The Night I Met Chopin’s Ghost
Another Piece Almost Consigned to the Wastebasket
Author’s note: Last October, I took an unexpected hiatus from Medium and my daily writing practice. It was with some bemusement that I returned, five months later, to some of my old drafts — work I considered imperfect and unworthy of being published. I am grateful that I did not delete this story fragment. I like it, even if no one else does. Who am I to know what works?
Frédéric sat quietly, his dark eyes studying me impassively. The silence, though it lengthened, was not uncomfortable. Many things were like this in the afterlife: contrivances taken for granted in life became meaningless in death. To a ghost, all of existence was an endless, awkward silence.
Even after so many years without a heartbeat, I experienced phantom palpitations. I stepped gingerly into the room and clasped my hands behind my waist.
“Well, to hear the maestro himself play is quite a treat,” I said.
For a time, Frédéric said nothing, and I feared that I had made a poor introduction. Given an infinite number of things to say, the odds were against my saying something fitting.
I became slightly embarrassed, and looked down. A web of fine lines cut through the dust on the mottled floor; insects had created there a platte of thoroughfares through years of scurrying to and fro. I had the strange urge to laugh, for we suddenly seemed no different, the insects and I.
“It was always one of my favorites,” he said, his soft voice full of tender emotion.
I looked up and saw that he was staring through me, through the open door and to the black forest beyond. After a moment, he focused on me and said,
“I come here from time to time. It is a rare thing to find a working piano in a quiet part of the world, where no living thing can disturb you.”
As though sensing my thoughts, he continued, “And it pleases me, too, that I may play for others who desire to hear.”
He turned back to the keyboard and began playing what I instantly recognized as the third movement to his piano sonata №2. He is not without some ironic humor, I thought, as I stood watching the rhythmic motions of his shoulders play out the sombre melody.
As he moved into the interlude, switching from minor to major key, I felt decidedly that he had chosen this piece for this very moment, as though he knew my innermost thoughts. I had been on my own funeral march, not just tonight, in the woods, but for years beforehand. As I entered this room and found him before me, the clouds parted metaphorically, the sun shone, and the whole cast of my existence took on a lightness unfamiliar to me.
At the close of the movement, Frédéric remained seated a while, the two of us sharing the quiet space and savoring, perhaps, the memory of his playing as we might have a delicious meal in our bygone lives.
“It’s curious I should find that piece so accurate a depiction of my existence now,” he began, “for it has come to be alike Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, in a way. His is played during times of great happiness, and mine is played during times of sadness. How ironic that I should find solace in it.”
I remained silent, for what could I say to this?
“Do you know, they played this at my funeral?”
I did know, for I was there. It was one of the few things I remembered, now. I nodded.
“To this day, I do not know if I would have been more honored had they played one of Beethoven’s funeral marches. Is it a fitting tribute to have your own work played at the celebration of your death, or not? I do not know. And perhaps being honored is not the point.”
“Perhaps we honored ourselves, rather than the departed, thus,” I said. “The living cannot know what the dead will find honorable. What could be more fitting to them than to play your most familiar marcia funebre at your funeral? To play the composer’s work at the very hour of the composer’s death?”
Frédéric smiled grimly and nodded. He stood, then, and pushed the bench back into place. For a moment, we stood together in the empty room; gloomy though it was, it seemed intimate and comfortable. I could sense the end of this enchanted stretch of time, and I dreaded it.
“You are a man of music,” he said.
“Yes, I played. A long time ago.”
This was another of the handful of things to which I could anchor my drifting consciousness. Thought, to me, seemed always like a shifting mist, through which only rarely could I descry constancy, like snatches of the Pont Neuf through a Parisian fog.
“Time,” Frédéric continued softly, “as you have no doubt guessed by now, is a contrivance by which we are no longer bound. You may have played a long time ago, yet it is the same as yesterday.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“It is the only way.”
He turned and walked to the far door, on the other side of the parlor. I had a sudden fear that it would be the last I saw of him. Emboldened by a near desperation, I blurted out,
“You said you play here from time to time. Are there any other places one might find you?”
It was almost impetuous, my question, for I had come to learn it was of no concern to ghosts where others spent their time, or in what way.
Frédéric paused, but did not turn — not right away. He stood, in my estimation, pondering the curiosity of what I had asked, and whether a breach of our unwritten etiquette warranted a response.
As I was about to voice an apology, he turned, his lips tight, as though struggling to hold in some secret.
“There are others, like me. We convene once a year, at the summer solstice, at Kasteel van Mesen.”
I bowed and murmured a thank you. When I rose again, he was gone.
