Jiří Suchý: Dead Piano Player Blues

The hands of a dead piano player are no different than the hands of other people. The skill inside them will never again show itself, remaining enchanted inside those hands, turning to dust with them. And no one can tell what dust could do when it was still a hand.

Helen gazes upon that pair of pale hands and thousands of thoughts whirl through her head. All at once she acts on one of them: she touches those hands with her fingers and feels that they are cold. The hands that could make a piano ring out in the style of Erroll Garner and in the next moment sound just like Teddy Wilson, the hands that used to play that old rag-time exquisitely and then clasp Helen around the shoulders, are cold.

Helen stands by the bed and doesn't cry a bit, just waits, so that there's no danger of her mascara running. She looks straight ahead and tries to put herself into the situation. From today on she will be alone. While John was alive she had him, and then a number of others that he didn't know about. But now she will be alone, because she can only manage to be unfaithful to someone living.

John the piano player died at four in the morning. At one minute past four he realised that his body no longer belonged to him. He would have liked to close his half-open eyes, but all there was was the will to do so. The transformer that had changed his will into actions for his whole life, was not working. Let's say to bend his arm at the elbow – just yesterday that was an action he carried out quite automatically. Today it was no use even if he focused all his thoughts upon that act. The command was given, but the troops were missing. Every last man in the division of his personality had fallen and their immortal commander was wandering the battlefield helplessly.

By the window, not far from the bed, there is a piano. The keys are slightly yellowed and here and there one can see the traces of a lit cigarette that someone forgot about. A grey autumn light falls on the keys through the window. John becomes aware of the keyboard. It's provoking him, insistently calling to him. John can feel that he needs to strike those keys one last time – just a couple of chords and then he could leave for good. Just yesterday it was the most ordinary thing he could have done to play a few chords; today it is infinitely impossible. John feels his helplessness, he knows about his cold hands, but he can't reconcile himself with the reality. He would like to focus all his energy, which must after all be here somewhere, which is certainly shivering in the room here around his motionless body. To focus it into one single chord. If he could reach out his hand, he could certainly reach the keyboard. Yet it is impossible.

"This must be hell!" thought John to himself. "The hell that lady at catechism used to go on about and that I forgot. Not a pot full of burning oil, no eternal flame under it, but a tantalising and unreachable piano..."

Helen is alone with the dead for the time being. In the afternoon her friends will come. It's muddy outside and they'll track lots of muck into the room. Once the funeral is over Helen will scrub everything and while she's working she won't think about the past. She will try to efface the traces of the one who left. Rearrange the furniture. Give his things away. Sell the piano.

Helen's gaze falls on the quiet keys and rests upon them. Then, without even knowing why, she steps toward the instrument. She once used to play the piano very poorly, but she soon left off and never had the desire to return to it. Until now. She sat down on the rotating stool and had the feeling that she was not acting of her own will. She felt terribly obedient. Like that time when she was young and her parents used to force her to repeat her scales. The difference being that today no one was standing over her, so she didn't know why she was actually laying her hands on the keys. Then she closed her eyes, because she could feel one collective shudder run through her heart and fingers. She struck the keys and a complicated minor chord rang out. Then another followed. Helena played the blues. The first few bars she played with a brilliance that was then suddenly lost somewhere, and the piece continued on joylessly until Helen became aware of her own incompetence. She stopped playing and felt as though she had just woken up.


Translated from the Czech by Michael Allen