19 X 2002 - 23:43 - verba31

I think it's time for another Alchera assignment, especially since I don't want to do my homework and still have Sunday to do it in. What say you?

OPTION NO. TWO: Write a piece of prose or poetry (fiction, or nonfiction if you are able!) that contains all of the following:

A leak
An instrumental album
A robe
Time
Sadness
Lace panties
Numbers

Sadly enough, I think I can manage to write nonfiction for this one if I put in the lace panties through negation.

[Note in retrospect: I think this works better if you pretend you're reading a children's book, one with a picture on every facing page and just a few lines of text on the other. Then each paragraph is equivalent to one illustration's text, and... yes. A children's book that involves a drug-induced haze: fun for the whole family!

Second-guessing comes naturally to me these days -- after all, I did take the PSAT this morning. Since this is the result, I'm inclined to hit myself and say, 'Stop it already!' But here goes.]

The woman in charge of our lives for three weeks -- 'personnel manager' for the orchestra she called herself -- took every opportunity she had to remind us as we arrived in St. Petersburg that although there would be only two hours of darkness, we did have a concert the next night, and so it would be best for us not to stay up. At the same time, however, she was insistent about the beauty (which she freely confessed she had never seen) of the raising of the bridges on the Neva delta. 'If you're up -- and I'm not suggesting that you stay up for this -- you should look out your window and try to get a glimpse of it going up.' Looking out of my window, I saw only two cast-iron bridges that were more reminiscent of Pittsburgh and the Monongahela than a glorious 18th-century city built by Italians. This was not a promising beginning.

Of course, certain parts of the trip hadn't been going well to begin with. Take my roommate, for instance, who was much less concerned with cleanliness and order than I was. We'd been friends for years, but living in the same room broke any resolve we had to remain friends. I fumed at the way he left his toothbrush dripping at the side of the sink and big pools of water throughout the bathroom. He resented the way I would go into convulsions at the sight of his underwear strewn around what was, after all, his half of the room. 'You really need to relax. Just... breathe. It's obvious you've never lived with someone before.' I kept reminding myself that things could always get worse -- after all, I really didn't think I could have dealt with lace panties strewn around the floor -- but when the orchestra hit Vilnius, one stop before St. Petersburg, something snapped, and I ended up sleeping in a friend's closet. (There must be some crude symbolism in that.)

I couldn't do that in St. Petersburg, however; the hotel was a big concrete block that had been airlifted into place, and space was tight. The beds were so low I suspect only I was comfortable in them, and the heat in the building was either too warm (in the wing where I was) or too cold (in the wing where my friends were). We soon discovered the joy of the St. Petersburg water supply, which is contaminated by, among other things, cryptosporidium, a parasite the presence of which meant that only bottled water was to be used when brushing one's teeth. Fortunately for my roommate and me, our faucet leaked in such a way that it dripped at night, keeping us up, but exploded in a spray of brown water whenever we actually tried to turn it on. Any attempt to get it to work was soon abandoned, and he became quite adept at manipulating the bottle of water so he could shave.

St. Petersburg was the last time he really talked to me -- he made up a peace offering, sitting on his bed (two inches away from mine) in his faded blue robe and holding out his Discman with his prized recording of Hillary Hahn playing the Sibelius concerto. 'Here,' he said. 'You'll love it.' I did, but each note also left me colder, more annoyed that he could be so moved as I was but still so unwilling to see the reason behind order. I still can't hear the piece without the pain of knowing how I might have kept a friend, if I'd been more willing to swallow and compromise. It's easy to see now that neither of us were ever particularly good with speech, that his way was music just as mine was the written word; we spoke a language full of different ellipses and shades, and this is what in the end thwarted us.

That night, I went to see the doctor who was traveling with us -- while trying to shut a broken window in Vilnius, I'd fallen off a stool and cracked my shoulder on the edge of a large pot. He gave me codeine but warned me not to take it before an orchestra concert, as it would make me dozier than I already was and there was a real danger that I might fall asleep. I nodded, knowing that this effectively prevented me from taking the pill when my shoulder hurt the most. I resolved to take it that night, after the brown-water bath he recommended...

As I had left him in Vilnius, now my friend left me, disappearing into one of his friends' rooms while I was in the bathroom, leaving a note on the desk to that effect. I knew I'd cover for him if the man responsible for making sure we kept curfew poked his head in the door, just as he'd covered for me. Some treasons are too great to contemplate. Despite this remaining loyalty, the break between us was now complete, whatever we might say; each of us had abandoned the other at least once, and that was a blow too great for us to absorb then.

I had taken the pill. I can say this: The world is very interesting on codeine. Time dilated; I knew it was the night before my concert, but I didn't particularly care. I drifted in and out of lucidity. I dimly remember having trouble making out the numbers on my calling card, having a conversation with a friend, looking out at the sun setting (at 1 AM) somewhere in the Baltic. The numbers on the clock itself began to flicker in and out. Some part of me must have recognized that I was falling asleep, but not before more time had passed and it was 2 AM. There was motion: the bridge was going up. To tell the truth, it was sort of ugly. Perhaps she'd meant another bridge? I stumbled back to bed and lay flat on the covers. I couldn't deal with this.

I heard him when he came back in; he was always much worse at being quiet than I was, probably because he didn't see much need for it, never felt an impulse to move to the side when an average-sized (but to me so big) person came down the hall. When I heard him settle beside me, those two inches an endless gulf, I finally felt the rupture, the knowledge that neither of us could easily back down now and that no peace would be easy. There are times when I will willingly accept harsh terms for the sake of the peace, for the sake of expediency. This wasn't one of them.

As I lay there, cursing the stubbornness that was losing (had lost?) me a friend, it was easy to tell myself that I should try harder, be more relaxed, develop a way of living peacefully with others. But it was easier still just to feel sorrow and a loss that descended thick as a curtain across my eyes and cut me off from the sleeping figure barely visible in the new dawn. So which choice did I make? Guess easily: the road of passivity, and loss, and eventual guilt.

Was he so wonderful a friend? Say this: that I don't make friends easily, and that making male friends who understand a full range of grunts and facial nonexpressions is even more difficult. It's the principle of losing a friend -- and what has to count for something, too, is that I can still open my eyes in a darkened room and see him, hear his voice as it praises or condemns a player, discusses a novel with me. It's on these nights I miss him most.