Stalker

10

Erik can’t help smiling to himself as he sits in front of the highly polished black piano with the name C. Bechstein, Berlin picked out in small gold lettering.

‘He needs to lower the stool,’ the girl says.

Erik stands up and lowers the seat by spinning it a few times.

‘We’ll start with your right hand, but we’ll pick out some notes with your left.’

He looks at her fair face, with its straight nose and half-open mouth.

‘Don’t look at me, look at the notes and the keyboard,’ she says, reaching over his shoulder and putting her little finger gently on one of the black keys. A high note echoes inside the piano.

‘This is E flat… We’ll start with the first formation, which consists of six notes, six sixteenths,’ she says, and plays the notes.

‘OK,’ Erik mutters.

‘Where did I start?’

He presses the key, producing a hard note.

‘Use your little finger.’

‘How did you know…’

‘Because it’s natural – now, play,’ she says.

He struggles through the lesson, concentrating on her instructions, stressing the first note of the six, but loses his way when he has to add a few notes with his left hand. A couple of times she touches his hand again and tells him to relax his fingers.

‘OK, you’re tired, let’s stop there,’ Jackie says in a neutral voice. ‘You’ve done some good work.’

She gives him notes for the next lesson, then asks the girl to show him to the door. They pass a closed door with ‘No entry!’ scrawled in childish writing on a large sign.

‘Is that your room?’ Erik asks.

‘Only Mummy’s allowed in there,’ the child says.

‘When I was little I wouldn’t even let my mummy come into my room.’

‘Really?’

‘I drew a big skull and hung that on the door, but I think she went in anyway, because sometimes there were clean sheets on the bed.’

The evening air is fresh when he steps outside. It feels like he’s hardly been breathing during the course of the lesson. His back is so tense that it hurts, and he still feels strangely embarrassed.

When he gets home he has a long, hot shower, then he calls the piano teacher.

‘Yes, this is Jackie.’

‘Hello, Erik Maria Bark here. Your new pupil, you know…’

‘Hello,’ she says, curious.

‘I’m calling to… to apologise. I wasted your whole evening and… well, I can see it’s hopeless, it’s too late for me to…’

‘You did some good work, like I said,’ Jackie says. ‘Do the exercises I gave you and I’ll see you again soon.’

He doesn’t know what to say.

‘Goodnight,’ she says, and ends the call.

Before he goes to bed he puts on Chopin’s opus 25, to hear what he’s aiming at. When he hears the pianist Maurizio Pollini’s bubbling notes, he can’t help laughing.