Cambridge by Susanna Kaysen

where you start it. I want you to understand the pattern of the melody.”
    “You mean three notes up and three notes down?”
    “Exactly.” He nodded. “And you can start those three notes anywhere you want. It’s the relationship that’s important.”
    I tried again. This time it worked better, at least for the first few phrases.
    “It’s like a translation,” I said. “It’s saying the same thing with different tones.”
    Vishwa smiled. “It’s called transposition, and you’re right. Translation and transposition are the same sort of thing.”
    Vishwa had said, “You’re right,” or, “That’s good,” at least three times since we’d sat down at the piano. He made me feel safe. I leaned against him, pushing my shoulder into his arm. He made an answering lean, so our bodies were propped together, like two playing cards starting to make a house.
    “Better?” he asked. “Not so scary?”
    “Yes,” I said. I started to relax, but relaxing let me feel how scared I was. Listening to music was wonderful; trying to play it—being forced to play it—made me nervous. It felt like a test, one I always failed.
    “I’m going to bring a violin to the lesson sometime,” he said. “A piano is too big. It’s at least ten times bigger than you are. I think that’s scary. A violin is nice. It’s light. It smells good. You’ll like it.”
    “But I can’t learn to play the piano on a violin,” I said.
    “It’s all the same.” Vishwa stretched out his arms to encompass every instrument in the world. “All one big thing.”
    I heard my mother walking around upstairs. She would not agree that it was all one big thing. There was the creak of her closet door opening and the rustle of her dresses. There was the thunk her bureau made because the drawer was swollen on one side. Some bracelets jingled. It was piano, piano, piano from her point of view. Once I’d heard her express some admiration for the cello, but fundamentally, the piano was music.
    “My mother says the piano contains the whole orchestra,” I told Vishwa.
    “That’s pretty much true,” he said.
    “So why isn’t she a conductor?”
    “Because she is such a very good pianist. If I could play the piano, or the oboe or the violin, like that …” He trailed off.
    “You said you sing through the orchestra.”
    “Yes, I do,” said Vishwa. “I feel it isn’t quite as direct. Not quite the same as having your hands on an instrument.”
    “Don’t underrate yourself,” my mother said from the doorway. “An orchestra without a conductor is dead. It isn’t anything. The conductor makes it alive.”
    “A symbiotic relationship, perhaps,” Vishwa said. He rose from the piano and made the little bow he always gave mymother. “After all, I need the orchestra as much as they need me.”
    “We sound like we’re in a French movie,” my mother said. “A bad one. Would you like a drink? Do you drink?”
    “And smoke too,” said Vishwa.
    “What a relief!” My mother pulled her Camels out of the pocket of her dress and offered him the pack. “I was worried that you would disapprove of these Western habits.”
    “Everyone in India smokes,” said Vishwa.
    But he had a funny way of smoking. He held the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, as if it were a pencil, and took rapid little puffs. He looked so awkward that I thought he might be smoking just to be polite. He had none of my mother’s debonair smoking tricks: breathing the smoke back up her nose so she looked like a dragon, blowing smoke rings, leaving the cigarette at the edge of her mouth with the smoke making clouds around her face while she talked.
    “Scotch?” my mother asked Vishwa.
    “Is that what you have?”
    “I have bourbon.”
    “This is an American specialty?”
    “Very,” said my mother. “It’s like Scotch, only more so. It’s Southern Scotch.”
    “I’ll try,” said Vishwa.
    “Go upstairs,” my mother told me, “and see what’s keeping