The Body

He heard the dog howl like a wild animal and it intermingled into his dream.  It was a strange dream; an unclear group of hunters, which he was part of, were galloping on horses, chasing a wounded reindeer, while the dogs were running behind, barking and yelping.  The dog howled again, and he woke up in a startle.  He lay in bed motionless, trying to calm his racing heart, and listened to the night sounds.  The soothing tic-tac of the grandfather clock that stood in his living room, the noisy hum of the fridge in the kitchen, the shrill sound of the crickets outside his bedroom window, and the shutters that rattled in the light breeze.  All the night lullabies that put him back to sleep.  Then suddenly he heard a dog whimper, and his heart skipped a beat.  He opened his eyes wildly staring at the faint light of daybreak, and recognized the voice.  It was Lucky, the Cocker Spaniel of his next-door neighbor – Sophia.  A cold sweat covered his brow, and a shiver ran down his spine.  It was a heart wrenching sound, and he jolted into a sitting position, which made him dizzy.  Lucky got his name from Sophia as he trotted one day to her doorstep, and never left.  He was an unkempt, thin young puppy, and did not carry any identification tag on his neck.  Sophia adopted him into her house and her heart.  He slept by her bedside, ate from her plate whatever she made for him, gained weight, and was forever loyal and devoted to her.

Joe stepped quickly out of his bed and went to the window to look at her house.  He could not see anything.  A soft light had started to rise in the East, but the shadows of the night still lingered and all he could notice was the outlines of her small bungalow.  Her windows were dark, and he stood by his bedroom window, worried and confused without any idea of what to do.

Sophia moved into the neighborhood some 33 years earlier.  A petite woman with golden hair in a shade so bright that it looked like a halo around her head, especially as she was wearing it, in an old-fashioned way of two braids held around her head, like a tiara.  When Joe saw her for the first time on that day, the deep gold color of her hair took him back to memory fields of his childhood; The fields of ripe wheat at summertime in his native land, Naples, and his heart filled with a sweet sadness and longing for home sweet home.

She trailed a long floral dress, and carried herself with a straight back and high head, which gave her a majestic appearance, albeit her minuscule size.  Joe never saw a woman with so much dignity and poise as Sophia, but that he learned to appreciate much later.  The next item the movers carried down of their big truck was a Grand piano, and he wondered then how she would fit it into her small accommodation.  His bungalow was a mirror image of the other house, and it was small, but she did not have much furniture, and the piano filled the whole space, leaving room for only two armchairs and an end table. 

Sophia was a concert pianist, well known in her native land, Russia.  She traveled all over the continent, and at Eastern Europe, in the Communist countries.  In the mid ’60th, they sent her to perform in Carnegie Hall, in New York.  In the morning after the concert, which was very successful, she managed to fool her security escorts and entered the Canadian Consulate on 2nd Ave, asking for political refuge.  They granted it to her immediately, knowing that if she would return to the USSR, she will spend the rest of her life in a Re-education camp with hard physical labor.  She didn’t have anything to lose, her parents were both killed in an unfortunate car accident when she was a student in the Music Department of the Moscow University, and she never got married, being too busy with her career, to find time for personal attachment.  She was then near 40 years old 

She wanted to live in a big city like Toronto, but the immigration officer that dealt with her case, told her she needed to keep a low profile for at least a few years, and they relocated her to the small township of Newmarket, Ont.  An all-Anglo-Saxon town that did not see many immigrants among its residents, but nevertheless, she managed to find her own niche there.  In a few years, she built herself a career as a piano teacher, getting students without any advertisement, just by word of mouth from satisfied parents, who were very proud to have their young sons and daughters getting piano lessons from a concert pianist.

After seven years, she moved to Toronto, missing the pace of a big city, the many options for cultural stimulation, and that was how she found herself a house in Joe’s neighborhood, in downtown Toronto. 

She started to perform again, mostly in small venues and concert halls, but she did not care.  She loved playing to appreciative audience, and it sufficed her, as long as they shared their love for music as hers.  When at home she would spend hours in front of her piano, playing and practicing different musical pieces, and when weather permitted, Joe would sit in his backyard, under the wide-shade of his apple tree, listening in awe to the tiny woman producing so much magic with her hands.  She had long narrow fingers, he noticed, that looked strong and powerful, and he would close his eyes and listen attentively until his wife would call him back in.  He was married then, to nice Maria, his wife for 41 years, until she passed away after a short battle with breast cancer.  Joe was numbed with sorrow, lost, and lonely.  They did not have children and his large family was scattered all over the American Continent, and Italy.  He was alone.

It was the first time Sophia entered his house, to offer her condolences, and it was the first time he noticed how blue her eyes were, deep blue with a speck of gold, like the Mediterranean Sea on a summer day.

It took him seven more months until he mustered his courage and knocked on her front door.  He put on his festive polka dot red bow tie over a clean shirt, and held a bottle of wine he made two years earlier in his basement.  He was nervous and when she opened her door, he lost his courage and his tongue.  Her eyes widened in surprise as she looked up at him, and Lucky who was already with her, measured him up in suspicion, as if saying to him ‘what are your intentions here’.  He felt big and clumsy, towering over her with his heavy built frame, and his stocky arms with its rough palms, a result of life hardship as a mechanic in a car shop, and he clung to his bottle with both his hands as if holding for dear life.

“I … I …” he tried to talk holding out his arms, offering her his gratitude, but his words came out incoherently, and Sophia smiled gently.

“Oh you brought me wine, Joseph, how nice of you.  Please come in, Joseph.”  She always called him by his full name, and he liked the sound of it in her special accent with its rolling ‘R’s’ and soft ‘L’s’.  And for the first time in 17 years they were neighbors, he entered her house.  She told him to sit down in one of her armchairs, and played for him a cheerful Italian Tarantella, to thank him for his attention, and he was paralyzed with awe.  Lucky, sat at her side watching him constantly, until finally he relaxed and let his head drop to the rug and dosed off.  Later she brought two wine glasses and a plate of fruits, opened the bottled, and they drank from his homemade wine, savoring on its heavy sweet flavor.  It was a short visit because he was shy to the point of embarrassment, and her kindness only made it harder.  Ever since, their friendship deepened, and he put himself at her service.  He attended to her garden, taking care of every aspect of it, while listening to the magic of her music; he took care of all small house repairs as a skillful handyman that he was; and he would cook dinners, at his place to eat at hers.  Over the years, they became intimate, but she never let him stay over for the night.  And when he followed her to her bedroom, she would talk to Lucky in Russian, telling him to leave her room, and he would reluctantly oblige with his tail tucked in between his legs, he would go and sit in front of the closed door, sending at him a long look of resentment.  And when he would leave, Lucky would glance at him crookedly and carrying his head high, he would resume his seat at the side of her bed with a sigh.  She never agreed to move to live with him.  She needed her privacy, her own free place, she explained to him, and with sadness, he had to accept.  Her golden hair turned slowly to white, but she still wore it in the same old-fashioned way, and he never got tired watching her combing the heavy fall of the gold-white silken hair.  Her eyes were still sharp and blue in her wrinkled face, and he felt content and happy she let him enter into her Garden of Eden.  He never stopped wondering what she found in him; Him, the simple man that he was, uneducated, unsophisticated, while she was a woman of the big world, educated, and with a well-known reputation in the world of music.  He never realized that his kindness, his quiet character, his warm heart, the care he took of her, was in fact all that she needed, all that she wanted.



He heard Lucky crying again in a deep growl and the hair at his nape stood.  He felt sick to his stomach, and putting a calming hand on his racing heart, he ran to his kitchen looking for the keys to her house.  Something was wrong.  He never heard Lucky like that before.  Fragments of thoughts and images, of words and gestures ran through his mind, but he did not stop to think it clearly.  He felt sick to his heart.  They were both old, she even older than him, which never mattered, just filled him always with terror, for he could not bear the idea of being without her. With shaky fingers, he fumbled for her keys, and when found it, he walked as fast as his arthritis limbs let him, to her house, leaving his door ajar.  His hand shook violently when he tried to open her front door, and from behind it, he could hear Lucky shuffling and whimpering in the living room. 

“Lucky, Lucky, wait, I’m coming.  Where is Sophia?  What happened?”  He talked to the dog behind the closed door, with his tremulous old voice, and then finally the door opened.

At first, he could not see anything in the darkened room, but then as he stepped forward he saw her.  She was lying on the rug in front of her Grand piano, one hand on her chest, and the other stretched out with its fingers spread opened, as if trying to hold to something.

“Sophia!  My beloved Sophie!”  He ran to her and fell to his knees, as hard sob escaped his throat.  He touched her face that was still warm and soft, and tears welled up in his eyes, and blurred his vision. 

“Wake up Sophia!  Wake up love!  Don’t leave me!”  His words escaped his mouth, and he shook her shoulders slightly.  Her hand dropped to the side of her body, but she did not stir.  She was dead, and he had yet to accept it.  Lucky approached them, sat down beside his master, and started to lick her bare arm, and then Joe’s hand, as if trying to comfort both of them.  Joseph rested his head on her breasts and cried his heart out, knowing she had left him all alone.  Him and Lucky.