Violin

Chapter 19

I was always quiet right before the concert. So no one noticed. No one said a word. There was so much kindness and richness here-old dressing rooms, baths of handsome Art Deco tile, murals and names to be explained-the others were gently borne away.

A stillness came down on me. In the great impossible palace of marble, I sat with the violin. I waited. I heard the great theater begin to fill. Soft thunder on the stairs.

The rising hum of voices.

There came the thump of my vain and eager heart-to play.

And what will you do here? What can you do, I thought. And then again there came that thought, that image that perhaps I could lock in my mind, lock as one locks upon a Mystery of the Rosary, to fight him off -The Crowning with Thorns-and nothing he could do could weaken me, but what was this terrible, aching love for him, this terrible sorrow, this pain for him that was as deep and bad as any pain for Lev or Karl, or any of them?

I lay my head back in the velvet chair, let my neck roll on the wooden frame, held the violin in its sack, gestured No to water and coffee and things to eat.

The auditorium was now filled, said Lucrece. "We have received many donations."

"And you'll receive more," I said. "It is a magnificent place; it must never be allowed to fa,l into decay. Not this, not this creation."

On and on Glenn and Roz talked, in their soft muted compatible voices about the mingling of the tropical color and the Baroque scale, the fleeting sophisticated European nymphs combined with a forbidden indulgence in the range of stones and patterns and floors of parquet.

"I love your. . . velvet clothes, what you wear," said kind Lucrece, "this is pretty velvet that you wear, this poncho and skirt, Miss Becker."

I nodded and whispered thanks.

It was time now to walk across the immense dark shadowy rear of the stage. It was time to hear our feet clopping on the boards and look up, up, into the ropes and pulleys, the curtains high above, the ramps, and the men peering down, and children, yes, even children up there, as if they had been sneaked into the place, and to the right and left the awesome wings full of great operatic scenery. Painted columns. All that one could see, for real and true in stone, painted again.

And so the sea is green when the wave curls, and the balustrade of marble looks like the green sea, and there is painted the green balustrade.

I peered through the curtain.

The first floor was filled, each red velvet armchair held its eager occupant.Programs... mere notes on how no one knew what I would play or how or just when I would stop and all that... fluttered in the air, and jewels caught the light of the chandelier, and three great balconies rose one atop the other, each overflowing with figures struggling to their seats.

There were those in formal black, and gay gowns, and others high up in workinan's clothes.

In the boxes to the left and right of the stage sat the officials to whom I had been presented, never remembering a single name, never having anymore to remember, never expected to do more than what I meant to do, and what I alone could do: Play the music. Play it for one hour.

Give them that, and then into the mezzanine they'll pour, talking about the "savant sophisticate," as I had come to be known, or the American Naif, or the dumpy woman who looked too much like a prematurely aged child in flaring velvet, scratching at the strings as if she fought with the music she played.

No hint before of a theme. No hint of a direction. Only that thought in my mind, a thought begun somewhere else in music.

And the admission in my secret self that it was scattered within me, the Rosary Beads of my life, the splinters of death and guilt and anger and rage; it was in broken glass I lay down each night, and waked with cut hands, and these months of music making had been a dreamlike respite that no human being could ever expect to last, that no human being had any right to expect of Heaven.

Fate, fortune, fame, destiny.

From behind the edge of the huge stage curtain, I stared at the faces in the first row.

"And those velvet shoes, those pointed shoes, don't they hurt?" asked Lucrece.

"It's a hell of a time to mention that," said Martin.

"No, it's only an hour," I said.

The roar of the house swallowed our voices.

"Give them forty-five minutes," said Martin, "and they'll be delighted. All the money is going to the foundation for this place."

"Boy, Triana," said easygoing Glenn, "you sure do get a lot of advice."

"Tell me about it, brother," I laughed softly.

Martin hadn't heard. It was all right. Katrinka was always shaking at this moment.

Roz had settled back in the wings, straddling a chair like a cowboy, with the back in front of her, her legs spread comfortably in her black pants, her arms folded on the back of the chair, so she could watch. The family receded into the shadows.

It seemed a calmness had settled over the technicians.

I felt the cooling driven by the engines far below.

Such beautiful faces, such beautiful people, ranging from the fairest to the darkest, with configurations of features never ever seen by me anywhere before, and so many of the young, the very young, like the ones who had come with the roses.

Suddenly, asking permission of no one, giving no warning, having no orchestra below me to alert, having no one to find me now but the light man with his spot high above, I walked out to the center of the stage.

My shoes made a hollow sound on the dusty boards.

Slowly, I walked, giving the spot time to descend and fall on me.

I walked to the very lip and looked down at all the faces ranged before me.

I heard the quiet fall over the house as if the noise had been urgently dragged away.

In coughs, in final whispers, all sound finally died.

I turned and lifted the violin.

With a shock, I realized I wasn't on the stage at all, but in the tunnel. I could smell it, feel it, see it. The bars were right there.

This would be the great struggle. I bowed my head against what I knew was the violin, no matter what the spell that kept it from my eyes, no matter what the charms that drew me to that filthy tunnel and its dank water.

I lifted the bow that I knew had to be in my hand.

Ghost things? The playthings of a spirit? How do you know?

I began a great downward stroke, falling into what had become for me the Russian mode, by far the sweetest and the one which made the most room for sadness.

Tonight it would have to enlarge and carry the dark tide, and I heard the notes clear, shining, falling like coins in the dark.

But I saw the tunnel.

A child was walking towards me through the water, a child in a country dancing dress with a bald head.

"You are doomed, Stefan." I didn't move my lips.

"I play for you, my beautiful daughter."

"Mommie, help me."

"I play for us, Lily."

She stood at the gate, she pressed her small face to the rusted iron pickets and clutched them with her small chubby fingers. Her lip jutted. "Mommie!" she cried in heartbreak. She clabbered as babies and young children do. "Mommie, without him I would have never found you! Mommie, I need you!"

Evil, evil spirit. The music descended into protest and riot. Let it go, let the anger go.

It's a lie and you know it, you idiot spirit, it's not my Lily.

"Mommie, he brought me to you! Mom, he found me. Mom, don't do this to me, Mamma!

"Mamma! Mamma!"

The music rushed forward, though I stared wide eyed at a gate I knew was not there, at a figure I knew was not there, so heartbreakingly perfect I felt my breath cease.

I made myself breathe. I made the breath come with the stroke of the bow. Play, yes, for you, that you would be there, yes, that you could come back, yes, that we could turn the pages, that it would be undone.

Karl appeared. He walked softly towards her. He laid his hands on Lily's shoulders. My Karl. Already thin with disease.

"Triana," he said in a hoarse whisper. His throat had already been hurt by the oxygen tubes he so hated, and finally came to refuse. "Triana, how can you be so heartless? I can wander, I'm a man, I was dying when we met, but this is your daughter."

You're not there! You are not, but this music is real. I hear it, and it seemed I had never risen to such a height, charging the mountain as if it were Corcovado and looking up through the clouds.

But still I saw them.

And now my father stood beside Karl. "Honey, give it up," he said. "You can't do it. This is all evil, it's sinful, it's wrong. Triana, give it up. Give it up. Give it up!"

"Mommie." My child grimaced in pain. The country dress was the last dress I had ever ironed for her, for the coffin. My Father had said they will-No . . . the clouds come now across the face of Christ and it matters not if He is the Incarnate Word or a statue made lovingly of stone, it matters not, what matters is the stance-the outstretched arms, for nails, or to enfold, I will not-In astonishment, I saw my Mother. I slowed the pace; was I pleading with them, was I talking to them, was I believing in them, and giving in to them?

She came to the iron gate, her dark hair pulled back the way I loved it, her mouth touched with the barest lipstick just as if she were real. But there was a lurid hatred in her eyes. Hate.

"You're selfish, you're vicious, you're hateful!" she said. "You think you fooled me? You think I don't remember? I came that night, crying, frightened, and you, scared, clung to my husband in the dark and he told me to go away, and you heard me crying.

You think even a Mother can forgive that?"

Suddenly a startled sobbing broke from Lily. She turned and raised her fists.

"Don't you hurt my Mamma!"

Oh, God. I tried to close my eyes, but Stefan stood right there before me with his hands on the violin.

He couldn't move it, or jog it, or make one note fall short of the mark, and on and on I played, of this chaos, this hideousness, this...

This truth, say it. Say it. It's common sins, that's all, no one ever said you bashed them with a weapon, you were no criminal hunted in dark streets, no wanderer among the dead. It's common sins, and that's what you are, common, common and dirty and small and without this talent you stole from me, you bitch, you whore, give it back.

Lily sobbed. She rushed up to him and beat on him. She pulled on his arm. "Stop it, you leave my Mommie alone. Mommie." She threw up her arms.

At last I stared straight into her eyes, I stared straight into her eyes and I played of her eyes and I played, regardless of what she said, and I heard their voices and saw them moving, and then I lifted my gaze. I had no sense of time, only a sense of the music shifting.

I saw not the theater I wanted so desperately to see. I saw not the party of ghosts he so desperately presented before me; I looked up and beyond and I envisioned the tropical forest in its celestial rain, I saw the drowsing trees, I saw the old hotel, I saw it, and played of it, and played of branches reaching the clouds, and of Christ, his arms outstretched, and of the arcades of the old hotel, the windows with their yellow shutters stained by rain and rain and rain.

I played of this, and then of the sea, oh, yes, the sea, no less wondrous, this mounting, tossing, glossy, impossible sea with its phantom dancers.

"That's what you are! Oh, if only you were real."

"Mommeeee!" She screamed. She screamed as if someone was hurting her unbearably.

"Triana, for the love of God!" said my Father.

"Triana," said Karl. "God forgive you."

She screamed again. I couldn't sustain it, this melody of the sea, this summoning of the triumphant waves, and now it melted again into anger and loss and rage; oh, Faye, where are you, how could you leave; oh, God, Dad, you left us alone with Mother, but I will not... I will not... Mamma...

Lily screamed again!

I would crack.

The music surged.

The image. There had been some thought, some simple half-formed thought, some little thought, and it came to me now, came to me with an ugly vision of the glittering blood on the white napkin lying by the blazing heater, the menstrual blood, the blood swarming with ants, and then the gash in Roz's head when I smashed the door, after the Rosary broke, and the blood they drew over and over and over from Dad and Karl and Lily, Lily crying, Katrinka crying, the blood from Mother's head when she fell, the blood, the blood on the filthy napkins and on the mattresses when she wore nothing at all and bled and bled without cease.

And it was this.

You can't deny the wrongs. You can't deny the blood that's on your hands, or on your conscience! You can't deny that life is full of blood, pain is blood, wrong is blood.

But there is blood and there is blood.

Only some blood comes from the wounds we inflict on ourselves and on one another. That blood flows bright and accusing, and threatens to take with it the very life of the wounded one, that blood-and how it glistens, so celebrated, that sacred blood, that blood that was Our Lord's Blood, the Blood of the Martyrs, the blood on Roz's face, and the blood on my hands, the blood of wrongs.

But there is another blood.

There is a blood that flows from a woman's womb. And it is not the signal of death, but only of a great and fertile fount-a river of blood which can, when it would, form whole human beings out of its substance, it is a living blood, an innocent blood, and that was all it was on the napkin there, beneath the swarm of ants, in squalor and dust, just that blood, flowing and flowing, as if from a woman letting loose the dark secret strength in her to make children, letting loose the powerful fluid that belongs to her and her alone.

And it was this blood now with which I bled. Not the blood of the wounds he inflicted on me, not the blood of his blows and his kicks, not the blood of his scratching fingers as he tried to get the violin.

It was this blood of which I sang, letting my music be this blood, flow like this blood; it was this blood that I pictured in the chalice raised at the Consecration of the Mass, the wholesome sweet and female blood, this innocent blood that could in the right season form a receptacle for a soul, the blood inside of us, the blood that makes, the blood that creates, the blood that ebbs and flows, without sacrifice or mutilation, without loss or ruin.

I heard it now, my own song. I heard it, and it seemed the light around me had swelled impossibly. I didn't want such bright light and yet it was so lovely, this light that rose up to the beams I knew to be above.

And, opening my eyes, I saw not only the great hall filled with rows and rows of faces, but I saw Stefan, and the light was directly behind him, and yet he reached out at me.

"Stefan, turn!" I said. "Stefan, look! Stefan!"

He did turn. There was a figure in the light, a short stubby figure, beckoning to Stefan in great impatience, Come. I gave the music one last thrust.

Stefan, go! You are the lost child! Stefan!

I could play no more.

Stefan glared at me. He cursed at me. He made his hands into fists. Yet his face changed. It underwent some complete and seemingly unconscious transformation. He gazed at me with wide and frightened eyes.

The light behind him faded as he drew close, a dark shadow, fading even as he hovered over me, a gloom no more substantial than the shadows in the wings.

The music was ended.

I saw the audience rise en masse. Another victory. How so, God? How so?

Three tiers and they reward this din that is my only tongue.

The hall roared with applause.

Another victory.

There was no sight or sound of those contrived ghosts.

Someone had come to take me from the stage. I stared out into the faces, nodding; do not disappoint, sweep the hall with your eyes, all the way to the right and to the left, look up at the topmost balconies and then at the boxes, don't raise your arms in vanity, merely bow, and bow, and murmur thanks and they will know, thanks from my bloody soul.

In one last dim flash I saw him, close to me, confused, bent, near invisible, fading.

A wretched miserable thing. But what was this bewilderment? This strange wonder in his eyes. He was gone.

I was held by others once again, oh, lucky, lucky girl, to have such kind and helping hands. 0 Fate, fortune, fame, and destiny.

Stefan, you coull have gone into the light. Stefan, you should have gone!

Backstage, I cried and cried.

No one thought it the slightest bit unusual. The cameras flashed, the reporters wrote. I knew no doubt within my heart of peace for those I'd lost-except for Faye . . .

and Stefan.