The old Madame was dying.
No more than two years had passed since she started teaching John, and during those years, her eyesight had been getting worse and worse. With the sudden clamor and outburst of children she had been overseeing, she often hoped that her hearing would decline alongside it, and eventually turned half-deaf.
No eyes, no ears, no nose, the only thing she could use to ‘see’ were her stiff and bloated fingers. John became her translator to the world and eventually even took over a few classes for her.
Neither of them knew sign language, but John had learnt a bit of braille from practicing with the Madame for so long. She hurriedly urged him to attend sign language classes with her, so she could continue being lazy and shove her already light work onto his shoulders. Well, she also wanted to be able to scold and tease him at will, but that wasn’t important.
These days, John acted like her caretaker and repeatedly stayed at her home. The furnishing and layout was familiar, though he couldn’t tell why that would be. This was clearly his first time in a house.
As for the Madame, she seemingly held no recollection of knowing John before the lessons began; take it as a fault of the old.
Nevertheless, John quickly became familiar with the menial tasks of living. He had a room of his own and a set of fitted clothes that did not come from the hall’s donations. The Madame enrolled him into an online course to make up for all those years without education -- he was neither poor nor outstanding, but she was still satisfied with his results. He slowly helped tutor the original caretaker’s clumsy sign language, as well as oversee the assistant’s work. John was able to finally abandon the label of ‘the concert hall’s child’ and was recognized as a hardworking, dependable person.
The Madame, on the other hand, relaxed and laughed in front of John, feeling that her time was soon coming to an end. The dignified attitude fell away and revealed a smug, lazy old woman. She still got into trouble and turned her caretaker’s head white and left the messes she made to John and her assistant to deal with. Several times, her caretaker had to snatch away substances of dubious origin.
It was tiring, but John was glad to see that the old Madame seemed happy.
Between the pages of a particularly old practice book, John found a small photo.
The woman in the photo was young and charming, with dark eyes that glittered with a childish delight. She laughed at the person behind the camera and presented a small bouquet of clovers and dandelions and other common weeds, while behind her was a wooden picnic table and a sparse forest. Her hair was long and fell freely behind her back, enshrining her was a simple layered sundress, ruffled slightly in the wind.
John brought up the photograph while in conversation with the Madame.
‘Is it you?’ He remembered the girl’s smile and immediately compared it to the Madame’s arrogant smirk.
The Madame refuted him out loud, “Can’t you tell? That’s my wife.”
Her voice was rough and quiet from lack of use, but there was a commanding air in the way she spoke.
John froze. Since when did the Madame have a spouse? There were no photos of people in the entire house, nor any sort of memorabilia of another person’s life. Not to mention, John had never seen her speak about her wife with anyone before!
The Madame only laughed when he brought this up. “Aiya, why would I talk about my wife with people who cannot know her? She doesn’t deserve the disrespect of people’s assumptions. Ah, I’ll tell you, she was a very precious girl. She wanted to study the stars since she was young, but couldn’t make it as an astrologist. Before I took over the hall, we hitchhiked around the country as a violin-piano duet.”
The woman’s name was Shan, and she had been gone for many decades already. They met when Shan’s childhood scout club was selling sweets and the Madame had tried to steal some. If not for the fact that the two didn’t really take themselves seriously, the interaction could’ve turned into a bitter rivalry, since the two continued to meet at schools and concert recitals. When it came to university and job-hunting, the two prematurely tied the knot and ran away from their displeased families; the Madame’s grandfather that so doted on her was the first one to chase the young couple out of their hometown. At the time, the two were barely able to call themselves adults. The Madame had lived for such a long time and broke through numerous trials, but there wasn’t much else to say about Shan: the Madame mentioned without restraint that Shan had disappeared during a time when the Madame was in her thirties when abduction cases were rising; her voice was nonchalant and a slight smirk still played across her lips, but her eye’s showed an unrivaled ferocity. Clearly, there was something more to the story, but John didn’t probe. He felt that he had already resurfaced a plate of spoiled food in front of her.
Still, John was confused. ‘Aren’t you afraid of forgetting her, though?’
“Naturally, I won’t forget the name of my best friend so easily. If I do, doesn’t that just mean that I’m another step closer to seeing her again?”
The Madame didn’t insist on the topic and the matter of the lost wife was quickly dropped.
‘John, don’t you want to leave this place?’ The Madame fluently and suddenly asked with her hands. ‘The university I attended has its registration coming up soon. I can give you a letter of recommendation if you choose the music program there. University isn’t too bad, do you know… ‘
The Madame wore a rare serious expression while talking about the benefits of earning a college degree. Before, John hadn’t even considered the possibility of getting a higher education. Even while taking those online classes, he felt that the results weren’t impressive enough to garner attention from his teachers, much less a university. Now, suddenly asking him to pack up and leave just when the Madame was on the crux of death, wasn’t this too convenient?
John held her hand and signed, ‘No need. I didn’t prepare anything, and I don’t have enough money. There’s no way for me to get a scholarship even with your letter. Besides, I’m fine with just working at the hall.’
‘Money isn’t a problem.’ The Madame harrumphed and tried to flick his forehead. ‘I’m telling you, it’s not good to take up space in the hall all the time.’
‘And I’m telling you, there’s no point.’
The Madame muttered something unintelligible and shooed John away. However, just a few weeks later, a brochure for a certain university arrived at the house. A short letter was attached to it, saying that the university had accepted the Madame’s recommendation and awaited his application on favorable terms. John realized that the old Madame was not willing for him to let go of this opportunity and sent back an application half-heartedly.
He wasn’t expecting much in the first place, so there was no harm in humoring the Madame.
But when a letter returned confirming his placement as a piano-oriented major, he suddenly realized the weight of responsibility he had.
At this point, John was about to turn twenty-one. He was still finishing up the classes that would give him the qualifications to attend the university. Now faced with another mountain to cross, he couldn’t help but feel rather regretful.
To have such a large decision made on a whim, John silently berated himself in his heart for bringing himself needless trouble. He didn’t mean to push away the Madame’s sincerity, he just believed that the simple life suited him!
John spent his time packing and glaring at the old Madame, who pretended not to see him. No, that’s not right, she couldn’t even see him in the first place. In any case, there was a strange cold war brewing between an old woman and a young adult for many days.
Of course after John’s departure, it would be impossible for the two to meet again.
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