A Splendid Gift (6 page)

Her father took out his violin and gave her an A note so she could tune the instrument.

She craned her ear to her string and plucked. She closed her eyes and checked the note again. Only when she had tuned the cello to precision did Elodie begin to play.

***

Over the next several months, Elodie’s playing became even more inspired with her new cello. She played with such intensity, such passion, that the mere trill of her vibrato caused her listeners to sense that they were in the company of a prodigy. Now nearly seventeen, her limbs had lengthened and her body had transformed into a woman, both lean and strong. Her father often invited his friends from the Liceo Musicale to listen to his daughter play, hoping to prepare her for larger audiences in the future.

She had both an acoustical and physically charming presence. When her arms drew the bow across the bridge of her cello and then pulled backward to sustain a single, long note, Elodie looked like a dancer. Professor Moretti remarked one evening that she resembled a swan, one capable of gliding across even the most difficult channel of music.

Every afternoon after school, Elodie opened up the case and pulled out her cello. “It doesn’t sing until it’s in your hands,” her mother said one day, as Elodie began to play. She watched as her daughter rested her temple against the cello’s long, brown neck. The amber waves of the instrument’s varnish rippled in the sunlight, and the long shadow of the instrument’s body stretched across the apartment’s floor.

Orsina waited all day to hear her daughter play. It was like a thirst inside her. Her daughter’s music brought beauty into her life. She still marveled that the child she created from her own womb had such a capacity to awaken things inside her. She had listened patiently as the girl first learned her scales, then graduated to arpeggios and more difficult études. Now she was playing full sonatas and concerti. Her daughter was on the cusp of adulthood, and Elodie’s playing became more nuanced and a certain sensuality infused her music. Her fingers now moved with confidence, a nimble precision as they danced up and down the strings. Her bow alternated from long, ribbonlike strokes to gentle caresses.

Elodie grew her hair past her shoulders, and occasionally, when she was fully engaged in the drama of her playing, her hairpins would come undone and her face would become hidden in a curtain of hair. But when her hair was pinned high and in place, she was a striking presence. She had her mother’s china-white skin and Venetian green eyes. And when she performed, she appeared celestial.

***

“She is not only a gifted player,” her father told her mother. “She also has a rarer gift in that she can hold the notes inside her head.”

Her mother didn’t seem to understand at first. “What do you mean, Pietro?”

“What I mean is that she has an extraordinary ability to memorize the musical score.” He shook his head. “She doesn’t get that from me, Orsina.”

Elodie’s memory was something her mother had noticed quite early on. The girl rarely ever needed to write anything down. She could also remember with great clarity what she had been wearing on a particular day, even several years after. She could read a book once and remember with ease its entire content without having to refer back to a single page.

“It’s the Venetian in her,” Orsina said. She knew that her daughter’s memory came from her bloodline. Venetians had spent centuries navigating a floating city of mazes. One needed to remember pathways, landmarks, or even anecdotes of particular places in order to find one’s way.

Orsina couldn’t remember things that were written down like Elodie but she did have a strong visual memory, which she knew she had passed to her daughter. When the child was just four, she had directed Orsina home, telling her to turn left at the grocer, right at the park, and straight on the road with the gelato store in the front. She had smiled, knowing her daughter gave directions like her own mother had, and hers before her.

But Elodie’s memory was even more astonishing than a typical Venetian’s, and Orsina was happy that it would serve her daughter well in her music.

“This will set her apart from her peers,” Pietro told his wife. “She’ll be the one the professors want for their string quartets or for piano duets. It looks very impressive not to need to have the music in front of you when performing.”

***

From the time she is ten years old, Elodie attends classes after school at Verona’s Liceo Musicale
,
on the corner of Via Roma and Via Manin. By eighteen, however, she studies there full-time. Her lithe frame carries her cello case to the school’s cloistered walls. Everything around her casts an impression. The blue-gray plaster walls, the stark practice rooms. The smell of dry leaves meeting moist air.

Her memory is like soft, red clay. A face on the street. The pattern of a dress. All that she encounters remains fixed inside her mind, like a web of permanent fingerprints.

She plays Vivaldi, Albinoni, Beethoven, Bach, and Dvořák, the music flowing through her, her body soaking up each note. Her body is just another part of her instrument. Her legs are strong like a colt’s; her lean arms have the quiet strength of a dancer.

When she plays, she closes her eyes. She hears the fire. She senses the water. Her bow is like lightning. Striking. Flashing. Touching down sometimes for just an instant, and other times moving back and forth like a saw. She does not play with any sense of fear.

Outside, the world is blackening with the encroaching war. She senses it like a shadow as soon as she leaves the classrooms at the Liceo or her home. The women in line for food at the grocery store, their hands clutching ration cards; the striking factory workers protesting on the streets. The black, billowing shirts of the Fascist police on their motorcycles. The fear that doesn’t hang in a single note, but rather an intricate orchestration that is impossible for Elodie to decipher.

She is chosen to play in an advanced string quartet with three other students. Lena, a violist, is chosen as well. The majority of girls attending the Liceo Musicale play the piano or the flute. But Elodie and Lena are among the few girls who play the strings.

The two girls are opposites. Elodie, with her dark black hair, her sinewy body, and her green eyes. Her friend Lena looks more German. Her body is soft and curved. Her hair blonde, her eyes blue and round. There is a voluptuousness to the way she plays her viola as well.

They quickly become friends, and learn to complement each other’s playing. Lena laughs more easily and takes Elodie to the cafés to have espresso after class. She does not have Elodie’s memory, though. Lena is like the two boys in the quartet as she needs to read the musical score. But on several occasions, her beauty is responsible for distracting their classmates.

“Franco was trying to look down your blouse today in rehearsal,” Elodie teases. “It’s a small marvel he didn’t lose his place. . . .”

“He’s an imbecile.” Lena snorts. “He wouldn’t be able to open my bra even if he had three hands.”

Elodie is amazed by her friend’s quick tongue. It’s such a contrast to Lena’s angelic looks and the mask of demureness she wears through the halls.

Lena is critical, too, of Mussolini’s alliance with the Germans. “Those swine,” she calls the Germans. “The lowest from the gutter. You just wait and see . . . if we’re not vigilant, we’ll be like Czechoslovakia and they’ll be steamrolling in here and ruling our country.”

Elodie can feel the weight of eyes on them as her friend blurts out her feelings.

“You shouldn’t speak so loudly. . . .” she whispers. “You’ll get us dragged into the police station with talk like that.”

“What are you afraid of? The police don’t see us as a threat. You’re just a girl with a cello on the street. They’re too stupid to even notice us.”

Elodie looks around. What Lena said is true. The piazza is lined with women pushing baby strollers and a few men walking toward the post office. They are just two young girls carrying instruments, and easily blended into the scenery. No one takes notice of them at all.

Alyson Richman
is the author of
The Garden of Letters
,
The Lost Wife
,
The Last Van
Gogh
and
The Mask Carver’s Son
. She lives in Long Island with her husband and two children. Visit her online at alysonrichman.com, facebook.com/thelostwife, and twitter.com/alysonrichman.

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