Anne Rice - Violin

I wiped my face.

Go ahead, tell him, you don't think you can do it again. You don't know. I know.

You can’t.

"Says who?" I demanded of Stefan.

He stood up straight, arms folded, and in his anger flashed a brighter color. "Oh, it's always a matter of anguish, isn't it, petty or great? Look at you, how you blaze now!

Now that you drive the doubts into me! What if your very challenge gives me the strength?"

Nothing can give you the strength. You are beyond my power now, and the thing is deadwood in your hands; it's dried wood, it's an antique instrument, you cannot play it.

"Frau Weber," I said.

She stared down at me amazed, anxiously glancing at the seemingly empty corner and then back to me quickly with an apologetic and protective nod.

"Yes, Frau Becker."

"Do you have a robe I might wear, something decent and loose? I want to play now. My hands are warm, they're so warm."

"Perhaps it's too soon," said the Count. However, leaning heavily on his cane, and groping for the hand of Melniker, he was already struggling to his feet. He was brimming with anticipation.

"Yes, yes, indeed," said Frau Weber. She gathered up the garment from the foot of the bed, a simple flaring robe of white wool.

I turned and placed my feet on the floor. My feet were bare and the wood was warm and the gown came down to the insteps of my feet, and I looked up at the ceiling, at all this splendid molding, and orna ment and loveliness, this dreamy regal room.

I held the violin.

I stood up. She put the robe over me, and I put my right arm care-fully through its loose long sleeve, and then shifting violin and bow, slipped my left arm into the proper place.

There were slippers there, but I didn't want them. The floor was silken.

I walked towards the opened doors. It didn't seem a proper thing to play in the bedroom, to meet either revelation or defeat there.

I entered the spacious drawing room, and turned dazed to see the mammoth portrait of the Great Empress Maria Theresa. Rich desk, chairs, couches. And flowers.

Look. All those fresh flowers, like the flowers for the dead.

I stared at them.

"From your sisters, madam, the cards I have not opened, but your sister Rosalind has called. Your sister Katrinka has called. It was your sisters who said to give you hot chocolate."

I smiled, then laughed softly.

"Any other one?" I asked. "Do you remember any other name? A sister named Faye?"

"No, madam."

I went to the center table where the large vase of flowers stood, and peered through the crowded, tumbled blossoms, not knowing the name of a single plant, a single species, not even the common pink lilies with their thick pollen-covered tentacles reaching out.

The old Count had made his way to the couch, with the aid of the young man. I turned around and saw to my right that Stefan had come to the door of the bedroom.

Go on, fail! Dry up. Dry up and blow away. I want to see it. I want to see you give up for shame!

I lifted my right hand to my lips. "Oh, God," I said, more reverently than Frenchmen say Mon Dieu. It was a true prayer. "What is the prologue to this? What is the formula, the rule? How do I cast aside what I don't even know?"

Another voice intruded, "Get on with it!"

Stefan turned in shock. I saw the fierce anger in his face.

I turned round and round in the room. I saw the dazzled Count, the confused Frau Weber, the timid Melniker, and then the approachmg ghost, who was in fact opening the doors to the hall, and this opening of doors the others saw, that I knew, but they couldn't see the ghost, and thought this a draft perhaps.

This ghost came striding in as he had walked in life, they said, with his hands knotted behind his back, filthy as if he'd come from the deathbed, lace stained and ragged, and even with fragments of the plaster of the death mask still on his face.

The alcove stood open to the hall. I saw a gathering of living people there.

Maestro. Stefan's heart broke. His tears came.

Oh, I felt so sorry for Stefan.

But the Maestro was merciless, and dismissive yet intimate.

"Stefan, you tire me, that you bring me back for this!" he said. "Back to this time, for this! Triana, play the violin for me. Simply do it."

I watched the small obdurate figure cross the room.

"Oh, this is splendid madness, I think," I said. "Or maybe merely inspiration."

The ghost took a chair, glowering at me.

"You will actually be able to hear it?" I asked.

"Oh, my God, Triana," he said with a brusque gesture. "I am not deaf in death! I didn't go to Hell. I wouldn't be here if I had." He gave a loud harsh laugh. "I was deaf when I was alive. I'm not alive now.

How could I be? Now play the violin. Do it, do it to make them shiver! Do it, to make them pay for every unkind word that has ever been said to you, for every guilt. Or do it for what you will." He drew himself up. "It doesn't matter, the reason. Fancy injury or love. Talk to God or to the finest part of yourself. But make the music."

Stefan wept. I looked from one to the other. I didn't care about the human beings in the room. I didn't know that I would ever care about them again.

But then I knew it was for them that I had to make this music.

"Go on, play it," said Beethoven in a more commiserating voice. "I didn't mean to sound so gruff. Truly I didn't. Stefan, you are my orphan pupil."

Stefan had turned his head to the door frame, and put up his arm to cushion his forehead. He had turned his face away.

The baffled mortal audience waited.

I took note of them one by one; I tried to see the mortals and not these ghosts. I looked through the alcove at those who waited in the hall. Herr Melniker moved to shut the door.

"No, leave it open."

I began.

It felt no different, this light and fragrant and sacred thing, crafted by a man who couldn't have known what magic he had shaped from the barks of trees, who couldn' t have dreamed what power he had loosed from the heated curving wood as he bent it into shape.

Let me go back to the Chapel, Mother. Let me go back to Our Mother of Perpetual Help. Let me kneel with you there in the inno cent gloom, before the pain. Let me hold your hand and tell you not how sorry I am that you died, but simply and only that I love you, I love you now. I give you my love in this song, like the songs of the May procession we always sang, the songs you loved, and Faye, Faye will come home, Faye will somehow come to know your love, she will, I believe in this, I know it in my soul.

Oh, Mother, who would have thought that life had so much blood in it? Who would have dreamed, but what we cherish is what we possess; I play for you, I play your song, I play the song of your health and strength, I play for Father and Karl, and in some time to come I'll gain the power to play for the pain, but now it's the evening, and we are in this untroubled sanctuary, among saints we know, and the streets will be filled with tenderly waning light as we make our way home, Rosalind and I skipping before you, and looking back to see your smiling face; oh, I want to remember this, I want always to remember your big hazel eyes, and your smile so filled with pure surety. Mother, it was no one's doing, was it, the undoing of us all, or is there always blame, and is there perhaps some way finally to see beyond it?

Look, look up at these oaks that always clasped branches over my head, all my life, at these mossy bricks down which we walk, look at the sky now purple as it can only be in our paradise. And feel the warmth of the lamps, the gas fire, Father's picture on the mantelpiece, "Your Daddy in the War."

We read now, we snuggle, we sink into the bed forever. It is no grave. Blood can come from many things. I know that now. There is blood and blood. I bleed for you, yes, I do, and willingly, and you bled for me.