Chapter 14: The Anatomy of a Duel
The news arrived at Belvedere Terrace not by courier, but via a brief, sharply worded Western Union telegram delivered to Lev Richter’s iron gate at nine o'clock the following morning.
CANDIDATE 74092 ACCEPTED FOR OPEN QUARTER-FINALS. STAGE DRAW: POSITION THREE, MARCH 14. GRAND PHILHARMONIC HALL. MANDATORY CONCERT ATTIRE ENFORCED. VANCE, CHAIR.
Richter held the slip of yellow paper between two fingers, his face illuminated by the morning sun cutting through the leaded windows of his library. A dry, rasping laugh rattled in his chest.
"He signed it himself," the old man chuckled, tossing the paper onto the side table next to his empty tea cup. "He wanted to deliver the execution notice with his own hand. Predictable. Arrogant to the very last ditch."
Maya sat at the Hamburg Steinway, her hands resting quietly upon the edge of the keybed. She was not smiling.
For the past seventy-two hours, since the tape had been submitted, she had felt a strange, humming pressure behind her temple—not pain, but the acute physical sensation of a diver descending into deep ocean trenches where the water turns black and the pressure increases with every fathom.
"He will be on the stage, won't he?" she asked.
"He will be sitting ten feet from the piano in the primary adjudicator’s box," Richter said, stepping behind her. His cane clicked once on the parquet. "Along with eleven international critics from London, Berlin, and Tokyo. And twelve hundred people who bought tickets expecting to see the future of European civilization."
"And if they laugh when I walk out with my cane?"
Richter stopped. He reached out and grabbed the back of Maya’s wooden bench, rocking it slightly until she felt the firm, immovable mass of his frame behind her.
"Let them laugh," the master said, his voice dropping into that dark, granite register that tolerated no weakness. "Laughter is merely air pushed through teeth by small people who are terrified of what they cannot understand. When you walk out onto that stage, Miss Chen, you do not carry a white cane. You carry a sword."
He tapped her left shoulder with the silver head of his walking stick.
"The quarter-final round requires thirty minutes of uninterrupted solo performance. One classical sonata, one major romantic work, and one twentieth-century piece of dynamic complexity. What is your choice for the modern?"
"Ravel," Maya said without hesitation. "Gaspard de la nuit: Scarbo."
Richter’s eyebrows shot up behind his spectacles. For the first time in three months, his face registered genuine, unvarnished alarm.
"Scarbo?" he barked. "Are you out of your mind? It is widely considered the most unplayable nightmare in the entire French literature! Maurice Ravel wrote it specifically because he wanted to create a piece more difficult than Balakirev's Islamey! It requires double-note repetitions at breakneck speed, wild hand-crossings across six octaves, and an impossible dynamic range between triple-pianissimo and sudden explosive violence!"
"Julian Vance played it in Zurich three years ago," Maya said calmly, her voice level as a plumb line. "The critics called it 'a miraculous demonstration of cold digital velocity.'"
Richter stared down at her sightless, tranquil face. A slow, terrifying grin began to spread across the old master's withered mouth.
"You want to take his own showpiece and shove it down his throat," Richter whispered.
"I don't care about his throat, Maestro," Maya answered, her fingers touching the keys, coaxing a warm, shimmering D-flat major seventh chord from the Hamburg Steinway. "He played Scarbo as a mechanical goblin. A toy with brass gears that runs around a carpet. But Ravel did not write a toy. Scarbo is the phantom that lives in the dark corner of the room when you are seven years old and your mother has turned off the lamp. It is the shadow that breathes when the house is asleep. Julian Vance has never been in the dark. I have lived there my entire life."
Richter stood motionless for five seconds. Then he threw his head back and let out a roar of laughter that shook the glass pendants of the chandelier overhead.
"Magnificent!" the old man shouted, slamming his palm against the mahogany rim of the piano. "You bloodthirsty little monster! You absolute barbarian of an artist! Sit straight! Drop your shoulders! From the opening tremolo—give me the first thirty measures of Scarbo! And if your repeated notes sound like hail on a tin roof, I will make you play them until midnight with copper coins balanced on your thumbs!"