Page 76 of Serenade Me

“My class had a concert here once.”

“Here?” Marius looks at the ruins.

“Yeah, we had lights set up and the performers brought their own folding chairs, it was standing audience only. For the last performance concert of the year.”

“What did you play?” I don’t say anything. “Anca? What did you perform that night?”

“I didn’t play anything.” I tell him.

“I thought-…”

“I said my class played.”

Marius is confused, but doesn’t say anything.

“I was supposed to play. But… but I couldn’t.”

Marius looks up at me, understanding. “Was it… your first time? The stage fright?”

“No, but… but it was the worst. I froze, and didn’t move for the entirety of the concert. Everyone was packed up and halfway home before I got up from my stool. Me and my harp, abandoned by the side of the road in Nice.” I can’t help but let out a sound I think is a chuckle. At the ridiculousness of the memory.

“Oh, Anca. I didn’t realize your stage fright was that ba-…”

“It wasn’t stage fright.”

“But-…”

“I call it that, because…it’s easier to explain. Than what it really was.”

“What was it?”

I take a breath. Tell him, Anca. He deserves to know. “It was, a completely and utter breaking down of every single ounce of self-worth, self-belief I ever had.”

“Oh, Anca. By who?”

“By my harp teacher.”

“What?”

“He… he called himself the Maestro, which is what we called him as well. He… fell in some sort of obsession with me. And he started telling me no one would ever understand my talent. That in their world, I had no talent. That people would laugh if they heard how I played. And that… he was the only person in the world who understood me.”

“Oh, Anca…”

“And the worst thing is… I believed him. I believed every single world he ever said. He was a brilliant harpist. The best I’ve ever heard. The best Jez had ever heard…”

Marius’ head tilts at my brother’s name.

“Jez… Jez found him for me. He hired him, when the teacher I then had said she didn’t have anything more to teach me. He found the… the Maestro, paid for him, got him transferred to London.”

“Did he know? About… about what was happening?”

“No. Not until much later. Until it was too late. I didn’t… I didn’t want to tell him what was going on. I guess I didn’t really understand it myself. But I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. Jez is a musical genius… he would know if someone was a good teacher for me or not. He must have thought this was the best person for me. Who was I to question it? So I didn’t.”

“He couldn’t have known this.” Marius shakes his head.

“I know. I don’t blame him. At all.”

There’s a pause. And we both look out at the horizon. The sun is almost reaching its peak height in the sky and the glare off the water is blinding.