The young composer, working that summer at an artist's
colony, had watched for a week.  She was Japanese, a
painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with
her.  He loved her work, and her work was like the way she
moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when
she made amused and considered answers to his questions.
One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her
door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would
like to have me.  I would like that too, but I must tell
you that I have had a double mastectomy," and when he
didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts."  The radiance
that he had carried around in his belly and chest
cavity--like music--withered, very quickly, and he made
himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry.  I don't
think I could."  He walked back to his own cabin through
the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl
on the porch outside his door.  It looked to be full of
rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the
rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl--she must
have swept them from the corners of her studio--was full
of dead bees.
 

Robert Hass
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