Partita

In the late winter on the Indiana University campus, the narrator feels a growing emotional distance from her partner, Jon Link, a musician preparing to leave for Munich. To distract herself from her unhappiness, she decides to learn Maurice Ravel’s notoriously difficult piano suite, Gaspard de la nuit. One day, a performance by four women she guesses to be South African at a “FREE SOUTH AFRICA” rally captivates her. She spots Sigurd managing the sound equipment and gives him back the flyer he gave her, now with her phone number written on it.

Later, Jon takes a phone message from a “Siegfried,” a mishearing of Sigurd’s name. The narrator and Sigurd meet for a second lunch at the same diner. There, a cook named Amadeo, who has been a friend and admirer of Livia since her first year at the school, playfully puts her hand into Sigurd’s, marking their first physical contact. He jokingly warns Sigurd to take care of Livia’s valuable, talented hands. During their meal, she tells Sigurd about her childhood, her difficult path to becoming a musician, and the tragedy of Cyrus’s suicide, a few months shy of his18th birthday.