Siheyuan: tomb robbing? I am serious about hunting.

Chapter 982

Lin Yanqiu didn't look back, but just pressed the first note. The arpeggio in B flat major flowed over the bluestone like spring water, spreading in the cramped piano room. Her canvas shoes were stained with mud brought from her hometown, and her trouser legs were still rolled up - they were wet by the dew when she caught the early bus this morning, and they haven't dried yet. The audition was to choose one person to participate in the Chopin International Piano Competition, and Zhang Manqi was a popular candidate. Her father was a famous piano educator and had performed in the Golden Hall since she was a child. There was a photo of her and Lang Lang in the piano room. Lin Yanqiu's piano was a second-hand one discarded by the county cultural center. Three of the keys collapsed, and she played it for six years with cardboard pads. She practiced until late at night, and the light in the piano room began to flicker. Lin Yanqiu rubbed her sore wrists. The fingertips had been worn out with thin calluses, and the muscles at the base of the thumb were aching. She took out an enamel pot from her canvas bag and brewed the cheapest jasmine tea. The tea stems floated in the water, like her heart hanging in the air. "You haven't left yet?" The door was gently pushed open, and the dean stood at the door holding a music folder. He saw the "Bell" music score spread out on the piano keys, which was densely filled with annotations, and some places were marked with fingerings in red pen - she copied it frame by frame from the video of the master's performance. "The technique of this song is too complicated," the dean tapped the cadenza on the score, "Your hands are too small, and the span is not enough." Lin Yanqiu compared her fingertips on the piano keys. Indeed, her little finger was half an inch shorter than that of ordinary people. When she played the highest note, her knuckles would bend into an unnatural arc. But she couldn't give up, this was her only chance to get out of the small county town. Before her mother died, she pawned the silver bracelet she brought as a dowry to raise enough tuition for her. Before she left, she said: "Go see the bigger world, just like you always play on the piano keys." The dean sighed and took out a piece of music from the music folder: "Try this." It was an unknown etude, and the author column said "Anonymous", but the melody was like the tide under the moonlight, with tenacity hidden in the gentleness. "This was written by my teacher when he was young. Maybe it's more suitable for you." On the day of the selection, Lin Yanqiu was the last to go on stage. Zhang Manqi had just finished playing "Liszt's Transcendental Etude" and the applause was thunderous. When she bowed, she deliberately glanced at Lin Yanqiu who was waiting in the backstage. The pride in her eyes was like a needle tempered with sugar. When the spotlight hit Lin Yanqiu, she suddenly thought of the starry sky in her hometown. Lying in the threshing ground on a summer night, her mother pointed to the Milky Way and said that it was the piano keys scattered by God, and each star corresponded to a note. She took a deep breath and pressed the first chord. It was not the showy "The Bell", but the anonymous etude. The piano sound seemed to float from far away, carrying the fragrance of wheat straw and the warmth of the threshing ground. It suddenly rose during the cadenza, like a meteor that suddenly flew across the night sky, but gently fell back at the most exciting point, turning into the residual warmth of the fingertips. The old professor on the jury suddenly sat up straight. He pushed his glasses and looked at the girl in the washed-white shirt - her wrists trembled slightly when she played the fast scale, but she accurately caught the breath of each note, as if she was caressing the fragile starlight. When the results were announced, Zhang Manqi's nails almost dug into her palms. Lin Yanqiu qualified with a one-vote advantage. The director patted her on the shoulder and said, "What you play is not notes, but stories." In the first three months of going to Poland, Lin Yanqiu locked herself in the piano room. She practiced piano for fourteen hours a day, had bread and tea for lunch, and her wrists were covered with pain-relieving plasters. Once she practiced until the early morning, her fingertips suddenly lost strength, and she couldn't even play the simplest scales coherently. She lay on the piano keys, her tears fell on the score of "Nocturne", and the word "mother" was blurred - she had secretly written it at the footer. "If you keep practicing like this, your hands will become useless." The school doctor looked at her X-ray and frowned. "The tendonitis is already very serious. If you practice more intensively, you may never be able to play the piano again." Lin Yanqiu walked out of the infirmary with her medical record book in hand and saw Zhang Manqi standing at the end of the corridor with a newspaper in her hand. On it was an article written by her father with a glaring title: "Skills and Talent: On Class Differences in Piano Education". "Some people are not born to do this." Zhang Manqi crumpled the newspaper into a ball and threw it into the trash can. "Your hands can't even reach the octave." That night, Lin Yanqiu didn't go to the piano room for the first time. She sat on the stands in the playground, watching the moonlight stretch the shadow of the teaching building very long. She received a text message from a neighbor in her hometown on her mobile phone: "I'm keeping the old piano left by your mother for you. It won't get damp on rainy days." She suddenly remembered that when she was a child, her mother always sewed the soles of her shoes while she practiced the piano. The sound of sewing and the sound of the keys mixed together, like a special duet. Once she complained that her hands were too small to play a major chord, so her mother stuffed cotton between her fingers and said, "Take your time. Your fingers will get longer and stronger." When she returned to the piano room, Lin Yanqiu found an envelope on the door handle. It was left by the old professor. It contained a yellowed photo - the young director sat in front of the old piano with bandages on his fingers, and next to it was written: "In 1987, I withdrew from the competition due to tendonitis." There was a line of words on the attached page: "Piano is not about who can play faster, but who can make the notes come alive." Lin Yanqiu adjusted her practice plan. She no longer worked hard on her skills, but went to the library to read Chopin's biography and find the mood of the melody in the yellowed letters; she went to the park to listen to the old man playing the erhu and blended the charm of the glissando into the piano; she even followed the canteen chef to learn how to knead dough and feel how the weight of the fingertips affects the toughness of the dough - which is similar to the strength of touching the keys. The night before leaving for Warsaw, the director sent a wooden box. Opening it, it turned out to be a pair of silver finger gloves with tiny patterns engraved on the inside. "This is my teacher's relic, it can help you gain leverage." He looked into her eyes, "Remember, don't think about winning when you go on stage, think about why you started playing the piano." The Chopin Competition was held at the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall. Lin Yanqiu stood backstage and heard the contestant in front of her playing the "Revolutionary Etude" smoothly, and the applause made her eardrums hurt. She touched the silver finger gloves in her pocket and suddenly remembered her mother's silver bracelet. The cold metal seemed to contain the warmth that traveled thousands of miles. When the announcement sounded, she took a deep breath and walked onto the stage. The black Steinway piano glowed under the spotlight, much brighter than the one in the old piano room, but it reminded her of the throbbing when she first touched the keys. She chose the "Piano Concerto No. in F Minor". When the strings of the first movement sounded, Lin Yanqiu suddenly felt that her wrist was no longer painful. Her fingertips fell on the keys, like stroking the wheat grains in the threshing ground in her hometown, and each note carried the weight of the sun. In the fast scale of the cadenza, she did not pursue extreme speed, but let the notes flow naturally like a stream, turning gently when encountering reefs, but always heading towards the sea. The old Polish professor on the jury closed his eyes. He seemed to see Chopin playing in the direction of his hometown in the salon in Paris, with the keys covered with the snow of Warsaw. When the movement ended, the audience was silent for three seconds. Then there was thunderous applause, and someone whistled, as if to welcome a triumphant hero. Lin Yanqiu stood up and bowed,