Anne McCaffrey
PRELUDE TO A CRYSTAL SONG
Killashandra listened, the words like cold bombs dropping with leaden fatality into her frozen guts. She stared at the Maestro’s famous profile as his lips opened and shut around the words that meant the death of all her hopes and ambitions, and rendered wasted ten years of hard work and study.
The Maestro finally turned to face her. The genuine regret in his expressive eyes made him look older as the heavy singer’s muscles in his jaw relaxed sorrowfully into jowls.
One day Killashandra might remember those details. Now she was too crushed by this overwhelming defeat to be aware of more than her terrible personal failure.
‘But... but... how could you?’
‘How could I what?’ the Maestro asked in surprise.
‘How could you lead me on?’
‘Lead you on? But, my dear girl, I didn’t.’
‘You did! You said ... you said all I needed was hard work and haven’t I worked hard?’
‘Of course you have worked hard.’ Valdi was affronted. ‘My students must apply themselves. It takes years of hard work to develop the voice, to learn a repertoire of even a segment of the outworld music that must be performed ...’
‘I’ve the repertoire? I’ve worked hard and now ... now you tell me I’ve no voice?’
Maestro Valdi sighed heavily, a mannerism which had always irritated Killashandra and was insupportable in this instance. She opened her mouth to protest but he raised a restraining hand. The habit of four years made her pause.
‘You haven’t the voice to be a top-rank singer, my dear Killashandra, but that does not preclude any of the many other responsible and fulfilling ...’
‘I won’t be second-rank. I want ... I wanted’’ - and she had the satisfaction of seeing him wince at the bitterness in her voice - ‘to be a top-rank concert singer. You said I had -’
He held up his hand again. ‘You have the gift of perfect pitch, your musicality is faultless, your memory superb, your dramatic potential can’t be criticized. But there is that burr in your voice which becomes intolerable in the higher register. While I thought it could be trained out, modified ...’ he shrugged his helplessness. He eyed her sternly. ‘Today’s audition with completely impartial judges proved conclusively that the flaw is inherent in the voice. This moment is cruel for you and not particularly pleasant for me.’ He gave her another quelling look for the rebellion in her manner. ‘I make few errors in judgement as to voice. I honestly thought I could help you. I cannot and it would be doubly cruel of me to encourage you to go further as a soloist. No. You had best strengthen another facet of your potential.’
‘And what, in your judgement,’ demanded Killashandra in a voice so tight that her throat ached, ‘would that be?’
He had the grace to blink at her caustic tone but he looked her squarely in the eye.
‘You don’t have the patience and temperament to teach, but you could do very well in one of the allied theater arts where your sympathy with the problems of a singer would stand you in good stead. No? You are a trained synthesizer? Hmmm. Too bad, your musical education would be a real asset there.’ He paused, had a thought and dismissed it. ‘Well then, I’d recommend you leave the theater arts entirely. With your sense of pitch you could be a crystal tuner, or an aircraft and shuttle dispatcher.’
‘Thank you, Maestro,’ she said, more from force of habit than any real gratitude. She gave him the half bow his rank required and withdrew. She did slam the panel shut behind her and stalked down the corridor, blinded by the tears she’d been too proud to shed. She half wanted and half feared to meet some other student who would question her tears, commiserate with her disaster, but was inordinately grateful when she reached the door of her study cubicle without encountering anyone. There she gave herself up to her misery, bawling into hysteria, past choking, until she was too spent to do more than breathe.
If her body protested the emotional excess, her mind reveled in it. For she’d been abused, misused, misguided, misdirected. And who knows how many of her peers had been secretly laughing at her for her dreams of glorious triumphs on the concert and opera stage. Killashandra had a generous portion of the conceit and ego required for her chosen profession, with no leavening dollop of humility: she’d felt her success and stellardom only a matter of time. Now she cringed against the panoramic memories of her Self-assertiveness and arrogance, hugging her fractured, deflated self as she recalled the agony of that audition this morning. She had approached it with such confidence, so sure of receiving the necessary commendations to continue as a solo-aspirant. She remembered the faces of the examiners, so pleasantly composed - one man nodding absent-mindedly to the pulse of the test arias and lieder. She knew she’d been scrupulous in tempi - they’d marked her high on that. How could they have looked so - so impressed? So encouraging? She wanted to erase the morning’s fiasco completely from her memory!
How could they record such verdicts against her? ‘The voice is unsuited to the dynamics of opera; unpleasant burr too audible.’ ‘A good instrument for singing with orchestra and chorus where grating overtone will not be noticeable.’ ‘Strong choral leader quality: student should be positively dissuaded from solo work.’
The judgements burned in her mind, abrading the tortured strands of her ego and shattered aspirations.
Unfair! Unfair! How could she be allowed to come so far, be permitted to delude herself, only to be dashed down in the penultimate trial? And to be offered, as a sop, choral leadership? How degradingly ignominious!
Wiggling up out of her excruciating memories were the faces of brothers and sisters, taunting her for ‘shrieking at the top of her lungs.’ Teasing her for the hours she spent pounding out finger exercises and attempting to ‘understand’ some of the weird harmonics of off-world music. Her parents had surrendered to her choice of profession because it was, for starters, financed by the planetary educational system; secondly, it might accrue to their own standing in the community; and thirdly, she seemed to have the encouragement of her early voice teachers. Them! Was it to the ineptitude of one of those clods that she owed the flaw in her voice? A mishandling in the fragile early stages of training? Killashandra rolled in an agony of self-pitying memories.
Then she realized that it was self-pity and sat bolt upright in the chair, staring at herself in the mirror on the far wall, the mirror which had reflected all those long hours of study and self-perfection ... Self-deception.
What was it Valdi’d had the temerity to suggest? An allied art? A synthesizer? Bah! Spending her life catering to flawed minds in mental institutions because she had a flawed voice? Or mending flawed crystals to keep interplanetary travel or someone’s power plant flowing smoothly?
All in an instant, Killashandra shook herself free of such wallowing self-indulgence. She looked around the study, a slice of a room with its musical scores neatly filed by the viewer, with the built-in keyboard and console that tapped the orchestral banks of the Music Center for any aria or song ever composed. She glanced over the repros of training performances - she’d always had a lead role - and she knew that she’d do best to forget the whole damned thing! If she couldn’t be top rank, the hell with the theater arts! She’d be top in whatever she did or die in the attempt.
She stood up. There was nothing for her now in a room that three hours before had been the focal point of every waking minute and all her energies. Whatever personal items were in the drawer or shelves, the prize certificates on the wall, the signed repros of singers she’d hoped to emulate or excel, no longer concerned nor belonged to her.