The Silence of the World
Elisa, was stoic and said little.
She preferred to watch the world rather than take part in it.
Her pockets were always full of interesting stones and acorns.
The expensive clothes her mother purchased for her were stained with mud and grass.
She was raised by her mother, a gentle woman, but full of tenacity; a musician, as talented as the greatest of concert pianists, though she never recognized it in herself.
Elisa was born with a peculiar sensitivity to the world.
She could hear and see things others couldn’t. The colours at the edges of rainbows that were invisible to other peoples’ eyes, the sound of snow falling during the depth of winter nights.
More than anything, it was music that brought vibrance to Elisa’s world.
Elisa’s mother pointed at the keys and told her “there are only twelve notes, yet Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart were able to write thousands of pieces, each telling a story, some of joy, others of pain- all of the greatest beauty.”
“Listen closely, Elisa” her mother said “there is more to the music that just what you hear”
Elisa was enraptured by the grand piano that sat in her living room; by the magic life her mother breathed into it.
It was an ancient piano said to have been used by Schubert to write, but never finish, his 8th symphony.
Its aged mahogany followed gentle curves. The ivory keys emanated the lives of the elephants whose tusks they were made from. Elisa thought about their lives, lived out in the Sahara desert.
They would never know that their bones would one day bring the pleasure of music to far away aristocrats.
Elisa imagined that the piano had a heart; that the sound traveled from its bones through its arteries and out its mouth.
Elisa’s mother played the piano almost unceasingly.
Elisa, always by her side, sat wholey captivated by her music.
Thick booklets of sheet music arrived in the letterbox weekly.
Her mother taught Elisa scales and arpeggios, but she was clumsy and found it difficult to understand the mechanics of music.
Roots, tonics, and diminishes were incomprehensible to her,
“How could something so beautiful be so veiled in mystery?” Elisa thought.
She made up for her lack of technical skill with the way she was able to hear music.
She could hear the difference in tone of the piano on rainy days and dry summer days; The subtle difference in her mother’s tempo between the morning and evening.
Elisa was able to witness music in a way that few others are able to.
On late nights when the crickets were humming, exhausted from running around the garden chasing salamanders, Elisa would lie in bed, welcoming sleep. When she closed her eyes, visions of music would come to her. The river of violin ostinatos the call of trumpets, the dance of piano keys. Music without the sound, no meaning lost to translation.
The meaning of minor thirds and crescendos flowed unhindered; direct communication of Bach or Mozart’s emotions.
She had felt these things from before she could talk and had shared it with no one; though her mother could sense it.
Her mother fed Elisa everyday with music from her piano, cultivating her daughter’s gift.
When she was twelve, Elisa developed an intense fever.
“Polio” the physician said.
Elisa slept for weeks and lost her memory.
She could only vaguely remember the amber light of a late afternoon. Her mother sitting beside her reading a story about a man and woman long ago. The first people to live on earth. They ate from a forbidden pomegranate tree.
She fell back asleep dreaming she was the first person to live on earth. The first person to watch a sunset and to see a flower, the first person to hear the song of a morning bird.
When she awoke, thousands of years later, startled back into her childhood, the world was silent.
Her mother’s lips spoke, but no words came.
Elisa hummed to herself, trying to reawaken the sound of the world.
Her mother held in her tears; the physician warned her that hearing loss was likely, but she had pleaded with God for weeks to make her daughter the exception.
The sounds of the world had been replaced by the most potent silence Elisa had ever experienced.
She recovered from the sickness, but her hearing never returned.
Her mother started communicating with her through hand written notes.
The serifs and loops of her mother’s cursive replaced the gentle cadence of her voice.
She always kept the small notebook and pen in her skirt pocket, scribbling I love you’s and lessons about the world; the pages of the notebook occasionally dappled in faded ink from raindrops and tears.
Though her ability to hear had left her, Elisa continued to enjoy the company of her mother’s piano.
Elisa found ways to enjoy the music without the sound.
She enjoyed watching her mother’s fingers dance across the keys.
She would place her small hands on the belly of the piano to feel the vibrations, and imagined it was the belly of a singing whale.
When her mother was outside gardening, Elisa would sit at the piano and gently press on the keys. She could feel the subtle vibrations from the strings, travelling around the wippens, down the ivory keys, to her finger tips.
She learned what the sensation of resonance feels like.
She would play the same note hundreds of times, intimately learning its frequency of vibration.
The mechanics of music began to become clear to her.
Her mother would balance her mug of peppermint tea precariously on the edge of the piano while she played.
Elisa watched the ripples on the surface change with the notes.
Each note sent the tea into a different dance.
Elisa developed peculiar sensitivities.
She would place her hand on the windowsill and feel the termites marching through the walls, the gentle melody of raindrops on the roof.
Her mother would catch her standing silently, her fingertips pressed against her chest, feeling her heartbeat.
She would go out into the garden and press her fingers into the soft soil. She could feel the nematodes tunneling through the earth and the fox gently breathing in its den.
She would place her hands on the trunk of oaks at the edge of the forest and feel the wind in their branches.
Elisa had lost her hearing, but she could still feel the gentle exhalations of the world through its vibrations.
She did not understand the pain people felt for her. Her aunts would visit- “what a shame to go deaf so young” they would say.
To Elisa, life was just as rich and vibrant as it was before her sickness.
Elisa taught her mother that there is more music in the world than just what comes out of instruments. There is melody and meaning to be had from every breath and raindrop.
Elisa would say that “overt beauty can blind us to the deeper and subtle beauty in the world”
To listen to music is to change it.
Elisa grew and continued her piano instruction. Her mother sculpted Elisa into an impeccable pianist. The precision and passion of her playing became unmatched.
She studied at the greatest music conservatories in Europe. Her peers were struck with jealousy and humility by her playing.
She was invited to play with orchestras and then for French royalty
Elisa’s mother grew old and passed away; her spirit continued on like a note’s vibration in the body of a piano that never quite ends; the molecular vibrations continuing on until the death of the universe.
Elisa continued her music.
People traveled great distances to hear the playing of ‘the deaf girl’.
Some said it was a hoax “no deaf woman could play this skillfully”
Sometimes hecklers would shout during her concerts to see if they could get her attention to prove she could hear.
Elisa could feel and hear the voices through the piano and would gently smile to herself.
Others- “such a shame she will never be able to hear the music she makes”
All were brought to tears by her playing.
She played for oligarchs and kings.
She traveled across Europe, silently playing Beethoven and Schubert.
Audiences applauded for her, they told her how beautiful her music is.
She understood their fascination with the sound.
But the audience would never understand what she experienced.
They would never understand what it was like to feel the deeper meaning of the music without the superfluous experience of sound muddying it. The raw unfettered meaning of the notes; no need for translation.
She understood Beethoven’s sentiment-
She watched as audiences silently clapped for her; “did they not realize the irony of their cheering and applause?”
She smiled and gently bowed to appease them.
Her mother once told her that “they know of no other way to show their appreciation for such beauty”
After a concert in Berlin, an older man approached her. His skin was damaged and hair bleached by the sun, she knew he was not from cold and cloudy Germany.
People frequently sought for her after her concerts to express gratitude for her music or to express their sorrows for the death of her mother, always hesitantly speaking, not knowing she could lip read fluently. But this man was different, he approached her and spoke without hesitation, as if he were well acquainted with Elisa.
He said that he was from Spain, passing through Germany following the starling migration.
He had heard about her from many travelers in many cities.
…….
He said he was an ornithologist. He told her that there exists in this world a species of bird in which all males are deaf. They sing their song for all to hear and yet will never hear it themselves.
The female chooses her mate. The male only understanding the love and effort he put into his song but never experiencing the sound; the fruit of his effort.
The ornithologist told her that she was like, not the males, but the females, “because the thing is” he said “the females never develop hearing either. It is only in their trust in the beauty of all things that she is able to find love”.
The conductor raises his baton.
She places her fingers on the keys, breathes in,
and silence.