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""Oh really?"", she says with a smile. "Is that all you can say?".
"I can't say anything", I say. "I really can't. No one has ever given me anything so beautiful. Not even you".
It is a handmade book from a small bindery we passed by on our first day here. Like an old music copy-book, it is broader than it is high. Its cover is a light marbled grey, its contents more than a hundred pages of heavy paper. Each page has eight blank five-line staves. On the first few pages, in her hand, and with a dark brown ink, so different from her usual blue, she has copied out from my score the first eighty or so bars -in fact, the whole of the first fugue- of the "Art of Fugue".
Not one note has been crossed or whited out, so far as I can tell. Il must have cost her hours, to take such pains with rare clefs, yet the pages look fluid, unlaboured.
On the spine, embossed in small dull silver unserifed capitals are the words: Das Grosse Notenbuch des Michael Holme.
On the first page she has written: "Dear Michael, thank you for persuading me to come here, and for these days. Love, Julia".
I rest my head on her shoulder. She runs her hand over my forehead and through my hair. "You should go in. It's almost eleven".
"Will you play it for me?. We still have a few minutes before the rehearsal".
"No. How can I?".
"I remember you playing a little of it in Vienna, years ago".
"That was for myself. You crept up on me!", she says.
"Well?".
"I can't read these clefs fluently enough, Michael. You haven't brought your score with me, have you?. It's got a piano transcription".
"No. It's at the apartment. If I had known...".
"Well, there's my excuse".
"Maybe some of it's still in your fingers?".
She sights, and acquiesces.
We cross the bridge and go to he music room. I place my gift on the piano and stand by to turn the pages. She sits down, plays the bass line for a couple of bars, then picks at the soprano and the inner parts. She closes her eyes, and lets her hands and her inner ear remember. From time to time her fingers stop; she opens her eyes, registers a little more, and continues. What she plays is heavenly: an interrupted heaven. Finally, about halfway throught, she holds up her hands and say: "It's there somewhere, but where?".
"You're doing really well".
"Oh no, oh no; and I know it".
"I don't".
"I played throught this fugue that night after I heard you play it at the Wigmore Hall. I should remember it better".
"Well, then, in London?".
She hesitates. Does that word define her unsettled, too-settled life?. She softly says, "I don’t know, Michael".
"Perhaps?".
"Well, perhaps".
"Make that a promise, Julia. The second half of my present".
"I can't promise. It's such a different... situation. I don't even know if I'll want to play this there".
"You've taken five days away from me, Julia. Can't you give me this?".
"All right", she says at last. "But this isn't something I would ever play for anyone but you".
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Algunos libros llegan a nosotros y acaban enriqueciéndonos sin siquiera esperarlo.
Poseen sus páginas banda sonora. Hay música entre sus palabras.
Alguien perdió éste y acabó entre mis manos. No sé quién sería, pero sí sé, que ha inundado mi vida, con una música constante.
