Just Stop For a Little While: Ch 3

MARTHE’S POV

I was looking out the window when he came in. My fingers absentmindedly touched the piano keys and I struck a chord while my attention remained affixed to the world beyond this practice room. It really was a beautiful autumn day- the kind of day that makes you feel guilty for not going outside or for not participating wholeheartedly in those soccer practices your parents had put you through in those so far-gone days.
However, it was sad reminding myself- even if I had not been forced to stay in this practice room until five o’clock, I would not have gone outside either. Instead, just like all the other beautiful days of this season and all the other wonderful days in the past years, I would just exit this building, get into my car, and drive home. I would stay inside for the rest of the day, blatantly ignoring the scenery, but still wistfully staring outside.
“This kind of day- it almost makes you want to stop the world and get on, doesn’t it?” His voice remarked from behind me.
I turned around and was startled to see that he was already on the piano bench, so close to me, yet I had not even sensed his presence. He stood up abruptly and cut in before I could say anything. “I’m sorry for being rude- let me introduce myself. I’m Steven and I’m here to take piano lessons from you.”
I nodded slowly as I shook his hand. “I’m your piano teacher that you have been assigned, you can call me Marthe. Pleased to meet you.” Yet, as I was shaking hands with him across that piano bench, I couldn’t help but think about how he was my last student of the day and how relieved I would be to go home after this long day of teaching piano students. All the while, he grinned in reply to my tired smile, possibly suspecting the thoughts in my head.
The long piano bench fit two people easily and he sat down in the middle while I perched on the side. I watched him as he placed his hands on the keyboard, in the correct position above middle C. “So how many years have you played piano?”
His hands slid off of the keyboard as he turned around to look at me. “Just about one and a half years- I haven’t had formal instruction before, a fellow classmate was my main teacher.”
“Really? Which classmate of yours? I might have had him as a student before.”
He smiled. “You did. He recommended you to me as a teacher. He told me to say hi, just in case you remembered him- Ryan.”
“Oh yes, Ryan.” My voice rose high on his name, rolling out the unfamiliar name out on my tongue. Recognition falsely rang through my tone. “Of course I remember him. He was a brilliant student- very talented at piano.” I was lying through my teeth.
However, Steven merely turned back to the bench, seemingly satisfied with my answer. “Yea. He’s really great at piano, I told him so. Actually, he taught me this piece, that I’m going to play for you right now, so you can determine my playing skill.”
I nodded, an indication for him to begin playing. He opened his book on the stand and turned to a certain page.
“It’s not completely polished up yet but I think I know the notes and technique well enough to play it moderately.”
He stretched his fingers and adjusted his position on the hard seat before placing his fingers on the keyboard to begin.
“It’s called Nocturne in E minor by Chopin.”





It was a harder piece- usually only played by intermediate players, yet he played with a simple ease, which lent flavor and sophistication to the style.
As he played, I closed my eyes and remembered.
For just that one moment, I felt, touched, and heard.
And I saw the brightly lit stage, the scratches on the floor that polish couldn’t even get rid of, the old battered wooden bench, and a piano- a small grand piano but to my ten-year old eyes, it had been the biggest one I had ever seen. I remembered the audience sitting in the dark of the minor auditorium, my small hands and fingers curved over the keyboard, and the small stain at the bottom of my black tulle skirt from the sandwich I had eaten just before, a few minutes ago in the wings of the stage as a late dinner.
I heard the squeak as the lid of the piano was lifted, the slight whining protest of the piano bench as it was pulled up closer to the piano to suit my small height, the apprehensive cough of some audience member, and my own heavy tentative breathing as I adjusted the seat of the piano. I remembered falsely hitting the first note in nervous reflex and feeling relief as only silence came from the piano instead of that faulty note.
I felt the sweat on my palms, the smooth keys under my fingers, the pedals beneath my feet which I could barely reach with my toes, and the brushing of black tulle against my hands as I nervously wiped off the excess moisture and perspiration right next to that sandwich stain.
Then, as this all came back, as experiences or the experienced- I remembered, I felt, I heard my resolve.
As I had sat there on that battered bench, facing a small audience, the handful of parents who had dutifully shown up for their children’s performance, I had closed my eyes, just like I did now. I closed my eyes in silence, hands poised above the keyboard, imagining that there was something greater out there, that this was only the start. Although the audience was small now, there was more out there to be experienced- cheering crowds, large concert halls, and applause that clapped to a rhythm and never seemed to end even after you took three bows and walked off the stage.
In the one second of silence before I had played, at that exactly moment, I had decided that I would become a performer. I would live- I would truly only exist for these kinds of moments. Other times, when you merely practiced, you were just anybody else, someone seeking to improve and to hone to perfection. But, on a stage, it was something else. You breathed, you were reborn, and you were somebody. To perform, to dazzle, to astound- the gift and treasure was not in showing the world what you had. Instead, in moments like these, it was beating your personal best. This kind of attainment of ultimatum was what a performer lived for. It flashed through my closed lids in that one second on that piano bench in front of my first grand piano.

Then, as I opened my eyes in that flashback, I also opened my eyes when the song ended.
I smiled genuinely for the first time that day. “I played that song for my first recital.”