Until the Rain Stops by Elisif

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Chapter 1

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It had just begun hailing when the stranger— a cello on his back, dripping black waistlength hair tied back in a scrappy pony-tail, a dripping cloak and leather fingerless gloves worn alongside a fashionable tailcoat and cravat – had appeared at Ludwig van Beethoven’s door.

Setting down his cello so the narrow overhang of the door shielded it from the rain while he himself remained exposed to the dripping hail and ice, he had offered to share knowledge of music from a land Ludwig had never heard of or assist with the printing of music for the renowned young composer’s new compositions in return for a bed on the floor, preferably close to a fire or stovetop f that was at all possible, though a roof made of straw would do on a night like this, and he would know, he had endured that and worse in the past.

It was an exchange as poorly balanced as it was strange; in truth he’d let the wanderer in more out of sympathy for his poor instrument, left to the ravaging mercies of the wood-warping, string-rotting rain and hail than for the man himself. He’d shown the stranger a bed beside the stove and thought that the end of it.

But the following morning, he’d walked bleary-eyed into his music-room to find the stranger singing to himself in a language he did not recognise while the fingers of his left hand picked out a melody on Ludwig’s grand concert harp, achieving with just five fingers a level of skill and musicality he had never before seen a master of the instrument accomplish with ten.

“I tuned it for you,” he had said.

That had been six months ago.

…

Mostly, Laure, as he had requested to be called, played the cello. The scrappy black leather gloves he wore served an additional purpose, Ludwig had quickly learned: the right came with a snug leather sleeve stitched to the palm and buttons to connect the fingertips to the base of the hand, forming an immobilised pocket which allowed the maimed artist to hold and control a bow. On the rare occasions when he did make use of Ludwig’s harp, he would meticulously bandage his ruined fingers together, forcefully ensuring that he was limited to the skills he actually possessed and not those he could remember once possessing.

“You’re still the finest harpist I’ve ever heard,” Ludwig had said in disbelief as he walked in on Laure bandaging his palm and knuckles before a morning practice session, holding the length of discarded linen between his teeth.

“Millennia of practice. What you are hear are children’s nursery rhymes compared to what I was once capable of.”

Regardless of his initial awe, Ludwig had to admit it was true. Laure’s technique, his deft and lightness of fingers on the harp were well and truly otherworldly, but the physical limitations on what he could play with only a single hand were stark. Bach’s Prélude in C, over and over. Simple melodies played beautifully. Nothing grand and soul-stirring as he achieved on the cello, which was clearly not where his heart truly lay.

“I lost nine hundred years of skills when my hand burned,” Laure said through gritted teeth once, after another repeat of Bach’s Prelude, light as raindrops. Seated by the window, hunched over a bundle of manuscript papers and scribbling furiously, Ludwig looked up.

“Well at least it got itself over quickly in your case,” he said.

“My case?”

He slammed the manuscript shut.

“Never mind that. You heard nothing.”

“Ludwig… “

“Speak of it to no one,” he said, grabbing the armful of music books and heading out the door.

…

They played together one lonely summer’s evening, the scent of honeysuckle drifting in through the windows. Ludwig’s Cello Sonata in F Major, with occasional intervals for them both to scribble notes with ink-splattered fingers, debate the theory of the music, hands flitting as fast as was possible between cello strings, piano keys, and pens.

“You see,” Ludwig said, shuffling through the music book to find a desired passage, “when writing sonatas for cello and piano, most composers simply have the left hand of the pianist and the cellist playing the precise same notes.”

“A pointless limitation I would say.”

“Precisely. Which is why I would compose for the two separately. Is there any reason the Obligato must always go to the piano part?”

“Inherent bias,” said Laure. “Composers frankly aren’t too fond of the cello.”

“No,” said Ludwig, pausing to scribble down some notes, “they aren’t.”

He paused; for a few seconds, he tapped a line of notes against the edge of the piano with his quill, before closing his eyes and making a conductor’s motions with his fingers, the physical manifestations of musical creation Laure was all too familiar with. As Ludwig was doubtless occupied, he returned to his seat, he began to re-rosin his bow, the motion of his elbow awkward with the bow strapped to his right glove and the small ball of sap spraying chalky dust across the floor.

Ludwig’s head jerked up and the quill tapped flat against the piano’s edge under his fingers.

“Laure,” he said.

“Laure. I think I just had a stroke of brilliance. I need you on the harp right now.”

Ludwig turned to face Laure; the other man set his cello down gently, moved to switch instruments, but then stopped. A concerned look on his face, he began to shuffled through his pockets— once, twice— but his hands emerged empty. He stared at his ruined right hand and his lips pressed tight.

His hands clenched as he stood up, opened the doors of the glass cabinet at the back of the music room, began to rifle through the delftware vases and enamelled trinkets that lined the shelves.

“Have you seen my bandages?” he said, opening a silver snuffbox and dropping the lid with a clang as his hands riffled frantically across the shelves. “Have you seen them?”

“What?”

“My bandages! I need them to play the harp, but I can’t find them—“

Ludwig slammed the bundle of music books down against his knees.  

“Why do you need those bloody things anyway? The composition is in my head right now—“

“Play it yourself then!”

“I can’t!”

“What do you mean you can’t? It’s those bandages, or remembering what it felt like to have my entire life’s work and the only reason I breathed turn to bloody blisters while I was powerless to stop it—“

“The notes are too damn high, Laure, I can’t hear them!”

Silence. Laure’s hands froze.

He buried his head in his hands.

“I’m going deaf, alright?” he said, peering through a crack in his fingers.  “That’s why I’m here. In Heiligenstadt. To— come to terms with it. The high notes went first.  A few short years, and there’ll be nothing left. Nothing.”

He set the books aside; his shoulders shaking, he stood up, walked across the chamber and rested his hands on the windowsill.

“A few short years and then I’ll be a composer who can’t hear his own work. Damned to silence forever, and there’s not a thing I can do to stop it.”

His shoulders trembled as he bowed his head, braced himself to continue, his palm flat against the windowsill as he doubled over.

“A composer who can’t hear his own work, Laure! What is a musician without his art? Better to be dead than to lose what you’ve dedicated every day of your godforsaken life to perfecting—“

Promptly he turned around, seized a ceramic water pitcher from the table beside the piano and flung it hard across the music-room, where it smashed it into pieces. As he turned around, Laure ran forwards, seized him from behind, held him tight against his chest and upright as a choked scream escaped his throat and he doubled forwards against the windowsill.

“Shh, shh…”

He tried his hardest to break his arms free if the hold, but even with his ruined hand Laure was stronger of the two, his arms crossed and clasped across Ludwig’s chest as he closed his eyes and held him still tighter.

“I’ve been there. I know how it feels.”

A choked sob emanated from Ludwig’s throat, and at last his pained little struggles ceased, faded to slow shuddering sobs.

“I’ve been there. Believe me, I know the pain.”

At last, Ludwig’s pained little struggles ceased and faded into slowly shuddering sobs and deep breaths of attempted composure.

At last he turned around in Laure’s arms.

They did not know which one of them initiated the kiss first. A soft nuzzle of a clean-shaven cheek turned rapidly to a succession of strong, hungry kisses, rapid touches set afire seemingly by the aching desperation of two artists maimed and isolated in that from all but each other. Another stammering kiss and Ludwig’s hands traced the ripples of muscle in Laure’s shoulders, pressing little kisses in to his neck as his fingers tugged at and untied the other man’s cravat.

“Laure…”

“Call me Maglor. As you’ve probably gathered, I’m not French.”

“Maglor then,” he said as they relocated themselves up against a wall of the music room. Once there, he brought his hands downwards and with shaking fingers he untied the laces of Maglor’s underwear and trousers, let them drop cleanly down to his ankles where he kicked them free. He then set about undoing the buttons of Maglor’s blouse, parting it from his neck down to his hips, and when he was bared entirely from the shoulders downward, took him in hand.

“Oh Eru…”

A gasp escaped his throat as Ludwig unlaced his own trousers, lent in and stroked both of their shafts together.

They climaxed quickly, both of them falling against each other in the hot gasping intensity of such sudden passion, half-collapsing to sit beside each other, leant against the wall of the music room and panting for breath.

It would not be the last time that night.

…

Maglor awoke in Ludwig’s bed some time later, his shirt bunched up high around his chest, his underwear discarded, a lingering taste of wine on his lips. His head ached when he lifted it: Ludwig’s half of the bed was empty.

Bleary-eyed, he rubbed his eyes and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His fingers were still bound together from an intervening practice session the night before; he tore the knotted linen loose with his teeth so he would have two hands to pull on and relace his trousers, tied them hastily before pouring himself a cup of water from a delft-ware pitcher placed beside the bed on the night-stand.

It was raining in Heiligenstadt. The steady roar of the raindrops echoed like grains being poured from a metal pitcher, coolness against the hands and the ears gifted by the second movement of a mountain storm; the lull before the thunder, the quiet allegretto before the summer’s wild andante. For it is said that in the music of the waters…

From the floor below, the music of a piano echoed, the notes as gentle as they were angry, soft as the notes of rainwater that graced them and yet infused with the furious passion of the storm.

Notes from the piano’s highest octaves, he noticed.

Maglor wandered downstairs, pushed open the etched porcelain doorhandle of the music room.

Ludwig was playing, shirtless; the muscles in his back rippled as his hands shifted up and down the keyboard in crashing waves of sound, playing to the thunder. An etched decanter of scotch and a glass had been placed atop the piano; after a few quick strides of notes, he reached upwards and took a swig from the glass with his right hand while his left maintained a trill down in the lower octaves and waited for the right to rejoin and echo it.

The rain roared onwards.

Maglor walked forwards, laid his hands gently on Ludwig’s shoulders. As they moved, he felt the stiffness and tension in them, muscles knotted for all the lissom silk, the hard raindrops breaking on a spider’s web that was the melody of Ludwig’s song.

“Laure…” he said, wincing as Maglor gently pressed against a knot of muscle in his neck.

As he massaged the knots in Ludwig’s shoulders, he glanced ahead at the notes on the following page of music; as he saw what was coming, his throat tightened.

As he progressed across the page, Ludwig’s hands danced higher and higher up the keyboard, until at last his fingers tensed. White-knuckled at the furthest reach of the keyboard, he stopped.

Still apparently oblivious to Maglor watching him, he slammed the music book shut, took another long swig from the glass of scotch, holding the bottle and glass in his hands wandered over and stood by the window, stared out at the storm.

For a few moments he stood silent. At last, he turned around, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and Maglor braced himself for what was coming.

“Tell me how it sounds,” he said quietly at last.

Maglor’s lips pressed.

“It’s a masterpiece,” he said, stepping forward, his hand resting on the arm of a chair. “But,” he said, tracing his fingers across the keyboard before raising his head to meet Ludwig’s eyes.

“It would be even more beautiful a few octaves lower.”

Ludwig’s fingers stiffened against his glass.

“You’re—“

“No, I’m not just saying that. I was once praised as the greatest musician the world had ever seen, Ludwig van Beethoven, and I’m telling you truthfully that this piece,” he traced his fingers across the keys, “will sound better a few octaves down.”

Ludwig sighed. He leant back against the windowsill on his left elbow, took another sip from the cup in his right.

“A composer who can’t hear and a harpist who can’t play the harp,” he said quietly. “We’re a pair. Whatever are we going to do, Laure.”

Maglor drew a deep breath to steady himself. Finally, he said:

“We’re musicians. What we always do. Where are my gloves?”

“By the liquor cabinet, I think.”

He retrieved his glove, set up his cello and adjusted his chair, awkwardly tightened his bow, looked solemnly up at Ludwig who had turned to stare out at the softly lilting rain.

“We play until the rain stops, Ludwig,” he said, buttoning the sleeve on his glove that allowed him to hold the bow in his useless hand.

“And then?”

“And then we play until the sun rises. And then until the sky turns grey and the heavens open once more. And come winter, until the snow stops falling.”

He paused.

“We play on, Ludwig. And the world cannot take that from us.”

He held out his hand. A resolved look in his eyes, Ludwig set down his glass paced over to the keyboard, flicked through the bundle of papers set on the stand.

He looked at Maglor.

“Lower?” he asked.

“Lower,” Maglor replied.

The two musicians played onwards, through the rain and the moonlight. Until the rain stopped.