Sight Reading (7 page)

Many times he had recalled sitting across from her that fateful night, stunned by her beauty, blurting out, impromptu, “Won't you marry me, Hazel? Won't you be my wife?” Even then he had heard the dissimulation in his phrasing, the way the words, “Won't you . . . ?” suggested doubt, when really he would have been shocked had she refused his proposal. And yet he had seen the slight disappointment flash across her face, watched her as she understood that this was it, this proposal of marriage that she had dreamed of, and that there was no little velvet box to peer into.

And so he had blubbered something about how he hadn't found a ring yet, how as soon as he scrounged together a bit of money he would buy one. That was when Hazel told him she didn't need a ring, wasn't even sure she quite believed in rings, since really they were about possession, and love shouldn't be about possession. . . .

He sighed as he turned down his street, past magnolia trees where preposterous blossoms hovered like plump birds. He had taken Hazel's word without even considering who she was, a woman who understood the tactile beauty of objects, who found imagery and symbols in any objet d'art, whether museum paintings, graffiti murals, or the patterns in their Persian carpet.

As he let himself into the darkened flat, he resolved to make it up to her. He flicked on the light and blinked at the bare walls. Of course Hazel had left her mark, had doused the bathroom and kitchen counters with a purifying layer of bleach, had detonated disinfectant and soaked the stove's coils in a tubful of suds—acts that to Nicholas had the aura of witchcraft. And indeed the apartment looked, felt, even smelled new, with Hazel's apothecary jars lining the bathroom sink and her shoes tucked neat as bunnies into compartments on the closet door. Now Nicholas looked into Jessie's room, saw her picture books on the little child's desk they had purchased for her. How he wished he could lean over right now and pick her up, fill the room with her hiccupping giggles.

Restless, he went to the piano, where he had been working out ideas for the Scottish piece.

It was the first time he had looked to material from his own life. Perhaps that was why, ever since beginning the project, he found himself remembering things. Scraps of memories—sounds, images. Not always a comfortable sensation, these shimmers of moments long past.

One happy discovery was that he still knew, by heart, much of the poetry he had memorized as a schoolboy—the Kipling and Yeats and Keats, and, later on, the Scottish poets he had discovered on his own.

God gied man speech and speech created thocht,

He gied man speech but to the Scots gied noght

It had been a delight to discover in university that he could transfer his love for sound and rhythm and meter to a whole other vocabulary—one that needed no words at all. He took a seat at the piano and thought back to the seaside village in Moray. Even now it was poets' phrasing he heard, “the rim of the sky hippopotamus-glum” and “the lacy edge of the swift sea” and “What bricole piled you here, stupendous cairn?”

And then came different words: “a stupid accident.”

In his mind he saw the nubby finger and thumb. But it was his father's voice, an angry grumble . . .
A stupid accident
. Nicholas didn't fight the sensation that shimmied through him, some other truth lurking nearby, a shadow that when you turn around isn't there anymore. It wasn't the first time he had felt this shadow—yet he was relieved when the feeling evaporated. He waited to make sure the moment had passed, and told himself that memory was a tricky thing. Then he closed his eyes, to try to find again the village, the beach, the cry of gulls. He continued working into the wee hours.

ALONE IN THE REHEARSAL ROOM,
Remy leaned closer to the mirror, examining the swollen purple abscess that had emerged on the left side of her neck. It hurt to touch it. In the mirror she saw that it was close to rupturing. Though this wasn't the first time she had suffered a minor affliction from intense practice, this particular grievance was new.

“I hope you're keeping that clean,” Julian said when he arrived.

“It's disgusting,” Remy said, still peering into the glass.

“Stop touching it! Put a hot compress on it tonight. You can't afford an infection right now.”

“Tell me about it.” Both her senior recital and the audition with Conrad Lesser were only days away. Plus her parents would be here for graduation and to help her move. The boil on her neck seemed ominous.

As she played the Brahms for Julian, the music sounded limp, not artful at all, her rubato mechanical, her marcato too heavy, as if she were mimicking rather than playing. When she could no longer stand it, she simply stopped and looked to Julian desperately.

“You've practiced too much,” he said matter-of-factly. “Well, not too much, but in the wrong way. It's become rote. That's what's happening.”

Remy felt her panic rising. “What can I do?” She whispered, so as not to cry. “I need to play it next week. Should I just not play it until then?”

“Taking a day off won't hurt you. The work you've done will still be there inside of you.” He thought for a moment. “Here. Let me see that.” Julian took the score from the music stand and began going through it with a pencil, marking it here and there.

“What are you doing?” Remy asked, even more panicked.

“I'm changing some of the fingerings. To keep you on your toes.”

“But I can't change the fingerings now! It's too late, I—”

“Why not just try it, Remy? I'm trying to make it less familiar to you.”

“But you already changed the fingerings in the Bach. I worked hard to figure out the most comfortable fingerings—”

“And now you're
too
comfortable,” Julian said.

“Maybe I'm just tired. Anyway, I'm just in rehearsal mode. When it comes time to actually—”

“Rehearsal mode! Remy, please. What have I told you for four years now?”

“That each time we play a piece is an event.”

Julian nodded. “Even a rehearsal is a performance, Remy.”

“I know that. I—”

“Don't ever let yourself slouch, just because there's no audience. The body remembers. The
music
remembers. Today I'm your audience—even this room is your audience. The rehearsal
is
the performance.”

Remy felt suddenly exhausted. “Please don't change the fingerings.” She began, silently, to cry.

It wasn't the first time she had cried, in frustration, in front of Julian. He wasn't one of those teachers who forbade any show of mental weakness. Even now he just reached out and put his palm behind her head, gave her curls a brief rub. “I still remember the first time you played for us. You were this timid young thing with big brown doe-eyes. I could tell that it had been a challenge for you to get here, that you probably hadn't had an easy ride of it. And then you started playing.” He nodded, smiling, and Remy found herself smiling, too.

“Remy, wherever you end up—even at your audition next week, any time you have doubts about yourself, I want you to remember something. The music is in there.” He tapped Remy's upper chest. “You've got soul, Remy. No technique can give a person that. No amount of practicing. A person either has emotional depth or doesn't. You have it. That's what makes your playing worth listening to.”

Remy nodded, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Don't give up on yourself, Remy. You've made a commitment—to your talent. Don't let anything get in the way of that commitment.”

“Okay.” Remy took up her bow and lifted her violin, wincing when her chin rest pressed the boil on her neck. Just beyond her left hand she almost saw, for the briefest moment, the face of the little bearded man with the hat watching her.

Chapter 4

H
azel strained to listen to the announcement, but it was for another flight. Hers had been rerouted. Now she and Jessie were stuck in New York rather than back in Boston, where they ought to have arrived by now.

A family of silk-laden East Indians ferried a mountain of matching luggage past her while a cluster of brightly draped African women, their nearly bursting valises held shut by belts strapped around them, made chattering negotiations with a skycap. Hazel envied the grand togetherness of these families, so many sisters, cousins, brothers. Hazel had no siblings; there had been a baby brother before her, but he had died of crib death. And though she had friends from high school and college, that wasn't the same as family—and so much moving around since then had caused her to lose touch with most of them.

She looked back at Jessie, asleep in the collapsible stroller, and tried, as she did every so often, to sketch her. Already she had sketched various other people from the waiting area: two teens sitting cross-legged on the floor playing cards, and a man reading a newspaper, and the woman behind him whose small bag contained a furry white dog. With quick little strokes, Hazel drew the pattern of Jessie's green jumper dress. She had explained to her why it was necessary to make a good impression when you traveled—which was why Hazel was wearing her favorite tunic dress and had fastened little plastic bow-shaped barrettes at the ends of Jessie's pigtails.

But the sketch didn't look right. Truth was, she felt herself growing tired of her drawings. She wasn't sure why. Until recently, she had felt an almost obsessive duty to try to capture all she saw—had considered it a vocation, in fact, collecting these glimpses and fragments of daily life. A few years ago she had even come up with an idea for a project, a new sort of cartoon, not the usual comic strip but a more realistic expression of the world around her, its small quotidian moments. But basic questions such as how to exhibit or publish such drawings proved too daunting, and she hadn't the gumption to seek out a mentor who might help her (or to even admit to others just what it was she spent her energies on).

More than once in recent years, packing for a move, she had at the last minute decided to leave behind entire sketchbooks, having convinced herself there was nothing of real worth inside. Nicholas, discovering this once—shortly after the move to France—had been horrified. But to Hazel those drawings had become juvenilia, nothing she was proud of anymore. It had felt freeing, actually, to discard them. And now . . . it seemed enough to have seen and noted, mentally, these things around her. What had once compelled her to uncap her pen had lessened.

“Attention, Pan Am Express passengers. Flight one-four-one to Baltimore is now boarding at Gate Nine.”

She watched with envy as everyone at the next gate rustled to life. The man across from her, too, and the woman with the dog, went to join the rapidly forming line. A young woman dragging an overstuffed duffel followed them, tears running down her face. Airports were such receptacles for drama, Hazel thought to herself, watching the weeping girl join the others at the gate. Every one of these people had some story. There was a very old stooped man pulling a battered valise by its leather strap like a leashed dog. There was a young couple fussing over their baby in a way that didn't bode well for their marriage or for the other passengers. There was an extremely attractive woman in a stylish tunic dress—

Hazel's heart gave a hard thud.

It was she. Herself. She wore the same dress, had the same blond hair styled by a curling brush. Though Hazel saw just her profile, she knew,
knew
, it was her, and craned her neck to see more. The other Hazel continued toward the gate check, then turned her head for just the briefest moment. Yes, it was she, her own self—though prettier, somehow. Completely at ease, unburdened, no small child in tow. Smiling pleasantly—to herself, it seemed.

Hazel's limbs trembled. She looked to see if Jessie had noticed, but she was still asleep.

The line of passengers moved forward, and now the other Hazel handed her ticket to the attendant. Not a care in the world. And then she was gone, through the door that led to the airplane, strolling into some other life.

A cold feeling rose through Hazel, like a tub filling with chilly water.

She knew what such visions were supposed to mean. The thought came to her that perhaps her own flight was destined to crash.

Why not? Hazel had long maintained a niggling awareness of life's unnecessary calamities. Not just her infant brother in the crib. Nicholas's mother, too, had died in a fluke accident, her car struck at a railway crossing when a signal malfunctioned. These things happened.

And yet she did not really believe that any such disaster was about to occur. No, that was not what this strange chill felt like. The woman had strolled forward, head high, in a way that said she was done with this place, that this was the last anyone would see of
her
. Now that Hazel's pulse had begun to return to normal, the heaviness that overtook her was not of fear or dread but of abandonment. For already she knew she would not see that woman again.

At last the chilly feeling subsided. All that remained was an odd yearning sensation—of wanting to be with that other Hazel, to have followed her happily through that gate.

THOUGH SHE HAD SEEN MANY
photographs of him over the years, and watched him in live performance on two occasions, Remy was surprised to see how small Conrad Lesser was.

His assistant, an unsmiling gray-haired woman, ushered Remy in. Lesser was standing beside the piano and seemed no taller than Remy. He was in his seventies, bald and fair skinned, with a long thin nose and enormous ears. He wore a suit, no tie, and smiled only briefly when he shook Remy's hand. “Very good,” he said briskly, as if relieved to be through with formalities. “Let's start with a scale. E-flat major. Scale, arpeggio, and chords, please.”

Julian had been right.

Though her hands were clammy from nerves, Remy played as well as she could, and when she finished the last chord, glanced at Lesser's face to see what he thought. But his face showed no emotion at all.

“And now,” he said, “what have you come prepared to play?”

“Brahms's Violin Sonata number three.” Annoyed with how softly she was speaking, Remy raised her voice to say, “And Bach's Partita number two.”

“Let's hear the Brahms. First movement. Lise will accompany you.”

Remy handed the piano part to the gray-haired woman. Though she had relaxed a bit, her hands were still clammy as she brought her violin to her chin. She nodded to the pianist, and began.

“Stop,” said Lesser.

Remy flinched.

“Your initial gesture. It's all wrong. This is an entrance, not an announcement. Try it again.”

Remy lifted her bow, aware that her hand had begun to tremble. She nodded at the gray-haired woman and began again.

“No, no.” Lesser waved his hand as at wafting smoke. “The sensation needs to be there
before
you play the first note. Establish the emotional connection
before
your bow touches the string, so that the emotion is already there. In the gesture
as well as
the sound. You're sending a message as much as connecting with the music.”

Remy's teeth hurt from gritting them. How in the world was she supposed to establish the mood when Lesser kept interrupting her? She tried to calm herself and lifted her bow again. But now her hand was shaking so much, there was no way she could enter on a down-bow. She decided to use an up-bow and, as the top of her bow met the string, heard how tentative she sounded, as if ready to be stopped again. And of course Lesser stopped her.

Trying not to sound furious, Remy said, “I don't understand. It shouldn't matter how it
looks
. All that matters should be how it sounds.”

“Ah, but the way you see yourself affects the quality of the sound. You must be in the mind-set already, hear the music in your inner ear. Can you hear it?”

Of course she couldn't. She only heard her heart beating horribly between her ears.

“You know what they say about stars in the sky,” Lesser said, “that what we're seeing has already burned out by the time we see it? A star by the time we perceive it has already
been shining,
without our even being aware of it. Think of the melody as that star traveling along on a continuum, until it arrives in the first measures of your score. Only then does the listener finally hear it.”

Remy tried to picture the melody as a line beginning far away, so faint that only she could hear it. Though aware of the seconds ticking by, this time she waited until she heard the melody clearly, felt it traveling toward her, and with her eyes still closed, listened to it. This time, when she lifted her bow, her hand was no longer shaking. She played the opening bars, and Conrad Lesser did not stop her.

She played the movement through to the end, emboldened, more confident with each passing bar. When she finished she knew she had done well. Awaiting Lesser's reaction, she could feel her own eagerness.

What he said was, “You don't know the piano part, do you?”

“Of course I do.” Remy was both affronted and horrified. “This is the piece I played for my senior recital.”

“Well, of course you've
heard
it,” Lesser said. “Lise played it quite beautifully just now. I'm asking if you've tried to
play
it.”

“But— I don't play piano. I mean, I've played a little, but I don't play
well
. . . .”

“You'll have to learn the piano part,” Lesser said briskly. And then, just as perfunctorily: “You're playing egocentrically.”

Remy felt her jaw drop. Never in her life had she been called egocentric.

“You need to understand what's happening on the other side of the music. Not just from your side. You're too self-focused. You've not paid sufficient attention to the other side, and it's coming through in your playing. You need to step outside of yourself.”

Remy remembered Mr. Elko telling the orchestra about needing to understand the music from every angle. But the way he said it hadn't sounded judgmental. He hadn't called their playing egocentric.

“So, you'll have to go home and learn the piano part,” Lesser said.

Despondently, Remy turned to replace her violin in its case.

“No, no—not now. I'm not finished with you.” Lesser leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “You know what I'd like to hear you play? Something old. I mean, something you haven't played in a long while.”

Remy just stared at him.

“Something you enjoyed playing,” he said, “but haven't gotten back to in a long time.”

The first thing that came to Remy's mind was the Paganini caprice she had played for her sophomore year exam. “But I won't remember how—I don't think—I mean, the fingering . . .”

“If it's something you loved playing, it should still live within you. That's the wonderful thing about music. Don't worry about the fingering. Just find the piece still alive inside you.”

Remy closed her eyes and tried to remember.

To her surprise, when she began to play, the music issued like a memory from her fingertips. And though a few times she found herself tripping over her fingers and having to make some awkward improvisations, the experience wasn't as terrifying as it might have been. When she reached the end of the piece, she felt oddly invigorated, as if she had just stepped off a roller coaster.

She looked to Lesser, to see if he was impressed.

But all he said was, “We'll conclude with some sight-reading.”

Remy's heart dropped at how dismissively he spoke. It dropped again when she saw the sight-reading piece. E-flat minor—six flats! That dark congregation clustered together beside the clef. Remy felt a drop of sweat roll from her armpit down her side. She reminded herself what Julian had taught her, to find the spirit of the piece and not worry if she played some wrong notes, to show that she understood more than just the melody and tempo—to capture the overall style and mood. She read through the score, lifted her violin, and played as best she could.

When she had finished, Lesser said, “I don't like the sound of steel strings.”

Remy swallowed hard, so as not to cry.

“And your shoulder pad is muffling the sound. You'll have to get rid of it. And replace all but your E string with lamb's gut.”

Remy squinted at him. Was this just a recommendation? Or an order?

Lesser shuffled through a small stack of sheet music, found the pages he wanted, and held them out to her. “Have this ready for our first class. In tempo, and from memory. I'll see you next week.” And with that, he dismissed her.

“WELL, NOW, WHO'S THIS?”