Walking along underneath the street, afraid to touch the walls and unable to see more than a few metres in any direction, you regret the simple question which brought you there. One simple question to the intriguingly delicate girl sitting under the streetlight, softly bowing the strings of her viola. Eyes closed, not even playing a song; simply lost in her own world. A world created by the notes resonating from the instrument.
It's late. Have you got far to go? Let me walk with you.
Turning back now would be the smart option, and yet, you can't quite manage it. You fix your eyes on the viola, held limply in her left hand, dangling precariously at her side, and you want to know. You need to know where the girl you see busking on the same street-corner every day goes at night.
Her silent steps stop suddenly and you bump clumsily into her. She turns to you and smiles, her face washed in white light, or perhaps the light emanates from her. There is light inside her eyes; eyes that look through you, over you, and up.
“There.” She waves her bow towards a piece of sky floating above you: A pot-hole that's been left open. “The stars are always there.” Her face brightens with wonder. “Sometimes the moon is too. Not tonight though. Tonight it will be further along. A full moon – round like a dinner plate.”
She's so full of the light of another world, her mind in a place you cannot even image, however much you wish to. The intensity of your desire to follow her thoughts, and to see what she sees, twists and writhes in your head, finally expressing itself in this simple thought: Is she quite right in the head? It is such a defensive, unoriginal thought. You feel somewhat ashamed of it and you're glad she hasn't heard – though the hurt you see flit across her face when she catches your eye makes you wonder if perhaps she did hear, though you never spoke it aloud.
Perhaps when you've heard something whispered about you often enough – Is she all there, do you think? Can she be quite all right? - you don't need to hear it to know that it’s been said, or thought, or even felt.
She turns back to the narrow strip of concrete which runs along the side of the sewer. “It's not much further.”
Her footsteps are light, but they echo. Or perhaps that is the sound of your clumsy feet as you follow her, staring straight ahead and trying not to wonder what it is that's making your feet slide on the slippery surface. And all the while that smell surrounds you and weaves its way, tendril-like, into your clothing, your hair; clinging with nauseating determination. It coats the inside of your mouth, sticking thickly to your tongue.
She's wrong. I could never get used to this.
Ahead of you a shaft of luminescent white light glows, falling from somewhere far above and cutting through the hazy gloom. You squint at it's brilliance and blink uncomfortably, then are startled by a sudden noise, sounding overly-loud in the stagnated silence: She has stopped walking and something like laughter has escaped her lips. Abruptly, she runs. There is an odd grace in her movements as she cradles the viola to her chest and glides down the narrow path, sliding to a stop in the beam of light. You follow tentatively until you can see the origin of the light: another pot-hole, or some manner of hole in the road. It's hard to see against the glare of the full moon, shining through. She stands at the base of the column of light, face raised to the white disk in the sky and fixed in an expression of unearthly bliss. With a slow, dream-like movement she raises the viola to her chin and draws her bow across it, sending a single, eerie note echoing down the endless tunnel.
She plays.
And as your heart swells and soars and breaks to the music you manage only one, unworthy, cynical thought: Baying to the full moon. She really is crazy.
She closes her eyes and plays on; lost to the world in which she has no place; unaware of you, from whom she senses nothing good or true or kind.
She plays on and on and on.
You turn and walk back the way you came, barely remembering how to return – almost losing yourself once or twice. The music follows you all the way, reverberating off the walls, filling the tunnel with unbearable sweetness.
At last you escape the sound, and the smell. You find your way back home, back to your life, your world. The routine and all its mundane safety. You climb into the shower and you scrub and scrub until the stench is gone. It is cleansed from your pores, as though it never happened. Just as though none of it had ever happened.
You close your eyes, and you try to forget, but you know that you cannot. You are painfully aware that you will still pass her on the same street-corner every day, and though you want it to be the same, she will be different to you. And you know that you will never again meet her eyes as you drop your spare change at her feet, along with the pity she neither wants nor needs.
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