how-but-why, and yet I asked, “Why?”
At first she replied with silence, but then: “I don’t want to say — and be wrong. I don’t want to hope for the wrong thing.”
Her cell phone rang. She put it on SPEAKER. “Hello?”
All silken tones had been washed from the voice by bad whiskey, and the words came rough and low, as if spoken through a stone-filled craw. “Miss Gwyneth, it’s me.”
“Is something wrong, Simon?”
“Some guys they’re lookin’ for you.”
“What guys?”
“Neighbors at two of your apartments called me, said these guys came around askin’ about you. Your neighbors they didn’t much like the look of these guys, thought I should know.”
“My neighbors hardly ever see me come and go. I don’t know them, Simon, so how do you know them?”
“Well, Miss Gwyneth, they’re friendly, and I gave ’em my number in case, you know, there was ever a plumbin’ leak or somethin’ when you weren’t in residence.”
“The neighbors have the number of the property-management company, and that’s all they need. Simon, I told you never to talk about me to anyone.”
Her tone of disappointment seemed to distress him. “No, no, I never did. I never talked about you. I told ’em the other name, not your real one, and all we talked about was stuff, you know, just this and that, the way people do.”
She got to her feet. “But you gave them your phone number. Simon, you’ve got to get out of there right away.”
“Out of here? Out of my nice little place? Where would I go?”
“Anywhere. Those men will be coming for you.”
“But, Miss Gwyneth, those neighbors, they have just my phone number, not my address or even my last name.”