The Silent Conversation

 

 

At times, there is nothing more interesting than to talk and listen.

I was at the lobby of a hotel, somewhere far away from where I call home, wifi in the room I checked in was weaker than that at the lobby, I wanted to read my mails but I fell in love with the tunes from a large piano at the lobby.

The melody filled the space, for me it was calming, but for the man I sat few feet from, it made him talk more, he was the man that talked and listened, I was, that night, the man that listened and talked.

Although I had never met the man, he talked and I listened, when I spoke he listened too, I spoke to no one but myself, he spoke with the keys of the piano, he talked all through, pausing only after each verse and then listened, to everyone and no one. He sat on a stool, the man that talked and listened.

 I was the man that listened and talked, I spoke to no one but myself and I listened to no one but him-the man that sat few feet from me, the man on the stool. He was the man that played the piano.

He spoke about a story I didn’t  really get the plot, but to my ears it sounded like a sad story, a love story gone sore, a bleeding heart probably, definitely a lamentation of some sort, he was stringing the song to which he spoke the words in his mind for sure, because his eyes showed concern and expressed the worry, the lines of his face merged at some point, and dissolved into an unpleasant smile, the smile of a man that has experienced love turn left, a man that had known pain only emotion can bring. We both understood this kind of pain.

He talked, I listened. When I talked he listened. Yet we said not one word to each other. He was the man that played the piano, I was the man that listened to every word of the piano and spoke to myself after each verse. Debating with me, my mind was, we (my mind and I) wondered why the story had to be so sad at the same time sweet to the ear.

I understood the song through the man, he most likely played the song that night because of a recent happening, because I studied his face, he was a young man seen a few years above 20, maybe it was his story he told, maybe he wanted compassion from us all, but no one showed it, no one was listening to him but me. He was talking to me I guess and I listened to him, and when I spoke he listened, yet not one word was said.

After a short while, another guy came to take over from him, his piano playing shift was over. He looked at me and nodded; I did same and gave a smile of a man that understood every word he said.

This he appreciated.

He walked by my seat and said ‘Thank you Sir’ in French, he was after all from Benin Republic, then it struck, I just had a conversation with a man that spoke another language, in a hotel lobby. He was a staff of the hotel while I was a guest, the class gradient clear, yet we ‘conversated’.

The topic was music, the conversation-a sad love song, two men tied in time by chords of a piano, exchanged words debating about the level of pain only love can bring.

The man talked, I listened. When I talked he also listened, not one word was exchanged. ONLY MUSIC DOES THIS.

The next day as we (the team I went to Republic of Benin with) drove out of the hotel, the driver switched on the radio and there it was again, same topic as my silent conversation. The tunes were same and a woman sang the song this time.

The lady in our team that understands French told me unprompted, that the song was about a woman begging her lover never to forget her, to always stop by at her house to show her love, pleas from a woman whose man was walking away.

I wished I could tell her I knew what the song said, but I couldn’t, how will I explain to her that the Song was the topic of my silent conversation with the man that ‘Talked and Listened’, the man that played the piano.