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Chopin's Moons

One arrowroot cookie remained, scalloped between them on the blue & white china plate set out for tea. It was Sand who spoke first, curious about Chopin's perfectly formed nails and his perfect white moons in descending order from thumb to little finger. 'These are my hands,' he said, regarding their pale arrowroot color, ' - a tiny brain pulsing under each transplanted moon and each dedicated to a different phase of my childhood. Composers, long dead, will often exhaust themselves trying to find room, wedging between my fingers as I play.' Weak, he asked if he might lie down but Sand insisted, propping him on the bench - where he slumped and abandoned his fingers to the keys. Then she crawled underneath and pumped his tiny slippered feet up and down - Ah that sound!: D.H. Lawrence, writing Piano, crawled under too, and pumping Sand's cold hands with his own, wept to hear his mother play Chopin so long ago.