The Orchestra - Sinfónia Lifsins - 8. Prodigy

For most of the afternoon I thought this day could not get any worse. As Karen prepared for the concert her voice increased in volume and annoyance, more so if she mentioned the replacement. She was under the impression that we shared her curiosity about what that kid was doing at any given moment in time.

“He’s probably very excited now! How long do you think he takes to get dressed?”

“Not as long as you, we hope,” the bastard said, handing her some sort of powdered make-up. They had forced me to remain in the living room with them as he applied the stuff to her face. “It’s only two o’clock, and we have to be there by five. If he takes that long too, I don’t think we’ll be able to cope when we go on tour!”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking your time to be beautiful,” Karen retorted, looking at her reflection in the mirror. She seemed happy enough, though my nose was beginning to protest at the prolonged exposure to her perfumed powder. “Gunni is very cute already. If he wants to, he can make everyone fall in love with him at first sight.”

“I would agree with you if I didn’t know Siggi.” At that moment they both turned to me, probably expecting me to start an argument over it again.

“Don’t waste your time on me, go do something useful instead.”

“You’re no fun,” the bastard pouted, crossing his arms over his chest. I could not be bothered to answer that with more than a raised eyebrow. “You could at least sit next to me while I work my masterpiece on Karen’s face. I promise you won’t regret that.” He smirked the way he did when his other head began thinking for him.

“I don’t see how you’ll manage to entertain us both. And I’ll probably sneeze all over you if I get any closer to that thing.” I pointed to the collections of little pots that contained the secret to female beauty, or so I was told. I always failed to see them working properly.

“Fine. Whatever. Go see what Gísli is doing then, and tell him to come have fun with us.” The bastard’s smirk was still there. My eyes were getting tired of rolling around every couple of minutes.

“I think he’s in the shower.” Karen’s eyes lit up too.

“Then go spy on him!” she shouted, rolling her eyes to indicate I was being stupid for wasting time with them when there was a naked man somewhere else in the house.

“Why should I? The bitch in permanent heat is Dmitri.”

The bitch in question narrowed his eyes, but then his whole face widened to accommodate his gigantic irritating smile. “True, that. Then maybe you can do something useful and tell Gísli he should stay in there until I join in?”

“Fine, whatever.” Any excuse to leave that powder-infested room was welcomed. Karen spoke just as I was about to enjoy my freedom, though.

“It’s not fair, you know,” she sighed, looking at the bastard while he added even more powder to the section of her face that was already full of it. “With two gay guys in the house I can’t have as much fun as you do.”

“Isn’t that what Gísli is for?” The make-up artist wannabe asked. I could have left then, since it looked like they would carry on that conversation amongst themselves, possibly finding an excuse to rant against me in a few minutes, as they always did. “He swings both ways; you should be able to have your way with him.”

“Yeah, but Gísli is…”

We never heard what Gísli was supposed to be, because the percussionist chose that exact moment to show up in the living room, his towel hanging precariously from his waist. The dramatic duo’s eyes lit up with the sight, and I took it as the perfect excuse to claim the bathroom. Washing a whole meter of hair meant I had at least an hour of solitude, unless the bastard decided to be inappropriate and invade my personal space again. Hopefully a naked Gísli would provide enough distractions.

Dress rehearsal. At least the kid was punctual this time. We did the usual routine of playing key parts of the pieces at the concert hall to check the acoustics and working last minute details with the week’s soloist. We finished early enough with a whole hour remaining with nothing to do but wait and entertain the kid. In the rare occasions that my attention drifted to their enthusiastic group, I heard stories of past performances being told as if they were some sort of fairy tale, undoubtedly put together that way to make the replacement feel like this was the sort of thing he would experience that night. Even the soloist, a pianist from Russia called Isaac Anatolyevich Krylov, seemed to like the replacement.

At half-past seven we re-entered the concert hall and took our places on the stage under the loudest ovation since my debut. If anyone was stupid enough to wonder what all the fuss was about, when the ‘leader’ entered the stage the audience not only clapped and tapped their feet, but also shouted and squealed. Among the musicians everyone was smiling stupidly, not even caring that we were five minutes late by the time they were done expressing their adoration for the new infant leader and the bastard was finally allowed to get on with the tuning.

We played Offenbach’s Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld as well as could be expected for a piece featuring so many slow, consecutive solos: less than a minute on and Václav played a couple of notes on his clarinet, followed by an overly-enthusiastic bastard, and then my fifty seconds of fame. Karen took over and played for considerably longer than I did. At least the slow, morose section was interrupted by the Opening of the Gates of Hell, getting some movement on the lower strings for a change.

And then his solo came. It carried on for an insufferable minute and a half, that simple, slow melody. There was nothing particularly difficult with his part, but the audience seemed hypnotised by that little kid with a violin, playing almost completely alone, save for Kjartan’s accompaniment with the harp. It took all my self-control not to face-palm. And it seemed it took the audience even greater self-control not to clap after he was done.

The short piece ended with the famous Can-Can. Gísli obviously enjoyed it; his face glowed through the whole clapping formalities. At the end, Gummi made all the soloists and Kjartan stand, one after the other. No need to be a genius to figure out who got the most applause and monopolised the loud cheering and stomping. The replacement blushed like a lightbulb decorated for Halloween. Those five seconds of embarrassment were more entertaining than his entire performance.

While the stage-hands put the piano at the centre of the stage for the next piece, all my fellow cellist could talk about was the little kid and his ‘brilliant’ performance under ‘so much pressure’. No doubt other sections would be doing the same. The only reason they had not put the replacement in a pedestal yet was because Gummi was occupying the only one available, the conductor’s podium.

“The concert is not finished yet. Keep your adulation for when it is all over and done with.” I made them shut their mouths just as the stage-hands finished with the piano.

The soloist came in under another cascade of applause. He was going to play his own composition, a love piece he composed for his wife. Isaac was a very good pianist. His play was the kind that touched people’s hearts in ways they never thought possible and made them cry, overwhelmed with the raw emotion pouring from his hands. For his encore he called his son to the stage to play with him.

That son was a proper prodigy. The boy was nine years old, but his technical skills and expression easily matched his father’s. At least the audience was able to recognise that too. The boy got more applause than our ‘leader’ and more squeals and thumping of feet than his father.

“Oh, man, you are too good!” the bastard shouted backstage as soon as he saw our soloist, locking him in a bear hug. “And your son is fantastic!” And he squeezed all the air out of the little kid. The rest of his enthusiastic shouting happened in his native tongue, and the rest of us were left clueless as to what they were talking about.

“You are really good. It was a very moving performance,” the replacement said once the bastard calmed down and went for his first bottle of vodka.

“Thank you, Gunni. You are very good too,” the soloist answered politely. “Listen, Gunni, if it is not much to ask, could my son play violin with you for a bit? He was very impressed by you today. He wanted to ask you himself, but his English is not very good and he is still feeling a bit overwhelmed by so much applause…”

“Oh, I would be honoured!”

So apparently the prodigious pianist could play the violin too. The whole room stopped to watch as the little boy, who shared the same name as his father for some reason, ran out of the room and came back almost immediately with his violin in hand. Adult Isaac thought it would be a good idea for the two ‘prodigies’ to play together, and so kid Isaac and kid replacement filled the next ten minutes with the sound of their violins. At least they were playing Vivaldi, even if it was such an overrated tune as the first movement of “Spring”. Kid Isaac was remarkably talented, even more so than our ‘leader’. Shame he was not old enough to apply for the job. We would be in a much better position right now if he was.

(...)

(This is the scene I warned you about. If you want to skip it, please read the summary at the end note)

Five minutes before the second half started the bastard decided to open a second bottle of his ‘Russian water’ and disappeared from view. It was nothing out of the ordinary until the soloist started asking around for the kid. How so very fitting that two of our key players would vanish at the same time. How so very fitting that one of them had to be the immature leader.

“He’s probably feeling the pressure and went into hiding.” People should not make such an overly dramatic fuss out of something that was to be expected.

“I saw him following Dmitri into the instruments’ room,” Karen’s eyes had the kind of glow that she usually put on to let us know she wanted to watch some man on man action. Unfortunately I was the only one who noticed it.

At this exact moment the bastard was probably acting on his paedophilic urges. I did not want to know how he had managed to attract the kid so easily and so quickly, but it was bound to not end well. Best case scenario, the kid would like it, be flattered with the attention and get too distracted to play the second half properly. Worst case scenario, the bastard would get sued, and thus fired, for sexual harassment. And so, because he never thought about these kind of things, I had to rush to the instruments’ room to prevent this new ISO apocalypse.

They were kissing. The bastard was all over the kid, pressing him against the wall and grabbing his hair and ass. The kid’s hands were holding the wall behind him, most likely because his new lifelong trauma was beginning to unfold.

“Stop it now, Dmitri. It’s not cool to hit on little children,” I said as neutrally as I could. If it was not so ridiculously easy for him to overpower me, I would probably have jumped straight on his throat to make him pay for his stupidity.

“Gunni’s almost seventeen, this is perfectly legal.” The bastard did not even bother to look at me while he answered. The kid stayed put like the kiss had made him into a statue. “And quite hot if I may say so…”

“No, you may not. Get away from him and let’s go back. The second half is about to start.” I motioned for him to come closer and looked at the kid, who now seemed completely mortified. “Well done in breaking our replacement, by the way. Hopefully this means we’ll get a better one soon.”

The kid became an incandescent brothel’s sign, as usual. The bastard just smiled and pushed the boy forward while still grabbing his ass. “You are so mean.” The Russian grinned, feigning his guilt. “But fine, let’s go. There’s a whole Romeo and Juliet to get through…” He urged the replacement forward until they both overtook me. His hand only left the kid’s ass when we were at the door to the waiting room.

(The WARNING scene ends here)

(...)

Surprisingly, the kid did not get any notes wrong during the second half. The audience applauded with the same old enthusiasm, still blinded by the kid’s cute face. Soon they were standing up and stomping their feet and whistling, as if they had just heard Yehudi Menuhin play Bach’s Partitas. Gummi made the kid stand up and bow to his new hoard of admirers, and after the conductor left and returned to the stage for the third time, he had to force the audience to shut up so he could speak to them. Gummi described the replacement’s performance using the biggest possible number of superlatives, and then casually mentioned that kid Isaac was also a violinist, so that he could propose that the two ‘prodigies’ did an improvised encore together to thank our ‘wonderful supporters’.

The two violinists repeated their backstage performance and another shower of applause made us all very late in getting home. By the time I left the stage, packed up, convinced my housemates that it would not be a good idea to stay for Gummi’s ridiculous post-performance party, and finally arrived home, it was almost midnight.

“It was a great night, wasn’t it?” the bastard asked as we prepared to sleep. He still smelled faintly of vodka. “We should do that more often!”

“No, thanks. Let’s go to bed and forget it has ever happened.” I sighed, already in bed and itching to turn off the lights.

“Oh, but the night has only begun!” the bastard insisted, approaching the bed fully naked and with the obvious beginning of an erection. “There’s so much more we could do…”

“No.” I warned as his hand came in contact with my hip. “You want to fuck the kid, then go fuck the kid and leave me alone.”

“Aw, that’s so mean!” he pouted. The bastard jumped on the bed and spooned me. “If I didn’t know you, I would say you were jealous of Gunni and I…”

“But you know me, so you will shut up.”

“True.” His had passed briefly around my crotch before he left the bed again. “You’re too grumpy tonight and I want some fun, so I’ll see if Gísli is up for some company. Don’t expect me back.” He slammed the door behind him.

“Have fun.”

“I will!” he shouted through the door, loud enough for the whole neighbourhood to hear.

Gísli and the bastard had plenty of fun that night. I could hear every detail of their nocturnal activities through our thin walls. At least Karen had as much fun as they did.