here (:

Happy is he

He was in his room as usual, playing a little tune, not really anything in particular, but wherever his fiddle took him. It was a warm, tropical day – not the kind of tropical that those in colder climates dream about in winter, but the sticky, sordid heat of an early monsoon thunderstorm. He was bathed in sweat; the salt clung to him under fingernails, forming little rocks in his hair and in other unimaginable places. But he didn’t seem to mind as he clamped the fiddle under his jaw and went on playing his little tune.

The window was open – as all tropical windows are – and he looked out of it as he played, but only half-expectantly, because there is usually nothing to see outside on a gloomy and stormy afternoon. Sometimes a crow would flutter by, or a pair of crows, and he’d bid “Hello” and “Farewell” to them with his little tune (he’d do a little slide up for “Hello” and another slide down for “Farewell”, all the time still playing the little tune). The crows that flew past were, expectedly, soaked from the shower, and they called little tired calls to him as they hurried past.

He often wondered where they were hurrying to; playing as he was, in his room, making his little tune, there was often nowhere to hurry to. He remembered asking himself before, if he was wasting time in his room making his little tune, but before he could stop long enough to think of an answer the little tune would call him back again and he would continue playing it.

The little tune wound its way around his arm and into his mind, looking at his thoughts, and becoming his thoughts. It was a friend to him – it sprang to life every time he plucked that little phrase that was his name – and it would talk to him. Not literally, of course, but by making his fingers come down in the right spots and making his arm pull the bow in the right directions. The little tune told him many things, from how it was feeling, to whether it was cold, or hungry, or tired – at which times he would add just the right amount of warmth, or sustenance, or lethargy into his playing. He felt he knew his little tune best; after all, it was his little tune, and he lived to make his little tune.

One of the things he could never ever do was to remember what life had been like before he began making the little tune. He knew he’d learnt the play the fiddle before he’d begun working on the little tune, but he couldn’t place where the little tune started, or how. It had just appeared in his life – very possibly, he’d come home from school one day, picked up his fiddle, and started playing it.

He had memories of, and with, the little tune, though. His favorite action with the little tune was to close his eyes and lift his little finger off the bow, so that it was balanced by his remaining four fingers, and make a little shimmering sound that made the little tune sparkle with laughter. He held very firmly to this, because he could not imagine that one day he might do that and no little shimmering sound would come out. He also could not imagine – or perhaps he didn’t want to imagine – what life would be like if his little tune stopped talking to him, stopped putting his fingers in the right place and stopped pulling his bow in the right direction. The worst nightmare, for him, would have been to find one of the other fiddlers in one of the many other rooms playing his little tune on his fiddle.  And the ultimate heartbreak would have been seeing someone else closing his eyes, lifting his little finger off his bow, and making that special little shimmering sound that was so dear to him. He never knew if the little shimmering sound was dear to his little tune, because his little tune seldom told him that kind of thing, but he assumed that the little tune must treasure what he treasured as well, and didn’t give it another thought.

He was happy. For some reason or another, but no definite reason – or perhaps no reason at all – he was very happy. It was a small blissful world of the little tune he treasured, and he knew that it was a good thing to be happy, so he always thought of himself as happy. And he was happy. He was very happy.

He was in his room as usual, playing a little tune, not really anything in particular, but wherever his fiddle took him.