It was a virtual sitting room with the most amazing re-creation of a grand piano that Claude had ever seen. The big letters above the keyboard read:
BERKHULTZ
He later learned that this was the name of a famous programmer of virtual instruments. The sunlight streaming through the heavy curtains of the window was low and of a wan character, like a sunrise in winter on Earth might have been.
“So,” said Despacio, when Claude appeared, “you are the one they sent to try me out.”
“I don’t imagine that I am trying you out, sir,” said Claude.
“What is it you imagine then?” Despacio appeared today as a middle-aged man with a goatee and a monocle. He was dressed in simple black and white. Claude was to learn that this was only one of several manifestations, and that Despacio did not picture himself—he was definitely male in all his appearances—as a particular person in a particular body at all.
“I think that I am very lucky to have an amazing chance,” Claude said. “Maybe a historic one.”
Despacio gazed at him through his monocle glass for a moment with a cold, blue eye. “Even if you are a young man who is full of shit,” he finally said, “you are probably right. Let us begin. Sit at the piano with me.”
And with that, the lessons commenced. At first they worked on nothing but technique. Despacio was appalled at Claude’s and set him to doing a complicated series of exercises for several weeks. The music was pretty enough, but it was only a means to build Claude’s finger strength and dexterity.
Claude went at it with intensity, nonetheless, and one day after a particularly complicated run Despacio grunted, sat back on the piano bench beside Claude, and said, “Yes, well, enough of that.” And then he began to teach Claude how to play music.
They worked through piece after piece in what, to Claude, seemed an entirely random order. First Bach, then some blues, then Debussy followed by a Zipper tune-wander from the twenty-third century. Contrapuntal early music. Rezik’s Clabberwerks. But in each piece, Despacio challenged Claude to feel the music, to learn to see through the notation, to even see through the touch of his fingers against the keys.
“You have to go inside the piano,” Despacio said. “You have to respond to it before it even makes a sound.”
“But—”
“But, nothing, young man. We’re not talking mysticism. Not yet. We’re talking about understanding what music is. It isn’t what you play. It’s what you find. Like mathematics. Exactly like mathematics. It’s out there, and all you do is explore it.”
Claude didn’t really see what Despacio was getting at, but he applied himself diligently, tried to perceive, at least, if not to feel.
Then, as abruptly as he’d ended the finger exercises, Despacio called a halt to the learning of new pieces.
“My version of the Well-Tempered Clavier has certainly shown its worth,” he said. “Now we at least know what we’re dealing with. Go away, now, Claude. I have to think.”
“But, I don’t . . . are the lessons over? Have I failed?” Claude suddenly felt the old anxiety clench its fist around his gut again. For a moment, he prepared himself for Despacio to hit him.
“No,” replied Despacio. “Please be at your next lesson on schedule.”
“Are you sure. I could—”
“Good-bye, Claude. Day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll . . . all right. I’ll be here.”
Claude shunted back to his dorm room feeling as if he’d been hit in the head with a wooden beam. He spent the next day fretting, and showed up for the following lesson exactly on time. Despacio was waiting in the sitting room as usual, but there was something profoundly different. With a start, Claude realized that the Berkhultz grand was gone. Now there was only a table and two chairs. Despacio was sitting in one; he motioned for Claude to take the other.
“There is something inside you,” Despacio began without preamble, “that will not let you play.”
Today the composer was dressed in a plaid shirt and blue jeans. He had grown a big mane of a beard whose hair was snow-white. This was, Claude knew, his “Ben Johnston” body.
“I have come to the conclusion,” he continued, “that we will never make a performer out of you. That is, you will never be a great performer, or even a very good one. I don’t know what the problem is, but it is beyond my skills to correct.”
“I’m sorry,” Claude said. Again the fist in his stomach, clenching.
“There is no need to be sorry,” said Despacio. “I am certain that it is beyond your powers to influence what has happened to you or the abilities with which you have been born.”
“Yes,” said Claude. “I suppose you’re right, sir.”
“Don’t give me that ‘sir’ bullshit,” Despacio suddenly exclaimed. “Don’t you think I’ve noticed by now that, with you, ‘sir’ is a term of anger, a pointed way of stabbing out using respect as a weapon?”
Claude was silent. He didn’t know what to make of Despacio’s comment.
“It doesn’t matter,” said the composer. “What matters is this: Do you want to continue with music?”
“Yes,” Claude answered without hesitation.
“Why?”
“It’s . . . the only thing I have.”
“You will never have it.”
Again Claude was silent.
“But there is something,” said Despacio. “Something harder. From now on, you and I are going to work on composition only, my boy. I think it is the only way”—he tugged at his beard, fixed Claude in his gaze—“for someone like you.”
Then the cool air-conditioning flowed in Claude’s mind. The fist unclenched. A little.
“I don’t care how hard it is,” Claude said. “Sir.”
“Of course you don’t,” replied Despacio, “because you are a hard thing, yourself.”
Claude crossed his arms and looked into Despacio’s eyes, now big and dark. “What is it you want me to do?” he asked.