“Go on then, if it pleases the lady,” Sassoon grumbled.
Ernest tipped his head and strode toward the piano. His recklessness had earned him a chance to play for her; that was all that mattered. And he wanted to play well; he wanted her to remember his piano, remember him before he left this bar. For he was tired down to his bones, and he was unsure how much more he could take.
He reached the piano, sat on the bench, took off his glove, and lifted the mahogany fallboard. His naked fingers touched the cold keyboard; a shiver raced down his arm and the familiar feelings of fear and resentment, mixed with anger, sprouted in his chest. It had been almost four years since he last touched a keyboard, since his piano was seized. His arms that used to strike out powerful arpeggios and silky legatos were soft from lack of practice. Before him was the nightmare again: the hand he was afraid to show in public, the grooves on his skin, and the crooked pinkie where the bones had been shattered and healed wrong.
All he could hear was the near silence in the bar, the huffs and puffs of the drinkers. He couldn’t see her, but she was listening, watching.
A new sensation—a fiery burst of tenderness mixed with a familiar ache—powered through him. He inhaled deeply, let his shoulders drop, and gazed down at the keyboard. Notes of Beethoven, Debussy, and Chopin, bouncing, tingling, streamed through his mind. He could no longer hear the crowd, or smell the cigarettes, or see the silver dots printed on the fallboard. He was in a bar, but he might as well be standing on a peak of the Harz mountains or in the center of the Leipziger Platz.
His heart full, he lifted his hands.
This song was for her.
8
AIYI
Notes swept the air, a trickle as delicate as spring mist; then gradually, they grew to be a wave of gentle legatos. The air bubbled in a fountain of sounds, soothing, putting me at ease, and then suddenly they leaped, the rhythms exploding in a passionate deluge of fire, and staccatos, accents, and arpeggios boiled one after another. The air grew incandescent; the bar roared with booming chords. A battle raged in my head; my body grew hot, bound by an infectious cord of excitement unknown to me before. It was a joy to stay there, to be held captive, to ride to the peak, and to be torn apart. But the music was kind; it sought no destruction, only comfort, as its magnificent cascade slowed and eased and dipped, gently like a rock falling into the embrace of a river, to a tender drip. When the notes murmured and finally faded in the air, a pocket of silence descended.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. I had heard different types of music: the energetic jazz that sent the dancers in my club into a frenzy and the melancholy folk music played by the street musicians using three-string violins. But not the classical music played on the piano, the Western music usually only available on gramophones. The foreigner who’d rescued me was full of surprises. A refugee. A bold man bargaining a free drink from Sassoon, and a pianist.
People were clapping. I itched to go up to talk to the pianist, but I had already thanked him. It didn’t make sense to socialize with a foreigner if there were no financial benefits.
“Well, darling, here’s your Chopin. Perhaps he’ll leave us alone now.” Sassoon frowned, still grumpy.
“Just one moment. Would you mind?” I said without thinking, then, weaving between the octagonal tables and smoking men, I walked to the pianist, his fingers still gliding over the keys in a wave of fluid motion.
“You played well. That was worth a cocktail. Thank you. I rather enjoyed it.”
“I’m glad. What else can I play for you?” He did a crossover on a higher octave. His scarred hand seemed to distract him, his crooked pinkie marring the purity of the arpeggios. But the wonder of the piano. There was nothing like that.
“You played it for me?”
“Of course. The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. I’ll play anything for you.”
“Anything?” I teased him. People flirted with me all the time, and I had gone along unfazed. This felt different.
“Absolutely.”
“I like jazz.”
“The American music? I love it too. What’s your favorite song?”
No one had ever asked me about my favorite song before, not the band I hired, not Cheng or my brothers, who believed jazz would corrupt my soul. Good girls listen to Mother; bad girls listen to jazz, Sinmay, my brother, had said. I couldn’t contain myself. “‘The Last Rose of Shanghai.’ It’s Shanghai jazz, a blend of American jazz and Chinese folk song. The gramophone was playing that. You want to hear it? It goes like this.” I hummed, swinging to the beat. “‘There is a kind of love that strikes like a thunderbolt; it blinds you, yet opens your eyes to see the world anew.’ There, there. That’s my favorite line.”