* * * there was that one winters evening in the off-season when the two of them spoke in the dim light of bhaktis bare-walled and sparsely furnished flat ; that evening when the bittersweet melodist allowed unwittingly that carefully constructed mask of his to slip away for that rare , but prolonged instant ; that evening which seems , now , in retrospect , a subtle and mocking prognostication of the accordionists untimely and brutal demise by evisceration , years later .