He grabbed my bag and his, and asked if I could get a small bag out of the trunk. I sensed that this request was intended to postpone me, to allow him to get to the house first, because as soon as I went for the small bag, he sprinted up the steps and disappeared inside the house, leaving the front door open. Maybe he wanted to make sure the place was presentable, turn the lights on, or whatever.
A few moments later I slowly followed him and found myself standing alone in a small entrance hall. Extremely small, for such a big house. It was in fact a little room, completely enclosed, with a door straight ahead. There was a chair against one wall, and I was trying to decide if I should sit or knock on the door, or just open it. I felt like a frustrated Alice in Wonderland, because the signs were missing; it seemed to me that if the chair were not going to wear a sign that said “Sit on me,” then the door should have one that said “Knock on me.” Or vice versa. I was about to knock on the door, when Damon opened it and stood in the doorway, against a background that was astonishing.
He was looking at me very intently, scrutinizing my reaction, while smiling in a shy, sheepish way. He seemed happy and alive, brimming with vitality. I, on the other hand, turned white; inwardly at least, and I’m pretty sure outwardly too.
Behind Damon was a huge room with not much furniture, and the little of it I could see seemed to be made of marble and glass. But what was noticeable about the room, and let me stress that this was very noticeable, very visually striking, was that there were clouds in the air of it. Big clouds. About seven of them. There was one just to the left of Damon, shoulder level. And another, further back, was bigger than me.
Damon stepped aside to let me in, but I didn’t budge.
“This is a bit unsettling,” I explained. “You didn’t warn me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you uncomfortable? I didn’t anticipate this reaction,” he said, shooing away the closest cloud with a few waves, like a smoker realizing his smoke is disturbing another person. “The reason I didn’t warn you was that I wanted to surprise you. In a pleasant way. But come in. Don’t be afraid.”
My footsteps echoed on the marble floor. “Is this what you’ve been working on this week?” I asked.
“Is what?”
“Making these big clouds?”
“No. I’ve had clouds like these for a long time. Size was the first thing I figured out; it was the core of my invention. This week I was taking care of other matters.”
I looked around, still nervous. There was a blue vinyl couch on the right, which I hadn’t seen from the doorway, and there was a glass clock against a wall. The room looked to be straight out of a Magritte painting. There was a staircase at one end, with a cloud halfway up the stairs, or halfway down; I couldn’t tell where it was going, if anywhere. There was another close to the window, as if looking out nostalgically. Another one’s top was popping out from behind the couch. Two floated near the ceiling. Some were very white and dense, like cotton; others were more loosely knit and see-through. They were all relatively motionless at this moment. I didn’t know names of various clouds, but one of them was sort of stringy and fibrous; sickly looking (the kind that looks majestically feathery in the sky, but obviously less so in a house). Most of the others looked plump, like well-fed sharks.
I became aware of a strange sound, music actually, coming from a large object, or sculpture, standing in a corner. On closer look it seemed like a fountain, dripping drops on various surfaces, each one producing a different note, and each note sounding ethereal. The notes were not random; there was a definite melody. It was probably preprogrammed, like a mechanical piano.
Before I had a chance to ask him about this musical fountain, Damon said he wanted to take me for a row in the boat on his pond while it was still light out. We went.
He was beautiful, rowing in the late afternoon light. And he was calm. Not at all nervous, for someone who was hopefully on the verge of making a move on me. His shirt was transparent, like a sweating man’s shirt, except he was not sweating. His chest was heaving from the effort of rowing, and yet there wasn’t the slightest sound of breath. His full lips were slightly parted. He looked at me, looking at him, and I looked away. At least I think he was looking at me, with his white-blue eyes, but it was hard to be sure because of the hair hanging in front of them.
He raised his face to the breeze and closed his eyes. The wind swept his hair aside. He then looked straight at me. I looked at the oar.
I wished I, too, had hair hanging in front of my face, to hide me. As I contemplated the oar traveling through the murky transparency, something suddenly struck me as odd, as not quite … realistic, about Damon’s rowing: There was no sound to it. Not even the sound of a ripple when the paddles entered the water. Yet I was not hard of hearing; from this boat, I could hear the birds in the forest. If Damon had been rowing slowly, the silence would have been somewhat more conceivable, but we were advancing swiftly, and his movements were powerful. I don’t mean to sound corny, but it was as if he and the water were one, as if he knew it as well as himself, knew how to touch it without disturbing it, without clashing with it.
He was still looking at me, and instead of allowing myself to wallow in self-consciousness, I decided to be courageous. I looked back at him and did not look away. After a moment, he smiled slightly. I reciprocated, almost imperceptibly, and I felt myself relaxing. It wasn’t so hard.
I hated the idea of destroying this thrilling, loaded silence, but I couldn’t resist venting my new boldness.
“You look like a ghost,” I said.
“How?”
“Your rowing is so quiet. You make no sound with the water.”
“If you ever, one day, know something well, it won’t make any sound either.”
I chuckled, a bit disappointed by the silliness of that statement.
“Don’t laugh,” he said. “It’s true. What you know well grows silent.”
“True of everything?”
“Yes.”
“Even of people?”
“Most obviously of people.”
“How sad.”
“No. But what’s more interesting for you is that it is also true of art.”
“Even of music?” I asked, wanting to trap him.
“Yes. Great composers make very little sound with their music.”
“You mean good music is minimalist?”
“No. I mean good music is silent.”
“No notes?”
“Yes, it has notes.”
“So you mean metaphorically silent.”
“And also literally.”
“How?”
“Oh, come now, Anna, you know what I mean. No matter how loud a piece is, no matter how many notes it contains, it is silent if it is great: it is pure, it is essential, it is wholly itself, and it makes no sound.”
At the risk of irritating him, I said, “I take it you don’t like music.”
He stopped rowing and came toward me, crouching low, like a lion stalking its prey, which may not have been an intended effect; I think he was just trying to avoid rocking the boat. He sat down next to me, straddling the bench. “I like music fine,” he said softly, so close to my face that I could feel his breath on my cheek. We stared at each other for a while. He said, “Look up.”
I looked up, while his eyes remained glued to me.
“Are there any clouds?” he asked.
“A few.”
“Do they please you?”