Anima Emodulari (Life, Put to Music)

It’s been nearly a decade since Erasmus Harper spent any time here.
         His cherished room is ordinary and barren. The forest-green walls are peeling at the upper corners of the room, depositing piles of paint chips near the rotten molding at the base. The maple floorboards are creaky and dilapidated and riddled with scratches from shifted pieces of furniture, the battle scars of remodeling. Most of the disposable furniture had been removed at his request during the room’s final transformation nearly 40 years ago, leaving only a single lamp tucked away in the darker nook of the room. It now leans against the far wall, unplugged and missing the bulb.          
         But nothing detracts from his most precious items: a piano, a bench, and a solitary window positioned directly to the left of the bench. The piano looks partially worn but still majestic. Its dark mahogany finish gleams brilliantly in the sunlight, reflecting the powerful rays as if exuding its own aura. He runs a hand along a curved edge of the baby grand and examines the keys, sweeping his fingers across the ridges and recalling the sonic power that they had produced in unison with his emotion-stricken hands.
A thick layer of dust had collected there in his absence. He considers blowing some of it off, but he doesn’t see the use.
         He looks longingly at the piano bench. That seat had been memorable to him not so much for what had happened there, but for what hadn’t. It was his hideaway, his oasis in the desert of chaos. His father did not abandon him here, his wife did not dissolve their marriage here, nor did his body fail him here. Whenever he clutched the edges of that grainy wooden base and perched himself atop the padded leather, the universe outside of this room, his room, ceased to exist. There was nothing beyond his window aside from inspiration. There was nothing separating his heart and hands.
         But Misery, he discovered, will pursue a man incessantly.
         Nine and a half years ago, he played this piano for the last time: bolts of pain suddenly charged through the fingers of his right hand and ended the day’s session. He assumed that it was routine cramping and that it would subside after sufficient rest. A few days later, his left hand began to ache as well. He thought it odd and coincidental but still chalked it up to soreness.
         But it was not cramping or soreness. It was rheumatoid arthritis.
It was Misery incarnate.
         No amount of medication or exercise could save his cursed hands from the raging disease. Misery, the entity that was not content in stealing his father and his wife, robbed him of that which he cared for most by destroying his only means of spiritual cleansing.
         He takes a deep, mournful breath. He raises his palms to his face and stares into them, wishing he could somehow project life into them once again. He has mangled hands to match his mangled heart; the fingertips that once expressed his despair can now do little else but cause it.
         He returns his attention to his bench. Although he’s been in and out of this room many times over the past decade, he hasn’t sat here once.
         But today, on this breezy but warm April morning, something is different. For the first time in years, he finds himself wanting to return to that bench. He misses the comfort of this place as much as he misses the music and the solace it provided him. In his old age, he has found himself taking fewer things for granted. Most of what he misses he can never have back: youth, his wife’s love, his father… his hands….
         His piano is still right in front of him.
         He sits. His hands find their way onto the keys, as they had done so many times before. But this time, he doesn’t play a single note. He closes his eyes and breathes slowly through his nostrils, lowering his head to concentrate. Harmonies echo inside his mind, the resonant sounds of the piano soothing him within his own imagination.
         He knows that he can never fully return to his melodious paradise.
         Today, somehow, he doesn’t need to.