likethe fossilized twig of a tree. “If you intend to teach, you must be proficient in Bach.”
“I don’t intend to teach.”
“Neither did I when I was your age. Do you think you are better than I am?”
I considered this. It was more that I sensed a certain limitation in her character. The world, I suspected, would never embrace her the way it would embrace me. “I’d like to play Rachmaninoff,” I said. “I like the stories he tells. I’m going to be bored if I have to play even
more
Bach.”
She studied me, her eyes tiny, cold and dark as if they had been pressed from coal. “Perhaps next year, if you pay attention to me and pass your exams.”
Alone, I practiced my Bach preludes. In the company of my classmates, I studied music theory, art history, and literature. Outside, the cherry blossoms dissolved like sugar in the heavy rains of spring and a wave of fleshy green leaves exploded through Ueno Park, bringing the smell of nature in through my window. I worked my way through Uchihara-sensei’s lessons. I tried to listen to her. But I began to study the Lento from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 1 on my own. I indulged myself in the melodic lines, in the way the voices braided together like a conversation. I imagined my mother and me as we had been before her marriage, when we had lived in wild Kuma-ume.
In the dorm at night, I drew little sketches of Uchihara-sensei and me engaged in a lesson. I was usually a sad little pencil in the drawings, and Uchihara-sensei an eraser, struggling against a desire to rub out what I wrote, even as she tried to convince me to write even more on paper. One of my dormmates, Taki, was in the fine arts program and was studying portrait painting. She liked to wear a beret, as though she were in Paris, and I sometimes threw her into my cartoons as a little teacup with a cap on its head, admonishing us that our great battles were having no effect at all on the direction that art in Japan was now taking. I always drew Shinobu as a tattered novel, disinterestedly watching our antics from a bookshelf.
“You know,” Taki said to me, as she looked over my shoulder while I sketched, “you are a pretty good artist, for someone so untrained.”
“You are a pretty good artist too, for someone so untrained,” I replied.
“Hey!”
“I’m just kidding. See?” I held out a sheet of paper and pointed out how the intelligent teacup had once again saved the life of the hapless pencil stuck inside a trash can.
At the end of the semester, each music student performed in the recital hall, located just above the school’s administrative offices. The floor of the auditorium was weak, and even just one too many bodies on the second floor caused the ceiling over the offices to sag. It was not uncommon for some suit-attired woman to come marching in during a performance and demand that five people leave the audience, or risk collapsing the entire building.
“Come hear me play,” I told the other students. “I’m going to have a surprise.”
“You’re going to finally collapse the building?” someone asked.
“Something much more interesting than that,” I promised.
I did not even tell Shinobu what I intended to do. “Remember,” she advised, “you must be smart about how you work with other people here.”
“I know.”
She frowned. “I’m not sure that you’ve taken my lectures to heart.”
I was only somewhat disappointed when my mother phoned to say that she could not come to hear me play—Mineko needed her for some unspecified emergency—for the auditorium was full and two latecomers were turned away from the back of the room. I flexed my hands and prepared to play. I would show them an earthquake.
I dutifully fingered my way through Bach’s Prelude no. 1 in C Major, as Uchihara-sensei had expected. But when it came time for me to perform the Mozart Piano Sonata no. 5, I stretched my fingers and began the Rachmaninoff instead. I had known, of course,
“I don’t intend to teach.”
“Neither did I when I was your age. Do you think you are better than I am?”
I considered this. It was more that I sensed a certain limitation in her character. The world, I suspected, would never embrace her the way it would embrace me. “I’d like to play Rachmaninoff,” I said. “I like the stories he tells. I’m going to be bored if I have to play even
more
Bach.”
She studied me, her eyes tiny, cold and dark as if they had been pressed from coal. “Perhaps next year, if you pay attention to me and pass your exams.”
Alone, I practiced my Bach preludes. In the company of my classmates, I studied music theory, art history, and literature. Outside, the cherry blossoms dissolved like sugar in the heavy rains of spring and a wave of fleshy green leaves exploded through Ueno Park, bringing the smell of nature in through my window. I worked my way through Uchihara-sensei’s lessons. I tried to listen to her. But I began to study the Lento from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 1 on my own. I indulged myself in the melodic lines, in the way the voices braided together like a conversation. I imagined my mother and me as we had been before her marriage, when we had lived in wild Kuma-ume.
In the dorm at night, I drew little sketches of Uchihara-sensei and me engaged in a lesson. I was usually a sad little pencil in the drawings, and Uchihara-sensei an eraser, struggling against a desire to rub out what I wrote, even as she tried to convince me to write even more on paper. One of my dormmates, Taki, was in the fine arts program and was studying portrait painting. She liked to wear a beret, as though she were in Paris, and I sometimes threw her into my cartoons as a little teacup with a cap on its head, admonishing us that our great battles were having no effect at all on the direction that art in Japan was now taking. I always drew Shinobu as a tattered novel, disinterestedly watching our antics from a bookshelf.
“You know,” Taki said to me, as she looked over my shoulder while I sketched, “you are a pretty good artist, for someone so untrained.”
“You are a pretty good artist too, for someone so untrained,” I replied.
“Hey!”
“I’m just kidding. See?” I held out a sheet of paper and pointed out how the intelligent teacup had once again saved the life of the hapless pencil stuck inside a trash can.
At the end of the semester, each music student performed in the recital hall, located just above the school’s administrative offices. The floor of the auditorium was weak, and even just one too many bodies on the second floor caused the ceiling over the offices to sag. It was not uncommon for some suit-attired woman to come marching in during a performance and demand that five people leave the audience, or risk collapsing the entire building.
“Come hear me play,” I told the other students. “I’m going to have a surprise.”
“You’re going to finally collapse the building?” someone asked.
“Something much more interesting than that,” I promised.
I did not even tell Shinobu what I intended to do. “Remember,” she advised, “you must be smart about how you work with other people here.”
“I know.”
She frowned. “I’m not sure that you’ve taken my lectures to heart.”
I was only somewhat disappointed when my mother phoned to say that she could not come to hear me play—Mineko needed her for some unspecified emergency—for the auditorium was full and two latecomers were turned away from the back of the room. I flexed my hands and prepared to play. I would show them an earthquake.
I dutifully fingered my way through Bach’s Prelude no. 1 in C Major, as Uchihara-sensei had expected. But when it came time for me to perform the Mozart Piano Sonata no. 5, I stretched my fingers and began the Rachmaninoff instead. I had known, of course,
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