Anne Rice: Violin

"It's the smell, isn't it? You can smell it."

She nodded very slowly. "Why in God's name did his mother leave you here alone!"

"A baby, Miss Hardy, born in London, a few days ago. You can hear all about it from the machine. The message is there. I insisted that his mother go. She didn't want to leave Karl. And there it was, you see, no one can tell you exactly when a dying man will die, or a baby will be born, and this was Karl's sister's first, and Karl told her to go, and I insisted she go, and then . . . then I just got tired of all the others coming."

I couldn't read her face. I couldn't even imagine her thoughts. Perhaps she didn't know them herself in such a moment. I thought she was pretty in her dressing gown; it was white with pale flowers and pleated at the waist, and she had satin slippers too, such as a Garden District lady might, and she was very rich, they always said. Her gray hair was neatly trimmed in small curls around her face.

I looked back out at the Avenue. The tall lanky man was gone from view. I heard those words again. You're the one who never goes mad! I couldn't remember the expression on his face. Had he smiled? Had he moved his lips? And the music, just thinking of it made the tears flow.

It was the most shamefully emotional music, so like Tchaikovsky just saying, Hell with the world, and letting the sweetest, saddest pain gush, in a way that my Mozart and my Beethoven never did.

I looked at the empty block, the far houses. A streetcar came slowly rocking towards the corner. By God, he was there! The violinist. He had crossed to the median and he stood on the car stop, but he didn't get on the car. He was too far away for me to see his expression or know even that he could still see me, and now he turned and drifted off.

The night was the same. The stench was the same. Miss Hardy stood in frightening motionlessness.

She looked so sad. She thought I was crazy. Or she just hated it, perhaps, to be the one to find me this way, the one to have to do something perhaps. I don't know.

She went away, to find the phone, I thought. She didn't have more words for me.

She thought I was out of my mind and not worth another word of sense, and who could blame her?

At least it was true about the baby born in London. But I would have let his body lie there even if they'd all been home and here. It just would have been harder.

I turned around and hurried out of the parlor, and across the dining room. I went through the small breakfast room and ran up the steps. They are small, these steps-not a grand staircase as in a two-story antebellum house, but small delicate curved steps to go to the attic of a Greek Revival cottage.

I slammed his door and turned the brass key. He was always one for every door having its proper key, and for the first time ever I was glad of it.

Now she couldn't get in. No one could.

The room was icy cold because the windows were wide open, and it was full of the smell, but I took deep gulping breath after breath and then crawled under the blankets and beside him for the last time, just one more time, just one more few minutes before they burn each and every finger and toe, his lips, his eyes. Just let me be with him.

Let me be with all of them.

From far off there came the clamor of her voice, but something else from a distance.

It was the dim respectful pavane of a violin. You out there, playing.

For you, Triana.

I snuggled up against Karl's shoulder. He was so very dead, so much deader than yesterday. I shut my eyes and pulled the big gold comforter over us-he had such money, he loved such pretty things-in this our four-poster bed, our Prince of Wales-style bed which he had let me have, and now I dreamed for the last time of him: the grave dream.

The music was in it. It was so faint I couldn't tell if I was only remembering it now from downstairs, but it was there. The music.

Karl. I laid my hand on his bony cheeks, all sweetness melted away.

One last time, let me wallow in death and this time with my new friend's music coming to me as if the Devil had sent him up from Hell, this violinist, just for those of us who are so "half in love with easeful Death."

Father, Mother, Lily, give me your bones. Give me the grave. Let's take Karl down into it with us. What matter to us, those of us who are dead, that he died of some virulent disease; we are all here in the moist earth together; we are dead together.

Chapter 3

Dig deep, deep, my soul, to find the heart-the blood, the heat, the shrine and resting place. Dig deep, deep into the moist soil all the ay to where they lie, those I love-she, Mother, with her dark hair loose and gone, her bones long since tumbled in the back of the vault, other coffins came to rest in her spot, but in this dream I range them round me to hold as if she were here, Mother, in a dark red dress, with her dark hair and he-my lately dead father, wax probably still buried without a tie because he had wanted none and I took it off him right there beside the coffin and unbuttoned his shirt, knowing how much he had hated ties, and his limbs were whole and neat with undertakers' fluids or who knows, perhaps within they were alive already with all earth's tender mouths, come to mourn, devour and then depart, and she, the smallest one, my beautiful one, cancer-bald lovely as an angel born hairless and perfect, but then let me give her back her long golden hair that fell out because of the drugs, her hair that was so fine to brush and brush, strawberry blond, the prettiest little girl in all the world, flesh of my flesh-my daughter dead so many years now she'd be a woman if she had lived-Dig deep . . . let me lie with you, let us lie here, all of us together.

Lie with us, with Karl and me. Karl's a skeleton already!

Open lies this grave with all of us so tenderly and happily together. There is no word for union as gentle and total as this, our bodies, our corpses, our bones, so heavily snuggled together.

I know no separation from anyone. Not Mother, not Father, not Karl, not Lily, no t all the living and all the dead as we are one-kin-in this damp and crumbling grave, this private secret place of our own, this deep chamber of earth where we may rot and mingle as the ants come, as the skin is covered over with mold.

That doesn't matter.

Let us be together, no face forgotten, laughter of each one clear as it ran some twenty years ago or twice that long, laughter lilting as the music of a ghostly violin, an uncertain violin, a perfect violin, our laughter our music that blended minds and souls and bound us all forever.

Fall softly on this great soft secret snuggling grave, my warm and singing rain.

What is this grave without rain? Our gentle southern rain.

Fall soft with kisses not to scatter this embrace in which we are living-I and they, the dead, as one. This crevice is our home. Let the drops be tears like song, more sound and lull than water, for I would have nothing here disturbed, but only lustrous sweet, among you all forever. Lily, snuggle against me now, and Mother let me burrow my face in your neck, but then we are one, and Karl has his arms round us all, and so does Father.

Flowers, come. There is no need to scatter broken stems or the crimson petals.

No need to bring them big bouquets all tied with shining ribbon.

Here the earth will celebrate this grave; the earth will bring its wild thin grass, its nodding blooms of simple buttercups and daisies and poppies, colors blue and yellow and pink, the mellow shades of the rampant untended and eternal garden.

Let me snuggle against you, let me lie in your arms, let me assure you that no outward sign of death means anything to me as much as love and that we lived, you and I, once, all of us, alive, and I would not be anywhere now but with you here in this slow and damp and safe corruption.