"Danse sacrée" Debussy
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The harp is taller than Isabelle Dupont, but she moves it like it weighs nothing.
She arrives in early March, when the last of the winter gray is giving way to something almost like spring. She is old. That is the first thing Yaz notices. Older than any of the other teachers, older than Mrs. Okonkwo, older than the orphanage itself seems to be. Her hair is white, pulled back in a loose bun that releases small wisps around her face like escaped thoughts. Her hands are spotted with age, the skin thin and papery, but when she touches the harp strings, they move with a sureness that age has not diminished.
"So you are the child," she says.
Her voice is French. Not sharp like Lydia's. Softer. Worn down by years, the way stones are worn down by water until their edges are smooth.
"Yes."
"I have heard about you. From Elias." She pauses. Something flickers across her face. "He used to be different, you know. When he was young. Before the industry made him what he is now."
Yaz does not know what to say. No one has spoken about Thorne this way before. No one has suggested that Thorne was ever anything other than what he is.
Isabelle wheels the harp into position. It is enormous, golden, its strings stretching from the curved neck down to the soundboard like the threads of some enormous spider's web. She settles onto the bench beside it, her small body almost swallowed by the instrument's size.
"The harp is not like the others," she says. "The guitar speaks. The piano thinks. The violin questions. But the harp..." She runs her fingers across the strings. A cascade of notes fills the Practice Room, shimmering, dissolving. "The harp watches. The harp paints portraits."
"Portraits of what?"
"Of people. Of moments. Of truths that words cannot hold." She looks at him with eyes that are pale blue, faded like old photographs, but still sharp beneath the fading. "You have learned to play many instruments, yes? To make many sounds?"
"Seven instruments. Almost two years."
"And in all that time, have you learned to see?"
The question is strange. He can see. His eyes work. The Practice Room is there, the instruments are there, the red light blinks in the corner. Everything is visible.
But Isabelle shakes her head, as if she knows what he is thinking.
"Not with your eyes. With your attention. There is a difference." She gestures toward the bench beside her. "Come. Sit. I will teach you to watch before you play."
The piece is called "Danse sacrée."
Isabelle plays it first. The music is delicate, impressionistic, like light filtering through stained glass. Each note is distinct but connected, part of a pattern that shifts and reforms with every phrase. It does not tell a story the way the other pieces told stories. It shows something. A painting made of sound.
"Debussy wrote this for harp and strings," Isabelle says when she finishes. "But we play it alone. One instrument. One observer. Watching the world and showing what we see."
She positions Yaz's hands on the strings. His fingers are smaller than hers, but the spacing is manageable. The strings vibrate slightly under his touch, waiting.
"The technique is simple," she continues. "Arpeggios. Scales. Things you already know from the piano. But the intention is different. You are not expressing. You are observing. You are painting a portrait of something outside yourself."
"What should I observe?"
"Start with me." Isabelle settles back in her chair. "Look at me. Really look. Not at what you expect to see. At what is there."
Yaz looks.
He sees an old woman. White hair. Blue eyes. Papery skin. But as he keeps looking, he sees more. The slight tremor in her left hand that she hides when she plays. The tiredness around her eyes, layered like sediment, years of tiredness stacked on top of each other. The way she holds herself, straight-backed but fragile, like something that has learned to stand up despite wanting to sit down.
"Now play what you see."
He plucks a string. The note is high, thin. Fragile.
"Good. What else?"
Another string. Lower. Steadier. The note of someone who has been doing something for a long time.
"More."
He plays a small phrase. Rising and falling. The shape of someone who is tired but keeps going. Who is old but still here. Who is watching him watch her.
Isabelle nods slowly. "You begin to understand."
The watching changes everything.
Yaz does not notice at first. It happens gradually, the way seasons change, the way a child grows. One day he is empty, going through motions, existing without feeling. The next day, or the next week, or somewhere in between, something shifts. The emptiness does not go away. But something new arrives beside it.
Attention.
He starts to see things he has not seen before. Or rather, he starts to notice things he has been seeing all along without understanding.
Mrs. Okonkwo's smile. It is tired. He has always known this. But now he sees the specific shape of the tiredness. The way it pulls at the corners of her mouth. The way her eyes do not quite match the curve of her lips. The smile of someone who is performing happiness rather than feeling it.
Director Henriksen's efficiency. Empty. He moves through the hallways with purpose, clipboard in hand, schedules organized, everything in its place. But his eyes are flat. His voice is flat. He is a machine built to run an orphanage, and the running is all that matters. The children are just parts of the machine.
The other children. Going through motions. They eat their porridge. They attend their lessons. They play in the yard during outdoor hour. But their faces, when he really looks at them, are not the faces of children living. They are the faces of children waiting. Waiting for something to change. Waiting for someone to choose them. Waiting for life to begin.
Worn faces. That is what Isabelle calls them during their third lesson.
"You are seeing it now," she says. "The worn faces. The going through motions. Everyone performing their role, but no one truly present." She pauses. Plucks a string. The note hangs in the air, fragile and clear. "This is what the world is, child. A stage full of actors who have forgotten they are acting."
"Is that what I am? An actor?"
"You were becoming one. Empty and performing." Her faded eyes find his. "But observation can bring you back. When you see the performance, you step outside it. You become the audience instead of the player."
His ninth birthday arrives on March 15th.
Yaz knows the date because Mrs. Okonkwo tells him. She appears at the Practice Room door in the evening, her orange headwrap bright against the gray hallway, a small cake in her hands. Chocolate, or something meant to be chocolate. One candle. The flame wavers in the draft from the open door.
"Happy birthday, Yassine."
Her voice is warm. Genuine. But now he can see the other things beneath the warmth. The guilt. The exhaustion. The knowledge that she is complicit in something she cannot stop.
"Thank you."
"Nine years old." She sets the cake on the music stand, the same place she set last year's cake, the same makeshift celebration in the same basement room. "Growing up so fast."
Thorne does not come. Yaz waits, the candle burning down, wax dripping onto the chocolate surface, but no footsteps sound in the hallway. No silver hair appears in the doorway. No gold watch glints in the Practice Room light.
The man who calls him extraordinary, who speaks of investment and protection and futures being built, has forgotten his birthday. Again.
"Mr. Thorne sends his regards," Mrs. Okonkwo says. The lie is obvious. She does not even try to make it convincing. "He's very busy with... with the planning. For your future."
"It's okay," Yaz says.
And it is okay. Not because he does not care, but because he can see now. He can see that Thorne does not think of him as a child with birthdays. Thorne thinks of him as an investment with a timeline. And investments do not need candles. Investments need returns.
He blows out the candle. He does not make a wish. Wishes are for people who believe the world might give them something. Yaz has stopped believing that. But he has not stopped seeing. And seeing, he is learning, is its own kind of power.
Isabelle teaches him to paint portraits with the harp.
Not literal portraits. Sound portraits. The shape of a person translated into notes and phrases, captured in the spaces between strings.
"Play Mrs. Okonkwo," she says one afternoon.
Yaz's fingers find the strings. He thinks about what he has observed. The tired smile. The guilt beneath the warmth. The orange headwrap that is bright because everything else about her is heavy. The way she clasps her hands when she has something difficult to say. The way she looks at him and looks away, unable to hold his gaze for long.
He plays.
The melody is slow. Heavy at the bottom, where the bass strings thrum. But threaded through it is something higher, something that flickers and almost disappears. Hope, maybe. Or the memory of hope. Or the hope for hope. Something that keeps her going even when going is hard.
The piece ends. Isabelle is staring at him.
"That was her," she says quietly. "I could see her. Exactly as she is."
"Is that good?"
"It is..." She pauses. Her papery hands fold in her lap. "You see too much, child. That is not always a gift. Sometimes seeing clearly is a burden."
"Why?"
"Because once you see, you cannot unsee. And when you see how lost everyone is, how worn, how empty their performances have become..." She shakes her head. "It can make you very lonely. To be the only one watching while everyone else acts."
The fence feels different now.
Yaz stands there during outdoor hour, his fingers threaded through the chain-link, but he is not longing for the outside anymore. He is not imagining crossing to the other side, joining the families who walk past, becoming part of the world beyond.
He is watching.
The mother pushing the stroller. Her face is tired. Not tired like she slept badly. Tired like she has been performing motherhood for so long that she has forgotten what it felt like before the performance began. She smiles at the baby, but the smile is automatic. A reflex rather than a response.
The businessman on his phone. His suit is expensive. His voice is loud. But his eyes are empty. He is talking about numbers, about meetings, about things that matter because he has decided they matter, not because they actually do. He does not see the mother. He does not see the baby. He does not see Yaz watching him through the fence.
The old woman on the bench. She is feeding pigeons, the same way the old man fed pigeons years ago, the same bench or maybe a different one. Her face is worn smooth by time, the features softened into something almost peaceful. But her eyes, when Yaz looks closely, are not peaceful. They are resigned. She has stopped expecting anything from the world. She is just waiting for the waiting to end.
Worn faces. Everywhere. The mad world spinning around him, everyone performing, everyone acting, no one truly present.
You're seeing now, the Maestro says.
The voice is clearer than it has been in months. Not fully present, but returning. Fading back in like a radio station finding its frequency.
Really seeing. That's the first step back.
Back from where?
From the empty place. From the routine. From the nothing that almost swallowed you.
Yaz looks at the fence. At his fingers threaded through the diamonds. At the world beyond, full of worn faces, full of people going through motions.
I see them, he thinks. But what do I do with what I see?
The Maestro does not answer. Not yet. The seeing is enough for now.
Dayo finds him in the hallway outside the Practice Room.
It is late. After dinner. The other children are in the dormitory, preparing for bed. Yaz is walking toward the basement stairs, toward the harp that waits for him, toward the practice that has become something other than routine.
Dayo is standing by the window. His tablet is in his hand, but the screen is dark. He is looking outside, at the night, at something Yaz cannot see.
"Hey, kid."
"Hey."
Dayo does not look at him. His voice is strange. Lower than usual. Careful.
"I want to give you something."
He reaches into his pocket. Pulls out a folded piece of paper. Small. Ordinary. Nothing special about it except the way Dayo holds it, like it weighs more than paper should weigh.
He presses it into Yaz's hand. His fingers are warm. Brief.
"Don't read it here. Don't show it to anyone. And don't..." He pauses. Swallows. "Don't hate me too much. When this is over."
He walks away. His footsteps fade down the hallway. Yaz is left alone with the paper, with the night pressing against the window, with the sound of his own breathing.
He waits until he is in the Practice Room. Until the door is closed. Until the red light is blinking in the corner, recording whatever it records.
He unfolds the paper.
The handwriting is Dayo's. Messy. Quick. The letters pressed hard into the surface.
I see what's happening. I'm sorry.
Seven words. No signature. No explanation. Just an admission and an apology, folded into a piece of paper that Yaz will hide behind the smooth stone, beside Suki's note, in the locker that holds the only things that are truly his.
The first crack in the scheme. The first sign that someone else is watching too.
He rereads Suki's note that night.
It has been months since he looked at it. The paper is softer now, worn from being folded and unfolded and folded again. The handwriting is still careful, still round, still the letters of a girl who wanted to be remembered.
Keep counting. Keep making. I'll listen.
He has not been counting. He has not been making. He has been empty, going through motions, disappearing into routine.
But he is starting to see again. And seeing, maybe, is the first step toward counting. Toward making. Toward becoming something other than the nothing he almost became.
He folds the note back up. Places it beside Dayo's note, beside the smooth stone, in the locker that holds his past and his future and the small pieces of himself that no one else knows about.
She's still listening, the Maestro says. Closer now. Almost warm. Somewhere out there, she's still listening. Don't let her hear silence.
Isabelle's final lesson comes at the end of March.
She plays "Danse sacrée" one last time. The delicate arpeggios fill the Practice Room, shimmering, dissolving, painting portraits of things Yaz cannot name but can feel. When she finishes, she does not speak immediately. She sits with her hands on the strings, her faded blue eyes distant, looking at something that is not in the room.
"I have taught you what I can," she says finally. "You see now. You observe. You paint portraits with sound." She pauses. Her voice drops. "But I have also failed you."
"Failed me how?"
"I know what Elias is doing. I have known from the beginning." Her hands tremble slightly. The strings vibrate in sympathy. "I knew, and I came anyway. I took the money. I taught you. And I said nothing."
Yaz does not respond. He does not know what to say.
"I am too old to be brave." Isabelle's voice cracks. "Too tired. Too afraid of what it would cost. And so I watched, and I taught, and I stayed silent." She looks at him. Her faded eyes are wet. "Forgive me, child. I am too old to be brave."
She stands. Gathers her things. Moves toward the door.
"Everyone knows," Yaz says. The words come out without planning. "Don't they? Everyone who comes here. They all know."
Isabelle stops. Her back is to him. Her shoulders are curved, weighted down by something heavier than age.
"Yes," she whispers. "Everyone knows. And no one acts."
She leaves. The door closes. The Practice Room is quiet.
And Yaz sits with the harp, with the strings that paint portraits, with the knowledge that he is surrounded by people who see what is wrong and choose not to stop it.
That night, he begins recording.
Not for Thorne. Not for the demos, the showcases, the investor presentations. For himself. For something else. For a purpose that is only beginning to take shape.
The recording equipment is always on. The red light always blinks. But Yaz has been watching, and watching has taught him things. He knows which recordings go to Thorne. He knows which files are labeled and stored. He knows the gaps, the spaces, the moments when no one is paying attention.
He records a portrait of Mrs. Okonkwo. The slow, heavy melody. The thread of flickering hope.
He records a portrait of the fence. The longing he used to feel. The watching he feels now.
He records a portrait of worn faces. The businessman on his phone. The mother with the stroller. The old woman feeding pigeons. All of them going through motions. All of them performing. All of them part of the mad world that spins and spins without anyone asking why.
The recordings layer in his mind. Pieces of a puzzle he does not yet understand. But the pieces are gathering. The picture is forming. And somewhere beneath the numbness, beneath the routine, beneath the nothing that almost swallowed him, something is starting to wake up.
The harp strings hum under his fingers. Each note a face. Each chord a truth.
He sees them all now. The worn faces. The going through motions. The mad world spinning around him.
And for the first time in months, he feels something other than nothing.
He feels clear.