• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

LEO HEARD VOICES and knew it was his Liebestod, his song of love and death that had accompanied him through so much of his life, marking the end of one phase and the beginning of the next. Except while the singing had always been literal and the death metaphorical, this time his death would be most literal, just as the music—he could almost hear low, tremulant cellos—was dreamlike and distant. He listened to the words—“How mild and soft is his smile; how gently he opens his eyes! Do you see him? Shining ever brighter … how he ascends, bathed in starlight!”—and he could detect Maria, Anna, and even his own mother, returning to say good-bye. The words echoed and were accompanied not only by the surging arpeggios of harps but also by the rustling of the flags and the soft, overlapping wake of the boat as it headed toward shore. “Behold how his heart swells with pride,” the voices went on, “how it beats, brave and full, in his breast! And how from his lips … gently issues his sweet breath. Look, friends … do you not feel it and see it?”

He watched with expectant eyes as Martin and Maria briefly conferred and appeared to come to a consensus with regard to his final request, made only seconds earlier, although the details were already blurring as images from the past began to cascade over his mind. He sighed heavily but contentedly, knowing that his will was about to be done; they were not going to doubt or question but simply lift the burden under which he had labored for so long. Martin ignited a corner of the brittle paper—the formula—and passed it to Maria as the sheets caught fire in a whisper and then expanded into a tiny, flickering flame. Leo felt no regret as he watched the formula disintegrate; this had been his father’s understanding of the world, and only now—through this transformation—was Leo making it his own. He felt tears of gratitude and forgiveness running down his cheeks as the voices continued: “Do I alone hear this music so wonderfully sweet … this blissful lament from his lips saying all, forgiving all? How it grows within me, soars on high, and echoes throughout the heavens!”

He tried to raise his arms—he wanted to embrace his children—but his blood grew thick and slowed, and he could not. Though it seemed impossible after so many years of longing that he could be possessed by a most irrational instinct to live—an impulse to fight what he craved most of all—he was afraid and for a moment wanted to live a little longer, to know what would happen to Martin and Maria, and he hated the idea of leaving. But he knew that his part in their story was about to end, and in the next second he was consoled by the strong hands he felt on his shoulders, propping him up—this, he knew, would be Martin—and by the graceful manner in which Maria kneeled in front of him, keeping one hand in his while the other held the burning sheets of paper.

Maria sloughed from her fingers the final remnants of the formula, which drifted back and forth toward the floor. Yet still he lived, and to live, it seemed, was to question: would he rise like an angel or be sent to walk the coals of hell? Or—as he had always believed—would he be given to an endless moment of comfort and delivery, as if the gap between the last note of music and the start of the applause, a moment of complete darkness and silence bathed in accomplishment and regret, were extended forever? Trembling with fear and desire, he called out to his children and felt them close by as his eyes turned away from a diffuse light and the voices grew louder.

“Growing louder, weaving all about me …

… are they gentle breezes,

or sweet-smelling clouds?

As they swell and whisper, dare I breathe?

Dare I listen?

Shall I drink them in,

or be engulfed by their fragrance?

In the billowing sea,

their echoing sound …

… in the surging night

of the world’s life and breath …

… to drown, to be lost …

… unknowing, in highest bliss!”

The endless night had arrived; the performance of a lifetime was