Made yourself right at home in matter of minutes, didn’t you? Then came that marvelous walk through the dunes and down the beach, absently collecting a few shells. You’d intended to get right to work on the poetry collection that very evening, but zonked out for nearly two days instead. That was how quiet and peaceful it was. Still, old habits die hard, and by the end of the first week in cottage number three, prodigal words were once again finding their path to paper.

The second week, a low front had settled in, soaking the island with a cool September rain. A sweater felt good, and with the rain, you began to regain the rhythms— rusty at first, then steadier. Sweet, wasn’t it, old girl? Sweet as the air was salt, and you didn’t neglect the journal one single night, either.

And September drifted past like the unnoticed tides.

And then you heard it the first time. Remember? Damn! Two in the morning— and it was Scarlatti. Had it been Chopin or Brahms, you might have slept right through it, but Scarlatti? No way. But who the devil would be playing a CD at two in the morning? Mad as hell, you got up and made tea.

But it wasn’t a recording, was it? It was somebody practicing. Someone was actually playing that wonderful music which sounded like people toasting each other with different sized champagne glasses. Couldn’t get back to sleep, could you? Not until it stopped, or when the wind changed direction. Hard to tell which.

The wind became southwesterly for several days then, and you didn’t hear anything more, which led you to think maybe it had all been a trick of your overactive imagination. Some kind of masochistic nightmare. And then it happened again. Once more in the early morning hours. This time after brewing the tea, you listened. Really listened. The Scarlatti, which was obviously played as a warm up, rather like etudes, was followed by some exquisite Bach. Bach like you had never heard before, and your critic’s ear simply wouldn’t allow you to ignore it.

The Goldberg Variations are not your favorite things to listen to at three in the morning, but you couldn’t help noticing how well they were being played. There was power, and linear sublety you hadn’t heard since Landowska’s recordings stunned you when you were at the Conservatory. Then, damn it, you were curious! Almost sat down to write Joe about it. After all, in a way, he was responsible, wasn’t he?

Burn-out sneaks up on you. Like Alzheimer’s. Never saw it coming, did you? Probably wouldn’t have at all if he hadn’t thrown you out. “Jenny, get out of here. You need to take some time off.” The way he’d said it, you knew it was a command— not a suggestion. Couldn’t blame him a bit, either. Face it. Lately, your work had been lousy. Stinko. Your reviews had been duller than unbleached muslin. About as much fun to read as ten year-old obituaries.

“Take a sabbatical,” he’d said, then, in a slightly softer tone. “You’ve earned it, sweetheart. You’ve been going like a formula-one car for almost ten years, and now you’re starting to look almost as bad as this crap you’re turning in. If you don’t get away from this atmosphere for a while -- and soon -- you’re gonna be prime shrink material.

“Why not go back down to that place you talked about before? You know, that island you went to for your seminar. Hell, I don’t care where you go. Just get outa my sight, but get your ass back here in three months— with your head screwed on right.”

Three months? Some sabbatical. Some editor. Well, you take what you can get in this old world, baby. And so, there you were, once again on Porter Island. Just you, a few clothes, and the lap-top. God, it was amazing how fast Cleveland and the paper vanished from your fogged-up mind the moment you got on Henry’s boat. By the time it was half an hour away from the mainland, even Joe’s image had faded, like a high school newspaper clipping.

September, October, and November. Three of the loveliest months of the year, all on this gorgeous little island off the South Carolina coast, not far from where Gershwin researched Porgy and Bess. “Oops! Careful, Jenny,” you’d told yourself, “The idea is forget about work! You have escaped the insane world of music for three blessed months. You don’t want to hear one solitary note of it while you’re here in this tiny paradise.”

Yeah, right. Here, you were supposed to get back to being a poet, weren’t you. Maybe finish the collection you’d been sidetracked from for so long. Nearing the pine-and-cypress guarded landing, you really got excited, didn’t you? Even had the first week all planned out; first of all to see if you could resurrect the last three poems, which had fallen flatter than your last three soufflés.

Remember how you had turned, hair flying in the salt wind, and shouted over the clattering old inboard? “Henry, looks like you’ve painted the DOROTHY ANN again.”

“Yes’m. I manage to git a coat or two on her once’t a year.”

“Anybody else on the island right now?”

“Naw, jus’ me and Gen’ral Beauregard.”

You’d laughed into the spray. Henry Tinker, Porter Island’s caretaker and watchman, had just spoken his full quota of words for the week. Like before, you’d been tempted to ask him how old he was, but doubted if he’d remember. It wasn’t likely that one single day of your long vacation would be interrupted by the likes of him and his sad-faced hound, whose chief activity was yawning.

Henry had expertly docked his old boat, loaded your luggage into an equally ancient wheelbarrow, and trundled off in his bowlegged sailor’s gait toward cottage number three, which sits on the southeastern tip of the island. There are ten cottages in all. Log cabins, actually, completely hidden from each other by the island’s dense vegetation, high dunes, and by at least a hundred yards of distance. During the off season, they can be rented by the week or by the month— for only half an arm and leg. You had asked for the same one you had before, when you attended that poetry retreat Joe had referred to.

And the work had begun to flow well, hadn’t it? Until the playing began.

Still, your annoyance was brief. Unconsciously, you’d shifted the work schedule so you’d still be up when it began. It was worth it, too. Chopin rippled across the island to your cottage. Tender, understood Chopin, without the insipid melancholy most artists drip into it like an I.V. And Schumann, fragile as the mind that conceived it. Beethoven thundered forth, too, booming over the breakers with the power of absolute conviction. This was definitely not the work of some amateur, you knew. Whoever was playing -- or rather, rehearsing -- was good. Really good.

“Henry,” you’d asked one morning of your second week, “I thought you said there was no one else here. I heard somebody--”
“Oh, it’s jus’ Miz Lil. She’s back, I reckon. I plum forgot. Some say her family used to own this island, long time ago. Say, I’m on my way over to the mainland. You want some more of them fresh eggs?”

Henry doesn’t gossip a lot, does he? Didn’t tell you much, did he? Who the devil was ‘Mizz Lil?’

Took you another week to find out, didn’t it? Midnight walk on the cool beach. Quiet surf. Full moon out. Met her coming the other way, dressed in that weird looking outfit with the lace shawl, hands in a handsome ermine muff. (Hadn’t seen one of those in years!) Slender figure. Back straight as the Porter Island flagpole. A little nearer, now. You’re thinking she’s sixty, maybe seventy. Hard to judge accurately from such an aristocratic -- and still beautiful -- face. And presence! Even more striking in the moonlight. What’s the word? Austere? Yeah, that’s it. Austere. “Hello, I’m Jenny. I’m in number three.”

“Good evening.”

“I, ah, have heard you playing. You really play—”

“Oh, dear.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t really eavesdropping. It’s just that when the wind blows from the northwest, I hear you sometimes.”

“I hope my practicing doesn’t disturb you.”

“Not at all! I love music, and your playing is excellent.”

“Not beautiful?”

“Sure, it’s beautiful. Of course. No, what I meant was the way you play. It’s truly remarkable. Do you do concerts? Recitals?”

“Not for a long time, but thank you for the compliment. You seem to know something about music.”

Well, sweetheart, you weren’t about to tell this Miz Lil that you were a professional music critic, let alone that you had once been a promising young pianist yourself. Matter of fact, you weren’t sure you wanted to tell her anything, except that you had never heard such playing in your entire life, so that’s exactly what you said.

And she had smiled, nodded, and left you standing there on the beach feeling pretty stupid. Didn’t think to ask who she was. Can you believe it?

During the next three weeks, through the end of October, you felt even less like barging into the privacy of this strange old woman who played like a God for you every night, inspiring you to work like you’d never worked before. Finished the book in record time, didn’t you? Most of it first rate stuff, too. Saw her on the beach only twice more, and told her how you thought her Beethoven was on a par with Schnabel, how her Chopin was better than the legendary Kappell, and that you’d heard no one -- live or recorded – who searched further into Mozart’s drama. How she gorged you every night with her passionate Rachmanninoff, the brilliant light-show of her Scriabin, the slow paced clouds of her Debussy. She smiled each time, thanked you, complimented you on your ‘rather extensive’ knowledge of music, but never once took her hands out of that muff. Nor did she, until that last night, ever offer to correct Henry’s mistake of her name.

“No, Jenny, it is not Lil. Dear old Henry has always called me that. It’s Lila. Lila Banes-Kritzer. Please, you must excuse me now. I should return to my work.”

And you had nearly fainted! Had completely forgotten to ask about her piano, which had to be a Hamburg Steinway, if not a Bechstein. No other instrument was capable of the incredible depth this old woman was reaching into— and carrying you along with her every night. No, it was the name. Her name. You suddenly remembered hearing an obscure radio interview somebody had done with the great Rudolf Serkin, who had talked about his own icons. Busoni. Hoffmann. And Banes-Kritzer. Lila Banes-Kritzer.

Okay. So you bribed Henry to run you back over to the mainland, then twisted his son’s arm to drive you to Savannah in his pick-up. Boy, the people inside the decent library there got a snoot full when you walked in, smelling like four day-old shrimp. Nevertheless, you found what you were looking for, even though they didn’t have a Grove’s. Found her in a copy of Taylor’s LIVES OF FAMOUS PERFORMERS.

LILA BANES-KRITZER, Pianist

Born in Warsaw, Poland. Orphaned daughter of Jewish parents, adopted by Sir William and Lady Emily Banes. Brought up in London, Paris, and the United States, where they often came for vacations. She was educated at the Paris Conservatoire and Berliner Hochschule fur Musik. Highly gifted but extremely eccentric, Lila Banes made her debut in Berlin in November, 1918, then triumphed in all the European Capitols, but refused to perform on an annual basis. She played only one concert tour every four years, each one beginning in November and lasting until March, and always in private rooms and small concert halls many believe she still haunts. In 1928, she married the German industrialist Heinz Kritzer, but never bore any children. Throughout her career, Banes-Kritzer refused to play with orchestras or make phonograph recordings, claiming, “The setting is not intimate enough for proper musical communication. . .” She was also never on stage without one of her two fetishes-- a shawl of the finest lace over her shoulders. (Before each performance, she was known to consume at least half a box of Luebecker marzipan!) She never allowed her wealthy husband to accompany her on her tours.

In 1933, she flatly refused to play a special “command performance” for Adolf Hitler, and continued to defy him and the Nazi regime by including music of Jewish composers during her wildly popular tours. When it was discovered that she herself was Jewish, not even her influential husband could keep her from being arrested and sent to Auschwitz.

There, she was tortured in a particularly cruel way. Both her thumbs were amputated, and her tongue was cut out. It is presumed she died there, although this was never confirmed.

Henry and General Beauregard were waiting to take you back to the island, and Henry handed you a package as you got underway. “Miz Lil’s gone again, but she told me to give you this.”

Didn’t have to open it, did you? You could smell the almond sweet confection through the paper, and you had a pretty good idea what it was wrapped in. “Thanks, Henry. What did you do about her piano?”

“Piano? What piano? Ain’t never been no piano on Porter Island, far back as I can remember, and that’s near ’bout eighty years.”

Bit your lip, didn’t you? “Turn around, Henry, please. Take me back.”

“Why? You forgit somethin’?”

“Not exactly. I need to make a phone call.” You didn’t feel the need to tell Henry the call was to make a reservation, praying the leasing company would accept one four years in advance.

Copyright © 2007 by Tom E. Lewis, All rights reserved.