The Record by Juliet Menendez

As Ben drops the record needle into the soft sound of its falling rice crackles, the last drops of a heavy afternoon rain nestle themselves into the hydrangeas resting on his balcony. A small distance from his long open window he takes a seat and places his feet along the ledge under the flowers. Moist, cold air moves across his bare feet as a low womanly voice emerges from the slow sound of sitar strings. Ben closes his eyes and lies down on the wood floor to follow her. She carries him into empty spaces filled only with her voice. Across a warm light that covers the insides of his eyes, through courtyards tiled with the colors of her words, along the roads of abandoned mountain villages, under the arches of marble towers, and leaves him in a candle lit tomb where she has erased the dead.

When the needle returns to its cradle at the end of the record Ben realizes that the room is dark and he can’t feel his feet. He closes the balcony window and sinks into the pile of blankets and clothes on his bed. His sheets smell of dust and the rain that settled in their folds. He pulls them tightly around him and scrunches himself into the bottom of his blankets. After his heat enters the blankets he stretches his legs and stares at the lights moving across the wall from the buses outside the window. He is hungry but his body feels heavy and his eyes can’t seem to move from the lights on the wall. He searches them for traces of her voice that he catches and loses in the stairwells and hallways he finds in the shadows.

In the night Ben wakes to a high pitched ringing in the pipes above his bed. His head aches with exhaustion and he feels he has not slept for weeks. Throwing his covers to the side he finds himself tangled in his clothing and takes it off. His lungs feel tight and the walls seem closer to him than usual. On his left knee he finds a spider bite and scratches at it.

He walks a few steps to his refrigerator and pulls out a half eaten sandwich from the deli across the street. Suddenly aware of how completely dark it is in the apartment he makes his way to the lamp dropping little clumps of tuna along the way. He sits in the chair at the foot of his bed. In front of him is the record he bought the day before. There is no picture on the cover. The case is a deep maroon with delicate light blue patterns rounding the edges. Written on the cover are two names, but he is not sure which one is the name of the woman.

On the way back to the refrigerator his toe presses into one of the tuna clumps. Only his toe notices. He pulls out a can of beer and a carrot. Resting his hip on the sink he wonders why the man at the fruit stand was selling records. After twenty minutes of insistent salesmanship the man had convinced him to add this record, from a cardboard box of many others, to his bag of bananas and grapes. Ben had tried to explain that he never listened to music. He barely even owned music. Only a few records and the record player his grandmother left him. As beautiful as the sitar or whatever might be, music was just not something he ever bought. But the record ended up in his fruit bag for $8.50.

Ben had bought many things under the influence of Sam’s dry, bony smile over the last month of his stay in London. An extra orange to keep away a cold or an extra umbrella just in case. But when Sam brought out the record, Ben had been sure the smile wouldn’t catch his wallet.

After drinking one more beer, Ben gets in his bed. He settles his head between his two pillows and tries to ignore the sunlight beginning to accumulate in his curtains. His eyes are heavy and the beer has warmed its way into his limbs, but he finds a lurking anxious feeling running through his veins. He finds himself looking again for her voice and firmly closes his eyes.

Defeated, he puts on the record.

He sits next to the record to watch the gentle needle rise and fall over each of the thin black grooves. Her voice drifts in and out of his consciousness as he plays the record again and again succumbing to sleep only when she is singing. When her voice becomes quiet he finds the needle through the thick weight of his eyelashes and brings her back.

He begins to search for her in the empty spaces finding only slivers of her image. The slender tips of her long fingers, the inner sides of her arms, and the tender curve of her neck between long strands of her dark hair. She appears alone accompanied only by a tree, the walls of temples, and the architectural arches framing her in his mind. She is not aware of him. He keeps himself from intruding.

By noon she is adorned with bracelets and necklaces that fall heavily on each of her limbs. Ben becomes fond of one delicate bracelet on her left ankle. He stays with her ankle until two.

When the last muscle of his back revolts against his seated position, he stops himself from playing the record. He reminds his limbs of their existence and pounds on them until they are ready to walk. From the balcony he looks out on the traffic and people below. They seem to be moving silently. Like the old films. He had always liked those. Just images and text. Unfinished characters to be finished in his mind.

Behind his large stack of journals, his unassembled bicycle and two dark suits, Ben finds his projector and a box containing several film reels. He inspects the faces on the film segments and decides that he has found the right box. He assembles the projector on his chair, turns the record over, and sits on his bed to watch the sequences play on the wall above his stove.

Her voice warms the cold images, but holds them out of his reach. She sings through the soft smiles of his grandmother and sister inviting him in as she fades into the white circles that scatter across the ends of the reels. On the wall Ben watches his grandmother move his infant legs into a dance. He falls asleep as she folds him back into her arms.

In the subways, markets, and parks of the city, she sings quietly infiltrating his senses with her observations. He finds the smell of an ashoka tree in a child’s lavender dress, the taste of almond in the air under the bridge, and the color of hibiscus delicately lining the roof tops on the horizon.

She has sought him out, he thinks. She sings only for him.

Ben begins rearranging his schedule to spend more time with her. He lifts himself willingly out of bed at the first hints of sunlight and runs from work to find her at sunset. He empties his apartment of clutter to create more room for her voice and finds a cushion to place under the record player.

At the end of the first week, she has developed two freckles on her bottom lip and a breath flavored with tamarind. By the second week a smooth birthmark appears on her left thigh. But he fears that she will never reveal her eyes and becomes impatient. On Tuesday of the third week he feels that she has forgotten him.

He refuses to wake up early and lingers at work with a slender secretary owning one glass eye. He defiantly chats with her into the last part of the sunset until he finds himself staring at her right ear with longing. He runs home to apologize.

That night Ben promises her that he will go to meet her. He writes letter after letter of everything he has to tell her making no revisions. He places them in a folder with the poems he wrote for her in the bath and tears pages from his journal that contain the drawings he made of each of her features.

He falls asleep with his cheek on the record player.

On the shelves of the library he finds countless diagrams of the sitar offering him suggestions for tuning. Books on Indian traditional music and pictures of Ravi Shankar have invaded the shelves and leave no room for her. She seems to be excluded from India. Unimportant compared with Ravi Shankar, Indian cooking, and the Taj Mahal.

He asks the music librarian if she has ever heard of this woman. He offers both names hoping that one of them is hers. But she directs him to another record of Ravi Shankar.

Queries on databases show no results. Women sitar players, in general, seem to be his imagined phenomenon. They appear only to wear saris and dance.

As he walks home he decides that he will have to travel to India to find her. Someone there will have to know her name. He will ask in every city and village. He knows he will sound ridiculous, but he is sure that when he finds her she will understand.

Indulging in the bravery of his decision, he is startled when Sam calls to him holding out freshly cut coconuts and mangos. Sam offers him a taste of the mango to lure him towards the stand. Ben follows it.

Sucking at the long strings of the mango, Ben reveals his new decision. He explains that he is aware how difficult it will be to find her, but that he is convinced it will be worth the search. He adds some self mockery, but the expression on Sam’s face doesn’t change.

“That record is very old.” He says. “78 when she made it. Dead now.”

Ben sits in the balcony window running his fingers over the hydrangea petals and looks down on the street below. He turns the record player to its loudest setting and places it next to the window. It is a warm night and her voice seems to hang in the humid air of the street. It drips over the brick walkways and sinks into the budding rosebushes of early June.