Anne Rice: Violin

I began a great downward stroke, falling into what had become for me the Russian mode, by far the sweetest and the one which made the most room for sadness.

Tonight it would have to enlarge and carry the dark tide, and I heard the notes clear, shining, falling like coins in the dark.

But I saw the tunnel.

A child was walking towards me through the water, a child in a country dancing dress with a bald head.

"You are doomed, Stefan." I didn't move my lips.

"I play for you, my beautiful daughter."

"Mommie, help me."

"I play for us, Lily."

She stood at the gate, she pressed her small face to the rusted iron pickets and clutched them with her small chubby fingers. Her lip jutted. "Mommie!" she cried in heartbreak. She clabbered as babies and young children do. "Mommie, without him I would have never found you! Mommie, I need you!"

Evil, evil spirit. The music descended into protest and riot. Let it go, let the anger go.

It's a lie and you know it, you idiot spirit, it's not my Lily.

"Mommie, he brought me to you! Mom, he found me. Mom, don't do this to me, Mamma!

"Mamma! Mamma!"

The music rushed forward, though I stared wide eyed at a gate I knew was not there, at a figure I knew was not there, so heartbreakingly perfect I felt my breath cease.

I made myself breathe. I made the breath come with the stroke of the bow. Play, yes, for you, that you would be there, yes, that you could come back, yes, that we could turn the pages, that it would be undone.

Karl appeared. He walked softly towards her. He laid his hands on Lily's shoulders. My Karl. Already thin with disease.

"Triana," he said in a hoarse whisper. His throat had already been hurt by the oxygen tubes he so hated, and finally came to refuse. "Triana, how can you be so heartless? I can wander, I'm a man, I was dying when we met, but this is your daughter."

You're not there! You are not, but this music is real. I hear it, and it seemed I had never risen to such a height, charging the mountain as if it were Corcovado and looking up through the clouds.

But still I saw them.

And now my father stood beside Karl. "Honey, give it up," he said. "You can't do it. This is all evil, it's sinful, it's wrong. Triana, give it up. Give it up. Give it up!"

"Mommie." My child grimaced in pain. The country dress was the last dress I had ever ironed for her, for the coffin. My Father had said they will-No . . . the clouds come now across the face of Christ and it matters not if He is the Incarnate Word or a statue made lovingly of stone, it matters not, what matters is the stance-the outstretched arms, for nails, or to enfold, I will not-In astonishment, I saw my Mother. I slowed the pace; was I pleading with them, was I talking to them, was I believing in them, and giving in to them?

She came to the iron gate, her dark hair pulled back the way I loved it, her mouth touched with the barest lipstick just as if she were real. But there was a lurid hatred in her eyes. Hate.

"You're selfish, you're vicious, you're hateful!" she said. "You think you fooled me? You think I don't remember? I came that night, crying, frightened, and you, scared, clung to my husband in the dark and he told me to go away, and you heard me crying.

You think even a Mother can forgive that?"

Suddenly a startled sobbing broke from Lily. She turned and raised her fists.

"Don't you hurt my Mamma!"

Oh, God. I tried to close my eyes, but Stefan stood right there before me with his hands on the violin.

He couldn't move it, or jog it, or make one note fall short of the mark, and on and on I played, of this chaos, this hideousness, this...

This truth, say it. Say it. It's common sins, that's all, no one ever said you bashed them with a weapon, you were no criminal hunted in dark streets, no wanderer among the dead. It's common sins, and that's what you are, common, common and dirty and small and without this talent you stole from me, you bitch, you whore, give it back.

Lily sobbed. She rushed up to him and beat on him. She pulled on his arm. "Stop it, you leave my Mommie alone. Mommie." She threw up her arms.

At last I stared straight into her eyes, I stared straight into her eyes and I played of her eyes and I played, regardless of what she said, and I heard their voices and saw them moving, and then I lifted my gaze. I had no sense of time, only a sense of the music shifting.

I saw not the theater I wanted so desperately to see. I saw not the party of ghosts he so desperately presented before me; I looked up and beyond and I envisioned the tropical forest in its celestial rain, I saw the drowsing trees, I saw the old hotel, I saw it, and played of it, and played of branches reaching the clouds, and of Christ, his arms outstretched, and of the arcades of the old hotel, the windows with their yellow shutters stained by rain and rain and rain.

I played of this, and then of the sea, oh, yes, the sea, no less wondrous, this mounting, tossing, glossy, impossible sea with its phantom dancers.

"That's what you are! Oh, if only you were real."

"Mommeeee!" She screamed. She screamed as if someone was hurting her unbearably.

"Triana, for the love of God!" said my Father.

"Triana," said Karl. "God forgive you."

She screamed again. I couldn't sustain it, this melody of the sea, this summoning of the triumphant waves, and now it melted again into anger and loss and rage; oh, Faye, where are you, how could you leave; oh, God, Dad, you left us alone with Mother, but I will not... I will not... Mamma...

Lily screamed again!

I would crack.

The music surged.

The image. There had been some thought, some simple half-formed thought, some little thought, and it came to me now, came to me with an ugly vision of the glittering blood on the white napkin lying by the blazing heater, the menstrual blood, the blood swarming with ants, and then the gash in Roz's head when I smashed the door, after the Rosary broke, and the blood they drew over and over and over from Dad and Karl and Lily, Lily crying, Katrinka crying, the blood from Mother's head when she fell, the blood, the blood on the filthy napkins and on the mattresses when she wore nothing at all and bled and bled without cease.

And it was this.

You can't deny the wrongs. You can't deny the blood that's on your hands, or on your conscience! You can't deny that life is full of blood, pain is blood, wrong is blood.

But there is blood and there is blood.

Only some blood comes from the wounds we inflict on ourselves and on one another. That blood flows bright and accusing, and threatens to take with it the very life of the wounded one, that blood-and how it glistens, so celebrated, that sacred blood, that blood that was Our Lord's Blood, the Blood of the Martyrs, the blood on Roz's face, and the blood on my hands, the blood of wrongs.

But there is another blood.

There is a blood that flows from a woman's womb. And it is not the signal of death, but only of a great and fertile fount-a river of blood which can, when it would, form whole human beings out of its substance, it is a living blood, an innocent blood, and that was all it was on the napkin there, beneath the swarm of ants, in squalor and dust, just that blood, flowing and flowing, as if from a woman letting loose the dark secret strength in her to make children, letting loose the powerful fluid that belongs to her and her alone.

And it was this blood now with which I bled. Not the blood of the wounds he inflicted on me, not the blood of his blows and his kicks, not the blood of his scratching fingers as he tried to get the violin.

It was this blood of which I sang, letting my music be this blood, flow like this blood; it was this blood that I pictured in the chalice raised at the Consecration of the Mass, the wholesome sweet and female blood, this innocent blood that could in the right season form a receptacle for a soul, the blood inside of us, the blood that makes, the blood that creates, the blood that ebbs and flows, without sacrifice or mutilation, without loss or ruin.