10: Feux Follets
A cool wind blew off the stage into the hall.
The excitement left over from Jin Kazama’s performance was still in the hall when a girl wearing a green dress strode onstage. In that moment, one could see the audience gathering itself: right, there’s still another performer, and Aya Eiden at that.
The moment she came out, in fact, all the energy and emotion from the previous performance—not dissipated, but collected itself, settled into a lower orbital to await what Aya Eiden would do.
The audience must have realized: there is something different about this girl. A holy (or unholy) pulsation emanating from her.
Ajang, are you floating?
So softly and smoothly did she walk to the piano that, with the length of her dress, she truly did give the impression of hovering above the ground. Masaru watched, slack-jawed.
With the quieting of the applause came the excitement. The audience collectively sat up straighter.
Aya seemed to collapse onto the bench and stared out into the null space in front of her.
Again, Masaru remembered. She had done the same in her First Round performance. Slightly above eye level.
Aya, what are you looking at?
Can you point it out to me?
And then Masaru had a sense.
It’s not a what, it’s a who.
There’s someone there. Someone she’s looking for. Someone she wants to perform her. That person is listening there.
Aya, as when she sat before she began her First Round performance, seemed to focus on something—find something in the null space, in the empty set.
She put her hands on the keys. And simultaneously, something heavy fell, thud, on the stage. It was an E-flat.
The Rachmaninoff Étude-Tableau in E-flat Minor, Appassionato, had begun.
Masaru felt chills all over.
She had evolved, seemingly overnight.
He remembered her saying that “it was fun” earlier in the day.
No doubt she had been continuously evolving while listening to Jin Kazama. And now she’s pushed out his lively performance with a single note. His entire performance had become her launchpad, something she was using to make her performance even more powerful and memorable.
See her face, full of confidence. Hear her music, overwhelming and magisterial.
She was going to do something incredible.
* * *
It was an overwhelming amount of data, Akashi felt.
Her Rachmaninoff was overpowering. “Data” was an odd way of talking about music, but here it felt right. One way to rank musicians was by their sheer sonic data output.
Amateur musicians’ data was full of noise, the signal murky in the muck if it was there at all. Lots of silt, lots of babble. Maybe a foot of visibility. But a professional’s music was a clear reef: perfect visibility, and what did you see? An ocean of life. Aya’s music was vibrant, clearly etched, impossible to take in all at once.
Listening to her, one got the sense of looking up at some higher-dimensional being. Some deity was using her to perform.
Such analogies came to mind as Akashi tried to comprehend her playing.
After the first piece, Aya’s focus remained steady. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then began the next piece. The audience knew not to attempt applause between her pieces, but Aya surprised them with the suddenness and vigor of her start.
The second piece: “Feux Follets,” from Liszt’s Transcendental Études.
“Feux Follets” refers to the curious phenomenon of ghostly, spritely lights seen above swamps and oceans, thought to be the work of demons luring horses and people into the earth, never to be seen again.
As the title suggests, the music evokes the dance of the flames bewitching their helpless victims, and also the demons dancing around their newest prey. It’s known as the hardest of the twelve Transcendental Études, nearly impossible to play and downright impossible to make convincing.
The grand, oppressive Rachmaninoff was contrasted by the scampering upward scale that opened “Feux Follets.” Her fingers seemed guided by a laser. The shadings of musical color, through dynamics and phrasing and tempo, were just as speckled and brilliant as the ethereal flames of the title.
I see the flames. They’re coming off the goddamn keys.
A pale white flame indeed seemed to pulse off the keys. So many tiny flames sparking and flying and floating and dissipating. Jin Kazama’s immersiveness was impressive, but Aya Eiden’s sheer precision was unfathomable in its own way.
Those who can create a big sound, he once heard from a peer, know how from the very beginning. And those who can’t, no matter how much they practice, never will.
Much different from “loud,” or, God forbid, “noisy.” The “noisy” evoke jackhammers or sirens. A “big” sound hits you in the stomach; you wonder where from the nether regions of the piano it had been stored before being released: thud.
With the last note, the last of the flames too dissipated. The hall fell into a smothering silence.
Aya had closed her eyes again. She sat. No one stirred.
Next: Spring and Havoc.
Akashi swallowed.
* * *
Up until Aya finished “Feux Follets,” she had absolutely no idea how she would play her cadenza. She still had Jin Kazama’s Havoc coursing through her insides; something else within her was trying to shed Jin’s cadenza from itself and desperately searching for something. That something—searching for something—it didn’t know what it was searching for—she felt unsettled, confused, lost.
She didn’t hear anything around her. Normally, she slightly dissociated when she played; she could look around her while remaining fully focused on the music: fully present and fully observant. But now, the part of her self that would wander at will while she played was now searching for something oiled over, drowned out by Jin Kazama’s cadenza.
And when she finally came to her senses, her fingers had just played the opening chord of Spring and Havoc.
The void.
Aya looked out over the piano again. The stage disappeared; a chilly darkness opened up. Under her feet, a swirling green spread; she could feel damp grass on her heels and sharp pebbles digging into the soles of her feet.
A wind blew from somewhere; it sailed through her hair and lifted her dress.
Who’s there?
Someone was behind her.
A ways behind her, someone was watching her. Watching over her. Warm, but also a little scary. With a mysterious aura.
Who?
A harsh, cold light shone on her back. She was certain there was someone behind her.
She became afraid. She felt sweat, real sweat, roll down her back.
Someone she had been close to, someone she missed and craved. But someone who was now far away, infinitely far away—someone who had become someone else.
Her fingers were playing Spring and Havoc. A little sad, but playful.
The cadenza drew closer.
“Freely, while feeling the void.”
Then what am I feeling now? This presence behind me?
The light grew brighter, as if the presence was asserting itself. The glare alone hurt. And then the light began to drift upward; it became a spotlight.
Aya felt as though she was being pulled up, slowly but inexorably. This was no normal dissociation—she couldn’t think about playing if she tried.
The piano’s growing farther. The keys, they’re so far away.
Aya saw her hands on the piano; her arms lengthened and stretched, so that she floated while her hands played. She felt the pressure of the keys on her fingertips, but she felt as though she couldn’t control them at all. She had no control over the sound of the piano.
What the hell is happening?
As she drifted through this fantasy, she looked up.
* * *
Mama.
* * *
The moment she thought the word, the light extinguished itself, and she fell back to the piano.
Her mind went blank; somehow, her hands were still playing. The air beyond the piano was no longer null space; her vision was probably just going a little fuzzy, but something seemed to shimmer just beyond the piano.
—Aya, did you only just now realize? Now, now.
She thought she heard a voice. No, it came to her, telepathically if anything.
Aya couldn’t believe herself either.
How did I not know? This presence, the presence that was warmer and closer than anything and anyone else; the presence that watched over me and protected me. The presence that, one day, wasn’t there. Mama.
—Not “wasn’t there,” my girl. I’ve always been here, looking out for you. Supporting you. You just had to look.
I’m sorry, mama.
She felt her cheeks redden; she felt herself get hot.
The liminal moment. The sixteenth rest before the cadenza—she’d never understood why it was there before. A minute sixteenth rest before a full stave of darkness: what was one supposed to do with that?
But that was all she needed to gather herself. She released the pedal for a moment, and then played the first note of her cadenza.
* * *
What’s happening?
Kanadae felt uncertain, queasy as she listened to Aya’s performance.
Where did this cadenza come from? She’s never played it like this.
Are those tears? Sweat?
Aya’s face seemed damp. But her expression hadn’t once changed. Her eyes remained nearly closed.
So this is what she was going for.
Kanadae listened. It was hefty, solid, full. Grand. Dense. A different touch than Aya had shown. Not a big sound per se, but more an anchoring sound: a pedal tone. Something that undergirded everything. Something primal.
Mother Nature.
The notion came out of nowhere.
The endless expanse of earth. Children sprinting through vast fields. And someone waiting at the far end, arms wide open.
The vast earth, home to all life.
Kanadae felt as though she saw a brilliant savannah unfurl before her. The grass, the wind, dirt. A smoky woodiness—the promise of dinner before long.
An inexpressible contentment. Comfort. A peacefulness only a child could feel.
Oh, Aya.
Kanadae understood. Aya had heard the despairing Havoc in Jin’s cadenza, and answered for it, word for word. In his void, her earth. In his darkness, her light. In his death, her life. In his Havoc, her Spring.
* * *
She really is something.
Jin Kazama listened from the very rear of the hall, sitting criss-cross on the ground, watching Aya through the gaps in the standing audience.
I’m jealous. She looks so happy.
Jin felt a warm breeze come off the stage. He thought he saw what she saw. Green fields, bright sunlight.
You can fly from there, right? Fly up? Go! Go!
Jin closed his eyes and flew with her.
* * *
I suppose this is why they call it a resurrection.
Miëko listened with empathy and satisfaction to the girl onstage.
She knew of Aya Eiden’s story secondhand. Genius girl abruptly leaves the stage after the death of her mother. She distinctly remembered a sense of loss when Aya disappeared.
But she also knew how terrifying it was to stand atop the world at her age. Chased by tour engagements, deadened by the solitude, despairing at the fact that it would never end, crushed by the label “genius.”
But you’re back. And not a lap behind—a lap ahead.
Aya’s cadenza wasn’t just mature, or brilliant, or expressive. It contained her entire life.
Masaru’s and Jin’s cadenzas were extremes of expression, but Miëko knew that extremes are in some ways easier to express. The prosaic, the everyday, the quotidian—capturing it, feeling it, appreciating it—now that took a lifetime.
She’s giving your horse a run for your money.
Miëko glanced over at Nathaniel. He wasn’t smiling.
* * *
The second half.
Aya’s concentration didn’t waver. The audience was ready. She began her next piece.
Ravel’s Sonatine.
Aya calmly played the piece in three movements, a piece dignified in a classical, rococo way.
It’s a good piece. And her performance makes me want to keep listening, and keep listening.
Nathaniel Silverberg had made a mark on his paper a while back; now, he was just enjoying her performance along with the rest of the audience.
Seems as though she’ll make it to the last round. The competition starts now.
Even coldly, analytically comparing Aya and Masaru, he could not factor in the existence of Jin Kazama. What would his fellow judges think? How would they rank them? What are they thinking about?
He was better aware than most regarding the contradictions of competitions. It’s not as though he’d been around them for only a day or two. And he’d been through a lot, as have his pupils. But this much he knew: Aya Eiden, Masaru Carlos Levi Anatol, and Jin Kazama would define the rest of the competition.
* * *
And so even Aya’s final piece began without any interrupting applause: Mendelssohn, Variations Sérieuses.
It begins quietly. Gentle waves wash in, and then out. The waves grow; the waves roar. The theme rings and rings. The variations cascade like a fierce ocean against a cliff.
Ajang, you embody “dramatic.”
Masaru, who had long ago given himself over to Ajang, smiled.
Just as plenty can read aloud from a script, plenty can play the notes of a dramatic piece—but few, in actuality, convince you of the drama, make you believe the drama has real-world implications, winners and losers and lovers and mourners.
He felt betrayed by Aya as he listened. To be frank, he had expected a continuation of her Rachmaninoff and Liszt—technical wizardry to rival Jin’s. He was sure she could have, if she had wanted to. But her cadenza was graceful and warm and full of love. She can still surprise.
And he also realized that her cadenza was a reply, if not a rebuke, of Jin’s.
Aya truly was changing before his very eyes. She, he thought, was the only one who had truly played freely, while feeling the void.
Does she worry about the results? Does she have any ambition? Does she want to be a pianist? With such talent, is it acceptable to want anything else?
Masaru closed his eyes.
Is it acceptable when you can bring forth such emotions, when you have the power to hypnotize an audience en masse?
Crashing octaves finished out the piece, and the recital, and the Second Round.
And what a finish.
Masaru felt a sudden sense of ecstatic freedom; it seemed as though a light had suddenly flooded the hall.
The hypnosis had been lifted. He opened his eyes.
Aya, who had had her eyes barely open for the past forty minutes, finally opened them wide. She smiled and bowed.
Huge applause, even bigger than that for Jin. Sheer howling; people everywhere leaping up and down.
Masaru and Kanadae looked at each other as though they had shared a fever dream. They laughed, wiped at their eyes, and clapped loudly.
The applause didn’t stop.
Aya went backstage, and then came out again. She bowed and bowed. She seemed embarrassed.
The Second Round was over. Results would be out soon.