The House of Silence (21 page)

And where is the Stainer, who's taken it? I look around me,
the audience has left, and there, in a corner, some members of the orchestra are laughing. Maybe they're the ones who switched the instruments. But it was an exact copy made in Barcelona, with premeditation. It was the Stainer but not, because you were fooled until you started to play it. When I picked it up from the chair where I'd put it down, I didn't notice any difference. And yet it was there where the change took place, where someone switched the silk purse for the sow's ear when I went out to get some fresh air and see the rain. This was done by someone who knows my habits. Yes, but who? It couldn't have been Teresa or Mark. Even though Mark has left me and as much as I hate Teresa, I don't think it was either of them. But if it wasn't them, then who was it? I can't think of anyone else, unless someone I don't know has followed me in order to steal my violin, and studied my moments, attending concert after concert for some time. Some dealer in antiques, and by now they must have sold the Stainer to someone for a king's ransom.

“Don't you think you should bundle up more, Anna?”

The voice came out of nowhere and gave me a start. I certainly wasn't expecting to turn and see Mama. She's even older, she's shrunken, she's just a slip of a thing with a scarf, hat, and coat. Suddenly, I have a suspicion and I just blurt it out, before even greeting her.

“Did you take my Stainer?”

She starts to laugh. “No, no. What could I do with a violin, or even the money I might get for it?”

Then she stops laughing and hesitates briefly before saying, “But I did hear that you weren't playing with your violin. I noticed
a difference and I thought that something was wrong—they've stolen your Stainer, I see now.”

I am silent. Of course, Mama noticed it too because, according to what she told me that day, even though we haven't talked since then, she's been coming to all my concerts. What devotion. Then she slowly added, “I came to talk to you because I see that you're having problems—”

“Don't tell me! Now you've come to help me solve them—do you know what's been my main problem since I was fourteen years old?”

I lashed out at her like that, I couldn't help myself. And now I see that she's crying. She covers herself with her scarf, but tears flow from her eyes, tears that gleam under the Berlin streetlights. I look at her carefully, and suddenly, I realize that she is no longer Mama, just an old lady crying because her conscience is so burdened that she can hardly bear it.

“Goodbye, I'm going to get my things.” I say, just to say something. In fact, I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do.

And I turn around and start to walk. And then from behind me I hear: “Do you want me to wait for you?”

I stop. Something changes inside me, I don't know exactly what, but it is something that, all of sudden, disrupts the course of my life. I touch my belly, where there is a being I'll have to learn to understand. And I will have to do what Mama never did for me. But maybe I won't be so alone if—

“Anna—”

She has come to stand before me. I won't hug her, I can't. But I just discovered that there is a moment in life when all we have
left is what's planted in front of us, and then we have to choose. Looking for the Indies and finding America. Mama is no longer Mama, she is an old woman who's emerged from the dark past, a woman who has dried her eyes and only has one treacherous tear slipping down her face. And when it lands on her scarf, it ceases to exist. And that happens just as I realize that in that tear is my soul, the soul I've been searching for over so many years.

As if we were coworkers who saw each other every day, I say, in a perfectly neutral tone, before entering the theater, “Please, wait for me—I'll be right out.”

“Good morning, Maria, dear . . . Can you hear me? Good morning—”

Good morning, Mr. Karl. And
gut'n Tag, Herr
Beethoven. You're both here together, oh, how wonderful, Mr. Karl, don't look at me like that, you're making me blush. What lovely colored clouds, eh, they appear and disappear, they're like cotton balls. Like those colorful cotton balls used by one of the ladies I worked for before I came to live with you. And I had never seen them before, those were other times, and I thought I was having visions when, as I cleaned her bathroom, I found those soft little balls that were so different from the ones I was used to. They were so pretty . . . You, of course, never had any of those things. When I bought cotton balls for you, I bought the regular white ones, because I thought that if I bought them in colors you would ask me why I had, or you wouldn't recognize them as cotton balls. Because, you have to admit, Mr. Karl, for you it was always all about the music, little else. Well, okay, a few other things, that's true, and the big surprise came
when I read your letter, Mr. Karl, my heart skipped a beat and, you know what, I didn't know how to react until they told me that you were dead. Then, of course, I didn't need to think it over any more, I didn't need the fifteen days you gave me to make a decision that I had already made anyway, because there are some decisions, Mr. Karl, that you don't make, decisions that you carry already etched on your heart, and no matter how hard you try to make another, there's no way around it.

And then, so many tears. I couldn't play the violin for a long time, you know, probably a year had already passed. At first I did try, when I still had the Stainer, when I still lived in your house, but I cried so, so much that I soon gave up. Later, in my new home, I tried again, I dusted it off and tried to play that song, but that didn't last long, soon I gave up trying to overcome the impossible to overcome. And I put the instrument down, next to Beethoven, they kept each other company and both got covered in dust. Every day I would stick my head into what had become a storage room, thinking today will be the day I can do it, and I tried to screw up my courage, and nothing came of it, and I would just shut the door again. And, when I went back there a year later, Beethoven, who was gray, had turned brown, and the violin case, which was dark brown, was then whitish.

“Maria, how are you? Don't move, just relax, I've taken care of everything, don't worry. Don't worry about a thing, dear . . . don't worry.”

If the nurse says so, then everything is prepared and I won't worry anymore. I never would have thought I could do what I did. But there was no other way. Don't come back, Mr. Mark told me,
because my wife would rather that . . . Mr. Mark couldn't get the words out because he was just making up an excuse to justify the fact that Mrs. Anna didn't want me around. Don't worry, I won't come back, I said, cutting off his stupid sentence that had gotten stuck on the way out of his mouth. He bit his lip and then he said, I'm sorry. Keep the keys, he said, as if he were doing me some big favor, adding, you never know. It was sad, he didn't know how to fix the situation, he didn't know what to do to avoid dumping me like that, like an old rag, without the possibility of returning to that house, to the apartment, as he called it. Now that was an apartment; it made mine look like a rabbit hole, because there was no comparison, his looked like a palace. Even though Mr. Mark had known hardship, it seems that living well was easy to get used to.

But what happened with Mark was later, I had already dusted off Beethoven in my little room in my little apartment, and gone back to playing the peasant girl and the shepherd, years before. I get the dates mixed up, I no longer know what happened when, and Mr. Karl, I get all the women that you entertained on the sofa mixed up, too. Those were other times, and when there were women on active duty, you didn't pay me any mind, and you forgot to teach me classes. Later, everything changed, but that was how it was at first, you remember, right? Don't try to change the subject, I'm not trying to admonish you for it, that's not it, but that's how it was, Mr. Karl, admit it. What's that? You didn't see me? I know you didn't see me, but don't worry, I always knew somehow, always. And I don't know if you saw me, but you seemed mad at me and you didn't say anything and you left, and, ay, I know, you already explained that in your letter. I know, Mr. Karl, when I read it, I
started trembling all over. I was trembling all over, yes, I was. And I cried too, Mr. Karl, but not in sadness like when you died. Then there weren't these colorful clouds. There was no pointy tree. I had to go, I had to go. The tree was yellow, I saw it because the moon was bright and so I saw it, and that was where I put down the case and I started to play, and no one came, Mr. Karl, because it was very dark. And my stomach hurt so much, my stomach hurt so bad that in the end all of me was a ball of fire.

“Maria, how are you feeling?”

I would say fine, but I can't answer. I cannot speak, I only make a strange noise that comes out of where I felt the fire. Now that's it, I have no fire or anything inside, only peace, an unfamiliar peace that leads me to the paradise of the cottony clouds and the Beethovens that give me an unfriendly look, with one eyebrow raised. And beside them, you, yes, I know, Mr. Karl, no need to say more, I already know, I can see.

That one who speaks Catalan and Spanish came in, because all the other ones that come through speak that incomprehensible language and when they enter a room they say
gut'n Tag
. The first time I heard it, I made an enormous effort to open my eyes and see if there was a Beethoven in the room where they have me now. But no, there wasn't, just a TV and a chair and a wardrobe, all the color of an old smear. And I thought,
Where am I,
and I tried to remember, but at first I couldn't remember anything. Later, I did. And finally I was even able to speak to the one nurse who knows Catalan and Spanish, who told me that they had found me out cold on the ground in the middle of a square, with the violin by my side, and that I had been sleeping for three days, but that I didn't need
to worry about anything, and that the violin was in the wardrobe. But I opened my eyes and I said I was worried.

Now everything is taken care of, Mr. Karl. After Miss Teresa told me where she'd found the violin, it was all easy as pie, because less than six months later, your son called me to ask for a favor. And, since I answered, as you wish, Mr. Mark, ay, sorry, Mark, he begged me to keep an eye on his apartment because he had to take Mrs. Anna to a spa for ten days, and he wasn't comfortable leaving the jewelry and the Stainer there alone for so many days, because the doctor had told him that they couldn't bring the violin with them, that Mrs. Anna had to forget she was a musician over those ten days. I think Mr. Mark didn't trust the maid that Mrs. Anna had hired, because he told me, come a couple of times, no one will be here, you'll be alone, and don't touch anything, eh, so they don't think that—he stopped short; when Mr. Mark talked to me, he would leave things half said, he didn't know how to finish them, and I felt sorry for him because he was too sincere, he was like you, he had to learn to be a bit more diplomatic. Don't worry, I said to reassure him. Thank you, Maria, he said immediately, you are worth more than all the jewelry and the Stainer put together. And I felt happy because I sensed him smiling at me on the other end of the line.

Honestly, it hadn't occurred to me before, but then a light went on in my head, a light like the one that lit up yesterday, or today, or ten days ago. I don't know, because I've lost all notion of time, a light like the one that made me ask the one nurse who knew Catalan and Spanish—when I could still speak—to please take a piece of paper and a pen and write this down, Miss Teresa, as you will see in the attached letter from Mr. Karl, the violin is mine, and I was the one
who threw it out, and now I am giving it to you. And I signed as best I could and I said to the nurse, please, when I've passed on, send this note that we've just written, and this letter from the drawer on the bedside table and the Stainer, all together, to this address for Miss Teresa. The Stainer, repeated the nurse, with a confused expression. The violin that you put in the wardrobe. Oh, yes, she said, slightly disconcerted. That violin, it has a name, I said. I think, Mr. Karl, that that's the last thing of any length that I said, when I woke up at that point I don't know if it was now or before; oh, how time flies, and how strange it all is. And you have no idea how hard it was for me to say that many things in a row to the one nurse who could understand me. But I managed to do it and then I was at peace.

When I played the peasant girl and the shepherd again, by Beethoven's side, after a year of living in the small apartment, first I had to dust off the plaster musician and the violin's case. And then I had to tune the instrument. And there was a broken string, the E, and I rushed to find another. I knew a lot about that, remember, Mr. Karl, how you would send me to buy new strings, and how you taught me to replace them. And they were almost always E strings, because that's the one that always breaks. Well, you should know that I had no trouble replacing it, not that day and not on any other. Since then I've played that song, that one and the others, without crying, but with so much feeling that I left the world, with that soul that you always said I had, and I would close my eyes and I would see you, and when I opened them again, I thought that I would see you before me, but no, it was just pokerfaced Beethoven. And I didn't know if I had played it the way I should, because Beethoven was fine with everything.

Everything in that apartment was small. And in Mr. Mark's apartment, everything was big. Since I had spent a few years cleaning it, I knew it well, and I had little trouble finding the Stainer when I went there those days. I went straight for it, I had my plan all mapped out, I had gotten an idea in my head and I'm still not sure now whether it was a good one or a bad one, but, either way, what's done is done and I did what I had to do. I became methodical and precise, Mr. Karl. I quickly went to the place where I bought the strings and I asked them if they knew someone who made violins. And they said yes, and they gave me a card, and I went there, and I found a man who looked me up and down when I told him I needed a special violin and that he only had a week to make it. That man responded in a slightly sarcastic tone, asking whether I thought a violin was a toy or what. I said no, not at all, and that I would pay him a lot of money to make an exact copy of another violin in a week. And then I mentioned a figure, which was more or less a quarter of all the money you left me in your will. Well, it seems I made him an exorbitant offer because his eyes grew wide as plates and, after a second of shock, he slowly got out the words, this much in advance and this much when you pick it up. I said okay and the next day I brought him the Stainer, and I picked it up a week later.