“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
“Well, it never hurts to be reminded now and then.” She kissed him lightly. “You get back to work. There’s this hot Russian guy that was checking me out on my way over here and I want to make sure he got my number right.”
“Good one,” he said.
She left him to practice.
By late afternoon, self-doubt had bloomed into all-out self-disgust. He decided that coming to the Tchaikovsky Competition was the dumbest thing he could have done. The rivalry with Mikhail Lezenkov was stupid, because of course Mikhail was a better player. One minute Ray was blaming himself and the next minute he was blaming the Lehman. The Strad’s absence throbbed in the air. Playing with this other violin was like playing with a prosthetic arm; it worked but was not the same. It felt lifeless. It was all the Lehman’s fault that he was fuckin’ up Christmas.
There was no use in more woodshedding. He was not getting any better and wasn’t going to get any better. He gave up. He wandered around the halls but felt like an endangered species on display. Stares from every direction. One young man actually came up and tried to touch his hair.
“Come on, man. Not cool.”
Press and fans circled him, and again he spoke to as many media outlets as he could: “If you’re watching this, know that I’m trying to get my violin back. It was stolen a month ago, and the kidnappers want five million dollars. That’s what I’m trying to raise. I can’t do it alone. I need your help.”
The afternoon rehearsal onstage went no better than the rehearsal in the practice room. If he’d held out hope that Mariamna was not deeply disapproving of his existence, that hope was dashed: he was sure she thought that his survival this far in the competition was due, without question, to a clerical error. He suspected that she was right.
Back in the hotel, he changed into his tuxedo, which felt too tight. He was probably getting fat. It would undoubtedly split open in the middle of the Paganini. He waddled up to the warm-up room to await his imminent debacle, figured he might as well warm up. Because playing for the past ten hours hadn’t warmed him up, right?
In the practice room, the Bach Chaconne awaited—one of the most difficult pieces, period, to play, because of its extensive polyphony and implied counterpoint. It was mathematical, precise, dizzying—and that’s what he’d heard all the other contestants focusing on: making the piece precise, vital, energetic. Rachel Vetter kept drilling emotion. “Never forget the rich emotional core of the piece,” she had told him.
And there, fed by the listeners, he felt himself thawing into the way he’d played for all those months of practice. Reached deep inside himself, summoning up strength and emotion and assurance. It was the audience that he tapped into. The music he knew; it was all muscle memory, and his muscles were ready. He could feel the Bach reaching out from his shoulders like wings, or a cloak, lifting into the corners of the room.
Dimly he was aware of Mikhail Lezenkov in a corner, watching coldly, and Ray could not have cared less.
He was ready. His Bach was sounding exactly the way he wanted—like himself, like all the work he’d put in, to be distinctive and original. A few heads turned as he practiced. Mariamna was there, and together they walked out onstage. He held the emotion close to him, looked out at the sea of white faces, so different from his own, and vowed that he would connect with them: if nothing else, he would connect.
Those fifty minutes he played seemed more like five. One after the other, the music spooled from him and his instrument: the Bach, the Paganini, the Tchaikovsky, the Ravel.
He fucking belonged up here.
He didn’t want to leave the stage. Ever.
This audience was like nothing he’d ever experienced. He knew that the online component was following the competition by making lists and tallying scores. Dozens of cameras stared into him to remind him that five million people were watching, sending money to his crowdfunding site.
But now, here in the recital hall, it was the live people, the people in front of him, who gave him a boost. With every pull of his bow, the audience leaned one way or another, like they were sledding, pounding on the seats at the end and standing up and shouting. It was electrifying, terrifying, and reminded Ray of a gospel choir.
When they finished, Mariamna smiled at him—or maybe it was a wince, it was difficult for Ray to tell. He was dripping with sweat but barely noticed. So that’s what playing in a perfect concert hall, with hordes of passionate music lovers, was like. Could he do it every night?