‘How did it go again…’ he mutters, pressing the keys to the left and right in a vain attempt to find his place.
The boy’s face twists. ‘That doesn’t sound right.’
Shifting his eyes upwards, he notices a book atop the piano’s dulled body. Grasping for it, he brushes off its dusty cover in his lap. He reads with the book pressed to his nose, slowly turning each page, struggling to make out the symbols under such dim light.
‘Ah.’ He says, triumphantly placing the open book onto the piano’s music rack.
He begins to slowly piece together …show more content…
‘Yeah, it was. As a kid I used to hide underneath it, listening to her play. It’s strange that it’s still in tune. I wonder if my mother’s parents have kept it tuned all these years?’ He stands up, placing the book gently atop the piano.
The girl squeezes the boy’s hand, noticing the gleam of faint tears in his eyes. ‘Let’s see what else we can find.’
Suffocating under a layer of dust, the small room is cluttered with bags of clothes, precariously stacked boxes and oddly shaped …show more content…
Well I can hardly see. Hold these.’ The girl fumbles through her purse.
‘Here,’ she says, using her phone as a makeshift light, ‘this is your mother in L’viv?’
‘My mother told me she actually met my father here, at this competition. She was only 16 at the time. She said that she was so distracted by his presence in the second row that it messed up her entire recital.’
The girl smirks. ‘Really? Must have been a handsome man.’
‘She was eliminated for her mistakes but she, and her distraction, later waltzed and fell in love during the orchestra’s performance of Strauss’s “The Blue Danube” that night… Or so the story goes. Sounds like something straight out of a novel.’ The boy hands the photos back to the girl.
‘You have never told me much about your family.’ Says the girl, her lingering smile beginning to fade as she carefully repacks the box.
‘Well, I don’t really know them and it hurts to be reminded of that. My father, of whom I never received more description than “handsome, kind and well-travelled”, was never around, as you know.’ The boy fiddles with the hairs of his nape, absentmindedly scanning the