The Museum of Modern Love(30)

‘I think there would be more forgiveness,’ Jane said. ‘If we did more of it. Imagine in Arabic countries, in Africa, even here in America, if men did this with their wife, their wives, every day. Looked into each other’s eyes. Or soldiers with soldiers. Children with teachers. Heads of governments. Perhaps it would be good to have someone to practise on before you tried it on someone very important to you . . .’ She laughed. ‘But really, imagine!’

Levin thought of his film score for Kawa. He had called the first track Awakening. The Winter King met a young woman living in the forest. A woman bound by a spell. She had lived in the forest a hundred years or more. (It was a fairytale, after all.) They fell in love and had a child. But when the child arrived, it was to bring the woman the greatest loneliness of all. Levin didn’t know how to write that bit. Everything he tried felt like a cliché.

In the wakeful hours between midnight and dawn, it was as if he himself was looking for a path across the river, a perfect beat of stones that would carry him to the far bank without washing him downstream. The river was not kind or helpful. And sometimes there was ice all around him and he was cold. The forest was death overgrown with life. In those desperate hours when he knew himself more alone than he had ever been in his life, he was sure he would lose sight of the track he had made and never be able to find his way back through the trees. At 1.05 or 3.17 or 4.24 am he was never sure of his footing. And he saw Lydia in all the shadows.

‘If you do sit, please write and tell me about it,’ Jane said. ‘Here, I’ll give you my email.’ She scribbled her details on a piece of notepaper. ‘This will all seem so far away and unreal once I get back home.’

‘You’ll be able to watch on the live feed,’ Levin suggested, indicating the camera on the atrium’s wall.

‘I’ll write my mobile number too. If you are about to sit, will you text me? I would love to watch.’

‘Sure,’ he said.

‘I don’t expect many composers have sat with her,’ Jane said.

‘Maybe not.’ He was ready for Jane to go. He hated drawn-out goodbyes. He would never email her.

She hesitated and then she said, ‘Arky, my parents were married for sixty years. My mother never came to New York. She always thought she’d get lost. My father came several times for the races.’

He nodded, uncertain of why she was telling him this, now she was about to leave.

‘Is your wife home again?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Is it irreparable?’

He looked at her and was surprised to see kindness there.

‘Yes.’

‘But you still love her . . .’

Levin nodded. ‘I do.’

‘So, have you tried?’

‘She’s made it very clear.’

‘You know, Arky, we don’t know each other very well, but probably as well as we ever will. So I just want to say this before I go. Karl and I, we were together for twenty-eight years. Now I’ve lost him and there’s no chance to say all the things I never said. I think, if I dare be so bold as to give advice—which I know men always hate—you should try with everything you have. I just hate seeing love go to waste.’

Loneliness was silent, almost soundproof, he thought. ‘I need to get home,’ he said.

‘Alright,’ she said, startled, as he jumped to his feet.

‘Something just fell into place with the film score.’

‘That’s marvellous,’ she said, standing up beside him. ‘Go! Go! Quick!’

He kissed her cheek. ‘Well. It was . . .’

She smiled. ‘Thank you. It’s been a great pleasure meeting you, Arky. Do let me know if you sit with Marina.’

‘I will,’ he said, patting the pocket where he had placed her note, wanting to be the sort of man who would.

At home he sat down in his studio and did what he had done almost all of his life. He wandered through arpeggios, through chord modulations in minor and major keys, letting the mood take him, feeling the augmented colours of both. Seeing the profile of Abramovi?, the pale silent face. He saw a woman alone in the midst of a forest of faces. Then he heard it. There was a heart song, a step between loneliness and connection. The music of forest and water. There, in the notes, was the music of time and solitude and yearning for love.

His hands ran up and down the keyboard, the crisp notes of the Steinway cool and white and black under his fingers. A rush of energy ran down his arms. He heard the theme that would run in and out of the film, threading the scenes together. Raindrops falling on leaves, a moon in the sky and this melody. He understood how the melody could progress into other passages. He glimpsed what might come before and after. He played it over and over, seeing the woman who was human by day and a fish by night slipping into the water at sunset, waking and stepping from the river at dawn, the forest gleaming in tiny fragments as light returned to tree and fern, rock and bird, lichen and fungi. The woman standing in the endless wave of water and holding the stories of the world together.

He thought of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, opus 95, the haunting call of horns, the quiet moments of pause. But this was the piano calling, beckoning to the sun. This was a story about how the world was born and how it would change, and nothing would be the same.