The Ghost Sonata

by Allison, Jennifer

  Julian strolled onstage confidently and adjusted the height of the piano bench. “You going to turn my pages?” He spoke in a loud whisper, which somehow made the phrase “turn my pages” sound flirtatious.

  Something warm stirred in Gilda’s stomach—something that felt like hope. She tried to squelch the feeling. “It’s my job,” she replied with a casual shrug.

  “My lucky day.”

  Gilda let out a giggle that sounded more like a snort, and immediately wished she had remained silent.

  Julian squinted at the piano music. “Looks bloody difficult,” he said to the judges.

  “It is bloody difficult,” Professor Waldgrave replied.

  The audience laughed.

  “Please begin, performer number ten,” said Professor Waldgrave, clearly agitated by the swell of chuckling throughout the performance hall.

  Gilda glanced up into the benches and saw that the audience had increased, as if people had made a special effort to see Julian’s performance in particular.

  Julian was in his element. Everyone likes him, and he likes everyone, Gilda thought. For some reason, the thought made her feel vaguely sad, as if she had lost something.

  Julian launched into the music, playing with greater speed than anyone before him. Parts of the composition sounded completely different than anything Gilda had heard that morning, and as she watched his well-developed hands move over the keyboard, she had a dual urge to kiss the back of Julian’s neck and give him a stinging flick with her fingernail. A moment later, Gilda found herself merely listening to his performance instead of following the music notation.

  “OH, PAGE-TURNER!”

  With horror, Gilda realized that Julian was looking directly at her as his hands continued to move across the keyboard.

  She had completely missed the page turn. Gilda jumped to her feet and lurched toward the music. She turned the page with a great flourish, but her giant cocktail ring caught on the music book and the entire book of music toppled to the floor.

  First, the audience gasped. Then giggles erupted through the hall as Julian launched into a corny boogie-woogie version of the dissonant, modern music he had been playing a moment before.

  Red-faced, Gilda picked up the music, located the correct page, and placed it back on the music stand in front of Julian, who shouted a sardonic “Thank you!” then quickly found his way back into the score.

  Gilda did her best to look mildly amused, as if she and Julian had purposefully planned this little slapstick comedy together, but she felt mortified. She glanced at the judges: Professor Maddox gazed at Julian with something close to adoration while Professor Waldgrave sat with his eyes closed and fingertips perched on his temples. It was hard to tell whether he was listening to the music with a special intensity or struggling to suppress a burgeoning headache.

  Enthusiastic applause greeted the end of Julian’s performance, but Gilda noticed that Waldgrave’s cat slunk under the judges’ table.

  “Sorry about that,” Gilda whispered as Julian stood up to take a bow. Miffed as she felt, she hadn’t actually set out to completely botch Julian’s performance.

  “I was making up half of that rot by the time we got to the page turn anyway.”

  “Have fun on your date with Jenny Pickles, then,” Gilda blurted. She immediately regretted the jealous comment.

  “Sorr y?”

  “Off the stage, please!” shouted Professor Waldgrave.

  “Just leaving.”

  “The little red-haired girl,” said Gilda, feeling strangely out of control. “I bet you didn’t know her last name was Pickles!”

  “Page-turner, do you have a problem?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Your job is to turn pages, not to chat up the competitors.”

  Giggles surfaced from a few scruffy-looking college students in the audience, and Gilda glared in their direction as Julian retreated backstage, presumably to go on his sightseeing date with Jenny.

  Now that the novelty and sheer terror of sitting onstage and turning pages had worn off, Gilda sensed a tedium setting in. She faced several more hours of sitting in the same chair, turning pages for the same piece of music, and imagining what might be going on between Jenny and Julian.

  27

  The Stranger

  Wendy walked down St. Aldate’s Street hugging her arms to her chest. The sparkling hoarfrost had melted, but the afternoon was still cold as she walked under a pallid sun. Wendy was used to cold weather in Michigan, but there was something about the dampness of England—the drafts of cold air that slipped under her clothes and seeped under her skin, down into her bones; the sheets of low clouds that looked as if they might fall to the ground at any moment. It was somehow harder to bear than the subzero chills she often withstood back at home.

  On the bright side, Wendy was relieved that she had redeemed herself in the sight-reading competition that morning, and doubly relieved that Gilda had somehow managed to turn pages despite her lack of experience, not to mention the cumbersome white gloves and giant cocktail ring. For once, the haunting melody in A minor had not slipped into her mind at the worst possible moment, and she had been able to concentrate as she performed.

  Still, Wendy felt a taut, grainy sort of weariness; she hadn’t had a single night of good sleep since she had first arrived in England, and it didn’t help that she kept waking up to strains of piano music that evaporated as soon as she climbed out of bed to peer into the hallway or look out the window.

  Her head ached as she recalled the bizarre event of the morning—the number nine mysteriously etched in the frost on her windowpane. Wendy had stared at that nine for a very long time, feeling an inert sort of panic, almost as if something had paralyzed her. Then—just before Gilda entered the room—she had sensed something trying to speak.

  Leave me alone, she had replied. Go away.

  Wendy stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, realizing that she was walking in the wrong direction—toward Wyntle House and the Jericho neighborhood instead of the Music Building. What is my deal? Wendy thought. It’s not like I don’t know how to get to the Music Building.

  Maybe you don’t want to get there, something in her head replied. She remembered the eerie sound of the voice she had picked up on the tape recorder and felt a coldness in her chest—a feeling of dread. Maybe I’m afraid to go to the practice rooms, she thought.

  But there was no choice; she had to go. Mrs. Mendelovich wanted to review Wendy’s entire performance program just in case Wendy made it to the next round of the competition. You have to go to your lesson, and you can’t be late, Wendy told herself sternly. She took a deep breath, turned around, and hurried back toward the Music Building, bracing herself against the cold.

  When Wendy arrived at the Music Faculty Building, she found Mrs. Mendelovich chatting enthusiastically with a gray-haired Oxford don who seemed to be edging toward the exit as he listened to Mrs. Mendelovich speak. “I have three students in the competition!” Mrs. Mendelovich declared. “All have good chance of winning.”

  “You must be very proud,” said the professor politely, sounding unconvinced.

  “And here is Windy now!”

  The professor took the opportunity to scoot out the door hastily as Mrs. Mendelovich greeted Wendy the way she always did before a lesson—with a broad smile and outstretched arms ready to seize Wendy in a hug. She’s proud of me again, Wendy thought. Still, there was something stiff and false about her teacher’s smile; something in their relationship had changed.

  “Windy! Good to see you! Brava for your playing today!”

  “Thanks.” For some reason, Wendy always spoke in monosyllables or small, quiet sentences when she was around her teacher. Despite her tiny physique, Mrs. Mendelovich had a charismatic presence that filled the entire room, and Wendy sometimes felt as if her teacher’s big personality were drowning out her own.

  “I convinced them to give us the recital room!” Mrs. Mendelovich led Wendy to
a room stuffed with music stands, rows of folding chairs, and some percussion instruments. “They do master classes in here with some very great musicians, and this is the best piano in whole building.”

  “Now!” Mrs. Mendelovich sat down in the front row and crossed her slim, stocking-clad legs. “I am the audience. I want for you to walk onstage and play through whole pearformance—beginning to end.”

  Adrenaline surged through Wendy’s body. She sensed a test: if you can do it now, you can do it later. Show me that you can still play this music perfectly.

  “But Mrs. Mendelovich,” Wendy ventured, “do you really think there’s much chance I’ll make it into the finals? I mean, my first performance wasn’t my best.”

  “Always pleepare as if you weell play in finals. See yourself playing in the Sheldonian Theater for big audience on that final night.”

  Wendy hadn’t even peeked inside the Sheldonian Theater yet, so the only thing she could picture were the sculpted stone heads that surrounded its exterior. She imagined the heads staring down at her as she played the piano.

  “And Wendy—one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Stay in the moment. As Professor Waldgrave says—‘Leesten to yourself.’ If your mind is only in this moment, you never get lost. In a pearformance, there is no past or future—just one moment. Now. The plresent.”

  Wendy nodded, but she felt the need to explain something about her problem to her teacher. “Mrs. Mendelovich—what if something keeps interrupting your thoughts so you can’t stay in the moment? Maybe something from the past that doesn’t belong there?”

  Mrs. Mendelovich stood up and scanned Wendy’s face quizzically with her kohl-rimmed eyes, as if she might be able to see the stray thought written on Wendy’s skin. “Tell it to go away,” said Mrs. Mendelovich. “Say, ‘Leave me alone. I’m busy now.’”

  “But I’ve already—”

  “Okay? Yes. Okay!” Mrs. Mendelovich clapped her hands impatiently. “Let’s begin!”

  Wendy sat down at the piano dutifully.

  “No, no! I want to see you walk onstage.”

  Wendy walked to the side of the room. She closed her eyes and tried to send a message to the ghost—or whatever it was that was haunting her. Whoever you are, please let me just play my music, okay? I’ll play through the A minor thing later—as many times as you want. Just please let me get through this music right now.

  She took a deep breath and walked toward the piano.

  “Shoulders back!” yelled Mrs. Mendelovich. “Posture! Approach the piano with mastery! No, no, no, no, no. Tlry again!” Mrs. Mendelovich made Wendy walk toward the piano three more times before she was satisfied enough to let her actually play.

  Several minutes later, Wendy concluded her performance and looked up at her teacher. She felt relieved: she hadn’t gotten lost. The phantom melody had not interrupted her thoughts, and she actually felt confident that she had played well.

  So why was Mrs. Mendelovich staring at her with an expression of quiet alarm?

  “You sound different,” said Mrs. Mendelovich, a note of accusation in her voice. She seemed to be considering the possibility that Wendy might be an alien in human disguise.

  “Different?”

  Mrs. Mendelovich hesitated. “I think eet was good,” she said crisply. “But all the work we did—the shading, the dynamics, even your technique—was all so different. If I heard you from outside this room, I would think someone else’s student is playing.”

  “Maybe—it might be better this way?” All Wendy knew was that it had felt better.

  “Take the Bach. You almost sound as if you are playing Chopin—all those liberties in your timing and too much pedal!”

  Mrs. Mendelovich viewed her students as receptacles for the greater artistic insights of their more experienced teachers. She shaped the color of their music, dictating each pianissimo and forte as if guiding a young visual artist through a paint-by-number set. The fact that one of her prize students now seemed to willfully forget every lesson she had learned was bewildering. Wendy’s transformation was also unnerving—even frightening—because the truth was that the music had sounded very accomplished. It was simply not Mrs. Mendelovich’s interpretation, nor did it sound as if it were Wendy’s. Mrs. Mendelovich felt chilled—as if an invisible imposter had slipped into the room.

  “Wendy, have you been seeking lessons with another teacher?”

  The question baffled Wendy. “Of course not.”

  “You’re sure? Lots of teachers here for the competition.”

  “My parents can’t afford another teacher.”

  Mrs. Mendelovich nodded. “If we still had several months to work, we would take these pieces apart measure by measure and start from the beginning. But it might confuse you if we did that now.” She fell silent for a moment. “I think we should stop.”

  There was a finality to the word stop that alarmed Wendy. Was her teacher giving up on her completely?

  Once again, she knew she had disappointed Mrs. Mendelovich, but this time, Wendy had no idea how it had happened or why her playing sounded so different. Maybe something is terribly wrong with me, Wendy thought. She felt the need to at least try to explain herself. “Mrs. Mendelovich,” Wendy ventured, “maybe I have culture shock.”

  “Why would you have culture shock?”

  “Well, I’m in a foreign country where I’ve never been before, and I’ve just been feeling kind of odd.” Wendy remembered her mother describing an experience of culture shock after first arriving in America—how she hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, how she had cried for home, how her stomach had ached and strangest of all, her hair had mysteriously turned wavy.

  “As musicians, we are world travelers,” said Mrs. Mendelovich. “Music is international language, and when you’re among fellow musicians—no culture shock.”

  If only that were true, Wendy thought. It seemed there was nothing more to say. The piano lesson was apparently over, and Wendy felt even more alone than before.

  28

  The Alice Trail

  Scribbling in her journal as she made her way up St. Aldate’s Street, Gilda glanced up and found herself in front of a little store called Alice’s Shop. She remembered reading about this shop in an Oxford guidebook, and was eager to explore it after discovering the copy of Alice in Wonderland in her room.

  Inside the tiny, dim shop, a clerk with dyed fuchsia hair sat at a cash register eating a sandwich. Gilda browsed through editions of Alice in Wonderland and an assortment of refrigerator magnets, tea cozies, tea towels, thimbles, postcards, lollipops, and Christmas ornaments shaped like Cheshire cats and white rabbits. Remembering that she needed to find some souvenirs for her mother and Stephen, she selected a grumpy-looking Queen of Hearts refrigerator magnet for her mother and a Tweedledum paperweight for her brother.

  “I like your hat.”

  Gilda glanced up and realized the pink-haired clerk was watching her. “Oh, thanks.” She had forgotten that she was still dressed in her “tainted royalty” outfit.

  “You’re an Alice fan?” the clerk asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Well done! I’ve noticed we don’t get as many kids reading Alice these days. Some of them think it’s too odd.”

  “It’s just weird enough for me.”

  “American, are you?” She didn’t wait for Gilda to reply. “If you have enough time during your visit, you’ll want to follow the Alice Trail to discover some of the book’s secrets. Here—this pamphlet has a map you can follow.”

  Gilda flipped through the pamphlet, skimming a description of how Alice in Wonderland was based on the bizarre dream of a real little girl named Alice Liddell, whose family had lived in Oxford. She read about the summer afternoon when Alice Liddell and the book’s author, Lewis Carroll, took a boat ride down the Thames, and how the Oxford landmarks they visited were woven into the whimsical, dreamlike story.

  “Only three quid for the book,” said the
clerk, suddenly sounding impatient, as if she expected Gilda to actually buy the booklet instead of merely reading it in the shop.

  Gilda searched through her bag and located a ten-pound note to pay for the little book, the refrigerator magnet, and the paperweight, half-wondering if she really wanted any of these things.

  “Now, you might be interested to know that some people—and not just kids, mind you—think that somewhere along the Alice Trail there’s a real entrance to Wonderland.” The woman nonchalantly punched numbers into the cash register as she spoke.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Gilda assumed the clerk must be joking, but it was impossible to be sure from her humorless facial expression.

  “Well, there is something interesting about the way so many writers who lived in Oxford describe magical worlds and parallel universes that have secret entranceways,” said the pink-haired woman, handing Gilda her receipt. “Take the Narnia books, for example. One can’t help thinking there might be something about Oxford that’s special.”

  Gilda had to admit she had an intriguing point. Still, it was pretty wacky to hear an adult talking about “magical worlds” as if they might actually exist in real life. Maybe this woman had become delusional after spending too much time alone in Alice’s Shop.

  “I just work here part-time,” the woman explained, as if answering Gilda’s thoughts. “I’m doing graduate work in math at Christ Church College—the same place where Lewis Carroll was a mathematician. I’m studying a theory that parallel universes may really exist,” she added.

  Gilda now wondered if the clerk was completely loony. “I didn’t know math could be so unusual,” she said politely. Math at school always seemed to involve tedious questions about stuffing apples in lunch bags and how many kids could fit into different carpool vans.