Charon
After what I guess was a million years, give or take, Charon got bored ferrying people across the River Styx, and asked for a little change in routine. Something to make the next million go by a little faster.
Frankly, I thought it was a bad idea, but I don’t call the shots around here: I’m just the piano player. Lucky to be alive is what I tell myself, although that’s not strictly true.
The only person Charon would go to with a request like this was Hades, which is too bad because the God of death doesn’t really understand why we’d need to pass the time at all. Now Zeus, Zeus is all about distractions: lightning flashes, after all. I once saw the father of the Gods draw a diagram in the dirt for a whole new creation, a whole new world, on that river bank over there. Draw it just like that, next to the river of souls, and then walk away. Forgot all about it. The spirits in the water crane their necks to see it whenever the waves get close. The dead walk across it all the time, but their footprints never leave a mark. Even the imagination of a God is more real than the corpse of a man.
“How you people doing?” I ask as the next batch of souls wanders onto the boat and passes my little stage. I’m wearing a mask, so my lips don’t move: you can only see my eyes darting behind it. “I’m Daxian, I’ll be giving you a little show on your way over to the other side. If you have any requests, just let me know, and let me know now: there isn’t much music where we’re going.”
Somebody, a throwback from the days of a very long time ago, drops a gold coin into my tip jar. It clatters around, hitting mostly glass, and I jump at the sound. “Thank you,” I say, trying to catch the woman’s eyes, but her hair is long and in the way. “Thank you very much.”
That puts me in a good mood, so maybe I’ll start off with something upbeat. “If there are no requests, then here’s an old favorite,” I say. “Gets ‘em every time.” I clear my throat:
A long, long time ago,
I can still remember how that music use to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance ...
At the head of the boat, his long pole half-way into the water, Charon turns his skull back to me and shakes his head. For some reason he doesn’t like that song; never has. Too bad, but he’s the boss. I am here for his benefit, not theirs. Truth is, I think he’s as uncertain about this whole arrangement as I am, but Hades was trying to be accommodating. It’s classically Greek, when you think about it: solve a problem of discontentment through art. Charon is just like Sisyphus: condemned to perform a physically demanding task for eternity. Only Charon’s, allegedly, is meaningful, and Charon, when he complains that the burden is too much, is given music by the Gods to ease his soul.
“Tell you what,” I tell the crowd, who are huddling into themselves and staring at Charon and peering over the side ... which is the way this almost always happens, only a few people ever being able to think of art at a time like this. “How about I just improvise.”
I crack my knuckles, my fingers spread out across the piano, and I let a feeling flow out of me.
There was a guy here, many trips ago, who asked if instead of playing I could accompany him on an acapella sea chanty. That was a good moment. I liked that guy. I hope he’s found contentment on the other side. I never did. When Hades picked me to entertain the ferryer of souls, they found me in a grave I’d dug for myself in the valley of shadows, and I’d ripped my own face off with these fingers, these magical fingers, just to feel something. That’s why I wear the mask. It didn’t work. Artists are the hardest hit by death, because life is the only medium we ever really worked in. I don’t know if Charon gets anything out of my playing or not, but I’ll take this ship for eternity, behind my copper mask. I try to tell them, through my music, what it’s like; my fingers trying to harmonize notes into emotion. The truth is, it will be all right. There’s no pain over there, and there are answers. All kinds of answers, just nothing to do with them. If they’re not artists, it will be all right.
I close my eyes, let my face just be the mask, try to trade my face for the piano, my breath for the piano, my heart for the keyboard: just my fingers move, my fingers and the boat, rising and falling on waves of souls. It will be all right. It will be all right. If you’re not artists, it will be all right.
And if you are an artist, then enjoy this now, be here now. Please trust me.
I can feel the water grow shallow, I can tell, between arpeggios, that we’re nearly there. I bring my improvisation to a close. I don’t know why they chose me. I can’t possibly be the best piano player in history, let alone musician. It wasn’t mercy, I know that, it wasn’t a gesture of pity towards a young musician who clawed his face off and dug his own grave in a land where there is no pain. Maybe I’m just lucky. Or maybe I’m the best musician who’s left down here, instead of taken up there, to Olympus, to entertain the immortal Gods. I could see that. It’s the kind of backhanded compliment that’s usually true.
The boat docks. My fingers stop. My eyes open.
They file off, one by one. The old men, the young boys, the woman with the very long hair, the grandmothers. All pass by, going one way.
“Good night, everyone,” I say. “Good luck. I’ll be here for all eternity.”
Charon is still, for a moment, then almost seems to take a deep breath, and pushes the boat back into the water. He turns his head to me, which is rare, and nods. Then nods again. Beckoning me. I look over my shoulder, at the living shore, and play a jazz version of a sailor’s song. We are both workers, and in the grand design the Gods have been kind to us.
- Benjamin Wachs