Free A Separate War and Other Stories by Joe Haldeman Page A

function at the place, maybe my primary one, was to sell guitars to my defenseless students.
    I’m a reasonable guy and usually start them out with something good but not too expensive. An expert can get a pretty good sound out of anything, but a beginner can’t; on the other hand, you don’t want to talk somebody into a thousand-dollar guitar that she’ll be stuck with if she quits in a month.
    Nobody’d ever done what she did. She asked me what my favorite chord was—an open A major seventh in the fourth position—and listened to me play it on every classical guitar in the store. She didn’t buy the most expensive one, but she was close, a custom-made three-quarter-size that a luthier up in Yellow Springs had made for a guy who died before it could be delivered.
    I said it had a haunting tone. She said maybe that was because it was haunted.
    She was clumsy the first day, but after that she learned faster than anyone I’ve ever taught. Once a week wasn’t enough; she wanted lessons on the weekends, too. Sometimes at the store on Saturday; sometimes elsewhere on Sunday, when the store was closed. We practiced down at the lake on campus when the weather was fine; otherwise her place.
    Her apartment was as plain and neat as mine was cluttered and, well, not neat. Mine looked like a bachelor had lived there alone for five years. Hers looked like no one lived there at all. It had the understated rightness of a Japanese Sumi-e painting—a few pieces of furniture, a few pieces of art, all in harmony. I wondered what was hidden behind the closed bedroom door. Maybe I hoped the room was heaped high with junk.
    When I did see it, I found it was as simple as the rest of the place. A low bed, a table and chair, and a place to hang our clothes.
    She was no groupie. I’d had plenty of experience with them, both before and (unfortunately) during my marriage. Sidemen don’t get groupies, though, and groupies don’t approach you with quiet seriousness and explain that it was time to move your relationship to a higher spiritual plane.
    I hesitated because of age—I’d just turned forty and she seemed half that—and I did respect her and not want to hurt her. She smiled and said that if I didn’t hurt her, she would try to return the favor.
    Later I would remember “try to.” She must have known.
    Our first night was more than a night, in both time and consequence. She revealed her actual beauty for the first time, and gave me more physical pleasure than any woman ever had, and took the same in return. I didn’t question where she could have learned all that she knew. Sometime around noon, she left me exhausted in her bed, and it was getting dark again when she gently shook me awake. She said she had a present for me.
    There were two candles on her table, with wine and cheese, bread and fruit. She lit a few other candles around the room while I opened the bottle, and then brought over her gift, a large angular thing in a cotton sack. When I took it from her, it knocked against the table with a soft discordant jangle.
    It was a big ornate lute-like thing, which she called a chitarrone. At least that’s what the antique dealer had called it when she bought it at the big flea market in Waldo.
    It didn’t sound very musical, missing some strings and not in tune with the rusty ones it did have, but even in its beat-up state it was an impressive piece of work, a cross between a lute and a kind of string bass. The wood was inlaid in a neat pattern, and there were three ornately carved sound holes. It came with a diagram showing how the strings should be tuned, drawn with brown ink on paper that felt like soft animal skin, a kind of hokey attempt at antiquity, I thought. The notes were square, but the staffs were recognizable. I knew I could string it with modern mandolin, guitar, and cello strings.
    It couldn’t possibly be as old as it looked, and not be