By Lucy Zhang
After we fed Will’s hands to the piano, it started sounding more musical. Whatever that meant. It seemed to correlate with how much your body and head swayed while hitting the keys, how much dancing you could do while seated. Several weeks ago, the piano had stopped creating pleasant music, and eventually, we chose Will’s hands as the first sacrifice since Will played piano the worst of us and since no one really liked him although they wouldn’t admit it. You sound like an asshole if you dislike someone because they laugh too hard at jokes that aren’t funny, or if they constantly put themselves down in search of compliments from others, or if they chew with their mouth open even when the food is the consistency of mush. We made the decision seem fair because we put it to a vote, and Will seemed happy enough to respect the majority consensus.
Without his hands, Will sat on the bench instead of joining us in our practice sessions. He could still tap his feet and sing so we believed he’d be fine. The piano sounded lovely, more musical than ever. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference, but the others claimed it sounded even better than when we first upgraded to this Concert Grand piano, the at-the-time brand new instrument that ate up the entire shared living room, its body standing like a mountain from which its wood descended—the Swiss and French alps scouted for the most consistent rings. We figured this was the price for killing trees for a piano: a hand or two every few years to keep the wood happy.
I took care of Will after the piano ate his hands: changing the bandages on the stumps rounding his wrists and spoon-feeding him whenever our meals couldn’t be slurped. I supposed I felt a kinship since both of our fathers liked to call us “stupid” in public, and even though my father didn’t send me to bed without dinner if I failed to meet his “standard of excellence”—whether that meant ranking first in piano competitions or looking uglier than normal (as though I had control over the water retention from too much sodium or my monthlies)—he would partition the table and tell me I could only touch the dishes to the left of this imaginary line: water, rice, and some many-years-pickled radish. Sometimes Will would arrive with red imprints on the backs of his hands, wide enough that the surface area could pass off as an after-effect of washing your hands too long under hot water. At least my father avoided damaging my hands since he still dreamed I’d ascend to pianist mastery. I doubted it. I would probably be next after Will to feed my hands to the piano.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Will told me when I stated I was next. “It’s actually pretty great. I don’t need to practice anymore. I’ll probably leave the school soon since I can’t do much with any instrument now.”
“And do what?” I asked.
“Help people with insomnia, maybe? People say my voice helps them fall asleep.”
“Medicine can do that too.”
“And death is essentially eternal sleep, but you don’t see people killing themselves to get some shut-eye.”
“Your dad is ok with this?”
“Oh, he doesn’t know I’ve lost my hands yet. I’ll just tell him I’m leaving for a very long music residency in Europe. He doesn’t remember things well these days, so if I wait it out, he’ll probably forget I exist.”
“Lucky,” I said. My father still remembered that I spilled a bottle of Yakult on his camera and to this day, won’t let me drink from a prepackaged bottle anywhere but over the kitchen sink.
“He’s probably going to die soon, honestly. It doesn’t take long for your neural pathways to degrade once the process starts.”
I handed Will a straw so he could sip from his cup of soy milk, the liquid level too low for him to reach with just his mouth. We fell into a silence, both seated at one of the picnic tables outdoors, me looking over one of my compositions and Will staring forward at a turkey antagonizing a group of geese trying to encroach on its territory where someone had left a box of stale egg custards on the grass.
I tried to avoid using the piano when I composed, claiming it was because I could hear my chords in my head and had no use for the physical instrument. But really, I disliked wearing down the piano knowing Will had to sacrifice his hands. I supposed I also wanted to avoid hastening the moment when I would lose my hands. My father thought it was too early for me to develop melodies. He called my songs trash after asking me to play one for him, so I told him I’d stop writing them. I continued to write them. I figured after I fed my hands to the piano, I’d still be able to compose music through dictation as long as my brain retained its capability to masquerade as a piano translator.
My father knew that the piano ate hands and didn’t seem surprised after I told him Will’s hands went first.
“Good thing you’re not the worst of the worst,” he’d said. He thought I ranked close to first just because I sent him a ranking five years ago when I performed best out of a random selection of kids. At the time, all the skilled students had left town for an international tour. I never sent him another rank chart again and replied to his inquisitions about my standing with, “Same ranking as before.”
“I might still lose my hands eventually, you never know,” I told my father, trying to mentally prepare him.
“That would never happen!” He insisted. For several months before Will lost his hands, I basked in the rare faith he expressed in me. My father praised my performances, vowing that I would sound magnificent on the Concert Grand piano the school had recently acquired. I suspected this was due to his worsening Alzheimer’s.
* * *
I stayed away from the piano and spent most of my time with Will.
“Sometimes you just need a break, too much practice erodes your musicality,” I told the others when they asked about my lack of appearances. They were polite enough not to laugh. We all knew we were nothing without practice, and we also knew I was next in line to lose my hands. Will never brought it up unless I raised the topic. Instead, he’d tell me about his carefully plotted future where he’d serenade insomniacs to sleep and travel the world with his inheritance.
“How are you so sure your dad will leave you with that much money?” I asked.
“Oh, he won’t. He hardly has any money to begin with, and it’s all getting sucked away by his medical care costs.”
I wasn’t sure where this mythical inheritance was coming from, or how he’d manage to travel alone without fingers. “I guess it’s not too expensive,” I shrugged. “Is there anything you’ll miss?”
“Absolutely nothing.” Will always replied with this answer. I couldn’t tell if he was lying. I would miss the sound of the piano—not the current grand piano, but the old one: a small digital thing that never needed tuning and sounded “insipid” to the others, but to me, I liked the sharp overtones, the diluted bass tone, the unweighted keys that felt like my hands floated.
“You just like fake things,” Will told me whenever I defended our digital piano.
“I like things that don’t cost hands,” I lied. The new piano’s keys felt increasingly heavy, their pivot point positioned so far back that I’d sway my entire body weight playing between the black keys, dancing to my music. I wasn’t at the skill level to dance to my music without looking silly though. I looked less stupid on the digital instrument.
“I might even learn to sing,” Will mused. “But not any time soon. I don’t want to look at another note for at least a decade.”
“When are you leaving?” I asked.
“Soon, things are almost ready,” he mumbled. I doubted he was ready. The most Will ever planned was for when lunch was Mongolian beef and he wanted to beat the line. “I’m not like those other try-hards,” he’d tell me even though I thought being a try-hard was better than waiting for your father’s knuckles to come rocketing down on your face.
* * *
I adjusted my schedule to practice once a week on the grand piano and spent the rest of my time with the keyboard in my room. The keyboard that never got out of tune and whose sound stayed confined to my ears, head, and headphones. I practiced on the concert piano on Monday mornings when no one was around, and the sound would reverb around the room, the tall ceilings, the empty halls of our common area. It sounded more like someone’s moans echoing off each string and soundboard. I often stopped before my allotted two hours elapsed, preferring to sit on the bench and stare out the side window that led to the open streets and several trees planted every couple blocks as a small semblance of nature. Will continued to sit through sporadic practices and I joined him for meals, although I wasn’t sure what he did with the rest of his time.
One month later, during lunch which was slippery vermicelli noodles in duck blood soup—something you couldn’t grip with chopsticks but also couldn’t slurp with just your head and teeth, I attempted to feed Will with a spoon. The noodles slipped off like eels wriggling.
He shook his head. “Stop, why do you keep doing this? I don’t even like spicy food.”
“How else will you eat?” I ask.
“That’s not your problem. I’m leaving tomorrow, anyway, so even though you’re making it your problem, it soon won’t be.”
“Hold on, do you even have enough money? Does your dad know? He’s ok with you traveling in this state?” I gestured to his stumps for hands.
“Does it matter? It’s better than staying here and waiting for the piano to eat my arms.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” I argued. The trees from which the piano was built shouldn’t demand entire bodies. The piano only consumed what you had most to offer, which naturally was our hands. Even when we tripped and fell (and we often did when climbing the stairs to our rooms while memorizing sheet music), we’d cradle our hands with our bodies and let our backs and skulls knock against the step edges first. “The piano shouldn’t hunger for anything other than hands.”
“That’s what you think. But it’s the wood and the tree that was stripped that’s looking for life force, not the piano. And trees don’t discriminate between hands and other limbs.”
“Is it going to kill you?” I asked. We didn’t have much existing experience with high-end concert grand pianos, so we only knew it needed top-tier maintenance and nourishment.
“No, because I’m leaving this place. But you should watch out. You’re not exactly the best pianist.”
I hid my wince by looking away at the clock. Although it didn’t hurt as much as when my father lectured me, especially coming from a subpar musician himself, Will had never told me outright that he thought of me as a mediocre musician. He’d only say that we had better things to do than let our short lives fizzle out from daily practice.
“What if I leave too?” I hoped it didn’t sound like a plead.
“You can come if you want,” Will said. “I don’t know if you can tie up loose ends by tomorrow though.”
“I’ll text my father that I’m going abroad on a fellowship. He’ll be happy knowing he doesn’t need to pay my tuition for a few months.”
“Sure, whatever works.”
We agreed to meet the next morning at the concert hall. I started packing my bags and folding my compositions into small, thick squares and crammed them into any spare pocket sewn into my backpack. I dumped my album of sheet music at the bottom and filled the gaps with wadded socks and underwear and t-shirts. My father always said to bring extra socks because wet feet would lead to illness and death. I stole an unopened water bottle on the coffee table in our common area since even though I rarely got thirsty, I’d been taught that one day I’d die from over-concentrated internal toxins without water by my side.
I wrote three drafts of texts to my father. They all said the same thing in varying lengths and truths. I ended up sending: “I’ll be going on a music career exploration trip tomorrow. Don’t be worried if I forget to text.”
I woke up to his reply the next morning: “When will you be back? Where are you going? With whom? How are you getting there? Do you need money? Is everyone going or were you selected?”
“Be back in a few months,” I nearly typed. I deleted the half-composed message and sent: “tomorrow.”
I sat on my bed in my closet-sized room, watching the concert hall from the window. From here, the piano looked like a toy in a doll’s mansion. I began to unpack my underwear and sheet music, waiting for Will to show up and then turn back around.
End.
Lucy Zhang writes, codes, and watches anime. Her work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Wigleaf, Apex Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbooks HOLLOWED (Thirty West Publishing) and ABSORPTION (Harbor Review). Find her at https://lucyzhang.tech or on Twitter @ Dango_Ramen.
