The Violin Conspiracy(91)

The next night, Ray, Nicole, and Janice joined the other contestants and their fans in the main hall for the announcement of who would be among the twelve to move on to the Second Round. Each name was met with thunderous cheering and applause. When the elderly judge on the left—one of the top violinists in the world—called Ray’s name, the crowd roared even louder. It was kind of cool to be the favorite. They called Mikhail Lezenkov’s name two slots after his.

He could feel eyes upon him and involuntarily looked over. Mikhail Lezenkov stared back, smiling slightly.





Chapter 29


    Day 40: Second Round


The evening’s festivities were still moving forward when Alicia texted. His phone, muted, buzzed lightly. He stood up, apologized as he stumbled over the people seated down the row and out of the hall.

Alicia: Confirmed a black market violin in Serbia

Ray: Will let you know if I hear anything

Alicia: OK am pursuing leads. Will keep you posted

Ray lingered in the ostentatious vestibule while the rest of the program finished inside—it felt rude to go back in. Once the final applause had washed out with the opening doors, the crowd following a few minutes later, he tried to find Mikhail, to ask him if he’d heard anything from his family yet.

It had seemed like every time Ray had left the practice room that day, or the previous days, there was Mikhail, glowering. But now, true to the way the world worked, as soon as Ray wanted him, Mikhail had disappeared. He circled the hall several times. He asked Nicole to look for him, too—no luck. After a while the crowds wore him out. Ray went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

The Second Round followed the same order as the First Round, but now the number of contestants had been cut in half, to twelve. Ray was third on Day One, and Mikhail was ninth on Day Two.

He arrived at the Conservatory early that morning, hoping that Mikhail would already be there, just loitering outside in the Tchaikovsky garden, but Mikhail apparently hadn’t gotten the memo and did not appear. He was probably hidden away in a bunker somewhere, plotting Ray’s destruction.

The rehearsals with Mariamna went better this time. He’d clearly won her approval, or at least thawed the coolness of her disdain. Twice it seemed that she almost smiled—but perhaps it was just gas, or a finger cramp.

The grueling fifty-minute lineup for the Second Round: Mozart’s Violin Sonata no. 21, Pablo de Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, Kreisler’s Preludium and Allegro, and Tchaikovsky’s Sérénade mélancolique.

He couldn’t get to the stage fast enough.

His goal, again, was to come out swinging and make the judges notice him, and his focus was razor sharp. Mozart had written his sonata in 1778, just when he’d started as a freelance musician. It had a brilliant opening that shifted to restless agitation: there was a world of possibility in front of Mozart, in front of Ray, and they were eager to see it through, eager to get on with life, eager to rise to whatever challenge was in store. Ray felt like he owned every note, breathed life and possibility into each passage.

In the final movement, Mariamna wasn’t quite behind him the way she should be. Was it on purpose? She was Russian, after all, and not Austrian. No matter, the judges were paying attention to him, not to the piano; and, in any case, he was having the time of his life.

The Sarasate was just fucking fun—a Gypsy delight that began slowly and stately and soon progressed into something so fast that he thought poor Mariamna might have a coronary trying to follow him. Guess these Russians have to work harder to hang with the homies, eh?

He played his Kreisler with flair and elegance. The piece had so much personality to it that there was no way a listener could not be charmed. The allegro section was incredibly fast—so much so that Ray actually impressed himself. Every note sounded even and true. Playing was like the first big drop on a roller coaster that just kept going down, endlessly, the thrill nonstop.

And finally—finally!—Tchaikovsky, of course. Let’s be clear here: Ray may have looked like a Black American, but secretly—secretly!—he was Russian. Secretly he’d spent his life ladling borscht and nibbling pelmeni. Vodka, not blood, surged through his veins. He was melancholy because it was always winter in St. Petersburg, and jovial because Muscovites are a good-hearted people who love to laugh. He killed the Tchaikovsky. He left the Sérénade mélancolique bawling its eyes out onstage. He bowed.

He never held the Lehman out the way he’d held PopPop’s fiddle.

Whether or not he made it through to the next round, he knew that he could have done no better, and that would have to be enough.

That night, in the grand hall, he and Mikhail sat next to each other, waiting for that final list of names to be called.

Silence fell as a world-class pianist stepped to the microphone, began to speak in Russian. Above him, three enormous monitors with close-captioned English translated in real time.

Ray couldn’t read the words on the screen. He was suddenly, stupidly, conscious of Mikhail’s tuxedo-clad shoulder so close to his: Mikhail’s arm on the armrest, the satin cuff of his sleeve, and the glitter of his opal-and-silver cuff links. How had he gotten the armrest? Ray hadn’t even realized it was a competition but now wished that he could put his own tuxedo-wrapped arm—with the good-luck cuff links that Janice had given him last Christmas, picked up from a mall in Charlotte—on the armrest, claiming it as his own. Too late, and now Mikhail, next to him, seemed twice the size of Ray, looming blackly and confidently next to him like a tuxedo-covered cement truck. How could Ray even begin to compete with a cement truck?