A Thousand Perfect Notes(13)

Beck stands in the behind-the-stage performance waiting area. When the stagehands move the huge purple curtains, he glimpses the blasting light, the sea of audience, the flash of the shiny piano. This grand piano probably costs more than his entire house.

Just wait until the clapping starts – das gottverdammte Klatschen.

He hates clapping. Hates hands. Beck’s soul slumps and folds back into those tiny dark fantasies of having no hands, of not being physically able to do this. Wishes, just wishes.

He stays locked in them while the Maestro takes Joey off for another toilet break and more young pianists fill the room. At least they don’t yap like the audience. Most are humming concertos under their breath, and their parents hover over them, more likely to puke with nerves than the performing kids. Everyone is under sixteen. In a few months Beck wouldn’t even qualify for ‘young’ pianist. If the Maestro makes him enter adult contests? He’ll crash and die. What is talented for a kid is average for an adult.

Beck closes his eyes. Forgets. Zones out so far he reaches the place deep inside where his own music lies. Little notes clamouring to be free. His own notes. His own creations. His fingers tap a tattoo against his other clammy palm.

If people cut him open, they’d never accuse him of being empty. He’s not a shell of a pianist – he’s a composer. Cut his chest and see his heart beat with a song all his own. Oh look, the world would say, this boy is hiding a universe of wonder in him after all.

‘I said hello. Are you deaf or something?’

Beck’s head snaps up so fast his neck twangs. When he loses himself like that it’s hard to come back.

‘Hi.’ His voice is gravelly and he feels slightly dizzy. His fingers tap on his thigh, not the Chopin étude, but the music inside him.

‘When do you play?’

Beck focuses on his interrogator. He probably should’ve stood up, shaken hands or – or basically done anything but sit like a surprised cod. She’s nine, or ten, with hair like polished obsidian. She’s the age where people still say ‘Aw! Cute!’ and then marvel at her ferocious playing. Beck lost the cute factor years ago. There’s prize money and scholarships to be had today, and some little upstart like this will get them. There are ten contestants. They’ve been through scores of eliminations. They are the best ten the state has to offer.

‘I’m last,’ Beck says. The worst possible place. He’ll lose all his nerve by then.

The kid’s dress looks like a red cupcake iced with sprinkles. She folds her arms. ‘How old are you?’

And he thought Joey had no manners. ‘How old are you?’ he shoots back, in control now.

‘Ten. Erin Yukimura.’

‘Fifteen,’ Beck says. ‘Kever—’

‘I know who you are. Everyone knows the Keverichs.’

Beck stands and smooths his sweaty palms on his suit trousers. The suit is a little small, particularly around the wrists. He tugs the sleeves. How is he supposed to answer this kid?

How is he supposed to stand when the Maestro’s piano has cast a shadow that stretches over half the universe?

Beck is saved by a boy in a shirt the colour of a blueberry. His smile is as wide as a watermelon slice and only adds to the fruity aura.

‘I’m Schneider,’ he says. ‘I see you met the rabid Erin. Did she bite you?’

‘Keverich,’ Beck says and shakes hands with the blueberry.

‘I know.’

It’s unnerving. Beck would like to rip his last name into a hundred pieces and throw them into oblivion.

‘Is she here?’ the blueberry says. ‘Your mother, I mean – Ida Magdalena Keverich.’

You don’t address a famous retired pianist by half her name, of course.

‘Is it true she only speaks German?’ the rabid Erin says.

‘She only swears in German.’ Beck rocks on his heels. ‘Actually, she only swears. What’s the point of the rest of the language?’

‘Does she still play?’ The blueberry’s eyes are so bright with longing that Beck looks away, disgusted.

‘No,’ he says.

Please, someone, drop the grand piano on Beck’s head. It’d be a gift.

‘If you played like her,’ Erin says, ‘I’d be terrified. But I’ve heard about you. And you’re … not that good.’ Her smile is a razor. ‘I’ll try to think of you when I win, but I probably will forget.’ She smirks and skips off to her parents.

‘There are some people,’ the blueberry says, ‘that you hope will slip off the stage and break both legs.’

‘I feel you on a spiritual level,’ Beck says.

The whispers of ‘ten more minutes’ tangle around the room and pianists start flexing fingers and taking a last sip of water. The co-ordinator checks in with everyone, makes sure they know when they’ll be onstage for a seamless transition. By the time she gets to Beck, the blueberry farewells him with a handshake.

The Maestro sweeps back into the room. It’s her size, Beck tells himself, that commands attention. But her legacy as the most acclaimed pianist in Europe and sister to Germany’s finest composer probably also has something to do with it. Also her hair. There’s no way to tame the Keverich curls, and the Maestro looks like she’s strolled through an electric field. Joey – in a puffy yellow dress and butterfly clips – has the same crisis going. And Beck? Even an entire tin of unfortunately expensive gel only gives the vague impression that his hair is slicked.