by Неизвестный
Father wiped my eyes with his handkerchief. I kept trying to explain that I was not really crying, that the strain of it had made the tears fall, but none of them paid any attention, either because they didn’t believe what I was saying or because they thought it wasn’t important. To me, it was desperately important. Because I had to vindicate myself so Erna wouldn’t think I was a spoiled and inconsiderate crybaby. And when next I opened my eyes, I was back at the table facing my other auntie, Erna’s sister, who smiled her shy and sorrowful smile. Erna was holding forth again, and I knew the conversation was about me. Father’s Aunt Frieda came back to the room with a colorful bowl of candy. She set it down on the table before me and stroked my neck and I brushed my last few tears away.
As we were walking home that day, I asked my parents if I could start taking violin lessons again. The lessons had been discontinued a few years before, against my will, but I had never forgotten the odor of colophony, so redolent of farewell and fresh hope, heady and pungent, like the resin from the tree. The remembered smell of it made my imagination soar and my heart thrill with adventure. From the rosined bow it seemed to glide to the strings and from the strings to the sound, to the very enigma of the violin. Suddenly on our way home I felt a fierce longing to smell colophony and hold the violin I had been forced to give up for medical reasons.
At first there had been lengthy consultations. We were living in a small neighborhood on Mount Carmel just then, before the war ended, and one day Mother took me downtown to the Hadar, where on one of those quiet side streets, in a modest two-story house not far from the Israel Institute of Technology, I was introduced to my first violin teacher, Mrs. Chanina. Mrs. Chanina was tall and stately and had chestnut-colored hair that she wore in a thick Russian-style braid rolled up at the back of her head. Mrs. Chanina tested my musical hearing and consented to give me lessons. On her way out of the teacher’s room, Mother informed me that Father was going to buy me a “quarter” violin and that twice a week we would come to Mrs. Chanina for lessons.
Mrs. Chanina had a regal beauty that I had never seen before. If I met her today, or if someone showed me a picture of her, I would probably find her less regally beautiful. Still I understand why she seemed so lovely to me at the time. It was her Slavic dignity and the way she moved and talked. Her voice was soft and deep and her eyes were the color of her hair, like the color of the drapes and the furniture, a deep brown with an auburn luster, a velvet brown full of warmth and subtle highlights. Her figure, her bearing, her slow, reflective movements, and the scarcely discernible way she had of tilting her head to the right—all of these raised her very high in my esteem. And whenever she picked up her violin to play, her eyes would flash fire as though the sleeping gypsy in her had been roused. Or so I picture her, when I close my eyes and try to imagine her friendly manner, her soft voice, and the graceful distance she maintained from her surroundings, fit living space for the Queen.
It was at around this time that I had my first whiff of colophony, as I applied it diligently to my bow. Father looked up “colophony” in the encyclopedia: so named for the ancient village in Asia Minor, which exported this substance, a gold or amber-colored rosin derived from the residue of distilled turpentine. Non-soluble in water, dissolves in ether or alcohol. Used in the manufacture of lacquer, to caulk boats, to rub over the bows of stringed instruments, and as a reducing agent in metal smelting; also used in the manufacture of soap and pharmaceuticals and as an emollient in the preparation of various salves and ointments.
Some time later, Mrs. Chanina suggested to my parents that in view of my excellent progress, they should enroll me in a theory class at the Haifa Conservatory, and accordingly, one winter afternoon they took me there. When they had settled whatever it was that needed to be settled in the office, they led me to the classroom and waited in the corridor until the lesson was over. My memory of these scenes when I try to recall them is hazy and incoherent. Then a dark pain rises out of the forgotten depths of me and bangs against my heart, longing to vent itself on the world, though I can’t tell why.
Maybe heads turned as the secretary led me into the classroom where the older pupils sat waiting for the lesson to begin. I was to share a double desk with a boy who had the shadow of a mustache. He was leafing through his notebook, and I don’t recall exactly what was going on in my head just then, but I must have been nervous. I was probably wondering what would happen next and what I was doing here among these older kids. I imagined I heard wisecracks and mirth from some quarter, though it may not have been aimed at me. A hush fell over the classroom as our teacher, a white-haired man with silver spectacles walked through the door and began to speak. Every so often he would illustrate something for us at the piano near the blackboard, and then he would ask questions. Through the narrow windows high in the old building I looked out at the street below, with all the cars and the people riding bicycles, and the Arab vendors pushing their carts. Gradually the pallid winter sky turned dusky, and the streetlamps went on and so did the lights in the windows all around and then the classroom lights went on and the faces of the older children became visible again, and the boy I was sitting next to wrote something in his notebook. My notebook lay open before me, blank and new. I couldn’t think of anything to write. I thought about my parents waiting for me in the corridor, and I was impatient for the lesson to be over so we could go home.
Afterward my parents asked with beaming eyes how the first lesson went, and if I had understood what they were talking about, and I lied and said yes, it was fine, and yes, I understood everything, and they were very pleased with me. I could hardly look at them. I was afraid to disappoint their expectations, their doting enthusiasm. I remember this as my first agonizing encounter with failure, and the shame of lying to conceal it.
It was a great comfort to be back with my violin teacher Mrs. Chanina, in the house I knew so well. Secretly I hoped I would never ever have to go back to the conservatory, but a week later, Mother took me there again. I walked into the classroom and sat down as before. This time the chair next to mine was empty, the boy with the shadow of a mustache having moved elsewhere, to sit with one of his friends. I slid over to the window seat where I could gaze out at the traffic. I watched the people coming and going and they looked like grasshoppers to me. And then, for no apparent reason, I felt a sudden anguish. All the people and the cars in the street were reeling so fast I felt giddy and might easily have fallen out the window to my perdition. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t look away. A woman standing out against the crowd was beckoning me to jump. It was clear from her face and gestures, I was the one she was calling to out of the whirligig. The painfully familiar figure opened her arms to me. A second later she vanished, and only then was I able to tear my eyes away. The eerie scene had overwhelmed me. I looked around and saw the older children writing in their notebooks as the teacher sat at the piano, playing scales and talking in a weary monotone. I hid my face in my hands, hoping it would all be over soon, and tried to visualize the corridor behind the door, to see through the wall and make sure Mother was still there, waiting for me. I imagined I was pacing up and down the empty corridor with nowhere to go, and I had just made it as far as the office at the head of the stairs when a peal of laughter startled me. As my hands dropped from my face I saw the class in an uproar and the old teacher leaning over me, patting my shoulder. He smiled at me a little doubtfully, and another peal of laughter resounded.
Then he went on with the lesson. To my right was the window, near and dangerous, and to my left, on the far side of the room, was the door that led out to the corridor. I glanced around, picked up my blank new notebook and tiptoed to the door. Slowly I turned the handle, opened it, and closed it stealthily behind me. Just as I thought, she wasn’t there. I walked along the empty corridor the way I had imagined when I covered my eyes, and suddenly I felt abandoned and betrayed. I bit my lip hard to keep from screaming. At every doorway, I slowed down to look and listen, maybe she was th
ere. Gradually I forgot my manners and in frenzy, started opening one door after another. In some rooms there were lessons going on, in others people sat quietly, and in still others there was no one at all. But Mother was not in any of the rooms. When I came to the end of the corridor, I suddenly heard a violin playing with piano accompaniment. The music resonated all the way down the corridor, but I hadn’t noticed it earlier because of the state I was in. Now, as I approached the door, I could hear the music clearly and it sounded sad, and beautiful and mysterious. The door was open just a crack and I peeped inside but couldn’t see anyone so I pushed the crack open a little wider. Then I saw the violinist, a tall boy wearing shorts and knee socks. He was playing a full size instrument. His hair was black and neatly combed. He was so transported by the music that he closed his eyes and as his wrist quivered over the bridge, he swayed with emotion and then suddenly stood erect again, his fingers poppling over the strings in the stormy passage. I could only see his profile, but the pianist was facing me, and she was a pretty girl with curly hair and glasses. The two of them were alone together, absorbed in the piece. Suddenly the boy stopped playing and I was afraid as I stood there behind the door that they would notice me, so I took a few steps back and heard them talking together, and a moment later they started playing again, so I came back to the crack in the doorway and listened to the music.
The sad music, slow and stormy in turn, made a deep impression on me. All the fear and pain and loneliness of a few minutes earlier were thrust away before the glory of this music so full of pride and melancholy, resignation and defiance, decorum and wild abandon. Sometimes the violin would draw the theme out, almost weeping, while the piano fought back, relentlessly challenging, striving to interrupt the line of thought, and sometimes the piano showed forbearance, accompanying the violin with all the joy in it, indulgent, cherishing. And when this variation gave way to the next one, the piano took up the theme, true in its fashion to the sad and noble beauty, while the violin tried to foil it with a counter-rhythm, joining it at the double bar, quitting in the middle, engaging with it once again.
When they had finished playing the final variation, the pianist stood up, and I backed away from the door and leaned innocently against the wall. A little later they left the room, she with her music tucked under her arm, and he fondly carrying his violin case. They lingered in the corridor a moment more and I studied him closely, longing to be him instead of me. The fear and self-pity that had brought me so low an hour before gave way to a nearly overpowering emotion. I followed them a little further down the corridor. The pianist said goodbye and went on to another room and the boy continued slowly, aimlessly, as though he hadn’t made up his mind where he was going yet. Just then, the pupils from my class started pouring out the door, and the kid with the shadow of a mustache called out “Uri!” and the violinist turned around. They seemed happy to see each other and I watched them from the side. Then the old teacher left the room, staring my way as though he had no idea who I was. Mother hurried up the stairs.
“Have you been you waiting long?” she asked breathlessly.
“The class just got out,” I said.
“How was it?”
“Fine.”
“Did you participate?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Why not? Were there things you didn’t understand?”
“I don’t want to come back here ever again,” I said, purse-lipped.
I didn’t look at her face so I don’t know what expression was on it. Without a word she took my hand and we started walking down the stairs. I felt guilty holding her hand.
I said: “I saw you in the street, so I knew you weren’t waiting for me.” Now I could look at her. She bit her upper lip. “Is that why you don’t want to come back?”
“No,” I said, “that’s not why.”
Later, as the bus wound its way up the hill, I told her about the boy and the wonderful music. She asked me to sing the piece for her and I hummed what I remembered in her ear. And although it sounded pitiful to me compared to Uri’s playing, my mother was very impressed, and that evening when Father came home from work, she asked me to sing it for him. But by that time I’d completely forgotten the melody, and try as I might, I couldn’t recall a single note. All that was left was my impression of the music and the emotions that it stirred in my heart.
“Why don’t you want to go to the conservatory anymore?” asked Father.
I didn’t know what to answer.
“Is it because I didn’t stay and you were afraid of being alone?” asked Mother, with a trace of resentment in her voice.
“No,” I said. “It’s because it’s not a good place. They don’t have good teachers there.”
“Why don’t we give it a little more time?” Father suggested.
And I relented. Mother promised never to leave the corridor again when she was supposed to be waiting till the lesson was over. Today, the whole thing seems like some bizarre nightmare without beginning or end. For years I tried to repress the memory, to pretend it never happened.
Whenever I practiced the violin, I was haunted by the piece that Uri played. My own playing sounded despicable to me, no matter what Mrs. Chanina or Mother and Father said. I began to despair that I would ever attain to such beauty, the domain of others, my betters.
One evening Mother asked what was troubling me. I didn’t understand why she looked so worried. Had I slept all right, she wanted to know. When Father came home from work, he too seemed worried.
The look on people’s faces revealed baffling things to me, things that were going on beyond my control where they brushed by, entrusting me with some deep dark secret even I was not supposed to know but had to guard until the time came to tell it. Nothing outwardly unusual happened that winter or the following spring, yet there was something there, sneaking up on me in the dark, bereaving me of all that was solid and safe.
Twice a week I went with Mother to the Conservatory, and I would sit in the classroom like an outcast. No one paid any attention to me, and I got used to it, I suppose. I never heard a word they said. I just kept hoping that one day I would meet that kid Uri and maybe ask him what the piece was called. But I never ran into him again, and whenever Mother and I walked down the corridor I would drag her over to the doorway where I had heard him play, and beg her to wait and listen outside: maybe it would happen, maybe I would be able to relive that amazing moment with her. But usually the room was silent, or else someone else was playing in there. It was the same with all the other rooms along the gloomy corridor.
Then one day before the lesson, the boy with the shadow of a mustache walked up to me and asked me why I blink all the time. I didn’t understand the question, but I realized he was provoking me and trying to hurt my feelings. I didn’t answer. After class I told Mother about the boy and what he said. There was such a look of pain and worry on her face that I felt guilty somehow, as though I’d contracted some dangerous disease, or witnessed a terrible catastrophe, and the only way anyone could help me was to reflect it back or to offer a little reassurance.
“If anyone asks you,” said Mother, “just tell them you’re tired. Tell them it starts when you get tired and need to rest, and that when you rest, it goes away. Just say you need to rest, that’s the main thing.” The strain of the lie showed plainly on her face. I didn’t feel a bit tired. I didn’t need to rest, and neither did my eyes. And there was no one who could give me what I really needed. I studied my face in the mirror. Nothing unusual there or in my eyes. It was a conspiracy of silence.
1
“Do you feel alright?” asked the doctor. He was standing next to Father and Mother as if they were all in league.
“Yes,” I said, “I feel fine.”
“Has anything unpleasant happened lately?”
I tried to think, but remembered no such thing.
He peered into my face but avoided my eyes.
“How old are you?”
“Seven.”
> “Do you bite your nails?” He looked at my hands.
“What?! Am I crazy?” I said.
Mother winced, and stared at me in utter shock and I couldn’t understand why. I searched her eyes, trembling at the possible disgrace I had brought upon her. The doctor noticed my discomfort and advised my parents to leave the room so he and I could have a little chat. When they had left the room, he smiled at me and asked: “How are things with your parents–alright?”
“Fine,” I answered, and added an expression I’d heard somewhere, “ They’re A-okay”.
The doctor chuckled skeptically and asked, “Giving you a hard time, are they?”
“What do you mean, giving me a hard time?” I was indignant. I loved them so much I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking.
“You think they’re pleased with the things you do?”
“I do what they tell me to,” I replied.
At this his eyes lit up. He must have caught the undertone of anger in my voice.
“Do my questions make you angry?” asked the doctor.
“No, no,” I protested. “No, not at all.”
He smiled incredulously.
“Hey, how come you haven’t checked my eyes yet?” I asked.
He continued to question me, and wanted to hear all about school, and about my friends and the games we liked to play and about the violin. I couldn’t figure out why he was so interested in everything. Then he led me out to the waiting room, and asked if I would mind sitting there for a while so he could have another chat with my parents. The door closed behind them, and I waited alone. Time passed. Daylight flooded through the open window. The waiting room furniture was pale, and so were the curtains. I was afraid I would panic again the way I did at the Conservatory when Mother left me, but it wasn’t so bad at the doctor’s. I got used to the pale furniture and strained to make out what they were saying behind the door, but all I heard was the sound of traffic coming through the open windows. For a long while I sat there alone, wondering when it would be over so we could finally go back to normal life. But normal life was gone forever, and there was no point pretending otherwise.