by Darran Brennan

Leo ran his finger over the Blüthner’s gold leafe applicae, admiring the craftmanship carved into the Roccoco white polished lacquer. Closing the lid of the unique grand, he felt guilty for harbouring an overwhelming wish to own it. The fallboard meeting the key bed with a muffled thud gave him as much joy as getting to play such an exceptional instrument. His passion for owning it was so heady that he often thought about fabricating a problem with it and offering to buy from Katrina, but he could never afford it even at a quarter of the price. One way or another, he would find a way to make it his.   

He pressed his deck shoes onto each of the three gold pedals once more to check that the tension in the springs were to his liking. Switching from hard to soft soles made all the difference to a virtuosa like Katrina Valentina. Once a month he let himself into Katrina’s home to tune the Blüthner Supreme Special Edition with 24-carat gold inlay. In three years, he had met her only three-and-a-half times. Hired by her manager after a recommendation by composer, Alfred Shumer, he had managed to spend two afternoons a month inside her home for the first year without encountering her. 

Their first meeting transpired when she descended the spiral stairwell in the hall. She was a sweep of blond locks and avocado eyes, pausing in her white chiffon negligee to huskily enquire, “Could you pay special attention to the damper, please?” before disappearing back upstairs. He could only nod, so struck was he by her lonely presence. The memory of her body reposed along the banister like a bass clef lingered for days. Afflicted by concern for her, heavy emotions remained with him whenever he returned, hoping to meet her again and perhaps comfort her. 

The second time they met was eighteen-months later, an accident. He was exiting her home one morning with his little brown leather bag of tools. She arrived with her arm linked by a dismissively brash man in a tux, sporting a thin moustache and impeccable skin. Her eyes barely met Leo’s but said more than her polite, “Oh, hello again.” Enough for Leo to animate worries about her safety before he dutifully left. The third time was a day later when Leo returned to hear the Blüthner after its rest day and to make any minuscule adjustments needed. 

Katrina entered the piano room composed and indifferent towards a subtle tone of fear in her voice. “Can I offer you anything?” she muttered, eyes reaching for him.

“I’m fine,” he said, trying not to show he noticed more about her state of mind than was professionally acceptable.

Again, she quietly begged companionship in her contrived, “Lemon tea?” 

“Okay, thank you.” He accepted despite a dislike for it, but he would not allow himself a second glance at her naked body beneath her gossamer robe. As she passed the rear bay windows, he kept his mind tuned to the Blüthner as his heart skipped three heavy knocks.

“My pleasure,” she said, flatly feigning freeness, turning back to gaze at him.

“Actually, I have my flask. Don’t trouble yourself,” he said, staring at his little leather bag then faking a polite smile. 

She glanced at the stairs suggestively. “It’s no trouble.” 

He unnoticed what he could hardly ignore and returned his attentions to the Blüthner. “I’m fine with my flask, thank you.”

Despite the invitation in her voice, every finite turn of his tool was to him equal to her perfectly weighted key presses. His passion for perfectionism was his concert. 

Once more she said, “Are you sure you wouldn’t like…,” while ascending the stairs, her waif body turned halfway to him.

“Thank you, I’m good.” 

Something quivered in her like a sustained G-3 in need of tuning, he noted as she slinked back upstairs, sipping coffee from his flask. He turned a screw an exact sixteenth of a millimetre and gave the C-5 three little taps: clink, clink, clink. 

“Perfect,” he muttered. Perfect in that he liked it to be imperceptibly flat, which felt more human to him. “We will breathe life into the now and then once more, Katrina,” he muttered, looking at the empty stairwell, obediently ignoring how his voice had cracked and trailed off saying her name. 

Their third-and-a-half meeting occurred four months later. Her manager had asked him to come at a specific time. Nervous at the thought of running into her again, he arrived without his soft shoes and decided to return the next day instead. The sound of her playing the Blüthner drifted through the open sash windows and made the hairs on his neck stand up; Clair de Lune was rarely played with such feeling and untainted precision. 

It was this half meeting that gave him the most insight into Katrina. Hearing her spirit alive and pure, unaffected and authentic, filled him with a passion he knew would linger heavily for weeks. A light rain soaked into his wool coat as he loitered below the window, wondering if a woman like Katrina might consider falling in love with someone like him. They possessed, after all, passion, perfectionism and a love for piano. Since meeting her, he was forced to admit, getting lost in his work could no longer keep at bay his troubling loneliness.  

As he left, he shook himself free of the fantasy: Katrina might not have been so put together in reality as she was behind the piano. Plus, there could be no real interest in a romance with someone like him, dishevelled, a workaholic and painfully introverted. 

Be content as the unsung magician behind her music, he thought as he skulked away. 

*

Returning the next morning, the day before Katrina’s biggest concert in the Opéra Royal de Versailles, he lets himself in with his key. He pays attention to the ambiance in the house; its absence. “She must be out.”  

Sitting on the stairs where he first glimpsed her, he remembers their brief yet lingering encounters. He wiggles his toes into his deck shoes and turns his thoughts towards the acoustics in the piano room. A touch on the A-3 is all she needs, perhaps a little on the F#-4. As he turns his head, his eyes find a sight his mind refuses to comprehend. Katrina lays lifeless on top of the keyboard, her blonde hair matted with the darkest of clarets. Beside her blood-speckled white fluffy slippers lies a small silver revolver. He scrambles towards her, his voice a breathless pine for their few moments together, all flashing through his mind with sickening thumps of his heart. 

He stops over her unencumbered body and looks at a scrawled note left on the music rack: Thank you for your excellence, Leo. Alas, to maintain perfection we must be alone; unadulterated. I now know you are burdened by a similar passion and lonely soul. They breed madness and sickness, which my spirit can no longer endure. I hope you accept my offer this time. With contrite glee, he murmurs the last line, “The piano is yours.”