The Great Molting
It was when Miles Miyagi lost his virginity that he also lost all passion for classical music. He described himself to me as a cicada and that moment as his great molting. The boy’s August had come; and alongside naivety, instinct forced him to abandon that musical shell he was born into.
He lay nude, with a mind drunk off the experience. Hither and thither his mind traveled before reaching the dusty corners of his memory. As dusty, in fact, as that closet.
“What are you doing in there!” Miles’s mother exclaimed. “I’ve told you not to open this closet, right? I’ve said that before. I’m sure I have.”
Sixteen years later and the heat of that day’s spanking remained seared deeply in Miles’s memory. But deeper still was the sunken cheeks of that black man he found in the closet.
A large square. Yes, the man’s face was upon a large square. A vinyl? No, there was no record player in the apartment. And those eyes! Bulging with whites whiter than Miles’s and a deep gaze directed somewhere — where? Miles had never seen a man so black in Kobe, but at the age of four, he was touched by that man’s expression nevertheless. It was his first memory of sadness.
There were four? — no, three — more of such squares lined against the corner of the closet. These squares — what were they? On the others, though, the man didn’t appear so sad, perhaps thanks to that golden instrument pressed against his lips — a trombone? Trumpet? The squares were probably records after all, Miles supposed.
“Hmm… you don’t say?” said a half-interested voice. His lover drew close, caressed his nipple, and asked, “So, tell me. What does Miles mean?”
In the applause, one could feel greater enthusiasm for Miles’s introduction. He was the piano soloist for the Kobe University Symphony Orchestra, yes; but to an audience composed of mostly parents, he was also a model child. An engineering student with musical talent — what more could be desired?
A hush descended as Miles positioned himself before the Yamaha. He preferred Steinways, of course; but when he placed his fingertips upon the ivory, he felt something profoundly foreign. Were he blind, he would have guessed he was caressing a lizard.
What was the first chord? What octave? What about the left hand?
It was time. The conductor nodded at Miles. He wore a slight grin, confident in the performance to come.
The orchestra, however, proceeded alone. The Keyboard Concerto №1 in D Minor had no keyboard, which became obvious in the immediate solo. The performance was halted by an uncomfortable pause.
Miles didn’t bother to turn and meet the eyes of the conductor. He could already feel their glaring heat on his back, and no facial expression could explain the incompetence that seized him. Sex, he heard, undermined athletic performance; but to rob all musical ability — no, not even words could describe such a theory.
At some point, Miles could feel everyone’s eyes drift away from of him. Even his admirers in the audience had limits to their patience. There were, of course, one pair of eyes that didn’t grow weary from staring at the boy. One pair of eyes that, behind immense frustration, struggled to rationalize this episode. He turned his head and indeed found the piercing glare of his mother.
She said nothing in the car. Masako, like her son, was not one for monologues. In her parenting, she replaced lectures with atmospheres, and Miles had to understand lessons based on the mood she created. With a Glenn Gould recording playing so loudly that it shook his seat, Miles knew this was one of those lessons about dedication.
Dinner was supposed to be grander than instant ramen; but Masako had neither the mood nor energy to pamper. She propped her elbows on the table, placed her head upon her knuckles, and continued that glare she had in the concert hall. She examined every morsel Miles chewed with disgust.
The disgust eventually welled her eyes with tears; but Masako bit her lip to ask, “What happened?”
Given the current atmosphere, Miles knew it would hardly satisfy. But, he had no better substitute. He chose the honest answer anyway. “I don’t know.”
Masako bit her lip again. “You’re too old for me to even smack you.”
“If being a burden is your mission for the day, then — congrats — you did great,” she added. “You should pray though that the orchestra is as kind as me.”
Masako rose from her chair, extinguishing every light on her way to her bedroom. Only the dining table light remained, painting the tasteless ramen gray.
Miles lost his appetite. He threw out the rest of his dinner and cleaned his chopsticks. From the dish soap rose a bubble that loitered about the sink for a bit before drifting away into the shadowy hallway. Miles watched as his mind wandered to the curious thought of whether that black man still resided in the closet.
With the faucet off, Miles listened for a slight snore from his mother’s bedroom. She was asleep. Towards the closet he crept, groping for the closet’s light switch in the dark. He threw himself inside and closed the door behind him. Now, to survey the floor.
The man was still there. Under sixteen years worth of dust, his face was now grey, but his eyes were sad all the same. In a Silent Way read the title. Beside it, another line of text: Miles Davis.
Standing in a line were now twenty vinyl records — five times more than he remembered. All of them were sealed except the last, and curiosity urged Miles to take it for further study. He returned to the darkness of the hall, relieved to hear his mother snoring still.
Under the lamp of his room was that familiar face, lips pressed against a trumpet. Again that name: Miles Davis. On the back of the album, Miles sought a more familiar, European name — a Beethoven or Brahms, perhaps. There were none. Only strings of English words that appeared to be song titles.
With no record player or even walls thick enough to conceal its sound, Miles browsed Spotify and found the album in his hands. The shuffle button was an enticing choice, but Miles was drawn by brevity of the first song title, “So What.”
Jazz was unfamiliar. As a classical pianist, he tried to rationalize what he heard, but couldn’t. As the bass played on, reason left him.
Miles melted upon the tatami floor. Behind his closed eyes was the naked flesh of the girl who stole his virginity. The bassist strummed each of her fine lines, every note an enticing inch of her. The scent of her sweat mingled with the aroma of the tatami straw close to Miles’s nose.
Then, a crash of cymbals with which she disappeared. Into oblivion that girl went, and with the trumpet came rushing a stream of emotions so abstract that Miles could no longer feel the floor against his head. He was somewhere without tatami, without thin walls, without the closet where his mother kept Miles Davis. Where he went was no one — not even himself.
“What does Miles mean?” As the song faded into silence, there stood the question again. Miles had no reply. Instead, he wiped tears whose origins he did not understand. He had been weeping.
Miles awoke the next morning to find Miles Davis there, a trumpet still against his lips. Curious about what a vinyl record looked like, he drew out the ancient disc from its sheath, a slow inch at a time. Yet, midway, his attention was snatched by a small, folded strip of paper that fell to the floor. He lay the album against the wall, the vinyl disc protruding, to examine the note. It was a phone number.
“Miles? Are you up? Breakfast is ready,” Masako called from the kitchen.
Miles abandoned his investigation, shutting the door behind him so as to conceal evidence of his forbidden travels to the closet. At the dining table awaited natto, rice, miso soup, hijiki, and a slice of salmon. Each of these stared up at him, wondering about the phone number. Miles ignored them and the urge to ask his mother.
“Morning,” Masako greeted. With a thin coat of lipstick, her lips wore a smile. For a moment, they quivered to say something. But as was their custom, she kept her words at a minimum. Miles returned the greeting to his mother’s back, as she struggled to put on her shoes and leave for work.
With his mother gone, Miles found the opportunity to call me. This was not without him itching his head and pacing about for a bit, of course; but the weight of the paper in his pocket told him the call was necessary.
“Good morning! Thank you for calling Tanioka’s Music School, this is Tanioka. How may I help you?”
Miles cleared his throat. “Yes, uh, um, I’d like to sign up for, um, trumpet lessons. Is that possible?”
“Name?”
“Miles Miyagi,” he answered.
The last time I heard that name was a couple of months before Miles was born. The name, of course, was his father’s idea. I liked jazz too, but thought it was stupid (who names a Japanese boy “Miles”?). To hear the kid’s voice was, to say the least, interesting.
Unlike his father, Miles was meek. I told him to meet me at the port, and he did without question. Yet, as I approached his silhouette, I felt as though I was walking towards his father. He looked so much like him that his mother’s coldness made sense.
“This is yours,” I said, handing him a trumpet. “It’s been waiting for you for twenty years. I haven’t tried it, but I’m guessing it still works. And before you ask — no, it’s not Miles Davis’s.”
He took the instrument and clutched and it with a grip so loose it swayed in the wind. His eyes kept their focus on me instead. It’s not that he was examining me; rather, jittering left and right, his eyes wanted to say something. The poor child just didn’t have the words.
“Thank you,” were his first.
Then he said, “But why here at the port?”
“Because this is the only place you can practice besides my classroom,” I answered. “The walls are too thin at home, and the trumpet is too harsh an instrument for your neighbors. I tell all my jazz students to come here. Brass instruments were just not meant for Japan.
“Of course, I won’t be here — I have a life! But, as you’ll find, most learning in life’s done outside a classroom.”
The concept was familiar to Miles. He was, after all, a decent pianist who spent his childhood balancing cram school and practice.
After some pause, Miles said, “There is one thing that I desperately want to learn and that I hope you can teach me. It’s a strange question.”
I liked strange questions, so I waited. The tide filled our silenced.
“What does Miles mean?” he asked.
Twenty years of learning — about the world and the abstract concepts that define human intelligence — yet this boy didn’t know himself. A great pity overcame me.
“If you called me, you probably know already,” I said. “It’s everything your father loved. Music, creativity, fantasy — that is Miles. That is you.”
I could tell the answer didn’t satisfy. So, I continued. “You’ll ask why he left. He left because he was too good of a person and because you were too good for him. You won’t understand that, I know. You don’t even know the man enough to hate him. But, truth be told, your father was ashamed of his flaws. He drank to forget the little progress he made as a musician. He drank to forget the distance of his dreams.
“I suppose you were the first dream of his to come true. And to taint you — why, that would have destroyed him sooner.”
I paused to study his expression. As I guessed, his father was too much of a stranger to deserve a tear.
“I suppose you sent me the albums?” Miles asked.
“Yes. You guess correctly,” I replied. “They were birthday gifts. But he didn’t trust himself enough to touch them.”
“My phone number,” I added, “was his final request — his will, one might say. You see, your father was convinced that you’d one day seek to know. He made that bet with your mother. Seems she’s as proud as him for you to have made it this far!”
Miles imagined his mother opening that closet once a year, stowing away another vinyl record out of pride. Though she was insecure, she could’ve destroyed them. She could’ve locked the closet.
“Thank you,” he said.
“No need. I haven’t done anything besides what I’ve been told,” I said.
He looked at me with a shameful smile. “Me too.”
Miles then lifted the trumpet to his lips with a posture so natural one might mistake him for Miles Davis. Of course, he was not Miles Davis. Clueless about a trumpet’s sound, he was downright awful. Yet, he played.
He put behind him a life of piano. He put behind him the streets of Kobe, where his mother walked— the same streets his father once walked. He also put me behind him. My strange presence had no effect.
It would take much longer for him to understand the true meaning of his name. Yet, at least today he learned to say, “So what?”
