The Red Curtain

She stood behind the red curtains. She could hear the chatter of the crowd on the other side. Her wide eyes staring at the thin line where the velvet would part revealing her to the audience. She knew there were tens and hundreds of people. Sitting, anticipating… expecting. Expecting a show of the night. Her show. Just the thought of the judgement that she could smell in the air, even worse – the pity looks she would see if she failed tonight. It made her heart skip a beat and her feet go numb.

The woman’s breath hitched, and her knees started to become wobbly. A deep breath and she unhooked the straps of her instrument that were tight on her back and lowered the precious baby onto the floor with careful and gentle stroke. Her chest was still feeling heavy even without the box holding her down. She felt her hands sweat and shake. Cold shivers started to run down her spine leaving her trembling while her pale skin turned snow white. She started to pace around. To shake the nerves. That is what she had been told. “Shake it off and do wonders,” was the saying she had heard all her life. Yet, now, when the moment was so close, that she should be feeling pride and heart should have swelled with joy, all she felt was nausea and her poor lunch turning upside down in her stomach. She felt it crawling slowly up her throat as she held her hand on her waist and the other clutching the buttons on her shirt.

“You’re up next!” the assistant half whispered half hissed as she hurried past her.

“Thanks,” she muttered hearing the chatter disperse into silence and the announcer delivering the introduction words.

“Oh, God,” was her only thought, “I’m not ready for this.” All those hours in early mornings when the sun was still snoozing behind the horizon and she had stalked through mud, rain, and snow. Cold and wet she would sit on the stool in a lonely classroom in the darkest corner of the building, practising relentlessly. All those lunches she had skipped just to go through the pieces one more time. All those late nights, when all her friends were sound asleep or having the time of their lives enjoying parties and drinks, she had sat on that stool and practised until the janitors had thrown her out. She had played until her fingers froze, her palms had clenched in cramps and her shoulders ached. She had played with excitement hearing the melody for the very first time. Unfamiliar yet it resonated to her very being, unlocking the doors to old forgotten memories or flashing thoughts of the future that may one day come. Oh, yes! She had played with stubbornness that turned into anger once the nimble fingers of hers would not listen. Repetition and repetition, over and over again. Oh, times she had dropped the instrument onto the ground and screamed and yelled at herself pacing through the room, angry and frustrated. Yet, every time she picked it up and continued. She played them one, two, hundred, million times until the timing and the sound and the tune was almost perfect. And then… she would play them again. Once the notes had settled in her fingers that she could play them in her sleep, she would let the melody resonate through her chest, allowing the rhythm beat alongside her heartbeat.

That is when the art was born. Letting the melody carry her emotions. Slowly, gentle. Her fingers drag along the keys, as the bellows lazily opened almost whispering. Her breaths would become one with the movement of the bellows of her instrument as the song started to build up. Letting the volume and power rise to the heights and the explode in culminations, leaving her breathless and empty. She had perfected it. Like a sculptor creating a masterpiece. Yet now, once it was her time to shine, the courage, nerves of steel and resilience that had carried her all this way, were gone.

“Suck it up!” she hissed to herself, “What the hell? All of that work you have put in, and now, NOW, you give up?!”

She scolded herself as the announcer continued after delivering a successful joke that made the audience giggle. The woman stretched her back and took a deep breath. She needed to get herself together and soon, but all she could think of was her soft bed in the tiny apartment in the nearby village, where a half a tub of ice cream and an unopened champagne bottle waited for her. “It took me a week of saving to buy that bottle,” she thought, “all for nothing if I cannot get up on that stage.”

And tears started swelling up in her eyes. Hot and burning they were running down her cheeks as she held the whimper inside stubbornly and angrily. She was a grown woman and yet here she was standing and crying like a child before a stage. Her cold hands felt like ice on her hot burning cheeks as she wiped the tears away, but with no luck. They were dripping down on to her shirt as the assistant waved at her that she was about to go on.

The woman stepped to her baby and picked it up. Putting it on and clasping the straps on her back. Her trembling hand ran over the delicate ornament on the old box. Accordion. She still remembered how heavy it was when she picked it up for the very first time all those years ago. Yet now she felt naked without it. It had been there alongside her through every good and bad day she had. The first time she won the first place in a competition. The time she had cried herself to sleep next to it when her university rejected her application. It had been stroked with loving fingers and battered with heavy hands.

“And now let’s welcome our artist to the stage!” the voice echoed through her ears as the audience clapped and the assistant pushed her forwards and the curtain opened. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her cheeks were pink and burning, her skin was pale while her stomach felt hollow and her legs full of lead.

“Baby steps,” she said the words that had kept her afloat in direst of times. She looked down. She could barely see her toes. And so... she took her step. One. Two and three. Deep breath and she continued, one, two and three. She stood in front of the stool and bowed her head. Her eyes stayed above the shadows of the heads as she knew, if she looked at them, she would run as far as she could.

She took her seat and ran her finger under her eyes, just to wipe the rest of the tears, that had blurred her vision. As she settled on the stool, she looked at white gleaming keys of her instrument and suddenly imagined the tiny classroom around her. As the old chipped cupboards were hiding the old instruments for unfortunate musicians who could not afford the luxury of a new companion. The dusty shelves filled with old and new sheets of notes. The two large windows that barely let the light through on the sunny days and rattled on rainy ones. That stool that surely had her bum imprint already embedded on it for eternity. And the thought of that made her giggle.

The woman took another breath and ran her fingers over the ornament one last time. For good luck. “Yes,” she thought, as her hand settled on the first keys of the melody, “just you and me, in the old classroom, on that stool, pouring our heart out.”

And the hall filled with music…