32/1 stuck out like a sore thumb in the street renowned for gleaming houses and pruned gardens. The yellow paint was peeling off from wear and the half-broken green gate was screaming to be replaced. The house was in shambles. The window glass had shattered and a creeper was making its way into the house through the gaping hole. A sudden gust of wind threw the door open, beckoning visitors inside, "Enter if you dare". A faded nameplate, nailed onto the jamb, hung purposelessly; the painted letters had transmogrified into unidentifiable blotches of black. Perhaps the owner had abandoned the place, perhaps it had been ransacked. But as you approached closer, you sensed movement. You heard sounds. And these sounds, celestial sounds, as if they had hands, like the call of sirens luring sailors to a rocky coast, pulled you towards the house until you stood right before the green gate. To listen. To revel. To fall in love, once and forever. Someone lived here. A man. A pianist. He lived with his dog and one could say the two were made for each other. Neither was fond of overbearing company and conveniently enough, Diego didn't talk and the old man didn't bark. Together with the piano, they made a wonderful trio. Diego perched himself by the old man’s side, wagging his tail ever so subtly to Schumann and thumping it to Rachmaninoff. Early every evening, every evening without fail for the past however many years he’d been living here, the pianist’d play a melody, transfixing passersby in their places as they stood straining their ears; enchanted, enraptured, infatuated, enthralled. Time was rendered meaningless. He would continue till long after sundown. The otherwise icy house melted into a tarn of wordless conversations. Then a candle was snuffed, and the gaping window-hole would vanish into blackness. The passers-by, shaken out of the trance, would continue on their onward journey, their eyes still aglaze with wonder.
One man and one dog knew what the house looked like from the inside. The living room was a concoction of strange, musty fragrances. Ancient wood, old skin, cough syrup. And mice. Lots of them. Cracked photo frames, paintings and multiple clocks hung lopsidedly on chipping walls. The hands of some clocks had stopped ticking and ticking clocks showed the wrong time. A grey floor peeked through the holed carpet. Almost ninety-five now, with a wheezy voice, sallow skin, pendulous cheeks, great, big ears and cloudy, blue eyes that shone as if they held crystal balls in them, the spindly old man sat in his splendid armchair, wearing baggy pajamas that could’ve been twice as old as he, betwixt a great, big mahogany piano and a great, big lampshade, his gnarled fingers tapping along to a Mozart symphony playing on the gramophone. He had a cerebral, grave expression in repose. It was barely winter, but the man had a woollen cap on. In all his unseemliness, he looked respectable. It was nearing evening. His lower lip twitched. The street lights outside were starting to pop into blazing oranges. Using every working muscle in his flesh, he stood up and walked to the other side of the room to fetch something. He walked with a hunch like the Hunchback of Notre Dame’s, leaning and grasping everything on his way. And still, he limped and hobbled. He was reaching out for candles now. His eyes twinkled beholding the bright, red, earthy flames as he lit them.
The happenings had earned the corner the title of Transfixdental Tangent. Some, fearing the pianist’s sorcery, kept their distance, and were careful not to saunter anywhere near the Tangent. Others, like infatuated lovers, stood beneath the old man’s balcony every evening to be wooed and lulled into a reverie. For the longest time, I remained a spectator having staunchly resolved not to partake in this madness- till curiosity got the better of me and I set out to the house. I found myself visiting it more often, and more often still. By the end of the month, it had become an everyday affair.
Then one day, the music died.
***

It was custom for the infatuated lot to lurk near the old man’s house on a daily basis. Like every other evening, we expected to be hooked by the tips of quavers and be transported to the green gate. We waited and waited but no sound came. The sky turned a pale grey, tick, tock, tick, and soon unnatural silence coiled us like a boa constrictor. Everyone started when a dog howled in the distance. A man plucked up the courage to enter the house. He returned pale as a ghost.

News of the old man’s death spread far and wide like rapid fire. Lachrymose Transfixdentalists mourned and lamented. No will was found bequeathing anything to anyone. So The Welfare Association decided to mow the house down. The dilapidated building was a disgrace to the pretty neighbourhood, after all. But everyone protested, and finally a consensus was reached that the place be converted to a mausoleum.
Arrangements for the funeral began. It was decided that the old man’s piano be used as his coffin, and the coffin be placed in the entrance hall of the old man’s house; it was too expensive a thing to bury, no one wanted a coffin in their house, of course, and even if they did, transporting it would take Herculean effort. An orchestra was hired to play Auld Lang Syne, and when everyone finished singing, the old man was lowered into the sound box of the great, mahogany piano and shut to the world. Diego wailed. “…a most unfortunate event…great man, great music. Today will be remembered as the Day the Music Died” Someone sighed. Someone wept. Don Mclean wrote a song. The crowd thinned and vanished.

I was shaken out of my slumber that night. Everyone was. A crowd had gathered around the mausoleum. They said an anguished madman had broken into the pianist’s house and was thumping keys furiously in channeling his grief. The dissonance, the cacophony, the horror, the horror! He must’ve been playing with his feet. But he had no feet. The anguished madman was a fallacy.

The old man’s spirit turned in its grave as the piano played itself.


Epilogue: I have recounted this tale to just about everyone I’ve ever met. But readers are entitled to a bit more. What I’m about tell you changes everything: Forty years have passed since I saw that piano play itself; thirty five since the pianist’s demise. Do the math.

Everyone attacked he who’d announced the pianist’s death, but in the herald’s defence, the old man looked and felt as good as dead when he was found. His skin was pale and he was cold as an icicle from having stayed indoors his entire life. So yes, he was alive at the time he was lowered into his coffin. When he awoke, disoriented by the darkness, he pulled and tugged at the piano strings- the dissonance, the cacophony, the horror, the horror; thank heavens they manufacture holed sound boards.