Anne Rice - Violin

Who ever prayed in that old Chapel who didn't remember it?

That old Catholicism was never without the scent of pure beeswax candles, and the incense that lingered forever in any church where the Monstrance had been held high, and there had been sweet-faced saints in the shadows then, artists of pain like St. Rita with the wound in her forehead, and Christ's dreadful journey to Calvary marked in the Stations on the walls.

The Rosary wasn’t rote prayer, but a chant through which we pictured the suffering Christ. The Prayer of Quiet meant to sit very still in the pew, clear the mind, let God speak directly to you. I knew the Latin of the Ordinary of the Mass by heart. I knew what the hymns meant.

All that had been swept away. Vatican II.

But a Chapel still it was, for Catholics who prayed now in English. I had come to it only once in its modern style-for a wedding three or four years ago. Everything I held dear had been taken away. The Little Infant Jesus of Prague in his golden crown was no more.

Ah, but you have a motive in this. How you honor me. A concert for my benefit in this, of all places where I'd come before I killed her, or any of them, worlying about flowers on the A/ tar Rail.

I smiled to myself, leaning against the fence for a moment. I glanced back to see Lacomb keeping watch over me. I'd told him to hang around. I was as scared of real people in the dark streets as anybody else.

After all, the dead can only do so much to you, until you meet a ghost, that is, a ghost who can play music out of God's mind, and a ghost who has a name: Stefan.

"Some plan you have," I whispered. I looked up and envisioned the oak branches surrounding and obscuring this light, only it wasn't this light then.

Light streamed out of the unadorned windows of the Chapel-windows like my own, to the floor, with many panes and some still with the old glass, wavery, melting, though I couldn't see such a thing from here. I just knew it and thought of it, beholding the house, beholding the time, beholding all of this to anchor my thoughts to the clever design of this stunt, this drama.

So he was going to play the violin for every"ody, was he? And I must be there.

I turned to the left on Prytania and walked down towards the gates. Miss Hardy and several other classic Garden District ladies stood there to greet those coming.

Cabs stopped in the street. I saw the all too familiar uniformed policeman looking on-for this dark paradise was now too dangerous at evening for the old ones to come out, and they had indeed come out to hear him.

I knew some names; some faces; some I'd never known; some I simply didn't place. But it was a good crowd, perhaps one hundred, lots of gentlemen in light wool suits, and almost every woman in a dress, southern style, except for a few very modern young people who wore genderless clothes, and a flock of college students, or so they appeared, probably from the Conservatory uptown, where I had once sttuggled so wretchedly at fourteen to become a violinist.

My, how your fame has spread.

As I took Miss Hardy's hand and greeted Renee Freeman and Mayteen Ruggles, I peered inside and realized that he was already there, the main attraction.

The thing itself, as Henry James's brave governess would have said of Quint and Miss Jessel without a qualm, the very thing-standing in the aisle, before the altar, which had been demurely covered for this occasion, and he was clean and properly dressed and his lustrous hair combed as well as mine. He wore his two small braids again, knotted in back, to keep his hair from falling too much into his face.

He was distant, but unmistakable, and I watched him talking to them.

For the first time . . . for the first time since it had begun . . .1 thought, I am going out of my mind. I don't want to be sane. I don't want to be present or aware or alive. I don't. I don't. He's there, among the living, just as if he were one of them, just as if he were real and alive. He was talking to students. He was showing them the violin.

And my dead are gone! Gone! What charm could make Lily rise? A wretched story came to mind, Kipling, "The Monkey's Paw," the three wishes, you don't want the dead to come back, no, you don't pray for that.

But he had penetrated the walls of my room, and then vanished. This I'd seen. He was a ghost. He was dead.

Look at the living people for once, or start screaming.

Mayteen wore the loveliest perfume. She was my mother's oldest living friend.

She said words which I strained to understand. My heart filled my ears.

“Just to touch such an instrument, an actual Stradivarius."

I squeezed her hand. I loved the perfume. It was something very old and simple, something not very expensive, that came in pink boffles and the powder came in pink flowered boxes.

My head was buzzing with the sound of my heart. I made a few simple words, just about as bland as an amnesiac could possibly conjure, then I hurried up the marble steps, steps that were always slippery when it rained and I walked into the harshly lighted modern Chapel.

Forget the details.

I am a person who always sits in the front row. What was I doing now, going into the back pew?

But I couldn't go closer. And this was a small place, this, very small, and from this corner of the back pew I could see him perfectly.

He bowed to the woman beside him, his partner in conversation-What kind of things do ghosts say at such mo~ents?-and he held the violin out for the young girls to examine. I saw the deep luster, the seam down the back. He held the violin without ever letting go of it or the bow, and he didn't look up at me as I sank back against the oak of the pew and looked at him.

People shuffled in. I nodded several times at those who whispered greetings. I didn't hear anything that was said.

You're here, among the /iving, as solid as they are, and they will hear you.

He looked up suddenly, without fully raising his head, and his eye fixed me.

Others have always seen and heard me.

Several figures moved between us. The little building was all but full. Two ushers stood in the back, but they had chairs they could use-if they wanted them.

The lights were dimmed. A single well-placed spot covered him in a dusty tarnished haze. How finely he had dressed for this, how white his shirt, and how clean his hair, and the braids holding his hair back-so simple.

Miss Hardy had risen to her feet. She spoke soft words of explana tion and introduction.

He stood calm and collected, his clothes formal, yet rather time -less, a coat that could have been two hundred years old or made yesterday, long and shaped a bit, and he wore a pale tie with his shirt. I couldn't tell if the color was violet or gray, the color of the tie.

He was dashing, no doubt of it. "You're insane," I whispered to myself, barely moving my lips. "You want a highborn ghost out of novels charged with siguificant romance. You dream."

I wanted to cover my face. I wanted to leave. And to never leave. I wanted to stay and to run. I wanted at least to get out of my purse something, a paper handkerchief, anything, something to somehow blunt the force of this, rather like putting your hands up over your eyes during a film, and watching through slatted fingers.

But I couldn't move.

With admirable poise, he thanked Miss Hardy, and thanked us all. Even, accented, but quite understandable, it was the voice I'd heard in my bedroom-a young man's voice.

He looked half my age.

He lifted the instrument to his chin, and raised the bow. The air quivered. No one stirred or coughed or rumpled a program.

I deliberately pictured the blue sea, the blue sea of the dream and the dancing ghosts; I saw them, I closed my eyes and saw the radiant sea beneath the invisible but nearby moon, and the distant arms of the land reaching out.