Anne Rice - Violin

"I adore this, I'm not going home," said Roz. "Nobody's going to make me go home. Triana, I want the money to stay here."

Glenn smiled and shook his head.

"You can have it, Roz," I said.

I stared into the darkness.

"What do you see there?" I asked.

"I don't know!" said Katrinka.

"Well, it is wet and damp, and there is something leaking there. . ." said Lucrece.

So none of them saw the man lying with his eyes open, and the blood pouring from his wrists, and the tall black-haired phantom, arms folded, leaning against the dark wall, glaring at us?

No one saw this but mad Triana Becker?

Go on. Go ahead. Go on the stage tonight. Play my Violin. Display your wicked witchery.

The dying man climbed to his knees, confounded, fuddled, blood streaming on the tile. He rose to his feet to join his companion, the ghost who'd driven him mad, driven out his music, just before coming to me, with these vivid memories his soul, this ghost, his tissue-thin soul that overflowed with all this, unwillingly.

No. It had a hint of panic.

The others talked. There was time for cake and coffee and rest.

Blood. It ran from the dead man's wrists. It ran down his pants as he staggered towards me.

No one else saw.

I looked beyond this stumbling corpse. I looked at the agony in the face of Stefan.

So young, so lost, so desperate. So afraid of utter defeat again.

Chapter 19

I was always quiet right before the concert. So no one noticed. No one said a word. There was so much kindness and richness here-old dressing rooms, baths of handsome Art Deco tile, murals and names to be explained-the others were gently borne away.

A stillness came down on me. In the great impossible palace of marble, I sat with the violin. I waited. I heard the great theater begin to fill. Soft thunder on the stairs.

The rising hum of voices.

There came the thump of my vain and eager heart-to play.

And what will you do here? What can you do, I thought. And then again there came that thought, that image that perhaps I could lock in my mind, lock as one locks upon a Mystery of the Rosary, to fight him off -The Crowning with Thorns -and nothing he could do could weaken me, but what was this terrible, aching love for him, this terrible sorrow, this pain for him that was as deep and bad as any pain for Lev or Karl, or any of them?

I lay my head back in the velvet chair, let my neck roll on the wooden frame, held the violin in its sack, gestured No to water and coffee and things to eat.

The auditorium was now filled, said Lucrece. "We have received many donations."

"And you'll receive more," I said. "It is a magnificent place; it must never be allowed to fa,l into decay. Not this, not this creation."

On and on Glenn and Roz talked, in their soft muted compatible voices about the mingling of the tropical color and the Baroque scale, the fleeting sophisticated European nymphs combined with a forbidden indulgence in the range of stones and patterns and floors of parquet.

"I love your. . . velvet clothes, what you wear," said kind Lucrece, "this is pretty velvet that you wear, this poncho and skirt, Miss Becker."

I nodded and whispered thanks.

It was time now to walk across the immense dark shadowy rear of the stage. It was time to hear our feet clopping on the boards and look up, up, into the ropes and pulleys, the curtains high above, the ramps, and the men peering down, and children, yes, even children up there, as if they had been sneaked into the place, and to the right and left the awesome wings full of great operatic scenery. Painted columns. All that one could see, for real and true in stone, painted again.

And so the sea is green when the wave curls, and the balustrade of marble looks like the green sea, and there is painted the green balustrade.

I peered through the curtain.

The first floor was filled, each red velvet armchair held its eager occupant.Programs... mere notes on how no one knew what I would play or how or just when I would stop and all that... fluttered in the air, and jewels caught the light of the chandelier, and three great balconies rose one atop the other, each overflowing with figures struggling to their seats.

There were those in formal black, and gay gowns, and others high up in workinan's clothes.

In the boxes to the left and right of the stage sat the officials to whom I had been presented, never remembering a single name, never having anymore to remember, never expected to do more than what I meant to do, and what I alone could do: Play the music. Play it for one hour.

Give them that, and then into the mezzanine they'll pour, talking about the "savant sophisticate," as I had come to be known, or the American Naif, or the dumpy woman who looked too much like a prematurely aged child in flaring velvet, scratching at the strings as if she fought with the music she played.

No hint before of a theme. No hint of a direction. Only that thought in my mind, a thought begun somewhere else in music.

And the admission in my secret self that it was scattered within me, the Rosary Beads of my life, the splinters of death and guilt and anger and rage; it was in broken glass I lay down each night, and waked with cut hands, and these months of music making had been a dreamlike respite that no human being could ever expect to last, that no human being had any right to expect of Heaven.

Fate, fortune, fame, destiny.

From behind the edge of the huge stage curtain, I stared at the faces in the first row.

"And those velvet shoes, those pointed shoes, don't they hurt?" asked Lucrece.

"It's a hell of a time to mention that," said Martin.

"No, it's only an hour," I said.

The roar of the house swallowed our voices.

"Give them forty-five minutes," said Martin, "and they'll be delighted. All the money is going to the foundation for this place."

"Boy, Triana," said easygoing Glenn, "you sure do get a lot of advice."

"Tell me about it, brother," I laughed softly.

Martin hadn't heard. It was all right. Katrinka was always shaking at this moment.

Roz had settled back in the wings, straddling a chair like a cowboy, with the back in front of her, her legs spread comfortably in her black pants, her arms folded on the back of the chair, so she could watch. The family receded into the shadows.

It seemed a calmness had settled over the technicians.

I felt the cooling driven by the engines far below.

Such beautiful faces, such beautiful people, ranging from the fairest to the darkest, with configurations of features never ever seen by me anywhere before, and so many of the young, the very young, like the ones who had come with the roses.

Suddenly, asking permission of no one, giving no warning, having no orchestra below me to alert, having no one to find me now but the light man with his spot high above, I walked out to the center of the stage.

My shoes made a hollow sound on the dusty boards.

Slowly, I walked, giving the spot time to descend and fall on me.

I walked to the very lip and looked down at all the faces ranged before me.

I heard the quiet fall over the house as if the noise had been urgently dragged away.

In coughs, in final whispers, all sound finally died.

I turned and lifted the violin.

With a shock, I realized I wasn't on the stage at all, but in the tunnel. I could smell it, feel it, see it. The bars were right there.

This would be the great struggle. I bowed my head against what I knew was the violin, no matter what the spell that kept it from my eyes, no matter what the charms that drew me to that filthy tunnel and its dank water.

I lifted the bow that I knew had to be in my hand.

Ghost things? The playthings of a spirit? How do you know?