The Orphan Sky (32 page)

I stared outside, swallowing tears, as the concrete industrial blocks suddenly gave way to the astonishing view of the River Thames, aligned on both sides by white palaces, their reflections shimmering in the dark waters.

“Yes.” I nodded.

“Bravo. And one more thing. I'm sure you're going to be a good girl, but with your dossier, unfortunately, I have been given an instruction to resort to Plan B in case of any unexpected action on your part.”

“What is Plan B?”

“Oh, not a big deal.” With the same happy smile, Ivan the Terrible reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and produced a tiny aluminum cylinder partially wrapped in a handkerchief, exactly like the one Farhad once showed me.

“You make a single wrong move, and I will have to jab you with a dose of
matreshka
. You won't make any more moves, and it will leave you quite paralyzed. But I'm sure it won't get to that, will it?”

He looked at me, the outer corners of his Mongoloid eyes raised, half testing, half teasing. “Of course not. So…relax and enjoy the scenery. There's no place like London. And by the way, there is the auditorium where you'll be playing.” He pointed at a monochrome building with a boat-hull roof standing lonesome on the other bank of the Thames, looking like an abandoned factory. “Royal Festival Hall,
Her
Majesty's
failed attempt at our Socialist Constructivism style. Honestly, they should have stayed with their moldy Victorian.”

The deceptive exterior of Royal Festival Hall didn't prepare me for what waited inside. An arena-like concert auditorium with three thousand seats, a peculiar canopy over the stage, zigzagged metal balconies and ceiling—all seemed to float inside an envelope, accessible by transparent foyers and flowing staircases. A smart palette of browns, reds, grays, and greens bestowed the feeling of a warm, cozy oasis. There was one major problem though—acoustics.

During the afternoon rehearsal, I couldn't hear the strings, and even worse, the lower register of the Steinway sounded muted, taking away any possible control over the dynamics, balance, and, most important of all, any emotional connection with the performance. But I was afraid to say a word. Not after Maestro Mstislav Rostropovich had been personally invited by the Queen to inaugurate the competition. In protest, the Soviet Ministry of Culture threatened to withdraw me from the competition.

Mstislav Rostropovich, the greatest cellist of the twentieth century, left the Soviet Union in 1974 for the United States. I heard him once when I was eight at the Baku philharmonic hall. He played Bach's
Suites
for
Unaccompanied
Cello
. His bow flying, his deep, poignant tone carried the same sort of vulnerability I would hear later in Vladimir Horowitz's performances. I remembered how proud I felt that this genius was born and started playing music in Baku.

Two hours before my scheduled appearance, Ivan stormed into my dressing room.

“We're on,” he declared. “Moscow has given us the green light to proceed. Get ready.”

I zipped my sleeveless black dress and slipped on comfortable pumps with a tiny heel, to better manipulate the Steinway pedal that had a low, almost to the floor, position. Surrounded by a myriad of lights, I waited for the curtain call in front of a large mirror, trying to apply kohl along my lash line, failing to keep it straight, my hands shaking, poking my eye until it felt on fire. I gave up, wiped the residue of the black pen, and washed my face clean. My
Medusa
face
. Could it ever be washed clean?

In a daze, I followed Farhad and Ivan the Terrible through a labyrinth of corridors to the stage. There we parted. Ivan the Terrible took his surveillance position on the side curtain, Farhad rushed back to join the rest of my keepers sprinkled strategically throughout the audience, and I stepped into the spotlight of the arena—a slave, a gladiator with music as the weapon, who had to bring victory to her masters.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” A smooth bass came from somewhere high up in the metal ceiling. “Rachmaninoff's
Piano Concerto no. 3
. Played by Leila Badalbeili, the representative of the Soviet Union.”

The announcer took an appropriate pause to allow applauding, but only a few polite claps swept across the sea of spectators.

“Leila Badalbeili was born in Baku, Azerbaijan,” the imperturbable bass continued. “She studies at the Baku Conservatory of Music under the mentorship of Professor Mirza Najafov.”

What? Not only had Professor Sultan-zade been left behind, but she had also been stripped of her credit for schooling me.

“Miss Leila.” Maestro Klein, the Argentinean conductor, dashed over and led me to the middle of the stage for a bow. A vivacious little man with silvery temples and the sad eyes of a dove, he had great sympathy for Communism. After the dress rehearsal, when no one but my assistant hovered nearby, he told me how much he'd love to have the opportunity to engage in an extended contract with one of the Soviet Union's great orchestras.

The audience applauded with a bit more enthusiasm than before. Or was it empathy? Could they sense that the symbol of the impenetrable nation could hardly place one foot in front of another? No, it wasn't stage fright. Instead, I drifted inside a bubble of detachment.

Maestro Klein, an authority on Wagner's music, waved his arms in what looked like a call to arms, and the full orchestra charged into battle. All I could hear, though, were clarinets, thin and muffled, but at least I had something I could count off.

Two measures in and my hands joined, playing in unison the plaintive diatonic leitmotif of the first movement, executing everything Professor Sultan-zade had taught me—a dark, ductile, seamless legato, an interplay between diminuendos and crescendos—increasing intensity for the broad passage that led to my lacing of sixteenth notes around the opening theme in violas and contrabasses.

Why weren't they playing? I glanced above the piano and saw them moving their bows fervently like in a silent movie. But the only sounds reaching me were the first beats played by the timpanis. Those were going to stop soon, and I would have nothing to hold on to other than the conductor's baton.

No help there. Maestro Klein's movements were too thespian, obscure, mostly exhibited for the strings and the audience. I resorted to tapping my foot for a count, the worst possible crime I could have committed against Professor Sultan-zade's recital ethics.

The poor acoustics probably had to do with the canopy, decoratively twisted in the wrong angles, dispersing the sound unevenly across the stage, but the glitch was obviously inflated inside my head. I knew the piece well enough to play it with my eyes and ears closed. I had to let the mechanics go and immerse myself in the music before the performance was entirely doomed.

I closed my eyes, letting my fingers do the job, visualizing the
partitura
of “Allegro ma non tanto” with its flying passages, encased with ties and slurs, crammed with flats and sharps demanding obligatory modulations, building up to the nightmarish climax.

No! Not yet! I almost screamed, stamping my foot, missing the pedal, trying to stop or at least slow down the devilish dance possessing my hands, my mind, the black-and-white keys bouncing up and down out of control across the hostile turf of the Steinway.

They obeyed. Letting me regroup, take a deep breath, disassociate myself from the human race before plunging like a wild animal into the tempestuous cadenza, smashing the barriers of tempo, racing ahead of the storm on top of the plummeting chords of the finale.

Then nothing. Silence. A fragile silence, transparent as the air, fragrant with morning dew, luring me away from the chaos of reality back to the safety of the dreams hidden behind Tahir's green door.

What a relief. Now I could let everything go and stay with my music, let
her
lead me back to my island of inspiration.

With my eyes closed, I rush through a long, narrow corridor, my hands brushing against walls with sporadic, impatient chords. Three steps down, and the passageway opens into a room overlaid with rugs. Ancient rugs with brilliant greens, blues, and violets spinning in the slow trance of the theme of the second movement “Adagio.” Or is it Billie Holiday's haunting “Body and Soul”?

“…For you I cry, for you dear only,” I whisper into Tahir's ear as he leads me through the dolce steps of our dance. Our Dance of Love.

A screeching mayhem from the strings—a razor through the tranquillity, forcing me to open my eyes.

To a blinding cascade of spotlight. And in this light, I'm dancing along with a corps de ballet of the dead cows, swinging to the rhythm of my music from an overhead rack. The stump of Tahir's arm in my hands. All soaked in blood.

“What did you think? That you'd just come back when it suits you and get your inspiration?” Tahir whispered, his mouth lopsided in a sneer, his atrophied face distorted by hatred.

I stopped in the middle of the arpeggio. The orchestra continued to play. The conductor—in total dismay—signaled for me to resume. On the side curtain, pale-faced Ivan the Terrible thrust his fist into the air. In the audience, Farhad sneered with malicious pleasure.

Be
strong
and
bold… Win or no win—don't come
back…

Now it was my chance to defect. My only chance. But how? I closed my eyes and saw it in a flash.

I
jumped
down
from
the
stage
and
ran
down
the
aisle
toward
the
jury
box
with
Maestro
Mstislav
Rostropovich. He would understand. He would help
me.

Before
I
could
reach
their
row, Farhad grabbed my forearm. “What the fuck are you doing?” he hissed into my
neck.

Ivan
the
Terrible
ran
behind, screaming, “She's having a nervous breakdown. Apologies. Leila has a history of mental
instability.”

“Please. Please, Mstislav Leopoldovich, don't let them take me away. I want to defect like you. To defect!” I cried, feeling a pinch where Farhad squeezed my hand. A warm wave washed up my arm, numbing my body, turning me into a
sponge.

No. I couldn't do it. I couldn't defect.

Like a wounded animal, with pools of sweat under my arms, I limped toward the side stage, accompanied by the sympathetic
oohs
and gloating
aahs
of an astounded audience.

• • •

Farhad stood by the window, framed by the drowsy lights of nocturnal London, emptying one bottle of cognac after another from the room bar, chain-smoking cigarette after cigarette, throwing the butts down to the street below. All in condemning silence. Was he taking pleasure in prolonging my suffering?

“I wonder, how would it feel to live in a big city like this?” he said broodingly. “To have a lot of money in the bank, to drive a fancy silver Volvo, to go on vacation to the Riviera on your own yacht?”

My heart paused. I'd been around the KGB long enough to know that not a single word ever came and went impromptu, even under the influence of alcohol. Especially in the case of such a fanatical careerist such as Farhad.

“No bugs here.” He smirked. “They don't bug hotel rooms, you know. They just live, enjoy their lives. And we could have savored some of that too, if you hadn't fucked everything up. Anyway. It's a lost cause.”

He took a long inhale from his cigarette, letting it burn all the way to the butt, then threw it out the window and emptied another cognac.

“The question is—what am I going to do with you now? Today you pissed away your princess tiara and departed from your little golden cloud straight into the gutter, pulling me with you. You're a complete embarrassment, Leila. You have failed the General, ruined a campaign that he was convinced had the possibility of propelling him all the way to the Politburo in Moscow. And the General is not one who forgets and forgives. So the right thing for me would be to get rid of you. To dump you like a used, secondhand whore.”

He moved closer, his swollen crotch against my eyes, his hand hastily unzipping his trousers.

“I've had enough of jerking off into the toilet,” he murmured angrily, bending my head for a convenient angle of entry.

“Ohhh…” he moaned, relieving his lust almost instantly.

“You see what you've done to me? All your fault.” He pushed me away, trying to mask his disgrace. “For three weeks I had to be celibate so you'd put
everything
into practicing your fucking piano. For what? For no good reason at all.”

He downed another cognac and looked at me with a licentious smile, rubbing his rising
chlen
affectionately. “Doesn't take long for me, does it?”

For what seemed like an eternity Farhad pleased himself, unleashing his bizarre fantasies, playing sexual games as specific as if he had spent hours scripting them in his head, celebrating my failure. The Firebird was safely in his cage now, watching silently as he plucked her golden feathers, teaching the new reality—Leila the pianist had died in the Royal Festival Hall. What was left of me belonged completely to him.

“Don't worry, I'm not going to divorce you,” he said, breathing heavily, elated, still relishing the role of a pharaoh who had just disciplined, then savored, a naughty slave. “You're good in bed, no complaints here. And I'll deal with the General. He'll understand. He needs me. I'm his eyes and ears. He'll just have to accept it. And you know what?” He brought me up, his hazy eyes against mine. “I love you. And I want you to have my babies. I've got lots of them here for you.” He patted himself with my hand. “I'll send you to Moscow. Let them fix whatever is wrong with you there. To the best clinic. Kremlin clinic. They'll put you back into working order.”

I felt nauseated by Farhad's prospects for my future, a carousel of the cacophonous, mutilated, unmusical phrases and chords of Rachmaninoff's
Concerto
no. 3
spinning inside my head.

“I'll be right back,” I said, getting out of bed and heading to the bathroom.

“Just hurry back. I'm ready for the next ride.” He yawned.

I closed the bathroom door and turned the water on. With my back to the mirror, reeking with the fumes of Farhad's smell, I was afraid to look at my face.

After a few minutes, I tiptoed back. He lay across the bed, asleep, drool slipping down one side of his mouth.

The suitcase in the corner. My shoes, together with all my clothing, were inside. The suitcase locked, the key hidden inside Farhad's locked briefcase. He diligently followed the safekeeping protocol.

I crept to the exit. A slight click, the door opened. I squeezed through the narrow aperture into the dim hallway.

The plush carpets swallowed the sound of my footsteps. Across the hallway, down the steps, past the sleeping doorman.