The Cough by Ekin Kurtdarcan

Maria felt the vibration of the distant cough on her fingers that gripped the curtain, the sound that split the darkness in her mind. The hall must have been full by now, and the buzz of the people rushing to find their seats was enough to make her head spin. To keep herself from losing her balance, as Maria instinctually reached out for the chair next to her, her other hand which was now made into a fist refused to let go of the stage curtain. She felt as if that dusty, heavy curtain was the only object that connected her to the stage. And the cough. Besides the spotlight that she couldn’t perceive, it was the reverberating cough that told her the concert was about to start.

As she fidgeted with her sleeves, she wondered how it would feel to be able to peek behind the curtain once more. Momentarily looking behind the curtain to see the audience, but pulling back just in time before anyone recognized her. When she played this game many years ago to amuse herself backstage and giggling upon hearing that ‘preparatory’ cough from the audience before every concert, she never would’ve known that one day only one of those seemingly trivial delights would remain. Now, as all she could focus on were fragments of sound rather than sight, the cough became her only entertainment; concentrating on the way people assumed that they would have to hold their breaths during a performance, only to look around nervously in half-hour intervals to let out coughs and sneezes. Maybe she should’ve coughed too, to feel herself breathing, to know once more that she was alive.

Maria moved her toes in her shoes that had now begun to hurt, pushed her glasses up her nose a little more. Shouldn’t it be easier for her to go on stage? Yes, perhaps she could not see the audience but she could feel them. The way they flipped through the pages of the program, the way they shifted their weight to the other leg… Every movement seemed to say, “I’m here, and I can feel you!”

A familiar hand on her shoulder briefly cut Maria off from her monologic retrospection. From the way the hand gently gripped her shoulder, she knew almost immediately that it was Alexandra, her classmate.

“Fifteen minutes to go,” she whispered smoothly. “Gorenko is waiting for all the students downstairs.”

Turning halfway to nod in silent agreement, Maria tried to fixate on the relative spot where she thought Alexandra’s face was. Focusing on guessing the way Alexandra was looking at her, Maria realized that after the accident that caused her to lose her sight and months of rehabilitation to recuperate many of her motor functions, this uncertainty was perhaps the biggest thing she struggled with. Most of the time, Maria could imagine a person’s expression by the slightest change in the tone of their voice. Treating her mind as a canvas, from the oscillations of highs and lows she would come to paint vivid portraits of the people she knew before; the way their mouths curved or the dimples that appeared on their cheeks as they shared jokes or stories. This became harder though, as Maria’s exasperation towards her self-insufficiency conflicted with the denial of her dejection. Later into her rehabilitation, too often, as she forced her muscles to remember what they once used to do with an astonishing facility, she would attempt to slam the keyboard in sheer frustration. In her inability to physically express her grief towards the lost part of her, the faces that she once knew would come haunting her mind’s eye; distorted faces full of pity that once glowed in delight as the hands that belonged to them showered her with gifts and flowers. And foremost, the face that would haunt Maria’s conscience the most: her teacher’s.

Maria slowly guided herself downstairs with the aid of the wall. She did not know why concerts and recitals had always felt like Judgment Day to her, her mind regurgitating the reflections of the past. Even in her deepest thoughts, she knew she had arrived at the bottom of the stairs upon sensing the excitement and nerves of the other students gathered there.

“You look as white as a ghost,” an alto voice enunciated slowly. “I assumed the appreciation of your progress would make you more confident.”

“I learned it from your approach to self-criticism, to always be wary of confidence and progress,” replied Maria wryly.

Ever since Maria was six years old, Madame Gorenko has always been the very embodiment of meticulousness to her. A towering woman with the poise of a tiger, Madame Gorenko never failed to be resourceful with scowls towards undisciplined and arrogant students. Maria remembered the days of her childhood when her feet dragged down the hallway towards her classroom in the cold conservatory building, where Madame Gorenko would be waiting with her face turned towards the window, her smoky eyes lost in thought as if she were dreaming of a far away land. Maria recalled Madame Gorenko’s aromatic perfume that smelled oddly out of place in that grave atmosphere, as she bent over Maria’s small, childish frame to demonstrate the way she should hold her wrists. It was still the same smell after 13 years, when her teacher visited her in the hospital days after the accident. Hearing the even trod of her feet on the linoleum, all Maria could do to respond was to lift two of her fingers in her right hand.

“It was a good decision for you to play tonight. It will motivate you,” continued Madame Gorenko.

“Please don’t listen to me the next time I propose ideas like this,” sighed Maria, as she tried to fight her splitting headache to keep her composure.

With a light chuckle, Madame Gorenko patted Maria’s shoulder and made her way towards a younger student. What was Maria thinking anyway, when she said so enthusiastically on one of her euphoric days, that she wanted to perform one more time? She knew it was her mother who conspired with Madame Gorenko to utilize the piano in her rehabilitation process, probably so that her ‘wunderkind’ would at least attempt to make a comeback to the concert stage. Maria compared that to a desperate effort to glue back a broken vase. No matter how strong the glue was, her cracks would always show. Years of sitting in stuffy rooms to ‘hone her talent’ seemed so far away to her. Now, whenever she remembered being downgraded from Beethoven sonatas to Yankee Doodle, a sarcastic smile appeared at the corner of Maria’s lips as if to remind her of the reason why she did not quit then and there.

Maria never failed to question whether this was all worth the effort, the misery. To her, it seemed like a sane person would’ve just let things go, rather than torture herself with this struggle and unpredictability. Maria was almost convinced she was insane, as she tried for months to battle her physical limitations to resurrect what molded into her identity for over 13 years.

“Perhaps it was some crazy instinct,” she whispered to herself as she tried to listen to the student already playing on stage. “As if I wouldn’t be able to recognize myself anymore.”

Maria knew her return to be a homage to her memories; the recollection of that aromatic perfume, or the cough, which became that string that tied Maria to the bittersweet amusement of life itself. Perhaps due to this revelation that she, walking on the line that separated euphoria from dejection, one morning decided to go on stage once again.

Trying to control her knotting stomach, knowing that the thunderous applause would cue her in, Maria let out a cough.