The Violin Conspiracy(49)

The flutes drowned him out.

Back off, he told them, and the violin had the power and resonance to overwhelm, so overwhelm them he did. At last he came to the section where the orchestra played without him. He put one hand to his eyebrow to shield his eyes, hoping the lighting guy would notice. The light remained fixed on him.

He tucked his violin back under his jaw, began to play just as a commotion from the back of the auditorium broke his concentration. How could the audience come in so late? Who’d let them in?

The latecomers whispered loudly and climbed over other audience members to fumble for their seats.

A woman’s voice, clear and outraged: “Excuse me?”

He would have recognized her voice anywhere. His mother had finally come to one of Ray’s performances. Late, and melodramatic, but she was there.

Silence, finally, from the audience. She’d found her seat. At least she was quiet.

At least she’d come during the second movement: the melody batting back and forth between violin and orchestra, flowing smoothly and organically like a fat snake of a river, undulating into the dramatic last movement. He threw himself into it: his mom wouldn’t get to hear something lush and beautiful like Mendelssohn or Brahms, but at least she’d hear everything he could pour into the auditorium. Now, at last, she had to listen to him: and he would make it worth her while.

The last movement of the concerto was the most energetic. Ray liked to play it at a moderate tempo, and they’d rehearsed it at a moderate tempo, but now the conductor took it faster than Ray had ever done.

There was nothing more he could do. He was blind, his mother was pissing off the audience, and he was playing the wrong piece of music at the wrong tempo. Awesome. Did Hillary Hahn ever have to deal with this?

Bring it. Just fucking bring it. Stand tall, Grandma Nora had told him: he would stand tall, with the spotlights shining on his face, and his music would pour into all their ears, and they would understand that no matter what anybody threw at him, he was not going away. He was not stooping to their level. The air-conditioning could go off and he could melt. They could toss any piece of crappy music they wanted at him and he would play. He would not be ignored or denied or embarrassed ever again: he was a musician, and music had no color.

When his last note rang out, the audience sprang to its feet, applauding.

His first concert performance with his Stradivarius. He extended his left arm, hand firmly grasping the violin’s neck, held out the instrument as if he were showcasing his fellow performer: giving it full credit, extending it like a sword in the spotlight. He kept it there a moment. Not just his triumph, but the triumph of his grandmother, and her grandfather before her, here in front of this white audience where few Black people ever played. They had done it together, and together they bowed.

This gesture of holding out and presenting the violin would come to mark the end of all of Ray’s performances with his Stradivarius, no matter how small and melodramatic the salute might have seemed. He raised up his glorious violin in an extravagant, intimate gesture; and he did it for himself, and for the unseen ancestors around him; and onlookers must have sensed this, for the applause dynamited in the hall.

Janice met him in the wings, pounding his back. He’d done it. And suddenly he was exhausted. He leaned against the back wall, the dark gray paint chipped in places. The orchestra finished whatever piece they’d played next—he honestly didn’t have any idea—and back onstage he went, up into the light and crowd: audience members and reporters waiting to meet him. Waiting, some of them, for his autograph. Surreally, he signed programs.

He was dimly aware of a large bouquet of red and white carnations blundering on the outskirts of the stage; like a battering ram it forced its way forward, and as Ray was signing the program of a tiny blue-haired woman in a sequined blue dress, he realized that his mother was holding the bouquet.

“Rayquan! Come here, honey!” She was looking good in a white summer dress, and the twins hung back behind her.

“Mama!” he launched himself into her arms.

“Stop that,” she said. “You want me to drop this? Here, you take it.” Her fake nails were a frosty pink.

“Uh—I can’t,” he said. “I need both arms free.”

Janice was suddenly there, taking the flowers, talking to his mother. In the past four years, throughout college, they’d never met. Ray gave the twins a hug—it had been months since he’d seen them, and his sister was definitely taller. They were twelve now, little carbon copies of Mom: good-looking kids. His sister’s skirt was too short, and he wondered if his mom had picked it out. His brother was trying to grow a mustache. Both twins seemed tongue-tied.

Later, back in the packed dressing room, his mother cornered him. “I want to see Mama’s fiddle.”

He had it strapped to his back, as always. He opened it up, handed it to her.

“Is that PopPop’s fiddle? You sure? That fiddle was white.”

“Yeah I’m sure. That was the rosin. The stuff that PopPop put on the bow.”

“That nasty sticky brown stuff you always left all over everywhere?”

He laughed. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“Ten million, you say?”

He packed the violin away.

“Hope you’re gonna share some of that,” she said.

“The water bill due?”