OCTOBER 12, 2019 – “At one of my violin lessons with Symphonie Espagnole,” I told him, “my violin teacher stopped to tell me a story about it.
“During World War II he’d been a tail-gunner on a B-17. On a night mission, his plane got hit. The crew bailed out over the Allied/German line. My teacher parachuted into a field but didn’t know if he was in enemy-held or friendly territory.
“As he crept toward the lights of a nearby village, he heard violin music emanating from a tavern. When he drew closer, he recognized the piece—Symphonie Espagnole—the very piece I was working on. But then the truly amazing thing: a few meters closer, my teacher recognized the violinist by his sound. It was a former colleague from their symphony days together in New York!”
Herb hung on every word. When I finished, he said, “Next time I’m at the library, I’m going to listen to that song again—what’s it called? Symphony . . . ”
“Espagnole . . . ‘Spanish Symphony,’ in French,” I said, “by the French composer, Edouard Lalo.”
After work on Monday, I saw a couple of young cops pass along the side of Herb’s house. The cops continued up our driveway and asked if I’d seen “my neighbor” lately. Questions ensued but few answers. My wife and I’d been out of town for a week and returned only late the day before. Another neighbor—on the other side of the street in front of Herb’s house—had noticed mail piling up and the front door slightly ajar. She called the police.
I pointed out to the officers that Herb’s recycling bin was sitting slightly askew out in the alley. That’s something Herb wouldn’t have allowed for more than five minutes after the recycling truck had passed through.
The young cops knocked on all the ground floor windows and peered in where the blinds or curtains weren’t drawn. I saw them use a pry bar against the back door. Soon they called for back-up. Then the back-up called their back-up.
Bad signs.
The cops told my wife, “He wasn’t alive, but we can’t say anything more.”
Apparently, they could and did. The next day I learned from Herb’s next door neighbors that he’d been found dead in bed.
Since Monday, I’ve mown our backyard, worked on our porch, taken the garbage out, exited our driveway for my evening walks. Each time I’ve expected to see Herb in his backyard or hear him clear his throat, awkwardly signaling he had something to say. But then I remember . . . that’s no longer possible, and that makes me sad.
For years to us, he was like an odd tree shaped by inscrutable burdens, standing in its lonely corner of the woods; a hardwood from gnarly and long-lived stock, an arbor that was sure to live through many more cycles of the seasons.
But now I will be missing Herb—the tree whose leaves dropped suddenly without sound just now this season, their final fall.
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
