The Audition
Chapter 1
Friday, March 1
I know I’ve screwed up the instant I finish the piece. No, before that. I know the instant I start playing the Andante in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 3. It’s a soft, emotional little melody, and as I hear the notes in the air, I can tell something is off.
The emotion is missing, as it has been since my mother died. And though this audition is my last-ditch effort to fix the mess that I’ve made of my life since that day, it seems like I’ve failed again.
There are four people listening to me play. The Chair of the Piano department at Juilliard, and three members of the faculty. Three men, and one woman who had smiled at me encouragingly when I started. She’s not smiling now; she’s saying something in a low voice to the other three. I can see her hands wave expressively as she speaks. One of the men turns to look at me doubtfully, but she nods vigorously and keeps talking.
Finally, the Chair nods.
“Alison Greenwall,” he says. His eyes meet mine. “I’m going to be honest – your work isn’t to the standard we expect at Juilliard.”
Yes, I know that. Until I had started preparing last month for this audition, I hadn’t touched the piano in six years. I’m horribly rusty, but it is more than that. There’s a block in me, and the pressure is building up behind it, but I can’t let go and release the emotion safely.
“But your mother was part of the faculty here, and Mara,” he glances over to the woman in the brightly patterned dress and the dangly earrings, “thinks you have potential.” His expression makes no secret of the fact that he’s not as convinced as Mara is about my talent.
“It is March 1. We are going to make an exception for you, and schedule another audition next week. March 6. I suggest you practise hard for your second chance.”
I thank them quietly, and I leave the room.
***
Five days. What the fuck is the point? Maybe if I had longer to prepare, I could try to sort out why my playing feels wooden and lifeless. I have technical merit, true. I’ve been playing the piano since I was four, and when I was eighteen, thoughts of getting into Juilliard were all that occupied my time. But my heart has never completely recovered from my mother’s death, and one week isn’t sufficient time to try to coax it from hiding.
I am about to give in to despair and tears, when a stray thought strikes me. ‘Nikolai could help.’
I swiftly banish that thought. I want nothing to do with Nikolai Zhdanov. But the thought doesn’t retreat, and as I sit in the Starbucks around the corner from Juilliard, it gains in strength. If anyone can fix what is wrong, it’s Nikolai, and he owes me. He bears a share of responsibility for the mess my life is in now. He can help me pull myself out.
I act on impulse. I have only my wallet with me, but I head towards Chinatown, where I can catch a cheap shuttle bus to Boston.
Nikolai lives in Boston. I haven’t seen him in six years; the last time I saw him was at my mother’s funeral. He’d looked anguished and bleak that day. His hands had still been in bandages, his career as a classical pianist ruined as a result of the damage sustained in the car crash and the subsequent fire. But I was hurting from the death of the only parent I had ever known, and I didn’t care about his loss, just mine.
The bus will take four hours to reach my destination. I have four hours to figure out how to convince him to tutor me so I will pass the audition.
***
I knock on the red door of the Cambridge townhouse and wait.
I wait some more. I knock again. Finally, after almost five minutes, the door opens, and Nikolai Zhdanov stands in the doorway. One dark eyebrow has risen upon seeing me, but he surveys me in silence.
“Zdrastvuyte, Nikolai,” I say quietly.
Finally, he speaks. “Allie,” he says, his voice rich with distaste. “The Juilliard audition didn’t go great, I take it?”
I take a deep breath. I don’t bother asking how he knows – he is probably on first name basis with every single one of the faculty at Juilliard. I don’t bother admiring his flawless, unaccented English. I just put my cards on the table.
“No,” I reply. “I need your help.”
He moves aside, and I take a step inside his house. My heart is beating and my palms are damp. Seeing Nikolai Zhdanov again is making me very, very nervous.
***
“Tell me why I should help you, Allie.”
The question hangs in the air, and I consider my response.
Nikolai and I have so much history. He was my mother’s most cherished protégé. When she heard him play the piano in a small orchestra in the mostly forgotten city of Norilsk in the far northern reaches of Russia, she’d moved heaven and earth to get him a visa to America. For the first three months, until she persuaded the New York Philharmonic to give him an audition, he had lived in our apartment. I’d given up my bedroom and moved into my mother’s room so that Nikolai could have some privacy.