The Little Red French Door by Simona

Author:Simona
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pipes & Clouds
Published: 2022-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

10

Lacroix’s apartment was only two stops away. I could have walked, but I’d have been a bit late to my appointment. The apartment was on a residential street, and the six-story building looked relatively modern, with a façade made of cream-colored stones and a steeply sloped, four-sided, ash-blue mansard roof angled at forty-five degrees. Lacroix lived on the second floor, which had a long running balcony and elegantly crafted window frames. I was glad for not having to climb six stories, as, of course, there was no elevator.

The entrance door was open, and a doorman in an elegant uniform said that Maestro Lacroix’s apartment was number five, on the right. He gestured up, and I started climbing the stairs. The tall windows, the wrought-iron stair railing, and the red carpet runner enhanced the light and solemnity of that place as well as my feelings of excitement, reverence, and humbleness for meeting someone who had been so close to my favorite composer ever, someone who had been a fine pianist, conductor, and composer himself, someone whose story must have been extraordinary. And of course, I was brimming with excitement when thinking that Maestro Lacroix might be getting me closer to the author of L’Océan, even if he’d just help me advance a little in my research.

When I was in front of the tall, light-brown wooden door, I looked for the doorbell and pushed it, and soon someone came to the door.

“Bonjour,” a man in his late fifties said. “You must be Clara.” He was just a little taller than me, with graying, curly hair, rounded glasses, and the elegant French attitude of an intellectual, but a sweet, approachable one. He was wearing an olive-green tweed jacket and pants of matching color and fabric, a blue sweater and, underneath, a white collared shirt almost completely covered by a gray scarf. He spoke softly, as if he didn’t want to disturb the music around him, the music Maestro Lacroix and his student were making in another room, or some other, less evident one.

I nodded. “And you must be Alain.”

“Oui, ce moi,” he said, smiling. “Enchanté.”

“Pleased to meet you too,” I said and followed him inside the place.

“François is almost done. It’d be a matter of minutes. Could I offer you some tea and cookies as we wait?”

“That would be lovely,” I said, and we walked to a room that was adjacent to the room where Lacroix and his student were working. I could hear the piano clearly and Lacroix’s whispering to the student when the student stopped playing or softened the sound. It was hard to understand what the two were saying, but the music seemed to be responding to that exchange, as it improved more and more. They were working on a passage in the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto number 2. It moved me so deeply to hear the two singing the orchestral opening in pianissimo, preparing for the entrance of the piano and working on that magical entrance, when the G on the piano meets the G of the clarinet, the horns, the violins, and the violas.

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