“Though I liked the swing, as if you were bending a large mirror toward-”
“I didn’t play it correctly,” she said, and blushed even deeper. “I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to be nice, but it won’t work. I have to play properly. It’s crazy that on the night before the performance I’m still not able to make up my mind. Should I take the easy way out or put all my effort into the difficult piece?”
“You know both of them well, so-”
“No, I don’t. It would be a big risk,” she said. “Perhaps, though… I’d need a few hours, maybe three hours, and then I might risk the Tartini tomorrow.”
“You shouldn’t do it just because your father thinks-”
“But he’s right.”
“No, he’s not,” Axel said. He began to roll a joint.
“I know the easy piece well,” she said. “But it might not be on a high enough level. It all depends on what you and Shiro Sasaki pick.”
“You shouldn’t think like that.”
“How am I supposed to think? You’ve never let me see you practice even once. What are you planning to play-have you even picked out a piece?”
“The Ravel,” he answered.
“The Ravel? Without even practicing?”
She laughed out loud.
“No, seriously, which piece?” she asked.
“Ravel’s Tzigane — and that’s the truth.”
“I’m sorry, Axel, but that’s a crazy choice. You know that yourself. It’s too complicated, too quick, too reckless, and-”
“I’m going to play like Perlman, but without being in a hurry… because the piece shouldn’t be rushed.”
“Axel, it’s supposed to be allegro,” she said with a smile.
“Yes, for the hare that’s being chased… but for the wolf, it should go a bit more slowly.”
She gave him an exhausted look.
“Where did you read that?”
“Attribution”-he waved the joint-“Paganini.”
“Well, then, I only have to worry about our Japanese competitor,” she said as she tucked the violin back underneath her chin. “Since you never practice, you’ll never be able to play the Tzigane.”
“It’s not as hard as people say,” he replied as he lit the joint.
“No, indeed.” She smiled as she started to play again.
After a while, she stopped and looked levelly at Axel.
“You’re really going to play the Ravel?”
“Yep.”
She was serious. “Have you lied to me and been practicing all this time? Maybe for four years? And not even telling me? Or what?”
“I decided this minute-the minute you asked.”
She laughed. “How can you be such an idiot?”
“I don’t care if I come in last,” he said as he stretched out on the sofa.
“I care,” she said simply.
“I know, but there’ll be other chances.”
“Not for me.”
She started to play the Tartini. It was better, but she stopped. She repeated the complicated passage again and then once more.
Axel clapped his hands and then he put David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on the record player. He put the needle over the LP and as the music started, he lay down, closed his eyes, and began to sing along:
Ziggy really sang, screwed up eyes and screwed down hairdo.
Like some cat from Japan, he could lick ’em by smiling.
He could leave ’em to hang.
Greta hesitated, put down her violin, walked over to him, and took the joint from his hand. She took a toke, another one, coughed, and handed it back.
“How can anyone be as dumb as you?” she asked as she touched his lips.
She bent over and wanted to kiss him on the lips, but her aim was off and she touched his cheek instead. She whispered “Sorry” and then kissed him again. They kept their lips together, searching and seeking. He drew off her cardigan and her hair sparked from static electricity. He received a little charge when he touched her cheek and snatched his hand back. They smiled nervously at each other and then they kissed again. He unbuttoned her white, stiffly ironed blouse and felt her tiny breasts through her simple bra. She helped him take off his T-shirt. Her long, lustrous hair smelled like the fresh air of snow and winter, but her body was as warm as newly baked bread.
They moved into his bedroom and sank deeply onto his bed. Her hands trembled as she unzipped and pulled off her skirt, and for a moment it seemed she would pull off her panties at the same time, but that’s not what she had intended, and her hands kept them on as Axel pulled down her kneesocks.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered. “Do you want to stop?”
“I don’t know-do you?”
“No,” he said.
“I’m just a little nervous,” she said honestly.
“You’re older than I am.”
“Yes, you’re still just seventeen-I’m robbing the cradle,” she said, smiling.
Axel’s heart pounded as he pulled down her panties. She lay still as he kissed her stomach, her small breasts, her throat, her chin, her lips. She opened her legs and he lay on her and felt how she slowly pressed her thighs against his hips. Her cheeks flushed bright red as he slid inside her. She pulled him close and stroked his back and neck and sighed every time he sank into her.
Once they finished, panting, there was a thin layer of sweat between their nude bodies. They lay wrapped in each other’s arms, eyes closed, as they fell into a sweet sleep.
63
It was light outside when Axel woke up on the day he would lose everything. He and Greta had not shut the curtains. They’d fallen asleep together in the bed and slept the entire night.
Axel slowly got up and looked down at Greta, who slept with a completely calm face and the thick blanket crumpled about her. He walked to the door and stopped next to the mirror and looked at his naked seventeen- year-old body for a while. Then he continued into the music room. He closed the door to the bedroom softly and walked over to the grand piano. He took his violin out of its case and tuned it. He put it to his chin, went to stand by the window, and looking out at the winter morning and the snow being blown from the roofs in long veils, he began to play Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane from memory.
The piece begins with a sorrowful Romany melody, slow and measured, but then the tempo begins to increase. The melody echoes faster and faster in upon itself as a blistering, split-second memory of a summer night.
It’s an extremely fast piece.
Axel was playing because he was happy. He wasn’t thinking. His fingers ran and danced like eddies and ripples in a stream.
Axel started to smile. He was thinking of a painting his grandfather had in the salon. His grandfather had said it was the most apt and glowing version of Nacken by Ernst Josephson. As a child, Axel had loved the legends surrounding this mystical being whose violin music was so beautiful it lured people to their deaths, beautiful deaths
