13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [10]
Louise’s piano is an heirloom, from her mother’s family. It is enormous and dark, and takes up half the room. Camille used to love to listen to her play it, back when they were practically children, before the war. Before the war had made them turn to each other as something other than cousins, as a man and a woman. It might not have occurred to them if it weren’t for the war, which had changed the urgent yearning for home in his letters into something unexpected. Before he’d written, “Next time I see your face, let me kiss it all over,” he’d written, “I wish to be safe at home, running up the stairs at your Papa’s house, hearing you call me up on that great big piano.”
These days, Louise is too conscious of the way the piano’s sound roars across the apartment when it is played; it can be heard in the staircase; it can be heard in the courtyard; it can be heard in the street! This is why Louise can seldom bring herself to play it now: a false note would be an embarrassing thing—nearly public, even though no one could see her flustered face.
Seldom does Garance hit a false note. Louise thinks that she is not teaching the child anything, but the child keeps coming back. The child does not ask for a reference, for the name of a more qualified piano teacher who is more compatible with her soaring virtuosity (an instructor who could get her into the conservatory). The child must love Louise.
When Garance does hit a false note, her cringe is immediate. Her head retracts into her shoulders and she winces sharply, as if someone has slipped a needle into the back of the hand that dared strike the wrong key. Sometimes, Louise can even hear the girl’s swift pained inhalation: an error in music—physical discomfort.
Yet the girl does not lift her hands from the keys at such a moment. She plays on through her cringing, fazed for only the smallest hiccup of time. Truly, Louise is privileged to teach this girl. Louise marvels at her luck. After the lesson, she makes tea and they sit in the living room together, sipping it and chatting about this and that and everything. They are friends.
“You know what I like to do, sometimes, at school?” Garance asks, while waiting for her cup to cool enough so that she can pick it up.
“What’s that?” Louise is smiling already.
“I like to find the meanest, hardest teacher I have. I like to focus on the one who scares the hell out of all of us students. This year, it’s my Math teacher. He’s cold and never smiles. When he gets mad, he doesn’t yell, but he throws his chalk at us. He’s a terror. This man—his name is Dupont—this man Dupont, I go to him after class. After everyone leaves the room as fast as possible to go to lunch, I stay there for a little bit and ask him questions about the magical workings of the quadratic equation. After a while, this makes him soft. After a while, he might even give me a tiny little smile when he passes me in the hallway—but of course not a smile big enough that anyone else can see. Just in his eyes. This is when I know I can begin, you see.”
The girl pauses for dramatic effect. Louise swallows her mouthful of tea (too sweet, she has put too much sugar in it) and gazes straight at Garance’s liquid green eyes. The girl continues, “After that, when I chat him up, I can talk about other things, like the weather. Maybe what kind of books he likes to read. Maybe he’ll even start looking at me like a person, like maybe I’m pretty. One day, he passes me in the hallway, and nods. He nods! He says yes, and I can strike! So, the next time I talk to him, I ask him what his first name is.”
“No!”
“Yes! It’s wonderful. You should have seen his face. He looked hurt, but he liked it. We had to squirm around each other for a while, but he gave it to me.”
Louise titters: “You’re not serious! So what’s his name?”
“Hubert.”
“So this man