I. First Movement: Grave (solemn)
– allegro di molto e con brio (quickly, with much vigour)
The allegro di molto e con brio bounces out the piano-room.
She plays on her Lauter, the Italian baroque-style baby grand her father lavished on them – on her, as a house-warming gift. It may be tiny but its tone is all class. Even Beethoven would be pleased as the Lauter and his No 8 in C minor seem to have been made for one another. And it suits her, too.
He plays a little himself, just a little, scraps remembered from his childhood piano teacher; not like her, this is her life, her passion. Every note is her call to beauty, to attention, to life itself. Every day her star rises further above the horizon.
Yet here in their apartment she makes coffee, does the laundry, changes the pillow covers, flips pancakes and slow cooks lamb shanks. The plumber is on speed dial and she recycles everything. She braids her Titian locks, wears Havaianas in winter like he does, and has a funny story for all of their wedding gifts.
This rising star occupies the pillow next to his, and more often than not shares his.
In the mornings she rehearses at her studio in town, and does a whole bunch of other concert pianist stuff in the afternoons with her father or her agent or this person or that person. People love her.
He loves her.
They met in the Peter Alexander shop in the mall, where he was looking for pjs for his sister for Christmas, and she wanted bottoms with reindeers on them. Her father gave her everything. When he first knew her he wondered why she wasn’t a brat – then he heard her play and realised she had a Steinway where her brat-centre should’ve been and the soul of an artist. He nicknamed her Starbright.
How majestically she plays! Every cell in his body has ears. Putting aside his laptop, he holds his breath in anticipation of where she will take him.
Piano sounds swoop into every corner of the apartment.
Squeezing under the old bathroom door to join in with the dripping basin tap; crossing the kitchen threshold to swoop over a bowl of apples and oranges on bench top and crowing Alessi tea-kettle on stovetop, with their breakfast dishes clanging in the sink, bobbing in the suds.
Pirouetting around two wine-stained Waterford goblets and a cloud of peonies in a Mason jar; sneaking around the door to the bedroom and depositing musical dreams and romantic interludes on their downy pillows for later.
Soaring over his bookshelves and skimming down her CD towers; creeping into every apse and closet like gentle waves into rock pools sunning themselves in morning bliss on ancient platforms.
Recapitulation! – for the grave has returned to end with drama what has been played, the stuff of which dreams are made.
And then comes the silence.
He breathes out.
II. Second Movement: Adagio cantabile (slowly, in a singing style)
He arrives at the door of the piano room to watch his famous concert pianist wife of four years play the adagio cantabile, unsure what to feel at this moment. This melody is famous, like most of Beethoven’s music, sure, but some musical phrases more recognisable, more beloved, than others. Like popular quotes from great authors, and the often grandiose themes that define their work.
Unhurried, absorbing, like nostalgia in notes, if nostalgia could be music… Like longing for something you’ve never known. How can that be? But here it is. Those powerful, tender fingers soulfully depress the keys, defining her pain. She can’t forgive him. As the notes tumble from the belly of the instrument and float across the room to the place where he stands, he admits he is at a loss to know what to do. He can’t force her to forgive him. If only she would tell him how he can make amends. She won’t even look at him. Only the piano, from where comes the same five minutes of Beethoven, over and over. The same poignant, addictive melody; those same delicate variations and grunting staccato motifs, none of which he can ignore no matter how many times she plays them.
He stands by the piano and gazes at her, those dainty, iron-willed fingers plying a melody of indifference where once it was played for love.
Tears shatter the perfect lake-surface blue of her eyes.
“Tell me how I can fix this?” he pleads.
The tears answer him by dropping onto her cheeks.
*
Her friend Shayna comes to their apartment to see her, with a sponge cake.
He hangs back while they greet one another in their typical fashion – he’s not included.
“Shayna, that’s perfect, passionfruit icing and all, did you make it yourself?”
“Just for you, sweetie. Besides, I wanted to be sure you were eating, and by that I don’t mean those disgusting vegie burger patties. Sugar is food for the broken-hearted, not vegan.”
“Spoken like a true pastry chef. And you know I’m not vegan. Lots of people prefer organic these days.”
“Then the sponge is organic.”
“Mm. I’ll put the kettle on.”
He should be working (something he’s writing which is on a serious deadline, with his editor on his case and no hope of making it), but the apartment has come to life with afternoon sunshine and the arrival of the droll Shayna.
After he greets Shayna, he tells them he’ll leave them to their visit; anyhow, they make it very clear they don’t want him around. Shayna looks as though she’d rather not know him. Not that he likes her all that much anyway. Shayna doesn’t seem to have much time for lesser mortals.
So he stays out of their way – but not out of earshot. Off to the left of the piano-room is a deep alcove where he often sits with his books or writes on his laptop, listening to her play, the afternoon sun warming his skin while her music cuts through to warm his heart. Today, however, Shayna’s voice cuts through, and if he eavesdrops on their conversation he might discover some clue as to how he can fix the situation…
He is sorry. Why can’t they see that?
“You are not dealing with it, are you?” Shayna asks her.
“It was a shock.”
“Course it was. After four years you’d think you’d know a person. When a man vows that a woman is his universe he ought to live up to it. It’s not like we didn’t warn you, sweetie, about those writer types. And introverts are the worst. You never know what they get up to…”
“Well, that’s not strictly…”
“When you return from an exhausting concert tour, it is reasonable to expect a tidy apartment, not dirty dishes piled up in the sink, an empty fridge and stuff everywhere, and for what – a few hundred words that some know-it-all editor is going to give the chop anyway?”
“I knew what I was doing when I married a writer.”
“Oh, sure you did. Looks aren’t everything, you know, even when they are compared to George Clooney…”
“You make me sound shallow. I’ve never judged a book by its cover.”
“A little flabby around the middle, mind you…”
So Shayna reckons he’s flabby. There’s a wild surprise.
“…but you’d expect that from sitting in front of that old computer…”
It’s called trying to write for a living, Shayna dear.
“…how tiresome for you.”
“Well, consider how much time music takes up in my day…”
“And look at you. Not a bit of flab anywhere. You exercise, sweetie, you jog and work out so you’re fit in body and mind for your work, so you play better, perform better. Frankly, you’re like a goddess and you only have to sit at your shiny concert grand and sweep back your mahogany tresses to make everyone in the audience wish they’d listened to their mothers and kept up their piano lessons beyond third grade.”
“Mahogany tresses? Honestly, Shayna, I’m glad you can bake light as air sponge and fill it with Chantilly cream because when I say that is the most outrageous nonsense I’ve ever heard I mean it.”
“Whatever. It’s called making you feel better, sweetie.”
Really, Shayna – really?
“And speaking of heard, I heard you at the piano when I arrived at your door.” Shayna isn’t fond of the Lauter… all looks and no substance, is her take on the baby grand. He can’t see her, but he can imagine her left eyebrow arching as she’s saying this, and her forehead above it wrinkling, and her right eye all squinty, as if she’s trying out for the part of the inspector’s off-sider in one of those BBC mystery series. “Why do you keep playing that piece all the time?”
She might get the part – that’s a good question. He perches on the edge of his chair.
“Somehow it helps. The moment when I try to make the silent bridge between the second and the third movements… it’s like the answer to what and why it happened will suddenly reveal itself.”
He swallows over and over, so many times his throat hurts. He wants to understand her but he can’t, he just can’t, as though his brain refuses to work any harder.
“I think you are torturing yourself…”
Shayna would.
“It’s not your fault. Play something else.”
“I can’t. I…I can’t explain… I need to play it. It’s not just about me, Shayna. Shouldn’t he have some recourse to explain?”
“I think you are looking at this entirely the wrong way.”
Shayna would.
*
The sun is low in the western sky; its sleepy blush settles in the apartment and cherries the piano room with deep and sensual warmth.
Becalmed by the same lacklustre paragraph, he puts aside the instrument of writer’s block torture, his laptop, and stands by the Lauter, which for all its glories doesn’t hold a candle to her, and watches her play the adagio cantabile.
Their apartment is made for afternoons. Through their Edwardian casements, picture windows and French doors the waning sun warms the rooms and spaces within, while fading the rugs, spotlighting her piano stool and dimming his computer screen. The apartment, the whole building in fact, is comfortable in its Edwardian skin. Many have lived here. When he runs his hands down the woodwork around the doors, the rough texture reminds him of childhood fingers sticky with jam toast and smudged pencil grooves of milestones now etched into memory. There are no children or babies in this home, except for her baby grand. One day, maybe.
The adagio cantabile slides up and down the afternoon sunbeams that have been lured inside. He recognises the coda, the end of the second movement.
The final sostenuto dies away.
Silence.
Her hands rest.
The count… it’s up to her but it’s always perfect; everyone says so.
Hands poised.
Hover.
Then hesitate. It’s off.
Procrastinate. She’s out of time.
It’s not right.
At last she makes with her dancing fingers and puts out the spirited opening bars of the third movement, the Rondo: Allegro.
Dadada dah dadah dadah…
“Let’s eat, Starbright,” he says.
She stumbles at her place in the music.
“It was sounding a little off. Not like you. So let’s eat and we’ll talk. Can’t we?”
There’s a tumbler of water resting on a coaster atop the Lauter and she sips that instead.
A man could starve.
“I’ll move out then,” he says, “Give you some space…”
He’s suggested it once or twice before and a sad, cold expression came over her face and she sat at the piano and pounded out the recapitulation grave.
*
Her father Michael visits her on an afternoon when passing clouds drift across the sun in a desultory fashion.
“Mikey, good to see you,” he greets him.
Her dad has a smile on his face, thank heaven. No need to sit in the alcove with Michael.
“I was hoping you’d come. We could use your help…”
She pulls out the left over sponge. It still looks good.
“How are you feeling?” her dad asks her.
“The same.”
The same?
“Come on, Mikey. Can you please get her to open up?”
Michael grimaces.
After a bit of a squirm in her chair, she looks embarrassed, like she wants to say something but is not sure how. He knows that look; surely Michael does, too. Then, “Dad, something happens between the second and third movements.”
“Play something else, sweetheart.”
“Huh? We need help here, Mikey, and that’s all you’ve got?”
She looks away. She’s not happy and who could blame her…
Michael clears his throat and munches his cake. “Go out and buy some new music.”
With those final sapient words, her father leaves without getting to the bottom of the problem.
New music? What good would that do? – except give her more dollars to right off against her tax. What good is any of it? He’s never fully appreciated the concept of a well-spring until he’s known this frustration because that’s what’s inside him, a well-spring of utter frustration. His fists clenched, he lets out a long, loud groan. Then he rams his hands into her neat piles of precious Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Shostakovich, Ravel and Stravinsky and tosses the lot into the air, raining pages all over the piano-room rug.
She returns from seeing Michael out, comes upon at the mess and stares at it, her face draining of colour. He feels terrible suddenly and says he’s sorry a dozen times. His remorse and promise never to do it again, along with a plea for them to fix the situation, fall on deaf ears; letting out a cry, she runs into his alcove and curls up there in his chair beneath the blue checked blanket.
Some of those passing clouds hang about, blocking the sun for the rest of the afternoon. Nothing feels right.
Michael’s advice goes the way of the sponge, eaten and then forgotten.
*
In the blood orange blister of late afternoon, the final bars of the adagio cantabile drift out of the piano-room.
He takes his place by the piano, watching her play, observing a peculiar look come over her face at the moment when the adagio cantabile dissolves into the sustained silence preceding the rondo allegro.
Her fingers hover over the keys.
“Let’s talk,” he says.
Her cheeks turn the colour of ivory and her lake-blue eyes stare in his direction.
“You always interrupt the beginning of the rondo,” she says.
She’s talking to him?
He practically stumbles over his words. “Tell me how I can fix things between us.”
“When this music dies, you will leave.”
“What are you talking about, Starbright? I’m not going anywhere. I love you. You know that.”
“You are there, aren’t you?” she says. “I think you are. Between the second and third movements, when you always interrupted with food on your mind, with us being together on your mind. That’s why I always used to play it, to give you those thoughts, to get you to tell me what was on your mind, when work troubled you and your self-doubt crept in. I understood this about you and this sonata ages ago. And now that you’re gone, how else should I bring you to me…”
“Gone? You’re not making sense.”
“You are my beloved,” she says and smiles, the first smile he’s seen on her porcelain face for… since it happened. Even so, tears splodge onto her cheeks, trickle down and delta… “I don’t want to let you go. How can I let you go?”
“Beloved? That’s an odd choice of word… someone’s beloved is…”
A stream of something unmistakeably cold and thin pours through him, and pools like a vast sea of understanding where his heart used to be.
“You didn’t know what would happen,” she says. “We said we would grow old together. Everyone said we weren’t suited, but they were wrong. And it wasn’t your fault… a silly accident.”
The bloody accident… He didn’t know. He didn’t even know? A surge of breathlessness rises up within, like he’s drowning or something, which is bizarre considering he’s not even alive.
Oh God.
She can’t see him, can’t hear him.
He’s dead to her.
Except in the sonata.
She’s grieving over him. He can’t stop it. Can’t fix it.
More time, he needs more time…
She cries. “I’m not ready… I won’t play any new music.”
“You won’t?” he says. When this music dies, you will leave… Leave? He doesn’t want to leave. He wants to stay here in the apartment, stay with her. “Just the Beethoven?”
“Only the Pathetique...”
He’d forgotten the No 8 is called that.
“…until we are both ready.”
And he needs to remember everything.
“Play the rondo allegro, Starbright,” he urges.
III. Third Movement: Rondo: Allegro (quickly)
Dadada dah dadah dadah…
The police came to the apartment door twelve months ago.
Dadada dah dadah dadah…
“But he was only going to meet with his editor,” she said.
“Ma’am, his car was wrapped around a tree on the parkway.”
Dadada dah dadah dadah…
He was always a good driver, so how could that have happened?
Was it raining that day? Was it someone else’s fault? He couldn’t remember.
“He’s hurt? How bad is it?”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry to have to tell you he died instantly. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Dadada dah dadah dadah…
Dada dah da, dada dah da, dada da dada da dada da.
“Were you speeding?” she asks him.
“I don’t know.”
“The police said you were. There was no one else at fault. You lost control. Why did you do that? Knowing I was here waiting for you…”
He doesn’t know why…
Tears.
He had tears in his eyes.
“I know you weren’t feeling yourself.”
“It wasn’t good enough.” Months and months of work. He was stuck.
“This life wasn’t enough for you, was it? This apartment. And me.”
The light from her star was too brilliant; he couldn’t find his own.
“I got lost in your light,” he concedes for the first time in his life.
Outshone by true talent, his was barely meagre and he hated himself for it.
On and on she plays. The rondo allegro inflicts its piercing, driving agony.
Dada dah da, dada dah da, dada da dada da dada da.
“You rammed a tree. You raced headlong into a tree to get away from me.”
“No,” he cries, “to get away from me!”
*
On an overcast afternoon she returns to the beginning; the agony of the allegro di molto e con brio.
Tears stream from her eyes.
He reads her heart through the music. If only they could try again.
But the adagio cantabile tells them what they already know. No matter how many times the sonata is played the notes are always the same.
Another afternoon and the rondo allegro introduction summons him.
She leaves the Lauter and goes to his alcove. From his bookshelf she selects his first novel. He observes her reading it all the afternoon long as clouds weave in and out of the sunshine.
The next time he comes to her, after barely hearing the notes, she can hardly play. She knows; his novel holds the clue.
“You were good enough. I should have made you know it.”
He is unable to do anything but endure her grief and guilt with razor-edged regret that is equal to his despair. Serves him right to suffer it twice over and worse.
And she never tells a soul.
Dadada dah dadah dadah…
How many afternoons come and go he hasn’t a clue. But whenever he hears the Pathetique he leaves his laptop and he’s right there with her, wishing he could hold her and telling her so.
“What is life, Starbright, but a beautiful sonata?”
Gradually, there are fewer tears…
“I want you to be happy, Starbright.”
Gradually, she no longer hesitates at any place in the music.
*
One afternoon she says, “It’s getting late.”
She closes his laptop.
Folds the blue checked blanket and arranges it just so on his chair.
Her fingertips glide across his books, causing him to shudder.
“You will always be right here in my heart,” she tells him.
One crystal-like tear sliding down her cheek, she sits at the Lauter and plays the whole sonata from beginning to end, every note as perfect as anything can be in life.
The final majestic chord reverberates through the apartment, stunning everything in its wake, seizing him on its passage.
Trembling from within causes him to take his eyes off her. He looks at his hands, his body… his form begins to flutter like the wings of a hummingbird.
She is fading, her piano, their apartment…
The afternoon sun releases him from its rosy lustre, leaving him to drift at peace in filaments of ancient starshine until the white light of morning.
