Our tale takes place in a small block of flats to the south of this city, a fairly generic block as is standard to socialist Europe consisting of three sides of a square rising five floors with one apartment to each side on each floor and a partially grassed courtyard in the middle, with a head-height wall separating the garden from the one in the next block. On the top floor in the southern wing of this block was K's apartment, like the rest the door from the stairwell leads on to a corridor extending the length of the flat with 3 doors to the right and one at the end. The first side-door leads to the kitchen; The second (which is remarkably small for any door in any country) leads to the bathroom; The third leads to the bedroom and the end-door opens on to the living room, which in turn has a door onto a small balcony, again as is standard to living-quarters in this town.
K was an old man, and he had lived in this apartment for over forty years. For the last seven he had been an invalid due to a misjudgement of basic physics whilst moving a piano with a friend, and had not left the flat since his last check-up at the hospital three years after the accident. During this time he had depended on the meals-on-wheels that got delivered to his door at five every afternoon (a hot dinner, some microwave porridge for breakfast and a different sandwich each day for the next day's lunch) and his daughter, C, who devoted herself to making his life as comfortable as possible despite having a successful career as an architect and loving husband of her own, though sadly six years after K's accident (and just over a year before we join the action) C had an accident of her own in an unfortunate incident with a BMW at a pedestrian crossing, leaving K with little more than the daily knock at the door to remind him that he did not exist alone.
Having prevented a full-sized grand piano from smashing against the wall with his body after it had fallen down a flight of twenty-two stairs K had been paralysed from the waist down, and since he could not afford to move from his fifth-floor apartment he remained there non-stop, apart from when C brought him to the hospital, dragging himself about using the hooks that her husband had installed for him whilst she was at work or home. Since her death her husband had forgotten about K completely, as had everyone else who had at one point been 'in his life', and his daily routine consisted of waking from fearful dreams at sun-up, dragging himself to the bathroom and on to the toilet, manipulating himself in order to perform those morning bathroom duties (remember he was paralysed from the waist down) and an hour or so later making it in to the shower. After a painful and lengthy wash he would heat up his porridge and drag it and himself to the balcony where he could enjoy the morning sun. At around two in the afternoon he would switch on the radio (which had been conveniently placed on the floor by the balcony for him by C's husband) and relax for the afternoon concert. His favourite composer was W.A. Mozart, and 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik' was his favourite piece; Whenever that was played he felt himself transported far away from his painful life by the grand orchestration and pretty melodies, as though a little night music brought the sunshine further in to his life. As the music got replaced by the frightening news at four he would drag himself back to the kitchen, eat his sandwich and await the knock at the door announcing the arrival of the next twenty-four hour's food. Having heaved himself to the front door and back to the kitchen his appetite would be already revived, and he would eat the lukewarm 'meat and two veg' messes while watching the ever-changing orangey shadows of the sunset in the courtyard, before beginning the lengthy process of changing and getting in to bed.
Now, even with the most rose-tinted of spectacles this could not be called a healthy existence, and indeed it wasn't. After just-under three months of this desperate solitude K's mind began to crack. It began with an almost manic desire to hear 'Eine Kleine' on the radio at lunch time, and culminated in a complete loss of the ability to speak, combined with this never-ending frantic itch to hear those arpeggiated opening bars, to the point where he was so completely consumed by the need to hear them that he forgot to wash, then to visit the bathroom, and finally to eat so that the as the foil-wrapped packages piled up at his door (at which nobody thought to comment, such is the nature of our privatised lives) his health deteriorated even further. It got to the stage, eventually, where he would wake up on the floor of the living room, drag himself on to the balcony, and muster all the remaining strength that he could to communicate with anyone or anything that might hear him in the only way he could imagine; By whistling.
He had always been a good whistler, but now the tremendous effort that it took meant he could only whistle a few random notes for about thirty to forty minutes, before having to rest for a good couple of hours in order to regain his strength and begin whistling again. Sometimes he would hear a response to his whistles, usually a mimic of the notes he had just sung, but he could never tell if it was a caged bird in one of the other apartments, or kids messing around, or even somebody assuming he was a caged bird and pretending to keep him company; It never worked though. Nobody ever triggered that his pretty melodies were actually a cry for help, and he remained alone with his pain, and his yearning to hear that beautiful piece of music. In fact, it was usually different refrains from that piece that he whistled, though they would only be recognisable to someone who knew the tune as well as he did, as he could normally only manage four or five notes in succession before having to take a long breather.
One sunny Monday morning in August while trying to whistle the famous opening bars K thought he heard somebody continuing the phrase where he left off, and the excitement that he felt surge through his body was almost enough to cause his massively weakened heart to arrest, so that he couldn't respond to the mysterious whistler and simply lay sobbing on his balcony floor, and his collaborator soon vanished from his ears. The come down that he felt then was even more powerful than the initial excitement, and he remained in that same spot on the floor wishing himself dead (not by far the first time he had done so) for a good couple of hours. While he was drifting in and out of consciousness, as was fairly normal these days for his hugely malnourished metabolism, he thought he heard an orchestra playing that famous opening phrase just outside his window and immediately put it down to his over-active imagination. But as he lay there the music continued, and to his delight he realised that it was true! Somebody in the courtyard was actually playing a recording of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik at a very high volume on their stereo! Oh the ecstasy he felt as the violins raced up and down among the 'cellos, swelling and receding as though it were an organic being and he was laying on it's chest as it breathed. His mind became filled with swirling, beautiful colours as the allegro gave way to a repeat of the first and second phrases, the subtle changes in the melody making huge alterations to the patterns billowing under his eye-lids. Before the music ended the spinning colours span faster and faster until, like one of those multi-coloured spinning tops, they blended into a dazzling white, and K began to notice a distinct lack of pain in his body. In fact, as the white light got brighter still he realised that he could really only sense his arms, and then his hands, and finally his fingers as all of the energy he had left seemed to seep from his finger-tips and his hands fell limply to the floor. He never made it to the grand finishing chords of the music.
A few days later, on account of the weeks worth of meals piled up against his door that the delivery guy finally decided to mention to somebody, the police broke in to K's flat and found him lying dead on the balcony, twisted into an agonising contortion but with a huge, content-looking smile on his face. The coroner recorded a death by natural causes.
