2: Ballade
Michiko Dakashima, having run from the station and confirmed the name of the hall, halted mid-stride and peered at the sky.
The sun had already set, and the surroundings were dark. It was her first time in Yoshigaë, but between the proximity of the complex to the train station and the numerous posters and arrows directing visitors to the hall, there was no chance of getting lost.
Dropping off Akihito had delayed her departure from Tokyo until three in the afternoon; missing her husband’s performance because of the very arrangements she’d made to see him would have been so frustrating as to be beyond tears.
Akashi had already sent her the day’s schedule, and so she had some comfort in knowing that he was to perform last that day, but, with his performing on the first day due to dropouts, she was vaguely paranoid that he would be pulled up in the schedule even further.
She realized as soon as she arrived that she was more nervous than even she thought.
She saw the staff table beyond the grand hall’s exterior glass. The entry to the hall beside the table: sealed shut.
In medias res. Judging was underway.
Just seeing the door made her heart race.
What the hell good does it do for me to be nervous?
Michiko, somehow craving air, took a few deep breaths and entered the hall, walking toward the table. She offered her ticket.
“Sorry, there’s a performance right now. Please wait just a moment.”
“Of course.” Michiko nodded politely and asked, “Are the events going according to schedule?”
“Yes, there haven’t been any deviations.”
The answer calmed her; she began to wander the lobby, where quite a few people were congregating.
Most seemed to be female conservatory students. They clumped in twos or threes and chatted, as though such occasions were familiar to them. Michiko, who rarely had reason to be at a concert hall, felt awkward and began to look around just for something to do. She noticed a few people who also seemed to be family members of contestants. Their discomfort at being in such a space, evident just from their posture, somehow made her feel more at ease.
Might that dignified elderly woman be an instructor?
She felt as though she could pick out the instructors. Having studied some piano herself as a child, she had the unsubstantiated notion that piano teachers had long hair. The older ones especially, wearing it in a bun. Suits with different tops and bottoms. A tidy blouse with a cropped jacket; a long flare-skirt. Brooches that she and her peers wouldn’t dream of wearing.
I really had no aptitude, come to think of it.
She recalled dawdling on the way to her lessons to take up extra time. A journey that always felt burdensome, an hour that never went as fast as she wished.
She had always taken lessons, and endured the mind-numbing practice—until, of course, she didn’t. Those who did ended up here.
Applause jolted her back to her surroundings; the performance concluded, the hall staff were opening the doors. The entering and exiting crowds mixed together, and she followed the former group in.
A surprising percentage of the seats was taken. A suited tuner worked onstage.
Where should I sit?
The rear was mostly empty; she picked a central seat and finally let out a breath of relief.
Ding, ding, the harsh tone of a piano being tuned. The tuner worked as though the hall was empty, focused on his work. There was something about the sight that seemed to relax the audience.
The soft, yearning light enveloping the stage.
I’m here now.
Her—some would say stolid and some would say gritful—personality rarely permitted joy, or fatigue, or love, or delight to show; sitting here, though, watching the grand piano onstage, she imagined her husband in the waiting area and smiled.
* * *
The troubles began after deciding to compete.
There’s a famous saying that “If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two, the critic knows it; three, the audience knows it.” After starting work and having Akihito, it was normal for Akashi to go several days at a time without touching the piano; he committed to entering the competition a mere year before its start. A salaryman like him could only practice in the early mornings, the late nights, and weekends. Despite living in a single-family home, neighbors and (silently) Michiko made him install expensive soundproofing in a room that barely fit an upright piano. The high cost of good sheet music doubly surprised him, and the instructor whom he engaged to help him re-orient himself before preparing in earnest was kind but in the end businesslike. Only then had he truly felt what an endeavor music actually was.
—It’s my first and last, you know?
Hearing this, Michiko of course understood, and, knowing that he was not one to ask for petty favors, even skipped payments to her certified deposits without complaint. But Akashi, on whom the whole enterprise rested, knew that the biggest sacrifice would be on his part, of his sleep. Obviously, fatigued practicing did not help his progress very much, and his nerves and financial woes had more than once pushed him to the brink of abandoning the endeavor.
More than anything, he struggled to sustain the enthusiasm, the drive, about the competition. Multiple times a week, the sense that it would all come to nothing, to less than nothing—what in the world was this meant to prove to anyone anyway—trickled into dark murmurs of self-doubt. Every time she would hear or see him in these states, Michiko dryly comforted him by saying, You’ve got to break even on that soundproofing.
He could tell Michiko silently understood his disappointment at failing to go pro. Her father was an aeronautical engineer of high standing in a government agency, and both her older brothers were also researchers. She dreamt of joining them, but as an undergraduate, she painfully realized the insufficiency of her aptitude to continue her studies, and, without a respectable job offer, became a teacher basically by process of elimination.
Though she had let go of her dream early, her feelings about research still wriggled uncomfortably within her.
So, when Akashi had said that he wanted to enter the competition, she acutely felt, Yes, so you couldn’t give up on that dream either. Her encouragement and support were beyond anything Akashi had expected.
The staff placed a white sign with the number and Roman-scripted name of the next contestant. When the audience quieted, a blonde woman in a blue dress stepped out to an outpouring of applause. The program book indicated she was Russian. Somehow Westerners seemed mature to Michiko: she was only twenty.
The brilliant colors began to flow. She couldn’t remember the last time she had heard live piano music in a concert hall. Of course, she’d heard Akashi here and there, but with the soundproofing, even that pleasure had evaporated.
She’s good.
Listening to her, Michiko began to get nervous again. It may go without saying, but all of them would be dispatching these terribly difficult pieces with verve and joy. The caliber of the competition was such that many of them had already embarked on careers as concert pianists; this one sure seemed like it. When Akashi murmured that he’d be happy even just to pass the First Round, she had chalked it up to nerves and self-deprecation, but she now realized how hard it’d be to get to the next round. She thought that someone who’d gotten to Final Rounds as an undergraduate would treat the First Round like a formality, but that was ten years ago, and his age definitely had not eased things, at least in his circumstance.
How am I going to comfort him?
Such cold thoughts began to occur to him.
All that effort and time and money for this competition, just to get eliminated in the First Round. What am I going to say to him.
“You did your best.” “It’s better to have tried than not.” “I had a fun time too.” “This way, you don’t use all your paid vacation days in one go.”
Many such phrases swept by, but she could only see Akashi, head hung. None of it would help.
—It’s hard being a musician’s wife, yeah?
Like some phantom, her high school classmate’s voice came to her. They had only become friends planning for their school’s reunions, but the friend had fallen for Akashi when he was in college and followed him around competitions and recitals with bouquet after bouquet.
“Men who can handle an instrument are popular.” Akashi’s undeniable musical talent combined with his bright, kind attitude had earned him consistent popularity with the fairer sex.
Akashi and Michiko had known each other from childhood playdates; having eyed each other for all of middle school, they had naturally transitioned to dating in high school. Nerdy STEM kid to her marrow, Michiko was entirely without dating or fashion sense; many had thought it a waste for Akashi to be dating Michiko, and her now-friend had been among them. She’d even—based on her grilling Akashi—said to him that she didn’t suit him (not that he paid any attention to it, but still).
But after graduating college and reaching marrying age, those women, every one, lost interest in men who played the piano—or, rather, thought playing the piano perfectly neutrally, irrelevantly.
How’s Akashi doing?
Does he still play the piano?
Good thing you’re a civil servant, Michiko.
The tenor of old friends who knew both her and Akashi, and their union, was layered not with envy or even admiration but something approaching pity.
Hearing that Akashi had gotten a job in a major instrument retailer, those same friends, as though their lines had been written for them, congratulated them on his finding such a fitting job—but the undertow of “You can’t make a living off of music, after all” and “I guess he didn’t have what it took to live off his music” poisoned even their well-wishes.
—It’s hard being a musician’s wife, yeah?
That woman, who had asked, genuinely and without ill intent; that woman, who indecently ingratiated herself with Akashi and chided his romantic choices; that woman, who had recently married a significantly older dentist and had her first son: that woman sparked such unbearable fury in Michiko for the crystal of pity lodged at the center of that question.
The hell are you asking for.
Michiko, reliving the rage the question had made course through her body, cursed her silently.
A Korean girl, a Chinese boy, a Korean boy. The contestants were all fantastic. She’d heard from Akashi about the maturity of young Asian musicians, and these three indeed all surpassed the Russian girl she had heard first: their power, their technique, their expressivity were on another level.
They’re all so good.
Michiko sighed.
And then, the last performer of the first day of the First Round.
22 DAKASHIMA AKASHI
The changed sign made Michiko unconsciously straighten her back. Her heart beat ever more wildly. She could not remember the last time she had been so nervous; she pressed down, hard, on her abdomen in a bizarre attempt to calm herself.
Her heartbeat drummed in her ears.
I couldn’t even step onstage right now. How do they do it?
Maybe, if I were a contestant, I wouldn’t be so nervous.
Akashi’s incredible for even daring to do something like this.
The weighty stage door opened, and Akashi, all one hundred eighty centimeters of him, quietly stepped onstage. The appearance of a Japanese performer triggered a hearty round of applause.
Akashi, standing onstage, appeared enormous. She somehow forgot her belting heart in her awe.
Here was a person born with an aura of light and elegance.
It was as though Michiko was seeing Akashi for the first time.
He stepped energetically, casually, to the piano, and then sat down. Gently adjusted the height of his seat. Adjusted for a while—the Korean boy had been quite short. Wiped down the keys with a handkerchief, and then his own hands.
—It’s just a habit. The tuner would have cleaned it, but I feel as though wiping down the keys cleanses me somehow too.
She heard Akashi’s voice, as clear as the moment she had heard it.
He patted his forehead gently with his handkerchief and then placed the cloth on the piano. The slightest tilt of the head, a stare into space.
Things look good. He seems calm. Focused.
Michiko nodded to herself.
Akashi turned his eyes to the keys, and then began to play.
Ah!
Michiko started. And it wasn’t just her, but the entire hall: until he had begun, there had been an air of Finally, the last one, but they all seemed to be recollecting themselves and sitting upright.
Akashi indeed has his sound. It’s the same piano, but somehow it’s totally different from the previous performer.
It’s brisk, and subtle, and damp, somehow, in a soothing way. It’s very him.
Music is wont to reveal the person. And this music—this is the Akashi Michiko knew through and through. He had a refined, powerful quality, with a resonance and weight. Akashi seemed to be giving off visible energy, like heat off a hot road.
The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, Number 2.
He’d thought for a long time about which to play. After narrowing his options to three or four, he still played all of them obsessively, changing his program multiple times and for the last time the day before he was to submit his program.
Michiko always thought that Bach evoked some image of religion with his music. She couldn’t quite place it, but it was when she could best approximate the soothing nature of prayer.
Akashi’s Bach: she could listen to it forever. Listeners’ minds naturally calmed when hearing it.
Next: Beethoven’s Sonata no. 3, first movement.
It’s said that the sonata is a very important, even seminal, form. It’s how one knows a composer’s ability, a composer’s talent.
Michiko knew “Moonlight” or “Appassionata,” the famous ones, but she wasn’t so sure about the rest. Akashi’s Beethoven sonata sounded like piece made for itself: a testament to architecture, and form, and harmony, rather than a medium of expression. This made it perfect in its own universal way.
“The amateur is fearless.” She remembered a time when she had offered her frank opinion—at his asking—while he practiced this sonata.
—Is that how it sounds? He laughed bitterly.
—Yeah, it’s not that much fun, sorry.
—Then I must be doing something wrong, Akashi murmured as he played gently, looking at the ceiling.
—Why? Isn’t it the composer’s fault?
Akashi’s voice turned a touch steely. No—there’s a reason it’s survived this long. It has its own something, and it’s only the pianist’s fault if they can’t find it, and express it, and express it convincingly.
She felt tears fill her eyes.
Akashi, I finally understand what you meant.
The Beethoven flowing from his fingertips to the audience via the piano was, measure for measure, elemental, magnetic, aspirational.
It’s convincing. I think I can get a little of what Beethoven was trying to say.
She focused as hard as she could so she wouldn’t miss a note, but the piece ended before she knew it.
Akashi’s last piece for the First Round was Chopin’s Ballade no. 2.
—I wanted to play the Fourth, but it’s so long.
She remembered his sweetly lamenting tone as he practiced the piece. No piece starts more quietly, gently. Like someone’s whispering, yearning and beautiful. Listening to this section, she imagined Akashi reading a picture book to Akihito.
But this easygoing scene was overwhelmed by phrases of arching passion beyond imagine. Dramatic melodies wash in and out and in and out like angry waves, swelling with each flooding of the shore.
The ruthlessness, the roughness of reality.
To wear a tuxedo and play those beautiful melodies, he’d had to be chased by his work and his family obligations and his fatigue, constantly and without end. How much effort he’d spent to stand atop that stage, only she knew.
—It’s my first and last. Please, let me.
—I want to tell Akihito his dad was a musician.
—What am I trying to prove, to whom?
—Maybe it’s because I’m older that I can compete.
—My technique isn’t following. I’m rushing. This isn’t even music.
—I knew this was a mistake.
—It’s the unconvincing pianist’s fault.
—Thy said they’d all come if I made it to the Final Round.
Akashi’s comments, Akashi’s expressions layer on one another. And still, his Chopin was breathtakingly beautiful. His Ballade no. 2 seemed perfect to reveal Akashi’s gentle yet strict personality.
The moment the piece ended, a moment of perfect silence smothered the hall. Akashi, who had been hunched over the keys, jerked his head up.
He was happy.
A light smile on his face, he stood to receive thunderous applause. Michiko joined the frenzy, clapping like mad, and murmured to herself, I am a musician’s wife. My husband: a musician.