The Orphan Sky (19 page)

“You see, Leila, your Papa, with all his
f
laws
, wanted to be good. He just didn't know the difference between right and wrong. Between ethical and corrupt. The only thing he knew was ‘I want because I can.' That's how
she
raised him. That's how society allowed him to be. He was the successor to a highly decorated hero of Soviet Azerbaijan, a lifelong member of the Communist oligarchy, a club of powerful and spoiled men who never acquired any sense of reality. Except for their own.”

“But what about you? You've become a part of the same elite.”

“Yes, while I was married to your Papa. He was my
krysha
.”

Krysha?
Like Tahir's
krysha
? Why would my celebrity surgeon Mama need protection? And from whom?

“Without his connections,” Mama said, “I would have been dispatched—after Medical Academy—to work at a clinic in some remote mountain
aul
. The only reason I was given a surgery department at the central hospital was because the First Minister of Health—Papa's third cousin—made a call.”

“But that's degrading. You're too good for that. You're the best in the city. This whole thing is crooked.”

“Yes indeed. The kingdom of crooked mirrors. Nothing is as it looks. That's how I felt at the beginning when I was young and naive like you. But, with time, we learn that this crooked-mirror reality is the only reality we've got in our lifetime. And we have to make the best of it.”

“But not at the price of other people's misery, especially people we care about.”

“Please, Leila, hear me.” Mama leaned against the back of the couch, sapped, her voice trembling. “That boy from the music shop—he might be everything you believe he is. But in the eyes of our society, he is a convicted criminal. He has nothing to lose. He is stuck where he is. On the bottom. While
you
are walking away from the greatest opportunity a girl can have. To win. To become independent. To achieve international fame and choose the life you desire.

“Music is the key to your freedom. Please, I beg you. Take Farhad's help. He has risked everything—his honor, his career—to save you. He cares about you, Leila. Cares greatly. And he is the only one who can help you. The other one—that
boy
—he is pathetic. He can do nothing for you but hurt you more.”

There was truth in Mama's words, even if I didn't want to admit it. I thought of the afternoon when the gang of lowlifes insulted Tahir and me, and how Tahir, scared, had run away as fast as he could. Would Farhad have ever done this? No, he would have fought for my honor. He'd have killed those thugs. The same with the tribunal. No doubt, Tahir knew about it. Then why didn't he come and shout that I was innocent, that all those “prostitution charges” were nothing but despicable lies? Not as if it would have changed anything for the better—probably would have made it worse—but still. He didn't even try.

“And it's not only your music that's at stake.” Mama gulped air nervously. “There's something else. Without Papa—and with the many jealous powerful enemies he amassed—it is also my job that is at stake.”

I got up to fetch her some water. She reached for my hand, took it in hers, and squeezed gently, initiating a special bond. A friendship I had always dreamed of sharing with her.

In the rays of daylight seeping through the closed drapes, her hair had an unusual copper color. I looked closer. Threads of silver dominated her natural gold hue. My mama had become gray over the past few weeks.

A flood of regret crashed over me. If I had never set foot inside the green door, everything would have been fine. I wouldn't have awakened the bad
lenet
, and the curse wouldn't have fallen upon all of us. The curse had taken away Papa and Aunty Zeinab and now threatened to turn my Mama into a dismal, old woman.

“
Mamochka
,” I cried, throwing my arms around her. “Please forgive me. Forgive me for everything. I love you. Love you more than anything else in the world.”

Mama smiled at me through tears, placed her calloused palms against my burning cheeks, and said in a gentle but indisputable manner, “You have to do it, Leila. You don't have a choice. What is brought by the wind will be carried away by the wind. And what's gone is just memories. Hold on to them, but move forward. Your life is just beginning. And so is your music.”

Later that day, Mama and I arrived at Comrade Guseinov's office, and witnessed by Comrade Farhad, I signed the fraudulent confession that cleared my name. And sacrificed Tahir's.

On March 17, 1980, at few minutes past seven, I came onto the stage of the magnificent Great Concert Hall of the Budapest Franz Liszt Academy of Music. Almost fourteen hundred music aficionados were crammed into three auditorium tiers and the chorus seats at the back of the stage, little more than an arm's length away from the orchestra.

As I passed Professor Sultan-zade behind the stage curtain, she whispered her blessing: “Go and show your greatness. And let the world fall at your feet.”

An imposing Bösendorfer—a 290 Imperial model—waited for me in the spotlight, the great-grandfather of my baby Bösendorfer at home, with eight full octaves and a fully resonating, almost orchestral sound. A sound suited for the performances of convoluted, contrapuntal compositions by Bartók, Debussy, Ravel, and Busoni. Even Edvard Grieg's
Piano
Concerto
in
A
Minor
, played before me by a girl from Warsaw with spiky, straw-like hair, benefited from its grandioso tone.

But my Mozart? With his delicate lyricism and pleasing harmonic resolutions? With his melodic mélange and touching emotions? Could I tame the imperious Bösendorfer before he overwhelmed gentle Mozart? It would be a challenge. Sweat erupted on my palms. I wiped them furtively against my skirt.

The conductor of the Hungarian State Symphony, Maestro István Lukács, waited to escort me onstage. Tall and thin, his forehead remarkably high, making up almost half of his pale face, his long, lank hair spilling over his shoulders, he looked like Franz Liszt himself. I wondered if that factor had helped him get the job with the Liszt competition. A silly thought, of course, but I welcomed it as a distraction from my anxiety.

The maestro took my hand and led me to center stage, his mouth curled in a suave portamento smile. He clapped, inviting the audience to join, waved his hand toward me, then briskly mounted the rostrum and signaled for the orchestra to rise.

I bowed, first to the jurors' box, then to the rest of the audience. A deep breath. I turned toward the piano. Now I had to make four steps on my own, four steps that would set me on the right emotional path and cue the audience to love me or hate me.

Wearing my brand-new concert dress, a mermaid confection made by Baku's premier tailor—its jade scales sparkling, its tail flipping from side to side—I proceeded to the piano. Just the way my steps had been rehearsed—day after day—with Professor Sultan-zade. She had also conceived the concept of my mermaid dress. And I fully appreciated it now, standing in the malachite spotlight of the ornate Art Nouveau auditorium.

I could see the wowed eyes of the audience. I could hear the accelerando of their heartbeats. No, just one. One heartbeat. My own. The audience had become
my
audience, tuning to
my
heartbeat.

Unhurriedly, I seated myself on the bench, adjusted the folds of my dress, and rubbed my perfectly dry hands against my thighs. This time for stage effect only—to give my audience a sneak view inside the intimate world of a performer. Finished with that little bit of theater, I closed my eyes. Shutting everything out. Everything. Except what I needed to win.

To
win!

Because I had sacrificed my soul for it. Because
to
win
was the only justification for the betrayal I had committed. And because only the win could possibly give me the power to repair the damage.

“Mozart. Piano Concerto Number Twenty.” The voice of a presenter hushed the audience.

Maestro Lukács stamped his foot for a count, waved his long arms in the air, and the orchestral tutti came crashing down on me. The strings swept through dark, threatening skies, hammered by wild staccato winds of the east. Too loud. Too fast. Totally different from the way the orchestra played during the rehearsal. I stared at the maestro in panic as he coiled his boneless body in perpetual motion, his hair falling across his face, leaving nothing visible except his hawk nose.

Why did he want to kill my performance? To help a local participant? That Hungarian boy who played Beethoven? But he was so weak. No chance he could place anywhere even close to the top.

The skies cleared. A sweet, almost idyllic theme in F major brought me relief. But not for long. The fragmented, chromatic angst returned as the momentum built toward my piano entrance.

Think
Rachmanino
f
f
—sweeping lyricism, contrasting textures. Caravaggio—bold, real, imposing. Renoir—dreamy, soft, suspended in time. Kandinsky—

“No, Tahir. No!” I shouted to myself. “No! Not now. Not here. I have to win.”

And to win, I had to deliver a conventionally beautiful and burnished performance of my Mozart
Piano
Concerto
no. 20
. The way it had been interpreted and rehearsed with Professor Sultan-zade. The way the jury and the audience expected to hear it. I couldn't take any chances. Professor Sultan-zade had warned me that any emotional deviation from the pages of my
Concerto
would result in a fiasco. The head of the jury and my former idol, Sviatoslav Richter, believed in carrying out the composer's intentions to the letter.

Then
think
about
Mozart.
The real Mozart
. How did he feel—detested by the audiences in Salzburg—writing this piece in an urgent rush, eager to pay o
f
f his huge debts? Composing it in just a few days. Rehearsing the first movement while the last one was still in manuscript form. Humiliated by the obnoxious critique of his patron, Emperor Joseph II: “Too beautiful for our ears and far too many
notes.”

Too beautiful? How could music be
too
beautiful?

I raised my hands over the keyboard's fearsome ocean of black and white keys. And—one key after another—I began to tame them, weaving a melody of pain and longing. A bare voice against a large anonymous orchestral force in D minor.

Not
just
D
minor. For Mozart, it was the demonic D minor, the same key he used to write his own
Requiem.

The timpani announced a forthcoming storm. The nocturnal sea was no more. The waves were dashing against the rocks, grudgingly sliding down. I turned my face to the blistering wind. I was ready.

I clashed with the orchestra in the tempestuous climax of the cadenza. A brilliant, dramatic cadenza composed by Ludwig van Beethoven for his beloved Mozart's
Concerto
.

Then—trouble in paradise—the tranquil second-movement “Romanze” in B-flat major. I painted the melody with a soft brushstroke—the lush legato of Edgar Degas's
Blue
Dancers
and the mezzo-staccatos of Georges Seurat's
Morning
Walk
. The G-minor middle section threw me back to the battlefield to exchange a few agitated passages with the orchestra. Just a few. Then, back to Billie Holiday and her white gardenia and to the original B-flat major.

The last movement, “Allegro assai,” came as a dream. A cascade of Kandinsky's colors splashed on a canvas. Not the palette Professor Sultan-zade had envisioned for Mozart's music. Not a pretty fusion of pink and more pink. Instead, high-pitched yellow screams, sonorous blue stabs, silent voids of black, and shades of gray. Like the sky over the cemetery during Papa's funeral. Like the plastic cover over Aunty Zeinab's body on the stretcher. Like the silver threads in Mama's golden hair.

Only at the very end did I allow the beautiful—too beautiful?—Impressionistic violet-blue tones to prevail. The rhythmic mantra of the crashing waves. A lavender sunset spilled into the Caspian Sea. Tahir and I sailing away into the purple glow of the horizon.

“Young and innocent, they savored the violet-scented wine of first love and became deeply intoxicated… Her eyes shone for him in place of the sun; his desire for her lit up the night sky… She was his rose, and he was her nightingale… Their hearts became
one…”

I ended the
Concerto
with the jubilant passages in D major surging up and down the keyboard.

The last chord of my finale drowned in the ovations that shook the Grand Hall like the temblors of an earthquake. I glanced anxiously at Professor Sultan-zade, waiting for me backstage, staring from behind the curtains on stage right. She waved at me, applauding, her face dripping with tears. Maestro Lukács abandoned his rostrum, his orchestra, and his urbane style. He rushed to me, grabbed my hands and kissed them. Even the jurors released their guarded smiles, applauding me, joining the rhythm of the audience.

I
did
it. I had the win!
The win that would secure both Mama's and my positions. The win that would propel me to the highest elite of the Soviet music intelligentsia en route to international celebrity. To recognition. To fame and freedom. To power.

But no matter how many rosy scenarios I spelled out in my head, it didn't help. Inside I felt nothing. No joy. No satisfaction. Nothing.

Nothing but emptiness.