blackswangreen

The sequence of doors we passed made me think of all the rooms of my past and future. The hospital ward I was born in, classrooms, tents, churches, offices, hotels, museums, nursing homes, the room I’ll die in. (Has it been built yet?) Cars’re rooms. So are woods. Skies’re ceilings. Distances’re walls. Wombs’re rooms made of mothers. Graves’re rooms made of soil.

That music was swelling.

A Jules Verne hi-fi, all silvery knobs and dials, occupied one corner of the solarium. Madame Crommelynck sat on her cane throne, eyes shut, listening. As if the music was a warm bath. (This time I knew she wouldn’t be speaking for a while, so I just sat down on the armless sofa.) A classical L.P. was playing. Nothing like the rumpty-tump-tump stuff Mr. Kempsey plays in Music. Jealous and sweet, this music was, sobbing and gorgeous, muddy and crystal. But if the right words existed the music wouldn’t need to.

The piano’d vanished. Now a flute’d joined the violin.

(I can still hear it, hours later.)

• blackswangreen by david mitchell
• a reference to the Cloud Atlas Sextet by Robert Frobisher in Mitchell’s other book, Cloud Atlas

📚 💬