JESSIE TU A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing: extract
This week we’re thrilled to bring you an extract from Jessie Tu’s novel A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing – an exhilarating, disturbing, unputdownable debut about music, sex, and, yes, loneliness and connection.
Jena Lin was a musical child prodigy, touring the great concert halls of the world for years with her mother and Banks, her violin teacher.
But when the novel opens, that is all in the past. Now she is a young woman in her 20s, living in a Newtown share house and working as a casual violinist with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Her life is unsettled, and sex fills many of the gaps.
In a few months’ time Jena and her best friend Olivia will both audition for a single permanent opening with the SSO. In this extract, Jena has been working on the excerpts she will play for her audition.
Extract courtesy of Allen & Unwin
Chapter 3
At the chemist, I am restocking on condoms. Banks calls. My teacher from another life.
‘I’ve been busy.’ He always begins by qualifying a call. ‘Can you come around? I’d like to hear your excerpts.’
‘Now?’
‘Did you see the hand physio about your wrist?’
I make vague sounds.
Last week, I’d knocked my wrist against the station turnstiles while running to catch the train. I am always bumping into things. My body knows no boundaries.
With my free hand, I press my wrist to assess the pain.
‘It’s not bad today.’
‘Your audition is only a few months away,’ he says.
‘Is that why you called? To remind me?’
‘No. The orchestra needs you to step in for a concert tomorrow at noon. The soloist missed her flight from London.’
I stop in the middle of the aisle.
‘What piece?’
‘The Beethoven.’
The last time I played Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, I was fifteen years old and standing on the stage of Carnegie Hall. I didn’t finish the performance.
‘I know it might bring up old memories,’ Banks says. ‘It’s only one performance.’
I had a therapist once who gave me an exercise to do if I ever felt a panic attack coming on. I had to weigh up advantages and disadvantages. Of saying yes: good exposure, good venue, reputable orchestra. Of saying no: too much fame is not a good thing. Of saying yes: fame can be good, if used in the right way. Of saying no.
‘Okay, I’ll do it.’
We arrange to meet in a few hours. I go back to scanning the shelves. I can’t find what I am looking for. Non-latex. Ribbed. Scented. Citrus. Large.
I find a salesperson nearby. ‘Do you have those large, non-latex condoms?’
He looks at me as though I’ve asked him to take his penis out.
‘They’re in a sort . . . of reddish pink box.’ The salesperson pretends to not be fazed, but he is fazed. I have fazed him.
‘I’ll ask my supervisor.’
He walks away, then doesn’t return.
At the counter, I pay for two boxes of vegan condoms, three environmentally friendly lubes, a morning-after pill and a box of contraceptive pills. The pharmacist asks me to fill in a form for the morning-after. I count back the hours since I’d last had sex. The condom had broken while the man was inside me. Now, I am here, as if it is my job to clean up the mess.
*
On the train, I call my hand physio. She asks me to describe the pain.
I tell her I can’t.
‘What do you mean you can’t?’
‘I mean, I don’t know what words to use.’ She tells me she’ll be available in the afternoon.
At the Opera House, I find her in the green room with bags of tapes and cream.
‘It’s pretty bad, Jena.’
She squeezes the side of my wrist like she is navigating the remote control of a game console.
‘You’ll need at least a week’s rest.’
‘A week? I’ve got a concert tomorrow.’
She shrugs.
‘You can either rest it or damage it further.’
‘What about the anti-inflammatory tablets?’
‘They are not a cure.’ She frowns and hands them to me anyway. ‘No more than two in six hours or your muscles will spasm and you won’t be able to play at all.’
I swallow two pills as soon as she leaves then go into the communal kitchen for some ice. Physical injuries never stopped me from playing when I was the world’s best. Though back then, I didn’t do anything likely to cause injury. I didn’t do anything apart from play. My father wouldn’t even let me use a knife in case I sliced my finger. He was protective like that. My fingers, he’d say, were the most valuable part of our family.
My mother wasn’t so strict. When we were on tour, she would let me use a butter knife.
‘Don’t tell your father,’ she’d say. My mother and I found communion through shared lies.
I press the muscles around my wrist to test the pain. It had flared up early this morning when I was in bed with a man. I met him last night at a recording session for Noah’s band. A bass player. I invited him back to my place after and in the morning, I woke to his erection pressed against the small of my back. He slipped inside me without asking, moaning. At one point, I climbed on top of his body and put my hands on the headboard. A blunt pain shot through my wrist. In the climax of morning fucking, I held on, endured the pain. Gripped the wood tighter. Stayed silent. As he was getting dressed, he tried to make conversation.
‘Noah says you’re some hot shot violinist.’
He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on his socks. I was sprawled on top of the covers.
‘Not really.’
‘He said you used to be, like, world-famous.’
I got up and reached for my shirt. ‘That was another time.’
*
Jessie Tu
Photo: Sarah Wilson
It troubles me—how little I care. As arranged, I visit Banks at the Conservatorium, but take my time. I will play for him again. I will forget the pain I caused him. It’s cold inside his room. He never turns on the heating. It interrupts the sound. Damages the instruments.
‘How’s Monkey?’ he asks.
I take out my plush toy from the case and squeeze its neck. ‘Same.’
Banks slides the sheet music onto the stand and sits down. He smells of bacon and sweet milk.
‘Let’s hear the excerpts then. One by one.’
He does not look at me. His focus rests on the music.
‘I thought you’d want to hear the Beethoven?’
He shakes his head. ‘I trust you’ll do well. The excerpts?’
I wait for him to pick up his violin. He played with the SSO for several years in the eighties, chiefly as the concertmaster. When he retired, they kept him on the board and sometimes he plays with us on special occasions, small ensemble stuff.
I reach for my metronome. He does not move.
‘No metronome,’ he says. ‘I’ll count you in.’
The tip of his thumb and forefinger join—a hoop. He draws circles in the air. He hums the opening flute line of the Brahms 4th. Nods his head for me to begin.
I take a breath. The hairs on my bow press into the steel strings.
‘Too loud.’
My exhalation is pronounced.
‘You’re breathing too loud. You’re part of a violin section. You’re not a soloist. You can’t breathe so loud.’
I begin again.
He raises a hand. ‘Now you’re playing too softly. Start again from the beginning, forte. But don’t breathe so loudly. You’re saying something with your breath, but don’t be so frank.’
I stare at the dead skin peeling off the back of his hands. Twenty- five years of European sun had done damage, but it was the last few years in Australia that had brought out the sunspots.
I raise my violin to my neck and begin again, this time, holding my breath.
‘Why are you doing that?’
‘Experimenting.’
‘Don’t waste my time.’ He stands.
There’s a knock on the door. Another student.
‘Come back when you’re ready to take this seriously,’ he says.
I slide the shoulder rest off the violin and begin packing in silence, stuffing Monkey back inside the small compartment in my case.
Before I leave, he raises a hand. ‘What would you like from me?’
I wonder how he sees me now. If he hates me for what I did when
I was his best student. His most famous student. His reputation had rested entirely on everything I did. Maybe he still loves me.
Part of me wants to erase him. Forget the years he spent teaching me. But there is hardly a memory of a sound that does not include him. Without him, I am rootless.
I turn to face him. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m older. Less patient now. You need to clarify what it is you want. Otherwise I can’t help you.’
‘I think I want you to, I don’t know—contribute, somehow.’
He frowns. ‘Come back after the show. We can talk.’
‘You won’t be there?’
‘No.’
Walking to the station, I wonder if he’d planned to re-enter my life as strategically as he’d planned to exit, all those years ago. Why did he make it seem as if I was the one wanting something from him? Yet, it was he who asked me to come. I’d forgotten that momentarily. When did I become so uncertain about myself?
*
The following day, I arrive at the Opera House an hour before the doors open. The concert hall. Musicians in their seats. That old familiar sight. The conductor shakes my hand at the podium. He introduces me to the orchestra. Formalities. They all know who I am. He makes them act as if I am someone I am not. Someone I used to be. The travelling soloist. The prodigy everyone talked about. A cellist on the first desk smiles at me; no teeth. Perhaps gritting them behind a closed mouth.
We run through the concerto. Standard play. I’ve memorised the music in my bones. The notes fly out. Under the surface of each phrase, my heart pounds in my throat, drumming a beat that distracts me from the rhythm of the third movement, its giddy eruption some form of pure joy. Optimism.
During the break, the cellist hangs back and watches me loosen my bow.
‘What’s that?’ He points to Monkey, whose head is sticking out of the shoulder rest compartment in my case.
‘Oh, him.’
‘Your childhood doll or something?’
When I don’t respond immediately, he says, ‘Aren’t you a bit old for that?’
*
I open the concert, just after 1 pm. I use more bow, tucking long phrases into one stroke. For the double stops, I am careful, hesitant about the intonation. Relax on the pressure. Later, the conductor tells me I was too soft. ‘Fuck you.’ If only I were bold enough.
I walk to the Conservatorium to see Banks.
I knock on his door and let myself in. He’s sitting at the piano, marking a score with a pencil.
‘It went well then?’
‘As well as it could. I made it to the end, at least.’
‘Tremendous.’
He has never used that word.
‘I won’t stay long,’ I say. ‘I need to work on those excerpts.’
‘Why don’t you play a little?’
‘The excerpts?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not really ready with those yet.’
He smiles weakly. ‘Never mind. I’ll prepare for my next student then.’ He stands and gestures to the door.
Outside, I look back at him. But he has already turned around.
From Jessie Tu A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing Allen & Unwin 2020 PB 304pp $29.99
Like to keep reading? You can buy A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW here or you can buy it from Booktopia here.
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