Sight Reading

by Daphne Kalotay

  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?”

  “This is my daughter, Jessie.” Nicholas couldn’t help sounding proud. “Jessie, this is my friend Yoni. Say hello.”

  Jessie affected not to have heard him.

  “Won’t you say hello to Yoni?”

  She would not. She had noticed something on the floor—a trampled pen cap at the foot of Yoni’s desk—and squatted to pick it up.

  “Please put that in the bin, love. It would be awfully nice if you could say hello.”

  She looked up. “I had a Popsicle,” she told Yoni in her little alien voice.

  “I suspected as much,” Yoni confided. “Telltale purple around your mouth.” To Nicholas he said, “Popsicles for breakfast?”

  “It’s almost ten,” Nicholas said. He knew he was too indulgent. But now that he had her back, he felt near horror at himself—for having let his daughter out of his sight all those weeks.

  “I see how she looks like you,” Yoni said. “Like Hazel, too. You must be delighted to have them back again.”

  Yes, he was delighted, thrilled to bits—though really he and Hazel had barely had a free moment together. Each day she headed off to this office or that school, finding swimming pools and day care centers, her agenda book filled with addresses and abbreviated directions; for herself she’d sniffed out a course at Harvard Extension. Her sketch pad, Nicholas noticed, had been abandoned, wedged between a bookend and the side of the wall. More than once it had seemed there was something she wanted to tell him, that she was about to say to him—but then, just when he was bracing himself for something worrisome, she hadn’t said anything at all.

  “Do you play a musical instrument, Jessie?”

  “I go to Marching Band.”

  Nicholas explained that Hazel had found a music class in town. “Yesterday was Jessie’s first time. I’m told she played the tambourine and the maracas brilliantly.”

  “With such esteemed parentage,” Yoni said, “I’m sure she’s a natural.” He sounded sarcastic. Perhaps it had to do with the faculty newsletter announcing that Nicholas had won the Brillman-Stoughton Prize.

  “I do my dancing,” Jessie explained, going up on tiptoe, arms raised, to skip around the room. Nicholas laughed. The truth was, she had never shown much interest in music. Not that this bothered him. She would surely turn out to have her own talents.

  “Maybe when you grow up you’ll play in a band,” Yoni told her. “Have you heard of Tubby the Tuba?”

  Jessie shook her head.

  “No!” Yoni opened his eyes wide. “We’ll have to remedy that. Maybe you’ll play the tuba.”

  “Just so long as you’re not her teacher!” Nicholas said with a laugh.

  “Well, now, why would you say that?” Yoni looked surprised.

  “You’re stern, Yoni. I hear you with the students.” More than once Nicholas had witnessed Yoni berating someone in an exaggerated, nearly comic way. Apparently it was an act he was known for on campus. “It’s a wonder they don’t break down and cry.”

  “I sound stern,” Yoni said now, “but I would never hurt anyone.”

  In fact, Nicholas had begun to view Yoni’s droll imploring of students as an expression of his own frustration—not with the students but with his own professional disappointments. At the jazz club a few weeks ago, Yoni had mentioned, very briefly, that he’d not gotten the faculty grant he’d applied for (while Nicholas, without even requesting one, had been handed three thousand dollars in “summer development funds”).

  Or perhaps it had to do with something more painful, like his wounded hand. Though Nicholas had grown used to the deformed thumb and missing half-finger (no longer even saw them as strange, really), it still happened sometimes that he recalled Yoni’s words, a stupid accident, and the eerie feeling would overcome him, almost like remorse—or perhaps it was just that he had been reminded of something, though he didn’t quite know what.

  This feeling, a deep piercing sadness, was strong enough that Nicholas had decided not to ignore it. Instead he was using it. For the sadness was somehow intrinsic, he had realized, to his new piece, the Scottish one. He had already sketched out other sections, and in the third movement things had darkened, a sense of something lurking underneath—a Loch Ness monster of sorts, Nicholas had come to think, something you may have seen or just imagined. To tease it out, he was trying to re-create the eerie feeling, the one he had become attuned to, this brief strong wash of darkness.

  “It’s just my manner,” Yoni said now. As if hearing Nicholas’s thoughts, he added, “You know, Nicholas, there’s a reason we Israelis are called sabras.” He hunched down a bit toward Jessie. “Do you know what that means, Jessie?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, it comes from a kind of cactus—”

  “I have a cactus! At Gran and Pop’s.”

  Yoni stood up and said to the air, “The prickly pear cactus. It’s not just the land we’re from. My people, we’re—” He looked back at Jessie and in a boisterous voice said, “Prickly. I’m prickly.” He grinned, the lines reaching from his eyes to the tops of his cheeks.

  “No, you’re not!” Jessie squealed.

  “Yes, I am!” Yoni said. “Rough on the outside, sweet on the inside.” And then, in a wondering way, as if the thought had just occurred to him, he said to Nicholas, “The opposite of you, perhaps?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Nicholas said, taking umbrage at the suggestion. He had certainly never thought of himself that way.

  “I’m prickly!” Jessie announced.

  “Well, prickly,” Nicholas said, “it’s time we got a move on.” Yoni’s musing irked him. He picked up Jessie’s bag of toys and slung it over his shoulder. “Thanks for letting us stop by.” But he wished he hadn’t, really.

  “WHAT I WANT YOU TO LEARN,” CONRAD LESSER SAID THAT FIRST day, leaning back in a wooden swivel chair so that his flaplike ears seemed even larger, “more than anything else that you learn in this class, is how to love music.”

  Remy and the others nodded reverently. The class was small; besides Remy there was a pretty brunette named Barb; a Russian boy called Mischa; twin sisters named Penelope and Pauline; and a timid blond boy (the youngest in the class) who said his name so softly, no one caught it. Each of them had been assigned a new piece to learn by heart, and Remy could tell that each of them was terrified.

  The blond boy was asked to go first. He had been assigned Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D Major, and as he began to play, with a definite flair but also somehow too slick, Remy recalled some of the musical friends she had known who flew from continent to continent to compete in contests and had this same, overly polished air. Mrs. Lepik had forbidden Remy to follow that path; she said it was bad to always be in the spotlight, that competitions narrowed one’s creative field, that by playing the same carefully perfected pieces over and over, one’s playing became mannered. Remy supposed this was what had happened with the blond boy, who seemed to have modeled his playing on Jascha Heifetz; his bowing and slides, his very stance, were recognizable, almost a pose. Lesser told him to stop.

  “It’s very clear which recording you’ve been listening to,” Lesser said. “A marvelous one. But wh
at you’re doing now is an imitation. A copy. If this were a math exam, you wouldn’t copy, would you?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Do you know why it’s wrong to copy?” Lesser didn’t wait for an answer. “Not just because it’s unoriginal. It’s that it’s insincere.”

  The boy said something too soft for anyone to understand.

  “We must always, every one of us, play from the heart. In fact, please sit down. Let’s hear from one of your colleagues.” He motioned for Remy to stand.

  She could feel her heart beating as she came forward. All week she had practiced Lalo’s Symphonie espangnole, really too much to learn (and by memory!) in just a few days. Her neck hurt from playing without a shoulder pad, and her fingertips were sore from having to press hard on the new gut strings; though her E string was still steel and the G wrapped in aluminum, the other two were fully lamb’s gut and heavier than what she was used to. But the pain was her reminder to do what Lesser had said: step outside of herself, think of the entire piece, not just her part, not just herself.

  Determined that Lesser not stop her as he had at the audition, she focused on the “initial gesture”—and to her surprise he allowed her to continue. Remy liked the sound of the new gut strings, more intense than before. But as she came to the second page, Lesser waved his hand for her to stop. Stepping forward, he said, “Please let me see your instrument.”

  Remy carefully handed him her violin. Her parents had bought it for her when she was fifteen, a used Otto Erdesz of a soft tan color, the burnished maple of its back a light-and-dark feathered pattern; if you peered through the f-holes you could find the small white label, Joannes Baptista Guadagnini, in delicate, flowing script. Remy still treated it like a new gift, always wiping it carefully with her chamois cloth as Mrs. Lepik had taught her, making sure never to leave the faintest trace of rosin on it. She wondered if Conrad Lesser was going to criticize the brand of strings she had purchased.