A Thousand Perfect Notes

by C. G. Drews

  ‘How many pitiful and starved boys do you bring here?’ Beck says, slightly strangled.

  August spins her plate as if the cake will taste better from a specific angle. ‘Shut up and eat, Keverich.’

  Beck pokes the cake with his fork. It doesn’t look indigestible – but he is used to Joey’s cooking – and it appears to be stuffed with nuts and dried fruit. The drink has a thick creamy froth with cinnamon dusted on top. It smells like … not chocolate or coffee. What is it supposed to be?

  What has he gotten into?

  August has already tucked into her cake with a few moans of deliciousness.

  ‘So,’ he says, forking up cake and staring at it, ‘am I eating Steve?’

  ‘It’s stevia.’ August licks her fork. ‘An alternative for sugar. But don’t say that S word here.’

  Beck’s too hungry. He stuffs the cake in and mumbles, ‘Is there a swear jar in case I need to say – holy shit, what is this amazingness?’

  August tips back her head and laughs.

  Beck abandons the fork and just picks up the cake and takes a mouthful. It’s like fruitcake but also almonds and also small explosions of chocolate and the occasional chewy date. He’s never tasted anything so good and dense.

  ‘I could eat, like, nine pieces,’ he says with his mouth full.

  ‘I knew you’d like it.’

  ‘Actually –’ Beck licks his thumb ‘– you totally doubted.’

  ‘Fine. I did. But I was going to punch you in the face if you didn’t.’

  ‘Really? So you secretly wanted me to hate it so you could live that dream.’

  August puts her elbows on the table and points her spoon at him. ‘You have such bad self esteem, it’s kind of sad but still adorable. The truth is, I tried to bring my friends here and they …’ She sits back in her chair, face clouded. ‘They were pretty rude about it all.’

  ‘That sucks.’ Beck only has half his mind on the fact that August maybe doesn’t fit with her friends like he always thought, and half on the fact his cake is gone. ‘I would never be rude, of course.’

  August snorts, but she slips from her chair and disappears back into the kitchen. She returns with another slab of almond fruitcake, bigger than before.

  Beck remembers to thank her, but then he has to concentrate because a clump of chocolate has melted in the centre and he needs it all in his mouth. Right now. This is so much better than a bite of fluffy sponge cake. This cake glues to his ribs.

  The drink – a dandelion latte, August explains – isn’t as delicious, but he still drinks the entire thing and probably would’ve taken a refill. Or ten. Maybe he did like it? Maybe he likes everything. Maybe this is why August is so happy. Cake! And coffee – well, um, whatever-it-was! On a regular basis!

  ‘It could be a little sweeter, though, don’t you think?’ Beck says – at the wrong time, since Morris walks out of the kitchen to wipe another table.

  The stiff look says he offended Morris.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Beck whispers to August. ‘It’s just the tea had that something-is-dead-in-here vibe, you know?’

  August punches him. ‘You’re uncultured. But we’ll build up slow. Today almond cake, tomorrow turmeric broth and alfalfa patties.’

  ‘I’d very much like to leave now.’

  August disappears to pay and appease the hurt Morris, and returns with a paper bag of biscotti. She shakes it in Beck’s face. ‘For Joey. Now for a leisurely stroll back.’

  Beck is horrified. He totally forgot about Joey. What kind of a horrible brother is he? This dampens his elation over a full stomach down and he settles into an easy walk beside August. He’s not sure what to think of their outing. Not sure what to think of her.

  And maybe he should shut up, accept the cake and the olive branch, accept the insistent kindness. But, as they exit the shopping complex, bypass piles of stolen trolleys in a ditch and stumble on the cracked footpath, he has to ask.

  ‘Why are you really doing this?’ Beck says quietly.

  Please, universe, don’t let her say because you’re pathetic and need a friend or you’re clearly starved and abused so I’m doing my duty. Although what’s left for her to say?

  August doesn’t answer right away, which is good – she’s thinking seriously for once.

  ‘You’re interesting, Beck Keverich, even though you won’t tell me your full name or who hit you.’ She walks on the edge of the gutter, arms out for balance, bag of biscotti crinkling in the wind. ‘You’re kind, but you’re also mean – and that’s confusing. You get super crabby when you’re hungry.’ She flashes a cheeky grin. ‘But I fixed that for now.’

  He considers shoving her into a puddle.

  August sobers. ‘You’re like this overlooked shadow, always in the background, and you make me so curious. And your life obviously isn’t all peach pie and daffodils and I figure that equals a body needing a friend. You’re weird. I’m weird. Why not? Oh.’ She pauses. ‘Nearly forgot. You have freaking beautiful eyes.’

  His throat knots.

  August jumps off the gutter and turns to face him. ‘I don’t have to know. I won’t keep asking. But you know where I live, so if you want a break from –’ she waves vaguely at his face ‘– it, you can come over. Any time.’

  Self-conscious, Beck touches his scabbed lip, his swollen cheek, and drowns in the suffocating knowledge that someone notices.

  And cares.

  The Maestro doesn’t end his unprecedented holiday.

  Beck does.

  For habit? To please her? Because, even though it hurts, he’s addicted?

  Beck plays scales to unravel the stiffness in his fingers, to shake off the week he spent in silence. Then he tackles exercises that go faster and faster like a thousand marbles falling down the stairs. But the pieces? The Bach, the Schumann, the Chopin – every time he tries to play them, the notes blur and he has to scrub knuckles over his scalp in nervous agony. Because he sees –

  the thrum of the audience,

  the molten fury on the Maestro’s face,

  the stagnant silence while he gropes for music,

  the failure, strangling him.

  Even after an hour of irritatingly repetitive scales, his fingers ache for his own music instead of the Maestro’s. But he doesn’t dare let his notes breathe.

  He plays for hours. He forgets cake and freedom and August. It’s better this way.

  He plays until eight and only stops because he hears Joey readying for bed. She shouldn’t have to listen to him pound out B flat scales while she sleeps. Instead, he searches for food – which proves harder than spotting a platypus. It looks like the Maestro had tinned spaghetti, so Beck heats a plastic bowl for himself and scribbles music on the back of an old docket while he eats.

  Only the click of spoon against bowl tells the house he’s alive. He’s there.

  So he daydreams about music – his music – and what it’d be like to have it written out. He mentally adds in a few strings, some brass, and wonders if he could juggle a whole orchestra in his head.

  He wonders if he’d make the Keverich name proud by composing instead of playing.

  As if the Maestro would let him. Ha.

  There is his uncle, famous pianist and composer, but the fact that the Maestro curses and praises him all in one breath – because he can still play music and she can’t? – cements the fact that the Maestro would be furious if Beck started composing. Besides, she never composed, so why would he need to when she demands he follow in her footsteps? Beck can’t even play the études that the Maestro and her brother had perfected with their eyes closed at his age. How dare he write his own music? If he even whispered about dreams of composing, she’d see it as rebellion and descend into a rage.

  She strides into the kitchen then, the room shrinking around her as she fills it with her scowl, her height, her expectations. They haven’t spoken since the contest, haven’t even looked at each other. Beck’s toyed with the idea she might give up on h
im completely and just ignore him – which would be, basically, the best thing ever.

  Without a word, she slaps the kettle on and digs for a mug and a teabag.

  And he hates her for it.

  The Maestro doesn’t act like one who’s been broken in half. She doesn’t cower in a crippled heap or huddle in tearful what ifs.

  But Beck does. And he has the use of both his freaking hands.

  It makes him want to hurl his lukewarm spaghetti, to stand, scream, rage at how he’s treated when he didn’t ask for this, when he didn’t cause the end of her career. The stroke did.

  Beck touches his once-split lip. Remembers.

  The Maestro’s spoon tinkles against the mug as she pours hot water. ‘Have you finished practising?’

  Is that a trick question? Beck spins his empty bowl. ‘Well, Joey’s in bed, so – I don’t want to disturb her.’ Not a yes or a no. Nicely done.

  ‘I have not heard the études yet.’ She reaches for her mug handle but stops, her hand shaking too hard. She rests it on the bench and still doesn’t look at her son.

  As if he’s forgotten the doomed études. But what can he say? Um, no, because I’m not planning to touch them ever again? He’d rather pretend those études never existed, that he’d never sat on that stage and forgotten them.

  She picks up her mug and takes a sip. ‘Geh,’ she says. ‘Go.’

  ‘But, it’s so late …’ Beck trails off.

  Her eyes are flints of steel.

  He abandons his red-stained bowl in the sink and marches to his piano, because, apparently, she will not let this one go. The reprieve was a joke.

  The Maestro follows him. She sets her mug on some old music on top of the piano – Beck notices the red marks on her hand, fresh burns from where she’s spilt hot tea and is too proud to bandage. She nods for him to start.

  Beck pulls out the music, slightly crumpled, from the piano seat. But as soon as he smooths it out, the Maestro snatches it away and tosses it on his bed.

  ‘By memory.’ She stabs a finger at his skull. ‘You know them. You know.’

  ‘I forgot.’

  Her fingers curl into a fist, but the blow doesn’t land.

  Beck flinches. ‘I have forgotten,’ he whispers. ‘I swear, I – I don’t know what happened, I—’

  ‘Play!’ she barks.

  Beck rests his hands on the keys, shifts around a little and frantically tries to remember the notes. But they’re gone. They’re gone – gone – gone—

  She slams her forefinger on the first note, the right note. And it hits him in a rush. Yes. That’s the chord. His fingers find it and press.

  The Maestro’s eyes are hot on his neck. ‘You do not forget music, Junge. It is always in your head.’ She takes the opportunity to stab him with her finger again. ‘But what are you doing? Stopp! Are you a timid lamb?’ Her voice rises.

  Beck retracts his hands from the keys.

  She cuffs the back of his head and he lays his hands back on them.

  ‘Do you play the notes like they’ll bite you, Junge? Or do you play with fire, with passion, like they’re the only important notes in the world? These études are my legacy – will you spit on that?’

  The look in her eyes says she’d like nothing more than to sweep on to the piano herself and play and play and never ever stop. But she hasn’t touched the piano since her hands started shaking. Beck wonders how much she misses it – the lights, the stage, the applause, the people recognising the true talent of a musician whose soul is woven with the piano. Was she happy back then? Was her life thousands of notes knitted with smiles and congratulatory roses clasped in her perfectly poised hands?

  She picked his entire repertoire out of pieces she excelled at. Pieces that made her famous, that she swears will make him famous. She knows them better than her own heartbeat. Which is why she hates when he butchers them. He wishes he didn’t. He wishes, just once, he could play them perfectly for her since she’s had every note she loved snatched away.

  ‘I swear I just forgot,’ Beck says. ‘Please, I’ll relearn it. I just need the music—’

  The smack is harder this time and his neck snaps forward, nearly whacking against the piano.

  Her voice is calm now, calm but bitter. ‘Why do I wish you to play the piano?’

  Another trick question. Beck opens his mouth, but the words have sped away. Because you want to control me? Because you failed so I have to succeed?

  Beck stares intently at the keys.

  The Maestro gives him a shove and somehow, defying physics and the tiny constraints of his room, she slides on to the piano stool next to him. She doesn’t hit him. She sits, rigid and austere, and Beck loses all sense of what’s normal, what’s right, what’s expected. He can barely breathe.

  ‘There is music inside you,’ the Maestro says. ‘Just as there was inside of me.’

  It’s not what he expected.

  ‘My music was taken,’ the Maestro says, stoic, though Beck can see, out of the corner of his eye, how her hands are shaking. ‘You still have yours. Do you squander the gift? Do you ignore it?’

  ‘I don’t,’ he says, not sure if he’s defending himself or making a promise.

  She curls her fingers into a fist to stop the trembles. ‘It means nothing to you, when it should mean everything.’

  It shouldn’t hurt, not after everything, but his eyes feel hot and he wishes she’d just shut up and go away. She’s told him all this, a hundred times.

  How hard would it be to say good job, you can do better because I believe in you?

  ‘I want the best for you, Sohn,’ the Maestro says.

  Please. She wants what’s best for herself.

  The Maestro continues, ‘I want your music, I want you, to mean something in this world. Your uncle comes on tour to our country soon and you will play for him. Amazingly. You will.’

  It’s nearly a nice pep talk. But his uncle? More mountainous expectations for him to fail? Great.

  ‘Play,’ she commands. ‘Play the Chopin. Play it right.’

  So he does.

  It comes back, with hesitating mistakes at first, and then he remembers. The chords wrap around his fingers as he kneads them out of the piano. He tries to play softly, because of Joey, but the Maestro raps her knuckles on his head, so he throws himself into the music.

  Music is nothing unless it fills your soul with colour and passion and dreams.

  But Beck can’t find it, can’t stitch that passion into this music that isn’t his own. He can hit every note right, but what’s the point? She’ll never say well done. She’ll never smile after he masters a difficult run. He plays like a boy trying too hard, with fingers that are tired to the bone.

  Somehow he still wants her face to break into a smile, like it did when he was little, and her chin to tilt back with a tidal wave of laughter as she proclaims her son a prodigy.

  Instead he plays the études.

  Over and

  over.

  And over

  once more.

  The Maestro stands, nods, her foot taps to the music. ‘Play it every day, every single day, until you cannot forget it.’

  ‘Yes, Mutter,’ Beck says, beaten.

  Is this punishment for having a friend? For finally doing something instead of wishing?

  These eighty-eight keys are part of him, but do they have to be his whole life?

  His jaw tightens until he thinks it’ll break off – and his fingers crash the étude finale. He looks at her, fiery and defiant for half a second, daring her to point out the wrong notes. Daring her to say he’s worthless.

  The Maestro’s eyes are sad or wistful – or dead. He can’t tell. ‘You could be something, Schwachkopf. You could be.’

  But he’s not, is he?

  Is

  he?

  She leaves without saying he played badly.

  There’s no torture like a song on repeat.

  Beck can’t shake the étude, can’t shake the we
ariness after playing half the night, can’t shake the feeling that the Maestro has been different – weird – since she said he could be something. He doesn’t know what it means.

  Does it mean anything?

  Ugh, he’s tired.

  But, congratulations to the universe, the Chopin is burned in his brain so fiercely that he wishes he could slam his head against a wall to quiet it.

  Instead, he goes to school.

  It’s been weeks since the cake escapade, but Beck still gets a pang when he sees August – what is it? Nerves? Anticipation? He knots up, hunches his shoulders and can’t think of anything to say. Until she gets talking. Until he defrosts. Until they find their pocket of comfortableness to stroll in.

  It’s wet and cold when Beck and Joey exit the house for school. Joey wears a bright red raincoat and basically looks like a hazard sign. Beck has an oversized hoodie, but it’s hardly waterproof. And August, as usual, is entirely underdressed. She has on shoes, at least, with knee-high neon striped socks, but no jumper. Her flesh is a ripple of goosebumps as they walk in the misting rain.

  ‘I’m gonna jump in puddles!’ Joey warns and then dashes a few paces ahead.

  ‘You’ll get wet—’ Beck says, but Joey just swears at him in German and pounds the footpath. Oh, forget it. The preschool teacher can figure out what to do with a soaked five-year-old.

  ‘I finished the paper.’ August pats her satchel. ‘It’s downright inspired.’

  ‘What if they know I did nothing?’

  ‘You’ll get detention. Or expelled. And you kind of deserve both, but –’ she wiggles her eyebrows ‘– I am, fortunately, super nice. I wrote your section with my left hand so it looks crappy enough to pass for you.’

  ‘You are nice.’

  ‘“You” –’ August wraps it in air quotes ‘– are a horrific writer compared to my eloquent soliloquy. But I had to make myself look good. No offence.’

  Beck shrugs.

  ‘You say a few dumb things,’ August adds. ‘But I’m not here to make you look intelligent. I’m not a miracle worker.’

  ‘I can live with that.’

  ‘You do have a fanboy moment.’ Her grin is evil. ‘It’s hilarious. You misuse the word incredulous, but your gist is that you adore this hardcore rock band. Who’d have thought quiet ol’ Beck could be so passionate about music?’