EVERY MORNING THE PIANO rescues Souren Balakian from his dreams.
The same low notes gently tug him away from everything that he has left behind. The ghosts that haunt his sleep are chased away by the music floating up through the floor from the studio below. He opens his eyes.
The workbench on the other side of the room. The empty stares of the puppets on the wall. A small gasp of relief escapes his lips.
His head falls back onto the pillow as the music washes over him.
The first theme emerges from the depths of the piano, no more than a whisper. Souren hears a heavy melancholy in the stately procession of low, single notes. Every morning he wonders what the composer has lived through, to have drawn such sadness out of himself.
And then, through the dark clouds, a shaft of brilliant sunlight. A new melody emerges, high and clear and heartbreaking. This is what Souren waits for. The tune cleaves the gathering shadows and wraps itself brightly around his heart.
Those first brooding tones retreat, but they do not vanish. Now the music is two intertwined melodic lines, one low, one high, one sad, one full of hope. They meet and diverge, echoing each other, dual counterpoints of darkness and light. Sometimes they come together in sweet harmony; sometimes not.
Finally, the music resolves back to its first theme, that simple, forlorn elegy. The pianist’s left hand stretches down the keyboard into ever-lower registers, until there are no more keys to be pressed, no more notes to be played.
Silence crowds in.
Souren lies still, staring up at the ceiling. From the room below comes the scrape of a piano stool. A moment later, the same low notes echo up once more through the floor. He listens to the piece a second time, then a third.
This is the only music the invisible pianist ever plays. There are no scales, no taxing etudes. Every morning he comes to his studio and performs the same tune over and over again.
When Souren sees his neighbor from downstairs in the hallway, the two men exchange polite nods, but they have never spoken a word to each other. The musician is a short, middle-aged man, always impeccably dressed. From his perfectly combed hair to the tips of his polished shoes, he projects an aura of unruffled elegance, but Souren knows better. His solitary repertoire betrays a quiet unraveling within.
Souren knows the comfort of the familiar all too well: like the pianist, he gives one identical performance after another. He tells the same stories, day after day. This is how he survives. That is why later on today he will pack up his puppets and cross the city to his usual spot in the Jardin du Luxembourg, beneath the chestnut trees. Then he will wait for the children to come.
The sound of the piano continues to float up through the floor. The melody breaches his defenses and buries itself inside him. He feels the mournful pulse of those low notes deep in his bones. The music quickens his blood, and he thinks of Thérèse—her soft body beneath his, her red mouth on his. He has not seen her in months. If the audience is generous today, perhaps he’ll pay her a visit this evening.
There is the gentlest knock as the lid of the piano closes.
Souren moves to the window and looks down onto the street. In front of the apartment building there is a small fountain. An unsteady trickle of water emerges from the top of the stone column at its center. Beneath the fountain’s surface is a carpet of coins, tossed in by superstitious passersby. From Souren’s window they catch the reflection of the early morning sun, winking up at him.
After a moment the pianist appears. He walks past the fountain and crosses to the opposite sidewalk. He is wearing a perfectly cut gray overcoat and an elegant hat. There is a dark flash of color, a silk scarf, at his throat. He leans forward as he walks, as if he is heading into a strong wind.
This man’s music has become part of Souren’s mornings, as essential as the sun rising over the rooftops of the city. The familiar melody offers him a moment of quiet grace, and this gives him strength for the day ahead. The pianist knows nothing of this, of course. He plays only for himself. Souren wonders how the arc of the man’s own days is changed by creating such beauty each morning. He watches as the pianist makes his lonely way down the street. The man looks tired, defeated. He does not play for joy, thinks Souren. He plays for survival.
The silence that follows is almost as sweet as the music it replaces. Souren sits down at his table, languishing in the space left behind by the piano’s notes.
Then comes a lovely echo: a woman’s voice, low and warm and rich. A second voice joins in, higher and sweeter than the first. The singers navigate the piano’s melody in perfect unison. A song without words. Gone is the tune’s melancholy. Now the music is reborn, full of life and bursting with hope.
Souren clears a space at one end of the table and lays out two plates. He unwraps a small parcel of heavy wax paper. Inside is a wedge of pale cheese, its rind a dusty gray. He bends down and sniffs. I’ve found a new one for you, Augustin told him last night when he stopped in at the fromagerie on Rue des Martyrs. A Saint-Nectaire, from the Auvergne. I think you’ll like it. Souren places the Saint-Nectaire between the two plates, and waits.
A few minutes later, there is a knock on his door.
Standing in the corridor is a young girl. She is wearing a blue tunic and has long, dark hair. Big gray eyes gaze up at him.
“You’ll never guess what!” says the girl at once.
“Bonjour, Arielle. What?” Even after all these years, Souren’s French is awkward and cautious. It is a language, he has discovered, fat with grammatical and idiomatic peculiarities. Even the simplest sentence contains traps for the unwary. At least he knows that his young visitor will not judge him for his mistakes.
“Maman has agreed to take me to the Jardin du Luxembourg today. Enfin!”
Souren smiles at her. “That’s very good news.”
“I’m finally going to see your puppet show!”
“I like our little shows here,” says Souren. “They remind me of a girl I used to know. Her name was Amandine.”
“It’s not the same, though,” says Arielle. “I can see you, for one thing. And that’s not right.”
Souren inclines his head, conceding the point: seeing him is not right. He gestures for her to enter. “We have something new to try today.”
Arielle sits down at the table and looks at the cheese in front of her. “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”
“It’s called Saint-Nectaire,” says Souren, as he cuts two slices and puts one on each plate. “Tell me what you think.”
They eat the cheese in silence.
“It’s not as smelly as some of the other ones,” says Arielle. “May I have some more?”
Souren cuts them both another slice and then turns to the wall of puppets. “Alors, who do you choose today?”
Arielle considers for a moment. “Those two.” She points to a young boy and a handsome knight. Souren takes the puppets off their hooks. He sits back down. Arielle eats her cheese and waits.
All of a sudden the puppets burst into life from beneath the tabletop. The knight is regal, serene. The boy, in contrast, flies back and forth along the edge of the table. He wants to become the knight’s apprentice. He begs, he implores. Arielle watches, rapt. If you wish to be my page, says the knight, you must prove your loyalty and your bravery. Of course, of course, agrees the boy at once. And how do I do that?
Just then there is a knock on the door. Souren breathes a sigh of relief. Sometimes when he begins a story he knows how it will end, and sometimes he does not.
“Come in,” he calls.
The door opens and a woman steps into the room. She smiles at them both. “How is the cheese today?” she asks.
“Maman, you’re interrupting the story again!” complains Arielle.
Her mother looks unperturbed. “Oh, Saint-Nectaire! How delicious!” She picks up a crumb of cheese off her daughter’s plate and pops it into her mouth. “We have some grocery shopping to do this morning, Arielle. Perhaps we’ll buy some for ourselves.”
“I heard you both singing this morning,” says Souren.
“Oh, I hope we didn’t disturb you!”
“Not at all. I love to hear you sing.”
The woman smiles. “It’s a beautiful melody, n’est-ce pas?”
“I hope he will always play that tune,” agrees Souren.
“I’m sure he will, until he writes something else.”
Souren frowns, unsure he has understood correctly. “Until he writes—?”
“Didn’t you know? He’s not really a pianist. He’d be the first person to tell you that. He says his hands are too small.”
Souren thinks of the elegantly dressed man and his well-manicured fingers. “He sounds like a pianist to me.”
She shakes her head. “He’s a composer. His name is Maurice Ravel.”
Souren has never heard of him.
“En tout cas, they say that he has not written a note for months. He comes here instead, to his studio, and plays the same piece every day.” The woman pauses. “Can you imagine how it must feel, to be put on earth to do one thing, and then not to be able to do it?”
Souren remembers the man’s slumped shoulders as he walked down the street, away from his piano. “Perhaps that is why the music is so sad,” he says.
The woman bends down and kisses the top of her daughter’s head. “Did Arielle tell you that we’re coming to the Jardin du Luxembourg this afternoon?”
“She may have mentioned it,” says Souren, grinning. From the edge of the tabletop, the knight performs a deep bow. “Arielle knows the puppets so well, but she’ll see a very different show this afternoon.” He nods at the knight and the little boy, who both appear to be listening closely to every word he says. “Nobody else has ever heard the stories I tell you here,” he says to Arielle. “They are just for you.”
“What kind of stories do you tell at the show?” asks Arielle.
He shrugs. “Some you will know, others you will not.”
“Stories from where you came from?” guesses her mother.
Souren thinks of the new tunic for Hector’s puppet that he sewed together in the small hours of that morning, and nods.
“Well, we can’t wait!” She smiles. “And if that wasn’t enough excitement, tonight I’m going to hear one of the greatest jazz musicians in the world play.” At this Souren pulls a face. “You don’t like jazz?” She laughs.
“Don’t the musicians just play whatever notes they want?”
“Well, they improvise, yes, so every time it’s different. But that’s what makes it so sweet.”
Souren points to the floor, at the invisible piano in the room below. “I like things the same each time.”
“Oh, Souren! Where’s your sense of adventure?”
He does not respond. He has left his sense of adventure behind him, far away from here.