“Nyet! Nyet! You no practice?! Lazy!” He’d throw up his hands and stare at me with colossal disappointment, like I was his underage daughter, pregnant with fifteen sets of twins.
“I’m sorry, I’ll practice more next week!” I rarely did, but it always felt good to have that moment of resolve, like saying, “I’m gonna learn French!” It doesn’t MATTER if you do it or not, deciding is the high, right?
When I’d massacre Bach again the following week, Viktor would take a more Communist approach. “Nyet! Nyet!!” He’d stomp over and take my bow hand roughly from behind me and start sawing at the instrument, moving my arm like a terrified puppet across the strings. I’d hang on as much as I could, struggling to keep the bow anywhere near the instrument.
“Understand? You play like this!” I didn’t, but I’d nod and just pray for the horrible amusement park ride to be over. This is how I learned to play the violin really, really well.
Despite Czar Viktor’s passive aggressiveness and his exact resemblance to Mikhail Gorbachev (sans head tattoo), I loved him and never wanted to disappoint him. Because, as sad as he could get when I was lazy, he became equally impassioned when I was great.
One year I had to play a Mozart concerto for the spring recital, and I came super prepared for dress rehearsal at Viktor’s house. My family was having money problems, and it cost a lot to hire a pianist to play with me, so I was determined to get a gold star to show that the money was worth it. Oh, and because my mom said, “I’m paying a lot of money for that pianist, we might not eat this week, so play well or else!”
We started rehearsing, objectively I was rocking the trills, and in the middle I looked over and saw Viktor waving his arms and head around like Stevie Wonder. (No insult, he was just into it.) Out of his right eye, I could have sworn there was . . . moisture? Trickling?! Was the meanest man I’d ever met having a stroke?! Was I having a stroke? What should I do?! It freaked me out and I almost stopped playing. I didn’t, because I didn’t want to waste $2.25 a minute, but the impulse was definitely there.
After I was done, Viktor walked over and cupped my face in both hands like it was a Fabergé egg. “So good, so good, my heart!” He thumped himself in the chest. It was a gesture of . . . I’m not sure. Something positive, like CPR. As the pianist left, he screamed into his kitchen at his little wife, Raeza, who was always cooking while wearing a pair of medical scrubs, even though she wasn’t in the medical profession.
“Raeza! Borscht! We eat!”
He hauled me into the kitchen, a room I’d never entered in more than five years of studying with him, and ate disgusting blood-pink soup together.
He looked over the top of his bowl, smiling. “Yes?”
“It’s great!” I wanted to throw up.
“Good girl.” Viktor patted my head and slurped.
I think in Russia, he’d legally adopted me.
[?College Timez!?]
When I got into my teens, I took the violin more seriously. Because people would tell me how I was adorable when I played, and I’m a praise monkey. (Will perform for smiles!) I auditioned for the Juilliard pre-program when I was fourteen and was accepted, but finances wouldn’t allow us to move to New York City full-time. It was a crushing blow because I was definitely ready to move out of the house. In fact, I was always ready to move out. I’d picked out a list of excellent boarding schools by age twelve and couldn’t understand why we weren’t wealthy enough for me to go abroad like in the “Madeline” books. Or, alternatively, rent me an apartment down the street. I forged my mom’s signature and paid all the bills for her anyway, so at that point it was just geographical logistics, right? My parents couldn’t understand my vision.
So when my professor offered to help me get into University of Texas at Austin, I was all over it like a rabid dog on jerky. Or whatever analogy. Look, I was excited.
We were living in San Antonio at the time, and my violin teacher was Mr. Frittelli, a professor at UT. He was a tiny man and a dazzling violinist who appreciated a good fart joke. My kind of guy.
One day he asked, “What are you doing for college?”
I sighed a dramatic teen sigh. “I have a ton of them picked out, but I dunno, I have forever to decide.” Being precocious was SO HARD.
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen, gonna be sixteen in June.”
“Do you want to go to college this year?”
“What?”
OMG.
“Yes. Take me there now, please!”
I’m not sure who Mr. Frittelli blackmailed in order to get an underage teenager with literally NO school transcripts into a public collegiate institution, but a week after we spoke—*BOOM*—he’d arranged for a full scholarship for me to study music starting in the fall. All I had to provide was an SAT score!