The Pianist's Room – Part 1: Apartment Above the Concert Hall

The room was at the top of a narrow stone staircase, above the old concert hall in the Musikverein district. It had a sloping ceiling, a window that rattled in the wind and a single bed that Anna had bought from a shop in the seventh district for the price of two concert tickets.

She had come to Vienna to play the violin. She had been a rising star at the conservatory in Prague, with a bright sharp sound and a career laid out in front of her, until the night in Dresden when she had frozen halfway through a concerto and never quite thawed.

Now she worked in a music shop on the Mariahilfer Straße, selling sheet music to tourists and tuning other people's instruments. She did not play. Not in front of anyone.

The first night she heard the piano, she thought it was coming from the next street. The second night, she realised it was coming from directly below her.

It was a Chopin nocturne, played slowly, with long silences between the phrases. It drifted up through the floorboards like warm air, and she lay in bed and listened until the last note faded.

The next night, the piano began again, the same nocturne, a little faster this time, with a mistake in the middle that the player repeated, very quietly, until it was right.

Anna sat up in bed. Her heart was beating very fast.

On the fifth night, the music stopped in the middle of a phrase, and a man's voice called up the staircase, rough and cheerful, with a strong Viennese accent.

"You're listening," he said.

Anna froze. She did not reply.

"I can hear you breathing," said the voice. "You breathe like someone who's about to play something and then changes her mind. I'm not complaining. I've done it myself."

She got out of bed, wrapped her cardigan around her shoulders, and crept to the top of the stairs. Below, a light was on in the concert hall's back corridor, and a tall man was sitting at the edge of a small piano in the shadows, one hand resting on the keys. He had dark, untidy hair and an expression that was half amused, half curious.

"Hello," said Anna.

"Hello," said the man. "I'm Felix. I'm the pianist, and I'm very sorry for the Chopin. I've been practising it for three weeks, and I'm terrible at the middle section."

"It sounded lovely," said Anna, before she could stop herself.

"You're kind. And you're a liar."

"I'm not a liar."

"You're a violinist," said Felix. "I can tell from the way you hold your shoulders when you talk about the stairs."

Anna's throat tightened. She came down two steps, slowly, and sat on the cold stone.

"I'm not playing any more," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because I froze in Dresden, in front of two thousand people, and I haven't been able to make a sound since."

Felix was quiet for a long moment. Then he got up from the piano, came to the bottom of the stairs, and looked up at her.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Yes."

"Would you like to come down and play something with me, here, in the dark? Not for an audience. Just to see what your hands remember?"

Anna's heart jumped. "I don't know if I can."

"Then don't play," said Felix gently. "Just come down. Sit on the bench. And if you want to stop, you say so, and I'll stop, and we'll both go to bed with a bit of Chopin in our heads."

She came down the rest of the stairs, one at a time, and sat beside him on the bench.

"Green?" he asked quietly.

"Green," said Anna, and her voice shook. "Very, very green."