The Opera lights go down; the conversation stops. The Parisian crowd basks in the silence before the performance begins — a silence unlike any other as two thousand people hold their breath. All eyes are fixed on the stage, waiting for the slightest movement of the curtain, but the thick velvet remains an immutable wall of scarlet. All of Parisian high society is reduced to a vague mass, rendered mute and swathed in darkness. Their power, their money, their expensive tastes — none of it matters now. The audience are one with the room. The curtains part. The silence swells with anticipation. In the middle of the stage sits the piano, wreathed by the circular beam of the spotlight. Around it there is nothing; nothing else is needed. Monsieur Spielman detests the superfluous. His music must fly like an arrow, reaching its target unimpeded by any distraction. He walks towards the light with a steady, placid gait. The people in the crowd recognise him; sitting just meters away, they can almost smell his cologne and hear whispers of his Polish accent. Aleksander Spielman sits down on the bench. He removes his white gloves and lays them beside him. He runs his hands just above the keys, like a shy caress. This is his ritual. Finally, he lays his fingers upon the ivory.
The pianist begins to play a Schubert sonata, moderato. He hears a child walking through the night, his feet sinking into the crisp snow. It is young Aleksander strolling through Kazimierz, the Jewish neighbourhood in Krakow. Aleksander likes to sneak out after dinner to look at the old synagogue, admiring the stonework of this scared place even at the tender age of eight. He likes to seek refuge in the solitude of his faith. Aleksander wonders if the synagogue is open. He jumps the gate and pushes against the building’s heavy door. It does not resist. The sacred texts of the Torah resonate between the child’s temples as he hears a distant voice in the midst of song; this voice he would seek for the rest of his life.
Krakow seemed to live only in winter, coated in ice and snow. When it was cold, he liked to play in the park in Kazimierz with the other Jewish children. He watched the musicians who would sometimes distract them from their games. He liked the Yiddish songs. He liked the violin. He liked the indescribable glow in the eyes of the musicians. This glow was a mystery to him; something as inviolable and mysterious as the ways of the lord. The black-bearded rabbi at the synagogue disapproved of Aleksander. He did not understand the boy’s interest in music and would have liked to see him paying closer attention to his study of the Torah. Aleksander’s family wanted him to become a rabbi.
The pianist begins the second movement of the sonata, andante poco moto. His brown hair tumbles over his shoulders, with the spotlight casting a blue haze around his feathered locks as the audience looks on, transfixed. The pianist continues to remember. As he plays, the past unfurls beneath his fingertips. Aleksander loved Sebastian; they were teenagers and they met secretly at night, after dinner, behind the synagogue. Their love was forbidden; it was a crime. These moments were of innocent intensity, full of romance. They met perhaps a dozen times. They didn’t talk much, and Aleksander didn’t know much about Sebastian. Speaking would have made their sacrilege too real, and shattered the magic of those ethereal moments. Aleksander never told his parents about his love for Sebastian.
Spielman begins the third movement of sonata number sixteen, scherzo. The pianist tenses up. One day, his mother found a letter from Sebastian in her son’s desk. The letter announced he was getting married. It was a firm goodbye. Aleksander watched his mother wail and cry. He would go to hell; he had disgraced their family name and ruined their lives; what if his father found out; her life meant nothing to her now. A tear runs down the pianist’s cheek. The entire hall is brimming with emotion. The next day he would leave for the Warsaw Conservatory. He would never see his parents again. He would never see Sebastian again. The pianist closes his eyes. He sees only white. Freezing white. The white of winter. The white of loss.
Aleksander Spielman begins the final movement, allegro vivace. He was in France, far from Kazimierz, when one by one, family by family, everyone he’d known as a child was sent to their death. The pianist lifts his hands from the keys. The silence at the end echoes the silence at the beginning. Aleksander Spielman takes a bow. The applause is deafening. The Opera lights go up again.
Alan Alfredo Geday