The Grieg nocturne is only a recent addition to his repertoire. Until a few months ago, he had rarely played it since his earliest days in the Conservatory. He dropped it not long after his audition because of his hunger to learn newer pieces, to stretch his capabilities. Later, as a young man, he was wary of the piece becoming routine. He wanted to retain the frisson that charged him when, doing exercises, he happened to stray upon some of its chord sequences and would then play a couple of bars—like a fleeting glance of a former lover as she stepped onto a bus, or handed her cinema tickets to an usher.
After Mr. Leibniz died the piece became too painful to play; it sounded leaden, morose, under his touch. It remained that way until his doctorate students in Paris cajoled him into coming to their Christmas party and he heard it in close proximity, in a small book-lined apartment in the Sixth Arrondissement, tucked away behind the St. Sulpice church. Not unlike the old man’s place: three floors up, a rickety staircase, the same warm wood panelling inside. He sat in an armchair with a broken armrest, a ridiculous paper crown perched on his head, a mug of mulled wine warming his palm, and listened to a young Spaniard make it come alive for him again, drawing out its smoky hues. Its patterns seemed more peaceful than he remembered, the two-beat rhythm of the right hand creating a steady, determined tempo, the three of the left wrapping itself around the melody rather than driving through underneath. He cast his eyes around the apartment, with everyone else focused on the keyboard, and what came back to him were not the specifics of that night but, instead, the atmosphere of the old man’s home, the tenderness with which he led his wife between their three rooms, always presenting his forearm for her to lean on, the gentle warmth of his voice when he reassured her in her confusion, extinguishing her distress.
He plucks off his bow tie and bundles his jacket on a chair. A case of fine Scotch sits in front of the ranks of bouquets. He unclasps the lid and flips it open; a satisfying weight to it, a beautiful thing a wooden box, the triangles of dovetail joints hugging each other. He pours the whiskey into a glass, the warm amber sluicing around. He reaches into the breast pocket of his jacket and takes out a golden ring and puts it on the middle finger of his right hand. His father’s wedding band. A graduation gift from his mother which he removes only for recitals.
The communal hum of the departing audience comes through from a speaker somewhere in the corner of the room. It’s gratifying to hear his own language being spoken by a large group—a few years since he’s heard it in this context. The elongated sentences, a certain curvature to the words, the nuances of meaning that crackle in his ear. Fifteen years in France and he still can’t connect with his adopted language in this way, never feels truly comfortable with those throwaway expressions that are reserved for those who took to it from birth.
He listens to people greet each other, inquiring about mutual friends, swapping stories about their children. Of course he’s attuned to any words of acclaim that filter into his room, so much sweeter to him when the praise is delivered without his presence. His need for approval lessened as he began to fill large auditoria, but he can’t yet bring himself to stand and turn down the volume, quench the chatter. Someday he will be oblivious to this too, his petty vanities finally laid to rest.
MARIA SIDESTEPS through the crowd, moving against the flow. She left her scarf at her seat and she’s glad of the excuse to grab a few minutes to herself, away from Alina and her husband. Already they’re positioning themselves to take advantage of the free champagne. She wants to stave off, for as long as possible, the handshakes and small talk, the feigned interest in who she is. She misses Grigory more intently at these kinds of occasions. No one to link arms with, to exchange ironic commentary with. No one to rescue her from a particularly sterile conversation. The preserve, she remarks to herself once again, of the lonely widow.
She finds her scarf tucked under the armrest and pulls it out, and the seat levers down then flips back up, and the sound echoes around the auditorium, emphasizing its scale, the place charged with what it contained fifteen minutes before, the beauty of Yevgeni’s encore piece still stirring inside her.
She sits and watches the musicians pack up, quietly. Can she detect a certain reserve amongst them also, a reverence for what has just occurred, or is this simply a natural assumption you make when watching a group of people in formal wear go about a mundane task?
Stagehands come and wrap the piano in a fitted blanket, tie it in place, then move off somewhere else, and the chairs and music stands remain pointed towards it, watching over it as it sleeps. She thinks of her nephew tucked into his small bed, hair fanned out against the pillow as she kissed him good night.
That child has become the main accompanist to her adult life. He has always been near. Even in her most difficult times, she has been kept afloat by the currents of his talent. His music, even in his absence, flowing through her, lifting her.
She had once believed that words would be her legacy. A book picked up at a secondhand stall, fifty years after her death. An article that a researcher stops upon, skimming through microfilm files. But language has always been her betrayer. She, as much as anyone, knows its limits, its devious ways. The things that are most precious to her now are beyond articulation. Each has adopted the other, aunt and nephew—Alina is too far away from both of them now ever to bridge the divide—and if, at fifty-seven, she has nothing else to show for her life, then there is always this: Yevgeni sitting on that stage, holding a note in suspension, taking her breath with it, his fluid hands dancing, as they once did, on her typewriter keys, at nine years of age.
How close it all came to never happening.
HE CLINKS THE RING repeatedly against his glass, a metronome to pace his thoughts.
Yevgeni has never asked his mother why she kept it for him, why she didn’t let his father take it to his grave. Such a question would be too revealing for both of them, would open up too much. Old habits still lingering.
Perhaps she felt guilt at not providing a male presence for him. Perhaps, at his graduation, she wanted to remind her son where he came from, that though he was about to flourish in a new, sophisticated world, he would always be a kid from the outskirts. His wearing of it surely indicates he does feel an obligation, a debt, to his father, but Yevgeni remembers the man so vaguely that he’s merely a shadowy presence, a ghost who climbs his walls on long winter evenings.
It’s the only possession he has that’s older than himself, and he wears it, in truth, out of fidelity to the past. To remind himself that, one generation before, an artist with his talent, with his profile, should expect to spend half a lifetime freezing in a gulag: chopping wood, laying roads. That the prospect of a life such as his has driven many better musicians, better men, to madness.
The heat of the Scotch licks over him. He takes pleasure in the charred aftertaste, a reward for his work; he can allow himself this. These minutes after a recital are the only time he truly feels at peace, feels equal to his ambition.
The chatter from the auditorium has quietened, the audience continuing their conversations in the lobby, only an occasional stray note from loosened strings as the orchestra packs up their instruments.
The ring has since proven a constant source of speculation for women over a certain age. Almost every day he gets questions about it, little jokes about him transferring it onto the other hand, making it a wedding band once again. Such comments never used to bother him, but now, in his midthirties, they carry a sting. He simply doesn’t have an answer when they ask if there’s a woman in his life. There have been missed opportunities he has seen only in retrospect, too unwilling to compromise his focus, the last of which was a historian who lived in a former hotel that had been through the most superficial of reconversions. The lift had a sliding iron gate, the brass plate outside still announced he was entering the Hôtel Jean Jaurès. He presumed it was no accident that a historian would choose to live in a building named after one of the founding pillars of French socialism. He presumed this but never thought to confirm it with her.