Zagreb 2
I don’t recall much about what happened next. My eyes were closed. But when I paused and then opened them, I saw the black shiny shoes of the elderly pianist and him seated opposite Ronald on a chair he had pulled up. We three were in an intimate sharing of something profound. He had shiny eyes and had emerged from the kitchen, Ronald later said, when the music reached him there. Quietly, he had returned to his piano and sat looking at Ronald, looking at me, inside the music.
He spoke quietly in Serbo-Croate, and mentioned ‘le Divin’, shaking his head gently. Then he came towards me, reached round and down into his piano and pulled out a half-jack of Slivovitz from under the lid. We drank several toasts to each other and to music.
And then, as we parted, he looked into my eyes with his shiny blue ones, and said,
‘Your husband loves you very much’.