It takes an enormous length of time for someone to answer the doorbell. It’s Audwin Denzel, his uncle’s friend. He waves Beck in. ‘Jan is upstairs. Come, Sohn.’
They bypass the ballroom and instead take the white-carpeted stairs to the second level. Then there’s a twist of hallways and Denzel leaves him in the mouth of a music room – an actual real music room. It’s flooded with light from floor-to-ceiling windows, and the walls are sky blue. And the piano? A white Steinway.
Just the thought of this guy having two grand pianos makes Beck weak.
Jan isn’t there and the room is quiet. There are several bookshelves, a coffee table shaped like a quaver note and a white sofa that Beck’s nearly too scared to sit on. But it’s not like he’s going to sit on the piano stool and tap a few notes while he waits. No thanks.
He rests his backpack on his lap – a shield? – and sits gingerly on the edge of the sofa. And waits.
Ten minutes?
Or a million years?
Finally Jan appears, a mug of steaming coffee in hand. He looks relaxed, casual, with jeans and a black pinstriped shirt, the impossible Keverich curls waxed down and an expensive watch on his wrist, loose and clinking against the mug.
He leans against the doorframe, sips his coffee and stares at Beck.
Are his eyes disappointed? Did Beck fail some sort of test? Great. He’s messed up and he’s been here all of ten minutes.
‘I had a feeling,’ Jan says. ‘Now I’m sure.’
What? That Beck is uncultured in rich man’s etiquette? Maybe he should’ve stood as his uncle entered? Maybe he shouldn’t have sat on the snowy sofa?
Maybe he should’ve told the taxi to take him to the edge of the world and let him fall off.
Jan strides into the room. ‘You hate it.’
‘What?’ Beck is failing this test, failing fast and hard.
‘Someone who loves music, breathes music, wouldn’t have been able to resist this piano. I’ve been waiting outside. You did not touch it or play it or even look at it.’ Jan runs a hand along the grand’s white side. ‘You were too scared to put a fingerprint on it.’
Beck should probably say something. Defend himself? He sits stunned, mute.
‘You sit as far from it as you can.’
Beck hadn’t even thought about where he sat. He just – sat. So his uncle is analysing everything? This is stupid.
‘Last night,’ Jan goes on, his voice as crisp as new sheet music, ‘you stayed on the verandah, again as far from the piano as you could be.’
‘But Joey—’
Jan doesn’t hear him. ‘I wondered if it was stage fright. I said as much last night, to which you didn’t blush or look embarrassed. You looked relieved. Because I hadn’t guessed, had I?’
Stop.
This is a lie, isn’t it? Where’s the uncle with a smile as warm as hot chocolate and a laugh as bright as sunshine? This man is like the Maestro. Was yesterday all an act?
Beck should’ve known.
Jan slams his mug on the coffee table with an ominous crack. Black liquid sloshes over the sides.
Exactly like the Maestro.
How much of an idiot is Beck? Once upon a time, when her hands were perfect and her career rioting forward, the Maestro was probably all smiles and melodies too. Beck is a freaking moron. Why didn’t he see?
And the worst part? He can’t get away. He’s not even sure he can find the front door of this monstrous house, and what would he do if he did? Walk halfway across the city to get home? He’s trapped here, him and Jan and the piano.
‘Did you make a mistake or are you the mistake?’ Jan says.
Beck opens his mouth –
shuts it.
Jan’s eyes harden and the next words are a roar. ‘ANSWER ME.’
It’s not like the Maestro, it is the Maestro. Beck shrinks into the sofa, his world melting. Don’t collapse, don’t shrivel, don’t let his words cut you open. Why wasn’t he born with the Keverich stone and steel?
‘Both,’ he says, because that’s what the Maestro would want to hear.
His eyes close for a second, ready for insults to be hurled at his incompetent foolery. How he’s no Keverich. How he’s no pianist. How he is nothing.
But it doesn’t come.
Jan sinks on to the sofa beside him, puts his head in his hands and rakes fingers viciously through his hair. Confused doesn’t cover what Beck is feeling. He resists the urge to scoot away.
Jan pulls a crisply ironed handkerchief – who does that? Come on – from his pocket and mops up the spilt coffee, cursing softly about wasting good coffee and ruining the mug. Beck’s brain spins, because that’s not something the Maestro would think of. She leaves Beck to clean up the catastrophes.
‘I should’ve used a coaster.’ Jan gives Beck a sorry smile.
Is he messing with him? A cold sort of fury floods Beck’s jaw. His hands knot into his backpack. What is going on?
Jan pushes the coffee away. ‘You’re not honest with me, Beethoven.’
‘Beck.’ He says it stiffly. He’s torn between rage and embarrassment and terror here, but he’s not going to be mocked. And his name is only a joke.
‘Beck,’ Jan amends. ‘My apologies.’
Is this the Keverich curse? Psychotic mood swings?
‘Be honest with me now,’ Jan says. ‘How much do you love the piano?’ But as Beck opens his mouth, Jan holds up a finger, ‘Ah. Nein. You are going to lie.’
‘I’m not.’ Beck’s teeth grit.
Jan’s eyebrow rises. ‘Truly? I see your mother’s words written all over your face. I see her behind your music choices. Those études? We played them as children because we were forced to make them perfect. Drove us both insane.’ He shakes his head. ‘I see her in your fear of mistakes. I see her everywhere about you. But, at the piano, I should see you.’ He sighs and knits his fingers together. ‘I apologise for the theatrics, though, my nephew. I needed to know you honestly.’
What?
‘Does she hit you?’
Beck has lost all use of the human language.
‘We are family,’ Jan says. ‘And I have waited years for your mother to contact me, to let me know where in this forsaken country she was hiding. She should never have left Germany. But, her shame …’ He trails off, but Beck knows.
How, after the stroke, his mother bypassed rehabilitation for the nerve damage in her hands. How she took him when he was just a toddler and left Germany without a goodbye. How she spent all her savings on the house. On the piano. How she couldn’t bear to remember her past, so she cut it away like rot on an apple. How she wanted Beck to take up where she left off, so the world would be awed by the legacy of Ida Magdalena Keverich’s prodigy son.
How he, unfortunately, was not a prodigy.
‘I would have liked to be a father to you and Joey,’ Jan says. ‘But, you know your mother. She wanted to be alone until she was ready.’ He turns on the sofa, faces Beck. ‘So tell me. There is madness in the Keverich line, madness and fear and grief. But does she hit you?’
Bruised lips. Blood-streaked tiles. Hand-shaped bruises.
‘I don’t need rescuing,’ Beck says, voice stretched thin. ‘I’ll save myself.’
He didn’t know, until that moment, that it was true.
But it is.
Jan seems to read between the lines, because he nods and his eyes glow with a thin shred of satisfaction. ‘Gut. I am glad, Beck, I am glad. But I hope you will not refuse a little aid from someone who wants to be part of your life. And I apologise, again, for coming at you so violently. I know Ida’s tempers. It appears they have not changed much, ja?’
Beck just shrugs.
He’s being dissected and it’s hard to breathe.
‘I wish I could give Ida her music back. She is lost without it.’ Jan’s eyes cloud. ‘But it is no excuse. I want to make your life better, my nephew. I want to make your existence exciting and spectacular.’
Beck would prefer an OK life. Where he goes to school and doesn’t worry if there’ll be dinner on the table and never touches a piano and maybe runs to August’s house some nights to stargaze.
‘What do you want, Beck? What do you want of this world?’
He checks to see if Jan is serious – and his uncle’s gaze is level, expectant.