7: You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To
Jin Kazama’s performance sent ripples of fear through the balcony of judges.
Yes, this is panic, Miëko thought as she observed the reactions of those around her. As soon as Kazama departed the stage, their jaws dropped, and they looked at each other, gauging each other’s reactions. Looking at Nathaniel, she noticed that he was deep in thought and pale in face; it was his concentrating-as-hard-as-he-could face. He was surely analyzing Kazama’s performance; it seemed he was not registering the reactions of those around him. What was certain that he had received a bigger shock than he’d ever expected.
As expected, the reactions were neatly divided into two categories.
Unbelievable, fantastic, miraculous, heavenly. Energetic and progressive, a carnival.
Or pitch-black, angry, smoldering.
What a curious reaction.
When Anatol played, they seemed united in praise and admiration; what was different now?
Miëko quietly took a few deep breaths and gathered her own thoughts. After two encounters, she thought she was beginning to understand.
When listening to his performance, whether you enjoy the music qua the music or not, you couldn’t help being swept away by your emotions. The emotions his music reached and touched and prodded were emotions buried beneath conscious thought, emotions normally well-hidden.
Hidden in a corner of the mind you try to forget about, somewhere mushy and infantile.
Everyone has this corner—cubby, if you will—somewhere within them.
When you become a professional musician, that cubby becomes a minute little entity. The feeling of music you love, your naïve fondness for music, the sensation of music that made you sit slack-jawed and eyes glazed over at four years old—that is what lies inside the little cubby.
As a musician, you start to build a wall between the music you like and the music that is “great.” The music that is your work, that is salable—as you devote yourself to that more “adult” music, you even forget what the music you loved even sounded like. Meanwhile, you learn, you feel in your marrow just how hard it is to make music that sounds good, that you can be satisfied with. The longer you are active, the hurdles only get higher, and that cubby in your mind—no, your heart—becomes ever holier. You rarely look inside the cubby, and try to forget it’s there.
But Kazama’s music was an unwelcome guest seeking the cubby you’d forgotten was there and wrenching it open and manhandling its precious contents. Your gratitude that someone opened the cubby, your frenzied joy at drinking in its contents, intermingles with the violation you feel at this sacred space being exposed to the world. This is what her rejection of his music in Paris was, she thought.
And Maestro Hoffman had known this all along.
But the audience—the audience which does not hide its cubby, the audience which is not hardened against good or even great music—wouldn’t have stood a chance. With each successive tsunami of music, of emotion and ecstasy, their joy would have reached Pentecostal heights.
Miëko wasn’t sure whether she was satisfied with this explanation, but she remained uncertain how even to begin to judge its artistic merit, how to consider it neutrally.
There was one other odd thing.
This time, her second hearing Kazama, she felt none of her hatred from before. To be honest, she completely fell for it.
Why? she thought. Because I’d read Maestro’s letter? Some new bias?
It was beyond doubt that there was some deeply emotive quality to Kazama’s playing. How could someone create music of such … life?
He was recreating the music with perfect technique, but it was childish and light. There was no sense of his following the music note by note, practicing until perfection. In a word, it didn’t seem like he was trying—maybe this was also creating some of the judges’ sense of opposition?
These days, there is a great deal of emphasis on how well a musician conveys the composer’s will. Studying the score, considering the time period and history, and melding them into a fine performance is the focus of much of today’s music. A performer’s liberal interpretation, liberal performance is less and less well received.
Kazama’s performance indeed has gone beyond study for that liberated sensibility; she would have believed it if she were told he didn’t know the names of the composers. He was playing the music as written, was all. But the performance really was maddeningly perfect. It could only have been developed by a pedagogy older than she, a pedagogy of the past, a pedagogy of the aesthete and Romantic.
“What was Hugh thinking.” She heard Olga mutter from in front of her. With someone as stoic as Olga, Miëko couldn’t tell whether it was a compliment or a rebuke. But it was obvious that Olga too was deep in thought. Registering her gaze, Olga turned around and made a face.
“Interesting. He’s really quite interesting,” Olga murmured as if to herself. She shook her head with an air of daring Miëko to disagree, and then walked away to the judges’ lounge.
* * *
“Aya? Aya, it’s time to go.”
Only when Kanadae bumped her shoulder did she come to her senses.
“Oh my God, you’re right.” Looking at the stage, she saw that the next performer was number 84. It was time to change and go to the practice room.
“Aya, are you OK? Do you want me to go with you?”
Aya looked emptily at Kanadae’s face, wrinkled with worry, and shook her head.
“No, I’ll be fine. Can you just wait here?”
Aya picked up the dress case and stood up. She felt as though she had launched herself upward; she couldn’t figure out where she was.
Right, the competition. I’m competing.
Aya hit her cheeks lightly.
She walked out through the hallways and into the lobby, and she still only heard Kazama’s music echoing in her head. None of her surroundings were registering. She just followed her body to the elevator and toward the practice rooms.
His music would not stop. The Bach, the Mozart, the Islamey flowed and flowed.
It was an utter shock.
A hypersaturated music.
A music filled with joyous life. An oppressive, holy music pouring out from the piano.
He’s loved by the god of music.
Her sense when she heard him that night at the school was no mistake. She realized it was him the moment he stepped onstage. And she was certain from his first note. Her certainty solidified and clotted at the center of her being.
* * *
The last day of the First Round found Aya in weeping despair.
The conversation she had heard in the restrooms would not fade from her memory, and she was unable to focus on her practicing. She felt bloated with anxiety, unable even to run away—she wanted to scream herself into oblivion, but she could only sit with her fear and wait.
Kanadae seemed to think that Aya’s attitude was caused by her nerves. She seemed to be making a conscious effort to treat Aya as usual and took her to see the honeybee prince play.
None of the contestants registered besides Kazama; she felt as though the events happening onstage were on some foreign planet, divorced from any reality she might inhabit.
I’m going to fail in the First Round. Today is my last day. The tale of the genius girl ends today. Ends with a punishingly mundane anticlimax: there is no resurrection; ordinary at twenty; ordinary to vomiting.
Aya nurtured her cold predictions in her heart.
Sorry, Kanadae. Sorry, Maestro Hamazaki.
No apology would suffice for the father-daughter pair. She felt so bad about letting Kanadae down that her bones hurt.
Would they accept me after this? Would they hurt too much to see me? Her heart grew heavier with every thought of their disappointment.
“What a crowd. Behold the honeybee prince’s entourage.”
Kanadae’s comment jolted her out of her nightmarish reverie; she did subconsciously register, she realized, how noisy things were. The whole hall was packed; people lined the walls.
“Do you think the hall is full?”
Aya suspected she was right. She had heard about the contestant of the hour being Japanese, but the crowd’s fierce anticipation was almost frightening. None of it was directed to her, but she felt some bizarre secondhand nervousness for Kazama.
And then he appeared.
She recognized him immediately.
He began to play.
Aya finished changing and followed the signs to the practice rooms.
She heard others repeating their First Round repertoire, almost pathologically, in the other rooms. She reached an empty one and sat down before the grand piano.
Still she only heard Kazama’s music.
Aya closed her eyes and listened. The god of music. The god of music had been there.
It was a mysticism she’d relive over the next two weeks.
What she felt then was from long ago. A scene from childhood. Listening to the pitter-patter on the roof, thrumming the rhythm with her fingertips.
Mom. Maestro Watanuki. Maya.
Each scene of her life with a piano—frighteningly many—overlapped in her mind.
Some new hall, some new piano, unfamiliar conductors and orchestra members.
Every piece she’d ever played flowed through her head.
Yes. There had always been someone inside the piano. Always someone inside those pianos onstage. Someone waiting for her.
Jin Kazama. How happy he looked. Like I used to.
The god was waiting for him. Just like it waited for me.
He was playing with the god. Like I used to.
How nice that had been.
Why did I run away?
Her heart felt heavy. She didn’t want to see the truth.
She opened her eyes to it anyway.
To play with the gods, she had had to give up everything. To reveal everything, to put in everything. She was tired of it. She wanted to play with someone else.
I made the excuse that I loved music. I thought I’d be forgiven because I loved music.
She wanted to cry. Her throat heaved.
I want to play. Like Kazama.
I want to play. Like I used to.
I want to feel that joy again.
Aya sat and did not touch the piano. Some staff members went by, looking for her and then watching with concerned expressions, but Aya never noticed. Only when they banged on her door and called that “the performer preceding you has started” did she stir from the bench.
* * *
The size of the audience swelled again; people lined the sides of the hall once more.
The crowd that had emptied out after Jin Kazama had returned. But the atmosphere couldn’t be more different. Then, some eagerly anticipated fair was about to open; now, people seemed almost to be holding their collective breath and tamping down their nervousness.
Kanadae was feeling their disquieted nervousness as a continuous stinging sensation.
She’d never been this nervous, not even for her own performances. Then, she would know how much she’d practiced and worked and achieved, and, knowing that any more was impossible, threw it all to the wind onstage. But no such comfort came to her in this moment.
The prodigal daughter’s resurrection or second death. A mob had gathered to bear witness.
Kanadae felt herself unable to breathe for a moment. Her heart broke for Aya, who had to stand up to their cool gazes and play her heart out. She sighed and gathered herself.
It’ll be OK. I believe in Aya.
People were still streaming into the hall.
* * *
“Welcome,” Hiroshi Dakubo said. He said it warmly, with admiration.
The girl who had been looking about backstage looked at Dakubo in surprise. She looked lost in thought for a moment, but then emerged from herself and smiled and nodded. Dakubo found himself laughing and nodding with her.
Yes, he had once been her stage manager, long ago, just like this. He even remembered the piece: Ravel’s Concerto in G Major.
He remembered his awe, so intense it had made him tear up standing there in the darkness.
Wow, she’s the real thing, was what he’d thought. He’d seen her return backstage, head high, already a consummate professional.
A different energy had settled over the audience, Dakubo noticed. But the girl’s calmness almost reassured him.
“Now, Miss Eiden, it’s time to go,” Dakubo said as he checked his watch. She quietly stepped out. As he watched her step into the light, her profile was not that of a girl but of a goddess, the same he’d seen all those years ago.
* * *
Wondering why the hall had filled up again, Masaru was listening to the whispers around him, hoping to pick up any rumors or anecdotes.
A girl who used to be called a savant. Toured extensively before thirteen. Quit piano as a result of her mother’s death. Returning to the stage after seven years for the first time today. You could learn a lot just from eavesdropping.
So that’s what this blend of curiosity and spectatorship was about.
There was a heavy, unpleasant energy.
Poor thing. She won’t be allowed to be anything less than excellence.
As he sat in thought, the stage door opened and a small woman appeared. As soon as she appeared, Masaru felt his chest tighten. He couldn’t understand why, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
With her entry, a refreshing breeze seemed to blow through the hall. An applause, welcoming and a little nervous, met her as she strode casually to the piano.
A trim bright blue dress. Short bobcut. Bright, piercing eyes.
He recalled feeling such a gaze, long ago. When he was a child—in Japan.
His heart skipped a beat.
No way, no way.
He tried to calm himself, but his mind immediately went to the old cloth bag in his hotel room.
There are never coincidences like that.
He rejected what his mind was suggesting, but his heart would not leave him alone; it only pulsed faster and more insistently.
Meanwhile, the woman had sat down; the hall was dead silent, maybe literally holding its breath.
Masaru could not take his eyes off her. He stared and stared, trying to absorb everything about her.
But she sat as if alone, staring off into space.
In time, she opened her eyes to a slit, and smiled a bitter, sad smile. And then, as though a switch had flipped within her, she straightened and tossed her hair back, and set her hands on the keyboard, expressionless.
* * *
When she began to play, the whole hall seemed to wake from a doze and lean forward slightly toward the stage.
She’s on another level, was the first thought Akashi Dakashima had.
Oh, to compete. A competition assumed that the people were on some level where they could be measured with the same units.
But this was like racing—not a tortoise and a rabbit, but a tortoise and a rocket.
Ecce homo. Ecce deus, ecce dea.
Akashi felt his own efforts as laughable whims as he listened to Aya Eiden, genius.
* * *
As Nathaniel Silverberg listened to Aya Eiden’s formidable performance, he recalled Hamazaki’s comments to him not long ago.
—There’s a child I want to wake from her nap.
That was what he’d said when he’d asked him for his thoughts on the Japanese contingent at the competition. He didn’t say who, but now it was obvious.
Hamazaki was never one to understate, but this is no child.
He wasn’t sure whether he was angry or in disbelief. She was thoroughly mature—it was like watching Marlon Brando after five days of middle-school theater. A serious music, with impeccable technique perfectly supporting a supple, developed musicality. The technique was unfussy, and the music—hypnotizing.
It was bold. It was creative. It was deeply interesting, especially in the Beethoven. It was singularly hers, inimitable. It felt like a full-fledged recital.
As he listened, he felt a chill on his neck.
Masaru’s rival isn’t Jin Kazama. It’s her.
* * *
The third piece, the Mephisto Waltz, opened smoothly and quietly.
The audience’s curiosity and spectatorship had long dissipated. They were here for nothing but the music. With a single heart and mind, they lent their ears to Aya Eiden’s pure, perfect music.
Kanadae was so moved she almost sniffed. She felt hot at feeling the same awe that she had felt at Aya’s first concert, more than ten years ago.
She’s totally different from Masaru Carlos.
Subtle and dramatic. Elegant and sharp. An excitement that grew and grew like some slow-moving tsunami. A Mephisto Waltz against which there was no emotional defense.
This girl, who had wholly subjugated the piano to her will, almost looked as though she was flying. A goddess soaring into the heavens. The goddess Kanadae knew had been inside Aya was only now showing her true form.
Kanadae blinked rapidly and thought to herself.
Welcome back, Aya. I’m glad you’ve decided to come back.
* * *
The very rear of the hall.
Aisle seat, right side. A worn, wrinkled hat almost completely obscuring the boy’s face.
Amidst the other audience members straining not to miss a note, the boy’s eyes were wide open; his face, blushing red, staring straight at the woman onstage.
* * *
As Aya stood to bow after her performance, generous, warm applause filled the hall. Aya smiled cheekily and tap-tapped offstage.
No one seemed able to speak. The audience members just looked at each other, smiling and, in some cases, weeping. No cheers, no movement. Just an overwhelming roar of applause.
At last, words here and there:
“Hmmm.”
“That was something else.”
“That’s Aya Eiden.”
“Wow.”
Out of the stunned audience, Masaru stumbled into the lobby. He couldn’t recall when he last felt this much excitement. Move, move, move.
It’s her. I know it. It’s my Ajang.
Masaru wanted to cry.
She’s here. She’s really here. I can’t believe it.
He wasn’t sure to whom he was shouting, but he shouted and shouted, She’s here, she’s here, over and over in his head. The lobby was crowded beyond recognition; families and locals seemed to have arrived to await the results. Now he really shouted—his French slipping out, pardon, pardon—as he pressed toward the green room of the concert hall.