A Thousand Perfect Notes(57)

‘No.’

Beck stops cowering. He pulls himself tall, so he’s nose-to-nose with her. He looks like her, he realises, when he doesn’t back down or tremble – wild hair, height, steel bones and eyes that long for something out of reach.

Joey’s voice is a hiccupping sob. ‘Don’t hurt him, Mummy.’

But the Maestro doesn’t listen.

Does she ever listen?

‘You will play,’ she says, her voice spiralling down a cold, callous hole.

He can barely get the words out. ‘I don’t – I don’t want to live like this.’

Because he wants to live.

It happens fast, a storm that’s brewed for days, a rusted nail about to give, a piano string too old, too frayed.

The punch catches Beck on the side of his head and sends him stumbling backwards into the piano. The keys howl. He does not.

Joey lets out a bubbling sob.

He wishes she didn’t have to see this. He wishes Joey didn’t have to think this is normal.

He straightens and pain throbs through his skull and there are marks on his hands where the piano keys bit. But he’s barely upright before she shoves him again, her curses in thick German.

‘Stop.’ Is it a plea? Is it a demand?

When is he going to be more than a trembling semiquaver?

‘Stop, Mutter. You can’t – I’m not—’

‘H?R AUF ZU REDEN.’ Stop talking.

She hits him again and he isn’t ready for it, he still believes she’ll stop and say sorry and promise she won’t do it again. Every time she hits him, his stupid head thinks it’ll be the last time. She can’t mean this.

When is he going to realise she’s built on regret and smouldering hate?

‘The piano is your legacy,’ she screams.

‘No it’s not.’ Beck shields his face with his arm. ‘It’s yours. It’s your dream, not mine.’ He tries to back away, but he’s between a wall and the piano.

He’s always been stuck here.

She hits out hard, fast, and blood trickles down his split cheek and it’s stupid, he knows it’s stupid, but all he can think of is how he can’t turn up to August’s like this again. She’ll never get her song.

She’ll think he didn’t have the courage to come.

Which is true, isn’t it? He’s pathetic.

Stupid.

Worthless.

Schwachkopf. Moron.

‘You break my heart,’ the Maestro says, her voice cracked, crying. ‘You are nothing when you should’ve been everything. Without the piano, there is nothing left of me. Nothing. You failed me. You failed everyone.’ Her voice twists into a wail.

It’s true. She’s right. Beck fails school, life, Joey, August, Jan, the piano.

Fail – fail – fail.

‘Beck! Beck!’ Joey screams. She’s a shadow behind the Maestro, trying to grab her mother’s arm.

The Maestro’s fingers twist into Beck’s hair. ‘You are my mistake, Beethoven.’ She slams him into the piano.

His head connects with wood and paint and polish and for a second he sees nothing. It’s like floating on the sea in a cardboard box. He’s only dimly aware of Joey screaming. Of the Maestro smashing his head again. Of blood filling his ears. His eyes. Blood everywhere.

His eyes clear and he sees the piano, floating in a zigzag, smeared with his blood.

His voice is distorted, like he’s yelling through a tunnel. ‘Joey, call the police.’

‘NEIN,’ the Maestro screams. ‘You are being punished! Or are you such a baby you cannot take it?’

He’s being murdered.

He just has to hit back. Hit back. Hit back.

And be just like the Maestro?

He won’t.

He refuses.

But he’s struggling to know which way is up, where he is whoheiswhatisgoingon …

A small body presses against his legs as he sags against the piano. She’s between him and the Maestro.

‘Don’t, Mummy,’ she says.

The Maestro backhands her.

It tosses Joey’s little body halfway across the room and she cracks into the wall with a sickening thud. She lies still. She can’t be still. Is Beck screaming? He has to get to her, but the world is upside down and dripping blood.

He tries to get up but the Maestro hits him again and this time, when his head hits the piano, a sharp ringing splits his ears. He doesn’t get up.

But his swollen lips move – in a whisper? Or a shout?

‘You can’t hurt your baby, Mutter. That’s Joey. You can’t hurt your baby Joey.’ And he says it over and over and over and over

and she doesn’t hit him again.

When he cracks his swollen eyelids open, the Maestro is on her knees, pulling Joey’s crumpled body into her arms and sobbing. Huge sobs. They shake her to the core of her bones.

Beck pulls himself to his feet and staggers out of the room. He’s made out of cement and each step weighs a hundred kilos. He finds the phone in the kitchen and nearly drops it before he can get the number in. It takes him five tries to follow the line of wobbling digits on the card from his pocket.

Is the phone dead? He can’t hear the dial tone.

Until faintly, like a tiny pinpoint of light, he hears someone pick up.