Work Text:
Fryderyk Chopin and Franz Liszt are two complete strangers who happen to know each other by heart.
Chopin sees his lanky classmate in the hallway of the conservatory almost every day and wrinkles his nose in disdain every time he hears Liszt play. Too expressive for Fryderyk’s taste. Too showy. Too… loud, after all.
Of course, Franz is not untalented—and moreover, Chopin even enjoys his playing from time to time—but sometimes it seems to Fryderyk that the only reason why Liszt is so passionate about piano is only because all these dreamy looks and girlish sighs are too flattering to Liszt’s exorbitant ego. Franz bends over the pianoforte so theatrically, his long musical fingers so easily extract the most difficult melodies from the piano keys, and Chopin is so infuriated. Liszt, in fact, did absolutely nothing wrong to Fryderyk. He's quite friendly, suave with his professors, and terribly charming with the fairer sex (naturally, he loves the attention so much, that bloody narcissist). But Chopin still sticks to his creed. Whenever Schumann happens to say something along the lines of “Your favorite Hungarian just uploaded a new etude on Spotify the other day, wanna take a look? The guy’s got talent!”, then Chopin only meaningfully chuckles, expressing disinterest with the entire indifferent look on his face. Liszt the performer might not be utterly appalling, perhaps, but Liszt the composer? Chopin is convinced that when it comes to this matter, Liszt desperately lacks originality, lacks authenticity, lacks talent, ultimately.
Something makes Fryderyk Chopin absolutely horrified by Liszt's sheet music; something makes him call Liszt nothing more than a mediocrity and ignore his presence at every single class they share.
He loves Clara like his own sister and calls her a brilliant pianist; with Schumann, they play four hands with pleasure, in between Bridget Jones marathons (Clara makes them watch movies of her choice every single time they hang out together).
So, what happens to be wrong with Liszt?
Chopin and Liszt are two strangers who know each other by heart, because there is no other way to explain this stubborn prejudice.
***
As Fryderyk and Robert stand in line for coffee in a small campus coffee shop on Monday, Chopin spots Liszt and one of his countless, never-ending girlfriends.
“God, I can’t believe Fanny actually fell for this,” Schumann chuckles, when he approaches the counter. “One small black coffee to go, please. Fryderyk, do you want anything?”
Chopin watches as Liszt, near the door, holds it open for the girl, and smiles at her in the most charming way possible. Franz plays the part perfectly, no wonder half of the conservatory is head over heels for him. Chopin chuckles and is already planning to look away when a pair of green eyes rush straight at him. Well?
Franz arches his eyebrow and looks at Chopin questioningly for a fraction of a second. In the next instant, Liszt winks at him, all playful, before slipping out the door with mademoiselle Mendelssohn.
Dumbfounded and completely bewildered, Fryderyk is unable to move.
“Come on, boys, don’t hold up the line!” Someone calls behind them, and Chopin immediately receives a painful push right on his shoulder.
“Hello, earth to Fryderyk! The hell is wrong with you today?” Robert seems indignant. “Do you want anything or not?”
“Huh?” Fryderyk, blinking frequently, looks at Schumann. “Right, yes. Can I get a medium almond milk caramel latte, please?”
***
Chopin hates Liszt.
Chopin hates Liszt especially on Fridays, because they both rent apartments in the same building on rue de Barres; moreover, they live on the same floor, and Chopin got damn lucky with his neighbor. Liszt hosts modest house parties every Friday: because of him the hallway on their floor constantly smells like it’s a brewery, and the smell of tobacco smoke has long been ingrained into the red carpet on the floor. The morning after each party, empty glass and aluminum Stella Artois bottles are lying at his door; Liszt lazily takes them out only in the evening. Franz also often invites charming young ladies to his place (one of the neighbors once changed the WiFi network to “we can hear you having sex”). Truth to be told, sometimes Fryderyk notices older women, too, like Marie—one of Liszt’s long-term flings, a woman just over thirty, with an unusually attractive appearance, who always carried a pungent smell of expensive perfume. It even looked like she was married. However, at some point, Fryderyk noticed that the lady had ceased to appear at Liszt's. He must have lost interest in her. The affections of his heart never last for long.
Sometimes Chopin bumps into Franz as Fryderyk wearily trudges back to his apartment with his groceries in paper bags. On Tuesday, for example, it happens again, and Chopin hates Liszt when he—why would that happen all of a sudden?—offers Fryderyk help. Fryderyk may be of a fragile build; let's say he looks thin and pale, but that's honestly a bit too much.
“I can carry a couple of bags on my own. It’s fine.” Chopin snaps rather rudely.
“Well, as you wish.”
Chuckling, Franz watches how Fryderyk, approaching his door, diligently fumbles in his pocket, looking for the keys, but then one of the paper bags tears, and he has to collect its contents. And when the other bags fall down too, Chopin desperately groans, while squatting down.
"Are you sure that...”
“I’m sure, Franz,” Fryderyk hears a chuckle behind his back, and then the door finally slams shut. Thanks God.
Chopin hates Liszt.
Chopin hates Liszt more and more on a random Wednesday, when he spies on him playing Shostakovich’s piece in an unoccupied practice room. He’s not peeping on purpose, of course, it’s just that Chopin’s practice room is further down the hallway, and Franz, as always, is too noisy. Fryderyk stopped to watch him only out of curiosity. Fryderyk leans against the wall solely out of curiosity, holds his breath and watches Liszt playing with such ardor. His hands—his hands, oh God—flit over the keyboard, he leans over the instrument, his longish hair falling on his face (he immediately tosses it back with a theatrical movement); fingers, strained like steel springs, fish out an intricate melody from the piano.
Chopin hates Liszt, and this hatred is of a very strange nature.
Because that same evening, standing under a hot shower, he throws back his head in pleasure and succumbs to unexplainable impulses from outside. Fryderyk slides his palm along his own length, while imaging Franz's strong hands on his hips. He imagines Liszt stroking him, pulling him closer, looking at him from above. Fryderyk wants to know how it feels like to be in Liszt’s arms, to feel the weight of Liszt’s body on his own. He pictures Franz’s fingers on his lips. He pictures Liszt kissing him, leaving a trail of hickeys on his pale, sensitive skin. Chopin closes his eyes and feels his heartbeat quickening, and in the lower abdomen something sips pleasantly, sweetly.
Fryderyk bashfully finds himself cumming with Liszt's name on his lips.
And then he starts crying.
Because this stupid feeling (it’s terrifying just to accept that it might be love) has been haunting him for a long time, Chopin feels restless, and to be honest, Fryderyk is nothing but a good actor. He convinces himself over and over that he hates Franz Liszt, but here he is, weeping in the shower while the hot water hits his shoulders, and he is not crying out of hatred.
Perhaps, Chopin has lied too much. Perhaps, he has lied to himself.
Perhaps, if he had been smarter, this never would have happened, but Fryderyk never pretended on candidness. The last thing he wanted was for his heart to be a desperate, unnecessary gift in the hands of someone like Liszt. A trinket, a trifle, a sacrifice worth nothing. So Chopin tells himself that he has nothing but a total dislike for Liszt, and pretends to believe in his own lies.
Fryderyk mindlessly draws music notes on the misted glass. His chest is still aching. Then he steps out of the shower, washes his face with cold water, trying to come to his senses, turns off the tap and looks in the mirror. He is terribly pale, and his eyes are red from all the sobbing. He spends the rest of his evening alone with cheap Rosé and some silly romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant.
***
“For the next class, compose an etude, exchange your pieces with a partner and learn it by heart; I will do the assessment myself, at the end of the month," says Monsieur Bernard, the pedantic professor of music composition, and Chopin feels a catastrophe coming.
However, during the coffee break, he will approach Schumann. But when he does, Robert looks at Chopin and smiles sheepishly, saying that he is already in a pair with Clara.
“Sorry, Fryderyk, you’re kinda late. Consider me greedy, but I will not be sharing my boyfriend with you,” Clara laughs as she sits down at the wooden table in the courtyard with them.
Well, it doesn't matter, he finds Brahms a very talented young man, together they often go out in bars, sipping ale or, in the case of Fryderyk, sweet red wine. So, there’s still some hope left. But it turns out that Brahms is doing the task with Debussy —the next in line, damn it!—and when he hears from Mendelssohn: "Oh, Fryc, I'm sorry, but Weber...", Chopin laments the whole world and decides to leave everything as it is. He will deal with this later. He definitely has better things to do for now.
But it all ends quite deplorable when a couple of days later he finds himself sitting in front of a Steinway piano in one of the practice rooms, and Liszt is right in front of him. Fryderyk carefully watches his every movement and facial expressions, while Franz is looking away. He tries to guess what is it that Liszt is thinking of. The sunbeams, fanning into the room, gently fall on Franz’s skin; he exposes his face to them for a moment, and then moves away from the window.
“Your notes…” Liszt sorts through the sheets, his gaze lazily running over the lines. “This is a funeral procession. I doubt anyone would want to listen to that.”
Fryderyk takes a deep breath and goes to the windowsill: the weather is nice outside, it’s the very beginning of spring, the patio is flooded with soft sunlight, while he is here, stuck with Liszt, and the whole situation feels like pure torture.
“It would seem that no one needs a second Paganini nowadays, yet you’ve got thousands of monthly listeners on Spotify. Weird, huh?” Fryderyk responds without taking his eyes off the window. Franz sits down at the piano and plays the beginning of the etude.
Chopin hears from behind his back, “A couple of arrangements are not that much of a big deal—“
“A couple?” Fryderyk chuckles, sincerely surprised, “Six studies on Paganini's motifs, nineteen transcriptions of Beethoven, thirty arrangements of romances by Schubert and nine by Rossini, and don’t you think I forgot about Berlioz's arrangements—seven overtures and four symphonies! Sometimes I think that you are simply deprived of the composing gift, and all of this unhealthy excitement around your persona is not justified in any way. Tell me, do you have anything of your own, Liszt?”
Franz takes his hands off the piano keys. There’s silence between them for a while. Chopin, all flushed, tries to catch his breath, while Liszt looks at Fryderyk intently, and his gaze is so piercing that under his onslaught Chopin — unexpectedly even for himself — is extinguished. He becomes uncomfortable.
Liszt looks questioningly at Chopin, “How come you remember the entire history of my publications by heart, Fryderyk?”
Fryderyk hesitates. “I’ve got a good memory.”
“Ah? So that’s how it is?” Franz is slightly tilting his head to the side. “Then do me a favor and try to play my own etude without any flaws the next time. In your performance, decisive measures sound pale and dull. Work on it.”
And he turns back to the instrument. At the same instant, the room fills up with chromatic currents of a melody that Franz is playing.
“What are you talking about?” Chopin’s question sinks in a melodious legato.
“You play without delving into the meaning, shamelessly distorting, just like you’re weaving lace or crumbling with beads,” Franz continues mercilessly, not looking up from the keys,“You stretch out the phrases, emphasize the soreness, anguish, weakness... effeminacy.” He turns over the sheet of music and laments, “Well, look at that, even right here, you couldn’t do without sentimentality.”
Outside the window, the sun suddenly disappears behind a thick layer of clouds, and the room is filled with a pale, bluish gloom. Fryderyk makes an effort to pretend like a dozen blunt needles haven’t just pierced his chest at all; he makes an effort to pretend like they are not, with each new word carved into his heart, twisting in deeper, slowly, like a corkscrew.
He does it well.
And it's fortunate that Franz is sitting with his back turned to him, for Chopin would not have been able to withstand one more intent gaze of his.
Fryderyk wants to say something in response, to make a biting remark, just like he did before, to reproach Liszt for barbaric use of pedal or ostentatious bravura; for these constant fortissimos that soar up to the clouds and make the listeners' nerves twitch. But the words don’t come. Fryderyk’s throat feels like it is unpleasantly filled with lead, and he simply remains silent.
Franz continues to play from the sheet; thankfully, he is not as insightful as Fryderyk. When the music stops, he turns to Chopin, and for a moment it seems to Liszt that the boy sitting on the windowsill looks now paler than the usual. Liszt looks expectantly, without uttering a word, examines Fryderyk—his eyes are almost unreadable, shrouded in a melancholy haze, as always.
There is something in Fryderyk that reminds Liszt of old porcelain figurines.
If you touch the figurine, it will immediately dissolve, crack into small fractures, falling apart into a lacy melody of some nocturne, a tiny porcelain heart and a bouquet of violets tied with a thread.
Chopin loves violets, Liszt knows that—he's seen Fryderyk carrying pots home from a flower stall a couple of times. Large blue eyes stand out on his pale face, and they always look with such aching anguish, you can't help but stare at the young man. Liszt often wonders why is that, but when Chopin looks at Franz himself, his gaze usually clearly and condescendingly expresses only dislike. And nothing more.
“I don't like the way my music sounds from under your hands.” Fryderyk quietly delivers his final verdict. He lifts his eyes from the polished Oxfords to the unflinching pianist, and their eyes finally meet. Fryderyk feels a strange tingling in his fingertips.
“Then come here and correct me right from the sheet,” Chopin hears mockery in Liszt’s voice, “You didn’t think that I would freeze on the left pedal, abuse the tempo freedom, slow the melody inappropriately, and ‘reward’ myself with accelerations, did you? Exactly how you would’ve done it.”
Liszt thinks there’s something about Fryderyk's appearance—a delicate porcelain doll, some sad-eyed marquis or shepherd. Touch it—and it will shatter.
Liszt, of course, doesn’t understand that someone else's porcelain heart is entirely in his hands. And so Chopin shatters.
“If you can't notice your flaws on your own, then I can’t help you.” Fryderyk says quietly as he jumps down from the windowsill. His only wish is to leave Liszt alone with the instrument and the sheet music.
“There is depth in this music, and no sentimentality. And your playing is coated in sugar.”
Liszt is openly amused over how Fryderyk trembles, he smiles contentedly, watching Chopin's cheeks flush red. It was almost a compliment—well, what an honor.
“You must be kidding me,” Chopin barely audibly says.
“Not at all, Frycek.” Liszt looks so calm, and Frycek flies off his lips with such satisfaction, that Chopin just wants to...
“Don't you have anything to say?”
“Don’t call me that. Ever again.”
The door slams.
Liszt remains tete-a-tete with Chopin's piece and his own thoughts. And when he slides his fingertips between the black protrusions of sharps and flats, the thought creeps into his head, that he is a complete asshole.
***
Chopin often misses home.
Of course, he is infinitely grateful to his caring parents who pay for his education in Paris, and he knows that absolutely everyone in Warsaw is proud of him. Former teachers, acquaintances of his parents, family, everyone he knew at home predicted extraordinary success for him in the musical field since childhood. On the last Friday of every month, the Chopin family held private musical evenings, the so-called chamber concerts, and Fryderyk remembers all these enthusiastic sighs, the sugar of compliments, the pride of the household. At these home concerts, Fryderyk always felt at ease, because there his uniqueness wasn’t seen as a burden, but as a gift.
Paris is his father's birthplace. And, yes, of course, he loves the cool air of the wide boulevards, the houses and lampposts stretching along the streets: all these charming street scenes, as if captured by some artist of the Romantic era. Second-hand bookshops with time-worn books, Parisians always in a hurry, cars merging into one wide line around the immovable Arc de Triomphe, corner buildings with those delicate balconies, and the July Column proudly ascending to the skies. Certainly.
But all of this slowly, but surely becomes monochrome, and perhaps Chopin does love Paris, but he loves landscapes that are dear to his heart much more.
Noisy companies in the evenings, drunken laughter echoing through the tangle of Parisian streets at nights, one bottle of wine or cider shared between four people at the same time—and yet, as soon as he closes the door of his small apartment, the longing swallows him whole again.
On Friday night, he smiles wistfully at Schumann and Mendelssohn, who intend to "get fucking wasted!". Fryderyk lies about a headache, then he just locks himself in his room and empties the last bottle of Rosé.
Franz, apparently, is not at home, because the hallway is quiet, no usual drunken commotion, no loud music blaring from the speakers. All the better.
Fryderyk looks out the window, at the dim light of lampposts stretching along the deserted cobbled street, and his vision is blurred from tears. His heart aches with an obscure sorrow. He looks at the piano in the corner of the room and involuntarily remembers Liszt’s words—perhaps he was right. Perhaps Fryderyk really is made of nothing but quiet sadness, which imprints itself on everything that flows from his pen.
If only Franz knew that he was partially to blame for this.
Fryderyk wants to disappear, but he cannot even fall asleep, even though it is long past midnight.
The lockscreen of his phone suddenly lights up in the dark of the room.
@franzliszt has requested to follow you
Chopin stares at the phone screen in confusion for a while, then turns it off, takes a deep breath and counts to three. But it’s true, he wasn’t hallucinating. He confirms it by switching his phone back on and rereading the notification with mixed feelings.
He accepts the request, and for some reason his hands are trembling. Liszt has a bunch of photos with friends in his profile, silly pictures from parties, Brahms smoking on the balcony in his pants only, with Delacroix lounging next to him— the latter clearly passed out, a bottle of liquor squeezed in his hand—and a whole kaleidoscope of photos with cats. There are also video clips of Liszt playing, with captions like “Handel sucks” or “My new piece will end Beethoven’s career” (to which Chopin, of course, snorts—modesty is not something the Hungarian is known for).
As Chopin shamelessly stalks Liszt’s page, a short vibration alerts him to a new message:
“still awake?”
All of this is too strange, Fryderyk thinks. Why would Liszt start a late-night conversation—especially just like that, out of nowhere? Chopin decides the best defense is a good offense.
“If you’re texting me just to be nasty again, you’d better go to bed.”
Liszt replies with a flurry of angry emojis.
“don’t you dare to block me, fryderyk.”
And a moment later the phone vibrates again.
“i’m practically ten meters away from you and I won’t hesitate to break down your door if you leave me on seen.”
Then Liszt says that, in truth, he wanted to apologize. It’s strange for Fryderyk to read this from Franz, but there’s not even a hint of irony or mockery in his words.
He blames a generally lousy week, briefly mentions the breakup with Fanny, who left Franz for some guy from the art academy. Fryderyk's heart skips a beat, though he finds it odd. Franz gets a new girlfriend every single month, and Chopin has never seen him genuinely upset over a breakup. Could it be the German girl really meant something to Liszt? From these thoughts he feels so bitter that Chopin can almost feel the taste of wormwood on the tip of his tongue.
However, Franz somehow manages to coax Fryderyk outside, to the worn stone steps at the entrance of the building. As soon as Chopin closes the heavy door behind him, he’s greeted by the cool night air. Franz is sitting on the stone steps. Fryderyk notices a litter of cigarette butts scattered across the cobblestones at Liszt’s feet.
“I was almost sure you wouldn’t come,” Franz says, reaching for another cigarette.
He makes a quick noice with the wheel of the lighter, setting on fire the cigarette tip with a slight movement of his hand. Fryderyk watches how, for a moment, Liszt’s face is illuminated by a flashing light. Liszt has a chiseled side profile: when Fryderyk looks at him, he looks longer than he should, as if Franz had stepped off a canvas that is two centuries old. He has a nose of a noble picture protruding forward, longish chestnut hair, and his eyes burn through. Under such a gaze, it wouldn’t be a pity to shatter into porcelain fragments. And that is exactly what Chopin does each time—it seems that this has become his good old habit.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Fryderyk puts on an indifferent look and sits down next to him. Franz offers him cigarette, but Chopin waves him off, “Keep that up and you'll cough up all your lungs by the time you’re thirty.”
Franz rolls his eyes at Fryderyk’s sententious speeches and laughs it off. They sit for some time in complete silence, not exactly uncomfortable, but heavy with unspoken thoughts , and then Fryderyk, unexpectedly for himself, says, “I'm sorry that everything turned out like this… With Fanny, I mean. She seemed nice.”
Fryderyk kicks the gravel with the nose of his Converse.
Liszt slowly exhales the smoke, shrugging his shoulders indifferently, “Not much of a loss.” He then looks at Fryderyk and shamelessly asks, “Well, and you? Do you have a girlfriend, or?”
Chopin hesitates before shaking his head.
“Why is that?” Liszt doesn't back down.
“And why don’t you like Handel?”
Franz’s laughter echoes the empty street.
“Well, that’s quite simple. He's just a boring court scribbler, and his music is too pretentious.” Liszt exhales smoke in Fryderyk's face, and Chopin tries not to cough. Then Liszt insists, “Will you answer me or not?”
Because the one I’m in love with is an asshole who adheres to the credo of Don Giovanni, Fryderyk wants to say, but instead he just says that he had been in love only once, in Poland, and after moving to France he never found anyone else.
“I was sure you would say something like that. God, you’re predictable.” Liszt giggles, brushing off the ashes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chopin frowns.
“Ah, because you’re such a sensitive boy, for whom any separation is a life-long tragedy. Still healing your heart wounds, afraid to fall into the same patterns.” Liszt chuckles. “Kinda touching, if you ask me.”
Fryderyk doesn’t tell Liszt that him and Maria were planning to get engaged.
“You know, Franz, you are a cynic and you wouldn’t recognize true love even if you tripped over it.” There's bitterness and irritation in Chopin’s voice, “I still don't get your motives, though. Does it really bring you that much pleasure just to tease me?”
“Don’t be so mad, Frycek. I think this is sweet.” Liszt takes another puff, for the last time, and then throws down his cigarette. He snuffs it out with the sole of his boots. After a pause, he adds, more quietly: “You seem sweet to me.”
***
Fryderyk can't trace the moment when his relationship with Liszt crosses the threshold of estrangement, and now seeing sudden messages from Franz on his phone becomes...familiar. Just as familiar, as when they sit at the piano in one of the practice rooms and play four hands. Weeks passed; at first they only rehearsed etudes for the musical composition class. They played it out, each time giving each other less and less caustic remarks, and then, at some point, when Chopin was playing something unpretentious during a break, Liszt suddenly sat down next to him and started to improvise. Fryderyk was timid at first, immediately took his hands off the keys (he even blushed!), but one glance from Franz and his soft smile were enough.
And the room filled with music again.
It seems that since that day it has become their own tradition, because Chopin more and more often found himself sitting next to Liszt, playing music.
They are very different.
Franz is not accustomed to playing neat, graceful pieces: he needs to fly swiftly until his heart stops.
That is why sometimes Liszt comments mockingly (but nevertheless with kind condescending softness), on Chopin's manner of playing, referring to excessive tenderness, or to capricious sophistication, or fleeting moods. Chopin grows used to it, ceasing to take Franz’s words seriously. Liszt himself is not burdened with pedantic caution in handling the pedal or fear of thunderous fortes.
Liszt compares Fryderyk's music to porcelain.
And every time they are alone, Franz feels as if he is holding a fragile porcelain musician in his hands. He has slender hands with graceful fingers and a waist that threatens to break at a careless touch. He is in a beautiful old-fashioned frock coat and white gloves—such a gentle, fragile pianist with sad eyes.
Liszt longs to feel the chill of the gloss under his fingers, to touch his slender frame, his graceful hands or hair, but he only looks at his porcelain musician, unable to convince himself that gazes alone are enough.
He knows for a fact, that they are not.
How intoxicating it would be to trace those thin lines, to stroke the wrists, the narrow shoulders. Franz would then have grown braver and immediately touched his porcelain cheek with his lips. And then, perhaps, his musician would have flinched. But Liszt knows that if he’s not careful, the pianist will immediately crack and split in two at the waist. The sound of breaking porcelain would last longer for Liszt than any nocturne played from under Chopin's fingers.
So, Liszt dismisses this romantic fleur, as if it’s nothing, and keens his attention on the music sheets.
***
One hour before the closing time of the conservatory, Fryderyk sits in one of the practice rooms and plays a waltz.
He does not know that Liszt is standing in the doorway, leaning his shoulder on the jamb, listening in fascination. The waltz is intimate—a single glance at the performer is enough for Franz to understand this. The minor tonality burns his heart with inexplicable longing. Liszt doesn't even scold himself for being sentimental. He just stands there, looking at the young man at the instrument and listening to his every sound.
When he notices Franz, Fryderyk shudders and smooth sounds are suddenly cut by dissonance.
“I didn't mean to scare you. I'm sorry.”
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough,” Liszt sighs, walking into the room. “The thing you played—“
“Yes, yes, I know exactly what you’re going to say. You really don't have to bother.” Chopin closes the lid of the instrument. “But I didn’t ask you to listen, no one forced you, right? You can keep your opinion to yourself. I already know everything you find odious in—”
“That's not what I'm talking about,” Franz interrupts, shaking his head. “I haven’t heard this waltz before. Is it yours?” Franz sits down on the floor, leaning his back against the wall.
“You already guessed.”
“Yes,” Liszt laughs, “I think I could distinguish your piece from a thousand of others.”
Chopin looks down, all ablushed. Silence hangs between them, and then Franz looks at Fryderyk point-blank and says:
“Very beautiful. And sorrowful.”
“It's about home. I wrote it back in Warsaw.”
Liszt nods understandingly, “You probably miss home much more than I do.”
And then Fryderyk looks at Franz with the gaze that until now he had always hidden behind a haze of indifference; the gaze of a sad porcelain pianist who stands on the mantelpiece among other elegant knick-knacks and dreams of one thing only. It seems to Franz that tears well up in Fryderyk's eyes.
“Sometimes it feels like this longing is suffocating me. And it's silly, really, I know. But I... can't do anything about it.”
When Fryderyk turns away from Franz, the latter gets up from the floor and approaches Chopin, who is sitting with his back facing Liszt.
“And it's not just about longing for Warsaw, even though sometimes It feels unbearable, it's just… You're right, you were always right, and I'm always looking for meaning where there is none. And I take everything to heart when I shouldn't. And I think too much.”
“If you were different, you wouldn’t write music like that.”
Liszt sits down next to Chopin and looks at him, Fryderyk’s head bowed down. Franz notices tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Are you talking about the very music that you just recently compared with boudoir tunes?”
Franz finds himself watching in fascination as numerous tears, that look like small pearls, roll down Fryderyk’s pale cheeks. Liszt’s own heart, for some reason, tightens painfully inside his chest.
“Shut up, Fryderyk, that’s not true,” Franz whispers angrily, and then says in an unexpectedly affectionate manner, “C’mon, come here.”
And he presses weeping Fryderyk to his chest. At first, Chopin shudders with his entire body, he even weakly tries to move away, but then gives up on any attempts to distance himself from Franz. With each quiet sob, Liszt presses him closer and closer, strokes his dark hair, his palms descending to Chopin’s trembling shoulders; he tries to whisper something comforting. With careful attentiveness, Liszt tries not to blab anything superfluous in this fit of sudden tenderness, even though it seems so appropriate right now. He probably wouldn't even notice how things that he hides even from himself, would have flown from his lips along with consolations.
Franz's embrace feels very… right. When the tears subside, Chopin sits, completely relaxed, with his head on Liszt’s chest. Franz continues to gently stroke his hair. When Fryderyk’s consciousness sobers up, he suddenly realizes the position they are in right now, and so he slowly moves away, feeling his cheeks burn with embarrassment. Liszt seems imperturbable, he only looks at Chopin intently.
Some time passes until Fryderyk decides to speak.
“In my parents’ house, for as long as I remember, there stood an old Pleyel grand piano. A gift, apparently, that stayed in our house for two whole centuries. It was a concert instrument with worn out, yellowed and bent narrow keys. Its legs were decorated with intricate carvings.” Fryderyk says this with a clouded, absent look, sliding his fingers along the polished lid of the piano, “On the music stand lay old sheet music, also yellowed with time. My sisters and I were forbidden to even go near the piano. Our parents were proud of it, like a family heirloom, and showed it off to the guests. But when I was alone, I often sat down at it and carefully touched the keys. I loved to imagine, who could have played it before, and how it made its way from Paris to Warsaw. I was about eight then. When I thought about all the things the two-hundred-year-old piano had seen, for some reason I would to cry.”
Liszt remains silent for a while, as if processing everything that Chopin had just told him.
“Everything’s crystal clear to me now.” He finally says a few moments later.
“What is clear to you?” Fryderyk speaks with some kind of weak, powerless irritation, while sniffling.
“Now it’s clear to me why you’ve got all of your semantic climaxes on the piano.”
“And you play forte where it’s supposed to be pianissimo.”
“I like to be heard,” Liszt shrugs. He turns his gaze to Fryderyk and smiles, “You can kick me if you really want to. I honor the sacred right of a composer to kick his colleague. Without it, the history of music would be unimaginable.”
“I don’t want to... kick you.” Chopin’s words sound quiet.
“What is it that you want then?”
Fryderyk looks at Liszt. Their eyes finally meet.
For you to kiss me, Chopin thinks to himself.
***
“i’ve got something to show you. come over after 7 today."
Liszt sends the message without hesitation as he goes up the stairs to the third floor. It’s already late evening, which means Fryderyk is at home: he’s not a big fan of noisy night companies. Entering his room, Franz hangs his coat on a hook, and then for some reason looks for a long time at the sheets of music laid out by the piano. Last week he wrote a nocturne. A nocturne for Chopin.
Half an hour later, Fryderyk is sitting on the windowsill in Liszt’s apartment.
Liszt carefully places his hands on the piano keys. The music is smooth, calm and full of lyricism. The melody flows like sweet molasses, enveloping everything around like translucent silk; as if this is not a nocturne at all, but a confession.
It sounds different. Doesn't sound like Liszt at all. Chopin watches him play with his eyes closed, and for some reason Fryderyk smiles faintly. When Liszt finishes playing, they sit in silence for a while, not daring to speak. There is something indescribable between them. Something that neither Liszt nor Chopin dare to say out loud.
Then comes Fryderyk’s humorous remark about how the piece was “painfully sentimental” for Franz, a timid laugh, and, again, silence.
“I named it Liebestraum.” The purity of his pronunciation is surprising, but Fryderyk suddenly remembers that Franz spoke German for the most part of his life.
“It’s beautiful.” Chopin adds quietly, “Who is it for?”
“You.”
Chopin raises his head in surprise and looks at Liszt. His face is completely serious.
He suddenly confidently approaches the windowsill, on which Chopin sits, motionless. And freezes right in front of Fryderyk's face. Fryderyk still doesn’t move, he just watches as Franz runs his thumb across his cheek, then a little higher, above his eyebrow, and strokes the bridge of his nose. Fryderyk is afraid to even breathe. He is afraid of Liszt, he is afraid of Liszt he will do to Chopin in any case. After all, Fryderyk had given up a long time ago. Chopin closes his eyes, and from Franz’s touch his heart beats so hard in his chest that his body even slightly sways from side to side.
Franz puts his hand on Fryderyk’s waist, drawing him closer, face to face; so close that Fryderyk hears Liszt slowly breathing. Chopin does not open his eyes.
“Look at me, please.”
“Franz...” exhales Fryderyk in a half-whisper. He climbs down from the windowsill, he wants to wriggle out and run away, but Liszt makes him raise his head again, holding his chin.
Then Franz slowly leans in, kissing Fryderyk for the first time.
The kiss comes out at first restrained and very tender: Liszt is still careful with his porcelain pianist. Fryderyk holds his breath in trepidation.
Driven by an incomprehensible feeling, Chopin tries to escape, but Liszt manages to take him by the hand and press him back to him.
“This can’t go on any longer, Fryderyk.” He whispers in Fryderyk’s ear, and his breath burns Chopin’s skin. Franz touches Fryderyk's temple with his lips. Then he carefully moves Chopin's head away, his chin sliding along his cheek, his lips touching his neck.
Chopin feels as if there’s a hot lump somewhere in his stomach. Tears are welling up in his eyes. He cannot, and does not want to push Franz away. Liszt knows it. He also knows that every kiss sends shivers down Fryderyk’s spine. Chopin skips heartbeats as he inhales. Franz turns Fryderyk towards him, looks into his eyes for a couple of moments, and then pounces with a kiss, not at all as meek as recently. Fryderyk is trembling in Franz’s hands, and so Liszt soothingly strokes his head, his shoulders—and he kisses, kisses, kisses him. When his breathing subsides, Chopin raises his teary eyes to Liszt and, not believing himself, says:
“I can’t…” Fryderyk’s voice trembles. It looked like he could break down and sob out loud in any second. “I know that you are driven only by the novelty of these feelings. When you get bored of them, and I know that it will happen soon, you will leave me, and... Franz, I don’t want to be yet another youthful experiment for you. Not when I’ve been in love with you for a fucking eternity.”
Fryderyk runs away, slamming the door behind him.
Franz still stands there, with an abyss instead of a heart and the ringing of broken porcelain in his ears.
***
Chopin avoids Liszt at the conservatory.
And Liszt pretends that he doesn’t care.
It was as if nothing had happened. As if everything is the same as before. They walk past each other again in the hallway, just like total strangers. Liszt again starts getting drunk every Friday instead of talking to Chopin until late night, and he goes back to flirting with anything in a skirt, again.
As he sits on the back patio with Robert and Clara, Chopin sometimes furtively watches Liszt courting girls, and when their eyes meet—his and Liszt’s—Fryderyk is always the first to look away.
They again become complete strangers, who truly know each other by heart this time.
And this simple fact makes it more painful.
The spring break begins, and the weather gets annoyingly worse. Leaving his apartment in the late evenings, Chopin steps on wet paving stones that glisten under the light of lampposts. It’s raining more than ever. All of Fryderk’s friends leave Paris for two weeks or so, and it becomes unusually quiet in Liszt’s apartment as well. No music, no sounds, absolutely nothing. Perhaps, it's for the better.
Chopin convinces himself that he did the right thing. He convinces himself that he will soon feel better. He has to feel better.
The coolness of the evening sobers him up. Once again he is annoyed to discover that his supply of wine has come to an end, and with reluctance, Chopin wraps himself in his woolen scarf, locking the door to his apartment.
It’s about eight o’clock, and it’s already dark outside; the lampposts lit up, throwing a tired yellow light onto the streets, wet after the rain.
Fryderyk listens to a quiet serenade from Schwanengesang by Schubert, arranged for piano, in his headphones. He goes down the stairs when the melody stops, and the familiar motif of a nocturne is immediately heard. That same nocturne that Liszt played for him. Franz uploaded it to Spotify a couple of days ago.
Chopin wants to put his heart in a glass jar, seal it in alcohol and hide it somewhere far away so that it doesn’t torment him anymore.
“This is for you.”
At first, Fryderyk hears his voice only. He raises his eyes and recognizes a familiar image in front of him: his hair is slightly scattered, a barely noticeable blush on his cheekbones. He is freezing. Only then does Chopin notice the outstretched pot. A pot of violets.
His lower lip trembles, no words come to his mind, so Fryderyk just slowly takes the pot in his hands and says quietly, almost inaudibly:
“Thank you, but you didn’t have to.”
“I know you love them. I always see violets in your living room. And you told me once that their smell reminds you of home.”
Chopin’s headphone wires lie in the folds of his huge fluffy scarf, but Liszt still hears his own melody coming from them, and he cannot help but smile sadly.
“Listen, I need to go, I...” Fryderyk mumbles, but Liszt grabs the Pole by the hand and pulls him closer.
“I won't let you go, not until we talk. Fryderyk, this is pure idiocy.”
“Franz,” Chopin cries, “You won't tell me anything new. It will be better for me if everything stays the way it already is now,” Fryderyk hesitates before adding, “Please, don't do this to me. I can't… I won’t endure this.”
Chopin’s voice trembles again. Liszt doesn't know whether raindrops or tears are rolling down Fryderyk’ cheeks.
He loosens his grip for a moment, and with eyes closed just slowly exhales, thinking that Chopin will run away this right second. But Fryderyk, for some reason, remains where he is. Liszt doesn’t know what to say, as he hears quiet sobs, mixed with sniffing. It hurts his heart, it hurts much more than he would like, and Franz simply cannot bear this anymore.
“Listen to me,” he whispers with his eyes closed. It only takes a tiny bit of bravery, right? Liszt takes Chopin’s hands in his, opens his eyes, and there he is — Fryderyk, wet from the rain, looking Franz right in the eyes. And so Franz begins, “First of all, I hate Handel, because I am sick of this ponderous performance of his every single piece. He’s also wearing a terribly stupid wig in every portrait that I’ve seen so far, it looks ridiculous, and I think that is a completely valid reason to loudly declare that Handel sucks.” Liszt takes a breath, “But here’s the thing, Fryderyk. I love your nocturnes, even if they're sentimental and sugary, and I was lying when I said that it was a «funeral procession», because it's not! I listen to literally everything you post online, because you are a brilliant composer,” Chopin seems to want to say something, but Liszt shushes him angrily, “No, I haven’t finished! I love your nocturnes, even though Brahms says that they are too vanilla, and that they’re only written to reduce one to tears. But I don't care, I still listen to them late at nights because you touch and move everything in me with your music. I truly, deeply love everything you write, I love this melancholic doom of yours that I used to make fun of; in fact, I was only making fun of it because I loved it and was too scared to admit it! I love your mazurkas, especially because it seems to me that I am the only one who notices how much you miss home. I love this aching sadness in your stupid waltzes, and all of your stories about childhood, and you... I love you, too.”
Chopin silently looks at Liszt, who is all flushed and is breathing heavily, towering over Fryderyk. And Fryderyk stands with this absurdly huge scarf, in which he is almost drowning, and with a pot of violets in his hands.
They just stand there in silence for a while.
“I still like Handel, though.”
“Idiot.”
“You know, Franz,” Fryderyk looks at the raindrops falling down in the light of the lampposts, “If you call my waltzes stupid again, I might just drown you in the Seine.”
Franz laughs, and Fryderyk also laughs quietly with him. They must look real silly right now.
In the pouring rain, Liszt leans down and kisses Chopin again. Fryderyk kisses him back, clutching a pot of violets in his hands.