The House of Silence (6 page)

I dried other tears, the ones from my boyfriend's cigarette
smoke, on my way home. When I got there Mr. Karl had already finished listening to that Bach concerto. And I felt my heart sink a little. Then I saw him appear from behind the bust of Beethoven. You're late today, he said, tickled. Oh, I got caught up, I answered, turning so he wouldn't see me blush. What do you say, let's have a class, he said. What class? I blurted out. Piano class, he simply said. I was slow to react: Ah, okay, well sure. I followed him into the room as I took off my jacket with one hand and my hat with the other. Mr. Karl isn't rehearsing opera today? I asked, with ulterior motives. But he didn't seem to realize my motives and he just said, ah, that's over, now I have some concerts with the orchestra. I made no comment. I just let him teach me. Mr. Karl took up my fingers delicately, and then he had me do what he called a scale, from do to do—moving my thumb under the other fingers when I got to the end of the hand, because, obviously, that scale had eight notes and my hand had only five fingers, and the other three had to come from somewhere. And now the left, he would say, and we did it with my left. Up and down the scale, first with him helping me and then on my own. And next week we'll do it with both hands; just you wait, he said.

On that day I wished the lesson could continue. Going up and down like that, if you could do it fast, had to be a real surprise for anyone listening. Maybe it wasn't so hard to play the piano. Maybe even a Maria could do it.

That week a lot of important things happened. The first was that I learned, very gradually, to go up and down the scale with both hands. I was thrilled. It seemed incredible, and yet I was doing it. I was overcome with emotion as I went up and down the piano.
And Mr. Karl seemed very pleased too. He would clap and say, I think we've earned ourselves a hot chocolate with whipped cream.

The second thing that happened was that, at midweek, the doorbell rang and—when I opened it, the opera singer was there. I mean the one with the kisses and the sofa. Before I had time to say anything, she elbowed me out of the way and went straight to the piano room. She could hear that Mr. Karl was in there practicing his music. What do you think you're doing? I started to say. And Mr. Karl also started to say, What do you think? And here is where it all ended—because that day there was no kiss—instead there was one of those smacks that was so loud it echoed through the whole neighborhood. Mr. Karl was shocked. And the woman had the gall to say, before leaving: So you just wanted me for the opera. And she left with her head held high, wiping away a tear that I saw, even though she tried to hide it.

The third thing was that my boyfriend kissed me. He filled my mouth with the taste of smoke, a taste I wasn't sure I liked—but, after all, it was still the taste of a kiss like the one between Mr. Karl and the opera singer. I felt like he was sticking everything inside me, and I didn't know if I could breathe or not. And then he smiled at me with his two missing teeth and asked if I'd liked it. And I said yes, because there was nothing else I could say. And then he walked me home, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. And I slipped my arm around his waist. And when we got home he kissed me again before saying goodbye.

I opened the door and I found Mr. Karl there with a strange expression on his face, one I didn't know how to interpret. You have a boyfriend. I saw him through the window, he said. Yes, I
answered, realizing that there was no way I could deny it. Mr. Karl passed by me before heading off to his bedroom, where he usually never went unless it was time for bed. And, before he disappeared up the stairs he looked at me and he said, because you are very pretty. Very.

As soon as he was gone, I ran to look at myself in the mirror. Having Mr. Karl say that to me was as if there'd been an earthquake and suddenly all the birds in the trees of that park had flown over to land on my head and all started chirping at the same time. I stared at myself for a while and, on that day, I found myself lovely too.

The first look from Mark at the start of the concert leaves me indifferent. But Karl's first look went straight to the depths of my eyes. It hurt, and it had been a long time since anyone had hurt me. Come in, he said in that strange language he spoke, a mix of equal parts Catalan, Spanish, and German. I followed him to a room where he had his piano. Along the way we passed Mark. He was nobody, just a boy who wasn't even thirty, who was still studying conducting and living off of his father's success. He said hello and disappeared. I didn't see Maria that day; she must have had it off, because when she was there you found her around every corner—like now, because that woman is like the plague.

Karl sat down at the piano and told me to play while he played the other violin's part, the one Teresa played, even though I didn't yet know that she was the one who would play it. That first day I pulled out my student violin, but another day, seeing that I could impress him, I brought the good one. A Stainer—how beautiful, he said, and a strange look passed over his face as if he had recognized
something. Can I see it? he asked, and he took it from me and looked it over carefully. With one finger he touched the small stain that Teresa had explained was a crack that had been repaired, and he looked into the f-hole, and read the letters inside as if he wanted to be completely sure that it was really a Stainer.

But that was later on. The first day I went there, he stopped me right away. That's enough, he said suddenly, lifting his fingers off the keys. And he said to me, the other violinist had too much soul, and you don't have enough; where is yours? I was taken aback; no one had ever said that about my music. He looked at me differently and said, you play incredibly well—so well that it's scary. I felt myself growing inside. But then he continued: And yet you lack heart. Bach has no heart, I objected. Perhaps not, he replied, but he does have soul. And the violin does too. But you, on the other hand, you don't. There was a silence. I was deflated and thought that I'd already lost my chance at touring with that conductor, which had become my dream. Then he looked at me again and asked who had taken my soul. I don't know, I answered, shrugging my shoulders, unsure whether his question was serious.

But I did know. My soul left the day that Mama departed, never to return. One morning she was no longer there and I thought she'd gone on a trip, but Clara wouldn't stop crying rivers, and finally she said that Mama wouldn't be coming back. At first I didn't understand, but then Clara couldn't take it anymore and she told me that Mama had left a note for Papa saying that she was leaving because nobody loved her or needed her.

I left the house and went to the lake in the park. I was fourteen years old, and I no longer believed that there were little fairies
in the water. But I did believe that the water, where pink water lilies floated on their wide leaves, carried off the little soul I had left—which, years later, Karl would ask after. Suddenly, I felt full of remorse, because I was sure that it was my fault Mama had left—because she must have thought that I didn't need her. And the tears I thought I no longer had in me appeared once again, and I spent the afternoon and evening sitting on a bench, crying. I emptied myself out—and the lake, which had sucked my soul, remained impassive, the way I used to do when Mama looked at me after hitting me. Perhaps it was faking it as I had.

At night, I slowly returned home. And then I met Papa.

When Anna's mother left, she didn't tell me what had happened, but I saw that something was wrong, and after a few days, taking advantage of a moment when the girl had gone to the bathroom, her maid poked her head into the classroom and whispered to me. Now she's with her father, she explained. She's never talked about her father, I said. Because he was never around, but now he is; now he's here to stay.

My thoughts, current and past, always come wrapped in music, but now that I am here lit up and blinded by these spotlights, I feel as if, with Bach, all my life is suddenly well depicted. Bach is too exact, too clear. That moment with the maid was also very clear, and Anna immediately knew what we had been talking about. If you need anything, just ask, I said, realizing that the situation had become truly uncomfortable. Thank you, was all she said, and she brought her focus back onto her homework, onto the score that she had brought prepared for that day.

Anna was left motherless, and my own mother had grown old.
But before, long before, my mother had given me music; she had handed it to me on a silver tray. When that teacher told me, bring in the violin, let's see how it sounds, let's try to play something, I listened without saying a word—but the tears, my always sweet tears, dampened my face silently and without my consent. Oh, my girl, she said, wiping them away with her thumb, let's see if we have a little musician here—and she pointed to my heart as she said it. Yes, there was a musician in there, and she was me: I brought the violin into school the very next day. But first I came home and ran to hug my mother; I hugged her very tightly and cried even more. And she kissed me all over as she said, I so sorry I can't pay for a violin teacher for you. Maybe one day, sweetie, maybe one day.

It wasn't long. The music teacher was a pianist but knew where to place her fingers on the violin and how to press the first strings to make a sound as she ran the bow along them. And you say you found it at the dump, she said, admiring the find. Yes, I said, and it's a little bit cracked. I showed her the small line on the instrument. There are people who can fix that, she said, and made as if to grab the violin to take it away. I felt like I was dying; no, I shouted, no. Don't worry, I was just looking at it, she reassured me. And then she closed one eye and looked with the other into the f-hole, and I couldn't see her eyes but I saw that her lips moved as if she were speaking—but she wasn't, they just moved, as if she were reading something inside there, which I didn't yet understand, and that I now know simply means that the violin was a Stainer from 1672, a Stainer that I still can't explain how I let go the way I did. But anyway, at that time I didn't care that it was a Stainer any more than if it were a Sadurní. I could see the teacher's eyes as she let out a whistle
and looked at me again in some sort of altered state. The expression on her face had changed when she told me: Don't lend it to anyone, all right? I nodded, but there was no real need for her to say that, because I wasn't planning on lending my instrument to anyone, and not because it was a Stainer but because it was a violin and it made music. And then she showed me how to make the same sounds she made on the piano with the violin, the whole scale that at the time I didn't even know was called the scale. And I went to the beach and practiced it. There, beside the waves, I made magic for the first time with that tool that was more than a violin, that was almost like the father I never had. I spent hours practicing the same thing. And the next day I stayed after class and showed the teacher how I was coming along. And she congratulated me. Then she found a score for me, of a very simple song, and above each note she wrote its name because I didn't know them. And she told me, when we meet a week from now you should know how to play this song. And I went back to the beach when I could, when I didn't have to go to the dump, and I practiced and practiced everything my teacher had told me. I ended up with cuts on my fingers from so much playing, but I couldn't care less, I didn't feel the pain, I only felt how, gradually, I was making a melody come out of that wooden box. I felt that I was managing to grasp the music, that I had it in my reach. After four or five weeks, the teacher took my mother aside and told her that she had nothing more to teach me, that I had to have violin classes. And she smiled and added another magical sentence: She will have a scholarship.

I went to the conservatory until I finished my violin certification, at the age of twenty. And two years later, I began working
there as a teacher. With my salary, mother was able to stop cleaning other people's apartments and focus on her sewing. I also stopped cleaning apartments, and stopped ruining my hands. In my teens I spent my evenings worrying because I couldn't study what I needed to for the class the following morning or for an exam—and, when night fell, so as not to be a nuisance, I went back to the beach, as always, winter or summer. In winter I would cut off the fingertips of my gloves so I could play. And while I washed dishes in that home we had rented, I went over in my head the studies I had to play the next day. And when I was at the park with the kids or walking down the street or on the bus, I would do the fingering in my pockets to keep up my agility. I had to if I wanted to be a violinist. And that was surely what I wanted most in this world.

The orchestra's first violin is named Maties, like my father, like the father it turned out I did have. Mark stopped the concert for a moment to ask him to pick up his pace a bit. Maties nodded and the orchestra understood that they have to go faster.

At fourteen, I understood that everything had changed, everything. The day after Mama left, Papa showed up. He was one of the men who had come and gone, but never stayed for very long and never smiled at me or said anything. Wow, you sure have grown, he said, and that day he said it with a smile. And he looked at me with excitement in his eyes; where it came from I didn't know. Frankly, it seemed as if I had just conjured him up out of my imagination. Then, to my surprise, he asked me how it was going with the violin. Once I had recovered from my shock, I answered, fine, it's fine now. What do you mean? he asked, intrigued. We were in the dining room at home, so many years eating alone or in the kitchen with Clara, and now it turned out I had a dining companion, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I wasn't sure I liked that perfect stranger
sitting down with me at the table like it was the most natural thing in the world, after a fourteen-year absence. But at that moment I felt obliged to answer, well, I didn't like the teacher I had before, but I like the one at the conservatory and now I like the violin too.