From one room to another (Adagietto)
“Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter“
Fifty years before, they had listened to all of Wagner’s overtures except their favorite one, which was missing from the old CD – only it. On April 21, 2050, exactly one month after his passing, Ignota and his daughter entered his apartment to clear it away. The symmetry he had always been striving for eventually occurred: he lived precisely 100 years, evenly straddling two centuries.
Daringly, he thought of himself as the closing link of two millennia. One born at springtime’s debut is born twice, for himself and for the whole world, awakening from the winter lethargy. Astrologists argue that those born on March 21st represent the ultimate childhood and the never-ending immaturity of the world.
Ignota and the daughter did not find many things in his house. He did not have the Pharaoh’s syndrome, which drives some people to compulsively collect objects, hoping they would help in the afterlife. Nonetheless, over the years, a lot of stuff piled up.
The two women decided to throw everything away: the many books, including the ones he had laboriously written, several notes and sketchbooks still used when he was young, as well as postcards, letters, and pictures. They reformatted his computer so that many of his ideas and some secrets disappeared. Then they threw away his old running shoes and shirts that he would occasionally stare at, chasing memories and regrets.
Everything was vanishing in a heap of trash, and he felt as parched for connection. Ignota was throwing away his calendars one by one, absent-mindedly scanning them.
Unexpectedly, a restaurant receipt dropped on the floor. It was handwritten, thin, light blue, almost transparent, and crumpled. It was a date, a place, a memory: tagliatelle with ragu for her, with peas for him. Ignota wept a single tear and secured the treasured receipt in her purse, sadly smiling.
Also smiling, he felt revitalized and serenely passed away from one room to the next. It was then that the old CD finally played Tannhäuser’s overture.
