But Beautiful. Geoff Dyer

the melody. Keep the beat all the time. Just ’cause you’re not a drummer doesn’t mean you don’t gotta swing.

      One time Hawk and Trane were having trouble reading some of the parts and asked Monk for an explanation.

      —You’re Coleman Hawkins, right, the man who invented the tenor? And you’re John Coltrane, right? The music’s in the horn, between you you should be able to work it out.

      Most of the time he said little to us about how he wanted us to play. We’d ask him questions two or three times and get no response, he’d be staring straight ahead as if the question were addressed to someone else, to someone else in another language. Made you realize you were asking him questions and you knew the answers all the time.

      —Which of these notes should I hit?

      —Hit any of ’em, he said at last, his voice a gargle-murmur.

      —And here, is that C sharp or C natural?

      —Yeah, one a them

      He kept all his music very close to him, didn’t like other people seeing it, he kept everything close to him. When he went out he liked to be wrapped up in a coat – winter was his time – and he preferred not to stray too far. At the studio he’d have his music in a little book, reluctant to let other people see it, always plunging it back into his coat pocket when he was through, locking it away.

      During the day he walked around, wrapped up in himself, figuring out his music, watching TV or composing when he felt like it. Sometimes he paced for four or five days in a row, walking the streets at first, going south as far as Sixtieth, north as far as Seventieth, west as far as the river and three blocks east, then gradually restricting his orbit until he was walking around the block and then sticking to the rooms of the apartment, pacing nonstop, hugging the walls, never touching the piano, never sitting – then sleeping for two days straight through.

      There were also days when he was stranded between things, when the grammar of moving through the day, the syntax holding events together fell apart. Lost between words, between actions, not knowing something as simple as getting through a door, the rooms of the apartment becoming a maze. The use of things eluded him, the association between an object and its function was not automatic. Entering a room, he seemed surprised that this is what a door existed for. He ate food as if he was astonished by it, as if a roll or sandwich was infinitely mysterious, like he had no recollection of the taste from last time. Once he sat through dinner, peeled an orange like he’d never seen one before, silent all the while until, looking down at the long curl of peel, he said:

      —Shapes, a huge grin breaking over his face.

      Other times, when he felt the world encroaching, he became very still, retreated right down inside himself. He’d sit still as an armchair, so calm he looked asleep even with his eyes open, breath moving the hairs of his beard slightly. There is footage of him sitting so still that only the drifting smoke tells you it’s not a photograph. Talking to Monk anyway was like talking transatlantic, a delay in things getting through – not a split second but ten seconds sometimes, so long you had to ask a question three or four times over. If he got tense the delays in responding to stimuli of any kind got longer and longer until there was no response at all, his eyes coating over like ice on a pond. Most of the times he got into difficulties were when he was apart from Nellie or in unfamiliar surroundings. If something went wrong and he felt threatened he’d disconnect very suddenly, shut himself off like a light.

      If Nellie was around when he got lost in himself like that she made sure everything was OK and waited for him to find his way out. Even then she felt good being with him as he went maybe four or five days without saying a word until he broke his speech-fast and called out:

      —Nellie! Ice cream!

      —Whatever it was inside him was very delicate, he had to keep it very still, slow himself right down so that nothing affected it. Even his pacing was a way of retaining his stillness, like a waiter on a ship at sea juggling a glass of water through all sorts of angles just to keep it upright. He’d keep pacing until what was inside him became so tired of twitching around that he could collapse exhausted. These are only guesses, it was impossible to know what was going on in his head. He looked through his glasses sometimes like an animal that’s been hibernating, checking to see if it is warm enough to emerge again. He was surrounded by his home, by his eccentricities, then by his silence. One time when we’d been sitting together a couple of hours and he hadn’t said anything I asked him:

      —What’s it like in that head of yours, Monk?

      Took his glasses off, held them up to his eyes, and turned them around as if they framed the face of an optician peering into his eyes.

      —Take a look. I stepped forward, put my head into the glasses, studied his eyes. Sadness, lively flecks of something.

      —See anythin?

      —Nope.

      —Shit. Haha. Reached up and put the glasses back on his head. Lit a cigarette.

      I used to ask Nellie similiar things. She knew him better than anybody, so well that whatever I asked her, no matter how weird Monk was acting, she’d say,

      —Oh, that’s just Thelonious.

      If he had been a janitor in an office or someone in charge of supplies at a factory, waking in the morning and coming home to eat his dinner, she would have looked after him just the same as she did when they were jetting first-class all over the world. Monk was helpless without her. She told him what to wear, helped him into his clothes on the days when he seemed too bewildered even to dress himself, when he got straitjacketed in the sleeves of his suit or lost in the intricacies of knotting his tie. Her pride and fulfillment came from making it possible for him to create his music. She was so integral to his creative well-being that she may as well be credited as co-composer for most of his pieces.

      She did everything for him: checking in bags at airports, looking after his passport while he stood still as a column or whirled and shambled around, people looking at him, passing around him wondering what he was doing there, shuffling around like a down-and-out, tossing his arms out like he’s throwing confetti at a wedding, wearing one of his crazy hats from some part of the world he’d just come back from. And when he was on the plane and Nellie buckled his seat belt over his overcoat, people would still be wondering who he was, the head of some African state lurching toward independence or something. There were times when Nellie looked at him and wanted to cry, not because she pitied him, but because she knew one day he would die and there was no one else like him in the world.

      When Nellie was in the hospital he sat and smoked, watched a dusty sunset peer in through the raingrimed windows. He glanced up at the clock hanging from the wall at a surrealist tilt. Nellie had this thing about stuff being straight; Monk preferred things crooked and to get her used to the idea he’d nailed the clock to the wall like that. Every time she looked at it it made her laugh.

      He walked from room to room, stood in the places she stood, sat in her chair, looked at her lipstick and makeup, her glasses case and other stuff. Before going to the hospital she had tidied everything away. He touched the fabric of her dresses hanging neat and empty in the closet, looked at the shoes waiting for her in rows.

      She did so many things for him that most objects in the apartment were a mystery to him and he saw them for the first time: the casserole dish, stained from years of use, the steam iron. He picked up her pots and pans, missing the familiar noise of their clanking together. He sat at the piano, building a tune out of all the sounds he missed as she moved around the apartment: the rustle of her clothes as she got dressed, water running in the sink, the clatter of plates. She called him Melodious Thunk and he wanted to write a song for her that sounded just like that. Every five minutes he got up and peered out of the window, checking in case she was heading up the street.

      Each day when he visited her she was more worried about him than herself. He sat by the side of her bed, not speaking, smiling when the nurses asked if everything was OK. He stayed for the full duration of visiting time because there was nothing else he wanted to do.

      Reluctant