THE GIRL WITH THE GERMAN PIANO
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE AND THE SHADOW OF THE SERPENT
Sergio Luiz Pereira
Editing:
Chantal Brissac and Désirée Brissac Pereira
Translation:
Lynne Reay Pereira
Revision:
Stela Maris Fazio Battaglia
Illustrations and Cover:
Tabatha Romão
Contact the author:
[email protected]
Copyright 2020 by Sergio Luiz Pereira
No part of this book can be used or reproduced by any means without the author’s written authorisation
ISBN - 9798648231528
THE GIRL WITH THE GERMAN PIANO
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE AND THE SHADOW OF THE SERPENT
Sergio Luiz Pereira
Translation
Lynne Reay Pereira
Illustrations and Cover
Tabatha Romão
TALE III
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE AND THE SHADOW OF THE SERPENT
Dedicated to music
Contents
CHAP I SUNNY SUNDAY
CHAP II THE BEACH AFTER THE NOW
CAP III DREAMS THAT WENT TO SEA
CAP IV SYMPHONIC SEA
CAP V TRAILS OF DESTINY
CAP VI THE DESTINY OF THE TRAILS
CAP VII THE STAGE OF THE DANSE MACABRE
CAP VIII THE ARGUMENTS
CAP IX THE DANCING SCORES GAME
CAP X THE CONSECRATION OF WHAT WOULD COME LATER
CAP XI THE KINGDOM OF THE IMPRISONED OPERAS
CAP XII LOST HOPE
CAP XIII THE CURRENT OF CHOICES
CAP XIV MEDUSA’S EYE AND HONOUR
CAP XV THE MISSION
CAP XVI WINGS OF FREEDOM
CAP XVII THE EYE OF TIME I
CAP XVIII THE TWLIGHT OF THE FAIRY QUEENS
CAP XIX THEN TWLIGHT SYMPHONY
CAP XX THE EPILOGUE OF A KINGDOM
CAP XXI STEPS OF FIRE
CAP XXII THE EYE OF TIME II
CAP XXIII SYMPHONY OF LIGHT
CAP XXIV THE BALLERINA’S AWAKENING AND CURE
CAP XXV THE CONSECRATION OF THE SEVEN MOONS
CAP XXVI THE BEACH BEFORE THE NOW
CAP XXVII NOTHING IS FOREVER, BUT LOVE IS
CAP XXVIII REBIRTH AND DAWN
Preface
Dear reader
Are you ready for another adventure with Violet? Our Girl with the German Piano is back in the Kingdom of the Seven Moons, taken to dark, gloomy caves and chambers where sadness reigns. Being our beloved Violet, she quickly makes new friends and is reunited with old ones, but has to face old, powerful enemies, who hate to lose and will stop at nothing to get what they want. Our plucky heroine is now thirteen, on the verge of becoming a young woman, but you will happy to learn that she has lost none of her insatiable curiosity and still wants to save the world and everyone in it. And how can she fail with the Maestro and music on her side, this time helped along by dance? Sergio Luiz Pereira has given us another volume packed with scientific, mythological and philosophical information, glorious music, thrilling adventures, a tearful farewell to the German Piano and a sprinkling of magic and monsters. And once again he shows us the healing, universal power of music and love in our connected worlds. That universe brought Sergio and me together. It has been my pleasure to translate these adventures and I do hope you experience the same pleasure reading them. Viva Violet!
Lynne Reay Pereira
CHAPTER I
Sunny Sunday
- Let’s get going! We’re running out of time!
- Hold on. I’m closing the piano lid.
- I’m out of here. Last one to leave won’t be cycling...!
- Wait for me. You’re more of a kid than I am. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Violet went as fast as she could. She was carrying her helmet in her left hand, with gloves in her right. Her foot was half-out of her right sneaker. But she didn’t want to be left behind. It was all a joke, but she liked to pretend to herself and to her father that they were on a great adventure where time was always against them, forcing them to hurry.
She reached the outer lift door seconds before the inner one closed.
- Ahhh! There’s no escape! I’ve caught you!
He laughed, while the lift cavity walls seemed to be moving upwards, when really, it was the lift that was going down. Once in the building garage, they ran over to their parking space. Apart from the car itself, three bicycles stood there.
- Drat, what a pity mum isn’t coming today.
- She has to look after your grandma, remember.
- Dad, why do people get old one day? Why do many of them get ill?
- It’s part of life, my love. Everything’s a great cycle.
- I don’t want you and mum to get old. I mean, ill.
- Thanks very much. Life’s precious. Each person writes their own story. The important thing is to strive to be happy and make others happy as much as possible. As for the future, that belongs to God.
She gave him a hug. She wished the fountain of youth could be given to everyone in the world. But with the wisdom of her thirteen years, she knew that was impossible and not such a good thing, either. She had no doubt that life always required us to forge ahead, like a river.
That life which followed its own rhythm for her. The first signs of adolescence had made themselves known some time before. Even so, her appearance continued to be predominantly that of a child, for the aurora of the woman she would one day come to be had not yet spread its rays like a new morning through her little girl’s body. If infancy was the early hours and youth the morning, then Violet’s clock was at five am.
But none of this mattered at that moment. All she and her father wanted was to pedal and pedal. After praying for protection, they set off in the direction of the petrol station to put air in their tyres.
- Hi Champ, everything OK? Fifty-five pounds of pressure, please.
- My, won’t they burst?
- No, don’t worry, it’s the recommended calibration. You know, my friend, that there are bike tyres that can stand up to a hundred and twenty pounds of pressure.
- My, my!
Violet, like all children, observed the way her parents spoke with others. Parents always end up influencing the way their children will relate to others in the present and future. One example is worth more than a hundred orders.
- Ready. All done.
- Thanks. Get yourself a coffee.
The man took the tip, a beaming smile on his face.
- May God go with you both, boss.
- Bye. Thanks- said Violet.
They headed for the road, which was still quiet on that sunny morning. When they were passing the door of one of the many neighbourhood bakeries, Violet could smell the typical morning aroma of baking. If she hadn’t eaten at home, she’d have loved a melted cheese or mortadella sandwich, grilled on a hotplate.
They were her two favourite sandwiches: fresh, white cheese with tomato or hot mortadella.
- Dad, can we stop here on the way back for something to eat?
- But we’ve already had breakfast at home! It’ll be lunchtime when we come back. Your grandma will be waiting for us.
- So can we have breakfast in the bakery tomorrow?
- OK! OK! But now it’s time to pedal, agreed?
- Agreed, agreed. There we go, always in a hurry,
huh?
Streets sped by, along with the first minutes of the morning They were soon at the entrance of the Manequinho Lopes Vivarium, which is part of Ibirapuera Park. They could smell flowers and the fresh aroma of plants. The sensation of well-being coming from a change to a micro-environment, compared to the dimensions of a metropolis, was immediate. Big cities are full of asphalt and concrete and São Paulo was no different.
They stopped under the shade of a huge phytolacca dioica tree, better known in Brazil as ceboleiro . Violet was the first to lean her bike against a sawn-off section of tree trunk left beside some rose cuttings which, planted directly into the soil, lived side by side with saplings rooted in small balls of earth wrapped in black plastic, waiting to grow.
The girl hugged the tree, whose trunk diameter was eight times greater than her own arm spread. Her father arrived seconds later. They lay down, settling comfortably in the contours of the huge, exposed tree roots. These had sprouted from the trunk and penetrated the soil to avail of its humidity and absorb its minerals. That being from the vegetable world occupied a large area, but also generously welcomed any living being looking for shelter, comfort or protection.
It was so good to be lying down, looking at the cumulus clouds coursing through the sky, seeming to tell the winds not to push them anymore.
Lying there, between the trunk and the huge roots of the ceboleiro, both life and the butterflies were in perfect harmony.
- I wish time would stand still.
- Me, too.
A red-and-white breasted bird with black wings landed a couple of metres in front of them and looked at them as if it wanted to say something.
- Wow, how cute. Look, dad!
It just took three hops for the bird to get close to them. Then, it spread its wings and flew quickly away, flying over the flowers. A butterfly flew beside the little bird. They were flights of nature and totally different styles, but, like everything around them, they were interconnected.
The trees seemed to be talking to each other. In fact, they were speaking. It’s just that human ears have unlearned how to hear them because of the time they have been civilised. What were the trees talking about? They were certainly discussing lots of really important questions. What language were they speaking? We don’t really know, but we do know they were all connected by the most diverse channels. Their leaves, crowns, and the interweavings of their roots were some of these. There was also the wind and the infinite biological mail delivery carried out by insects. This has already been sung and spoken of in Celtic music, and also in Bossa Nova, for example Dindi, composed by Tom Jobim.
“Céu, tão grande é o céu
E bando de nuvens que passam ligeiras
Para onde elas vão? Ah, eu não sei, não sei.
E o vento que sopra nas folhas, contando as histórias que são de ninguém
Mas que são minhas e de você também...”
“Sky, so vast is the sky
With far away clouds just wandering by
Where do they go? Oh I don't know, don't know
Wind that speaks to the leaves, telling stories that no one believes
Stories of love belong to you and to me”
Violet could almost hear them and feel them happy and active. The little girl was right. In fact, the obligations and activities of trees, even when standing still and rooted in the ground are many. After all, the planet is alive. And one of the principal engines of life, in almost all worlds, is trees.
- We should be very grateful to the trees.
- I think so, too, dad.
- So, let’s get going?
- Just a little longer?
- Time’s already caught up to us.
- It’s always time, huh?
- It always is, yes. It can be a good friend or not. It all depends. Time can be an elastic band that stretches or shortens.
- I like time.
- That’s great. Because you never know the surprises it might bring. And the last one there gets no coconut water.
Violet would never forget that moment. Her father was wearing his helmet and goggles. He smiled and set off as if on an adventure. She knew that if she stayed behind, he’d come and get her. Even so, she hurried up because this was part of the game.
She made a big effort and caught up to him.
- Who’s not going to have coconut water now?
They went through the gate connecting the vivarium to Ibirapuera Park, turned the right and set off on a route that encircled the entire park. A lovely dirt track unfolded, flanked by all types of trees. One kilometre later, they were among the eucalyptus trees. As the morning wore on, as was usual, many people were enjoying the benefits that a park can offer. The trail led them to the park’s most popular and less frequented places.
They left the trail and stopped in front of their usual coconut water stand. Being old friends of the couple who owned it, they were welcomed with friendliness and affection. In Brazil, because of its very special culture, relations between customers and suppliers go beyond the limits of conventional, formal standards.
- Hello my dear, there’s some left for when you finish.
- Thanks, said Violet to Dona Julia, the owner.
After two coconuts and a little more coconut water, as was customary, supplied free by Dona Julia, father and daughter paid and pedalled off.
The park was big but the population’s hunger for outdoor leisure was even bigger. Approximately two thousand metres later, they reached the gates of the Ibirapuera Auditorium.
A metal awning painted in vivid red, christened “Labareda”[1], contrasted with the unusual, controversial building designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1950, but only built in 2005. This flame designed by the architect projected from the entrance to the auditorium like a tongue of fire inviting people to enter. Also red, but designed by Tomie Ohtake, a Japanese-Brazilian artist, is an immense, imposing wave in the Auditorium’s main hall.
Father and daughter didn’t go into the hall, but they were already familiar with Tomie’s sculpture.
The red of the awning and the white of the one-block auditorium had the blue of the sky as a backdrop. Seen from the front, the auitorium is a trapezium. Observed laterally, it seems to spring from the green grass as a triangle and seen from behind, it is a huge rectangle where at its centre, a twenty-metre door framed in red opens to the stage. In this way, the auditorium has two audience spaces: the internal and external, which is the green area of the park.
Violet and her father went round the building and came upon a crowd sitting on the stretch of grass opposite the entrance. That was a special Sunday. The Mozarteum Brasileiro Institute, founded in 1981 by Sabine Lovatelli and Claude Sanguszko, and which had already carried out countless services on behalf of classical music in Brazil, had brought the Berlin Philharmonic for a concert that day. It was a concert in which the magnificent, impeccable German orchestra was sharing the stage with the vigorous, apprentice OSESP- São Paulo State Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Two bicycles were left on the grass and two more human beings joined the throng to listen to the meeting of two generations, distant in time and of distinct nationalities, but united by a greater force.
The huge white wall of the Ibirapuera auditorium sprang from the green grass. The great red-framed door was also open, and in this way, the two orchestras sharing the stage could play for the external audience. To Violet’s eyes, it all looked like the screen of a gigantic three-dimensional television.
If the German orchestra was impeccable and the conductor more precise than anyone, the OSESP Youth Orchestra brought the freshness of adolescence and the dream of one day being as good as the Berlin Philharmonic. In the atmosphere that everyone was breathing, the sounds and timbres of the two orchestras fused, while in the invisible field, the energy of experience was allied to the energy that every youth has.
Although she couldn’t see with her own eyes what was happening in the invisible sound field, thanks to her ad
ventures, Violet knew that many mysteries were happening before the audience. She could already sense that the forces of good and health were taking advantage of that moment to carry out their work in aid of humanity itself – those moments when human beings, motivated by what their ears hear, become more receptive to the sublime.
But, for the majority of those present, the moment was merely an excellent experience of listening to music, because, for those who simply hear and see what human senses permit – and believe only in that – not a single thing was noticed.
Sounds are mechanical waves that propagate in the atmosphere, in water and some rigid bodies. The light that illuminates everything is made of electromagnetic waves that propagate in a vacuum, in the atmosphere or in water. Beings with a sense of hearing only hear because their auditory systems transform the mechanical sound waves into electric signals in their brains, while their sight systems convert the electromagnetic light waves into electric signals too, to be interpreted by their brains.
Stating that one only believes in what one can see is a cruel form of blindness, a blindness of the mind, since all our senses are very limited. While human beings only see in a very narrow frequency or wavelength, which goes from red to violet, such insects as bees or the peregrine falcon see in the ultraviolet frequency.
The same phenomenon happens with sounds. Not all species have the same auditory capacity. Elephants, for example, can hear subsonic sounds, which are frequency waves lower than forty cycles per second or forty Hertz. Dogs have also been equipped with ears that are sharper and sensitive than ours. And what about bats? Don’t even mention them. They can hear sounds on frequencies up to seventy thousand Hertz. This is impressive, since even maestros that were born with or have developed “perfect pitch” cannot go beyond twenty thousand Hertz.
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