Batumi

I found a beautiful but antiquated and poor quality grand piano from St Petersburg in the lobby of the Aura Boutique Hotel. The keys stuck slightly and a broken string along the soundboard inside gave some of the wildly out-of-tune notes a sitar-like buzz.

I sat down and explored it, finding the lower register slightly more coherent in key, and started playing a slow but not incoherent melody of chords based around an A minor and a G. It echoed against the marble floor and concrete walls and up the long stairwell.

An old woman in a long white dress, with brash and sloppy make-up and unruly white hair walked up and stood to my left, momentarily watching me play. Aware of her eyes, I slowly stopped and turned to her. I anticipated her comments. She said something in Georgian. It was unintelligible to me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, lightly patting my own chest to demonstrate I was regretful, “english only”. Without pause, the woman, using words that somehow sounded like she looked, said, “what are you playing” in perfect accented english. The question was delivered like a statement, sinking at the end so as to give it a lightly disgusted quality and leaving an ambiguity in the air around the intent of her intervention.

“Oh,” I replied, “nothing. I’m just making it up. I’m playing whatever is coming out of my head.”

The woman stood for a moment, and I imagined her tracing the great Russian and Soviet classical composers in her memory, remnants of cigarette smoke and contempt lingering in her dress.

“Ah,” she croaked, pausing mid-grimace. “It is not interesting then.”

No longer deserving of her attention, she turned and walked away before I could respond.