Free Violin by Anne Rice

together in a plea that sounded more purely human than any sound made by child, man or woman.
    It struck me—a great formless thought, unable to take shape in this atmosphere of slow lovely embracing music—that that was the power of the violin, that it sounded human in a way that we humans could not! It spoke for
us
in a way that we ourselves couldn’t. Ah, yes, and that’s what all the pondering and poetry has always been about.
    It made my tears flow, his song, the Gaelic musical phrases old and new, and the sweet climb of notes that tumbled inevitably into an endless testimony of acceptance. Such tender concern. Such perfect sympathy.
    I rolled over into the pillow. His music was wondrously clear. Surely all the block heard it, the passersby, and Lacomb and Althea at it at the kitchen table with their playing cards or epithets; surely the birds themselves were lulled.
    The violin, the violin.
    I saw a day in summer some thirty-five years ago. I had my own violin in my case, between me and Gee, who rode his motorcycle, as I clung to him from the back, keeping the violin safe. I sold the violin to the man on Rampart Street for five dollars.
    “But you sold it to me for twenty-five dollars,” I said, “and that was just two years ago.”
    Away it went in its black case, my violin; musicians must be the mainstay of pawnshops. Everywhere there hung instruments for sale; or maybe music attracts many bitter dreamers such as me with grandiose designs and no talent.
    I had only touched a violin two times since—was that thirty-five years? Almost. Save for one blazing drunken time and its hangover aftermath, I never even picked up another violin, never never wanted to touch the wood, the strings, the resin, the bow, no, not ever.
    But why did I bother to think of this? This was an old adolescent disappointment. I’d seen the great Isaac Stern play Beethoven’s
Violin Concerto
in our Municipal Auditorium. I’d wanted to make those glorious sounds! I’d wanted to be that figure, swaying on the stage. I wanted to bewitch! To make sounds like these now, penetrating the walls of this room.…
    Beethoven’s
Violin Concerto
—the first classical piece of music I came to know intimately later from library records.
    I would become an Isaac Stern. I had to!
    Why think of it? Forty years ago, I knew I had no gift, no ear, could not distinguish quarter tones, hadn’t the dexterity or the discipline; the best teachers told me as kindly as they could.
    And then there was the chorus of the family, “Triana’s making horrible noises on her violin!” And the dour advice of my father that the lessons cost too much, especially for one so undisciplined, lazy and generally erratic by nature.
    That ought to be easy to forget.
    Hasn’t enough common tragedy thundered down the road since then, mother, child, first husband long lost, Karl dead, the toll of time, the deepening understanding—?
    Yet look how vivid the long ago day, the pawnbroker’s face, and my last kiss to the violin—my violin—before it slid across the dirty glass countertop. Five dollars.
    All nonsense. Cry for not being tall, not being slender and graceful, not being beautiful, not having a voice either with which to sing, or even enough determination to master the piano sufficiently for Christmas carols.
    I had taken the five dollars and added fifty to it with Rosalind’s help and gone to California. School was out. My mother was dead. My father had found a new lady friend, a Protestant with whom to have an “occasional lunch,” who cooked huge meals for my neglected little sisters.
    “You never took care of them!”
    Stop it, I won’t think on those times, I won’t, or of little Faye and Katrinka on that afternoon when I went away, Katrinka scarcely interested, but Faye smiling so brightly and throwing her kisses … no, don’t. Can’t. Won’t.
    Play your violin for me, all right, but I will now politely forget my own.
    Just listen to him.
    It’s as