Anne Rice: Violin

"I love you," I whispered. "Faye, I love you."

She danced back. How she loved to dance. Once when we'd been separated and all came together in California, she had danced in circles and leapt in the air just to see us all united, the four of us, and so we were now, and she frolicked around the room. She leapt up on the wooden coffee table-a trick I'd seen her do before. She smiled, her small eyes flashing brightly, her hair red in the light from the window.

"Triana, play the violin for me. For me. Please. For me. For me."

No contrition? No apology?

No violin.

"Martin, would you get the other instruments? The Guarneri. I think the Guarneri is strung and ready to play and there's a good bow in the case.

"But what happened to the long Strad?"

"I gave it back," I whispered. "Please don't argue with me now. Please."

Grumbling, he went out.

Only now did I see Katrinka, wrung out and red-eyed, sitting on the couch. "I'm just glad you're home," she said in a raw and tortured voice. "You don't know." How Trink had suffered.

"She had to go. She had to wander off when she did!" Glenn said in his gentle drawl. He looked to Roz. "She had to do what she did. The point is, she's home. She made it."

"Oh, let's not do this tonight," said Roz. "Triana, play for us! Not one of those horrible witches' dances, I can't stand another one of those."

"Aren't we the critic!" said Martin, closing the door. He had the Guarneri violin.

It was the nearest to what I had had.

"Go on, play something for us, please," said Katrinka in her broken voice, her eyes dazed and hopelessly hurt and relieved as she looked at Faye.

Faye stood on the table. She looked at me. There seemed a coldness in her, a hardness, something that could not say that she had any care for us, something perhaps that said, "My pain was greater than you knew," the very thing we feared when we had called morgues in dread and given out her description over phone lines. Maybe it was only "My pain is as great as your pain."

Here she stood alive.

I held this new violin. I tuned it quickiy. The E string was very slack. I wound the peg. Gently. This was not as fine as my long Strad, not as well kept, but it had been very well restored, as they said. I tightened the bow.

What if there is no song?

My throat tightened. I looked at the window. In a way, I wanted to go over there and just look out at the sea, and just be glad she was here, and not have to learn yet how to say it was all right that she'd gone away, or talk of whose fault it was, or who was blind, or who didn't care.

I'd especially like to not know whether or not I could play.

But events such as these have never come to me at my choosing. I thought of Stefan in the forest.

Goodhye, Triana.

I tuned the A string, then the D and the G. I could do it now with no help. In fact, I'd been able to arrive at near perfect pitch even from the beginning.

It was ready. It had responded to me this much, and I remembered from the day it was first shown to me, played for me, that it had had a lower, more lush sound than the Strad, a sound that was a little akin to the large viola, and perhaps it was larger. I didn't know such things about this kind of violin. The Strad had been the object of my love.

Faye came to me and she looked up.

I think she wanted to say things, but she couldn't, any more than I could. And I thought again, You are alive, you are with us, we have a chance to make you safe.

"You want to dance?" I said.

"Yes!" Faye said. "Play Beethoven for me! Play Mozart! Play anybody!"

"Play a happy song," Katrinka said, "you know, one of those pretty happy songs you play."

I know.

I lifted the bow. My fingers came down rapidly, pounding away on the strings, the bow racing, and it was the happy song, the gay and free and happy song and it came unstintingly and bright and fine out of the violin, so fine and so loud and so new in my ear from this change of wood, that I almost danced myself; pivoting, dipping, turning, yanked

by the instrument, and only dimly out of the corner of my eye seeing them dance: my sisters, Roz and Katrinka and Faye.

I played and I played. The music poured forth.

And that night, when they slept, and the rooms were quiet, and the tall willowy women for sale walked the boulevard, I took the violin and the bow and I went to the window in the very center of the hotel.

I looked down at the spectacle of the fantastical waves. I saw them dance as we had danced.

I played for them-with surety and ease, without fear and with no anger-I played for them a sorrowful song, a glorious song, a joyful one.

The End

finished: May 14, 1996 1:50 a.m.

second run: May 20, 1996 9:25 a.m.

last run: Jan. 7, 1997 2:02 am.

Anne Rice

Jacket painting: Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni, Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy, EU

Scala/Art Resource, NYC

Alfred A. Knopf publisher, New York 1997