A Thousand Perfect Notes(23)

Beck touches his once-split lip. Remembers.

The Maestro’s spoon tinkles against the mug as she pours hot water. ‘Have you finished practising?’

Is that a trick question? Beck spins his empty bowl. ‘Well, Joey’s in bed, so – I don’t want to disturb her.’ Not a yes or a no. Nicely done.

‘I have not heard the études yet.’ She reaches for her mug handle but stops, her hand shaking too hard. She rests it on the bench and still doesn’t look at her son.

As if he’s forgotten the doomed études. But what can he say? Um, no, because I’m not planning to touch them ever again? He’d rather pretend those études never existed, that he’d never sat on that stage and forgotten them.

She picks up her mug and takes a sip. ‘Geh,’ she says. ‘Go.’

‘But, it’s so late …’ Beck trails off.

Her eyes are flints of steel.

He abandons his red-stained bowl in the sink and marches to his piano, because, apparently, she will not let this one go. The reprieve was a joke.

The Maestro follows him. She sets her mug on some old music on top of the piano – Beck notices the red marks on her hand, fresh burns from where she’s spilt hot tea and is too proud to bandage. She nods for him to start.

Beck pulls out the music, slightly crumpled, from the piano seat. But as soon as he smooths it out, the Maestro snatches it away and tosses it on his bed.

‘By memory.’ She stabs a finger at his skull. ‘You know them. You know.’

‘I forgot.’

Her fingers curl into a fist, but the blow doesn’t land.

Beck flinches. ‘I have forgotten,’ he whispers. ‘I swear, I – I don’t know what happened, I—’

‘Play!’ she barks.

Beck rests his hands on the keys, shifts around a little and frantically tries to remember the notes. But they’re gone. They’re gone – gone – gone—

She slams her forefinger on the first note, the right note. And it hits him in a rush. Yes. That’s the chord. His fingers find it and press.

The Maestro’s eyes are hot on his neck. ‘You do not forget music, Junge. It is always in your head.’ She takes the opportunity to stab him with her finger again. ‘But what are you doing? Stopp! Are you a timid lamb?’ Her voice rises.

Beck retracts his hands from the keys.

She cuffs the back of his head and he lays his hands back on them.

‘Do you play the notes like they’ll bite you, Junge? Or do you play with fire, with passion, like they’re the only important notes in the world? These études are my legacy – will you spit on that?’

The look in her eyes says she’d like nothing more than to sweep on to the piano herself and play and play and never ever stop. But she hasn’t touched the piano since her hands started shaking. Beck wonders how much she misses it – the lights, the stage, the applause, the people recognising the true talent of a musician whose soul is woven with the piano. Was she happy back then? Was her life thousands of notes knitted with smiles and congratulatory roses clasped in her perfectly poised hands?

She picked his entire repertoire out of pieces she excelled at. Pieces that made her famous, that she swears will make him famous. She knows them better than her own heartbeat. Which is why she hates when he butchers them. He wishes he didn’t. He wishes, just once, he could play them perfectly for her since she’s had every note she loved snatched away.

‘I swear I just forgot,’ Beck says. ‘Please, I’ll relearn it. I just need the music—’

The smack is harder this time and his neck snaps forward, nearly whacking against the piano.

Her voice is calm now, calm but bitter. ‘Why do I wish you to play the piano?’

Another trick question. Beck opens his mouth, but the words have sped away. Because you want to control me? Because you failed so I have to succeed?

Beck stares intently at the keys.

The Maestro gives him a shove and somehow, defying physics and the tiny constraints of his room, she slides on to the piano stool next to him. She doesn’t hit him. She sits, rigid and austere, and Beck loses all sense of what’s normal, what’s right, what’s expected. He can barely breathe.

‘There is music inside you,’ the Maestro says. ‘Just as there was inside of me.’

It’s not what he expected.

‘My music was taken,’ the Maestro says, stoic, though Beck can see, out of the corner of his eye, how her hands are shaking. ‘You still have yours. Do you squander the gift? Do you ignore it?’

‘I don’t,’ he says, not sure if he’s defending himself or making a promise.

She curls her fingers into a fist to stop the trembles. ‘It means nothing to you, when it should mean everything.’

It shouldn’t hurt, not after everything, but his eyes feel hot and he wishes she’d just shut up and go away. She’s told him all this, a hundred times.

How hard would it be to say good job, you can do better because I believe in you?

‘I want the best for you, Sohn,’ the Maestro says.

Please. She wants what’s best for herself.

The Maestro continues, ‘I want your music, I want you, to mean something in this world. Your uncle comes on tour to our country soon and you will play for him. Amazingly. You will.’