1
The ceremony lasts longer than anyone expected. We are gathered at the last minute to provide the music. The wife of the dead man had insisted on having the funeral at noon. Dragged from our Saturday morning sleep-ins by a text at 9 am. We, as in, the orchestra. His old students. It’s a pop-up funeral. I suppose all funerals are pop-up. Nobody plans on dying.
Neither did I plan on being inside a chapel closet with a bassoon player, gripping his hair as he spread my legs apart. Pantyhose down. Donut rings around ankle. Cunt salivating. His tongue slips inside my mouth. We are upright, heaving our bodies against each other. Fingers struggling at his belt.
I’d known the boy from Young Performers Awards when we were both ten. He had braces, a scar over his left eye and bad breath that smelt like blue cheese. I felt sorry for him. The kind of pity that was entirely self-serving. I knew this yet felt no shame. He took pity on me, too, I think, because I was the only other Asian who made it to the final round of the comp, which was unusual. Usually, we dominate the podium. Now we were newly minted college graduates, reunited. Better hair. Better skin. Better sense.
Bassoon bends down to retrieve a condom from his pocket. Naked below our torsos. I kneel down. Give his cock a paddle-pop lick. He is smaller than I expected.
He tears at the aluminium wrapping.
‘Here, let me.’
In the darkness, his hands trace my skull as I reach up and unpeel the rubber along his cock. His breath is heavy. I stand to meet his face. Open mouth fans the hair around my cheeks. He lifts me up, slides inside me. Thrusts. Groans. Marks each penetration with a short, muffled growl. The male is insertive. I am receptive. He grabs my wrist for balance. I flinch.
Tchaikovsky’s Adagio Lamentoso floats through the speakers outside.
‘Fuck! We’re on.’
I push him off; leap out of the closet, pull on my panties, skirt, rummage for my shoes. He zips his trousers, pants frantically.
‘I was so close to coming!’
‘Where’s my violin?’ I scan the room.
He points to the corner where my Gabriel Strad lies on top of the piano. I slip on my shoes, pick up the violin. Bolt. Hand to the door. Pause. I still my shoulders. Composure.
On the stage, I arch my back. Violin gripped at the scroll. A large congregation of mourners blink in my direction like school children waiting for instruction. Eighteen musicians wait on me. Behind them, a row of twenty vocalists.
Suspended over our heads, a banner:
IN MEMORIUM
PHILIP RESLING
30 JANUARY 1948–10 JANUARY 2016
Bassoon shuffles into place next to the clarinets, his black hair standing up at weird angles. I glance at the leaders of each section and rest my eyes on the music. I guide the violin into my neck. Bow on the A string. Pull.
A low, sustained murmur trails through the chapel. We begin Mozart’s Requiem in D minor.
He’d written it for his own funeral, supposedly. At university, Olivia and I wrote poems for our parents to read aloud at our funerals. We were stupid like that.
The choir enter on cue, dramatic and full of minor-key despair. My fingers drop like hammers on the fingerboard. I could play these lines half asleep. I glance at Bassoon whom I’d just let inside my body. His eyes are closed, brow creased. I return to the music in front of me. Long bows. Arms raised. We only play the Introitus; the opening. Sustain the final note. My eyes flick to the banner above, a photo of my former accompanist, who’d died suddenly last Sunday. A stroke in his sleep. In the picture, he is staring into the camera, daring us to look away. His wife and daughter are hunched in the front pew. They are silent. They are still. They are deflecting the pity being thrown at them. I look back at Bassoon. His eyes are still closed. What a loser.
The wife invites us to the wake at the family home. Other musicians exchange stories about the dead man. I hide in a corner with a glass of orange juice, staring at the plate of cut triangle sandwiches and assorted cream biscuits. There is nothing sadder than a plate of assorted cream biscuits arranged on a plastic plate.
Bassoon spots me from the doorway.
‘Hey.’
‘Oh, hi.’
‘Good performance.’
I swallow some juice. ‘I think so.’
‘Olivia said you toured with him.’
‘No. He toured with me.’
Just in time. My best friend pedals across the room, offering a plate of sliced melon and blueberries. I put an arm around her shoulder and take the plate.
‘This is a dreary funeral. Why don’t we get married?’
Bassoon glances between us. ‘Very funny.’
Olivia pushes a palm into my face. ‘You wish we were married. You’re not my type. You’re too thin.’
I roll my eyes. It’s 2016. Anyone respectable is thin.
‘You’re also too pretty,’ Olivia says.
‘And you guys are both girls, so,’ Bassoon chuckles.
‘Are you serious?’ I stop chewing midway through a piece of melon.
‘Quieten down!’ A man in a grey suit walks by and puts a finger to his lips.
‘Fuck you.’
‘Jena!’ Olivia slaps my arm. ‘That was Resling’s brother. I have to go apologise.’
Bassoon and I watch her walk into the kitchen, where the man has disappeared into.
I am so ashamed. I’d just fucked a homophobic bassoon player.
‘About before,’ he begins. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Don’t worry.’
He smiles awkwardly. I want him to walk away.
What did I know about throwing my body at strangers?
A whole lot.
I was a child prodigy. I never learned to share the attention. I was always the only kid in the room. I was always the star.
My grandpapa was a child prodigy too. He believed talent chose people. He said it was his destiny to suffer. To pursue great art. He had needs. They were excessive. That’s what he used to say. He used to say it all the time. Maybe I inherited his ferocity. It drove him mad. And wild. And to his death.
2
Home is Sydney. An old terrace house with cracked walls. Tasteful damp. I live on a quiet street in Newtown, a suburb in the inner west lined with milk crate cafes and bike stores owned by bearded white guys with sensible tattoos. Most practice takes place here, away from the chaos of the city. Away from my mother. Away from Banks.
A week after the funeral, Olivia and I find an evening to practise together. I’m in bed pushing a glass vibrator between my legs when I hear her arrive. I wipe myself clean and slip on a T-shirt and shorts before opening the door.
She wheels her bike onto the verandah as I step out, barefoot. Her hair bunched in a loose ponytail; violin case strapped to her back.
‘Why did you cycle here? It’s dangerous on King Street.’
She shrugs, unties her hair and whips it around like a dog shaking off its wet. She’s clutching her helmet in one hand and extracting a Tupperware container from her shoulder bag. ‘Brownies. I just baked them this morning.’
‘These don’t have hash in them, do they?’
I follow her into the kitchen. She pours herself a glass of water.
‘Why would I want us to be stoned while practising?’
We’re auditioning for a permanent place in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; both of us have been casuals since the beginning of 2015 sustaining on sporadic incomes. The audition is a few months away. Only one position is opening. My best friend and I are vying for the same role. It’s new terrain for us.