The Spider Who Taught Me Rhythm
Nadia, how could you do this to me? My heart belongs to you, and you’ve cast it to the abyss of your unconscious mind. I bleed for you, the blood of passionate anticipation. I spill it as the weeping ivories cascade melancholy melodies; as the ebonies evacuate happiness for misery. I adore you, Nadia! Why does the thought of you both lift my spirits yet torment me tempestuously? A ceaseless storm blackens the precipice of my longing for you. You’re the idol of whom my heart worships; you’re my self-inflicted demise.
Chopin, comfort me. Tell me tales that take my mind into adrift realms of fantasy. The keys never sounded sweeter than the way that you’ve arranged them. They sing bitterly. Your dissonant touch rains down from the highest of highs and lands gracefully on hopeful consonance—with dissonance always lingering behind for its return. If only I could perfect it. I wish to endure each note as you’ve endured them.
I’ve sat in this dusty piano room playing, again and again, the same études. I’ll perfect them and swoon you back to me, Nadia. The sip of this Polski water stings, but to think of us together on the night of our wedding, to undress you, and—
“Do go on…”
“Who’s that?” I scream as the last notes of my piano wane into the air.
“Come on, boy. It was just getting—”
I rose from the seat of my piano. I searched the candlelit room for someone hiding in the dark corners of my home. The tattered curtains couldn't hide even a mouse without the holes confessing their presence. The fireplace has been clogged with soppy soot for months now. No soul would be so filthy as to shove their bodies through that muck. I sat back on my piano stool. Desolance.
I poured myself another shot and slammed it back. Then I looked at my glass and thought, “The potatoes that made this must’ve been rotten. I’m hallucinating company.”
I fiddled with a childish tune and then I heard it again. A voice says something to me. I know it’s not the musical notes. That would be silly.
I stopped playing. Silence again.
Am I hearing voices in the piano? Nadia would have had a thing or two to say to me if I tried to tell her about a talking piano. Alright, Adam, she’d say, You walk around house barefoot again? Now you catch cold and your brain is kaput!
A talking piano? Ha! I played a speedy melodic line, letting the sustain pedal fill the icy air.
“A talking piano,” the voice appeared once more. “That is funny.”
I looked down in horror. On the music stand, a wolf spider lay with its legs spread over the sheet music. Rows of eyes stared back at me.
“What the—”
“Relax, friend,” it said. “Just keep playing the mu—”
The what?… The music? Now I knew that I was hallucinating. I didn’t want to get too close to the thing, but I had to deduce what I was hearing. So I struck a chord, and to my unpleasant surprise, I heard its voice speak to me again. So I played one of Chopin’s études from memory.
“Why so surprised?” it asked. “We arachnids hear with our touch. We pluck, and we bow the strings of our creation. Our worlds are lived in feeling earth’s vibrations. The air you breathe is like a web that connects us all.”
“Are you telling me,” I asked, “that spiders hear music like we do?”
“No!” He scoffed. “Better! Can you imagine the euphoria of every individual hair on your legs feeling a musical sensation? Have you ever wondered why, when you see us and go to grab your giant objects to crush us, we’ve vanished?”
“I mean, I always thought it was all your eyes.”
“No,” it bragged. “It’s because our worldview is influenced by the frequencies that we sense with our legs, our bodies, even our fangs. We hear everything with our bodies.”
I poured another shot of wódka and shook my head in disbelief. I’m talking with a damned spider. Now I know that I’ve lost it. Jokingly, I asked whether or not she’d care for a shot as well. She was quick to express that she preferred blood.
“Well,” I said, holding up my glass between us, as if to ward off the vampire in defiance to its unnerving comment, “my poison of choice is wódka, thanks.” The back of my throat kept burning after my last shot. I must’ve drank the last of my liquor.
“So, do you things have names,” I asked. “Why are you speaking to me anyway?”
She wiped her fangs with her palps. “Mirmah.”
Introductions and Propositions
“What kind of name is that? ‘Mirmah’,” I thought aloud.
“An ancient one,” Mirmah said. “We spiders are as old as humanity. Older even. Wherever you humans have settled, we were always there where you couldn’t see us. We hid in the cracks of forgotten places. These silent chambers that you all have built, snuff you away from the harmony of life’s songs—the vibrations in the winds, not like our homes, which resonate with them. We rest motionlessly in spaces like this, listening. Our bodies and our homes resonate with the world around us. This is a musical existence. You can do this, too. Yes! Those stringed instruments. The hammers that strike them. So lovely. Those fingers feel the vibrations. Sweet vibrations. They tickle the hairs on my legs. So orgasmic.”
“I have heard enough,” I cried. “Disgusting, horrid thing.”
“You are all the same: You fear us, smash us at the sight of our presence. We can help you. I can help you. But you would rather squish me with your boot. You won’t even touch me.” Mirmah paused. “Go on. Touch me. I won’t bite,” she said as she lifted his two front legs.
“No,” I said, repeating the same chord progression. “You’re lying.”
“I won’t teach you to sense rhythm as we do until you learn not to fear me.” Her two front legs remained in the air. Her fangs were buried underneath his palps.
I never considered the miniature world of spiders. I never thought of how perfect a teacher such a thing could be. They’re so sensitive to the frequencies in the air, that it often feels as though they even listen to the brainwaves transmitted from our very thoughts. I desire to experience rhythms like this, and that requires the same sensitivity that monsters like Mirmah possess. But for Mirmah’s species, it’s a way of life. Oh, how I longed to play Nadia something as beautiful as her soft, buttery skin, like the unblemished snow covering the fields of a new dawn. Shaking hands with this vile creature can’t surely be too high a price for my sweet jewel, Nadia.
“Ok,” I said as I ceased playing notes. At first, my hand felt strapped to the keys on the piano. I stared into the cold, lifeless eyes of the arachnid. I could sense her thoughts penetrating me. She predicted my movements and watched me from every angle all at once.
It terrified me.
I lifted my hand up and stretched my finger from my reluctant fist. Mirmah’s body remained locked in place—in anticipation. My finger hovered over the hairs of his legs. The palps that masked his mouth wiped off his fangs. The silence of my instrument feigned to me the appearance of a house spider. I pressed down my finger to touch the tips of her leg when suddenly he jumped on my fingers and crawled up my sleeve, locking eyes with me as he ascended atop my shoulder. I resisted the impulse to squash her.
Mirmah rested under the right side of my chin and stared at me as if to nudge my hands back onto the piano. Nervously, I played the fifth chord with a basic melody. She immediately brandished her fangs in defiance.
“Never play those disgusting frequencies near me again! The other one, the other one. Play what you were before.”
“Sorry. I’m not well with a large spider resting on my shoulder,” I responded.
“Well,” she began to lecture me while shooting his webs onto the piano, “you must adjust to more than that if we are to continue, my pupil.” She connected the web from the face of the piano to both of my shoulders.
“These are my strings. You will caress them with your soothing thirds and sweet, satisfying sevenths. And I,” she said, crawling to the space that rests betwixt my chest and the keys, “will conduct your cadence. The proper rhythm in careful tempo will swing my ornamentations as the sea winds guided the silken sails of my ancestors, gliding in matrimony with earth’s oxidating choir.”
Thus, my first lesson began: Comfort is the enemy of growth. Even if that comfort goes beyond human standards such as a bloodsucker nestling upon my beating heart.
A Musician Must Play From The Heart
“That’s right,” Mirmah said. “Give me your heart, Adam. Play to the beat of your heart. Each pulse is the force that gives your music meaning. Use it to speak to them, Adam.”
I watched energetically as she conducted with the swinging of her body, an effortless pendulum. Back and forth, her movements mesmerized me. I syncopated with Mirmah, doing as she did. With each swing, she wove more web from my heart to the face of the piano. As odd as it seemed, I trusted Mirmah because my form improved. The sound of the music was much sweeter. I pumped the pain in my chest into each musical phrase. And I began to see a vision of myself on a stage.
Before me, there were many women throwing themselves onto the body of my Bösendorfer. They all swooned for me. The police, worried, fended the frenzied ladies from stealing the locks of my long, curly red hair. They stood by me as I performed. They all circled me at every angle—at least, the angles that didn’t obstruct the infatuated audience’s view of my gracious exuberance.
I rocked back and forth in a trance. The roses fell at my feet. Lingerie rubbed my shoulders as I continuously caressed the women in the crowd with my seductive instrumentation.
They loved me. They all wanted me. I caught their hearts with the craftiness of my bare two hands.
I thought about which one I’d lay with first. Or maybe, I would begin with two or three naked women first. And then I’ll invite them all into my candlelit chamber, showing them where I make the magic. And of whom taught me to play like—
Wait. I couldn’t show them a talking spider. That would horrify them. Surely they’d think I lost my mind. Could they hear the spider, too? If I tried to show them the musical genius of my arachnid friend, would they perceive her well? Why doesn't that horrify me anymore?
Nadia?
Wait. Wait. I’m doing this for Nadia. I’m doing this all for her. Where is she? Her face isn’t in the audience. I see the seat that I reserved for her. Why didn’t she come?
Nadia! This is all wrong. I wasn’t supposed to sleep with strange women. I don’t actually want this.
“Why not?” whispered Mirmah’s voice, scathingly.
Adam Awakes From His Trance
“Mirmah,” I said. “What is this?”
I looked down and saw my chest covered in a sweater, woven in webs. In a panic, I saw two red marks on my right hand from which blood spilled. My vision was blurry. In the dimlit room, I faced off with Mirmah.
She spoke to me differently than before.
“Mirmah,” I said again. “What did you do? I thought we were friends. You were going mentor me.”
“Adam, you drunkard, and you fool!” She responded contentiously. “Why would I actually help you? I hate you. And every other human. I despise you. That’s why I drain your life in exchange for my venom!” She crawled closer to me.
I flinched in horror, spotting her within the thick walls of webs that fused me to the music stand. I sat there, paralyzed, my body entombed inside the sticky sarcophagus.
“How can I still hear you? The music stopped!”
“Because it's inside of you, Adam. In your mind. The notes swim in your head more than words of yourself. That’s why you have none left.”
“You gave me your heart so willingly. With such little resistance. And for what? Lustful obsession over a woman who no longer loves you, or needs you? You humans are so easily tempted. Of course, I would bite you. You stare your Adversary in the eyes and yet you still confuse your better judgment as morally impure. Even as you’ve let yourself be tangled in the webs of my deceit, you remain in disbelief that I am your foe. That’s why you’ll die by your own foolishness!”
Mirmah scurried up from the ivories towards my chest. Terrified, I knocked my bottle of wódka onto the keys of my piano. Mirmah cringed in pain.
Of course!
I slammed my hands down harder than I’d ever done before. My hands gripped the keys for mercy since I feared death was so near.
I played as if my life depended on it. Mirmah was only an inch from my chest when, all of a sudden, her charge was interrupted, and she fell upside down on her silken ropes, and her legs scattered frantically as though someone had flung rocks at her adhesive bridge. I slammed perfect fifths down like hammers, to rip down her decrepit symmetry.
“You filth!” Mirmah screamed. “That filth! You’re all filthy!” She squirmed in pain and frenzy.
“The only filth here is you and your lies!” I screamed to the heavens, as they rained down arpeggios from the highest octave to the lowest, repeatedly crashing like lightning before the tumbling of thunderstrikes to Mirmah’s anguish. “I see now. As I play from the Spirit, my heart is silenced. You have no power over my spirit, you deceiver. You play the strings of our hearts, waiting for us all to fall helplessly into your seductive layer. You strike your prey with your venom. Confusion fills our minds until it’s too late to defend ourselves. Then you come with your death grip as we panic in delirium.”
Mirmah lost control of her limbs, and all she could utter was, “I’ve…watched…you…years… wollowing…in grief…you…need—ahh!”
I don’t need you! I don’t need you! I will not die for my desires. How could I let myself be so stupid? Now I will die by my own hands that have fed your poison straight to my heart. Even once I kill this lying creature, I’ll surely not survive the night. Cursed creature! I hate you!
“We’ll meet again,” she said as her last words. She fell to the shivering, wooden floor, where she quivered and died, smote and vanquished.
I fell off my stool and began to choke. My chest sunk into the floor.
No one will believe me. They will think that I drank myself unconscious and became a philanthropic blood bag for this grotesque animal. They’ll never know that I shared a night with Terror itself. Now the thought that preys on my mind as I lay dying, Will this truly be the last that I see of the Beast?
Suddenly a light shined over my face. In the brightness, I saw somebody. I saw—her!
“Nadia?” I asked, shamefully. “Am I dead?”
She smiled at me gently. With heavenly comfort, I felt the gravity lift from my emptying chest. I couldn’t bear her to see me like this, to see me drunken, drooling, and writhing in the pain of Mirmah’s venom. I felt it surging deeper into my veins, like shards of glass shooting throughout my body at the speed of bullets, ripping and cutting. I sensed the poison drawing nearer to my heart with every pulse.
“I’m sorry, Nadia.”
The lady dressed in light shook her head softly as if to say, “Don’t worry any longer.”
“I thought I could bring you back,” I cried, as tears fell down my cheeks. “You always came to listen to me practice. So sweetly, you used to lay there on that couch, watching me with so much light in your eyes. You watched me. You always believed that I could be something great. But when you left me,” I said, sobbing, “when you died, my world fell apart. Because without you, all hope was gone. No one believed in me like you did. No one else cared. I thought if I played with enough force, you would return once more and lay your hands on my shoulders. And I would feel the warmth of your tender kiss on my neck again.”
She spoke so beautifully, in a language I’d never heard before. At first, it was foreign to me—the sound of a thousand symphonies, an arrangement of the most epic sonatas played in unison, all in frequencies that opened my ears to new, unearthly possibilities. Cosmic hues and shades of colors soaked in light, shot from her mouth like lasers in all directions as she spoke. Her cadence brought me infant memories that I never remembered until this moment, of the sweetest cradling and rocking in my mother’s arms. The careless curiosity of a baby filled my spirit. Her words made me feel childlike innocence again. And through the foreignness of her speech, I finally sensed the meaning of one message uttered in what sustained my last breath for my final legato of life:
“Surrender.”
Inspired by the true story of the famous Polish pianist, composer, and prime minister, Ignacy Paderewski, and the spider, which he wrote, listened to him play Frédéric Chopin’s études in 3rd intervals, as cited in Oliver Sack’s book, Musicophilia.
