This was going to be fun, Ray thought. Only the first day, and the first words out of Kristoff’s mouth were stupid and racist—but the racism didn’t seem intentional. Kristoff was just deeply ignorant and impossibly clueless.
“What do you have in mind?” Ray asked.
“Your people are known for their jungle rhythms, no? We carefully choose the first piece you are to play, you come onstage, and you dance the first few minutes.”
Ray was speechless. “Are you nuts? I can’t do that.”
“I would not have expected you could,” Kristoff said. “Not dance, but something like dance. A nod to your African ancestry. You need something to make your own.”
A nod to Ray’s African ancestry? Seriously?
“Well, there’s the bow I do at the end,” Ray said. “When I hold out the violin.”
“That comes too late. Can you start the performance by giving the audience something? A flower, perhaps? To a pretty girl? You’re a handsome man. Let’s make the audience love you before you play a note.”
So that night, when Ray appeared, he bowed like he always did, shook the conductor’s hand, shook the concertmaster’s hand, and then marched off the stage, down into the audience. He handed a long-stemmed pink rose to an older woman in her sixties.
She blushed. The crowd exploded.
Then, when he played the Brahms, he sensed immediately the difference: he was connecting with them more viscerally; they were rooting for him in a way that was beyond the music but also because of the music.
For the next month he would put up with Kristoff’s oblivious racism—Ray could learn from him. The five million eyeballs watching the livestreaming Tchaikovsky Competition awaited.
Back at the hotel, he had three texts, two missed calls, and two emails from Uncle Larry.
“Sorry to keep bugging you, but I really need an answer,” Uncle Larry said. “They’re holding the equipment for me, and I need to get that loan signed.”
“Uncle Larry, I can’t,” Ray finally said. “I wish I could. But I can’t risk losing my violin. I have a bunch of gigs coming up and I can try sending you more money then, okay?”
Larry’s voice was soft and deflated. “The equipment will be gone by then.”
“I’m sure there’ll be another shot, and at that point we both will have saved more. Okay?”
Larry disconnected the line without responding.
* * *
—
Over the next few weeks, Kristoff took apart Ray’s performance. He didn’t focus on the music, which Ray found difficult to understand. For Kristoff, music was a show. He drilled into each section of Ray’s repertoire, telling him to stand in one place at the beginning of a piece’s movement, with a yellow light on him; and then, for the second movement, to glide to the other side of the conductor, under a blue light: think of each musical element as a stage play. As the mood of the piece changes, so too does the lighting, your expression, your posture.
They would arrive early to the concert hall, have elaborate discussions with the concertmaster and the lighting team: “No! The lens for the blue is too small for the Mendelssohn! We need something twice this big!” or “The left light bar only! Only! Are you deaf?”
Working with Kristoff was a lesson not only in lighting design and showmanship but in rudeness and bigotry.
In the meantime, Ray’s rejection of his uncle’s get-rich-quick scheme didn’t seem to dampen Uncle Larry’s restaurant enthusiasm: a week later, he found the perfect spot for a late-night dinner club, and would Ray cosign that loan? Every day or two, an email or text pinged on his phone from someone in his family. Uncle Thurston had a new girlfriend with expensive tastes and they were really hoping to go to Bali for a vacation this August; Aunt Joyce’s husband had decided to buy a shower-door company that was going cheap—everyone needs shower doors, don’t they? Thankfully his mother texted the least of any of them, and only when she didn’t receive the money she’d expected. She kept a careful eye on his schedule, so if a payment didn’t come into her account within twenty-four hours of his previous performance, sure enough, his phone would chime: You forget about us?
He gave what he could, but it wasn’t enough. He wondered if it would ever be enough. Of all his family, he looked forward to hearing only from Aunt Rochelle: she never asked for money and was always enthusiastic, asking how he was doing. She, at least, was on his side.
At the same time it seemed, too, that the Marks family had disappeared—Kim Wach wrote them a vicious letter telling them to leave her client alone—but one afternoon Kim called. “When did you last check your email?”