Free The Four Temperaments by Yona Zeldis McDonough

wasn't practicing or listening to music, he was talking about the superiority of the stringed instruments in general and the violin in particular; his reverence for Bach and his ambivalence about Beethoven. His dissection of some piece of music that he had heard when he was—mercifully—somewhere else. Gabriel longed for silence, silence that he could see and feel as well as hear.
    He began to avoid his practicing, not so hard to do when his father wasn't there, as his mother didn't goad him in the same way. “You didn't practice today, did you?” she would say, knowing the answer but feeling obligated to ask, to try.
    â€œNot yet,” he'd tell her. “I'll do it after.”
    â€œBut don't you have homework?”
    â€œI did it in study hall,” Gabriel would lie. He could see that she was wavering.
    â€œOh, all right,” she would say. Gabriel was relieved and grateful in his escape. “See you later,” he would tell her. He could hear Ben's flute from down the hallway; his playing wasn't bad, but Gabriel couldn't stand the sound. He had to get out of there. He found his silences in different places throughout the city: in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he liked to visit the galleries that housed early Renaissance paintings or archaic Greek sculpture. In Central Park, all the way uptown, where his parents distinctly forbade him to go. As time went on, he sought the eloquent silence of buildings, from the great to the ordinary. The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. The New York Public Library. A row of brownstone houses in Brooklyn, the symmetry of their façades as gratifying and alive as faces. These edifices seemed to soothe and console him, in a way that music, mere sound, could not. By the time he was ready for college, all the subterfuge was gone, and he openly defied Oscar. He had made it clear that he would not attend Juilliard, no matter how Oscar tried to bribe him, no matter how many phone calls were made on his behalf. He wanted to go to Columbia, and eventually to study architecture. It was the only way he was going to get any peace.
    â€œYou're throwing away your gift,” said Oscar sadly, defeated but still kicking.
    â€œHe has other gifts.” This from Ruth, the mediator, the peacemaker.
    â€œThat's the most important one, though,” said Oscar.
    â€œCome on, Dad,” said Gabriel. “There's still Willie and Ben. You might make musicians out of them.”
    â€œYour brother William thinks the highest form of musical expression is the Broadway show tune,” said Oscar gloomily. It was true; William's natural facility with the piano turned to popular forms that everyone could sing to. Whenever there was a family gathering, he would inevitably find his way to the polished upright piano in the den and start improvising, letting his fingers roam the keyboard easily.
    â€œWell, what about Ben?” asked Gabriel, not too sympathetic.
    â€œYou mean the Pied Piper of Hamelin?” Oscar said. But Gabriel didn't care if his father was disappointed in him, or in his brothers, or in the way that his own career had worked out. He had his own life to live, and it was not going to be such a goddamned noisy one. The handcrafted violin of spruce and flame maple Oscar had purchased and presented to him with such a flourish remained mute, locked in its unassuming black case. After a while, he didn't see it anymore, though he never asked what had become of it.
    Once playing the violin was behind him, Gabriel attended Columbia, living first at home, and then finally in a dark but otherwise pleasant apartment on the ground floor of a building on Amsterdam Avenue and 118th Street, the very apartment where he first made love to Penelope.
    Although he imagined that he would have some competition when it came to winning Penelope, he was wrong. Despite her astonishing beauty, Penelope was not at all confident or poised; she had little idea of what