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Mozart's Morning
by St. Clair Carr
The places one finds oneself, Colin Mozart thought as he awoke. The sun pouring in around the edges of the dark green curtains showed the room to be almost a cube, and almost empty. The furnishings consisted of a double bed with dingy sheets; a chest of three drawers, the top one open; a garish yellow box of laundry detergent on top of the chest of drawers; and a man's bicycle propped against a vaguely beige wall underneath a bank calendar.
He was Colin Mozart. He lived in Colin Mozart's apartment, in the bedroom of which he now found himself. He carried Colin Mozart's birth certificate, according to which Mr. Mozart had been born forty-eight years previously in Smiths Falls, Ontario. He was wearing Colin Mozart's pyjamas, in the crotch of the trousers of which, he knew, a small rip had appeared on the second occasion Colin Mozart had worn them.
He would get up and drink Colin Mozart's coffee. There was no one in the living room or in the alcove off it, no one in the bathroom, no one in the kitchen. That was as it should have been. Also as it should have been was the pot of coffee which had been automatically prepared approximately twenty minutes earlier and whose powerful aroma filled the apartment.
He poured milk into the bottom of a mug and then filled the mug with coffee. That saved him stirring. He put the mug on the table next to an overstuffed armchair in the living room, then sat down and picked up the cigarettes and lighter which he had left on the table the night before. He extracted a cigarette, lit it, and took a drag.
No one (he thought) has ever wroteHe then picked up the coffee cup and took a draught from it. As caffeine and nicotine coursed through his body his understanding of the place of Colin Mozart in contemporary society began to return. He put the coffee down and cleared phlegm out of his lungs with several expert hacks of the variety he and other confirmed smokers practised every morning.
A poem as lovely as a smoke.His chair faced the wall of the bedroom, its back was to the alcove. To his left was the balcony window and in front of it a couch. To the right was a television set. On the table next to his chair were the remote control and the ashtray.
There was something he must do, just as every day there was something he must do. When it came right down to it, he had to be Colin Mozart, man with obligations. Since he was on vacation, he didn't have to go to work, but he had other duties, some of them imperative. Like the other members of his culture and species he had spent his life doing things he had to do.
He often felt that the other things he did were just to fill in time between duties. Perhaps he would not go to the track today.
He finished his coffee. He finished another coffee, and another cigarette. He shaved and had a shower, after which he dressed. He went out to his balcony on the twenty-ninth floor and looked out over the city. He would descend to the ground, to the rambling collection of doughnut shops, pizzerias, subway stations, hamburger joints, roti shops, chicken restaurants, gas stations, coffee shops, strip joints, variety stores, factory outlets, and police stations which surrounded his building for as far as the eye could see. This was Colin Mozart's world, and he had things to do in it.
Mozart's Morning © Coolth, 1999
The characters in this fictional work are not modelled on or intended to represent any actual person, living or dead. Any resemblance between these characters and any actual person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.