Nocturne In C# Minor 2

The Goldberg Variations

by Minou Janvier

URL: http://www.area52hkh.net/asm/mjanvier/cminor02.php
Summary: Rodney can't make art out of notes

When he was a child, Rodney discovered Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations. His mother owned the album, and he would listen to it for hours, wondering at the sheer beauty of the music. When he tried to explain how it made him feel, he could only think of the architecture of the Cathedrals he had seen in Europe, with their wondrous flying buttresses, their delicate arches, and their stained glass perfections. This was what the music did to him.

It was this more than anything, that convinced his parents to pay for piano lessons. And he did as well as any small child does, learning the notes, and the placement of the hands. He learned quickly, and rather easily, though he noticed that there were kids who seemed to just *know* what they were doing, and the music was effortless for them. It wasn't effortless for him, but it wasn't really difficult either, and so he let it go. For a while.

When he was 12, he discovered that his teacher was wanting something more from him. Something that he didn't really know how to give. Oh his technique was precise, exquisite even. He was a perfectionist, and this gave him the chance to really show what he could do. Practice really did make technique perfect.

But it couldn't make the piano sing like Glenn Gould could. It couldn't wring agony and ecstasy out of the instrument like Van Cliburn could. He would be no Horowitz. His Chopin would make no-one weep. He would build no cathedrals in the souls of his listeners.

So he quit. Oh, his mother made him take lessons for a few years longer. Said that the discipline was good for him. But he quit. The essential Rodney quit. If he couldn't make music, then he'd make science. Science didn't care what was in your soul and whether or not you could lay it bare for the world to see. Science only cared if your equations were right, or if you really understood the chemical formulas you were working with. And he could do that. Oh yes, he could do that.

And music remained a part of his life. He never stopped listening. Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Verdi. Yes, he enjoyed classical. Blues, Jazz, rock. He loved it all. And if he avoided Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Liszt, well, that was all right. He had Mozart. What did he need with Liszt?

But sometimes, late at night, he would wake, shaken by the feeling that there was something he had torn out of his soul that he would never regain. Something he had thrown away, like so much trash, that he desperately needed to survive. And in his mind, he would hear the echo of Glenn Gould, and know despair for just a moment.

But on the whole, life was good. If he wasn't loved as much as he needed, well, at least he'd had a good childhood. If he wasn't as respected as much as he wanted, well that was probably because he couldn't stop correcting people who later proved him wrong. Oops. But he was reasonably happy, and actually quite successful. And he was going to be just fine.

Right.

So how is it that he found himself with a life turned upside down. How is it that he found himself in the middle of the ocean on a lonely planet in the center of a far-off galaxy and it wasn't Star Wars? For months after they arrived, he kept expecting to see Jar-Jar Binks heading down the gangplank sometime and would know that he had finally cracked.

But as the months passed, he began to find a new kind of peace. He fell in love for the first time in his life, for one thing. And it wasn't quite what he expected, but exactly what he needed. John didn't get upset by his hobbies of eating and whining. John laughed at him, and with him, and played to his strengths. John loved him. Absolutely and completely. Of this, he was sure. John loved him.

And for the first time in years, he began to subconsciously hum Bach as he worked. He was happier than he felt he had a right to be, but was selfish enough not to complain. In spite of all the dangers; in spite of all the horror they faced whenever they went through the gate, Rodney McKay was happy.

He had noticed John's hands pretty much from the beginning. They were elegant, and graceful, for one thing, and they gave him pleasure. But the first time he saw John at a computer, he knew.

It was difficult to miss the perfectly flat wrists, the delicately curved fingers, and the straight back. This was a man who had dealt with a piano teacher at some point in his life. One who had constantly made him shift his butt to the edge of the bench, and sit up straight. One who had laid a ruler across his knuckles to make sure that they were flat. No carpal-tunnel for her students.

John played. And this explained so much. The self-confident peace about the man served music well. The feeling of restrained joy and fun. These were all signs that he would be a good musician. And Rodney suspected that he was.

He got confirmation in an odd sort of way, when John was gently rubbing his back after sex, holding him close and caressing him in ways that nobody else had ever done. But he did it with bent fingers, and Rodney teased him about it. John laughed, and admitted to having played a few times, then changed the subject. Rodney sensed a deeply hidden hunger in John's words, and didn't press. After all, they had no keyboard here for John to play. It would only be cruel to make him talk about his need for something he couldn't have.

Then they found it. And John brought it home.

It wasn't a piano, exactly. But it was close enough. And John worked on it like it was as necessary as air. And perhaps it was. First the strings needed to be rebuilt. they were all broken, tangled, and it physically hurt to look at them. But John spent many, many hours working with them, soldering delicately here and there, restringing the instrument with the tenderness and patience of a loving parent. Then it needed tuned. John never did mention how he got that to work, and Rodney sensed a great deal of embarrassment over that. Someday, he'd tickle it out of him.

Then, John learned to play. And when John was away, and unable to hear, Rodney painstakingly worked out the notes as well. He did this not for John. He never expected John, or anyone for that matter, to hear him. But here and now, he needed the discipline as much as John did. Needed to be able to produce something recognizable out of this alien technology.

Then came the night when John played for him.

He came home, bringing his dinner with him instead of eating at the commissary, because he needed to be close to John after a really awful day. He entered their quarters, and found him on the balcony, with the instrument carefully moved and positioned. He took a deep breath, and went outside.

John waited for him at the bench. He said something about eating, and Rodney snarked right back. They kissed hello, and exchanged their love for each other in both actions. Then John led him to the chair he had so carefully placed, returned to the instrument, and played.

When Glenn Gould played the Goldberg Variations, young Rodney McKay felt like he was no longer quite in the same place as before. No longer there on earth, with his body touching the here and now. Order and math danced with human flesh.

When Horowitz played Chopin, Rodney felt as though for an instant, he understood exactly what it was to be hopelessly young and so incredibly talented, with music literally oozing out of your pores, and to know that you had only a short time before you would die, and that there was absolutely nothing that anybody could do about it.

When Van Cliburn played Tchaikovsky, Rodney understood the mystery that was Russia, and the sorrow and joy of that immense place.

When John played Chopin, Rodney understood the mysteries of love and life itself. And wept as the cathedral grew in his soul once again, out of the ashes of his childhood. He wept for everything that he would never be, and everything that John already was.

But later that night, as he held a sleeping John in his arms, he felt that if he could not create absolute beauty, at least he had the chance to do what so few human beings ever do. He could at least hold it in his arms.