She must stop these idiotic thoughts and begin. Nothing but the music. She flexed her fingers and placed her hands over the keys. Don’t rush, Cynthia said. Take your time. They’ll wait. But not indefinitely. Not as long as Suzanne would have liked to wait. She played the opening notes of the Mozart Sonata no. 13. She had learned it as a child with Mr. Cartelli, and for a few moments a cheerful nostalgia infused her playing with warmth. The first few bars went fine, but as she moved into a ritardando, which contained a faint hint of the slow movement to come, she couldn’t recall any of the notes ahead. The score was up on the rack, there was no real danger, but it would be distracting to have to read from the music. Never mind, the notes will come as their time comes. And so they did. They were in her fingers.
As she was nearing the end of the first movement, something felt wrong in her body. A shudder went through her, then a clutch at her chest and stomach muscles, as if a clamp were gripping them. Panic, her faithful companion. It would spread, she knew from experience. Already her hands were losing warmth. She couldn’t remember what was ahead from one measure to the next, but her hands managed to keep going—good hands, they even understood the phrasing and tonalities. But now she was in the second movement, andante cantabile; could the hands alone convey the singing tone that was needed? Because her mind, which dictated the tone, seemed to have floated upward like a balloon, propelled by puffs of panic. All she could do was let her hands continue as best they could, while she hovered above the keyboard. If only she could stop and flee. Disappear. But there was no stopping now. She had to go on.
She tried to use the old trick that had helped her through bad moments in high school and earlier, when her father had forced her to play for guests. This isn’t really happening, she would say. It’s not even a dream, just something you must wait out, do mindlessly, and soon it will drift away like smoke. It’s not happening, while her fingers continued to play the notes and the lights blazed overhead and the scent of the flowers wafted from the footlights, and every so often the page-turner reached out to flip the page, each flip bringing her closer to the end of what was not happening.
There was no fooling herself—of course it was happening. She was sweating. The wet was seeping under her arms. She could smell her own fear. She was in panic’s grip and would remain there for the entire concert, more than an hour and a half. No, she’d never last that long. She was starting on the final movement now, which had a frisky opening: allegro grazioso, but grazioso felt quite beyond her. She’d make a bargain with her panic: If it would let her get through the Mozart, then the Bach Italian Concerto and a selection of Bartók bagatelles, up to the intermission, she’d say she was sick and couldn’t do the second half. Panic would win this round. A pity, because she and Cynthia had chosen the program so carefully, for contrast—the second half was the Chopin barcarole and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin—as well as to show Suzanne’s range, which was unusual for so young a pianist. All that would be lost now. No matter. Please, let me last just until the intermission.
She barely registered the polite but mild applause after the Mozart, and promptly launched into the Bach, an exuberant piece and, mercifully, fairly brief. She could hardly tell anymore how the music sounded—her ears felt stuffed and distant, like the onset of dizziness. The notes and dynamics were correct, but it might sound as if it were being played by an automaton.
She waited during the applause and tried, not too conspicuously, to take deep calming breaths. As before, the applause was not thundering but well meaning and courteous. Of course: She knew so many people in the audience. In the front rows, though she couldn’t see them, were her family and friends. Probably some of her mother’s friends, too, primed for her first big success. Could they tell how badly she was playing, or was it enough for them that she sat on the brilliantly lit stage and produced the notes? Richard must be out there somewhere. Cynthia. Maybe some of her teachers from Juilliard. Mme. Kabalevsky had said she’d try to come. They would know exactly what was happening. They would know her shame.
And the rest of the audience, the strangers? Who were they and why had they come? Music lovers? People excited by the debut of a new performer? Or subscribers, lonely people who filled their calendars with places to go of an evening, better than numbing television? Maybe tired husbands, fighting off drowsiness, dragged by wives who wanted to swallow “culture” in a few easy gulps, like some of the neighbors she remembered from childhood, who boasted at the canasta table of the wonderful concerts and plays they had attended, never describing them, only listing, as if adding them to a resumé. Or students such as she had been not long ago, students with buoyant hopes, imagining themselves in her place a few years from now. But they would do better, they must be thinking. How had she managed to get here anyway, or was she just having a bad day?
After the Bartók, when she went backstage, she would say she felt faint. She was coming down with something. The concert would have to be stopped. With this idea to bolster her, she struggled through the bagatelles. The mood shifts and irregularities of the Bartók usually exhilarated her, but now she felt like she was picking her way through a field of nettles. She imagined herself attacking the music the way some of the male students in the master classes at school had done, and while that bellicose approach lacked delicacy, it did have a mesmerizing power. She was giving a shape to the music’s contrariety, and it fortified her. A pulse of excitement kept her going. I’m doing it for him, she thought. He tries so hard, I can’t let him down. Never mind me and my idiot fears. Do it for him.
But this worked for only a short time. The ice crept up her spine and her forehead grew damp. Her fingers, those dutiful slaves, trained robots, were the only part that kept their facility, and she let them go as they would. It was like setting free a cluster of clever gadgets, and while they did not betray her—they were obedient and mindless—they played with a mechanical neutrality.
When the intermission finally arrived, Suzanne managed to stand up and bow, then walk slowly offstage, careful not to slip on the gleaming floorboards.
Phil was waiting in the wings. “Great!” he cried. “You’re doing great!” There was a crowd of faces, stagehands, people darting about on errands. “Oh, please don’t. It was a disaster. I’m not going back out there.”
“What are you talking about? You can’t stop in the middle.” He took her arm and led her back to the dressing room, where she collapsed on the ancient divan. The springs moaned beneath her. On the walls were dusty photos of the famous pianists who’d played here early in their career. She knew her photograph would never be among them.
“Look, I’m feeling sick. Tell them I’m sick and can’t continue.”
“It’s ordinary stage fright, Suzanne. I’ll give you a Valium.”
“No. No drugs. They could mess up my mind, and then I’d do even worse.” She sat up and bent her head over her knees.
“Valium is nothing. But okay, here, take some aspirin, then.” He held them out in his palm.
She swallowed them with a glass of water. “But you’ll have to tell them something. I can’t go through with it. I’ll pass out.”
“That could ruin your chances after all this work. It’ll give you a bad name. It’ll be harder to get the next gig. Dozens of people were dying for this opportunity, and you won it. I’m not going to help you throw it away. You can get this under control. You know the techniques they showed you at school. You didn’t panic when you auditioned at the contest, did you?”
“That was different. It was only a few people judging and I was one of a long line. It wasn’t so focused on me.” I pretended it wasn’t happening, she remembered. That wouldn’t work in a hall with so many people. Too much reality pressing in on her.
“Have some more water. You’re going to be fine. The worst is over, now that you know what it’s like out there. Pretend you’re in a small room with a few people you know. Richard and his friends—they always made you feel confident, you told me. Or pr
etend there’s no one out there at all and you’re playing for yourself. You’ll see. This half will go much better.”
“I need to lie down. Leave me alone for a while, Phil.”
“No, that’s not a good idea. Sit up. Or go in there”—he waved at the small bathroom—“and splash some water on your face. It’s almost time.”
He wouldn’t let her stop. He was going to make her stumble out into the hot lights and feel it again, just when it had begun to ease: the ice in her spine, her fingers cold and rubbery, her whole body melting down. Her leg muscles felt like sand, but they would have to carry her out there. Philip said she must. This was what he had promised, and he wouldn’t go back on it. Once, right after they were married, when Elena’s name came up, he took her in his arms and whispered, “I’ll never hurt or betray you again. I promise.” This was why she’d married him, was it not? The thought was so troubling that she wished she could wipe it away. Had she married the way some people marry for money or connections or security? This was what she’d wanted, and he had convinced her that he was the one to get it for her.
She splashed her face and fixed her hair and came back out.
“In five minutes you’ll be playing the barcarole—you know that suits you, and it’ll sound fantastic. You look better now. Here, let me straighten your dress.” He tugged at the fabric around her waist and hips. “Just keep yourself under control, and it’ll sound as good as last night at home. I wish I’d recorded it. Then you could hear how good you are. Maybe one of these days we’ll make some tapes.”
She was his prisoner. She let him lead her back into the wings, where he gave a gentle shove at her back and she was onstage again, in the shattering light. She didn’t look at the audience, simply began to play as if that were her prison sentence. And at first the music did go better. She managed to keep a grip on her panic. It was a small squirmy beast she held tight inside, restraining it with her stomach muscles.
The barcarole demanded a limpidity that she tried for but knew she didn’t attain, although the fingers worked for her again. But will alone wasn’t enough to keep the creature from wriggling out of her grasp and scuttling through the pathways of her body. Surely the audience could tell. Almost anyone could tell, as she began the Ravel, that the rhythms were getting shaky, the transitions hesitant. She had the notes all right but couldn’t control the inner narrative of the elusive music; it sounded weighty and deliberate, not at all as Ravel should sound.
“Remember, you’re not just a transmitter,” Cynthia used to say when Suzanne first began studying with her. “You’re so skilled that you tend to rely on that. But you’re also an interpreter. You need an interpretation. Think of those language people at the UN. People are hearing sounds they can’t understand, and the interpreter gives them a meaning, makes them intelligible. You need to do that.” That was especially true of Ravel. But she wasn’t making it intelligible at all. The music might as well have been a foreign language, or a familiar language poorly spoken. She played the slow passages too fast. She was restless, unable to linger in the moment or the sound—all she wanted was to cut and run. She played the fast parts so fast that the intricacies of the harmonies were smeared by speed. Even the page-turner seemed confused, as she leaned over to turn at shorter intervals than she had planned for.
She rallied her strength—it would all soon come to an end. Tolerable, Cynthia would say if she’d played this way at a lesson. Tolerable, Suzanne, but it needs to be more than that.
She didn’t stand up the moment it was over. She would have liked to sink into the stool until they all stopped their clapping and went home, emptied out the hall. The page-turner gave her a slight nudge, and Suzanne rose and bowed to the darkness. She was politely called back for one curtain call, and then it was truly over. In the little room where she lay on the couch, Phil told her there were people outside asking to see her—her family, Richard, Elena—but she would see no one.
“You’re behaving like a prima donna,” he said. “You haven’t earned that right yet. They care about you. And it’s not the end of the world, you know.”
“Leave me alone. You go out and entertain them. Tell them I’m too exhausted and I’ll be in touch.” She disliked being rude; she would have loved her mother’s consoling arms around her, but she knew the moment she saw anyone she loved she’d burst into tears of shame. How fortunate her father was not alive to see this. Not that he would have known the difference between a good recital and a botched one.
Phil shook his head in exasperation, but he did as she asked. Later, in the taxi going home, she wept while he sat silently beside her. Even he could think of no more to say.
The next day the phone kept ringing—her mother, her brothers, Richard, Elena, Simon and Tanya from Juilliard. Everyone congratulated her, and Suzanne did her best to accept their words with grace. Only with Elena and Richard did she speak the truth.
“It was pretty bad, wasn’t it?” she asked Elena. “I could hear it. I was frozen.”
“No, no, I wouldn’t say pretty bad. You could probably play those pieces in your sleep. You have that stunning technique that never lets you down. And that came through. Look, I’ve heard you sound better, but it wasn’t as bad as you think. There were parts that were very impressive—the Mozart. And the Bartók especially.”
That was Elena being diplomatic. Suzanne could take no comfort.
With Richard she was even more frank. “Tell me the truth. It was dreadful, wasn’t it? I was out of my head with fear. Everything I’ve practiced all these years just washed away.”
“I’m sorry you had such an awful time. I could tell what was happening. But it had its good points. You started each piece very well, and kept on, until the panic set in. Well, next time you’ll do all the anti-panic routines and do better. But it wasn’t a bad start. The technique was obvious.”
The reviews—in the Times and Newsday, and later on in a couple of the music magazines—were not as damning as she expected. “In her first New York appearance Ms. Stellman displayed a keen sensitivity to the challenging rhythms and dissonances of the Bartók bagatelles” and, “She played the Bach Italian Concerto with admirable precision, if a bit apathetically as she proceeded.” “Her interpretations of both the Mozart sonata and the Chopin barcarole began with promise, and though they remained technically accurate, they all but ignored the subtler textures and undertones.” The worst, as well as the most just, in her view: “Ms. Stellman is obviously a pianist with extraordinary technical gifts, but she somehow made all the selections sound alike. The shimmering hues of Ravel have little in common with the more abrasive Bartók tonalities, and yet Ms. Stellman did not make much effort to distinguish them. In short, a proficient but mechanical, even somnambulistic, performance.”
“Oh, blah, blah, blah,” said Phil. They were sitting on the living-room couch with the papers spread around them. “A lot of pretentious words. Don’t even read them. It’s not worth it.”
How could she not read them? She read them over and over, practically memorized them. She never said they were unfair. It was Philip who complained. “Okay, so you weren’t in top form, but why dwell on the negative? They love to do that. Couldn’t they hear the intelligence, the facility, the background you bring to the pieces? They should understand about stage fright in a newcomer. They could cut you a little more slack.”
“Why? There are plenty of people just as good who don’t go numb. Audiences pay money. They shouldn’t have to listen to something mediocre, whatever the reason.”
After all her years of work, to come to this. It was over, she said.
“That’s nonsense. It’s just beginning.”
“Okay, whatever you say. You’re the boss, right?”
He turned away. She showed him her bitterness, but not the perverse pleasure she took in the reviews. Tepid as they were, they existed. They confirmed her existence. They put her name in print in what her father used to refer to as the newspaper of record: proof tha
t she had been judged worthy to perform on that stage, however disappointingly. Years from now, someone going through old files might see her name. Long after she was dead, someone would know that she had existed. But this secret pleasure was too shameful to admit to anyone, even Philip.
He was patient while she brooded about the house, a week of watching television and reading mystery novels. Like a good nurse, he was all solicitude. Before he left in the morning he would bring her coffee and a fresh roll from the Italian bakery across the street, arranged neatly on a tray as if she were an invalid: coffee cup in the center, roll to the left, jam and butter just northeast of the coffee. Meanwhile, she canceled her students for the week and called in sick at the ballet classes she accompanied. In the evenings Phil brought home pizza or Chinese food, then insisted she get dressed and walk through the Village with him at sunset. It was early spring; the streets were crowded. He pointed out the first blossoms, the forsythia, flower of their home borough, he reminded her, embarking on its brief season. And they both laughed because they were alike in this: They had no use for nostalgia. They missed nothing of what they had left behind.
Philip was full of plans. His vigor drained what little energy she had. If only he would stop talking and simply walk beside her. They sat down at an outdoor table and ordered coffee, while they gazed at the sun sinking over the river, the endless traffic, the cyclists, and the handful of indefatigable runners in the midst of traffic. Suzanne marveled at their will. What made them feel that anything mattered so much? They walked and ran and drove so briskly, day after day. They were simply carrying on their lives, Phil said, as she’d done up till now and as she would do again. She was young, she’d have other chances. As soon as she was feeling better in a few days—he’d make sure of it. Already he was hatching plans, so she shouldn’t let up on her practicing.
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