The Fiddler

Unshaven and pale, his features not just thin but bordering on gaunt, my friend David leaned in and began to talk to me about the cancer.  His voice was clear and quiet but the words were hard to hear - lesions on his liver, they'd told him, multiple and malignant - not the kind of malevolence that would respond to radiation or chemotherapy or surgery.  It was,I began to comprehend although still dimly and as though from a great distance, the worst of all bad news.  His dark eyes met mine, his graceful hands cupped a glass of tonic and lemon, and he talked to me about dying.  I saw then how terribly ill he looked, how drawn and tired and thin and I started to ache with helplessness, wanting to shout down these dreadful words.

He is an artist, a musician, a philosopher, slightly eccentric looking with a tendency to stay on the sidelines and a somewhat shy nature, a thinker rather than a doer and a private sort of man.   He has a horror of this news being spread over some social media site or circulating through the well meaning music community so when he asks for my promise to say nothing of what he tells me, I give it.  His dark eyes meet mine with a sadness so profound I can barely make sense of it and I wonder if he knows how much he is loved by his fellow musicians and artists, how thoroughly and quickly they would come together to support him and raise money.
Then I realize it doesn't matter - he's never been comfortable with any kind of celebrity, dying is no exception. I give my word, knowing I'll regret it but bound by it.  And I listen as he talks to me about discovering his spirituality, about things finally beginning to make sense, about how sometimes things just are what they are without rhyme or reason or fairness.   He talks about the doctors and here is the only flare of real anger - cancer may be taking his body, he tells me, but doctors are taking the rest - his money, his humanity, his self respect and peace of mind.  What they can't cure, they run from, he tells me, by detaching with a violent sort of arrogance, a self serving and insincere indifference.  He illustrates this by sharing his most recent conversation with the cancer specialist - an Asian oncologist with a marginal grasp of English who believes in getting right to the point - stage four liver cancer is untreatable, sorry, my nurse will show you out.

But, he adds with something that might've been a grimly determined smile, he feels fine for now and has a plan, at least for the short term - he will take his antidepressants and anxiety drugs, do his best to surrender his will to his higher power on a daily basis, paint and make music and be as grateful as much as possible.  A fine plan, I tell him, an exceptionally fine and reasonable plan.

The break between sets ends and he returns to the stage.  Despite his frail appearance, his voice is strong and his fiddle playing as good as ever.  Before I leave, I give him a kiss on his beard roughened cheek and he smiles back at me.

It's not enough but it's something.