B Flat

Music comes from noise. Sometimes out of silence. And sometimes out of nothing, when an insecure, fragile melody heard only by you, gets along with you and then pursues until another one comes along. Takes her place. Depending on the mood, time of day, time of year, its sound can change, and it is painted in different colors and shades.

White and black keys, giving birth to colored sounds - it was disturbing and incomprehensible, and Rimma noticed this strangeness at the wedding of her older brother. It was the first time she heard live music. The spacious yard of the private house was filled with guests. In the middle were lavishly laid tables in the south, and next to the bushes humpbacked from the weight of the brushes of French lilacs, sat an accordionist. At first, Rimma did not pay any attention to his lonely figure - firstly, because he was completely lost against the background of heavy purple splendor, and secondly, because of all this wedding fuss with toasts, jokes, endless kisses, wishes that only emphasize a certain nervousness of what is happening. Rimma could not catch the cause of this nervousness, but the mother’s eyes, moistened from time to time, and the somewhat doomed look of the groom, confused her and disturbed the feeling of holiday. She didn’t want to think and look for a reason. She liked her so much in a white capron dress, with a white bow in brown hair. This whiteness and splendor of a groomed, belted dress brought her closer to the dazzling beauty of the bride, whose figure did not spoil the slightly outlined tummy.

- Sing, Stella, sing! – pushed the bride her aunt, a heavy woman with a fresh, tightly twisted into small rollers permanent. She rose and went to the lifeless, crucified heavy Weltmeister figure. Slightly bent over, she whispered something, and the musician, according to a nod, played. At dusk, his face was not visible: only his hands, fingers running on black and white keys, pressed against bee-like buttons, frozen in anticipation of a late soprano and slipped down with the last chord. Then the dance started. Dragging a folding chair across the courtyard, Rimma sat obliquely from the musician and sat there all evening without taking her eyes off him. He played waltzes, tango, some popular things, and each time Rimma was again surprised by the rainbow of colors, born from ascetic black and white keys. She was embarrassed to ask the accordionist about it, but felt that he played for her alone, it was in her that she found an astonished and grateful listener. Hanging lanterns unevenly illuminated the courtyard, snatching from the darkness the faces of the dancers. For the first time, Rimma did not want to be among them, although more than anything, she loved to dance.

Last fall, at the beginning of first grade, her mother took her to see ballet school. Rimma had no doubt that she would be accepted, that she would be amazed at the obvious talent for hearing dance and moving to any music as if she had known it for a long time. She constantly danced in front of the TV: she danced with the Moiseev ensemble, waltzed with skaters, swam and died with Plisetskaya’s “Swan”. She admired the grace of the dancers and, standing on tiptoes, tried to imitate their poses - broken hands, a proud tilt of the head. Shifting a table and woven chairs to the wall, she jumped, spreading her arms out, trying to stay in flight. Sometimes in a dream, the jump lasted indefinitely, and then some people looking at it from below, astonishedly looked at each other. And it hovered and even could slightly bend in flight, like a bird, and smoothly return to a stable ground. But even in her sleep she was afraid of heights and therefore did not soar too high.

Rimma didn't go to the exam. She dreamed of performing and surprising everyone who came to appreciate her abilities. And when in a long cold room with mirrors and a wooden floor, the pianist knocked on the keys, she only hesitated a minute, surprised by the faceless glass sound of the instrument, but, imagining herself on stage, she began to spin, stretching out into a string, raising her hands above her head, forgetting about those who were watching her. Then she was felt, forced to reach out, bend, and when finally called to the office of the Director, she suddenly realized that she would not be given a glitter-sheathed, lush pack and dull-nosed satin shoes.

- Your girl is very musical – in a tired, sad voice she addressed the headmistress’s mother, fixing the hair collected in an onion bundle with nervous fingers. She perfectly hears the nature of the music, feels the mood. In practice, she gives her feet a rhythmic pattern, like a pianist does with her fingers. Well, you know, syncopes, eighths, if that tells you anything. Rare quality. But...

Still looking over her head, she continued.

- Her physical condition will prevent her from becoming a ballerina. Weak stretching, lack of innate flexibility, can not sit in the twine. But more importantly, these blue vessels. You see, she painfully poked Rimme's long dried finger under her knee, too close to her skin. And with age, the loads will get worse. Where did you see a ballerina with blue legs? Besides, she still does not reach the machine yet, and, impatiently looking at the clock, finished, perhaps at her ballroom dancing? But no, the problem will remain. Try the dance club.

The next morning, Rimma knew what to do to get into the ballet school competition. She'll learn how to sit on the twine. A year should be enough. And the blue can be covered with a thin layer of glue and properly sprinkled with mother powder. Having made the decision, Rimma calmed down and began to train, although the frustration and resentment that spread even to the long-nosed pianist-accompanist did not go away.

For the first time, she didn’t want to dance. It turned out that you can sit and just listen to music forever. Only time flew too fast. Almost nobody danced anymore. The musician pulled the accordion straps from his shoulders, and the furs formed a cream fan, making a quiet, extended sound.

- You heard, for the first time in the evening Rimma turned to an accordionist, he sighed.

- No, he yawned, he chuckled. And you should go to bed, too.

Rimma looked at the instrument hidden in the case and looked around. The dishes were removed from the tables. The women spoke softly, but their voices seemed too sharp in the ensuing silence. The lantern that hung across from him cracked and went out. A cloud of flies vanished into the darkness. The last thing Rimma remembered was the shoulder of her brother carrying her to a taxi.

The piano was delivered in early August. Red wood, shining, polished, it made the Rimmian passage dark room brighter and more elegant. From a small, with a gold rim of a keyhole on its lid, an elegant, as from illustrations to Perrault's fairy tales, a key protruded. He turned easily. Rimma lifted the lid and, afraid to touch the keys, stroked the golden beech over the Peupitre - Zimmerman.

- The teacher will come tomorrow, said the mother.

Rimma feared she would look like a ballet school accompanist, but Sophia Markovna looked very different. Sixty years old, with dark, slightly habituated eyes, flat-breasted, smelling of a mixture of cigarettes and good perfume, she did not waste time on stories and questions, but just sat on a black spinning chair and played. She had very strong, short fingers, and she played clearly, tenaciously, energetically, just as she spoke - without unnecessary emotions. The first lesson was painfully short. Just getting started, an hour has passed. Every Sunday, at four o'clock in the afternoon, opening the piano and moving a chair for Sophia Markovna, she waited, sitting on a windowsill. And she came minute by minute, with the necessary lacquer, under crocodile skin, a bag in her hands and a motley silk scarf around her neck, covering an ugly purple scar. The weakness of Sophia Markovna was jewelry. She adored brooches and sincerely rejoiced when on New Year’s Eve and March 8 Rimmina mother handed her another Czech trinket. But her passion was rings: gold, massive, with big stones. Rimma especially remembered the ring with a flat, square, dark blue sapphire - it Sofia Markovna never removed. It was a gift from her husband, a famous musician-composer, handsome and clever, who died of a heart attack in front of her eyes a few years ago. They had no children, and Sophia Markovna gave herself and her time to her half-blind sister and students. Sometimes after class, she stayed for a cup of tea, and then she and her mother discussed the city news and Rimmina successes.

Rimma learned the notes quickly. She didn’t have much trouble understanding

keys and keys. For each lesson, she disassembled new plays, and only memorizing them by heart caused boredom. Playing in front of guests, she was afraid to make mistakes, and therefore her play became constrained and unexpressive. But repeating the naughty passage, polishing it to shine was laziness. Much more interesting.

I was listening. This relieved the addiction that tormented her, gave her freedom to own the keyboard and excited still unconscious possibilities. She could sit for a long time behind the instrument, listening to sounds and chords, changing the harmony - so the artist mixes colors in search of the only true one. Her hunch that every note, every tonality is colored differently was confirmed as soon as she learned to extract sound from the bottom of the keyboard. She played with the keyboard like a kaleidoscope. Only there the colors and patterns changed arbitrarily, and here you could do it yourself. For example, if you press the red Do and, without removing your foot from the pedal, take the orange Re, you get a yellow dissonance. In the presence of Sophia Markovna Rimma adhered to the set tonalities, but playing for herself, changed them depending on her mood. Tchaikovsky's "French song" seemed less heavy in the fresh, green Sol Minor. Rimma had no qualms about editing the classics. It was a fun, never boring game.

As time passed, Rimma entered music school, jumping through two classes. Her new teacher was the exact opposite of Sophia Markovna: cheerful, talkative, slightly sloppy. She usually sat to the left of Rimma, with her foot on her leg, exposing to the public a naked strip of immaculate white skin between the top of a capron stocking and a gum of blue, pink, or soft-salad tights with hair. She adored sweets, and always chewed dragees. pebbles. The paper casing trembled at the top of the instrument, and depending on the strength of the sound, the peas of sweets rolled out one by one or poured on the keyboard with multicolored rain. Sometimes other teachers came into the classroom. Pulling out of plastic bags sweatshirts, bras, jewelry, they tried on all this splendor for a long time. Rimma was not annoyed at all: trying not to look in their direction, she continued to mechanically play page after page.

Rimma, you missed your flat again. I hear everything, Zinaida Mikhailovna shouted in a compressed voice, trying to squeeze her head into her blouse with a zipper. Imported rags did not contradict classical music, but, on the contrary, they only supplemented and enriched life with small joys.

Rimma is accustomed to eternal employment: in the morning – a regular school, in the afternoon – a music school. Classes tonight. On Sundays, the choir. All over again. But somehow, there was time for reading, going to the movies with her girlfriends, and composing music, an activity that Rimma carefully hid and shy. In a glossy notebook with a violin key on the cover, she recorded music born of her imagination, tried to transfer the elusive harmony from the colorful kaleidoscope of fantasies to the black and white reality of lined paper. But sounding, the colors were blurred, the melody – poor, and momentary euphoria in the morning was replaced by disappointment. The princess turned into a frog again.

Having passed the spring exams for all five, Rimma was preparing for the annual exam.

A trip to the sea and my dad's birthday. The guests were supposed to come tonight.

And the house smelled baked. On the kitchen table next door to the cherry pie

They rested airy puff pies with potatoes. Famous chocolate

The cake, prepared according to the family, undisclosed recipe, was soaked at the top of the kitchen buffet from the night. In the room, mom and Rimma cut salads, leaving grandmother in the kitchen alone with stuffed languishing in the pot.

fish. The Pope wizarded the decanters, filling them with amber and ruby

homemade wine. By lunch, everything was ready: covered with starched white

tablecloths, sparkling, carefully wiped with ammonia, glasses, cozy

sitting one in another plates with pine twigs around the edges, decorated

Early radish, onions and dill snacks. In their house they loved and knew.

receive guests. Many of them have been friends with their parents since their youth.

And until recently, Rimma sincerely believed that they were not friends at all.

relatives. Gradually the house filled with guests. Congratulations, questions,

Exclamations, compliments, praises. Oh, cakes are amazing, melting in your mouth. And

What is this cute pâteau made, is it from ordinary

Beans? Give me that salad, it was delicious.

And then, as usual, some of the guests sat down at the kitchen table to play in the kitchen.

Poker, and lovers of dancing moved to the Rimmina room, as

Recently, they preferred to do it to her accompaniment.

Guests ordered foxtrots, tango, and Rimma easily picked up the hummed her.

melody, enjoying the respectful looks of adults and slightly envious

- children.

But today, among the guests was Marik, the son of his closest friends. A few days ago,

He passed his proms, his exams, and he graduated from a ten-year music school.

I was going to the conservatory. Marie Rimma saw very rarely -

He was not in the habit of visiting his parents. He was totally interested.

Other companies were those where beautiful girls, fashionable musicians, among whom he felt equal. Spectacular appearance, dark, black-haired, with blue eyes, he always attracted attention.

He knew it and enjoyed his popularity. And as if admiring his own

nature has decided not to stop there, and

She gave Marika rare musical data: absolute hearing.

Excellent memory and perfect technique.

Rimma had never heard Marik play, but she knew from the conversations that he was playing.

He had a great future ahead of him. And today, naturally, he found himself in

center of attention. One of the guests asked me to play. Without the cloth, as if waiting for this request, he sat down at the instrument and played. A four-stroke theme sounded a cautious march, and then, changing each other, garlands of chords flew. The vortex passages, like gusts of wind, subsided and flew with renewed vigor, but the theme repeated in basses sounded more and more persistent: then with a formidable warning, then with deceptive caresses, drowning again and again in the chromatic fury of Chopin's passion. “Winter Wind” was the name of the sketch that sounded that evening in a cramped room. But Rimma didn't know that then. As well as the fact that Marik, having studied at the conservatory, will not become a great musician, and his fame will be limited to wedding halls. Years later, he'll be at her wedding. That many years later, having emigrated to America, working as a taper and working as a taxi driver, he will not be able to break out of the vicious circle outlined by himself, and will die of cirrhosis of the liver long before old age. But that distant shore was not visible from the serenity of a June evening hopelessly destroyed by Etudes.

Rimma had no idea that a piano she knew better than her own could sound like that. As if waiting for the touch of the hands of the master, his soul came to life and spoke with the frantic trepidation of slender passages, the deep tenderness of basses and colors, the names of which Rimma did not know. In the final cascade of passages, Marik's hands soared over the keyboard and, momentarily frozen in the air, fell to their knees.

A voice from the kitchen said, “Zina, you’re bluffing again, I see you.” Then there was laughter, the ringing of coins poured into a platter. The guests stirred, applauded, and under the ringing of teaspoons, the room melted, the breath of Chopin’s harmonies dissolved. But the heart kept beating at the throat. Through uninvited tears, the figures of the guests and Marika, who invited her to the instrument, spread. Squeezing into the back of the sofa, Rimma frantically wrapped her head, stood up awkwardly and almost fled the room. “In five or six years, Rimmochka will play us the same way.” There was a debate about politics in the corridor, and there was no one in the yard. On the wooden bench, there was no telling like a new, shiny nail and a pack of cigarettes. Putting a nail in her pocket and pulling out a cigarette, Rimma crumbled it and smelled her fingers. Then she rubbed them on the dress and laughed: the conjecture took shape of the truth. No, I guess. so Rimmochka can't play. Never. No matter how much she tortured herself with endless scales, no matter how much she studied, listened to the chords, recorded her naive plays in a beautiful notebook, the piano will not submit to her, will not sound like today, when Marik played it easily and everyday. For a second, Rimma thought that her heart shook and stopped, that she was looking at herself from the side, seeing the one she was before Etudes.

Rimma woke up in the middle of the night and lay for a long time with her eyes open, watching the glimpses of the headlights of passing cars on the polished surface of the piano. I didn't think of anything. Snippets of thoughts, notes, sounds kept you awake. Rimma got up and went to the kitchen. Washed glasses inverted tulips crammed on a table next to neat stacks of Japanese plates. Outside the window, obliquely from a hanging cherry, the outlines of a box from a piano appeared, in which coal was stored for the winter. Rimma returned to the room, opened the closet and pulled a nail out of her dress pocket. Kneeling in front of a rotating chair, she gently stuck it in the center of the circle and with confident movement scratched out the flat. Then she brushed the black lacquer crumb in her palm, threw it into the window and lay down, cocooned in a blanket. The music no longer sounded, and the colors of the beaded chromatic placers faded. Everything fell into place: black became black and white became white. There was no ecstasy, no annoyance, only indifference and peace.

She left for the sea this morning. And there was a long sunny summer ahead.

Zoe Master.