The pianist who couldn't say goodbye [Story]

We tend to get rid of people and things throughout our lives. At least that is what I believe. That is why it is not strange that I lived without most of them.

Immediately, because of this premise, I could be building the drawing of a rather lugubrious man. But, I believe that there is nothing healthier than honesty about the principles of life. We, the people, can spend day after day clinging to the book we always wanted to write and we never started; to the ideal of woman we find in each made-up face; even to the schematic conception of the place that corresponds to us every ten years. However, when an event divides our existence in a before and after... is impossible to be part of this dynamic.

Deep down we all keep a truth that condemns us: abstain from finding it, believe me, it is not worth it. Once you discover the shadows that control this absurd theater called life, the work loses that aftertaste, the roles lack intensity, the libretto seems cliché, and each scene is an endless spiral of predictable moments.

In my case, the truth found me when a bullet erased Catalina's smile.

I had learned to play the piano when I was a child, but when I lost her I decided to become a pianist. I developed a dependence on the instrument as a catharsis of that commotion. After her death, everything had a grim character and every place on earth cried out again and again: "lose hope". Maybe I should have gone with her, I should have taken a knife and skew, with my own hands, the thread that keeps me alive, but I could not. I could not follow her steps. I was too cowardly.

So I decided to play the piano. In this way, by touching it, each note represents that rusty knife that I was unable to use and left forgotten on her bedside table. Every note hurts me, shouts at me and revives in my soul a part of her. Being a pianist is my way of building a life through our memories and not based on what society dictates for this type of situation.

Sometimes people attend my presentations. According to them say, I have become a peculiar attraction in this kind of music. For me there is no public, only people who feel with their eyes, unable to understand that their perception of life is conceived by an invisible force, and limited by what they know. It is irremediable. Very few will come to understand it, and that is why I do not play the piano for them. If there are a hundred or ten-thousand, the truth does not interest me, I only show up for the money. Unfortunately, deep down, we are all terribly common.

There was an occasion when they interviewed me. Of course it was a novelty. I still wonder why I accepted that interview. I guess that woman reminded me of Lina. Her eyes transmitted to me that inexplicable ambition that Catalina had when she spoke of the future, with a sky painted with watercolor on her back.

Until then, I had never agreed to be interviewed. They called me "the pianist who cannot say goodbye." title deserved by my way of acting on stage. Every time I finished playing the piano, I just sat there, indifferent to the applause, looking towards the ceiling, completely vulnerable before the image of Catalina in our apartment, sitting on the railing of the window, the breeze combing her candy curls, her eyes about me, and that smile full of serenity. At that moment I cried in silence. Playing the piano causes me very deep wounds, or maybe it makes me aware of them. The problem is that, unwittingly, I am becoming addicted to that pain... it is the only way to see her again, to remember her with joy and not with the regret of every day. When her image disappears, my presence on stage ends. I leave without paying attention to the applause. The curious thing is that although I completely ignore the audience, it seems to please him.

So, I was in the middle of an interview with Elizabeth Da Corte, who was pleased to have a scoop in her hands. If I had not lived through so many mornings conversed with Catalina I would not have been able to evade with such precision her sagacious questions which only sought to break the anonymity to which I had reduced my life. The program was already ending. I was one step away from coming out victorious, there were only a few minutes left, but something happened. She formulated a question that made my heart beat with a barbaric speed. That bitch had investigated my life!

"Do you see Miss Catalina when you finish playing the piano, Mr. Krefferd?"

She pronounced each word with looseness and delicacy. I am sure she enjoyed the sadism that journalists experience when they stalk a weak point of their interviewees.

I remained there, in silence, with a lost look in those eyes that were Catalina's mirrors. The study in silence. The camera pointed at me like a weapon, but instead of shooting, it was content to capture with proud sensationalism my pale face. I chose to get up and conclude the interview. What could I do? To undress emotionally and to show my vulnerable state in front of a blind world full of stupid feelings of appearance? To pretend that everything was fine through a solemn tone that conveyed my false superiority by losing Lina? Or, this would be really funny, fight with Elizabeth for having brought my personal life to a program and then pretend that Lina did not exist? Absurd, I did what I had to do. Although, from that moment, everyone discovered who I could not say goodbye to. Even me.

Until then, playing the piano was a way to spend days chasing the sporadic memory of her smile. I did not notice that while I was not playing the piano, I felt an inexplicable sense of old age, fatigue, and a sadness that went beyond the fact of not having it. A sadness that clung to the bones, as if the aura of all objects and people were colorless, oblivious to any subjectivity. Life was reduced to a blank canvas for hours. A terribly heavy canvas to see, live and suffer, a canvas that locked me in the prison of nothingness, of emptiness, of the total absence of color and light. My soul was there, submerged in tedium and despair, exasperatingly seeking freedom that was hidden in death, and that death came when playing the piano.

A thousand times I died in front of the white keys, a thousand times I smiled when I rose the black keys... then the color returned, and the same song sounded because in spite of the music sheet being different, for me it always had the same sound: It sounded to her! To the autumn of her eyes and the glass that hid her lips every morning, to her honest smile and the footprints of her bare feet on the ground. I played the keys, the piano shouted and with equal strength roared my soul soundless in a lament full of life, in a death unfortunately happy because she was there. The canvas was filled again with all its colors of fire. Each chord tears me, robs me of air, tears, memories: happiness. Each appointment in front of the piano draws me two paths and demands a decision. Be its slave and lose my life little by little, or renounce her memory. I cannot say goodbye, Lina! The pianist cannot say goodbye... so I decide to be a slave to this piano, which is my owner and my vehicle. It takes me to your side for seconds that slide through my fingers. Seconds that are insufficient for me to tell you how much I miss you. How much I love you.

What would happen if I took that rusty knife and decided to give up life? Would you forgive me the impatience? Is there the possibility of dying and continuing to remember you in an eternal dream in which I do not suffer due to your absence? It would be fun to find you in another life, feel your lips again, your scent... and know that even death has not managed to steal your smile.

Do you remember that you always said that we are all slaves to what we choose? Well, I think I have decided to be a slave to your memory, and, what is the same, to this piano that is the bridge to reach you.

I just hope that my notes reach your ear while you wait for me in the infinity of time, sitting on that bench where we met, looking at the garden of eternal autumn.

Although this life seems insipid and colorless without you by my side, when I play the piano, I do it for you, Catalina. I sing to life the song of our love, and I will do it until my body disappears and my memory materializes wherever you are. So enjoy the show while you wait for me, my love, because I will never say goodbye to you.