A New Hand · The Long Way Down to Morning · Pulse Beat
It took another eleven months to find the new fingering. She and Mr D'Souza worked it out together on his balcony: a way of shaping the left hand so that the stubborn finger was held out of the way…
It took another eleven months to find the new fingering.
She and Mr D'Souza worked it out together on his balcony: a way of shaping the left hand so that the stubborn finger was held out of the way, and the fourth took over what the third could not. It meant rewriting every phrase she knew. It meant a different sound: a little darker, with a slide in it where a clean note had been. Mr D'Souza listened with his head on one side and said, "Ah. That is you."
"It's worse."
"It is different. Different is not worse. Different is how a voice is made." He tapped her wrist with a bony finger. "Nobody has played this. You will have to decide what it is."
She spent a year deciding. She learned the Bach again, from the beginning, as if she were nine. The Chaconne took four months. When she finally played it through, on a clear evening, with the doors open to the rain, she did not stop at the third finger, because there was no third finger in it. Only the new hand, and the old ear, and a girl, much older than she had been, who had learned that the thing you lose is not always the thing you needed.