Work Text:
00
Maurice felt that gaze upon his back while he was conducting.
He stood on the podium, feeling lost. In the section they had just rehearsed, the viola entered the wrong bar, and the brass’ pitch was still off. The musicians seemed incapable of grasping his emotional directions, or perhaps they simply didn’t want to. If the professor had been here, things might not have gone this way. No one paid him any attention; the rattling orchestra seemed like a flock of squabbling sparrows. He had no choice but to place the baton back on the music stand and, head aching, announced a 20-minute break. As the sparrows scattered, he vaguely felt a gaze from behind. It made him uncomfortable all over, as if the embarrassment and helplessness he had just experienced were augmented tenfold, played on loop. He turned, secretly hoping that it was Professor Gédalge who came to his rescue. It wasn’t. He locked his eyes on an all-too-familiar figure in the audience.
He was stunned. The figure doffed their hat in recognition.
Claude Debussy sat in the audience.
“I thought you were unwilling to see me,” said Maurice.
They sat in a street-side café. Sunlight melted by the rim of the coffee cup, trickling down the handle onto the saucer and the tabletop. There were few pedestrians. Maurice spoke with neither indifference nor affection. He felt that the atmosphere was somewhat stiff. Claude shook his head, stirring the latte art in his cup.
“I was merely passing by,” he said.
Maurice noted that Claude was imitating his tone, that tone with distance, be it consciously or unconsciously. He found this a bit amusing. Ricardo had lectured him enough on the tone—Ricardo Viñes, his friend since Conservatoire and current roommate, majoring in piano. Well-liked by their teachers for his outstanding expertise, he should have been a professional pianist by now, though he hasn’t officially declared it. Maurice came across an Instagram reel of Ricardo’s performance just the other day, tagged in Vienna. He silently liked it and watched as his ID blended into a sea of IDs.
He remembered Claude once performed in Vienna. He glanced at Claude and noticed how the latter had not touched his coffee, just stirring it back and forth as if lost in thought. He asked,
“Are you partnering with an orchestra?”
“Yes.” Claude answered. After a while, he added, “I was unaware that you took on conducting.”
“Not really. I am still studying composition with Monsieur Gédalge. He has been conducting the orchestra recently, so he often brings me along.” Maurice explained. “Something came up today, so he asked me to lead the rehearsal.”
“Part-time? Internship?” Claude asked.
“Slightly both,” he answered.
Pause. Sunlight flowed, but the air was stagnant.
“Are you still studying at the Conservatoire?”
“Not since two years ago.”
Claude relaxed a bit and smiled. The first time he smiled since this reunion. “Oh, now I remember. Yes, two years ago. The whole Paris knew.”
Maurice stared at his coffee cup in embarrassment. He really didn’t want to bring up this matter on this occasion. He never wrapped his head around how a simple large-scale composition competition aroused the Parisian society and how he, for not winning five times, was singled out as the hotspot. Many failed more times than him, and the humiliation, indignation, dismay, and self-doubt he initially felt upon learning his lost for the third time all vanished in an instant when he saw the bolded headline “Is the Talented Junior Composer Ravel Unfairly Treated.” He gave thought to the possibility of living on another planet. It was not until the dean and a considerable amount of juries, who insisted that his work “deliberately opposed the Conservatoire,” resigned that the affair finally settled. A messy affair, but it severed his ties to the Conservatoire completely. What followed was natural: he studied composition with M. André Gédalge in private and did odd jobs at the orchestra. It’s just that he had not produced weighty works recently. He consoled himself with the excuse of composer’s block, though how long it would remain was uncertain.
He decided to skip the topic. He asked:
“Your collaboration with the orchestra this time...”
“A new piece.” Claude interjected too quickly.
Maurice was taken aback for a second; he seemed to not anticipate such a swift response. But he promptly composed himself and congratulated Claude politely. “A premiere?”
“Yes... well, I mean, not a new piece.” Claude explained, “Not a new piece for performance. Which would be Mozart. But...”
Claude looked hesitant for words. His beard concealed most of his expressions, but Maurice still captured a glimpse of emotion in those familiar black eyes, a glimpse tender and complex. He was familiar with it, too familiar. He caught it with ease, as if catching a flickering fish. He felt its scales slipping through his fingers.
“There is a piece for two pianos.” Claude said finally. “I don’t know if you...”
Maurice noticed the informal “you” and was momentarily dazed. He saw Claude from three years ago before his eyes.
But the tabletop now stretched infinitely; it turned into a lake. He stood by the lake, where the fish had just flickered past. He stared at the dark water and was seized by vertigo. He felt the ground beneath him slowly tilting.
The water stared at him intently, calling out to him.
He looked up. Claude continued: “It was that one, the one we...”
He paused. Struggled. Found the right word, “...‘collaborated.’”
Maurice realized that the fish was the key to the past, a key that he now held.
Claude said, “I was wondering... if you...”
01
“I met him,” Maurice said with a serious expression.
“Who?”
Ricardo Viñes, absent-minded, asked as he wrestled with the coffee machine. Having wrapped up a tour, he had just arrived in their small apartment in Paris from Vienna the night before. The audience was enthusiastic, his flight was on time, the air conditioning was just right, and he got a taxi straight from the terminal. The cabbie loved classical music and, upon learning he was a pianist, bombarded his eardrums with Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 turned up to maximum volume along the ride. He tidied up a bit and went to sleep, a good night’s sleep undisturbed by dreams. Then he woke on this sunny morning to welcome his one-month vacation. He decided to start the wonderful day with a cup of coffee, only to find the machine malfunctioning.
Everything went smoothly—he would venture to say perfectly—until the coffee machine clogged the road. Ricardo was focused on the machine, such that he failed to notice his roommate’s unusual seriousness. “Was this coffee machine working yesterday?”
“Yes. I...”
“I don’t understand; why has it stopped working?” Ricardo saw nothing but the machine. He tinkered here and there and attempted to fix the problem by disassembling it.
“I met Claude yesterday.” Maurice simply ignored Ricardo’s coffee machine dilemma.
Ricardo finally stopped whatever he was doing. He gave the look of someone who had witnessed the coffee machine come to life and dance a whole ballet on the table.
“Debussy?”
Maurice nodded. “Yesterday at the concert hall. I noticed him in the audience.”
“Is he not touring abroad?”
Maurice shrugged.
Ricardo finally let go of the coffee machine. He walked towards the sofa and sat next to Maurice, looking worried. “There was no confrontation between you two, right?”
“What? God, no,” said Maurice. “We chatted for a bit and drank coffee. That’s all.”
Ricardo seemed unconvinced. He gave Maurice a troubled and skeptical once-over. Maurice turned his gaze elsewhere, seemingly determined not to continue the topic, but Ricardo knew he was waiting for further questions. So he expressed his puzzlement. “Yes? And?”
“He invited me to play with him at his concert. I said no.”
Ricardo raised his eyebrows.
“This is awkward, don’t you think? If he only wants somebody to play piano duet, why not ask you?” Maurice analyzed rationally. “Besides, he doesn’t want to see me at all.”
“That doesn’t sound like it,” commented Ricardo. “You forget that I arrived in Paris last night. He has no reason to think of me.” He added, seeing Maurice didn’t respond, “Dear God, I thought you two were long over.”
“We are long over,” Maurice said immediately.
Ricardo shrugged, palms up. “Doesn’t seem like it.”
Maurice thought of nothing to say. “Long over”—he had firmly believed that ever since Claude left Paris for Rome. He thought his path from then on would not intersect with Claude’s whatsoever—they should not intersect before, nor would they in the future. The story ended, period. But that familiar feeling returned yesterday as he looked into the audience. He found his hands and feet cold and clammy, his chest burning with a feverish intensity. His heart pounded fast; he felt awful, he felt as if he was standing in a desert.
He first met Claude in a concert hall as well. It was five years ago; he was still at the Conservatoire, and everything would progress as planned. It was the premiere of his piece, two in total, with Ricardo introducing. He had little rest those few days and only felt a headache as he stood in the concert hall. Whispers spread during the performance like a plague; he supposed that the audience did not buy it. He endured through the end; out came a sparse applause, and he urgently wanted to slip backstage to find Ricardo and leave. He struggled to locate Ricardo amidst the crowded backstage. Then a voice stopped him.
He turned and saw Claude Debussy. The person who frequented his headphones, the stage of Conservatoire performances, the covers of sheet music, and all his dreams.
He suspected a headache-induced hallucination.
No one was unfamiliar with Claude Debussy, especially in the Conservatoire. Famed already in his early thirties, star professor at the Conservatoire, gifted pianist and composer. His works opened up a new realm in classical music; he was the future of French music, a rising star in the composition world—
The rising star looked slightly disheveled at the moment, probably due to the jostling crowd. He fixated on the astonished young man, who stood a head shorter.
“Excuse me, are you Monsieur Maurice Ravel?”
He felt the air in his lungs burn. He thought he might really have a fever.
They exchanged contact information. Maurice soon realized, however, that it was hardly necessary—three days later, as he walked into composition class, he found Claude standing next to the piano. Claude did not seem surprised by his arrival at all, even motioning him to find a seat. He sat down and nudged Lucien beside him: “What happened? Where is Professor Fauré?”
Lucien shook his head. “I don’t know. In any event, he is not teaching the course anymore.”
He felt himself zoning out the entire class and did not hear a single word. As he was packing up after class, Claude called out to him.
“Monsieur Ravel.”
“Professor?”
His memory stopped there. To be honest, he couldn’t remember exactly what Claude said to him. Perhaps he mentioned the performance three days prior, perhaps he praised his compositional talent, perhaps he pointed out the many imperfections in his work, or expressed his expectations. But none of that mattered anymore. A few days later, he entered Claude’s home by the opportunity of asking for assignment help, and after that, the visit became as natural as eating or sleeping. Then, another few days later, on his way to Claude’s home, he encountered a sudden heavy rain. He wavered for a long time but decided to finish the remaining journey anyway. Rain should be brief in this season. But on that day it wasn’t; the rain pattered along his way. Finally he stood on Claude’s doormat, drenched from head to toe.
While he was wavering, Claude opened the door.
They stared at each other. A world only of rain sounds.
But now it was Maurice and Ricardo staring at each other. The coffee machine droned to life, the silence shattered. Ricardo instantly jumped to check it. Amid the drone, he asked,
“So did he contact you after that?”
“No,” said Maurice. “He’d better not.”
“I think it’s best for you two to talk it out,” Ricardo began scrolling down his phone, trying to figure out how to fix the machine, but spoke with utmost sincerity, “You will run into each other eventually.”
“No.” Maurice said firmly, “We will not cross paths again. We should not have in the first place—”
The sound of the machine halted. An abrupt silence neatly severed the conversation like the dropped blade of a guillotine. For a moment, they both stared blankly into thin air. After an awkward lull, Ricardo spoke up:
“Are you going to his concerts then?”
“No.” Resolutely.
“The day after tomorrow, at the concert hall where you rehearse.”
“No... The day after tomorrow? How do you know?”
Ricardo gestured with his phone. On it was Claude’s Instagram. Maurice stared at the face on the poster as if he were meeting this person for the first time.
02
Maurice Ravel sat in the audience.
He thought to himself: he had came to the concert eventually. It was an action that occurred almost unconsciously, something that happened before you were fully aware. An osmosis, or an enchanted movement, like the enchanted spins in dances. Like habitually ordering iced Americano, habitually failing to quit smoking, habitually remembering a certain song at a certain sunset. And he habitually walked towards Claude.
Darkness fell, and faint chatters surrounded him. There were a total of fourteen performances in Paris; this was the first one. The stage was illuminated by a single spotlight, which shone on a lonely piano in the center, casting a perfect oval halo on the floor, like an elongated moon. The black piano lacquer seemed distant under that warm, brilliant light. He remembered Claude liked to play the piano at night with only a small light on, letting the rest of the room fall into darkness. He recalled it was a small lamp atop the upright piano, its lampshade silver metal, but its light warm. Claude said he felt tranquil with one lamp, and it gave the impression of conducting the most precise alchemical experiment in the world.
Maurice laughed. He thought of Claude’s predilection to compare composing to alchemy. Perhaps being a medieval alchemist suited him more.
He sat next to Claude. They sat together on the piano stool. He asked, “Why alchemy?”
Claude said, “Because a fine piece of music is gold.”
On the piano’s music stand were several staff sheets scattered with fragments and scribbles. They idled away an entire afternoon in front of the piano, jotting down sporadic ideas and experimenting with novel chords. Melodies sprang up like flapping birds—this was after the rain incident; they had grown accustomed to this routine. Now, as afternoon transitioned into evening, the sky outside was a deep, saturated blue, reminiscent of velvet and copper sulfate solution. Maurice asked, knowing the answer, “Have you extracted any gold then?”
Claude laughed and said he hadn’t, because alchemy required a tranquil state of mind, which he was currently incapable of. After these words, he leaned over, the light twinkling on his eyelashes. He felt his breath brush against his face. The air stopped when their lips met. Maurice closed his eyes and heard heartbeat; he could not tell whose.
Now that Maurice remembered, most of the scenes took place at Claude’s home. He would knock on Claude’s door at some leisurely or un-leisurely hour as naturally as eating or sleeping. They would discuss composition and the contemporary development of music—it was an era ill-fitted for progressing classical music; Maurice’s compositional homework—those outraging yet surprisingly pleasant chord progressions; poetry—Claude adored Verlaine while Maurice preferred Baudelaire; Claude’s new pieces—when he played them for Maurice, Maurice sat quietly by, watching the rhythmic pressing of the sustain pedal. They had plenty to do. Whether at the piano or in bed, they could while away a whole idle afternoon or evening. But some scenes were at school. Maurice would deliberately head to Claude’s office before his piano lessons, making desultory conversations or simply being there until the entirety of that piano lesson was whittled away. Claude was familiar with his trick; he pulled it tirelessly and with great delight, like a child at heart. The valor was probably a product of knowing Claude, whose feigned reproach and that indulgent smile scarcely concealed posed no authentic threat to him.
Applause suddenly erupted in the darkness. He snapped back to reality and looked at the stage to see Claude appearing from the side door, fast-paced. He was wearing a formal black suit. One hand on the piano, he gave a curt bow and sat on the stool. A large section of the oval moon on the floor was devoured by shadows. He played Mozart. He rarely played Mozart, though Maurice knew he liked his pieces. He gazed at Claude’s nimble fingers and felt each note striking right upon his nerves.
Mozart. Maurice had not spared Mozart’s compositions from punctilious analysis during form analysis classes, but Mozart at this moment was different from the one in form analysis or composition classes. He was given new meanings, a fresh entry in the dictionary. On that rainy day, he continued his journey, wishing for the downpour to cease, a wish not realized until too late. He arrived at Claude’s front porch, drenched and disheveled. Claude opened the door, and they faced each other silently, allowing the rain sounds to occupy any available space. With the rain as the backdrop, Claude enveloped him along his trembling soul with a thick blanket into the warmth and dryness of his cabin. By the time he had cleaned himself up and sat on the sofa, still wrapped in a blanket, hot coffee in hand, Mozart’s symphony playing in the living room stereo was close to ending. Maurice realized, all of a sudden, that it had been playing since he entered. Claude never played Mozart during his previous visits. Strange how it had escaped his notice upon entering. He stared at the stereo and imagined the spinning disk inside it, a disk that had never been read—then Claude walked up to him. Their eyes met. There were no rain sounds, only the shimmering strings and flute from the stereo. He called Claude by his name (until then it had been “Professor”). They kissed, and things took their natural course.
The new definition did not belong to Mozart; it existed solely in Maurice’s dictionary. It represented an unexpected existence that brought great happiness. A coincidence. We would, invariably, find reasons to rationalize this unexpected happiness; for example, Claude’s inherent fondness for Mozart; for another example, the loud rain submerged the symphony indoor. In any event, its existence was still unexpected, beyond anticipation. But after that, the definition became destined, for every time he heard Mozart, he would recall the sound of rain, shivering, a warm blanket, a kiss, and a coffee cup. Just as every time he saw spotlights, he inevitably thought of a small silver lamp, a pitch-black room, a medieval alchemist, and a sky the color of copper sulfate solution. He looked at the floor brightened under the spotlight, its shape akin to an eye. The white oval part was the sclera, and in the center of the sclera, a black, piano-shaped pupil...
Applause in the concert hall pulled him back from his thoughts again. He saw Claude lifting his hands off the keyboard and had already stood up to bow. The concert was over. His bow was appropriate, his smile immaculate. Then a brisk turn and steady walk towards backstage. Meanwhile, the applause continued like an endless curtain of rain. They wished the soloist to return, so the unoccupied piano, lonely once more, received the warmest ovation. As if candies would burst from the magic box as long as they wished hard enough.
What are you wishing for then?
The question snuck its way into Maurice’s mind. Wishing for a rain to stop, wishing for a composition prize, wishing for a piece that he did not particularly wish to hear. Maurice had given up on wishing for anything. He got used to not wishing for anything. The moment he began to wish, he knew it would not come true.
Claude returned swiftly, as though that brief departure never happened. Ovation rose once more, like tides. As Claude bowed, Maurice stood up short and, among the surprised whispers and bewildered looks, squeezed out of the row of seats and fled the concert hall.
03
It was the seventh time Maurice came to the concert. The first three were at the theater he frequented, so he knew his way around. The subsequent venues were a bit far, but he managed to find them nonetheless. This one was near the Conservatoire, leading to unavoidable encounters with familiar faces—most of whom he did not know and did not bother to exchange small talk with. He ignored them all, assuming the disinterest to be mutual. He always kept his distance from the Conservatoire to avoid stirring up old memories. Whether of Claude or of that damned jury.
But he did run into Lucien and Raoul while collecting his ticket at the entrance. Lucien seemed to be in a good mood; he gave Maurice a big hug, saying it had been a while since they last met. Then he asked why Ricardo had not joined them. Maurice realized he was not sure what Ricardo had been up to lately, so he made something up to brush it off. He concealed from Lucien that he had, in fact, sneaked here without Ricardo’s knowledge, having solemnly promised the latter a few days earlier that he would absolutely not attend Claude’s concert. But Lucien did not seem to mind and filled Maurice in on recent school news: it has been much more liberal since Professor Fauré became director, not to mention much easier to skip classes; a young prodigy entered Professor Bériot’s piano class, who shocked all the professors by daring to play Chopin concerto in the entrance exam; the new professor teaching composition was unreasonably demanding, correcting assignments on the spot and requiring students to revise them in class until they met his standards. All these standards, yet his teaching was mediocre. Much worse than Professor Debussy, complained Lucien. Speaking of whom, he’s been in that advanced study program in Rome for so long; I wonder if he would continue teaching—
Raoul prodded him with his elbow, and Lucien shut his mouth tactfully. But Maurice seemed nonchalant. He shrugged, “Not sure. Probably not.”
“Pity. Nonetheless, with his virtuosity, he would excel whether as a performer or a composer...” he quickly added, “I know you had some conflicts with Professor Debussy, and to be honest...”
“That’s water under the bridge,” Maurice calmly interrupted. “Besides, it wasn’t a big deal.”
He pondered the word “conflict” and felt the urge to laugh. A flimsy term. They did not know the full story between him and Claude; no matter how he summarized his relationship with Claude, it would not be that. It was too upright, too black-and-white, too patronizing. Their relationship, on the other hand, was far from such clarity or decency—he thought if their story were written into a novel, the novel would undoubtedly devote an entire chapter to all the complexities and disputes. It would be an inevitably lengthy chapter, retelling repetitive plots, echoing the same dialogue. And in the final line of that chapter, a succinct summary: eventually, their relationship fell apart.
Fall apart—a phrase that rendered everything before it: all that ambiguous situationship, the entanglements, the escape after the mess; their first meeting at the theater, school memories, and that pouring evening—trite. Predictable, like soap operas and dime novels. As if, by doing so, all of this could be slotted into a generic solution template—everything could be categorized and labeled as “a certain kind of thing.” Every template corresponds to a panacean solution, a cure-all that, once applied, could explain everything. It looks down on everything, arrogant; it holds the answers to all problems in the world.
When he walked into the concert hall, he found the staff bustling about. They moved on and off the stage, setting up everything required for the performance. One of them was tuning. He heard a chromatic scale of a few notes circling around, running up and down, like a caged animal.
When he was with Claude, they spent half of their time arguing, the chasm between them an unbridgeable strait. The other half they spent trying to ignore the misalignment and, like fitting two wrong pieces of a puzzle together, love each other like all lovers in the world.
Maurice thought that abyss between them existed right from the start. It was never conjured out of nothing. It had always been there. They simply chose to ignore it, allowing it to remain deep beneath the sea while they stayed on the surface, tacitly avoiding the world beneath. Then the sea receded, so the chasm became a ravine. Everything became bare, aggressive, inescapable.
Claude stood in the room. He was silent. The laptop screen was fixed on a post on the Conservatoire forum. The post had garnered over three thousand views. The densely packed text was rife with contentions, all focusing on the same question: the piece Maurice published some days earlier—was it too similar to the work Claude released a month before?
Claude was silent, and so was Maurice. He knew this was just the beginning. Since he began publishing his work, such discussions had never ceased. They were compared constantly, just like an epidemic that, once appeared, is unstoppable. They probed, approached, chased. They attracted each other like magnets and blended unwittingly. The similarity in their works seemed an inevitable result of their closeness. How much was “too similar?” A set of chord progressions? A particular device? A tonality? A bar? A phrase? They had written so much together; how then, could one measure the extent of their shared work? Neither could go out and explain anything. But in Claude’s silence, there seemed to be something more.
Silence grew like a tree, seizing the air in the room. Its roots were buried in that unending rainy night two years ago.
Claude closed the laptop, and the clamor on the screen subsided. He said, “You know what they are saying.”
Maurice said, “I do.”
Pause.
“And they will continue,” said Claude.
“Yes.”
Maurice came closer. Claude had one hand on the top panel of his laptop, his fingers slowly circling. He did not look at Maurice, but instead at his hands, when he said,
“Your music comes from you. It belongs only to you.”
“They are your own thing.”
Then he looked up, met Maurice’s slightly surprised gaze, and kissed his forehead.
Maurice thought he could calmly finish the entire concert. He was wrong. He had to flee again after the first encore. It was a new piece by Claude, and he found his composure deteriorating as the music unfolded. From the first note, Claude inextricably appeared in his mind. With every note, phrase, and harmonic shift, Maurice could not help but picture Claude composing them; what was he thinking when he wrote those miraculous, misty harmonies? When Claude was stuck, he would lose himself in quiet contemplation and stare blankly at a crumpled paper ball on the ground; when he was satisfied with what he wrote, he would hum happily like a child. He must have been humming happily after writing this part. He said, music, language poeticized, should not be blunt; he said, music should flow as swiftly as writing itself; he said, avoid overreaching, dramatic exaggeration, end it neatly right here!
Maurice slowed down only when he reached the streets. As the audience began to disperse, he settled into a café. He watched the flow of the crowd outside the glass window, whose faces showed a mix of haste and indifference. After the concert, as with the previous ones and those to come, the audience would disperse, each to their own lives—some to dine, some to return home, and others to socialize. A pattern that would hold true for all fourteen performances in Paris. From each performance, each audience member took away a part—he imagined Claude’s notes as raindrops, seeping into the earth, merging into rivers, and flowing towards different destinations. But before him, raindrops gathered into a silent lake. He stood at its edge, feeling the ground tilting beneath him, water closing in.
Someone snapped their laptop shut. He recalled Claude’s words and that kiss on his forehead. It wasn’t until half a year later, when Claude left Paris to study in Rome, that Maurice realized the true nature of that inexplicable kiss: it was neither solace nor trust, but a plea for verification, a seeking of confirmation. Claude’s silence held a question so calmly posed that it was impossible to evade. He kissed him. He was asking, “Maurice, am I correct? Is this you? Is this what you do?”
04
The sound of a piano greeted him as he opened the apartment door. They had a piano in the apartment; Maurice’s own, which he had insisted on moving in, vowing to practice with diligence. Yet, that ambition to “practice diligently” faded too quickly, and the piano soon fell into disuse. Neglected for too long, it was now grievously out of tune. Maurice listened to the notes out of tune, imagining fingers flying across the keyboard, and recognized Ricardo Viñes’ touch.
He sat down in the living room and, sipping a glass of water, listened to the piece till its end. Chopin’s Mazurka Op. 47, No. 1.
He pushed open the study door. Ricardo was sitting at the piano. “What brings you to the piano?” He asked.
Though a pianist, Ricardo seldom practiced in their apartment. On one hand, it might disturb the neighbors; on the other, there were available practice rooms for him at the Conservatoire. So in this small apartment, apart from the shelves full of sheet music and too many records that couldn’t be stuffed in, there was hardly any sign related to music.
“The piano needs tuning,” Ricardo replied, evading the question.
“I know.” Maurice said, “But it doesn’t matter if we don’t. No one uses it.”
He looked at Ricardo, who offered no response. So he added, “Have you used it recently?”
Ricardo shook his head. He suddenly said, “We might as well sell it if we decide not to tune it.”
Maurice’s eyes widened.
Ricardo and Maurice sat side by side on that small sofa in the study, watching the technician busied himself, tools clattering.
Ricardo said, “This piano is really out of tune. It’s almost as bad as the one down the corridor, on the Conservatoire’s second floor.”
Maurice laughed out loud. “Exactly, no one wants to go to that practice room. Practicing there is an assault on the ears.”
“I’ve always wondered why no one tunes that piano.”
“The only room in the Conservatoire that receives no complaints, even when occupied by violin students,” commented Maurice.
“I see: it must be the violin students’ conspiracy.”
“It even had a broken string,” continued Maurice. “The Conservatoire didn’t even bother to replace a broken string.”
“Speaking of strings... do you remember that competition when we had to replace one mid-performance? ...a composition competition, yes! Composition competition! I was performing your piece, Maurice. And the performer before me broke a string!”
“I remember!” laughed Maurice. “it took them a good half hour to replace it...”
Of course he remembered that composition competition. And many other composition competitions, and the works he had published, he remembered them all. He remembered the cacophony of skeptical voices; the countless, pointless arguments, and the silences between him and Claude.
—Zero personality
—Complete lack of sensibility
Gossips and judgments filled his world, a ceaseless white noise like rain. He continued to frequent Claude’s office and home, the white noise with him. Later he gradually stopped going to his office. He continued to skip those piano lessons, vanishing when class time rolled around. Occasionally, he visited Claude’s home. Tension and weariness hung between them. They had argued, each staunch in their opinion, but soon they found that everything was futile, and thus grew weary of explaining anything. What lay between them was no longer an abyss but a sprawling landscape of mountains and plains. They stared at each other across what seemed to be thousands of miles.
—Borrowing without thinking
—Obviously heavily influenced by one composer
He mulled over the cursed name of Claude. He thought perhaps some people were just not meant to get along. The curse took hold the first time he heard Claude’s name, the first time he heard his piece. The name brought him unexpected happiness—a thunderstorm and Mozart’s symphonies!—but cursed his Conservatoire days. From then on, their names would always appear on the same page, in the same post, under the same entry, in the same sentence, in the same article. Chatters rose: are they too similar?
Maurice found this amusing. He was accustomed to the pursuit, though he never admitted pursuing Claude. But they were completely different people—their paths were not the same. Maurice preferred to liken Claude to a fifteenth-century Italian adventurer or mercenary. He seemed fit to appear anywhere in the world, or rather, his mission was to travel the world. Maurice, conversely, would be a jeweler, a confectioner, a wandering minstrel with a flute. If one were to list all their differences, the list would be endless: from details such as the color of their shirts, how much sugar in their morning coffee, the music in their record players to something as big as their composing habits, the harmonies they use, the musical forms they abide to, and their respective, incurable selves and ideals. But in a way the “pursuit” was real. It was their eternal stance. Even though they walked on different paths, he could always see Claude, just within reach. Always striding forward, always exploring the unknown, never looking back.
Therefore, a near vengeful pleasure welled in his heart when harsh criticism struck Claude as well—the blade turned on Claude when the timing of their similar new works’ composition was undeniable. Maurice never cared about the gossip of his schoolmates; he hardly ever took them seriously, but for Claude it was different. He almost savored that unprecedented anger of the elder and, after a long pause, remarked,
“You are afraid. What are you afraid of?”
He knew Claude too well. He knew Claude’s fear too well. And it was the reality of this fear that made the words so cutting.
But Claude sneered, “Without me, you are nothing.”
He felt dizzy all of a sudden. An overwhelming agony seized his heart.
—What then?
A flash of lightning cut through the sky. Maurice cast a swift glance out of the window. The leaden sky loomed, somewhat frightening. Fine raindrops appeared on the window glass, sealing off the leaden world outside.
“I have some things to take care of, so I must leave.” Maurice straightened up from the small sofa. “Thanks for waiting it out. You can give it a try after the tuning’s done.”
He walked out of the apartment. He gazed at the damp ground. He forgot the umbrella.
But he walked into the rain. It was light and stopped within a few minutes. In this season, the rain would not last long. He walked to the theater—Claude’s twelfth performance in Paris. He entered through the main entrance, into the concert hall, and into the comforting darkness.
What then? Then came that composition competition. The competition that aroused the whole of Paris. Having failed twice before, he still participated for the third time. Those years, he was almost obsessive about winning that award, as if it was the whole world, a pass to gain recognition from the public, from the Paris music community, to throw all past doubts to the ground and prove that Maurice Ravel is Maurice Ravel, not a vassal of Debussy, least a Debussyian imitator—he was aware that the Conservatoire had long viewed him with disfavor. The number of people in the Conservatoire he could speak to could be counted on one hand. Failure was the most unwelcome expectation. Little did he expect to stir the entire Parisian music community and the press, or to find, to his surprise, numerous supporters rallying for him. Upon seeing his name on the front page unaccompanied by Claude’s for the first time, he experienced an odd, painful relief, like some sort of withdrawal symptoms.
He realized he could no longer stay at the Conservatoire. The grand failure was like shattering a mirror; everything around him fractured in an instant, disintegrating. Judges resigned, the director replaced... The reform of the Conservatoire waged a storm, and in the eternally calm eye of the storm, he woke, startled, seeing the path ahead with unprecedented clarity.
05
Maurice walked into the theater, noting that the audience was larger than usual. Only after settling into his seat did he remember—this was the fourteenth performance, Claude’s final performance in Paris. Claude on stage appeared much the same as on his first night. The angle of his smile, the depth of his bow, each step, each note—impeccable, flawless. One piece ended; it was intermission. Claude rose, bowed, turned, quickly left the stage. The stage was once again left with the solitary piano.
Claude left resolute. We are not talking about the intermission of this performance here, but rather the events two years ago: a heatedly-discussed composition competition, a person involved in it, and another, who had little to do with the competition itself but was entangled with the person involved. Amidst the uproar at the Conservatoire and across Paris, Maurice escaped on a yacht trip with friends, while Claude announced his departure to Rome for further studies and resigned from his position at the Conservatoire. He left resolutely, his office standing emptied the very next day. Maurice saw Claude’s Instagram update on the yacht. He calmly pressed delete and then flipped his phone over on the table, face down.
For Maurice, the ending seemed reasonable enough. A chaos, then a messy escape; destiny guillotined everything clean, end of story. No one cared how the protagonists continued their lives after the story; besides, their ending could not be more dignified anyway. As Maurice walked out of the theater, he remembered leaving the Conservatoire building as such; he seemed to shed a heavy weight; he believed everything would improve. And he hoped for such at this moment. The fourteen performances were over, and soon Claude would have nothing to do with him again. His life would continue; everything returned to serenity, the sea’s silent surface after it has buried valleys and hills.
Then he froze. He saw Claude Debussy standing not far away, gazing at him with equal startlement.
He sat in Claude’s car. Bright lights from oncoming vehicles obscured Claude’s expression from the back seat. Claude drove in silence. He could not see Maurice’s expression from the rearview mirror either. It started to rain halfway; the sound of rain stagnated in the air, and the wipers swept irritably back and forth. Streetlights cast a series of shadows behind the car, which were swallowed by the night.
He saw Maurice at the theater entrance. So he said, it’s been a long time, we should catch up a bit. Maurice lifted up his eyes to look at him. He still seemed startled; Claude was unable to tell whether he was willing to or not. That look conjured memories of their first encounter backstage in the theater three years ago, and of that rainy evening when Maurice stood outside his door, drenched to the skin. It was always like this with Maurice, like a cat. You could talk to it, but you would never figure out what it was thinking. He continued. I am leaving Paris tomorrow. Maurice finally spoke. Where to? He asked. Rome. He answered. What for? He asked. He fell silent. He took a fierce drag on his half-smoked cigarette and stubbed it out. Staring at that little orange spark for long, he finally spoke.
I am getting married.
Congratulations. He replied dryly, after a long while.
They got out of the car at Claude’s. Maurice stood on the porch, suddenly nauseous. Amid the sound of rain, he saw himself three years ago in that same spot, dripping wet from head to toe. Then, Claude from three years ago opened the door, welcoming him with a dry, warm blanket. The room glowed warm yellow.
Claude opened the door. The house was unlit, a bit dark, but Claude walked straight in. Maurice followed, pulling the door shut behind him, and the sound of rain was severed. And once again, it was just the two of them in the whole world.
Claude walked towards the piano and switched on the silver little lamp atop. He handed Maurice some pages. Under the dim light of the lamp, Maurice was utterly shocked to see the familiar handwriting—his own and Claude’s.
“The piano duet I told you about that day,” Claude said slowly. His voice was extremely soft, low, almost unreal by its hollowness in the rain and the enclosed space. “The one we wrote together... I was thinking, perhaps you’d like to play it with me... as an encore...”
“...encore.” Maurice murmured almost unconsciously. His hands holding the pages trembled.
Claude said, “I know you went to the performances. You said you wouldn’t, but I know you did. All fourteen of them, you were there, Maurice, I could see you. I saw you in the audience thirteen times. This last time I saw you outside. You always left before the first encore ended.”
Claude reminded himself: Maurice was a cat. Affluent, elegant, mysterious, and aloof. When he looked at it, it gazed back from another world. Between them lay an insurmountable chasm of time and space. And then one day, the cat arrived in a cardboard box on his doorstep. He opened the box to find a soaked, baffled cat. His mind supplanted him out of nowhere with the image of Oedipus, the infant abandoned in the barren mountains and rescued by shepherds. Then he thought of Harry Potter, the child wrapped in swaddling clothes at the doorstep. But Maurice was not like that. He was not an abandoned child. He was a cat, lured and caught, placed in a cardboard box and left on his doormat on that rainy night. He wrapped it with a blanket and brought it back to his room, thus adding a cat to his life. But cats cannot be tamed. You can never say that you “own” a cat. Cats only own themselves.
Claude said nothing more. He gazed at Maurice, narrowing his eyes, for a long time. He did not move until the person in front of him matched, slowly, that image in his memory.
Then he withdrew his gaze. His words were tinged with amusement, but his voice was filled with bitterness.
“After so many years, Maurice.
“I still can’t read you.”
Maurice was speechless. He stared at the pages in his hands. He vividly remembered each stroke and note that Claude had scribed on the paper. He also remembered everything beyond the notes, all that tenderness that was young and passionate and now lost—all things young and passionate would be lost. He was shaking, but he couldn’t utter a single word; he feared that if he spoke, the overflowing pain would engulf him, he would be drowned by the lake within his heart, or shattered into rocks and stones, sank into the depth of the ocean, a whole world submerged.
Silence burgeoned, tree-like. Whenever the sea receded, revealing the chasm between them, trees began to grow. From the bottom of the chasm, they sprouted, branched out, bit by bit, until they rose above the horizon, until they became a gigantic barrier between them, until they netted the entire sky and sprawled over all spaces. The roots were buried in that rainy evening years ago. Amid the pitter-patter, something seemed to sprout. And on this similar rainy evening, at roughly the same hour, in Claude’s home, they stared at each other, silent. Everything slid towards the irreversible. The trees were still growing.
“Play it, Maurice; I know you haven’t forgotten.” Claude sat on the piano stool. His voice sounded indistinct, smeared with plead.
Maurice sat down. Claude struck the first chord. He tried his best to keep up with Claude’s tempo, while Claude attempted to match his pace. They played, stumbling, like they were partnering for the first time.
This was the fifteenth performance, set against an evening of heavy downpour, lightning, and thunder, in a cabin dimly lit. There was only an old upright piano on stage, and on its lid a silver nightlight. No program, no audience, no repertoire, only an encore. The two musicians finished the piece silently and clumsily. They were the only audience to each other. The true meaning of encore is “never again.” As the piece ended, lightning flashed outside the window. Maurice took his hands off the keyboard, stung by the glint of the ring on the other pair of hands.
——END——
Note: “Encore” is a French term often shouted after a performance, meaning “one more time.”