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I hear the music before I reach his floor. It’s a viola sonata by Shostakovich, a twentieth-century Russian composer who finished this piece weeks before his death.
The music roots me in place, but on the inside I am in motion. Strings soar and fall, winding circles around my heart, tugging it this way and that. Behind his door, Arjun’s slicing and sawing and plucking. The piece is so beautiful, I ache right along with it. It is hopeful, then hopeless, then flitting between the two as though it cannot make up its mind. I’ve never heard it played with this much melancholy before, and it makes me wonder if Shostakovich knew he was going to die. He was waiting for it to happen, and this was his way of expressing it.
When the song is over, I chance a few steps forward and ring the bell. Footsteps pad along the hardwood floor, and then Arjun throws the door open.
“Adina? We’re not scheduled for another half hour.” His hair is a little out of place, as though he’s been exercising instead of playing Shostakovich. It is a burgundy sweater day.
“School got out early,” I say. “No. That’s a lie. I left early. I cut class.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go. Or anyone else to talk to. Maybe we could . . . talk.” It’s only when I say it that I realize this is what I have been aching for: to talk to someone who isn’t a doctor, who has no connection to my family, who is entirely on my side. Someone who cares for me and only me so much he cannot be objective about this miserable mess.
His statue face softens, dark eyes widening with an emotion I ca
n’t place. Sympathy? “Come inside.”
If it is sympathy, I decide I don’t mind. I prop my viola against the wall and lead him into his living room, not the studio. It is sparsely decorated, a geometric-patterned rug, simple shelves, no television. I sit down on the couch and unzip my boots so I don’t track any mud onto the rug.
He takes a seat in an armchair on the other side of the room. It doesn’t match the couch, but I like the incongruity. “Can’t you talk to your family?”
“They all look at me differently now. It hasn’t been that long, but it feels like everything’s changed.” I heave a sigh. “You’re the only one I feel like I can talk to.”
He straightens his posture, as though he is taking pride in my compliment. I didn’t mean to flatter him, but I’m glad for his reaction regardless. “Really?” he says.
“You don’t act like I’m fragile.”
“You’re not someone who should ever be considered fragile, I don’t think.”
I pick at my tights, tugging on one long thread. “I haven’t been able to play since I got the results. Not really. But I heard you playing just now, and I don’t know, something happened to me. I’ve heard you play before, but this time . . . I didn’t know the song could have so much sadness in it. I felt sad listening to it. That’s exactly what music should do, right? That’s what you teach us to do, play with enough emotion to make other people feel something? I know that whatever happens to me, I can’t let myself get lazy. I can’t stop playing.”
“Thank you,” he says, genuine. “I’ve never met anyone who feels music the way you do. I’ve always thought that one day I’ll have nothing left to teach you.”
“It’s true. I’m sure I’ll be better than you one day,” I joke. “Maybe I should find another teacher to keep your ego intact.”
This jolts him. “You haven’t wanted to find another instructor, have you? Because of . . .” He can’t finish the sentence.
“No. I only want you.”
The words linger in the space between us. Perhaps I intended the double meaning, but I truly didn’t come here to try to seduce him. I thought I’d tell him about my insomnia or the article Tovah found about Huntington’s symptoms in teens. He gets up from the chair and sits on the couch next to me. I say nothing. The past few weeks, he has tried to put space between us, but now he is getting close to me on purpose.
The couch groans softly beneath his weight, and my skin sparks with electricity at his nearness. Many measures pass before he speaks again.
“I should be honest with you. I’ve been attracted to you for a while,” he says. “You’re so talented, and you’re beautiful, and you’re intelligent. And you’re, well, I feel like I understand you, and you understand me. Sometimes I feel like a stranger in this country, and I think you do too.”
All I can do is nod.
“But you are my student. I wasn’t supposed to have those feelings for you. I needed some time to think, I guess. I didn’t know that everything I was feeling wasn’t . . . wrong.”
Hearing him confess that feels like passing my hand through a flame without getting burned. This is proof my body is still powerful. It flips a switch, turns me from fawn to minx again.
“You can have all the feelings for me that you want. I won’t tell anyone. We can keep it inside your apartment, and no one will ever know.”
“Adina . . .”
I lick my lips, aware he is watching me. “I want you,” I repeat, intentional this time. “You want me. Life is short. Why should we deny ourselves something that could feel really amazing?” I reach out a finger and stroke it across his wrist. “This isn’t wrong, is it?”
There is a new energy between us. An inevitability. “No,” he says. “It’s not wrong.”
