> must’ve sent it after our long conversation in a restaurant, after I’d
excused myself.
I put the phone down. There were stacks of sheet music
around the bed, piles of scores on the windowsill across the room
and on top of the flimsy keyboard. The wall on the right was full
of post-its, which he’d move around until the orchestrations made
sense. The calendar on the table was full of post-its too, and next
to the calendar was my camera. My new year’s resolution had been
to take more pictures but it was already March and the card was
only half full. Most of the photos were from our ex tempore trip to
Paris.
He was sleeping heavily in the same position and I could
wriggle my arm free. I started to remove his clothes, one by
one, first the shoes, then socks, trousers, underwear and finally
the vest. He could scarcely leave the house when there was still
daylight and I was surprised to see he had a gardener’s tan. It was
only these times after he’d passed out, that I could properly look at
his bare body. He wouldn’t allow lights on when he was sober. The
face was horrible but the body was beautiful, now released from
its tension and slumped over the bed.
The clusters of freckles looked dark in pale light. I switched
on my camera and started taking pictures of the freckles on his
shoulders, then of the ones on his back, for which I had to turn him
around. After wine and beer he didn’t react to anything and even
though he made sounds, I wasn’t worried about him waking up.
I turned him around again and took more photos. I wanted
to remember everything, his neck, his forearms, his ankles. I tried
the flash a couple of times but the results were foul. The flash
robbed his skin of its glow. I twisted him in different positions on