The accordionist on the Casino waterfront

The accordionist on the Casino waterfront

H. Dragos

I sat on a bench with my Starbuck coffee and two bagels for sparrows. It was a late spring day with a cool, chilly breeze but clear skies and sunshine with rays already heralding summer. The sea was calm, with small waves coming in the natural rhythm of the breeze. It was not even 9 o'clock, but it was a weekend day and not twenty paces away, the accordionist, whom I had already noticed, was already at his post. These were the week-end beautiful days when he knew from experience that he could earn some pennies.

In the last few months, when weather was mild or sunny, he was playing some entertaining music based on some classical or well-known melodies. But mainly he was playing again and again the first few dozen chords of music, always the same ones from Ivanovich's Danube Waves waltz. He would take small pauses. It was time for rearrangement the small blanket on which he sat on the concrete railing and with which he wrapped his thighs, when the sun would hide behind the clouds or the breeze seems colder. Sometimes he walks his hands on the keyboards without touching them, or just stay still and and have a long look over the sea, carried away by worries or memories. Then he would re-play, most of the time, the same waltz over and over, obsessively. He seemed to have forgotten the rest, or perhaps he didn't want to remember it. Or perhaps he had forgotten some of it after his mental degradation, for his fingers didn't seem to run as well on the keyboards. In fact, most of the people walking along the cliff didn't even notice the endless repetition of the chords, because after a few dozen steps they were practically no longer paying attention to the music. Or they were simply "taken away" by the sea waves endless motion, the gentle sun, the cool sea breeze or simply more or less heated discussions with their husbands or children.

While I was feeding the sparrows with bits of broken bagels, I looked at him hoping in vain to hear the continuation of the waltz, or some other song that I knew that not so long ago, not even a year before, he had sung with great pleasure.

What had happened this spring when we were forced to stay in our houses in fear of COVID? I wonder how he earned his money to survive? As a freelancer, he most likely didn't have much of a steady income and it was even harder than usual.

He looked unkempt, clothes rumpled, shoes slightly scuffed and dusty, beard grown a few months. A dusty and deformed old fashion felt hat covered the almost bald head, letting a few strands of silver hair fluttering at the temples. His face was well drawn, much thinned; from hunger or troubles? Or both? I had known a year ago that his only relative, a sister from Buzau, had died, and so he had lost the last person to whom he would have been related as a family. He once told me that he hadn't seen her for over 15 years, but the thought that he still had someone, somewhere, comforted him and gave him the strength to go on. The woman with whom he had lived together most of his life, had also died over 10 years ago, a small eternity for him. He suffered and found it harder and harder to cope alone. But driven by necessity, he had learned to get by, cooking his own food, washing as much as a shirt, at least enough not to drive away his few customers. In winter sunny days on the boardwalk, the sun seemed to be his best friend, and he could gather a few bucks with his music.

He had had a full life, as a musician among lot of friends, at parties, weddings, with a lot of pleasant memories, which now and then brightened his loneliness. His earliest memories, from his youth, were the most vivid. He didn't know why, but he thanked heaven that they were the most pleasant memories.

After finishing my cigarette, I went down to the promenade and leaning on the railing towards the sea, and apparently studying the renovation work on the Casino, I began to study him with the corner of my eyes...

With hands on the keyboards of the accordion moving mechanically, endlessly repeating the waltz chords, with half-open eyes I saw a beginning of a smile in the corner of his mouth accompanied by a small dimple in his cheeks. He was dreaming with open eyes. He was in two worlds. It seemed as if visions of parties and beautiful women were trying to dislodge him from the present reality:

".......Revisit again a sweet memory of that wedding at the Casino, more than 50 years ago, where he was a soloist in the orchestra; the witch’s eyes.... bride's sister.... the blond hair lost on her shoulders and the unusually large green eyes, which had fixed him all night long….. In the morning, when the party was almost over, they left together ...What a real woman!... what a body full of life and lips of fire! When they made love ....as if they were no longer on Earth and time had stopped there..... He loved her with the same fire... which consumed them both in that few hours. But she left in the morning, without saying a word, only a long, hot kiss of farewell ... he had not even asked her name, because he thought that he lived a dream, like a drunk.... how he would have cherished her by his side forever..."

He paused, running the back of his hand over the scar on the corner of his temple, which he was covering, with his hair pulled unnaturally from his forehead, as if trying not to reveal to strangers another love affair. The scarcely visible sign he had caught in his youth, in a brawl with a group of vagabonds who had picked on a single woman who was probably late for a movie.... The mark had been barely visible on his dark skin and still raven-black hair until at least a few years ago, when rebellious white hairs began to show-up. He sometimes covers them with the shabby cap, tilting it slightly to one side.

Or perhaps he remembered bitter days when he'd starved himself to fast, or days when he'd drowned his love wounds, in wine.

It was my mother's favourite when I took her on the promenade of the Casino, to breathe a little of the aerosols that opened her lungs a little, relieving her asthma. My mother insisted every time to give him a Euro, although at the time, it seemed to me a bit too much. But in my selfishness, I didn't realize how much it meant to him, but mainly to her. I knew she would have given him even more, but she was always careful to spare me, not to spend too much on her desires. I could feel it, and after I left, I was sorry I hadn't given him more. And every time I came back with Her, I'd forget all those promises and act just as unconscious selfishness.

The accordionist continued to play the same piece of waltz in the same endless repetition as when I came.

I walked towards him, holding a two Euro bill. I placed it gently in the cardboard box, in which a few metal cents coins, were already lying. I slightly bowed my head and received the same silent, grateful response from sad eyes. It was as if he had lost the power to thank me in words, though his lips seemed to be trying to spell the thanks words.

A few seconds after me, a family had just passed by and their little girl, not yet 5 years old, timidly received the mission to add a few cents coins to the charity box. Then I hoped that maybe people could bring him luck, that maybe the sunny day would brighten his home and his heart. And maybe he would still be able to continue the waltz in all its marvellous chords.

I came back the next week-end, hoping to hear his waltz chords again and to be able to put a two Euro bill, or two in his box.

He didn’t come. He never came. Nor did I ever saw him....