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He tilts his head back and raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know. I ought to be sixty-five. But I’ve spent so much time out of my own time . . . it’s impossible to say. Seventysomething? It’s funny to be in 2028. I will be born this coming August. Why do you ask?”

“Your present sounds far away.”

“It’s been an eventful century.”

“Tell me about it,” I ask. Lightning flashes, followed by long, rumbling thunder. At first I think Oliver isn’t going to answer me.

Then he says, “You’ve seen some of it for yourself. The pandemics, the fighting over resources, the change from democracies to autocracies in the West. The weather—in my present, the climate has changed, and it may still be changing, I can’t tell. Robots are everywhere. Some of them are so small you can’t see them, some of them are inside our bodies. AIs became us. We fell in love with them. We forgot to defend ourselves. They do what they please with us now.” Oliver doesn’t sound angry, only regretful. He speaks quietly. I have to listen intently to hear him over the sound of the rain. “In my time, people long for escape. Synthetic experience has triumphed over the tactile, the organic; we are besieged by simulacrums all day, and even when we sleep our dreams are populated by fakery. The Japanese word karaoke means ‘empty orchestra.’ That’s how everyday life feels to me in my time, like vacant music.”

I try to imagine this world of no birds, this empty orchestra. “It sounds like the end of the world,” I say.

“It’s the end of one world, and the beginning of the next,” Oliver replies. “Nothing ever ends, it just gives way.” He offers me his hand, and I give him mine. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s wash up, and then we’ll make some music. Look, I think the rain is letting up a bit.”

Oliver Practices Piano

Monday, February 24, 1975 (Alba is 24, Oliver is 38)

Alba: Oliver practices like no one else I know: ten hours a day, twelve, fourteen. If I don’t interrupt him he doesn’t eat. He pads the piano bench with a pillow, he wears a sweater and scarf because the Yellow House is drafty. If I am making coffee or tea for myself I take his empty cup and refill it.

I assumed that Oliver was a musical prodigy, that he has been playing piano from the time he was small, like I began playing violin when I was four. We are sitting together silently on the sofa after one of his marathons and I say, “You’re going to wear yourself out. Why do you go at it like that?”

He looks embarrassed. “I know. It’s bad. I’ve got tendinitis in my upper back.”

“Well, that’s insane. Why not rest?”

He shrugs. “I’ve always done it this way.”

I remember my grandfather reading me the riot act because I blew out my bowing wrist. “Didn’t your teachers tell you to take it slow? There’s no point in practicing if you’re injured.”

“I had to learn quickly.”

“But your parents?”

Oliver frowns. “I didn’t start playing till I was in England. My parents never heard me play.”

“What?” I try to remember what Oliver has told me about his childhood. “I thought they sent you to study at the Royal Academy?”

“They did. But it was just a scheme to get me out of China. My mother knew someone who knew someone in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. It was easy to convince the people at the RA that I was brilliant; we sent someone else’s audition video. I had never touched a piano. I was thirteen, I liked Korean pop music.”

“Oh . . . dear.”

“As soon as I got to London my uncle brought me to a teacher—Madeline Baxter was her name. I lived with her, and we worked together all day, every day. My uncle visited occasionally, but he didn’t care how Mrs. Baxter went about it, he just wanted results. I spoke no English, so we used translation robots. We had six months until the audition. She made me understand that I wouldn’t be good enough, but she taught me basic skills and she taught me fast. I have never learned anything so quickly; my brain was a jumble every night—my hands learned and my head lagged behind for years. We were lucky: I had an ear, I was a good mimic, I understood that my life depended on learning this strange thing, music. My parents were desperate to send me away, I was desperate to please them. I didn’t understand that I wouldn’t see them again. I was terrified of my uncle, but when I look back it was possibly all for the best.”

“But, six months, you couldn’t possibly have fooled anyone?”

“I didn’t. I showed up for the audition and made a complete mess of Mozart’s ‘Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman.’”

“So what happened?”

Oliver lights a cigarette. He doesn’t offer me one. “Mrs. Baxter and my uncle had come with me. They were sitting a few rows behind the faculty. When I finished staggering through the pieces, the teachers spoke amongst themselves for a few minutes, then they all got up and beckoned my uncle and Mrs. Baxter to follow them. Everybody went out into the hall and left me sitting there at the piano by myself.” He turns his head and smiles at me. “It was very peaceful, sitting in that room, all alone. The piano had sounded so beautiful; it was a Steinway grand. The room was golden in the afternoon sun; the floor was old yellow oak, and the seats were a darker wood. The whole room was resonant, and I wanted to hear the piano again, so I started to play.”

“What did you play?” I ask. A soft mood has stolen over Oliver.

“Nothing; I was improvising. Some of it was the Mozart piece, but I was just playing around. I started moving through the circle of fifths, just filling the room with sound, waiting for the adults to come back and tell me I wasn’t good enough to stay.”

“But they let you stay.”

“They did. After a while I stopped. The door opened and they all came back. Professor Garcia, who became my tutor, came and stood by me. She asked me a question, but I didn’t understand. My uncle said, ‘She wants to know what you were playing.’ I shrugged and told him I just wanted to hear the piano again, that it was beautiful. There was more conversation between the adults, and my uncle said to me, ‘They say that you are accepted.’ He seemed surprised.”