Prelude
It begins with one note, the way all things do.
It is the lowest note, the thickest string and the slowest vibration with the ghost of a third finger on the string above. The octave. One note or two? Unison or a chord? Is it a shadow or an extra layer of light? Once it has begun, it feels right that the two notes should go together, and even when one is sounded without the other, from this moment onward each will always hold the memory and the promise of the other.
The semiquavers of the first bar lead to the chord in the second, starting with the lowest note once more, but now adding a major seventh — so nearly but not quite an octave, implicit always is the desire to rise one step and no longer be discordant, but instead find harmony. Not yet though, and above this the diminished fifth — the devil’s interval, just a hint of it, on the way to the Bb. The minor seventh. The need for resolution. The need to fall.
In one chord the desire to rise and the need to fall — coexisting in a perfectly balanced tension.
Sometimes it is easier to stay in this place of non-resolution, where the memory still jars, and the hope is not yet strong enough to carry the moment forward. Here, between the past and the future, nothing is set in stone and everything is still possible.
Here, dissonance is resonance, and resonance is living. After all, everyone carries within themselves the memory of consonance. That is the foundation on which we base our lives — the blueprint, the baseline.
It is the key of the piece — the tonic chord.
Home.
“Head of Music at Top British Music School Accused of Rape.”
That’s the headline.
I recognize the man in the photograph immediately. Twenty-five years later, hair thinning, brown had given way to grey, framing the long face and distinctive glasses with the oversized frames, small eyes staring forwards, brown and round as pebbles. I can’t believe it. A student who was at the school at the same time as me, has accused him of raping her multiple times as a teenager. The police are following leads on accusations against at least seven more teachers from that time and after.
I swipe the news app closed, pull the covers over my ears and snuggle into the soft down of the pillow, my thoughts going back twenty-five years to a time and place that despite my best efforts, I am unable to escape.
Fugue
Once it starts, once the subject is put in motion, there’s no stopping it – full speed ahead until the end.
The statement. It has a definite tonality. Grounded. Home.
It is adorned with chromatic inflections, giving the center a depth and complexity, a desire for something else but also for return. The whole movement rests on this balance. Every step away requires a subsequent step back. It is the motion between the two which causes the thing to live – to be alive. It is a journey. Subject and answer live in relation to each other, neither one completely settled without the other. Every twist and turn along the way is perfectly balanced, like a bicyclist tipping left and right in the wind, never losing forward momentum. There is an inevitability to the path, wheels furrowed deep in a groove that leads unapologetically to the last major chord which announces itself with a hint of surprise, only to be fast obliterated by the determined luminosity that glows into a future beyond it.
Home. Except something about the journey has deepened its impact.
The plain white walls of a music room, window out onto expansive fields and hedges, playing an unaccompanied Bach Cello Suite. Determined, I want this so badly that I push away my nerves, concentrating only on moving from one note to the next, the legato pull of the line leaving no room for failure.
He sits up straighter the moment I start to play. As one phrase leads to another he breathes in and then out in time with the rise and fall of each musical contour. Phlegm catches in his throat as he inhales, and he coughs to clear it. At the end of the piece, he asks me to play a C minor scale. I play it perfectly. He comes towards me and standing behind, asks me to sit up a little straighter, to release some tension in the wrist. He holds my arm, moving it up and down until I relax it completely. I feel the warmth of his clammy, shaking fingers on my skin. “Now play the scale again,” he says, “but this time let your wrist go with the bow, let the bow lead, not the other way around.” He speaks gently, authoritatively, his sour-edged breath skimming the surface of my ear. When I play the scale again, it’s perfect still – the notes in time, in place, in tune, but something in the sound has changed. The tiny shift in the tension between my wrist and the bow has allowed the music to take on a life of its own and unexpectedly here I am, gliding on the crest of a wave. It’s just a few seconds before my wrist slams tight once more, but it’s enough. At the end of the scale he says he would like to offer me a place at the school, starting immediately.
My breath stops, my heart shakes and there it is again – that wave. As I stand, the room spins and I reach for the chair, but no need because there on my back is the pulsing heat of his hand which has somehow anticipated my fall.
Allemande
One instrument, carrying four lines, appearing together very rarely, mostly by implication – one note left over, hanging, forms a chord with another. It is a stately dance, there is a formality to it which holds the emotions in check, keeps everything in its place. Leaping between voices, first low then high, then in the middle. Ghosts are hiding everywhere. Only the slightest glimpse of one before another takes its place.
The harmonies suggest something richer, deeper, less tamed – but for now no lines will be crossed. By keeping everything together, the voice moves forwards.
It is the motion that counts, since with movement comes growth. With every passing second the colors change – first brighter, then darker giving the feeling that time is moving, like clouds drifting across the sky, forming and reforming at every twist and turn. There is not too much consideration as to where exactly the path is leading, and since there is only one path, there is no point giving it too much thought. The destination is pre-determined. The changes along the way and the evolving backdrop are slowly building a picture, but it is veiled in the future, only tiny glimpses appear for now.
The notes are sounded, tasks are completed, and life goes on.
The corridor is long – cream-colored walls and high ceilings, with turquoise faded carpets. Doors open out left and right. At the end of the corridor is the big teaching room with a grand piano and a sofa. A large bow window opens out onto green playing fields bordered with tall trees.
My first lesson is on a Wednesday morning. When I arrive, the room is empty. September, but autumn has already taken hold – the heating is not yet on, and especially in the mornings the air holds a damp chill. It takes a few minutes for me to tune – and even once I have I’m not sure I’ve done the best job. I begin to warm up with a few scales. The acoustics are very forgiving – wooden floors covered with rugs instead of carpet giving an added ring to every note. After half an hour I start to wonder if I have got the wrong time. I’m beginning to think about packing up, although I am reluctant to have to go to German, when I hear hurried footsteps in the corridor. The door swings open and there she is, tall, red-faced, out of breath. She is mumbling something about her car not starting about how sorry she is to be late for my very first lesson. She puts her cello down and the hard case hits the wooden floor with a resounding bang. She flings a navy raincoat onto the sofa and removes her high-heeled shoes. Her tights have a hole in them, just below the ankle of her right foot.
She looks up and our eyes meet for the first time – hers are deep blue. Her hair is tousled, wind-swept, her cheeks still red from the cold outside. She smiles.
“Kat.” She holds out her hand to shake mine.
My hand is weak and uncertain but as she takes it I feel a strength returning.
“Anna.”
“Yes, I’ve been waiting to meet you.”
She starts by asking me to play some scales. She asks me to choose a piece that I know well. I play the C Minor Bach Cello Suite – the one that I had played for the audition. I start to retune the top A string – down a tone, as required in this piece. Re-tuning the top string changes the resonance of the whole instrument. As I turn the peg in order to find the exact place where the interval between the top two strings is perfect, I feel nervous in a way that I didn’t in the audition, my arm shakes as I lift the bow and a hint of unease rises from the pit of my stomach. She isn’t watching, she’s writing in a notebook. I have no doubt she’s listening, and that’s what counts. You can see when someone’s eyes are on you. There’s no knowing when and how someone is listening.
When I’m satisfied with the tuning, I open the music at the Prelude and begin.
It starts with the lowest note, the slowest vibration. It is the thickest string with the ghost of a third finger on the string above.
From the first chord, I’m there, veiled in a world that twists and turns in upon itself. Every movement and progression draws a shape on my heart. The depth and weight of the sadness ebbs and flows, one moment wrapped in beauty, the next hollowed out and empty. It’s a thread that weaves in and around me and with every second and with every note, I am taken over further. The voice is inside me and moves me. My brain connects my fingers to the strings, to the bow, and translates the voice to movement, to vibration, pushes it out into the air, hoping that it will come to rest in the soul of another.
Landing on the dominant, the Fugue flies away, tripping and dancing up and over, above and under, as though the thread that was so tightly and carefully wound is now unraveling faster than is sensible – always moving – always seeking, finding – until there is no thread left and the final wisp unfurls leaving the string curled in a heap on the ground, motionless.
As the final major chord dies away she says nothing. The silence between us resounds with the sweet melancholy of the sudden change from minor to major.
I wait for what seems like forever, but the only sound in the room is the ticking of a clock and the shouts of some younger students out on the playing fields.
“Should I carry on?”
“Yes.” Her voice cracks in the middle of the word. She clears her throat, motions for me to continue, pointing to the “Allemande” and pulling her chair further back so that she’s out of my line of vision, concealed behind me.
I’m even more unsettled now that I can’t see her, but I’m trying not to think about it. I’m focusing on relaxing my wrist – striving to find that place once again where the music led me and not the other way around. The semiquavers and trills dance on the page and my bow dances too, leaping and jumping across strings barely catching one before moving on to the next. I don’t wait for her at the end of the movement. She’ll have to stop me if she doesn’t want to hear any more. Her silence is annoying. Isn’t she supposed to be the teacher?
I channel my irritation into the fractured phrases of the “Courante” and let it run away at a terrifying speed. I let the mood take over the technique, allowing the bow to scratch at times and the intonation to give a little more than is comfortable. It races more and more as the piece goes on and collapses finally and decisively.
I’ve almost forgotten she’s there by the time I am deep into the sad and heartfelt middle of the “Sarabande.” overtaken by the beauty of the flow of the melody – the chromaticism straining to pull so far away from the tonal centre creating an imbalance,, framing the ups and downs that lead to the most quiet and soulful rising sixth at the end of the dance.
She takes a deep breath, as though she’s about to say something. I turn to find her straddling the chair, her head resting in her hands, her face turned away from me towards the wall.
“Should I stop now?”
She swings one leg over the chair to join the other and turns to face me. She leans forwards, elbows on knees. Her eyes are glazed over, glistening at the corners, just a hint of red around the edges.
“Anna,” she says, her voice close to breaking, “you’re extraordinary.”
Courante
Running, running, running.
There is an urgency, a quickening of the heart, an unsettled feeling. Is it anxiety or excitement? Hard to tell – both make the heart beat faster, make the breaths come quicker, shallower, both are a response to an imagined future event – no knowing whether it will be soothing, or worrying, or both. The not knowing is part of it. There is nothing worse than a predictable outcome. Or is there?
Torn between our need for consistency and change, we try to find a balance. Leaning first left, then right, trying to find the center – so difficult when the edges are invisible, and you do not know they are there until you are already upon them, until it is too late. Even the meter trips and falls, setting itself up and settling, only then to crash without warning and then try to find balance once more.
Sad or joyful? Such a thin line. Gasping for breath. Not one note settles, every single one pushes on to the next and the next, until at the end sliding to a close, landing on a chord, the movement stops.
Lying still. Lungs empty, heart beating into tomorrow.
“It’s violent. It’s so violent and so sad. Don’t you think? Why can’t you put all of that emotion that I know you have into this? Can’t you channel it into this?”
She’s exasperated and I’m frozen. Nothing moves. Not a muscle in my face. Not a hint of expression. It requires all my energy to give not the tiniest hint of a reaction away. And yet I play her words again and again in my head. “That emotion that I know you have”. She knows. She knows. I love that she knows. What’s stopping me? What do I want? What am I getting out of this?
Eventually I sigh. “I can’t.” I say, dead monotone.
“Just try, Anna, just try.”
I take a deep breath. I pull the bow back. I know I have to attack the string with a heavy motion. I know that feeling of weight when I pull it up high then let it fall, through the air, aiming very precisely toward the string until the very last moment when I know the positioning is right and I can begin to seize control. As soon as it touches the string once again, I push, dig the hairs of the bow deep into the string as I draw it back. I’ve done it so many times before in my room, with music playing loudly, or when my parents were out, and how good it felt, how cathartic, as though all the pent-up anger in me found a channel from my heart to my arm, to the bow, to the string and to the sound.
But instead I pull the bow up high. All the beginning stages of the action are identical. I push towards the string, but there is no moment of free fall, and so it hits hard. The sound to the ear might be the same, loud, energetic, but to the heart it is empty and we both know it.
Her eyes have a life of their own, they dance in every direction – up, down, across, around.
“Maybe we should leave the cello for today.”
My heart falls to my feet. Is she saying I should go? I should have tried harder, I could have focused harder on the music if I had really tried.
“Shall we go for a walk?”
From my feet, shooting up my body and out of my head into the air above me. I cannot keep up with my heart. A walk? Yes.
I’m almost crying with relief. She doesn’t want me to go. She wants to go for a walk with me. I can barely believe it. I swig at the tea too fast, burning my tongue and throat – I want to finish it and get outside. My heart is two steps ahead of me, down the stairs and out the door already.
“You need a coat. Hang on a moment, let me get mine.”
She locks the door, her fingers long and strong, nails cut short, tiny freckles on the back of her hands.
I have to stop myself from running down the stairs, I imagine myself tripping and falling. I hold back, just a little slower, one foot after the other.
It is not as cold outside as I thought, just windy. The salt sea air takes hold of my hair and wraps it around me.
She is doing up her coat still, wrapping a scarf around her neck. There are only a few people out. We pass a couple and I wonder how they see us. Just that they see us, walking together, is a thought I want to stay with.
“Do you like the beach? I had always wanted to live near the sea. I didn’t grow up here, we were in a city. But we spent summers at the beach and I always dreamt of living close to the sea.”
“You can’t get much closer.”
She chatters on about her beach summers. I am listening, but also existing on another level, phrases of the Elgar concerto coming in and out of me as I wonder how to get inside this conversation. There are layers beneath these words that we are exchanging, but for now I cannot get beyond them.
All of sudden, she stops and turns to face me.
“Can you tell me how you feel?”
How can a few simple words send me spinning? My heart is pounding and my hands are shaking. There is so much I want to tell her.
“It’s as though I have something around me that stops me from speaking.”
“You can tell me anything, you know.”
“I know.”
The beach stretches for miles. Seagulls up ahead are dipping and diving into the water, finding fish. The clouds are moving fast, pushed along by the wind. The sea is crashing in big waves onto the sand, pulling rocks and shells backwards and forwards. When I look up at the sky, I suddenly feel a part of something a lot bigger than just me and her.
We are walking in step, right feet together, then the left. She is so close to me that sometimes our arms brush, just the coats, but it’s enough to create a warm flow up through my arm and to my heart. Everything starts and ends in the heart. The long, opening melody of the concerto is flowing through me again.
“I can’t get the opening melody out of my head.”
She smiles and I do too. The moment breaks out into something much lighter and she reaches for my hand. She pulls it inside the pocket of her coat. It feels like the most natural thing in the world. I do not pull it away. Her fingers wrap around mine and I wonder about it for a moment.
“It’s so sad.” I say.
“What is?”
“That melody. It always feels so unresolved somehow. As though it is always going to be left open ended.”
“Do you feel that in you? Like something is always going to be unresolved?”
“I feel a lot of things. Too many things. It’s like the notes and the chords are all jumbled up together in a big mess, and most of the time I can’t sort them out at all.”
“Maybe just take a few of them. Sort them into a simple pattern, a simple melody. Something you can take hold of.”
What’s happening? Why do I feel as though I’m going to laugh and cry at the same time? I want her to push deeper and for the sensation to become more heightened. Or am I wanting to tell her something? Out of the millions of words in my head, which would be the ones that I would choose?
“Maybe you can ask me a question?” These are not the words I might have imagined, but they are the ones that come out of my mouth,
“I don’t know if I can find the right question,” she says, eyes sparkling.
“Is there a right question?”
“There, that’s a good question.”
I don’t want her to take her hand away. I want to wrap my fingers tighter around hers.
A seagull, mauling a dead fish on the sand. More gulls gathering, hustling for a fight. The clouds are turning – thicker, darker – signaling rain. The moment’s turning. She’s getting colder, as the afternoon is shifting. The gulls are ripping hard. She’s removed her hand, blowing her nose. She won’t take my hand again. A drop of rain falls on my cheek. I’m frantically searching for some words that might turn this around, that might cause the afternoon to open up again, but I feel it pulling away from me, disintegrating faster than I can hold onto it.
“It’s starting to rain. We should head back.”
Her voice rings on – something to do with the cello. The details are eluding me. She’s chatting happily, oblivious to the sinking ship that we’re on. She has plans for the rest of the weekend. She has things to do, right after I leave. The weekend stretches out in my head like a blank page that has no hope of being filled. My insides are pulling me down. It’s the opposite of before. I can’t go any lower otherwise I won’t be able to breathe.
Nothing is left of the fish. The gulls have flown away. They’re high in the sky, circling, squealing loudly. The rain is falling more consistently now. I throw my head back, pushing wet hair from my eyes. Suddenly I am brave – a wave breaks, throwing stones onto stones, crashing, a sound, squealing, the gulls, the rain, steadier, fuller – my arms around her, her arms around me.
“It’s ok.” She whispers it into my ear and pulls me closer.
The moment swallows me whole.
Standing still. Lungs empty. Heart beating into tomorrow.
Sarabande
At the heart, it is still.
From the stillness comes a single line, never splitting, always unaccompanied.
The sentiment is expressed in the fewest words possible, softly and slowly wrapping a satin ribbon around the still beating heart. Pulling and letting go, pulling and letting go. It is a single line of orange against a dark black sky. The sun has already gone, this is all that is left now. The sun and the sky will never be the same again.
The beautiful cruelty of each moment speaks crystal clear through the fingers and in the tension of the string.
Understated, it screams, inside.
Time stops and the moment goes deeper – the lines are horizontal but the emotions are vertical, digging down to the roots of the soul.
At exactly the right second, the ribbon is pulled taut, the insides are clutched tight.
The beating heart stills and the last sliver of color dissolves into black.
The simplicity of the dark sky is devastating.
Still.
We eat cheese on toast and salad for dinner. She made the salad earlier. She got it out of the fridge, in a bowl, covered in cling film. As I take my first bite, the cucumber numbs my front teeth, it is so cold. The cheese is oozing over the side of the white toast and by contrast burns my tongue. I am all fingers and thumbs and too nervous to be hungry, but I do my best to eat regardless. My parents are away, I have a concert at school. Kat said I could stay the night here.
We sit at the small, one leaf wooden table by the entrance to the kitchen. We have sat there once before. One time I had a lesson after school and she made me tea and toast. Toast with marmite. I had missed lunch so she insisted I eat something before we played.
We exchange few words beyond the purely functional as she asks me if I would like more. She has trimmed her fingernails. There is a little dirt under the nail of her thumb.
I decline a yoghurt in favor of a clementine. I regret it immediately as juice spurts through my fingers, peeling the skin. She’s in the kitchen. The clanging of dishes. Her long, bottle-green jumper reaches down over her hips and thighs, hugging them tight. I clear the plates and put them next to the sink. I thank her and she asks if I had enough to eat.
“Go into the lounge. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I haven’t been in the lounge before. A lamp with a large turquoise green shade in the corner of the room throws soft light onto the sofa and coffee table. I’m not sure where to sit. I take one end of the sofa. I can hear her washing up in the kitchen, the gentle slosh of water and intermittent sounds of china knocking on glass lull me into a soporific haze so that when she comes into the room I am momentarily startled,
She sits in the armchair opposite. Early evening and I hear the bubbling sounds of what I think might be a coffee percolator. She crosses one leg over the other and leans back in the chair, head tipped back, looking towards the ceiling. I am picking at loose cuticles on my fingers, unsure what to say.
Inane questions are filling my brain. Who will use the bathroom first? How will I pee without her hearing? Where will I change into my pajamas? In the bathroom? In the music room? My heart beats faster.
It’s getting darker. I’m starting to feel cold. She offers to get me a blanket and comes back with the red one from the music room.
I settle back at one end of the sofa, sinking deep into the cushion with the blanket wrapped tightly around me.
“I’m going to have a glass of wine, I don’t know if you- “
“Yes please.” I don’t usually, I’ve never before, but now I do.
She puts some music on. Jazz. Something I don’t recognize.
She returns with another glass, less wine. I smell it first and then slowly tilt it to my lips, trying hard not to have any visible reaction. She pulls the curtains and I swallow. The bitter hit shocks me and I almost gag in an attempt not to spit it out.
There is a small crack between the two curtains – a thick sliver of blackness, a tiny indicator of the large and intimidating world outside. I pull the blanket up to my knees.
She turns back and sits down at the other end of the sofa.
I drink the last of the wine. She leans forward to pour more into my glass. I hold it to my chin. She is telling me about a concert she went to the previous weekend. I am drinking the wine fast now, it is bitter still, but I am getting used to it. At first I feel nothing – not until the buzzing starts. It is like a wire from my ears to my forehead, sending the faintest signal that is making me breathe a little slower. She is talking and I am replying, but my thoughts are falling further and further away from my words. I am venturing outside of myself and it feels good.
A strand of hair has fallen across her face and I wonder how it would feel to lean forward and move it from her eyes, tuck it behind her ear, to run my finger inside her ear, to feel the place where the music goes into her.
She lifts her hand to her face, sweeps the hair to the side, tips the glass to her lips and swallows, long and deep.
Suddenly there are tears. I didn’t feel them coming, but now I feel them pouring down my cheeks. Inside, white hot. Something moving, shifting, burning. A searing pain. Something that I haven’t felt before but that I’ve known was inside me. At first it feels like unbearable sadness, ripping away the layers of me one at a time. I’m worried that soon there will be nothing left. Every layer feels like the last, and then underneath there is another. It comes in waves, bigger and bigger, clenching my heart tighter than I could have imagined. Any moment now I’ll no longer be able to breathe. She has her arms around me, pulling me close to her, telling me that it’s ok to cry, that I should let everything out. That’s exactly what I want to hear, and it’s such a relief although at the same time I’m worried that she’s not going to be able to hold it all, that it’s more than she and I can cope with, that it will become too much for her and she will have to let it go and will have to let me go with it. It’s too much for me but I know that it will be with me forever, that I have no choice but to carry it inside me. It’s taking over my body, starting somewhere in the pit of my stomach and spreading through my blood and veins to every part of me, settling most painfully in the heart, pushing me to capacity. I can feel no more than this.
We’ve moved from the living room to her bedroom, lying on the bed and she has her arms around me, holding me, stroking my hair, saying my name, telling me that it’s going to be ok. I find her mouth with mine. Her lips are soft and salty. My heart is pumping so fast, it might explode. The fear that still lingers in my chest is mixed now with such a sweet feeling of something else. Something that is growing by the second and I’m not sure where it’s taking me.
My head is spinning incoherently, unable to settle on a single thought. My fingers are on the buttons of her shirt, one by one, twisting – and as each tiny wooden disc comes free, so does something deep inside me.
Time stops and the moment goes deeper – the lines are horizontal but the emotions are vertical, digging down to the roots of the soul.
At exactly the right second, the ribbon is pulled taut, the insides are clutched tight.
The beating heart stills and the last sliver of color dissolves into black.
The simplicity of the dark sky is devastating.
Still.
Gavotte
The light breaks through. After the dark, comes the morning and the sun rises once again. There is no end to this cycle. There is no darkness that can stop the world from turning and stop the sun from appearing again and again and again.
Hope has been taking a quiet back seat, but now that the dark is gone, she rises and sings. Her melody is pure and trips along symmetrically. She speaks sweetly and softly, talking backwards and forward to herself. She is playful. The weight of the previous moments is gone. We are empty and drained, she knows that we can only take in levity and the promise of something better in the future.
We emerge slowly. Unsure of ourselves, hesitant to follow too blindly. We have been scarred by the unexpected turns so far.
She holds out a hand, and I imagine taking it – if I could trust her, could she take me where I need to go?
Repair, recover, renew. The body is strong, and so is the heart. The body heals leaving only the scars as reminders of what has come before.
It is a sweet-tasting smell. It is the buds of spring and the cool March winds.
It’s all relative. Winter has made us strong. We are ready to face anything.
Take my hand, she says, smiling. I take her hand, and we dance.
In the subsequent weeks I follow the trial religiously. Day after day reports appear in the news of the anonymous witnesses detailing the abuse they suffered at the hands of Alan Peterson and several other male instrumental tutors.
It’s several months later that the jury finally reaches its verdict. It makes headline news once more.
“Alan Peterson found guilty of rape.
Alan Peterson has been sentenced to seven years in prison for the rape of two students during his time as director of music in the late eighties at Blake’s Music School, near Brighton. For reasons of privacy, the students cannot be named. At this time several more teachers from the school are still being investigated after a rush of claims of abuse materialized following the original accusations made against Alan Peterson.
The sentencing judge told Peterson that “he was not safe to work around children. To have used his position to lure young women into situations where they were being forced to take part in sexual acts that were beyond their years and beyond their consent was inexcusable.”
In the summing-up he assured the court that all the claims were been taken extremely seriously, that there was clearly a culture in the school at that time which allowed staff to turn a blind eye to what was going on. He pointed the finger not only at the accused, but also at all the “silent witnesses” who had allowed such practices to continue without intervention or any attempt to take a course of action that might end such practices.
Mr. Peterson left the court with his head bowed to the ground. This is the pose he has adopted for the whole of the trial, continuing to be extremely guarded in his response both through the reading of the evidence and through the sentencing.”
Gigue
Home.
Firmly in C minor, just as it started. The root of it all.
Dance. A motion. Movement, coming together, celebration of the pulse.
Resolved. It is light, the rhythms full of air. Life, renewed.
Landing at the half way mark in the relative major then returning once more to C minor.
Just as it started. The root of it all.
Home.
I can’t wait to get there. I run along the corridor, as fast as I can with the cello on my back. I’ve finally mastered the really tricky passages of the last movement of the Concerto. It’s a surprise. The hours I’ve spent squeezing the patterns into my fingers are my gift to her.
I open the door and it swings back with a bang, crashing right into the wall and leaving shards of paint falling from the point of contact.
He’s sitting in her chair.
I must have got the wrong room, the wrong time.
“I’m so sorry.” I back out of the room, I’ll go and look at the lists again.
“Anna! You have it right. This is your lesson time-“
“But Kat-“
“I’m here as a substitute teacher for Ms. McCloud.”
My legs buckle and it takes all my concentration not to fall to the ground. A sharp pain in my chest makes me breathe in suddenly – all the air I can find.
I’m living in the moments before he said that, steadying myself back there, for fear that if I allow myself into the full here and now I might not remain upright.
He’s smiling cheerfully.
“Jeremy Bude.” He holds out his hand, and as he says the B of his last name a tiny spray of saliva springs towards me, “I’ll be taking Ms. McCloud’s lessons for the rest of the term. I’m so sorry that this is a surprise for you.”
“So where-?”
“Ms. McCloud had to unexpectedly take some time off. Personal matters. She may be back next year. All I know is I’ll be teaching you until the summer break.”
The room sways – all four walls zooming towards me, crushing my heart to a faint pulse, remote and unsteady, as a part of me detaches and falls into pieces, dissolving as it goes, never again to be recovered.
“Let’s start with the Prelude,” I hear him say.
It begins with one note, the way all things do.