The Corridor Outside Room Twelve

Nothing in nine years of lessons had prepared Zeynep for the particular quality of the silence outside Room Twelve. It was not the silence of a library, which is cooperative and faintly kind; it was the silence of people waiting to be judged. Along the corridor, a dozen other candidates sat clutching instrument cases, each one pretending, with varying degrees of success, to be absorbed in a phone, a score or a point on the wall. Zeynep had been awake since five. Her cello, resting between her knees, seemed to her unusually heavy, and the piece she had played faultlessly for months now dissolved whenever she tried to recall its opening. What she feared was not so much failure as the humiliation of failing visibly, in front of a panel who would have heard better performances that very morning. A cleaner was working her way down the corridor with a mop, moving with the unhurried efficiency of someone who has long ceased to be impressed by nerves. When she reached Zeynep, she paused, rested her chin on the end of the handle and studied the cello case with frank interest. "Haydn or Elgar?" she asked. "Haydn," said Zeynep, startled. "The C major." "Ah. The first movement. Everyone plays the first movement." The woman smiled slightly. "Do you know what they listen for? Not the notes. Hardly anyone misses the notes by this stage. They listen for whether you sound as though you would rather be somewhere else." Zeynep, who at that moment would have given almost anything to be somewhere else, said nothing. "It is not a bad thing to be frightened," the woman continued. "Only when the fear takes over the music is it a problem. So, try this. Instead of thinking of them" – she nodded towards the closed door – "think of a single person at the very back who has come in out of the rain, and who will sit there for exactly as long as the piece lasts. Play to that person." Before Zeynep could ask who she was to give advice, a door opened and a name that was not hers was called. The cleaner returned to her mop. When her turn came, Zeynep walked into the room with the cello and a curious sense of lightness. She did not look at the three figures behind the table. She looked at the empty chair in the back corner, and the first note, when it came, sounded like something she had always been able to do. Only afterwards, while collecting her coat, did she notice the framed photograph beside the notice board: an orchestra, decades old, with a young woman in the second row of the violins. The face was younger and the hair darker, but the half-smile was unmistakable. Zeynep looked at it for a long moment, then went to look for the cleaner. She had gone home.