But I knew I was being unfair. How could the writer of six paragraphs—six obligatory paragraphs, acknowledging the wonder of a man living one hundred and six years—know that Avrum Feldman believed in the power of one grand, undeniable moment of change, and in the voice of the music?

It was late and I turned off the lights of the room and settled into bed and thought of Avrum.

Death refreshes memory, pushes away the clutter of years. It is like finding an object, a keepsake, in a stored-away box, and by the simple act of touching that object, that keepsake, you remember vividly the time you first touched it, and whatever you felt, whatever it was that made you put it into a stored-away box, you feel again. And perhaps it haunts you.

There was, in my memory of Avrum, a stored-away box, one that made me understand the stories of Amelita Galli-Curci were more than gossip on the streets of Pine Hill and in the other towns and villages of the Shandaken Valley.

One night, in the summer that I met him and after he finally told me of Amelita Galli-Curci, Avrum insisted that I accompany him back to his room in the small hotel where he then lived. I thought he was not feeling well and was afraid of being alone. I asked if he needed to see a doctor.

“Doctor?” he said, puzzled. “Why should I see a doctor? What’s a doctor got to do with anything?”

I apologized to him. “I just wondered. I thought if you wanted somebody to walk you back to your room, maybe you didn’t feel too good.”

He spit a laugh into the air. “Mein Gott. I’m not one of those old people at the place you work,” he declared robustly. “I want that you should see something.”

In his room, which was sparse and drab, he directed me to move a chair to the front of the door, blocking it, and he instructed me to sit in the chair and watch him. “Ask me nothing,” he warned. “Nothing.”