The Violin Sonata

Max Kwong let his mother straighten his black bow tie, and then he watched her hands flick like a conductor’s at his collar, and finally smooth the black suit over his shoulders. 

“Don’t you think you should do more of your finger exercises,” she said, her worry lines creasing above her two fine eyes that reminded him of tiny swallows, always darting and busy. 

“Relax, Mom, I’ve got this. I’m technically perfect on my violin. Remember, my teacher Mrs. Lim has been telling you that for the last year. 

“Yes, but she’s also been telling you not to let your mind wander and to play with more feeling.”

“She’s just nervous like you that I’ll lose my concentration.”

“Max, this audition is important. If you pass, you can apply to the Juilliard College of Music. ” She looked around the Green room with apprehension.

Max looked down his bow and examined the strings on his violin. Ever since he’d started competing when he was seven, she’d flitted around him, fretting about possible failure, even though he’d won many awards.

“Mom, don’t stress out. You know I’m going to pass this audition. I’m the best of my age in BC and if the nationals hadn’t been cancelled last year because of Covid, you know I would have won that as well.”

His mom sighed. “That’s the problem, you’re a brash rooster.  And your teacher, Mrs. Lim, she feeds your ego, so now you strut around.”

He smoothed his hand over his chest and then reached out for her hand.  “I just don’t want you to worry so much. We’ve been doing these gigs for years now.”

She batted his face with one hand. “This is no gig, Maxwell. You’re seventeen. Juilliard is your future behind that door.”

 A few minutes later, the door opened, and a woman wearing a black pant suit and short blond hair said. “Maxwell Kwong?”

“Yes, yes, he’s here. This is my boy Maxwell,” his mom chirped even though he was the only fellow in the room. She gave him a shove.  

He stood up and turned to her. “It’s going to be okay.”

He knew the last student to audition, had exited out the door on the other side of the Brenton Music hall to a room, where he would meet his mother after he’d finished.  

This was just like all the other auditions and competitions he’d attended here. He took his place on the stage. A pianist was ready at his left, if he required her, which he wouldn’t unless the judges requested it. 

He didn’t recognize the three judges sitting in the front row, and didn’t listen to their introductions. They were all the same, self satisfied and smug, people who judged because they didn’t have the talent to play at the top levels.  

He barely suppressed a yawn. An older female judge with a grey pony tail smiled. She probably thought he’d been awake all night. He hadn’t bothered to set his alarm and had woken up to his mom yelling in his ear and tearing away his blankets.  

Sitting next to her, a male judge with a domed head stared ahead and tapped with his foot. Maxwell appreciated his boredom with the procedure.

 The other male judge sat on his own a few seats away. He was probably trying to effect an aura of genius with his wiry bird’s nest of hair.

“Maxwell Kwong, what will you be playing,” he said, with an orotund voice.

“The Bach Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor,” he said, knowing they had it on their program.

“Begin,” he said, and Maxwell played.  

The notes flowed from his violin without effort, one after another, in complicated chord structures and alone, hanging in the air without support. His hands played on automatic, and he let his mind wander.

“Stop!” the crazy hair judge bellowed. 

Maxwell stopped, taking the violin from under his chin. He smiled. “Will that be all?”

The judge jumped to his feet, and ran down the aisle and came up the steps to the stage.  

“Mr. Neilson,” the woman judge called out in a protesting voice. The other judge kept gazing ahead, but he’d stopped tapping his foot.

The mad hair judge ignored them and stepped close up to Maxwell, who stood his ground.

“You play with your head,” the judge made a sharp motion of slicing at Maxwell’s neck, who now had backed up and put a hand protectively to his throat. “You need to play with your heart, your gut, your very entrails.” 

Maxwell decided that this judge with his melodramatic air was a failed musician. He looked to the other judges.  

“Yes, technically perfect, but..,” the lady judge held up her palm, “…lacking a little Je ne sai qua?”, she said and gave him a friendly but helpless look.

“Oomph, blood,” the bald judge supplied. 

“But I didn’t make a single mistake,” Maxwell said.

“No, you didn’t make any mistakes,” the lady judge said with a saving smile.

Mr. Neilson went back to his seat and dropped his head, as if he’d done his part and was waiting for the next applicant to enter.  

Maxwell didn’t know what to do. His mom would be waiting to once again be reassured by him.

He put his hand in the air, “Did my mom put you up to this?”

The bald judge spoke. “You’re dismissed. You didn’t perform up to our expectations.”

The lady judge smiled. “Your mom hasn’t had anything to do with us. Do practice and perhaps next year,” she said with a hopeful smile.

“This way, Mr. Kwong, the blond woman at the door beckoned him.  

Maxwell passed through the door, and saw his mother’s eyes bright with anticipation. She caught sight of his face and her own was replaced with disbelief and shock.

 “Don’t talk to me, Mom.” He slammed his violin into its case.

Her hands flapped to the sides of her face. “Oh, I jinxed you. It’s my fault,” she wailed.

“No, you didn’t. They don’t want a perfect violinist. They want a theatrical monkey.”   

“But what happened?”  

“Nothing happened. They want a sad sop to bleed on stage.”

“But Maxwell…,” Tears came into her shiny eyes.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said and walked out of the room.

 His mom followed him to the exit door and he felt her eyes watching him. If she wasn’t in high heels she might have chased him. He ran through the parking lot and turned onto the walking and bike path, where he continued running, his violin case swinging by the handle in his hand.  

His black shoes his mom had polished this morning were kicking up dust and the June sun was too hot for his performance tuxedo. He felt ridiculous. He didn’t belong out on the street in the neighborhood and now some nitwit judges had decided he didn’t belong on the stage playing his violin.

He turned into Silver River Park and took a path that led downstream from the popular swimming area. With his violin case he bashed at the overgrown bushes. He found his way to a small out croft of rock, and took off his jacket and sat on it. He dangled his violin case over the river, letting it just break the surface.  

If he let go of the violin case, it would float down the river. He closed his eyes and fantasized letting the case go. Then he became aware of the rushing sound of the river, as well as the buzzing of insects and chirping of birds and then there was a bird call that travelled up and down the musical scale.  He opened his eyes and saw the river current pulling and trying to claim his violin case.  

Well, and why not?  Had he ever really cared about playing the violin. Hadn't he just played because it meant so much to his mom. She'd put a violin in his hands when he was six, and pushed him through years of lessons. He'd played well and she'd entered him into competitions. It had become expected and so he’d done it, much like he’d been brushing his teeth ever since a toothbrush had been put into his hands. It wasn’t any different with the violin. 

He took off his shoes and socks and dangled his feet in the cold rushing water. Just like that, he could drop the damned violin case into the river and just like that, he could let it all go. His mom would be upset and she’d cry, but eventually she’d get over it. 

“Stop,” he yelled at the violin notes that had begun playing in his head, wining low warbling notes and then almost screeching in a fury of tight high notes.

Those stupid judges, who were they to judge him? They already had their favourites selected, and that silly criticism had been an excuse. Besides he’d seen other violinists who played with so-called heart. They made a big deal out of every song they played, and at the end, they wept as though angels had visited upon their strings. But they never had the same mastery he had.  

The violin in his mind continued accompanying his jangled thoughts, but at times it played with the breeze stirring in the trees above, and roared with the river below, and playfully picked up the tunes of birdcalls and busy insects and even the sound swimmers made playing in the pool of river water upstream.

Then the playing slowed down, and became thick and halting, and he heard himself sobbing.  He had been affected with his mom’s obsession with his violin playing. But now all of that could come to an end. He was ready to let the violin be carried in its coffin down the stream.

 “One -two -three,” he let go of the violin case’s handle and watched it drop, submerge for a moment and then pop up, down the river from him.

He felt the violin rip out from himself. Before he knew what he was doing, he dove into the cold water, and reached for the case, but it floated in front of him and he couldn’t reach it. He’d never learned to swim, and now he dog paddled, but it wasn’t enough, so he stretched out his arms and kicked his feet to propel him toward the drifting case.

He thought he was drowning when the current pulled him under and he felt white water rushing all around him. Then it tossed him up to the surface just in front of his bobbing violin case. With all his strength, he propelled himself forward and grabbed onto the case and held on.

The ice-cold water numbed his head and hands, but the violin kept playing in his mind. Even with the river deafening in his ears, it rushed through him in a crescendo, and then subsided.  He found himself in a shallow pool and he could hear the birds again.  He stumbled over the large river rocks onto the shore clutching his violin case.