“The Clarinetist” – FWG Flash Fiction for 7/20/2024

Hearing a song can make a lasting impression, as the Godfather theme did at a café in Venice.

The prompt is:

https://pixabay.com/photos/theater-bratislava-old-town-6066228/

THE CLARINETIST

The eerie strains of the Godfather theme echoed across the piazza. I knew the song immediately, though it took me a second to place the instrument. Aha. A clarinet. A clarinet of all things, but yes, the notes were clear and as fresh as the light breeze that brought the melody to me.

Gazing around the plaza, I couldn’t find the musician, until I looked in the reflection off a marble pillar next to my table in the café. Its surface was perfectly smooth, and it presented a kind of anti-world, a little darker and underlayed with the twisting veins of the stone.

That’s where I found the piper, in the middle of the reflection, leaning against the base of the square’s fountain.

I looked again at the real plaza, thinking that I must have missed him on first glance. But the only signs of life around the fountain were some pigeons pecking for breakfast crumbs.

Back to the reflection. There he was again…and this time, we made eye contact. With a nod and a wink, he swelled the haunting theme into a crescendo. It was a tune I knew well, and when he stood up, I knew the player as well.

Roger was a musician. He played any instrument he could get his hands on, but my favorite—though not his—was the clarinet. When the cancer took him three years ago—second-hand smoke in too many honky-tonks—my love of music died with him.

But there he was, playing for me again and sending me a message. I loved him still, and music was such a central part of his soul that abandoning it was abandoning his memory as well.

Lesson learned, I smiled. My beloved clarinetist and his music faded, but live on in my heart.

THE END