The accordionist

The same melancholic waltz sounds every day on my street. The accordionist invariably performs it, whatever it’s scorching hot or so cold that he can hardly move his fat fingers on the black and yellowing keyboard of the old instrument. The melody slows down in winter and flows like a stream of vibrant notes in summer. The speed of his performance, along with the shed of leaves, marks the end of each season. He sits on a small stool beside the corner of the avenue, where the Sun stays longer. At his feet, on the grey cobled pavement, a cardboard box keeps the few coins that people, dismissively, throw into. The old lady, in a beige coat and wig-shaped hairdo, eternally searches inside her old-fashioned hand bag until she finds the least valued coin, maybe five cents, then she drops it into the box and keeps on walking like a female Charlie Chaplin with no hat nor walking cane; the civil servants that work at the institutional building, hard to tell from themselves*, walk past him mumbling with a fag in their mouth and, some of them, throw a few coins too, that fall with a dull clinging sound into the box. The accordionist nods as a way of thanks with every coin he gets, but never stops playing. He sways his tough body while he taps one of his feet in time with the music, raises just one of his thick, dark eyebrows and there’s a broad smile on his round and tanned face. Some days a small dog is tied up to the parking fence where the accordionist performs. It’s one of those ugly furry dogs, the living reminder of a forbidden union between a pet and a stray dog, the luckiest in the litter, a survivor dog who shamelessly licks its private parts, without paying attention to the ladies on the street. It stands, like a memorial statue in a pet’s cementery, close to his master who keeps playing until the evening comes.

Each morning I pass by where the accordionist sits and, although I’m hurried, I slow down my pace to listen to his music that is like a glimmer of magic in the moronity of the rat race. He notices what I do and probably guesses that I like the waltz he’s playing. He looks at me then, raises his open hand in a friendly greeting, and says “Hello, hello!” in a cheerful voice. It’s just a short break, the only moment when music stops sounding on my street.

*The sentence is grammatically incorrect but it’s an artistic license. It should say “hard to tell them apart”