Shostakovich After Midnight

Abstract

Shostakovich After Midnight Jerome Blanco (bio) Every so often, I happen across a person who reminds me of someone I once knew. I'd see a woman in a checkout line at my local grocery store and think, she looks an awful lot like my English teacher from the 8th grade. Nearly every time, the person turns out to be a complete stranger, who, upon closer inspection, looks nothing like who I thought them to be. When I saw Henry Wong board the BART at the 24th Street Mission Station, I thought this to be one of those occasions. But as I stared—what else was I to do on a long underground train ride?—I had no doubt that he was the same guy from ten years ago. He was older, of course, a couple more lines on his face and much shorter hair. He was dressed better, too, in a nice coat with gray slacks. But he was surely the same Henry Wong who'd changed my life. I wanted to run up to him right then but thought better of it, because I didn't want to be mistaken for one of those lunatics on the train. People were very on edge these days about strange men causing a ruckus on public transit. Instead, I said his name, quietly first, and then a bit louder. He didn't hear me. I didn't even hear myself. The train screeched too deafeningly along the tracks. After five stops, Henry positioned himself by the door, to get off at the Montgomery stop. I was meant to go all the way across the Bay, to Berkeley where I lived. Instead, I got out of my seat and readied myself to exit the train with him—and then to tap him on the shoulder when we wouldn't be bothered by all the noise. I would be late for dinner, but I knew that my wife would understand. ________ I'd encountered Henry Wong only once before that moment on the train. It happened in the second semester of my senior year of college, a time when I was a very different person than the one I am now. We both studied at a small liberal arts school in the Midwest, where they had real winters, unlike the ones we have here. I was walking across campus after midnight, towards the south end of the school where the train tracks ran east to Chicago and west to somewhere else. Minutes before, I'd been sitting in my apartment, tearing my hair out over a research paper on St. Augustine and his Confessions, thinking that I couldn't stand to type one more word. My mother was very sick then, and an ex-girlfriend had just broken up with me. My friends were set for fancy careers in Manhattan and D.C., while I languished and scratched my head about what to do with a degree in English. That existential dread that struck many seniors plagued me in feverish degrees, and on top of everything else, I admit that [End Page 63] I often walked towards the train tracks at night and watched the trains go by, imagining what it might be like to lay down on the cool steel rails, with nobody around to see. That night, I'd shut the Confessions, and thought, enough is enough. Why were we reading this man's prayers to God hundreds of years later anyway? If anyone were to read my prayers a hundred years from now, they'd probably be very disappointed. I went outside, under the falling snow, and found myself walking to the tracks. I never did intend to hurt myself, although hearing that churning on the rails did set my mind going. The snow was light, the sort that melted the second it touched my fingers. I wasn't wearing gloves, and the dry air made my skin rough and raw. The ground was still visible, only sprinkled with white, the way dandruff settles on my grandfather's jackets. Halfway across campus, I heard the music. Behind the soft rumble of the approaching freight train, piano keys glittered in the...