To See Through a Glass Darkly

Chapter 15

Sasha pauses for a very much needed musical interlude as family and friends gather around him.

Mom must have been watching for me because she opened the door as I came up the path to our house.

"Моя Саша, you walked all the way home from the church?"

"Да, Мама," I answered her. "And I enjoyed it, too, except for these shoes."

"Not to worry. You will become accustomed to them soon."

So as not to disappoint Mom, I decided not to tell her that I really did not intend to wear them enough to get accustomed to high heels.

As a family of musicians, we had designated the largest room in our house as our "music room," or "conservatory." It had a small, two-manual tracker-action pipe organ with full pedalboard, a lovely baby grand piano, and plenty of space set up with illuminated music desks and chairs for our home ensembles to play there. The walls were shelved to hold our library of music books and scores. At the end of the room opposite the organ was our recording studio and sound system. Beautiful cabinets held libraries of recordings in both analogue and digital formats: vinyl LP's, tapes, CD's, etc., and various devices carefully built and maintained to play back their signals.

Our conservatory was a room in which we took great pride as a family, not only because we spent hours on end making music there, but also because we had all contributed to it as a family in creating and maintaining it, as well as using it. Mom and Dad together had designed and built the shelves. Dad had taught me much about electronics and acoustics as we designed and outfitted our studio and sound system. Mom and Sonia kept everything clean and all the instruments polished. Also, Sis had somehow become responsible for our music library, organizing all our books, scores, and recordings, and keeping them so. Mom and Sis had also re-upholstered most of the furniture, so that everything in the music room matched. Even Aunt Svetlana helped by getting us a great deal on the piano, which we bought from a nightclub where she had played at the time.

My best moment in adding to our conservatory came when I brokered the deal for the pipe organ that I had found. Dad had just been laid-off from the metallurgy plant, so bringing home the organ for him to restore helped keep his thoughts constructive and focused while he was looking for new work. Mom and Sonia worked together refinishing the bench and cabinet of the organ.

I became aware that I had not practiced my violin since Tuesday evening, before all the hallucinations began. I opened its case and took out the bow, applying rosin to it. Then I attached the shoulder rest, but discovered that I had to adjust it a little differently due to the training bra that I was wearing. After all, I had never played as a girl, before.

What to play, then, for my first solo as a girl? Being Russian, myself, it should be something by a Russian composer. I had been rehearsing Vocalise by Sergei Rachmaninoff. He had composed it as an aria for soprano, although it had become a standard work in the répétoire for solo violin. Then maybe the "Song of India" from Sadko, an opera by another Russian composer, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov?

I spent a few minutes tuning my strings, then warming up with scales and arpeggios. Positioning my violin around the training bra was at first a challenge, but was starting to become an annoyance. I wondered, how did girls manage to play violin or viola at all?

After thirty minutes of practice I was reasonably satisfied with the Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakov works. So, I unbuckled the ankle straps of Deb's stiletto pumps and kicked them off, my tired and sore feet now cool and happily free of them. Yet, I was just a little sad not to be wearing them now.

Since we were getting close to that time of year, I decided on a different mood, a tune by Tin-Pan Alley composer Albert von Tilzer, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, with lyrics by Jack Norworth. I had found some interesting information about the song on the Internet. Most Americans only knew the lyrics to the chorus. They didn't even know that the song is about a girl telling her boyfriend where she wants to go on their date. All this reminded me that I needed to get myself psyched up for the high school baseball season.

At this time, I heard my sister and her friends coming in, so I decided to try another piece, La Fille aux cheveux de lin (or in English, Maid with the Flaxen Hair), by Claude Debussy. Sonia and Mom both liked this little opus, since they both had that kind of beautiful blond hair. I liked to play it just for them. Its score was marked con sordino, "with mute," calling for the softer sound made by a small wooden or rubber clamp affixed to the bridge of the instrument.

This one was beautiful, as I just let the music take over me while playing it. Then I suddenly became a little frightened as the beauty of it dawned on me. I had never played this piece so well before. And now I knew why…

This was a melody depicting glimpses of a girl, a beautiful girl, not flaunting her beauty, but simply enjoying it. She was at peace with herself and her own beauty, her own girlhood. I had never been able to feel the right way to play this before now. Why was I even thinking like this?

We had two sofas in the conservatory as well as a couple of armchairs. So I sat down on the left end of one, tucking my legs under me. Aunt Svetlana would be on my case so fast. And Dr. Otterbein, my violin teacher, would, too. "Violin ought always to be practiced standing," they both say. But today, I needed to sit this way, and to play while doing so.

I did not know how long I was there, curled up on that sofa, playing my violin. Nor did I notice Mom enter and take a seat in an armchair, sipping her tea. Nor was I aware just when I had noticed that Sis and Tina were also there, along with Deb, Marcia, and Jacqui.

When everyone had come in, I seemed to work on autopilot, functioning out of habit. Since I'm used to standing when playing in my lessons or as a soloist, I don't even remember getting up from the sofa. Tina had not seated herself on one of the sofas, nor in an armchair, but at the piano as my accompanist. My sister sat next to her, handling the scores as we played. All this transpired silently as I played alone, then Tina and I played together, and then everyone enjoyed listening to our music. (Okay! So, I gave in to both Aunt Svetlana and Dr. Otterbein by standing to play. You don't like it? You think I should be sitting for it? Well, then you take your violin lesson from either one of them seated! C'mon! I just dare you!)

This was the first time that Tina and I had ever made music together, just the two of us. Dad was usually my accompanist when I played at home. Since he'd been away working, I hadn't played with a pianist at home. I knew that Tina played. I'd even heard her playing here. But this was a new experience for me again, today: playing, making music, in harmony with the girl that I'm in love with. Indeed, this was an eventful day. How many things had I done today for the very first time? How many of those were altogether new?

We played a few pieces: Von Tilzer's and Norworth's baseball song (which everyone joined in singing), Tomaso Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor, and the works by Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Debussy discussed above.

While Sonia brought Tina the piano score for La Fille aux cheveux de lin, I could only think about my girlfriend. Debussy's little tone poem might have been about a blonde, but how I preferred the girl with raven locks seated at the piano! And after the way we had been making music that afternoon, the feeling that we belonged together, just wouldn't stop.

Debussy's favorite sonority must indeed have been the minor seventh chord. The opening melody traversed up and down a minor seventh chord by arpeggios, Ré… sá¬solmi… solsiré… sá¬solmi… solsisol… solmisol… famire…, just seeming to float in the air.

Everyone was relaxed, listening to us play, when suddenly, my fingertips couldn't quite feel the strings. My fingers began feeling clumsy, not moving quite as I wanted them as I heard the hard surface of my nails tapping against the ebony fingerboard of my violin. Then I felt a sharp pain stabbing through the tip of my left ring finger. I heard an ugly screech followed by the buzzing of a string.

"Ouch!" I yelled. "What the—?"

I looked at my left hand. The a-string had penetrated the corner of my ring-fingernail and split the pretty French manicure.

"Are you okay?" Tina asked, her and Sis springing up to see what were wrong. With the next blink, all the others else had huddled around me.

"I just broke a fingernail," I protested. "It can't be that bad, really. Can it?"

"It's your first one, though," Sis reminded me. But we were gonna give you a new manicure tonight, anyway. We could start now."

I looked at the broken nail again, but the French manicure was gone, as were my wedding rings. But my fingernail was split.

No question whatever about this one: this was not just an hallucination. The fingernail was still broken here in my reality, even if it looked different from what I had seen at first glance. And Tina, Sonia, and their girlfriends had all gathered around, holding my hand, fawning over my split nail, as if I had passed a rite of initiation into their own private sorority. Indeed, what I didn't know just then, was that I had.

Somehow, breaking my nail had confirmed me as a girl in their eyes. They all seemed to share a collective responsibility for me. That Sonia and Tina felt so did not surprise me. But Deb, Jacqui, and Marcia were just as much in the huddle surrounding me and their eyes all spoke with the same message: You're a girl now, one of us. We're all sisters, and we're here for you.

Then I understood that they'd gather around me in any time of need. Guys can and do likewise on occasion, although it's only in cases of extreme importance. But with girls, it's their herding instinct. I knew that if they're willing to huddle like this over anything so silly as a broken nail, then everyone of these girlfriends will be there for me in whatever situations I encounter.

My eyes began welling up with tears as this fundamental truth of sisterhood dawned upon me. It was very empowering. Now I knew that I was beginning to understand what was so important that Sonia had to share with me.

I should have tried this "girl thing" out a long time ago.

The other girls were all teary-eyed, too. Suddenly to be hugged by not only your girlfriend and your sister but also by their girlfriends all at once was overwhelming. All day, I had been dreading tonight's sleepover and its accompanying makeover, somehow worried that I would lose myself. But now, that dread had given way to an excitement and a soft eagerness. I was anticipating that makeover as much as any girl ever could.

I was as giddy as a teen-aged girl.

Then again, I was a teen-aged girl, so far as we were all concerned, at least for now.

However, breaking that nail also would admit me to a new fraternity as well. There just weren't any other members so immediately available to hold an initiation.

But they were around.

Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin
Anne-Marie McDermott, piano
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kuI3YEnHI

La Fille aux cheveux de lin, Préludes I, No. 8
Claude Achille Debussy
Arnaud Sussman, violin
Michael Brown, piano
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXw-MMn11is