Under a series of unfortunate events, a small-time pianist was named John. Forget the bland, unimpressionable name, John didn’t even have a family name to redeem it. So when the old concert hall’s owner found a greasy little toddler picking at her fruit trees, she had half a heart to send him away with the help of her neighbors when they came back. Thus, John was taken in.
She had relied on the family next door to send her groceries and transportation during the holidays, as the local law didn’t allow anyone of her age to operate vehicles. This, she repaid through private piano and choir lessons that left the parents satisfied and the child nearly lifeless. It was a good deal, since she got an excuse to ignore her caretaker while showing off her undampered skills, but unbeknownst to her, the family of three had met their demise out on the cruise they had yet to return from.
In the end, John had nothing better than a dog.
The old concert hall’s owner didn’t want to waste the last of her life on a child she had no relation to, so she deliberately ‘forgot’ John in the admissions office of the concert hall after her monthly visit there. Though her house was just a few blocks away, John was totally incapable of finding his way back, let alone out of the office.
Now certainly, there were many people who took care and performed at the concert hall and had the opportunity to notice a raspy wail very quickly. There were more than enough people who could take this child as their own, if not to child services.
Though for one very unfortunate and lonely John, the truth proved that troublesome matters are a hundred times more troublesome in real life than imagined on paper.
A few sympathetic parents with no children of their own had indeed tried to take this shrunken little toddler to their homes to care for him, but these couples were inexperienced and were quickly dissuaded from keeping an acceptable amount of attention on John with the excuse of work, poor time management, or plain poverty. In anycase, John was no one’s child and was rarely taken in for more than a couple of weeks; there was little reason for these ‘parents’ to feel much remorse for leaving him back in the concert hall without a second glance.
One can say that familial ties are just as virtuous as they are damning.
It was as if John did not even have the rights over his own life. He was even recognized as simply the child of the concert hall. Though those in the know felt proudly in their hearts that they were helping a child with their own strength, they never considered the dismal implications they were sending the young and frightful John.
A spare room suddenly had a modest leather couch with a couple of tablecloths tucked into its cushions. A footstool had turned into a low table, and a mismatched assortment of lost water bottles, watches, sunglasses, hats -- all sorts of miscellaneous lost-and-found harvests had been neatly organized in a box next to it. As for food and drink, well, there were plenty of bathrooms. The backstage had a canteen for the performers. John was able to scrounge enough to find more when his caretakers decided that they had satisfied their own hearts.
Irresponsible as it may seem, the police nor child-protection services never showed up.
Seven years passed like this, and the cute, pitiful toddler had turned into an eerily quiet child. What should have been a rambunctious little brat had irreversibly grown into something more akin to a puppet.
John gained self-awareness much faster than a normal child. He knew that his situation was unstable and he had few options at hand. One was to stay and work for the concert hall, receiving the same pity presents from the staff and audience until he grew out of the ‘cute kid’ phase. Another was to follow someone out to the city to find a school or orphanage to take him in, though that option was very risky and could sooner lead to him being kidnapped for parts. The third option… there was none. He could either continue living off the so-called blessings of others or risk a road trip to a world outside that he was not ready for.
There’s no need to assume: John had never stepped a foot outside of the concert hall. There were many times when he had puffed up his chest and prepared to walk out the doors, only to be pulled back and scolded by a familiar stranger. Thanks to his title as the ‘concert hall’s child’, all the responsible adults thought that there was someone in the back taking care of him. And if the thought hadn’t crossed their mind, they felt that it was natural that John should be inside the hall, never anywhere else. Being a child who was constantly taught his mistakes, John eventually stopped trying altogether and even formed mild agoraphobia.
But he knew that he had to try a life outside at least once.
The hall had one piano for rent. The black, lustrous ebony was a striking presence every time the stage cleared.
In the hours after the last janitor left, the Madame walked from her house just to sit by this piano.
It had belonged to her maternal grandfather, who had sold some inherited assets just to buy it for his wife, the Madame’s grandmother. When the Madame was but an impatient child, she was personally tutored by the old couple to play the piano and was quickly discovered to be a prodigy amongst her peers. Needless to say, those long bygone days were now nothing but warm, treasured memories.
With swollen, aching fingers, the Madame lifted the piano’s cover and brushed a hand along the glowing white keys. In those days, her eyesight had fallen so low that it could barely distinguish each key by itself through a tiny tunnel of vision that flickered between grey and white. She could only rely on her muscle memory to make a familiar sound.
How grand an instrument becomes when one can only hear! A low tone reverberated in the grand hall whose high ceiling matched one of a wealthy church. The Madame who had pressed the key could feel the vibration flow in waves from her fingers to her throat. It felt like she was singing, though it had been more than forty years since the last time she had sung a clear note. The gloss of the keys were not mocking but rather regretful under her fingers, which had been ruined by the years of growing arthritis and eczema. Against the shrill itch of the rough skin, she began to play.
Music is complicated and cannot completely be called a form of art nor language. Perhaps it can be something more akin to math, if math sometimes allowed 1+1 = 4, and at other times 3, but always resolutely 2. It is a form of energy that maintains its fundamental system, but must be expected to never fully color between the lines. It will never make complete sense. This was something that the Madame’s grandfather had told her, and something that she still believed.
So the songs that the Madame played often had a mind of their own. Whether that resulted in a poor motif or an impressive passage, there was a sense of fulfillment for her whenever she played. Did it produce joy? Maybe. Satisfaction? That may be closer to the case.
There are often words that reach our intended meaning, but rarely our feelings.
The Madame finally stopped and opened her eyes. A gloomy expression rose in her eyes once again, only to freeze once again.
Behind the piano stood a child.
The hair that looked like it had grown six months out of its last cut looked dry and lacking beside the rich ebony piano. Though originally a deep brown, some clumps of hair that branched in innumerable split ends were stained black. The eyes that were large in childish expression seemed to bulge in comparison to the thinned cheeks and lips that should have had a rosy shade, but instead looked pale and bloodless. This pitiful face could barely show itself above the open grand piano.
Of course, the Madame didn’t know all of this. Through her deteriorating vision, she could only see the shadow of something vaguely human. A flash of wistfulness reflected in her eyes.
She gestured for the child to come over after a minute of blankness. John couldn’t quite make heads or tails of the situation and blindly obeyed, eventually settling his hands on the keyboard to copy the Madame’s motions.
The Madame repeatedly slapped John’s hands until they curled like fat spider legs over the white keys and sat back with a satisfied smile. There was no communication between the two, only a pair of one large and one small leading and mimicking the other. Warbling notes slowly filled the hall, and much more slowly, did the night pass.
John was nothing remarkable to begin with. This was obvious to the Madame and John himself.
He hadn’t formed any passions towards music despite living his years at a concert hall. If anything, he should hate music, but that he did not feel as well. Rather, he was walking on stilts tied to a carriage’s wheels as though he were a part of a train -- none of the original momentum was his, but he was still going somewhere. As for whoever laid down the track, well, that was none of his concern.
The first time that John ‘played’ the piano was frustrating. He hadn’t meant to learn it at all, but he couldn’t find the right words to politely reject that lonely old woman.
The next few days were just as strange as the first, though the Madame had begun to talk more and more as though she finally realized that this child was not an illusion of the past. Though not by name, John learnt three major scales within a week, and the Madame was thoroughly satisfied. She had unearthed many practice books for John to keep, though some obscure concertos were also mixed in due to her poor eyesight. She had also taken out a plastic sheet with subtle lines and bumps that formed music staffs and notes; this, she used to teach John how to read.
The Madame’s temperament was neither calm, cold, nor gentle.
Though John felt that she acted overly familiar with him, her actions felt as though there was a cloud of fog keeping her from the rest of the world, as though she was passively waiting for something.
She treated those lessons as though it was her duty. She was generous with her resources, but indifferent with her hand.
But of course, people noticed her sudden change in itinerary and thought how nice it would be if she also taught their own children to play.
The Madame only frowned slightly when asked and waved her hand for her assistant to prepare a practice room. If they really wanted to trouble her so badly, then she wouldn’t mind taking their money.
John didn’t know how he’d be treated in the end, but he had no choice in the matter. Maybe someday, one of the parents or the Madame herself would realize that he had no home and take him under their wing. In the meantime, all he could do was play.
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