Here in this room, on February 6th, 1935, Catherine de Sélys gave a passionate performance of Maurice Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand. It was the first time she had played this piece and the hearty applause that closed the audition touched her innermost being.
But just as she got up to take her bow, she noticed that her dress was covered with moist fingerprints exactly where her right hand had been lying. She could not understand where these marks could have come from because her hands never perspired even when she was deeply moved and what's more, her right hand had lain without moving --like a dead hand-- inert during the entire concerto. A closer look revealed that these were exactly the same fingerprints that had appeared on her apron when, in 1916, she had nursed the dying victims of Verdun who had clutched on to her so desperately.
Dumbfounded, she stumbled to the front of the stage and, seeing all those arms stretched out towards her, beseeching her to play an encore as if their lives depended on it, she felt brutally thrust back to Verdun and lost consciousness.
Her admirers rushed up and stretched her out on the chairs on which they had been sitting. Catherine remained motionless but her right hand began to quiver. Suddenly, at the height of its tremor, the hand began to move over Catherine's still unconscious body and caress it more and more indecently. Shocked by such obscenity, one man attempted to stop her arm from moving but it catapulted him across the room. This was no feeble woman's arm, but the arm of a whole battalion, an arm that was at last fulfilling the impossible desire that death had broken short. As the rebellious hand's caresses became more and more unbearable, the exasperated audience jumped on it and succeeded in holding it down.
When Catherine came to her senses, she realized that her adoring admirers had so brutalized her arm that she would never be able to use it again. At the same time, she realized that if she wanted to pursue her heart's desire and continue playing the piano, that she would be condemned to forever playing the only concerto her new condition allowed.