3: Intermezzo
“I only survived thanks to that last contestant.”
“Seriously. I finally felt as though I’d heard actual music.”
On their way to the lounge, the tension and demands of the day behind them, the judges uninhibitedly let out their feelings about the day.
I really liked him.
Miëko repeated to herself the name of the last performer of the day: Akashi Dakashima. He wasn’t someone she had heard of before his performance, and he had not at all been mentioned in the pre-competition chatter.
The oldest one. Twenty-eight.
In a world where the young tend to garner the most attention, he was an elder. They tend to have technique and expressivity. But most either keep adding to their experience without cultivating their talent, or try to cater to the judges’ taste and lose their uniqueness. But he did not fall into such traps: though seemingly traditional, his interpretations were subtly unorthodox. And yet he also went beyond self-satisfaction to appeal to the audience with unvarnished emotion.
Meeting such contestants was always a delight. A brilliant and lithe musicianship, one that gave the sense of hearing something fun—a sense that came from that sort of playing that was indeed unusual but not at all oppressive or ugly.
When you listen with the goal of confirming their technical ability, no matter how you try to be objective, the biases layer like grease. Artistic preconception, if you will. Something that you could wash and wash, but that stains your senses. The pieces become blobs of sound, something you can’t conceive of as music.
But Akashi Dakashima’s performance was undoubtedly musical. It seemed to cleanse the sonic palate and open one’s ears afresh.
The audience seemed to much agree. Music was funny that way—though there were plenty of instances where the pros and the crowds perfectly diverged.
“How was it?” Nathaniel approached and asked. He seemed not to be in a bad mood.
“Yes, this is what competitions should be like. Is how I felt.”
Nathaniel chuckled mildly. “A very Miëko comment.”
“I don’t have that much judging experience, you know. I was pretty excited before the auditions, but then I went, Oh, Christ, yes, I remember this suffering. I learn but never remember.”
“It’s a marathon. You focus too much right now and you won’t have anything by the Third Round.”
“You’ve said that to me before.”
Indeed: just as contestants think “Oh, next competition …”, judges think “Next time, a star …” But in a two-week long competition, with five-day-straight stretches, listening takes unfathomable stamina; the untrained or uninitiated burn out before the halfway point.
“And what do you think, Nathaniel? Were there any you liked?”
“The baseline has gotten so high. If we’re going by technique alone, I feel bad for the contestants. Without some crazy talent, you just go unnoticed.”
“So you’re saying your secret weapon is better.”
Nathaniel’s casual expression betrayed an absolute faith in his pupil.
“Hardly. Every competition has its reversals.”
“Yeah, yeah, but I can see right through you. What did you think of the last performer?”
“He was good. A well-rooted tree, is what I was imagining.”
“Can’t disagree there.”
“Should we get dinner?”
“Sure, where?”
“The Indian place in the basement.”
“OK, some spicy food to energize us, I see.”
Their score cards had already been collected. They sort of kind of stopped by the lounge, and then went to the hotel restaurant downstairs. Various snacks had been made available throughout the day, but eight hours of judging has left them drained and famished. With the kitchen closing soon, they ordered anything they thought they’d want even just to try; whatever their differences, they were alike in being gastronomes.
“So, are you divorced?” Miëko asked without preamble as soon as they clinked their beers. Nathaniel made a displeased face, as though his beer was spoiled.
“I think it’ll happen. As long as the alimony can be agreed on.”
“How’s Diane? Is she doing alright?”
Miëko had once met Nathaniel’s daughter. It was a small world indeed, and she and Nathaniel couldn’t help but run into each other here and there over the years.
“She’s OK. I always thought she’d liked me better, but these days, I can’t tell.”
“Why?”
“Well, she’s debuting as a singer.”
“Wow, congratulations! In what genre?”
“Pop. Given that she’s been in a band with her girlfriends since middle school, I figured she’d be into that kind of music.”
“Gotcha. And here I was thinking that she was so unlike you, cute and sweet and all.”
“And you’d be right,” Nathaniel casually conceded. “She has musical talent, but no awareness of the real world. And it’s no contest that my—my wife is much savvier in, and better recognized in, the celebrity world. She could even be her manager.”
“Ah, I see.” Realistically, Nathaniel, globehopping as he does, could not be by his daughter’s side nearly as much as she’d need. Despite his wife’s being a famed actress, with her focus in the UK, she could be where her daughter needed her.
“But there’s joint custody anyway. Doesn’t it not matter?”
“It does.”
Miëko knew him well enough—far too well—to know that once he said “No” in that manner, there was no convincing him otherwise. But she still gave it a shot.
“It doesn’t change the fact that you’re father and daughter. I still text with my son.”
“Maybe. I heard he’d gotten a job, by the way?”
“Yes, a civil servant.”
“It must be a relief.”
“Sure. He’s a responsible kid.”
“Do you still live with that guy?” Nathaniel glanced at Miëko.
“Who? You’re not talking about his dad?”
“No, that way younger studio musician, you know.”
“Oh, yeah. I am. Not that we’ve gotten married or anything.” Miëko indeed was living with a composer eight years her junior. He remixed and performed and composed—a musician of small but respectable stature and a person of trustworthy character. In fact, going by that alone, he might even be older than Miëko. Their work kept them separate much of the time, but they got along nicely, and, more than anything, when they were together, she felt at ease, almost at home.
“No thoughts on coming back, then?”
Miëko, ripping apart a tandoori chicken, reacted a beat late to the sudden confession. Still, she demurred. “Come back? Where?”
“To my side.”
“What?” Nathaniel might seem jokey and smiley, but with such topics, he spoke like an arrow: unwaveringly and directly. His worried equivocating during their divorce was as far from his firmness now as imaginable.
Right, I’d forgotten what he was like.
Miëko nodded inwardly more than a few times. But, she only said, “What about that charming secretary of yours?”
In refusing lightly, Miëko tried to give the impression that she was not taking him seriously. To be honest, early on in their dating, his directness offered a temptation that nearly swayed her more than once. But their drawn-out conflicts and the effort over their separation … those memories, along with her knowledge of the fact that part of the difficulty of settling on a figure for his alimony was because of the photos of him with an elegant Polish woman who could speak five languages, made her not particularly welcoming or warm to this old friend who seemed as though he was looking for any way to deny his current reality.
“Jeesus, even you?” Nathaniel laughed a bitter laugh that was mostly bitter. “You’re talking about the Polish woman? She’s just a very talented secretary. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“And that’s what she’d say, too?” Miëko shrugged. “The rumor mill was churning up a goddamn storm.”
Nathaniel reddened blotchily. “Ha! Rumors! Rumors everywhere. Rumors that she got pregnant with my kid and gave birth in the asscrack of her country. Rumors that my oh-so-uneven temperament required relief in the form of prostitutes, who are now blackmailing me for unholy amounts. It’s really incredible, the kind of shit people will spout as though they’d seen it with their own eyes. And these rumors abet my wife’s calling for some astronomical alimony, and of course, of course I want to indict somebody too, but who the hell am I going to blame for my troubles?”
With his anger spent, Miëko had more than a little sympathy for him. Miëko, who had had an outgoing personality in her youth, had also been thanked for it in the form of vicious, irresponsible rumors.
“It’s the fame tax. You know they’re just jealous of your talent.”
Hearing this, Nathaniel softened, as though his ego had been soothed somewhat. “Well, it’s fine. Whatever. I mean it, though. I’ve matured, just a little, since we separated. I want you to believe that I’m confident in us. Would you please think about it for the duration of the competition?”
It was Miëko’s turn to laugh bitterly. “Gosh, is the ball now in my court? I hate getting homework.”
“Anyhow,” Nathaniel said declaratively, scooping up the last of his lamb curry. Miëko flinched at the sudden turn of tone and expression. “This honey prince, or honeybee prince, or whatever he is. Tell me about him.”
Miëko sighed internally. She’d known this would come up. “I opposed him,” she said, as though it were an excuse, but Nathaniel’s probing eyes remained narrowed.
“So, how is he, actually? I want to hear the sense you got from him, unfiltered.” Miëko could hear the desperation in his voice. “What was he like? Was it anything like Maestro Hoffman?”
Miëko could tell that he was nervous, excited, almost unhealthily keen. He was trying hard to hide it, but his unease seeped from the cracks. She was embarrassed for him: embarrassed for his loyalty to someone who had always looked just to the right of him, so to speak, even as he was congratulating him; embarrassed at how he was reduced to a gentle-hearted boy when it came to his favorite teacher; embarrassed at his fate of never even being able to call himself pupil.
Miëko shook her head sharply. “No, they’re nothing alike. What I felt was a violent negation. It’s not wrong to say I rejected him. As soon as he was done, I felt as though I was on fire. It was a ridiculous denial of Maestro Hoffman’s musicianship.”
She felt the fury of that moment flash by. It was only a moment, but she felt its heat against her insides.
Nathaniel’s expression was hard to parse. At once unsure and yet also relieved. Unsure at how this mentor, whom he admired so, could teach such a student. Relieved that his successor was no ordinary musician, even though no successor of his could be ordinary.
“But the rec letter was real, right?” Nathaniel asked carefully.
“Yeah. It was also such a low blow of his—he wrote at the end that when some people heard this, this gnat prince, they would reject him. Like I did.” She relived the shame of reading the rec letter as she recounted its contents. The aftershocks were loath to fade.
“Gnat prince?”
In response to Nathaniel’s uncertain expression, she explained the meaning of his last name, and he laughed.
“Anyhow, now I’m not sure of myself. What I got so angry at. Sergei and Alain loved him. How can he trigger such polarized reactions? It’s music. But I was, in the end, convinced by those two that being able to trigger such reactions in itself was greatness.”
She decided not to tell him about her desire to wheedle the highbrow New York crowd—given that Nathaniel was among them, however close they may have been or friendly they were now.
She realized now that he had likely gone around asking anyone he knew for information about the Paris audition. Of course, he could justify his questioning because he was researching the opposition for his star pupil. But it wasn’t hard to imagine that it was at heart his disbelief that Hoffman would take on a pupil to such an intimate degree.
“I heard that the organization doesn’t give out audition recordings, as a rule,” Nathaniel murmured resentfully. She sensed Olga’s hand: should Jin Kazama win or even take a medal, the audition recording would be not a small bounty. If he crashes and burns, that’d be another thing—then that recording could also be used to indict her and her compatriots: what the hell were they thinking.
“Mr. Numa mentioned the other day—Maestro Hoffman was for sure Kazama’s teacher. According to Daphne, he’d even go to where he lived to give lessons.”
This triggered an expression of such stricken despair that Miëko regretted saying anything at all. She’d thought that it was common knowledge.
“Maestro? To teach?” This coming from the man who had to cross timezones for his piano lessons. She didn’t fault him for the hurt in his voice. “I wonder whether Maestro Hishinuma speaks often with Daphne.”
Nathaniel seemed deep in thought, as though he was about to chase down Hishinuma and grill him himself.
“Yeah, me too,” Miëko ventured cautiously. “I don’t know whether you’ve heard—the reason he’s called the honeybee prince is because he’s the son of an apiarist. He seems to travel with his dad, helping him with work. Presumably it’s because of those special circumstances that Maestro Hoffman went to him—what do you think?”
Hearing this, Nathaniel sunk the crook of his jaw even deeper into his hand.
“Or, well, maybe he just wanted to embrace his inner childish kindness at the end of his life.”
Miëko had meant it as a reassurance, but Nathaniel shook his head savagely. “You can’t be serious.”
His tone stung; she felt dazed. His hair seemed to stand on end. “No way. Maestro would never. He was, to the end, clearer, colder, and more serious about music than anyone else.”
Nathaniel’s negativity pushed Miëko over the edge as well. She’d tried to empathize with him and support him, even when she hadn’t meant what she’d said and then to have it thrown in her face—it was too much.
“I know that much too,” she said coldly.
“Then don’t say things like that. How could he have that kind of student.”
Ah, now I’m remembering. This is who he really is.
Miëko felt a strong distaste diffuse within herself. Nathaniel would be filled with concerns and doubt, and come and confess his worries and apparently seek comfort—only to take that comfort and twist it into something vile and crude. This was his wont, but, in the last days of their relationship, he’d done it nearly every day.
“Well, he’s playing on the last day of the First Round; you can hear him with your own ears. My explanations won’t do it justice anyway.”
Miëko extracted a cigarette from her case but remembered that smoking was banned indoors. How she missed Paris; she cursed the modern age.
“Well, Masaru isn’t going to lose anyway,” Nathaniel muttered, as if to himself.
“Whatever you say. He’s your pride and joy, so you must be right.” Miëko played along and drank her chai tea. The cooled milk of the tea clung in wrinkles of film to her lip.
“How can you say that when you haven’t even heard him?”
There he goes again, picking apart everything I say. At least he’s not as agitated now.
“You’re no better, saying what you say when you haven’t ever heard Kazama,” Miëko snorted as she licked away the film and chewed.
Honestly, I think I want to hear him more than you. What he is, exactly. What Maestro Hoffman was thinking. I want to hear him and parse him. I want to hear him so bad I’m about to flip out.
So Miëko thought as she watched the man before her cradle his head in his hands.