"Vocalise," Op. 34 No. 14 Rachmaninoff
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The voice is the instrument you are born with.
Rafael Santos tells him this on the first day of April, when the spring light is finally breaking through the gray and the Practice Room windows are letting in something warmer than memory. He is sitting across from Yaz, no instrument between them, nothing but air and the space where sound will be.
"The guitar you learn," Rafael says. "The piano you study. The violin you struggle with for years before it speaks to you." His voice is warm. Rich. The voice of someone who has spent a lifetime learning what sound can do. "But the voice. The voice is yours from the first breath. It knows you. It remembers everything you have ever felt."
Rafael is not like the other teachers.
He is older, in his fifties, with silver threading through dark hair that curls past his ears. His skin is the color of coffee with milk, warm brown that catches the light differently than Yaz's olive tones. His eyes are dark and soft, the eyes of someone who has seen suffering and chosen kindness anyway. When he speaks, there is music in the speaking itself, the lilt of Portuguese underneath the English, the rhythm of a language that sings even when it is not trying to.
"You have learned nine instruments in two years," Rafael continues. "Guitar, piano, violin, drums, cello, trumpet, flute, harp, and all the others I cannot name because there is not time. But Yassine." He leans forward. His voice drops. "Your voice was always the first. It knew music before you knew words. It knows what all those instruments were trying to teach you."
"What were they trying to teach me?"
Rafael smiles. The smile is sad and warm at the same time, the smile of someone who understands questions that do not have easy answers.
"How to feel. And then how to let the feeling out."
The piece is called "Vocalise."
Rafael sings it first. No words. That is what vocalise means, he explains. A song without language. A melody carried only by the voice, sustained by breath, shaped by nothing except the emotion it wants to convey.
The sound that comes from Rafael is unlike anything Yaz has heard.
It is not technique. The other teachers taught technique. Breath control, finger placement, bow pressure, embouchure. The mechanics of making sound, the engineering of music. But this is something else. This is a human being opening his chest and letting something escape that has been held there for years, for decades, for a lifetime.
The melody rises and falls. It aches. There is no other word for it. The sound aches the way a wound aches, the way an empty bed aches, the way the fence aches when you press your fingers against it and realize you cannot pass through.
When Rafael finishes, the silence in the Practice Room is thick. Heavy. The silence of something that has been named and cannot be unnamed.
"Rachmaninoff wrote this when he was grieving," Rafael says quietly. "He lost something. Someone. The history does not say what. But you can hear it. The loss. The way he was trying to hold onto something that was already gone."
Yaz thinks about Suki. About her note, still hidden behind the smooth stone. About her bed, now occupied by a child whose name he has never learned. About the way she said I'll listen and then left, and the listening became something he had to imagine instead of something he could trust.
"Can you teach me?"
"I cannot teach you this," Rafael says. "I can only help you find it. The vocalise is already inside you. It has been there since your first song. Since 'Seven Years.' Since the day you opened your mouth and fifty million people heard what you were feeling."
He stands. Walks to the window. The spring light falls across his face, illuminating the lines there, the evidence of years lived and songs sung and grief expressed and survived.
"The voice remembers everything the other instruments learned. The hope of the piano. The loneliness of the cello. The anger of the trumpet. The numbness of the flute." He turns back to Yaz. "When you sing, you are not choosing one feeling. You are choosing all of them. You are letting them speak through you, together, at once."
"How do I do that?"
Rafael smiles again. The sad, warm smile.
"You open your mouth. And you stop being afraid."
The fear is real.
Yaz does not realize how real until he tries to sing.
He has spoken. He has hummed. He has made sounds with his voice in the privacy of his own head, in the darkness of his own bed, in the spaces where no one could hear. But singing. Singing in front of someone. Letting the sound come out and fill the room and be witnessed by another person.
It is terrifying.
"Try," Rafael says gently. He is sitting across from Yaz, hands folded in his lap, nothing threatening about his posture or his presence. "Just one note. The simplest thing. An 'ah' sound, held for as long as your breath allows."
Yaz opens his mouth.
Nothing comes out.
His throat closes. His chest tightens. Something in him, something that has been building walls for two years, refuses to let the sound escape.
"Again," Rafael says. No frustration in his voice. No disappointment. Just patience. Just the understanding of someone who has faced this fear in others and knows it cannot be forced.
Yaz opens his mouth again.
A small sound emerges. Thin. Weak. The sound of someone trying to speak through a door that is almost closed.
"Good. That is the beginning." Rafael nods. "The voice has been quiet for a long time. It needs to remember how to be loud."
They spend the first lesson on breathing. On opening the throat. On letting the diaphragm do the work instead of the chest, on finding the resonance in the sinuses and the skull, on all the technical foundations that will support what comes later.
But underneath the technique, something else is happening.
Yaz is feeling.
Not clearly. Not completely. But the numbness that has coated everything for months, the gray film that made the world distant and unreal, is starting to crack. Small fissures are appearing. Light is getting through.
You're coming back, the Maestro says.
The voice is clearer than it has been in a long time. Not fully present, but close. Returning.
I didn't know I had left.
You didn't leave. You hid. Sometimes hiding is necessary. But the hiding is over now. It's time to be heard again.
The vocalise takes shape over weeks.
Rafael comes every day. That is different from the other teachers, who came twice or three times a week, who had schedules and other students and lives outside this basement room. Rafael comes every day, as if this is the only work that matters, as if Yaz is the only student who exists.
"Thorne is paying for intensive training," Rafael explains when Yaz asks. There is something in his voice when he says Thorne's name. A flatness. A distance. "He wants results. A showcase. Something that will impress his investors."
"Is that what this is? A showcase?"
"That is what he thinks it is." Rafael's dark eyes meet Yaz's. "But that is not what we are building. We are building something else. Something he does not understand."
The vocalise grows. First one phrase, repeated until Yaz can sing it without thinking. Then another phrase, connected to the first. Then a third, and a fourth, until the melody begins to take shape, until the aching that Rachmaninoff put into the music starts to find an echo in Yaz's throat.
The first time he sings it all the way through, he cries.
He does not expect it. He does not plan it. He opens his mouth to sing the opening phrase, the one he has practiced a hundred times, and something happens. The sound comes out, and it brings something with it. Something wet. Something that has been held for months, for years, for as long as he can remember.
The tears run down his face. His voice wavers but does not stop. He keeps singing, keeps letting the sound out, keeps feeling the feeling instead of pushing it away.
When the vocalise ends, he is shaking.
Rafael does not speak. He does not congratulate or critique or analyze. He simply sits there, present, witnessing, allowing Yaz to have this moment without commentary.
Finally, Rafael says: "That was real. That was you."
"It hurt."
"Yes. Real things often do." Rafael's voice is gentle. "But the hurt is better than the nothing, yes? The hurt means you are still alive."
Yaz wipes his face. His eyes are burning. His throat is raw.
"I didn't know I still could," he says. "Feel things. I thought I had stopped."
"You cannot stop feeling. You can only push it down. And the pushing takes everything you have." Rafael reaches out, touches Yaz's shoulder briefly. "You have been pushing for a long time. The vocalise is letting you stop."
Thorne arrives on a Thursday in mid-April.
He comes without warning, the way he sometimes does now, appearing in the doorway with his silver hair and his gold watch and his expectant eyes. He looks at Rafael first, then at Yaz, then at the empty space between them where no instrument sits.
"Progress report," he says. It is not a question.
"The voice training is proceeding well," Rafael answers. His tone is careful. Neutral. The tone of someone giving information without giving anything else. "Yassine is discovering his range. His emotional capacity."
"Emotional capacity." Thorne walks into the room. Sits in the chair by the wall. Crosses his legs. "That's encouraging. What about commercial viability?"
The words land in the room like stones dropped into water.
"Commercial viability," Rafael repeats.
"The investors want to hear something. A demo. A sample of what we've been building." Thorne's voice is smooth, reasonable, the voice of someone explaining business to people who do not understand business. "Something that will showcase his development. Something with... appeal."
"He is nine years old."
"He was seven when he wrote a song that made fifty million people cry. Age is not the issue." Thorne's eyes move to Yaz. The warmth is there, on the surface. But underneath, something else. Something that calculates. Something that measures. "Yassine, I want you to understand something. Everything we've built, everything we've invested in your training, it's all leading somewhere. A reveal. A moment when the world finally sees what we've created."
What we've created. Not what you've created. Not what you are. What we've created. As if Yaz is a product. As if the two years of lessons and practice and hiding were a manufacturing process, and Thorne is waiting for the assembly line to finish.
"He's not ready to be manufactured," Rafael says quietly.
Thorne's gaze shifts. The warmth drains out of it.
"Manufactured?"
"That's what you're describing. A product for investors. A demo to showcase development." Rafael's voice is steady, but there is something underneath it. Something that pushes back. "Yassine is not a product. He is a child with a gift. And the gift needs time to mature, not deadlines to meet."
The silence stretches. Yaz watches Thorne's face. The calculation there. The assessment. The deciding.
"I appreciate your perspective, Rafael." Thorne's voice is still smooth, but colder now. "But I trust you'll remember who is funding this training. And what the expectations are."
He stands. Adjusts his jacket. Checks his watch.
"A demo by the end of the month. Something we can play for the investors. Make it happen."
He leaves. The door closes. The room feels smaller without him, but also freer.
"He doesn't want music," Yaz says quietly. "Does he? He wants... something else."
Rafael is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is careful.
"He wants a product. Something to sell. Something to build a brand around." He looks at Yaz. "But that is not what you are. And that is not what we are making."
"What are we making?"
Rafael smiles. The sad, warm smile.
"We are making something true. And true things, Yassine, cannot be manufactured. They can only be discovered."
The synthesis happens without planning.
Yaz is in the Practice Room late one night, after Rafael has gone, after the orphanage has settled into sleep, after the only sounds are the building's quiet breathing and the hum of equipment no one has turned off.
He has the recorder. Not the one that belongs to Thorne, the one that sends everything to servers and databases and investors' reports. His own recorder, a small device he took from a shelf when no one was watching, a tool of surveillance that he has turned into something else.
He plays a recording of himself on the piano. The Nocturne. The variation he created two years ago, the first piece that was truly his. The sound fills the Practice Room, and he listens, and he remembers.
He plays a recording of the cello. The Bach Prelude. The night Suki left, when he sat in this room and played until his fingers ached, when Elena watched from the doorway with tears on her face.
He plays the flute. The hollow emptiness of Syrinx. The months when he felt nothing, when the routine swallowed him, when he almost disappeared completely.
And as he listens, something starts to form.
The pieces are not separate. They are connected. The hope of the piano leads to the questions of the violin. The questions lead to the restlessness of the drums. The restlessness leads to the loneliness of the cello, which leads to the anger of the trumpet, which leads to the numbness of the flute, which leads to the watching of the harp.
It is a story. His story. Two years compressed into sound.
All instruments are voices, Rafael had said. Your voice is the one that speaks for all of them.
Yaz opens his mouth.
He does not sing the vocalise. He does not sing anything he has been taught. He sings something else. Something wordless. Something that holds all the pieces together, that weaves through the piano and the cello and the flute, that gives shape to what the instruments alone cannot express.
The sound fills the Practice Room. No words. Just feeling. Just everything he has been holding for two years, finally given permission to exist.
He does not know how long he sings. Time stops mattering. There is only the sound and the feeling and the connection between them, the thread that runs through everything he has learned and everything he has survived.
When he stops, the silence is different.
It is not empty. It is full. Full of what he has just created. Full of what he has just discovered.
Welcome back, the Maestro says.
The voice is clear now. Warm. Present. Fully returned.
I didn't know I was gone.
You weren't gone. You were learning. Learning to see. Learning to feel. Learning to wait until the time was right. A pause. Something like pride in the voice that is not a voice. You've learned to see the mad world. You feel it. Now you can name it.
Name it?
Make it into something they can hear. Make it into a song.
Yaz looks around the Practice Room. At the instruments lined against the wall. At the recording equipment. At the red light blinking in the corner.
For two years, this room has been a cage. A gilded cage, beautiful and terrible, filled with everything he could want except freedom.
But cages can become studios. Prisons can become workshops. The very thing that trapped him has also given him everything he needs to tell the truth.
He has nine instruments. He has his voice. He has the recorder that was meant to spy on him and has become his tool instead.
And he has a story. A story that has been forming without his knowing. A story of hope becoming a cage. Of questions silenced. Of friends lost. Of anger contained. Of numbness survived. Of worn faces everywhere, going through motions, performing their roles in a mad world that never stops spinning.
Yes, the Maestro says. Now you understand.
His voice fills the Practice Room.
No words. Just sound. Just feeling. Just everything he has been holding for two years, finally given permission to exist.
The Maestro speaks clearly now, warm and present: You see the mad world. You feel it. Now make it into something they can hear.
He is ready.