Anne Rice - Violin

"Maestro," he whispered. "May Perpetual Light Shine Upon You...." He wiped at his cheek. "May your soul and the souls of all the Faithful Departed rest in Peace."

The mourning woman, heavy in her black bonnet and huge skirts, rose slowly from her seat beside the marble child. She came towards him! She could see him! She suddenly reached out to him.

In German she spoke. "Thank you for that," she said. "Beautiful young man, and that you played it with such skill and feeling."

He could only stare at her.

He was afraid. The young ghost was afraid. He looked at her perplexed. He didn't dare to speak. She stroked his face with her hand, and spoke again.

"Young man," she said. "So blessed. Thank you for that on this day of all days.

I love this music so. And always have. Whoever doesn't love him is a coward."

He seemed unable to answer.

Politely, she withdrew, turning her eyes away to give him his privacy again, and she made her way down the path.

Then he called out: "Thank you, madam."

She turned again and nodded.

"Ah, and this day of all days, my last visit here perhaps. You know they move the grave soon. They will put him in the new cemetery with Schubert."

"Schubert!" he whispered.

He held in his shock.

Schubert had died young. But how could this disconnected counterfeit of a living man know such a thing, roaming in the ether?

It didn't need to be said aloud. We all knew this, all of us-the woman of memory, and the young ghost, and the ghost that held me, and I. Schubert the maker of songs had died young, only three years or less after his visit to the deathbed of Beethoven.

Transfixed, the young ghost watched her leave the graveyard.

"And so it began!" I whispered. I stared at the visible ghost, the powerful ghost.

"What drives this spirit to visibility?" I demanded. "I can take the woman seated beside the marble child, but can you see your dark and secret gift which can cross the divide of death? Do you? Have you ever looked at these lessons before?"

He wouldn't answer me.

Chapter 14

He didn't reply.

The awestruck young ghost waited until the woman was out of sight, and then, walking a pace from the grave, looked up to what he could see of the sky, a Vienna winter sky, almost a soiled gray, then solemnly he glanced back at the tomb.

Around him clustered the disheveled and disoriented dead, more dense and cunning than before. Oh, the sight of these spirits!

Do I see anyone to whom I can appeal? You think your Lily wanders in this gloom, your father, your mother? No. Look now at my face. Look now what recognition brings and isolation solidifies. Wbere are my frilow dead, whatever their sins and mine?

Not even monsters executed for sure crimes come forth to take my hand. I stand apart from all these you see, these wraiths. Look on my face. Look, and see where it began.

Look on hate.

"You look on it," I cried. "You learn from it!"

I saw it only for an instant. The standing figure. The hardened face, the contempt for the wandering formless dead, the cold eyes cast down on the grave.

Twilight.

Another cemetery had risen around us; it was new, hill of more grand monuments, more for show, and s5rely here somewhere stood the monument-ah, yes, to Schubert and Beethoven, their graven statues mounted like friends though in life they had scarce known each other-and before this monumental heap, the young and visible Stefan played a fierce Beethoven sonata, weaving his own work in and out, and a crowd of young women looked on, spellbound, one weeping.

Weeping. I could hear her weeping. I could hear her weeping, and it became mingled with the crying of the violin, the ghost's face mournful finally as her own, and as she clutched her waist in pain, he bled the long notes out, and made the others swoon as they gazed at him.

It might as well have been the worshipers of Paganini in the Lido, here, this magic violinist, nameless no doubt and garbed now completely for the late part of the century, playing for the living and the dead, eyes rising to fix on the one woman who cried.

"You needed their gnef, you fed on it!" I said. "You found your strength in it. You stopped your mad zinging crazy dead song and you played a selfless tune and they could see you then."

You're rash and wrong. Selfless indeed. Wben was I ever selfless? And you, are you selfless now that you have my violin? Is it selflessness you feel as you watch this spectacle? I didn 't feed upon her pain, but her pain opened her eyes and her eyes saw me, and those of others opened as well, and the song came out of me, from my talent, my talent born to me in my natural lift and nurtured there and tutored there. You have no such gift. You have my violin! You are a thief as surely as my father was, a thief as the fire was that would have burnt it up!

"And throughout this harangue you hold on to me. I feel your lips. I feel your kisses. I feel your fingers against my shoulders. Why? Why tenderness, as you spit hate in my ear? Why this mixture of love and rage? What can I give you that is good, Stefan?

I tell you again, attend your own story. I won't give you back an instrument to drive people mad. Show me what you will. I won't do it."

He whispered in my ear.

Does it make you think of your dead husband? Wben the drugs made him impotent and he was so humiliated? Remember his face, his haggard face and the cold glaze of his eyes. He hated you. You knew the disease was finally on the march.

I don't hold you because I love you. And neither did he. I hold you because you are alive. Your husband thought you a fool with a pretty house he filled with trinkets, Dresden plates, and high-top desks inlaid with fancy figures and crusted with ormolu; he held the crystal from France before your eye, and cleaned the chandeliers; he heaped your bed with pillows trimmed in brocade.

And you, you, swallowed up with that, and your sense of heroism, that you would marcy this sickling man, this fragile man, you let your beloved little sister Faye wander off. You didn't take her to your heart, you didn't stop her. You didn't see her take your Father's diaries and turn and turn and turn the pages! You didn't see her stare the length of the attic to the door of the room where you and your new husband, Karl lay in bed.

You did not see her frailty, displaced in her own Father's house by this new drama, Karl the rich man, which you fed on as surely as I have ever frd on your misery. You did not see her slip to an orphan beaten down by her Father's written words of judgiiient, disappointment, condemnation. You didn't see her pain!

"You see mine?" I tried to throw him off. "You see my pain? You claim yours is greater than mine, because you with your own hand struck down your Father? I have no talent for such crimes any more than for the violin. But this we share, this talent for suffering, yes, and for mourning, yes, and the passion for the majesty, the utter mystery of music. You think you can wring from me compassion when you pitch me into forced memories of Faye that I can't endure? You sickened dead thing. Yes, I saw Faye's pain, yes, I did, I did, I did let her go, I did, I let Faye go, I let her go! I married Karl. And it hurt Faye. Faye needed me!"

Crying, I tried to pull loose. I couldn't move. I could only keep the violin from him and turn my head away. I wanted to cry alone. I wanted to cry forever. I wanted nothing but crying, and only those sounds which were eternally and forever the echo of crying, as though crying were the only sound that carried truth or merit.

He kissed me under the chin and down along the neck. His body told of tender need, of pliant patience and sweetness, his fingers caught my face worship hilly, and he bowed his head as if in shame. In a broken voice he said my name: Triana!