Bach and The Tuning of the World. Jens Johler

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       9. The Muse

      The following afternoon, after he had played on the grand organ with the four keyboards, Bach walked over to the Zippelhaus, and the living quarters that Adam Reincken had procured for them. Exhausted but happy, he climbed up the stairs and rapped on the door with the knocker – a cast-iron snake’s head.

      After a little while, the door was opened, and Bach froze.

      He saw grey-blue eyes and a slightly opened mouth. He saw her blonde, curly hair, and the strands that fell over her temples. He saw her lean figure in a tight linen dress, over which she wore a turquoise shawl. He saw the expectant expression on her face. He wanted to say something – but what? If he could only just manage to be gallant for a moment … for one single moment!

      ‘Oh – yes?’ a gentle, exceedingly enchanting voice asked.

      ‘B-beg your pardon,’ he finally stammered.

      ‘What for, my dear?’

      He had no idea for what. Or, in fact, he had too many ideas. He sensed the harp, the strings, and flutes of the Upper World, yet also the cornets, trombones, and the reedorgan of the Underworld. He sensed an entire universe full of music; and if he had had the courage at this very moment, he would at the very least gallantly … sing. And yet he remained silent.

      ‘Y-yes?’ she asked again.

      How was it possible that a human being was able to put so much expression, so much melody, in two small syllables? He would have to remember. He would try to dissolve the words into music, too. He would work on it, all the days of his life.

      ‘Why are you so silent?’

      ‘I’m with Böhm,’ he finally stammered out. ‘Reincken … the small room … the dormitory over there.’

      ‘And your name?’

      He told her. She told him hers. But for him, she already had quite another.

      As he stepped over the threshold, his paralysis eased a little. He even managed to answer her questions. Yes, he was from Lüneburg. Yes, he was a student of Böhm. Yes, he was at the opera yesterday. Oh, yes, he had seen and heard her …

      ‘I beg your pardon? On the clavichord? Yes, of course, should you so wish it … Right now?’

      She led him into a large, sparsely furnished room: a four-poster bed surrounded by red patterned drapery, a painted chest, an oriental rug, an oval table, two chairs, a music stand; leaning against the wall was a lute, a framed silhouette hanging above it, and – over there, the clavichord!

      He only needed to sit down on the stool and bring his hands close to the keys to be transformed.

      She gave him the music. He sight-read, which wasn’t hard, and she sang to it. And how she sang! Who knows what life is like in Paradise, but it couldn’t be so different to this. He saw this ethereal creature – he heard her gentle soprano voice, the same voice that had filled him with such longing the day before – and now he could have sung his heart out with happiness that he was allowed to sit here and accompany this voice.

      ‘Enough,’ she suddenly said.

      No, he thought, never enough.

      ‘You’re a valiant fellow,’ she said.

       And me? What should I say now?

      ‘My dress is too tight,’ she said. ‘Would you mind helping me unbutton it?’

      She turned her back to him, casting him a glance from her blue-grey eyes over her left shoulder.

      He rose from the stool, and his knees began to shake. He walked up to her, smelled the scent – what was it? Violets? Lilac? Roses? Forget-me-nots? – and fumbled with her buttons. He had never done anything like that before. He wondered if it was a sin. But what if the dress was too tight for her?

      ‘Oh yes,’ she said, after he at last managed to free the first button. ‘Now I can breathe more easily.’

      ‘Is that enough?’ he asked, and took a step back.

      ‘No … no,’ she said quickly. ‘Please go on.’

      He went on. And while her dress fell to the ground, he felt that his own clothes were growing too tight for him. Autumn was drawing in, the summer was over, but here, in this apartment, the heat was intense.

      ‘How do you like my perfume?’ she asked.

      ‘Very much indeed,’ he replied, plucking up courage. ‘The scent of roses?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You have a sensitive nose. But there’s something else here, too –’ she indicated her slender white neck – ‘which you’ll have to come very close to recognize. And if you guess what it is …’

      She pulled his head towards hers. His nose and – he couldn’t avoid it – his mouth touched her blonde hair, then her neck. He felt like fainting, but that was out of the question. It would certainly not be gallant of him.

      ‘Y-yes?’ Again this melody. One of these days, he would compose a series of variations on it. An aria, thirty variations, then the aria again.

      ‘What do you smell?’ she asked softly.

      Nothing, he wanted to say, but checked himself.

      Once again, he put his mouth and nose against her neck. And then, all of a sudden, it came to him. ‘Skin,’ he whispered.

      Was that gallant? No, maybe not. Probably it was far too blunt. But if he’d varied the theme, or found a sweet and catchy new melody for it – now that would have been gallant.

      But, gallant or not, it was definitely the right answer.