Endre Orsós was the bassist of Steelbird, the only band member besides Csaba who played on every single LP. He was Csaba’s friend. Maybe the only one. Now his wife Márta is on the phone; Endre married her after his first heart attack seven years ago. Csaba was their best man.

I sat by his side when he died a couple of hours ago. He didn’t know me, but Csaba’s friends are my friends too. A second heart attack, not far from his workshop at the edge of the woods. Nobody noticed he had collapsed, clawing at his chest, gasping for air, only me. I held his hand until he went cold. The dying see; they always see me in my purest form, the form I have never seen myself because there is no mirror to reflect it.

I hope he didn’t see me as a monster. I hope I didn’t make his last moments even more horrible than they already were.

After the call Csaba drinks through the whole night. He has to borrow money to buy the booze, but he drinks anyway and remembers. He puts on a Steelbird album, the final LP called To Live or to Die. He puts the final song on repeat. The only Steelbird song without drums, only acoustic guitars and violin. It’s kind of a ballad, titled ‘Like Crows in the Sky’. He and Endre wrote it together. Not a very good song, but what Steelbird song is?

I recall the afternoon they wrote it. They were rehearsing in a garage out in an abandoned industrial facility by the edge of the forest. I liked that garage. It almost felt like a kind of a home, since the darkness of the forest was always whispering into my ears, hastening me, ‘now-now’ rustled the leaves, ‘now-now’ hissed the snakes. But I knew the time was not ripe. Csaba was not yet ready for the Throne. He sat by the edge of the forest with Endre, each holding a beer. I wished I could sit there with them, I wished I too could sip the lukewarm Kőbányai, like I was one of them. I kneeled on the ground and listened to the two of them talk. We looked up at the sky darkened by crows, our ears filled up with the caws. I gestured towards the sky as a greeting, but nobody saw it. The crows returned to their nests in the woods, resting for the night. That was when Endre dropped the piece of wisdom the song was based on.

‘We’re just like these crows,’ he said. ‘For a minute we fill up the sky, then poof, we’re gone, not a trace left. Nothing.’

I wanted to hug Endre. This was what I had been trying to explain to Csaba his entire life. This was what I offered a way out from. To become the sky itself, and not just a passing bird against it.