The Violin Conspiracy(95)

Nicole had rearranged Ray’s schedule so he would practice last, at the very last possible day, with the orchestra. He still only barely made it from the airport—sweating in the back of the cab as the scheduled 2:30 p.m. time grew ever closer. But he made it, with five minutes to spare.

As he got out of the cab, he shook himself. His violin was still gone, but he was still here—a fucking finalist at the Tchaikovsky Competition. He folded his brain around the music—it was all about the music now, nothing else. Nicole and Janice met him outside the Great Hall. He hugged them both, but his mind was elsewhere, deep in the Tchaikovsky Concerto. He was only vaguely conscious of the extraordinary building looming in front of him, the people nodding and gesturing to him, Nicole’s hand in his own.

When he strode onstage to meet the conductor, he was focused, fully present. He was a finalist. He was a world-class musician. The orchestra had to respect him: respect him not for how far he’d come despite the color of his skin, or despite his lost violin, or despite a hundred other reasons why he shouldn’t be there: they had to respect him because of what he could do.

He knew they were scrutinizing his playing, and he scrutinized them right back. If the lead-up to the allegro of the Mozart Concerto wasn’t at the tempo Ray wanted, he stopped and insisted that the conductor immediately correct it. He wasn’t being arrogant, just demanding. He deserved to be there and everyone on the stage playing with him knew it. He used every second of his allotted thirty-minute slot and, when his time had run out, he shook their hands and staggered off the stage, exhausted.

He could have a couple hours’ rest before the performance.

That night, when his cue came for the competition, he bounded out, shook hands with the conductor, bowed to the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, and bowed at last to the audience. No pink roses allowed, though—competition rules forbade it. The Zaryadye auditorium undulated around him like something alive, and the crowd’s deep bellow and applause buoyed him up.

Here he was. His last performance of the competition.

He would remember this forever, he told himself.

His audience would remember this forever, too.

Ray brought the violin to his jaw, closed his eyes. For an instant—less than a breath, less than a blink—regret washed over him: wishing his own violin were here, wishing his grandmother were here. But he could do nothing more. He had done all that he could. It was just him and the music now, and the future was endless.

Drawing his bow into position, he began.

Mozart. He tuned out the world as he talked to Mozart throughout the Concerto no. 5—“Turkish.” He summoned all the teaching, all the practice, and poured himself into every precise, pointed note. The opening arpeggio soared into the vast space, and he hung on the high E, demanding his audience—and Mozart—hear him, demanding they open themselves to him. He imagined his notes were water, or mercury, or silver—sliding into their ears, dissolving and thrumming into their blood. Their heartbeats were his.

When he bowed, the applause seemed to last a very long time.

Finally, Tchaikovsky’s Concerto.

There were those who would say that only Russians can play Russian music: that it’s not in the blood of non-Russians, that Americans or Germans can never truly understand or appreciate the deep and rich culture from whence came Tchaikovsky’s glorious concerto.

Ray, of course, would disagree. He would tell you that music is truly a universal language, and that we, the listeners, will always impose our own fears and biases, our own hopes and hungers, on whatever we hear. He would tell you that the rhythm that spurred on Tchaikovsky is the same rhythm that a kid in a redneck North Carolina town would beat with a stick against a fallen tree. It is a rhythm in all of us. Music is about communication—a way of touching your fellow man beyond and above and below language; it is a language all its own. Leonid Molchalin from Juilliard had drilled him hard. Ray took everything he’d learned, along with the sparkle of the water on the Moskva and the taste of his breakfast kasha, and he made it clear that he could play “this kind” of music. No one would ever question him again. His G-string notes cut through the orchestra. He commanded the room. He took a few steps forward, daring the audience and the judges to look away. A few times the orchestra’s tempo threatened to exceed his, but he pushed right back at them, held them in line.

For the concerto’s final movement, he started uncharacteristically slow—a warning shot, daring them, and then winding up the tension, driving forward into a speed that made it seem as if his bow hand were not even part of his body: a flickering mosquito or a hummingbird, barely visible. The melody vibrated off him—clear, uncolored, rich, itself. He forced that orchestra to earn its places in those chairs.

The final note hung in the air like a cloud, and he realized he was grinning from ear to ear.

The audience was on its feet. His shirt was soaked through. Whether or not he won, his fellow finalists would definitely have to work to keep up with him.

Nicole couldn’t bring herself to speak after Ray’s performance. She just hugged him. Janice joined in. “Your rival, Mikhail Lezenkov, has some big shoes to fill,” she said.

“It was like a gigantic ass fell on the stage,” Nicole said. “And you just kicked it right off.”

During intermission, before the next and final performer of the night—there were only two performances, separated by an intermission—the Russian media mobbed him. He answered their questions, repeated his plea for crowdfunding support—he was up to $4.1 million—signed programs, and then took his seat with the other finalists to listen to the next musician of the night: a Korean woman who delivered a solid, if unremarkable, performance.