Only Darkness. Danuta Reah

could you just go over … but it wasn’t how he expected.

      He knocked at the door. He could hear music coming from the downstairs room, which stopped as he knocked the second time. She opened the door and looked at him, then she smiled and invited him in. She took him into the room they’d been in earlier and she made some kind of gesture, of welcome, he wasn’t sure. She was dressed now, wearing something that seemed to consist of scarves and swirls, a confusion of shadow colours. Her hair, now it was dry, curled on to her shoulders a vivid red-gold. He couldn’t stop looking at her.

      The violin was out of its case, propped up next to the music stand. ‘I was just practising,’ she said. ‘I’ve nearly finished. You don’t mind waiting?’ She picked up the instrument again, smiled briefly at him, and then became intent as she played. He watched the way her body bent and danced with the music, as though she was part of it. She was unselfconscious. He had given himself the right to watch her last time, this time she had given him the right. When she finished the piece she was playing, he asked her about the music. He’d never heard anything like it before. She picked up the violin again and played him pieces as she was talking about them. Then she showed him how to draw the bow across the strings and after a couple of tortured cat sounds, he produced a high, clear note.

      His interest aroused her enthusiasm. She pulled out some books of songs that he had forgotten he knew, and made him sing, harmonizing her clear soprano with his tenor, but he didn’t have the technique to do that for long, and they ended up laughing and breathless. Then they talked, sitting in front of the fire. He was good at getting information out of people, he could question them gently, expertly until they told him far more than they intended, but this time he let her draw him out, talked about things he’d rarely talked about before, until she knew as much about him as he knew about her. There was no rush, no hurry.