Chapter Text
Solange could ask for anything, taking lessons whenever she liked as long as she kept improving. I would let her, asking for nothing in return.
Emilia’s death had taught me such, at least.
I guided Solange’s fingers across the piano, blowing out the candles beside the ink-stained tables.
She groped for each piano key with a trembling hand.
“Mr. Chopin… I’m afraid I can’t play it,” said she. Her croaking voice resonated with the dwindling notes, reverberating in the dying light.
“There’s no need to be afraid.”
I let the polished surface of the piano - from the pedals to the muffled sound of each string - sink into her familiarity. I nodded for her to continue.
Making changes here and there, from the technique to musicality, I returned her with affection and praise after she followed by advice.
As she played, there rose a younger, healthier image of my sister; from her shy countenance and budding talents, to the dimple on her chin and long brown hair fluttering by her shoulders whenever her hands stumbled or glided across the piano - that was my sister; the similarity hurt me more than it made me proud. And no matter how much I put such a far-fetched concept as that off, my sister surfaced into view through Solange’s cadaver, sitting upright upon the piano stool.
The past of Emilia’s sickness crept like coughs against my throat, and grew like manifesting, ice cold sensations up my spine when Solange’s hands touched mine.
I just had to make things right for her when she couldn’t help herself. And only through tutoring her piano, making her talents known, and starving myself from all the pleasures in the world could I let Solange roam free from a family which restrained more than it loved her.
“Are you alright, Mr. Chopin?”
Solange’s concentrated gaze focused more on my health than her talents.
I could not be more guilt-ridden than proud.
“I could stop and never disturb you again. All you need is to tell.”
“Of course not. There’s nothing you need to worry about.
“It’s better you never did at all. You’ve worried enough.”
“I worry about your health,” said Solange in her motherly voice. “And that’s more important than the my entire-”
“No that’s not,” I snapped. “And if you knew better you should know that. Or else you wouldn’t be stuck with such a horrible family and falling heads over heels for someone who doesn’t even care about you.”
“He does care about me,” Solange replied. “And my family isn’t so horrible.”
“Even if you flinch the moment your mother scolds? Since when did you have such a delusion?”
Solange hesitated. Something deeper within her made her hitch in her actions before she continued playing.
“Are you-”
I checked myself before continuing again -
“Just play, Solange.”
Solange struggled as she played various jumps and trills on a piano, with her hands stumbling even more with the fear of an authoritarian force to hurt her if she made any mistake. I could not rob her of more chances to grow different from Emilia’s fate; or else I would have failed, yet again.
Miscalculating the force I used when I clapped my hands too loud to count for her, the noise well exceeded that of the metronome, and all Solange had in her face phased from concentration and freedom to sudden jolts and freezes.
“You call that a loving family?” I said.
She inched away and came back again, head leaning and eyes frantic; switching from fear to comfort, and back to absolute alertness to too cordial manners for a teacher who had taught a pupil for years.
“Hey… hey… it’s alright.”
She only stood more rigid, with her back straightened more than ever as she began to rise from the piano stool despite the comfortable distance I gave her.
I placed my hand over hers. Before landing my hold just a bit too tight on her wrist, she flinched and a horrible sound rammed out the piano.
“Sorry, Mr. Chopin,” she spoke, her voice airier and colder, as if from a distance. Her shivering body answered more questions than I had asked.
She stared at the door, blown ajar as a puff of cigar smoke wafted in and only choked her more than it did increase the nervous fidgets up her arms.
“What if… mother was too…”
“It’s alright, Solange,” I repeated. When physical kisses and handholds of affections couldn’t help her, a mutual glance no matter how quick steadied her more than any embrace could.
“You play just well, Solange.”
I stood up to close the door before my student eliminated a second chance of her attempts to learn piano in secret.
“Aurore isn’t going to stop you. You are, so if you just continue to play, you’ll grow and improve more than anyone will.
I approached her when she nodded for the distance between us to lessen.
“You’re not going to cause a ruckus as long as you’re playing.”
Her fragile gaze stayed on me and watched my slightest movements before leaning over the piano again.
We spent winters in Majorca, travelled around with a haunting trail of illness and depravity in our footsteps.
Nights when my fiancée slept when I coughed, Solange took the role as caretaker. I objected in vain, thinking her taking on the occupation of a nurse was too wasteful of her youth.
And - still fresh as the blood trickling down my throat - in my memory, she cooed and shushed like an angel-winged turtle-dove, a mother rather than a pupil, and lived with my faults and flaws, humming when I played and singing when I slept.
I could not be more sorry for her. I could not be more apologetic, for all I saw in her were unfortunes and the dreary result of abuse, which withered a bud too soon, riddled with unrequited affection for grit and dust.
“Sometimes I wished I could be closer to someone.”
I scraped by her, making my way towards the instrument again.
“You’ve gone through enough already, Solange. Just play please. It’ll do you good.”
“It’ll only do you good.”
She rose up from the piano stool. “Focus on yourself more than me. I’m nothing compared to you.”
Before I could deny, Solange held my hand in hers; despite her discomforting glances and shivers.
“Stop avoiding the truth. That only hurts more. You only want to teach me for your sake, and I wouldn’t want to distract you.”
“Practise this piece, please.”
“We’ve been through so much together; so don’t let your plan of trying to make me strong and independent make you forget that all I ever want is just your affection.”
“But you can be strong. I’m only giving you a well-deserved push when all you’ve been is a some insignificant nurse-”
“That’s all that I want to be.”
Just staring at her older countenance now, flawed with heavier eyebags and a more withered figure; which all surfaced and changed because of me; I shook my head again.
“I want to teach you. That is my one request.”
I attempted to teach her to play the counter-opposite of how I played. Whatever she needed to improve, whatever faults she had collected in her chest, her vices and flaws, were all mine that she inherited: a caretaker, a young lady doomed to a sickly man like me; no different from my sister, no different from a doomed talent.
“Just play the piece like this.”
I instructed her over and over again; even if Solange did not oblige and rather amused herself with my vain attempts to help her escape a dying fate.
“Are you listening? Please, you have to.”
I flipped through pages and pages of manuscripts, marked the fingerings on musical scores and told her again and again about what was at stake-
“I don’t need anything like that, Mr. Chopin,” Solange grasped my moving arms.
“But you need it.”
“You do.”
Solange sat closer to me, making every word of hers heard -
“I just want you to be happy. That’s all I need.”
“Can you stop playing?” Scolded a voice behind us, snatching Solange from my tight grasp.
Aurore, my fiancée and Solange’s mother, tore away Solange’s parchment.
Ink on the paper, which spelled the name of Solange’s lover, the unspoken utterance of secrets and love for him, transcribed upon that scroll; thrown into the hearth’s burning maw against her daughter’s wishes. Solange squeaked and squealed in protest. Aurore silenced her with a blow to her head, beginning her destitution -
“From now on, you are banned from talking to your so-called lover.” I flinched, hastening to soothe a weeping Solange, holding her head close to mine.
“Do you even know the stakes of marriage, Solange?”Aurore yelled, begging a silent pardon to me before speaking in a tone exempted to be heard by everyone besides Solange. “By all means, I forbid your engagement to this man!”
Shoving her own daughter out of my stifling study room, Solange only objected with tears in her eyes. One arm dug for the remnants of torn parchment and spilt ink, and a flurry of sinking nails and muffled cries wished for me.
“Aurore please, your daughter, shows talent in the piano. If you would just let me teach her a little everyday if without interrupting each minute, maybe she will turn out to be more than-”
“Some untalented child who uses your ‘lessons’,” Aurore emphasised the subject of her phrase with disgust, “as free time to write to a lover I don’t even approve of?”
Opening my mouth for a firm refusal, only a coughing fit threw in blood after illness; shrouding the night with red.
Solange’s pair of soft and ink-stained hands brushed by the rashes on my swollen throat; enveloping me with almost the same, milky arms that once died for me.
Scores and scores of manuscripts, inscriptions still wet and heavy, had ink trickling through and into the piano keys. Pungent splashes and stains- not swallowed or drank by - but regurgitated into the piano’s open mouth, swerved through its innards.
As if acid mingled into Solange’s tears with my own, and ink laced through her pleas to muffle my embrace; the resurfacing of the last fragment of my dead sister, Emilia - resting as the silence, fragility and scratched wood and strings of the piano - whose wooden complexion was no different from Solange’s innocence - flooded out of Solange’s cries: flooding me back into the sullen and silent nights of the past.
Every night, while Emilia cried for help with coughs and blood; I had whined to assist her until timely death. I watched her ribs protrude from her chest, as volumes of blood gushed more than she took lungfuls of breath.
Many days had Emilia yearned for more manuscripts to write, but I - naive and crying - refused; cherishing her last moments by burying my attention to her health rather than preserving her memory in history and achievement.
I forgot that love could not preserve life. Caring for her more than she did for herself only made her hopeless; months before her death. If only she had stayed strong without my help, she could have made it further in life. If only I had loved her less, she might have won the battle with not only an infectious illness but mine too - a clinging, intoxicating love, almost as killing as tuberculosis. I could never forgive myself for causing her this tragedy.
Swatting away Solange’s trembling hands, I shook off clinging pleas in the air.
“See? Not even Frédéric wants you,” Aurore yelled at Solange, beckoning her daughter to leave the room.
“That’s not what I intended to-”
“Go, Solange,” Aurore interrupted me. “Frédéric doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
“Listen… Solange…” I mumbled, hiding the desire to embrace her.
“You are worth so much more than caring for some hopeless patient like me,” said I, trembling as Emilia’s ghost gazed at me from behind. “Focus on yourself and what you hold in your future.
“I’m nothing but the past and needy; ready to be thrown into the arms of death sooner or later. You on the other hand have so much to offer; don’t let love stop you from living.”
“But I’m only doing this for you, Mr. Chopin,” said Solange. “Writing and this. What I care for is you.”
“You wouldn’t say so when you’ve been in my shoes,” I replied.
“Another disruption in Chopin’s last few minutes before the soirée and you’ll be sorry you ever talked to him,” my fiancée dragged Solange into the hall.
“So sorry Frédéric. If she deserves to be punished for disturbing your poor soul, do tell me.”
“So am I too weak for even you to believe me strong enough to withstand the wind, Aurore?” I retorted.
Aurore only smiled gingerly as she told me to get ready. The infesting silence answered all of my questions. I only obliged with the same impending doom I felt upon that same dying night in my childhood.
Emilia's shadow hid behind the fireplace’s ardent glow. I shielded her away from Solange, yet the shadows grew closer, creeping as the ashes upon the mattress and heat across the smoke-filled room.
Entering the gap between Solange and Emilia’s ghost, she rendered my presence useless. Solange had to overcome her looming ghosts and demons herselves. And that meant willingly letting go of me or else she might succumb to what I fell into the night Emilia died - or rather the months before that.
Why couldn’t I just help Solange through these days when she - infatuated with such a man - deliberately and unknowingly walked to her coffin?
I, who had seen so much, must help her; fulfilling and forgiving myself for not doing such the last time.
As my piece came to a close, another round of gentle applause sounded in the drawing room. Though subdued and quiet, it was much to my liking. I asked, “Is my music all that delicate and shy? It lacks power doesn’t it?”
“Mr. Chopin darling, I would fall to your feet just listen to another one of your nocturnes. They're all so soft and sorrowful: much better than anything else in the world no matter how powerful or vigorous other pieces are,” said Marie d’Agoult. Her icy gaze once eyeing Liszt had diffused to ardent, fiery affection.
I stalked back into my seat, asking politely for a spot next to Aurore; manners barely inched away from their usual hospitality when interrogation prevailed before the next performance:
“Is that the reason why you wouldn’t let me teach your dear Solange? You think me too delicate and weak to help your daughter with these hands barely able to hold their own master?”
Aurore laughed away the question, “darling; you’re performing is one of a kind. Don’t hate it.”
I continued unpersuaded -
“You do think so.
“But Solange she needs me-”
“You’ve only met her for a few years,” Aurore snapped. “Why are you so interested in helping her?”
“Because she needs help, Aurore,” I said. “And you’re not giving it to her.”
“All you've been doing was giving Solange piano lessons and talking to her,” Aurore snapped. “You’re not doing anything either.”
“Because you’re not letting me-”
“I’m not letting you make her marry!”
“I’m not trying to-”
Liszt’s disapproving gaze at our conversation when he played silenced us.
Solange’s enthusiastic cheers, paired with Marie d’Agoult’s annoyed looks of disgust, heralding Liszt’s coming performance, overlapped my conversation with Aurore.
An instant chord of intensity flew across the room. Both the first measure of music and last bow to end dug Franz Liszt’s character into my mind; everything, from the way he pressed against the piano and how his lips tugged open for slight breaths of air, was exactly what I, my playing, wasn’t and that which is needed to be help Solange - a second chance to fulfill Emilia’s unfortunate fate.
Liszt smiled in his own gentlemanly manner as he kissed Marie d’Agoult’s hand on the way back to his seat; ending the show.
Marie - though unimpressed and clearly bored and sniffing with some injured manner - cocked away from him.
He continued to brush the stray strands of hair off his lover’s shoulders in a feeble attempt to gain her affection. Marie sniffed, winced and sat further away.
Taking notice of the two, especially Liszt, I leant my head closer to catch the conversation as the rest of the nobles took it to themselves to rank our performances.
“… Do you mind? You can’t just kiss my hands and dedicate some etude to me and think that I forgave you…”
“Please, Marie… At least one concert each week! There are people to entertain, charities to hold! I'm sorry but…”
Liszt’s brushing the tears from Marie’s watery eyes stopped before Solange’s shy and stuttering words.
So this was what she wanted - what my playing lacked.
“That was great, Mr. Liszt! I was honoured to watch you play. Your style, it’s so different from-”
“Enough Solange, you don’t want your mother talking to you about your poor manners, would you?” Marie snapped as Liszt’s eyes darted from me to Marie.
“Marie d’Agoult, would you mind your darling Franz Liszt to teach Solange some piano? She will most certainly benefit from learning of his vigour and power… something I don’t possess,” My voice faltered.
Marie bent forward. Her nose was only a breath away from touching mine. Her dull brown eyes beseeched the innards of my soul. I took a sudden interest in watching a minute hand rotate around a grandfather clock’s dial instead of Marie’s face which was barely inches from touching my eyelashes.
“You do not understand how much of a fuss he makes every time he leaves home,” Marie paused. Her uncalloused hands played with my cold, gaunt complexion; her thumb kept dancing on the blood stains dimpled on my lips as if Liszt was never there.
“Whether performing for some homeless child or acting as some martyr of the piano, he never even has time for me anymore.” Studying my face again despite how much I avoided her tiresome gaze, she continued -
“No matter how much I appreciate your gallant poetry gushing with so much volume from the piano’s strings and keys, I can never let him go. Or else Franz might just slip from my grasp again and again.” She reclined back against the cushions. The sofa sagged before her as if she wanted to take a better view of me from a distance.
“And speaking of such musical skill, how have yours been?”
“I don’t understand,” I replied, ignoring Marie’s question. “Why wouldn’t you want Franz to-”
“You’re too innocent, Frédéric,” she laughed, talking to me like a mother to a child. “You don’t know how much Franz does everyday.”
“But I need-”
“I’m his mistress,” Marie snapped. Desperation clung to her, clinging like nails digging to bone; stronger and harsher than her heavy perfume. “You wouldn’t understand, Frédéric.”
The soirée ended with me offering solace for an embarrassed Solange; and at intervals shooting gazes and glances at Liszt.
When we headed back home in our carriage; me with Solange - though my fianceé disapproved of the idea - and Aurore with his son, Maurice.
“Now why would you do such a thing and leave me behind?” Aurore asked.
“Just let me give her some time with me,” I said, holding Solange’s hand in a motherly way Aurore never did. “It’s not everyday she gets attention.”
“And make her want to marry someone else? Of course not!” She whispered as she pulled me close; not letting any words spill out into the air from my ear.
As the carriages pulled to the thoroughfare, I signalled Solange to brace herself. And as she bunched her muscles to leap towards our carriage, I hurried with her; mud splattered up by shoes and the sweat from Solange’s hands dirtied my gloves as Aurore shouted back from behind.
When safely inside, with the driver miles away Aurore, Solange’s head fell on my lap. Her pent fatigue released from her chest in heavy breaths and slowing heartbeat; and like a child - though she already reached eighteen - smiled at such a fatherly figure as me; and I pitied her for earning such a privilege for the first time when the others did before they even left the crib.
“You asked about letting Mr. Liszt teach me instead of you,” Solange said, her shoulder resting on mine. “You won’t leave me won’t you?”
“I would never. It’s just that…
“Franz could offer you so many lessons I can’t teach you.”
Solange smiled at me, getting up as the carriage came to a stop before our home.
I opened the door for her as she accepted my arm. She pressed it close to her and felt my warmth reach and seep into her cold, trembling hands.
“You’re already enough,” she smiled, content with my imperfections and nervous glances here and there. “At least you don’t hate me for loving.”
“But I am-”
Solange hurried over to the door, grinning at the mud on my shoes. “You better come here now and hide your shoes; mother wouldn’t want to see such filth.”
I walked over, not failing to smile or offer a helping hand to Solange whenever she needed it.
She went to bed shortly after; with me at the piano, my hands lying limp and frail, fully known for demure and elegance rather than vigour and power.
“You really want to marry, Solange?” I whispered to her sleeping figure. “Even if it kills you, you want to?
“You’ll just be left with too much pain and sorrow to bear.”
When will I finally break free from my curse Solange’s inevitable death - I did not know. I could only yearn for Franz Liszt’s gifts to aid her, but even that beamed from an unreachable distance.