Nocturne (3 page)

She turned on her heel to face me once again. “So was the Bach suite you played in class last week.”

Inexplicably, I followed. She was wearing some kind of floral perfume. It wasn’t overwhelming, but for a brief moment it lingered in each step she took.

“Yes, but that was the piece that made the cello worth playing, for me. It was the first real classical piece I tackled that made it all worthwhile.” I cleared my throat, shocked at my own honesty with a student. “I certainly didn’t waste my time, though, on rock music.” I arched my eyebrow in her direction.

Savannah stopped in her tracks. “And the
Entr’acte
is mine. It was the first piece of substance I mastered. I was ten…” Her gaze trailed off with her voice as she ignored my jab at her other musical selection.

“Ten?” I questioned. “It has a pretty ambitious octave for a young flutist.”

“My mother was in Carmen at the time. I heard the song and wanted to learn how to play it immediately. So, I learned it. It was like I was playing along with her.” Her voice sounded distant, still.

Ah, so her mother was a flutist. It certainly made sense, of course. Most students here had at least one parent who was a musician—or who tried to be.

“So your mother plays for the opera? Which one?” I asked as we reached the door. I loved the opera.

Savannah’s eyebrows pulled in a bit before she gave a relaxed smile. “I have to get back to my dorm. Sorry about the door, Mr. Fitzgerald. I’ll remember to close them from now on.” A blast of frigid cold air hit me as she quickly exited the building.

“It’s quite all right, Miss Marshall,” I mumbled to the closing door. She hadn’t answered the question about her mother.

Two years before, I’d been in Washington, DC for a concert at the National Arboretum. I vividly recalled the sun shining in through the glass at an angle, the slight sound of water from a fountain, the beauty of the music as we played. Most of all, I remembered the faint smell of lilies drifting over me, almost intoxicating, as I played.

That’s when it hit me, the perfume that I couldn’t identify before. I’ve never been an aficionado of gardens or flowers, but I remembered that scent. That’s what she wore.

The faint smell of lilies lingered in the air behind her as the door latched closed and I stood alone in the hallway.

Savannah

I
slid into my seat
in music theory and leaned toward Nathan. “Feeling better?”

He looked at me with bleary eyes. Hung over, and it served him right.

“Not really,” he mumbled, his voice only as loud as I assumed his headache would let him speak.

We’d gone out the night before, intending to have dinner and a couple of drinks, and he’d had more than just a couple. That led to a strange moment late in the evening as we were walking back toward the school. He’d stopped, his feet skidding on the snow, and looked at me.

“Savannah?” He slurred his words.

I raised my eyebrows, turning back toward him. I met his eyes, and he met mine. He looked as lost as I’d ever seen him. I felt like I should say something—he looked angry, sad, and confused all at once. Before I could open my mouth, he shook his head.

“Never mind,” he finished.

I didn’t press. We had walked on, returning to the dorms.

This morning, he looked a little better, but just a little. His skin was washed out, pale looking beneath the freckles scattered across his nose and cheeks, and his eyes were red-rimmed. It was out of character for Nathan to drink that much.

The door to the classroom burst open, and in marched Fitzgerald. He carefully leaned his cello case against the wall, then shook off his jacket and ran a hand through his hair. A few snowflakes evaded his effort to brush them away.

Ignoring all of us, he walked to the white board and began writing on it.
Contrary Motion. Mirror. Proportional. Spiral. Accompanied.

He turned around. His blue eyes slid right past me, fixing on Nathan for a few seconds, then to the other students in the class. His face was set in a rigid frown, and his posture highlighted tension, restrained motion, intensity.

“Mr. Connors. Please remind the class what are the three requirements for a musical composition to qualify as a strict canon?”

My eyes darted to Nathan. This morning he was lucky to remember his own name. He was so obviously hung over; I could only think Fitzgerald had singled him out deliberately.

Nathan shifted in his seat, and his face actually managed to go a little bit whiter. He coughed. “Um … the second voice … can’t vary from the first … or its um … contrapuntal variations ... um ... the second voice enters later ... except for …”

Nathan’s voice trailed off and he closed his eyes.

“Mr. Connors, I explained during the first week of class that I expect you to show up for class prepared. This is material we reviewed on Friday, and you had the entire weekend to review it. How are you supposed to understand today’s lesson?”

I raised my hand. Fitzgerald ignored it.

Nathan kept his eyes closed and took a deep breath. “Sir, my apologies, I am not feeling well this morning.”

Fitzgerald continued to glare at Nathan, and so I finally spoke up, hoping to distract his attention from the too obviously suffering Nathan. “The three requirements are: the second voice must be an exact repetition of the first, or a contrapuntal variation. The second voice enters later than the first, except in proportional or retrograde. The
riposta
is generated by the
proposta.
”

Gregory’s gaze shot to me, and for three long seconds he stared, causing my stomach to flip as I stared back. Swallowing once, he pursed his lips dismissively. “That’s very good, Miss Marshall. Or it would have been if I had called upon you,
which I did not
.”

I breathed a sigh of relief when he waved toward the board, then picked up a stack of paper and began handing the sheets out.

“This week we’re going to talk about some of the more unusual forms of the canon. Your assignment for the week is to compose your own brief form of canon. You’ll work in groups of two, choosing whichever instrument you wish. Each composition must be no longer than four minutes, it must strictly follow one of the forms of canon we have gone over, and you will perform it two weeks from today.”

He paused when he got to my desk, placing the assignment sheet on it, then his startling blue eyes met mine as his hand remained on my desk. “Miss Marshall, when I say I want strict adherence to the assigned structure, I mean it. If you wish to get away with breaking the rules, you must first understand them thoroughly. Am I clear?”

I nodded, but he hadn’t waited around for an answer, moving on to the rest of the class. I scanned the paper, which contained a detailed list of the criteria he intended to use to grade the assignment. It had been a challenge. Writing a canon, any canon, and making it sound good, was difficult, and beyond the scope of what most musicians could accomplish. I closed my eyes, the beginning of an idea forming in my head.

He didn’t want us to break the rules. We were required to adhere to the formal, stultified rules of strict canon, rules which were in place four hundred years ago. That was fine. But he didn’t say we couldn’t combine rules. Bach had done it more than once, as had a very few other composers. I tuned out the classroom, letting a melody form in my mind, visualizing it, then adding layers, one on top of the other, until I felt a loud tap against my desk.

My eyes flew open. Fitzgerald stood there. His eyebrows were squeezed together in irritation, a furrow running right down the center of his forehead. I could feel the heat coming from his body he stood so close.

“Are you still with us, Miss Marshall?”

I blinked a few times, my heart racing as I stared into his eyes. “Yes. I was thinking about the assignment. Sorry.”

He turned and walked away, returning to the lecture as I once again found myself needing a cleansing breath.

Thank God his attitude sucked, or I could have been in real trouble.

Gregory

It grated on me how Savannah continuously challenged me in class. I would never have tolerated it from any other student. Ever. But I’d watched her for the previous two years, and she was an accomplished musician and incredible student. That required some special consideration, but my patience only went so far.

Not to mention that her behavior encouraged others to do the same. Nathan hung onto her every word, apparently enamored with her radiance, and he’d followed her into challenging me in class earlier this week.

Nathan was unlikely to question me again. He left defeated at the end of class, tight-lipped and angry after showing up to our intellectual gunfight with a knife. But the fact was, they were both in for much tougher challenges than me if they intended to be successful. It was my job to help them prepare. I wasn’t enthusiastic about teaching this course, but I’d agreed to it, and I intended to do my best.

Savannah though ... she was impressive. Two weeks ago I had assigned the class a difficult challenge: to compose a four-minute strict canon. She had followed the assignment to the letter, but then turned it completely upside down, by composing an accompanied canon in contrary motion. Complex. Layered. Exquisite. One of my cello students, Marcia, accompanied her, a flute and cello duet which captured all the complexity of some of the best Baroque music, but also expressed a longing, and a depth of emotion I rarely felt hearing students play.

Her music, even her movements, were imbued with an inherent grace, a beauty I’d seen a hint of during her audition, but had pushed to the back of my mind. I’d never encountered an undergraduate with such depth of skill. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the music blaring from the speakers in the restaurant, instead focusing on the string of notes she’d played.

“Are you even listening to me?”

My eyes flew open. Karin—my date—stared across the table at me, her face twisted in annoyance.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking about something that happened in class.”

I spotted our waiter, a poorly shaven young man. He had a tiny brown spot on his shirt. I waved him down. “Excuse me. Perhaps someone could shut off the ghastly noise coming from the speakers?”

The waiter stood there, dumbstruck. I jerked a finger at the speaker for emphasis, and he said, “I’ll, uh ... talk to the manager.”

Karin said in a teasing voice, “The girls at the office are right ... you really
are
insufferable sometimes.”

I shrugged. “Hardly. This noise is awful.”

She shook her head, a grin on her face. “You think any music written since the 18th century is awful.”

“No, that is not true. There are a number of 20th-century symphonies I absolutely love. But this?” I mock shuddered.

Karin went back to her story. And the truth was, I wasn’t terribly interested. James had insisted on setting us up for this date, sure that Karin and I would hit it off. She was attractive enough. Blonde hair, and an attractive body. But she knew little about music. How she could possibly work for the conservatory and not actually care about music? She might as well be a heathen who just happened to work in a cathedral. She went on for quite some time about the politics of the school administration, something that I cared exactly nothing about.

But I knew I was expected to say something. “That sounds ... terrible.”

She gave me a look as if she knew my words weren’t sincere. Then she gave up.

“What about you?” she asked. “When you aren’t busy with the orchestra, or teaching, what do you like to do?”

I felt my eyebrows move toward each other. “Practice. Or go to the symphony, or the occasional ballet. I’d love to see the Bolshoi someday.”

She leaned back in her chair. “Movies? Do you golf?”

I flexed my hand defensively. “Sports don’t interest me. Especially any that could injure my hands.”

She shook her head. “So really ... it’s all about the music with you?”

I gave her a long look. “It is ... all about the music.”

I studied her. It seemed I already knew an inordinate amount about her, because she’d talked quite a lot so far during dinner. She graduated with a BA in Economics from Tufts, somehow ending up at the New England Conservatory, managing, among other things, the sizeable endowment for the school. Of course I was fully aware the endowment was essential to the functioning of the school, and that financial matters must be attended to. But in truth, I’d rarely paid any attention to such things. My focus was always the music. Other things were of limited importance by comparison.

At least my student, Savannah, understood that. While her opinions were often maddening, there was no question in my mind that she
got
it. When she talked about music her face glowed, highlighting excited brown eyes. Although, in truth, I was concerned she might be prone to flights of fancy, and I worried far too much about her future.

Frankly, it disturbed me that I thought about her at all once class ended for the day. Never in my career had a student antagonized me as much as she did. For one crazy second, though, I wished it were her sitting across from me at the table. I wanted to hear the sweet pitch of her voice as she argued her ridiculous opinions about musical freedom, so I could argue back. That would be far more interesting than a dissertation on office politics and who on the faculty was sleeping with whom.