Grey Wolfe LaJoie
Paganini soaring through the sky. His tongue out, the ragged tail of his frockcoat kissing the air. Wind whistling through the blackened teeth. Paganini grinning, sinking, plunging through the sky and back down into his body with a thump.
He is in his study now, there in the night's towering stillness. It is late. On his skin the dark feels so exquisite that, eyes wide, he weeps. He gathers the cloth of his nightgown up into a fist. At my tomb there will be nothing, he whispers, overjoyed. In such gentle candlelight he waits.
Through the roaches that come out, the ghost will sometimes speak with him. Late into the night Paganini lingers, hoping to hear it. It is, he has mused, a sort of scream, bereft of sound. He trembles with delight as they appear to him. The roaches creep from the shadow, bear the ghost out to the center of his study and collapse there. The burden of the spirit is too much for them. They fall to pieces under its weight, shattered. Paganini watches brightly. He is enthralled. The landlord has sprinkled chemicals around the building, arsenic and mercury and lead which cake in the insects' small spiracles. But this merely fortifies the ghost. It moves from body to body, screaming. There are important messages conveyed in this, yes. Each soundless sob contains such song as could be nowhere else performed. Paganini persists in listening, late late into night. He chews the nails from his long, terrible fingers until they bleed, then goes to bed.
Life writhes beneath the stale morning. Goethe comes to see him. Very early in the morning he is there knocking. He saw him play, in Weimar this past year, he explains. He only wishes to compliment him. "I have been trying to write about the performance," Goethe says, "but it has been difficult to capture. The fearful trembling, mere meters from self-slaughter."
Paganini gazes wildly out at him, his face a thin mask over his skull.
"May I?" Goethe asks, stepping into the meager flat. The two of them together stare at the space. The shelves have been stripped and all the mirrors shattered. What remains is a small bar, consisting of dry gin and limoncello. And, propped against the corner, the waxen violin.
". . . Such holes riddling the heart," Goethe says, "caught by the wind and set to singing." He takes a seat. Paganini goes to fix strong drinks and when he returns the two men stare at one another from across a vast distance. Without the mirrors Paganini has not seen himself in some time. He has only to look upon his thrilling, monstrous hands.
Goethe speaks a long while and then goes. Through the windowpanes the sky appears bright red. He is glad to be alone again. It was difficult to understand what the old man was talking about and, beside that, Paganini does not care for German letters. He is glad to be alone again, without an usher.
In the packed city streets Paganini filches fruit, carries it down some damp alleyway to be consumed. The bright juice dribbles from his neck. Light will die soon, he thinks. Overhead the gray sky passing. The glossy rind glowing in his hand. When he stands still for too long his mind fills up with the image of fire, a surging wall of flame that burns its way through every corridor. Always there is something dazzling and horrid before him, through which he is about to pass.
He licks his fingers and returns to the open streets, to walk among the broken congregation of the market. People shout prices at one another. Their laughter is indiscernible from their screaming. The scene is cacophonous and bloated and reeks of mildew. In the distance a child breaks free from her mother's grasp and runs through the crowd toward him. She stops just before reaching him and stares up into his skullish face. Paganini is no monster. He stands at a great height and incites in others awesome fear but he is no monster. The child watches him with fascination.
"Are you an angel?" she asks.
He looks down at his hands, still sticky from the fruit. "No," he says to the little girl.
"Are you a man?" she asks, her voice softer, filled now with grief.
"No," he says again.
Years from now, when he has died of an internal hemorrhage, the church will deny his body a Catholic burial. They will cite his widely rumored alliance with the Satanic, as well as the refusal, on his deathbed, to accept the last rites. It will take four years for his body to return to his hometown, and another thirty-two to be interred.
The little girl stares up at him grimly. Then, her voice somewhat transfigured, she asks, "Are you a shade?" She waits, inspecting him soberly.
Paganini laughs. Smiles at the little girl. Reaches down one of his horrible, elegant hands and pats her head. "My dear," he says, "we cannot solve the mystery." He hopes this will set her at ease, suspend her inquiry, but the little girl goes on examining him. He runs a hand through his ragged hair and is surprised to find that it feels dusty. The little girl peers into him.
"What is it like," she asks, "on the other side?" Ash, perhaps from some distant furnace, strays through the sky. Like black snow it falls down onto them, settles between them. Pure burning made this, he thinks, watching it fall. The crowd's chant accumulates around them, swells beyond capacity. Paganini thinks of the young girl's question. He fingers the rind of the fruit, still glowing neatly in his hand.
"Silent," he says at last, and flashes his frightful teeth.
Maria! the crowd howls. Maria you little sneak! Get back here! The girl smiles up at him, enraptured, then disappears into the mass.
The ghost begs something of him. He can think of little more than this: the screaming so still and so crystalline, moving from body to body. Paganini has stripped the mattress, dragged it out into the study where he lies all day and waits. When night comes he sits up and eagerly watches the shadows unfurl.
He lights a candle. Fixes another drink. Above him the spiders stir coolly in their corners. Blooms of mildew, cold and velveteen, spread out across the windowpanes through which the soupy moonlight struggles. Paganini lies atop the mattress and waits. His pale, pale skin seems to shimmer in the night. His ruined lungs take in the singing rot and send it out again.
Always the roaches hunger for more. They pull each other apart with want. Even before they appear, he can hear their fitful chewing. When the fermenting food has vanished they nibble at soap, at glue and at hair, at flakes of dried skin. They chew each others' wings and legs to pieces. Carelessly they do this, their eyes wide and unfocused. They delight in sharing with one another the silent scream. Paganini watches, mesmerized. Such marvelous signals they send he cannot fathom. Black rainbows build beneath their shells, ruin their veins with a thunderous light.
He lies and he watches their candy-black bodies tracing elaborate patterns, illegible patterns, around and around him. He fingers the sweat at the base of his glass. The darkness grows, ashen and sweet. If he is still enough, they will come onto him. He grips himself tightly, hugs his body to his body in ecstatic terror, trembles with laughter then goes on watching. Piece by piece the spirit's heat undoes another roach's glossy hull, leaves the legs to twitch.
If he looks on long enough, focuses himself fully, then his vision will relax and blur. Only then can he see clearly. For there are scars draped over his eyes. Thin, inexplicable scars which no physician can perceive. He has known about them all his life. They alone can break him to the other world, provide a crack of light through which at last to see.
The spiders look on coldly from above. The scent of the ghost rises up to them like steam, but they eat only what will come to them. "Do you hear that?" Paganini asks.
The spiders do not answer. They do not wish to quarrel. They live all of a single long night. Paganini goes on watching the roaches, listening. He is hungry, yes, but that is not what matters now. He must focus, he must watch them so carefully, for they come bearing a gift if only he might grasp it. Moonlight pleads fiercely through the window. Breathe not, he thinks to himself. He thinks, bear us off. But this is not the way. He must not ask a thing. He must stay very still and wait.
When he was young he watched his father's fingers on the strings. Often in the light of morning Paganini lay in bed pretending sleep. He did not want to wake. By midday the sound of the mandolin moved through the house and called him to rise. He would appear, as though from out of a long, hollow dream, his hair disturbed and his gray nightgown twisted. His father would be sitting there in the den, touching the instrument delicately. Paganini would come out from his chamber and settle there on the floor, unspeaking before his father. Settle and watch the way the music seemed to stay once built. So simple, and so warm. To touch most softly, he noticed, seemed most to give. His father's dark, labored hands would whisper before his eyes, blush and brighten and burn away. Paganini, from time to time, stuck out his small hand to brush the strings, and his father let him do so, allowing the note to ring through.
Together they listened. The sound stayed even after it had gone, long after it had gone, and in this silence Paganini sat. His mouth agape, his little body studded with bumps, shivering. In such silence, as in a dream, he could live forever.
The crowds roar before him. They stumble as though drunk against the walls. The sound that issues forth is beyond belief. It cannot be believed! The hoards moan under the weight of such noise. They scream. Before Paganini they writhe and collapse. At the amphitheater entrance men are fighting one another. Inside, some stand on their seats to get a better look. They wish to inspect his feet, to see if they are cloven, to see if the rumors hold. Paganini closes his eyes. Feathers fall down from the joists above him, litter from the frightened doves. Feet beat filthy against the cold ground and in all the heavy bodies hearts drum up warm blood.
The sound of the instrument is so faintly audible beneath this. It moves like a solemn sob. Those in the audience turn toward one another. They appear distressed. "This is music?" they seem to ask. It is difficult to understand their words over the noise. They seem certain of nothing. They feel they may be the witnesses to an inharmonic abuse. They are able to look on his cadaverous face only so long without averting their gazes. And yet . . . Before long they must again peer into him . . .
Under the force of his bow one of the strings on the instrument suddenly breaks. The crowd erupts with laughter. They are overjoyed. Paganini goes on. Another string breaks, dangles from the tailpiece. The laughter grows vast and consumptive. It extinguishes the lanterns that hang overhead. Paganini increases his speed. The dark merely enriches the sound he seeks, divine and diabolical. Those in the crowd can no longer look to one another. There is weeping, wild harried weeping, interspersed with all the laughter. Paganini labors over his instrument, twists around it. His work does him infinite harm. He plays still faster. He must not stop. His bones ache, soon they will shatter but he must not stop. Another string breaks, snaps swiftly and lashes his wrist, drawing blood. It does not matter. He is not finished yet. It is dark but he must persist. People shriek as though caught up in a terrible fire. He goes on, working the bow savagely against the neck. When at last the fourth string fails, he will have to continue. There is no other way.