Seconds earlier, my name had been called. Someone had held the side door to let me pass. Then the audience had caught sight of a girl and burst out in applause—for a hundredth time that night, welcoming one more teen prodigy to the legendary stage. Now from that same stage, as I played, a different legend was already taking shape. The soft maple floor had blistered up into a cobbled town square. Red roofs were popping all around. Houses stacked their pale façades on top of one another. Balconies exploded with geraniums. Neighbors peeked out, behind white-laced curtains. It was noon. A chandeliered sun had perched itself in the middle of the sky. And under it, baked in the summer heat, rows of seats had coiled around café tables. People chatted. Glasses clinked. The air buzzed with the anticipation of a spectacle. A death? Affair? Quarrel? Any pinch of gossip before the day’s siesta. Finally, a girl begins to cross the square. All in black, sweeping the ground with the ruffles of her dress.
