Eleanor Catton - The Rehearsal

“I just thought that’s what you meant,” Stanley said again. “Sorry.”

The Head of Movement did not speak for a moment. They were looking at him with faint pity now, he thought, as any teenager looks at an adult they believe to be utterly incapable of lust. They were looking at him as if they believed their awkward dry fumble against the fold of the curtain had somehow made him jealous; as if their collision had made him yearn for some lost youthful spontaneity of touch, and his outburst had only marked his dissatisfaction, his recognition of his own immeasurable loss. The Head of Movement felt disgusted. He wanted to turn his head and spit on the floor. He wanted to mount the seven steps to the stage and tear them from their cocoon of self-absorption and conceit. He wanted to shout and make them see that he was not jealous, that he could not be jealous of any pathetic hot-light kiss between two ill-made brats, and if anything what he felt was a profound nausea at what he had been forced to watch.

“Again,” said the Head of Movement sourly, and threw himself back into his chair.

Stanley was waiting for Isolde under the ginkgo tree when she emerged from her lesson, trotting down the sunken stone steps and across the courtyard to embrace him and kiss him briefly on the mouth.

“Look at you, you little gypsy,” Stanley said as he stepped back. “All your bags and everything.”

“Fridays are horrible,” Isolde said. “Sax and PE and art all in the same afternoon.”

“Gypsy girl.”

Isolde exhaled and flapped her arms and then grinned at Stanley, a broad, honest grin that lit her up completely. It was the same unashamed openness that had lured Mr. Saladin to Victoria, only it was transplanted here on to her sister, the same smile on a different face. Stanley leaned forward and kissed her on the nose.

“So when am I going to hear you play?” he said.

“I thought you could hear from down here in the quad.”

“But I’m never sure which sax is you and which is your teacher,” Stanley said with a grin. “I might be thinking you’re much better than you actually are.”

“Our saxes actually have really different voices,” Isolde said. “If you know to listen for that sort of thing. My mouthpiece is vulcanized rubber and hers is metal. The metal piece makes a really different sound.”

“Like how speaking voices are different from each other.”

“Yeah,” Isolde said. “Right. Like the difference between a woman and a girl.”

The stone building behind them was now unlit, all the curtains pulled and the lights doused. Inside, the offices were locked for the night and cooling now in the gathering dusk. On the attic level the saxophone teacher’s window was dark, as if she had locked the studio after Isolde’s departure and departed herself for the night, but if you looked up through the ginkgo branches you would see an inky figure standing by the curtain and looking down into the courtyard at the pair standing together under the ginkgo tree. Stanley and Isolde did not look up. Stanley crushed Isolde in a one-arm hug and together they walked away, talking quietly with their heads together, until they were swallowed by the cloisters and the branches, and they disappeared.

“Do you know why you are here?” the Head of Movement said as Stanley sat down.

“Probably my Outing,” Stanley said, hazarding a guess.

The Head of Movement raised his eyebrows and twitched up his chin sharply. “Your Outing?” he said.

“I must have failed the exercise,” Stanley said, suddenly realizing that he should be cautious, and trying to look a little more innocent and perplexed.

“I don’t think so,” the Head of Movement said. “I have your report from the Head of Improvisation and she said she was very much impressed. You were Joe Pitt.”

“Yeah,” Stanley said.

“I believe her report was very admiring.”

“Oh.”

Stanley tried to shrug and smile, but all he managed was a shiver and a grimace.

“Were you expecting to fail?” the Head of Movement asked, peering at him closely.

“No,” Stanley said quickly. “So I guess I don’t know why I’m here.”

The Head of Movement sat back and placed the palms of his hands on the desk before him. He was wearing a long-practiced look of grave disappointment, and Stanley’s heart began to hammer. The Head of Movement said, “Somebody has complained about you. Somebody has laid a very serious complaint about you. Do you know what that might be?”

Stanley looked bewildered. “No,” he said. “Who? What was it?”

The Head of Movement did not speak immediately. He looked at Stanley with something between pity and disgust, and Stanley felt himself shrivel.

“A music teacher who teaches in a studio in the north quad,” he said, “laid a complaint with us that you had been harassing her students.”

“What?” Against his will Stanley felt himself begin to flush.

“Harassing her students,” the Head of Movement went on. “In particular a young girl in the fifth form. Does this mean anything to you?”

Stanley sat for a moment without speaking.

“Nothing?” the Head of Movement said.

He drew the silence out between them carefully, like a measured breath. There was a dreadful sinking feeling in the pit of Stanley’s stomach. He sat and stared at the glossy sheen of the table under the Head of Movement’s hands, and said nothing.

“Normally,” the Head of Movement said, “we wouldn’t intervene in a case like this, of course. Normally we’d treat you like an adult and expect you to sort it out of your own accord. But the fact that this music teacher has taken up the issue directly with us—you see that we are compelled to talk with you about it. You see that.”

“Yes,” Stanley said automatically, and he nodded his head.

“The music teacher was very concerned about her students’ safety, given the proximity of her studio to this Institute,” the Head of Movement said.

Stanley nodded again.

“What happened, Stanley?” the Head of Movement said. “What’s all this about?”

Stanley looked up quickly to meet the Head of Movement’s gaze, and then drew his eyes away, turning his head to look at the framed posters and theater programs above the filing cabinet. They were ordered chronologically, lined up like a simple recipe for the Head of Movement’s life, the plotted path to where he sat right now at his empty desk with his bare feet together and a frown upon his face.

“I don’t know,” Stanley said at last. “I don’t know anything about a saxophone teacher.”

“I said music teacher.”

Stanley drew in his breath sharply and again glanced at the Head of Movement, even quicker this time, as if the tutor’s haggard face was either very hot or very bright, and his eyes could not stand to rest for long.

“I knew she played sax,” he said quietly, and the words were like a horrible admission, a statement of guilt. A little cough in the back of his throat broke the last word in two.

“I assume you are keeping quiet so as not to incriminate yourself,” the Head of Movement said coldly, after another wretched pause.

“I just—”

In truth Stanley simply had nothing to say. He shrugged, more to communicate helplessness than insolence, but the Head of Movement’s eyes flashed and Stanley saw that the gesture had angered him. The Head of Movement’s coldness somehow amplified now, and he pressed his palms flatter upon the tabletop.

“Because the young girl in question is in the fifth form,” the Head of Movement said, “you understand that she is not yet sixteen.”

Stanley was still nodding.