Chapter Nine

There is an instant when we have no memory of what came before and no expectation of what is to follow. It is the instant we open our eyes to a new day.

When I met that new day, I was nested in a feather bed that smelled of clean, flannel linens. Emerald velvet curtains hung from a canopy over the bed, closed on one side but open on the other. A ceiling-high faience stove protruded from the corner into the center of the small room. Its milky white tiles, with their delft-blue designs of fantastic plants and animals, exuded soothing, dry heat. Steps away from the bed’s gleaming mahogany footboard, a double set of tall, wide windows glowed with the light of a lazy, late-season snowfall. Despite the weather, the air smelled of lavender.

Like the horses passing in the street below, relentlessly hacking the same unnerving hoof-fall on the stones, the fortepiano down the hall repeated the same passage of Handel’s “Israel in Egypt” as the player sought the chords and texture that fit his labored transcription of the oratorio.

Once again denied the privilege of snailing up abed, I crawled into the dressing gown muttering the words that belonged to the music: “The horse and the rider, the hooooorse and the rider, hath He thrown into the sea. The horse and the rider the horse and the rider…”
To be continued...