I have always been fascinated with my piano teachers house.
Since I was a little girl of eight, I have come nearly every week in the fall, winter, and spring, sat on her oversized, abstract couches and stared at her shelves, longing to touch and handle everything. She and her husband travel often to Europe, and have a whole collection of various figurines, dishes, and art.
Next to the window stands a proud little row of blue and white pitchers, some filled with dried bunches of flowers, others waiting expectantly with their matching sets of cups, as if wanting to be filled with black tea or fresh milk. On the shelf below, are exotically painted pipes and wooden eggs; a little wooden man standing in a chair, his coat and bowler hat painted olive green, a little black gun poking over his shoulder; a porcelin peacock and two matching French women, their hands hidden in red muffs, their curls tucked up under flimsy little bonnets. Wooden cows, engravings of the saints, and a statue of the Virgin Mother. The wall beside is covered in paintings of European cities, street corners, and countryside, looking so magical and pure.
And the clocks! They are never on time, but are each of them so intricate and beautiful. The two cuckoo clocks with tiny little doors, and hanging pine cones seem to have come straight out of a black and white movie. One clock looks like a castle, with glass windows, and a brass wall around the top.
On another window sill sits an array of severe porcelin busts of the composers, frowning down at us little students who so cruelly botch up their brilliant music. Beethoven, Chopin, Handel, Debussy. Bach wears a ridiculous headband with foam music notes shooting up like antennas, making him scowl all the more fiercely at the mockery of it.
Now around the room, across from the red brick fireplace, and next to the white closet door are two rows of little blue plates, perhaps three or four inches in diameter, all depicting lovely scenes of great and important buildings in France, Italy, Spain, and England. Above the piano hands a gigantic framed sheet of old music in a foreign language. You always wonder what it says.
Despite all of these weird and wonderful things, the room is a cold and barren place. The walls are sterile white. The bookshelves are filled with tedious titles on subjects in which you have no interest. Bach glares down at you, chiding you if you're not sitting on the piano bench, reminding you of every mistake if you are. But you learn to pay him no mind after a time. You turn your attention to study other things - the oriental rug beside the baby grand; the perpetually broken coat rack; the side table with dusty red antique music books whose titles you never remember to read, or never get the courage to make the treck out of your chair and across the white shag rug, under the watchful eyes of the saints and composers.
I have always been fascinated with my piano teachers house.