Читать книгу The Ann Ireland Library - Ann Ireland - Страница 5

Eleven years ago Toby Hausner was the one to beat. If you’d seen him stride onstage, shaking those blond dreadlocks, guitar tucked under one arm like a surfboard, you would have felt the confidence blow off him, scary yet tantalizing. The spotlight held his form as he made his way to centre stage to the simple bench waiting there and the custom footstool. The old hall smelled like socks and mould after a solid week of rain.

He plunked himself down after a quick bow, then swung the guitar onto his lap and tuned while staring, eyes shut, into the spotlight. Not a hint of impatience stirred the audience. Hadn’t everyone been talking about this kid all week, noting his intense focus mixed with a joy of performing, unusual in one so young? Much was made of his rolled-up trousers and bare feet. Toby claimed that his body was a vibratory presence and must connect directly, flesh to floorboards, to create an acoustic chamber.

Whispers crested through the auditorium as he wiped each palm on his trousered knees. Huddled at the back of the hall were his colleagues, musicians from around the world who had been eliminated from earlier rounds of the competition. They sat forward on their seats, knowledge and nerves burning off them.

Near to the front was the row of judges, clipboards in hand. This was what they’d been waiting for all week: one final chance to be dazzled and moved. If this barefoot kid played the way he did in the semis, he’d walk off with the grand prize and an international career would be launched.

Toby’s elegant hands wrapped around the instrument, and as he raised his fingers over the sound hole, he let out an audible exhalation of air. When a person dies, they may sigh deeply at the end. So it went for Toby.

He began to play but it soon became clear that something was wrong. The judges squinted at their programs in the dark: allegedly the boy was playing Scarlatti, but this was not what they were hearing. Something more full-throttle and dissonant coasted through the hall, something improvisatory, no known composer, light-years from Baroque mode. Toby’s upper body bobbed up and down, and his mouth moved with each twinge of phrase. He was certainly enjoying himself up there, ripping through weird chord sequences and arpeggios, and despite their horror, no one stopped listening or watching, any more than you’d take your eyes off a kid tumbling from an open window.

This happened in Paris — some stage for a meltdown.