Her Symphony
I'm sitting in a café, looking out to the sea. An endless Ocean. In front of me are three glasses - one of the glasses contains orange juice, the other two are empty. I do not tolerate caffeine. The café is almost empty, it is still too early for beach parties. A little further away from me sits an elderly couple. They do not talk to each other while drinking their morning coffee slowly. The older man seems to be stiff in the body. The woman does not look at him, she also looks out to the sea. At the right corner sits a younger woman writing something diligently in her notebook. The girl who works at the café discreetly glances at her wristwatch. She sighs lightly. I drink my third orange juice and look back at the sea. A shining sea - whose waves, like a calm melody, bounce against the sandy beach, back and forth, at the same pace.
The beach is almost empty. A naked woman lies on a red towel, in the shade of a small bush. There is a large newspaper over her head, under which you can distinguish the shadow of her dark hair. Her breasts look straight up at the sun. Her dark pubic hair swirls in round loops below her belly. Her small feet are covered with thousands of white grains of sand. She does not look like a tourist. Her tan is natural.
About every quarter, her slender fingers grab the newspaper above her head and set it aside. With the help of her right hand, she easily stands up from the red towel and walks slowly down to the sea. She swims for a long time in the cool water. She swims far out, so far out that her black hair just becomes a small dark dot on the horizon. The glistening water makes her appear even smaller. Once she comes out of the water, her whole body glitters with small drops of water, pubic hair loops hanging down in wet spirals. Slowly she goes up to her red towel and lies down on it again, without drying her body. She puts the newspaper back on her head.
She waits for a quarter of an hour until the glossy water drops on her body have dried, and then she repeats the whole process. She slowly stands up with the help of her left hand, swims for a long time, comes back, lies down on the red towel, puts the newspaper over her head. Her small heavy breasts bounce easily up and down every time she goes in and out of the water. When she has taken her last morning swim, she takes a white shirt dress out of her bag and wraps it around herself. She does not dry her body before putting on her shirt. Wet nipples are soon clearly visible through the wet shirt, like two red cherries on a vanilla milkshake. Her movements are a musical composition, where her swimming movements in the glistening sea water are the chorus.
The woman leaves the beach in a hurry. In the evening she is back to take an evening dip. I'm back too. I'm sitting in the same cafe. I drink a glass of non-alcoholic white wine. I do not tolerate alcohol. She is wearing a thin black dress, no underwear, and no towel. She leaves the dress on the beach and enters the water heated by the sun of the day. The evening's swim is short. She does not swim far out, rather takes a dip in the water and goes back up to the beach again, puts on her thin black dress and goes into the café where I sit and wait for her melody to begin. Her thin dress has become really wet from the sea water. She smiles to herself before quietly sitting down at the black piano in the right corner. Her long fingers lightly pull over the piano keys. Methodologically, she plays a melody, then another. The tourists at the café applaud. I drink my wine and applaud.
By midnight, most tourists have already left the café. The woman is still playing her tune. She always smiles to herself when she plays, seeming to enjoy it even more than the tourists. She usually plays Chopin. Like a world-famous pianist, she touches the keys easily and quickly. My eyes do not have time to follow her quick movements. A famous naked pianist at a very ordinary, insignificant beach café. Do tourists realise how sweet and wonderful her melody is? She only stops when it is closing time. Her fingers do not seem to be a bit tired. The woman leaves the cafe and the beach, only to return the next day.
Sometimes she lets me go home with her. We never talk to each other. She orders me with her hands. She takes me quietly by the hand and leads me to her small room with white walls. There is a large balcony. There is no bed. She sleeps on the red towel. The room is almost empty. There is an old turntable on an old wooden stool. On the floor there are LPs in piles. Every night she plays a new record. Always a new tune, always a new dance. Before we fall in love with each other, we dance to different melodies in the moonlight that light up her otherwise dark room. She never hears what I whisper in her ears, she only listens to the music from the records. In the dark, she lets me embrace her, touch her. She leads my hands to her breasts, to her sex. The woman lays down on the red towel and lets me penetrate the deep sea inside her. My mouth finds her nipples in the moonlight, absorbs them in my mouth, warms them with my breath. I whisper in her ear, yet she does not hear. She still only listens to the melody flowing out of the turntable.
It goes on like this for an eternity, maybe for two. I drink orange juice at the café. She lies naked on the beach on her red towel, with the newspaper over her dark head. Slowly she puts down the newspaper, takes a swim, comes back, wet, brown, lays down on the red towel, puts the newspaper over her head, walks away, comes back, takes an evening dip, plays the piano, plays Chopin, lets me follow home to her, dancing with me in the moonlight, I love with her, enjoying her red cherries, she does not hear my whispers, just listens to the melody blasting through the old turntable's speakers.
An eternity later, we have finished listening to all her records. It's a stormy early morning at the café. The rain pours down from the dark sky, flowing down the glass windows. The sandy beach is wet. The holiday season is over, the tourists have gone home. Apart from the barista, we are the only visitors. She's sitting opposite me, more real than ever. Her black hair is set in a high ponytail. She is wearing black – a linen sweater and a pair of black shorts. Her yellow rain jacket dries on the back of the chair, her small feet sit comfortably in a pair of light grey boots. Silently she sips her hot coffee latte. She looks at me without turning her eyes and smiles. If the naked woman lying on the red towel was a mature sophisticated woman, the one sitting in front of me is a small child.
I say something to her, she does not hear me but continues to smile. This is the first time I have addressed her, apart from my nocturnal whispers of desire. A feeling of insanity rises like a heavy stone from my deep interior. I speak louder and louder but still she does not hear me. She looks at me questioningly, picks something up from her backpack. I see that it is an unsharpened pencil and a small red notepad. With childish handwriting, she writes something in the little pad. When she's done, she puts the pencil in the backpack again. She turns the block in my direction so that it is easier for me to read. The letters are small, crooked. There are three small words on the block.
I am deaf.
She continues to smile like a small child. When she has made sure I read the three words, she takes the pad out of my trembling hands and puts it neatly in her backpack. Before she leaves for good, she jumps up from her chair and walks over to the black piano. The accustomed fingers play Chopin's Nocturne.
I remember how I used to feel her moist sex during my nightly visits. Inside her stormed a deep sea whose bottom I never managed to reach. The tones that her fingers create reach deep inside me. Her melody reaches my fragile skeleton, breaks my legs in half, then throws them to the dogs to eat. She does all this with a playful smile on her face. It was never me she loved, it was the music, I think. I was her tool, her instrument, her muse. I see her now, lying on the red towel and every now and then glancing in my direction, looking at me, the man who quietly drinks one glass of orange juice after another without moving for several hours. I now see how she explored me, created me. Her fingers touching my body - they always played only one instrument, me as an instrument. And when the melody finally ends, the instrument will no longer be needed.
Before the composition ends, she suddenly releases her fingers from the keys, interrupting the melody. All the records, all her compositions are finished playing, it just keeps raining. She sits back on the chair opposite me and drinks her latte. The café is dead quiet, the only thing that can be heard is the rain pouring down. We sit quietly and still. She and I - we listen to the rain. Then she leaves me without even waving. She simply stands up and walks, without looking back in my direction once. She was never my imagination, I was hers. Then I know - the deaf woman's melody is over, and so am I. She closes the front door behind her, I dissolve.
Iva Haze is a twenty-six year old history student in South Korea, currently writing a master's thesis on medieval buddhist nunneries in Korea. Throughout life she has been wandering from one country to another, gaining different experiences. Culturally she is very mixed. She loves to write when procrastinating her studies. Her work is inspired by everything from dreams to minor details she notices in her everyday life. She loves willow trees because they are somewhat chaotic and usually grow close to water. You can find her on instagram @weepingiva.