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In the center of the room, taking the spotlight from every other instrument here is a classic Steinway and Sons Model B circa 1975. Maybe 1976.
I recognize it well. I played on one just like it when my fingers bled and my mother screamed at me to “respect the composition.”
When the only piano instructor I had as a child brought down his cane on me and forced my attention.
Fyodor snaps me out of my dark tour down memory lane. He points another aggressive finger at the piano.
“Sit.”
I take a second too long. He limps past me and slaps a hand to the piano bench.
“The bench. Sit.”
I drop onto the bench so quickly, my ass makes a smacking noise when it collides. He shuffles his way to the wall directly in front of the Steinway and then uses it as a crutch. He leans against the dreary pewter and looks smaller and more bite-sized than ever.
Yet, even more intimidating. More terrifying. A chihuahua that will bite the hell out of my ankles at the first hint of a mistake.
I get into position. Straightened back. Body toward the front of the bench. Feet flat on the ground. Hands relaxed and fingers parallel to the keys.
It feels so…unnatural.
I’ve always been an outlier. It drove my piano instructor insane when I was a child.
And my mother.
They’d screech at me to sitproperly.
My mother would make me sit in perfect position for hours.
…‘til she drove the point home with tears in my eyes and an aching spine. ’Tilheshoved my back straight whenever it began to wilt.
The first chance I was able, I played how I wanted to play. Relaxed, borderline slouched, with my fingers everywhere on the keys.
But the music sparked through me. It lived in my bones and nourished my soul. Freed me from the dark pits of my miserable childhood when I let go and trusted the beautiful sounds emitting from the merest stroke of the keys. I became a girl possessed.
By the sounds. By the music.
A mysterious music nymph which suddenly inhabited my body and took me on a shiver-inducing, borderline orgasmic ride through every curled note and deep chord.
Mother hated it. My soul was nourished by it. The magic I created at the stroke of a key.
As Fyodor’s hard gaze bears down on me, I try to channel that elusive music nymph. Even with the rigid, unnatural posture, I close my eyes and breathe in and out.
“Play,” he directs.
No song instruction. No further guidance on anything.
I play the first song that comes to mind—Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune.
I can’t stop myself once I get going. I lose the perfect posture and my hands don’t hold their technical position.
My fingers move.
They dance across the piano keys in gentle reverence of the romantic, twinkling notes.
I forget Fyodor watches.
My eyes close and I’m whisked away by imaginings of a full moon and dark sea of tiny, glittering stars.
