The street was so small only five people lived on it. Three moss-bearded buildings peered down at the pavement that curled like a vine between their feet. The street was their theater. The players came and went with the sun and rain.

An ancient pensioner lived upstairs at Number One. He owned a stringless piano. Passersby could hear him playing “Der Tod Und Das Madchen” so perfectly silently it didn’t bother them a bit. There must have been no heat in his flat, for when snow fell on the street, snow also fell in his living room. A brindle cat perched in his window, swishing its tail.

The cat fixed its agates on the window across the way at Number Three. An elderly heiress lived there. In her window a birdcage swung, and in the cage perched a cunning clockwork finch, of intricate brass with lapis eyes. It sang “Tea for Two” at teatime each day, and “Sunshine on My Shoulder” on sunny days. How did the bird know the time or the weather? The cat watched it with slavering jaws.

Next door, at Number Two, lived a young couple. The woman had a face like a melancholy butler, the man’s vests never fit him. The neighbors heard them quarreling on Sunday nights, bickering over French politics on Wednesdays. Fridays were for noisy lovemaking.

A boy lived downstairs from the pensioner. He was often outdoors, rolling a tire with a stick. No one had seen evidence of a family.

The young woman parted her curtains and stared down at the street. She saw the boy and his tire. The boy looked up. Something passed between them, some song without sound. The boy was sure he heard it.

When the woman set out for the market, the boy contrived to roll his tire past her. Their eyes met. The boy felt small flames under his skin. The woman laughed. Above their heads, the cat yowled.

“The cat!” the woman said.

The strains of “Das Lied Von Der Erde” floated past unheard.

“The piano!” the boy said.

The bird sang “It’s Too Darn Hot.” The woman and the boy parted in a hurry.

The pensioner’s cat got out. It bolted downstairs and across the street only to discover that its luscious prize was now a whole floor above, as inaccessible as before. The cat stalked into an alley and murdered a rat, for reasons the poor rodent couldn’t begin to understand.

The boy conceived a plan. He would pick flowers for the woman, a bouquet of the little cornflowers that grew between cracks in the street. When she passed him again, he would give her the flowers. What might happen next, he couldn’t guess. Thinking about it made his cheeks burn.

Inaudible music floated on the hazy April air.

Weather thwarted the plan. Rain fell for three days. The pensioner threw open his windows and bailed out his rooms with a bucket.

Finally the rain stopped. The boy waited on the corner with his nosegay.

The heiress’s roof had been damaged by the rain. Workmen erected scaffolding up the sides of the building. The heiress opened her window. “Let the sun shine in!” the bird sang. The cat saw its opportunity. It climbed the planks and reached a paw into the window where the bird was singing. “What’s new, pussycat?” the bird warbled.

The boy waited on the corner. He clutched the flowers. Before he knew it, the woman was coming towards him. But what was this? The lover in his too-tight vest was walking with her. His arm circled her waist. The flowers trembled in the boy’s fist. The woman didn’t look at the boy as she passed. The young man stared at the boy and curled a bristly lip.

The heiress ran past in tears, clutching her savaged goldfinch. The cat had gouged out its eyes, broken its delicate works. The pensioner emptied a pail of rainwater into the street and soaked the boy. The boy dropped the flowers. He spent three days in bed, shivering with the heat.

(Time, time, and time; tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …)

Now it’s years later, and a thin, carven-faced man has returned to the street. It’s the boy who used to push the tire. He hardly recognizes his home. The street is still small, but nobody lives there. Instead, it’s the heart of a thriving tourist area. The moss has been scrubbed away. The boy’s wearing a threadbare uniform with a medal on it.

Coming towards him, it’s the woman to whom he tried to give flowers! She’s middle-aged, wearing a wedding ring but also a mourning band. Her hair’s dyed the red of blood and fire.

Did they plan to meet? The pair sit in an expensive café. The drinks have Italian-sounding names that no Italian has heard of. No one these days remembers the crème de cassis you used to get for a sou.

The woman says, “The piano!” The man says, “The cat!”

Beyond that, they can’t think of anything to say. The man once knew the words to songs, songs he might once have sung to this person, but the words are scrambled within him now.

The woman leaves. The man sits, but there's no reason to stay. He walks out.

He pauses by an antique shop. In the window hangs a birdcage, and in the cage, why, it's the heiress’s clockwork goldfinch, from so long ago! The bird is badly dented, its lovely lapis eyes are long gone. It’s impossible to hear the sounds it’s making over the noise of the crowd, but the man has an ear trained for silence. He thinks the bird should be singing “Strangers in the Night” or possibly “Addio del Passato” from La Traviata. Instead, it’s croaking a single word over and over, announcing its own time and weather eternally. There’s a sign on the cage: DAMAGED: PRICE REDUCED.

I know all about that, the man says silently, and he walks out into the city’s labyrinth. Around him is the din of humans talking and laughing and fighting, too loud to hear silent pianos or damaged birds. The moon looks down like a high window on a street where the same things happen year after year and will keep happening as people come and go with the sun and rain and the years run by with yellow feathers in their mouths.

END