(8) Cantabile

Hey, Octavia Melody...

The girl I could never understand. The girl who moves me in mysterious ways. The girl with long, beautiful black hair, porcelain skin, a smile that can sometimes be as fake as plastic and other times melt my heart, and eyes that see both through me and at me.

Why did you tell me to play?

Why do you want to hear my music?

Even if it might be terrible?

Even if I'm here to commit suicide as a musician?

Knowing I can't hear the notes?

These are all things I plan to ask you.

I hope you're prepared, after dragging me around all this time!

I'm definitely going to get you back!

"Miss Melody is feeling a bit under the weather today, so she will be sitting amongst you today, kids!"

An excited chatter arose at that. Some of the children in the audience clambered in their seats to get a look at Octavia, who sat a few rows away.

"As such, please give a round of applause for..."

I stepped into that light once more.

"Asher Winterfield!"

The only sound in the hall were my footsteps, echoing and reverberating loudly in the acoustics of the grand hall.

A few claps. Clearly there was confusion amongst the crowd. The children who didn't know any better found themselves in a pickle when they were the only ones applauding.

"That's him, isn't it?"

"Sure looks different from the photos..."

"Idiot, that was six years ago! And this isn't a concert, so he's not in a tux or anything..."

"Wow, I can't wait!"

I couldn't figure out what kind of expression to wear as I stood before the small crowd of people. This was a weekly, non-formal event, so the hall wasn't packed like I was used to seeing. Perhaps that made the weight of what was about to happen even worse.

These were the people I was about to disappoint. Just these children, their parents, and a handful of curious onlookers were all that sat before me, yet their expecting eyes and words pierced me like bullets..

I took my seat, adjusting the height of my chair and the endpin on my cello so it sat comfortable between my knees.

And after all preparations were made, I let my hands fall to my side, hanging loosely and without feeling, as if my body had died.

Ah... I remember now.

This feeling.

The silence before a performance.

The air was thick with a feeling. So poignant it felt like you could grab it with your hands if you just reached far enough.

The moment before the conductor's baton came down. Before a pitcher threw the ball. Before the referee blows the whistle. Before the starting pistol is fired.

Octavia brought me here today to hear me play.

But for me, as someone who can no longer do that...

I am here to die.

I raise my arms, my left on those steel strings, my right holding the bow loosely with four fingers.

Bach's Prelude. The first of the great cello suites. Musical masterpieces.

If I played well, in this moment, would I be able to hear it again?

The notes?

I inhaled.

...

And with the release of my breath, my hands began to move.

I let myself sway into the unchanging rhythm of the Prelude. A steady piece which never needed a drastic shift in tempo or dynamics in order to convey a change of emotion, it was rather one of the fine examples of how notes and musical structure could dictate certain phrases, transform them into miniature and subtle expressions of sound and emotion.

Just as the sheet music in my mind dictated, I played each note in the time it was meant to be played. My fingers moved mechanically, almost against my will, even though the friction of the steel strings began to dig into my fingertips. The weight of my bow felt like a heavy stone in my right hand, my entire arm attacked with a familiar sensation that it was conversely not used to.

My body cried out, begging me to stop, desperately asking why I had decided to put it through the motions of playing cello when I had sworn off doing so for so long.

Yet I played.

The notes were garbled like a person trying to speak with their mouth full. Not a single phrase from Bach's composition shined in my mind's eye.

The air around me was in sepia.

"Hey, this playing is a little..."

"Should the little ones be listening to this?"

"I thought he was preparing for a comeback. What a disappointment."

I was halfway through the piece. I couldn't tell by sound, but the metronome inside my head had counted nineteen measures. Twenty three left to go.

Could I bear it? I had to steel my mind in order not to lose my place. If I couldn't remember what came next, I would have no point of reference. My ears reached out to grab the notes, but the only thing left was television static.

I couldn't put any feeling into my playing. Just keeping up with the score was taking everything I had. Sweat dripped obscenely from my forehead and hands, and it felt like the blood cells in my head would rupture any second.

This is wrong. This is wrong. I shouldn't be trying to play the cello. Why am I here? What am I doing? Why do I still try?

My hands were beginning to slow. There was no decrescendo written in the piece, yet I could feel my pace reducing with each measure.

I couldn't look up at the audience. My eyes were fixed on the bridge of my cello, the wooden piece where five steel strings stretched over like wool over my eyes.

"This is hopeless..."

"Where's Octavia? I came here to hear her..."

My body was beginning to seize up. Starting from my toes, crawling up my calves and towards my abdomen, the sensation that I had been touched by Midas' hand was beginning to take me. Like I was beginning to become stone.

Ah... you knew this would happen, wouldn't you?

Yet, you still tried. You met with Octavia Melody, followed her every whim, and ended up on this stage.

At least Alexis isn't here to see me like this. That's good. In her eyes, I should just be the sad guy with no plans for life, her production assistant. That life is the only thing waiting for me after this performance. Well, if I make up with her, that is...

I'm sorry, Alex. Sorry, Octavia.

Lost in my thoughts, the sheet music vanished from my mind. My hands slowed to a stop, as did the song.

Sorry, mom. Sorry, me.

I did this to myself. By hoping. By expecting something.

Again.

I stared at the ceiling, my body and mind numb.

The same mistake.

"Is it over?"

"He didn't even finish..."

"Is it true that he can't hear himself anymore?"

"Can't be..."

A worried chatter spread throughout that small audience.

I was frozen in time. My bow still on the string. My hands came dangerously close to going slack, letting everything go, letting myself fall back into a deep hole...

"Don't stop!"

Like an electric shock, Octavia Melody's voice pierced my ears. I nearly jumped in my seat at the sudden noise.

"Don't you dare stop, Winterfield!"

She had stood up in the audience. Everyone looked at her with mixed feelings.

"I..."

I could tell her voice was trembling, even from where I sat. "I'll never forgive you if you do!"

She inhaled deeply once and yelled in a way I'd never heard before.

"I won't give you a ride back home! That's a long way to walk, you know that!? And I'll take back the money I was going to lend you for the train!"

"So don't stop!"

Don't stop.

Her voice echoed once, twice, then three times in that large hall, and then vanished into the air.

She was colorful. Her words and actions moved me like nothing else did.

She was spring itself.

And I was winter. Cold, unmoving, stoic, forever destined to be the season which brings about the death of all things.

But it didn't have to be that way. After all, winter wasn't just the season of dying trees or flowers...

It was the season of revival. That death was part of the cycle which brought about bigger, better things. Winter was a powerful, influential force. And that snow, which covered everything like a blanket, lit up the world in a way that fake lights and flowers could never hope to accomplish...

I stared back at Octavia, a deep feeling welling up in my chest.

I had stopped midway. By all accounts, the performance was a failure. Nothing about this was a learning experience for those children who sat before me.

Still, they looked at me with expectant eyes. They sparkled so impossibly bright, like freshly fallen snow. Like bright red roses.

Like the garden I met her in.

My entire body tensed up, then relaxed.

"I wanna be just like him!"

That little girl who looked at me like a superhero. Did I ever feel that way about someone else? Wasn't there something in my life that moved me to act?

There was someone, for certain.

She was outrageous. She liked to play tricks on me. She was deceptively beautiful. She was inexplicable, she said and did strange things on a whim. She saw through me like I was made of glass. Yet at the same time, she never acted as if I were below her or in need of pity.

Octavia Melody. The modern classical genius. The girl who I'd met before, but couldn't remember where or when. She wasn't a flower on a high mountain, and neither of us were Beethoven. We were just people. She was a girl with a heart bigger than mine.

When hope was nowhere to be found within me, she instead shared with me her own.

"I still believe in you."

"I still believe in you. So don't go thinking you can't do it just because you don't think you can. It's not a matter of 'can' or 'can't,' it's a matter of doing!"

This ridiculous, impossible girl. Octavia Melody.

Despite everything, my lips began to curl up at the edges.

You're so infuriating... you bring me here by force, tell me it's okay to run away, yet you deny me a way home?

You're so unfair.

I smiled, and my eyes saw the lights above me through a thin film of tears.

And so...

I played from the top.

The notes were still muddled. Although they couldn't reach my ears, it no longer mattered. I wasn't playing with any special technique, any special mindset, nothing like that. Rather than play religiously to the score, I instead let myself be free inside the music.

I freed myself, if only for a moment, from the shackles of my ears. It was just like she said, how listening wasn't everything. I could feel the music now.

Each note was a color that danced in front of my mind's eye. Each note was a memory, an emotion, a strong urge.

I wanted to transcend words. I wanted to speak through my instrument like Octavia did.

I cried out to the air with my cello—

I want to make life comfortable for my Uncle.

I want to make up with Alexis, and laugh and joke around again like we always do.

I want Octavia to know how much her words lifted me up.

I want to show these kids that there's a bright future, a burning freedom in music that nothing else could provide.

I became keenly aware of the sensations in my body, in my fingers and arms. They were no longer numb, but now feeling a stinging, aching pain from the tirelessness of my playing.

Good.

That pain meant I was alive.

It meant I could keep living.

It looks like...

I began speeding up. The finale was fast approaching now. The intensity of the music swelled with each phrase. My hands and my bow moved in quick, discreet movements as the air around me began to vibrate with color.

...I won't die today after all.

A triumphant G major chord ended Bach's Prelude.

My bow soared off the string as the last note rang throughout the hall.

And within my ears.

...

Not a single word spoken. Not a noise to be heard. Silence so deep and profound that you could hear a pin drop.

A sudden chill came over me.

Clap.

Slowly, but surely.

Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap.

And then, thunderous applause.

"What the heck?"

"He is back after all!"

"That was incredible!"

"Guess there was nothing to worry about!"

I released a breath I didn't even know I was holding as I found myself standing up before the audience.

My shirt was drenched with sweat, and my breath was ragged, and my heart racing, and my body aching...

But I found it again.

The moment that all musicians live for.

When they finish that piece, and they stand to face the crowd, knowing for sure that their sound reached them.

I took a deep breath, feeling guilty for the happiness I felt in my heart and the big stupid smile on my face as I bowed deeply.

Was it okay for me to feel like this?

Was it okay for me to play the cello again?

Could I be forgiven after all?

As if to answer, the applause roared in my ears like crashing waves. And as I emerged from my bow, I saw her.

Octavia Melody.

Because of the lighting, it was all I could do to make out her outline, much less any kind of facial expression. Yet, I could see them perfectly in the dimness of the seating area. Her tears.

A smile, drowned in tears.

Like a rose covered in snow.

Author's Note

Cantabile: to be sung; played like that of a human voice; song-like.