Nadia Plays

The Luthier's Apprentice

Chapter 9: Nadia Plays

The violin was hanging on the wall in the front room, third from the left, and Nadia had been looking at it for weeks. She had been looking at all of them, the seven instruments that hung from their pegs on the front room wall, but she had been looking at this one in particular, the one with the deeper amber varnish, the one whose flame figure caught the light from the window in a way that made the maple seem to move, seem to breathe, the figuring shifting as the angle changed, and the shifting was the thing she looked at, the thing she watched, the thing she studied without admitting to herself that she was studying it, because to study a violin was to want a violin, and to want a violin was to want to play, and to want to play was to want the thing she could not have, and the wanting was dangerous, and the danger was the grief, and the grief was a country she had emigrated from and did not wish to revisit.

It was a Sunday. The workshop was closed on Sundays. Giovanni was at mass, which he attended not with the fervor of the devout but with the consistency of the habitual, the weekly attendance being a rhythm of his life in the way that the weekly sharpening of the tools was a rhythm, not a passion but a practice, not a belief but a structure, the structure that held the week together the way the ribs hold the violin's body together, the structure providing the shape within which the work could happen. Marco was visiting his family in Brescia, an hour's train ride to the east, the visit weekly, the train familiar, the family waiting. Lucia was at home in her apartment on the far side of the Piazza del Comune, the apartment she had lived in since her divorce twelve years ago, the apartment where she spent Sundays reading novels and drinking tea and not thinking about the workshop, the not-thinking being her version of rest, the deliberate setting-aside of the concern that occupied her other six days.

Nadia was alone in the building. She was alone in the front room. She was alone with the violins.

She had not played since Cleveland. She had not touched a violin since the afternoon she placed her instrument in its case and carried it out of Severance Hall and sat in her car in the parking garage and held the case on her lap. That was twenty months ago. Twenty months of not playing, of not touching, of not holding the instrument that she had held every day for twenty-two years, and the not-holding was an absence with weight, an absence with shape, the shape of the violin's body against her shoulder and the weight of the instrument under her chin and the pressure of the chinrest against her jaw and the contact of the strings against her fingertips, all of it absent, all of it missing, all of it the negative space that the violin had occupied in her physical life, the space that was still there, still shaped like the violin, still waiting.

She stood in the front room and she looked at the violin, the third from the left, and the violin looked back, which was not a metaphor, or was a metaphor so true that it ceased to be metaphorical and became literal, because the violin's surface reflected the room and in the reflection she could see herself, her face distorted by the curvature of the varnished surface, her features stretched and compressed and made strange by the arching, and the strangeness was accurate, was the correct representation, because she was strange to herself now, strange in the way that a person who has lost their defining activity is strange, the musician without the music, the violinist without the violin, the trained body without the training, and the strangeness was what she saw when she looked at the violin and the violin reflected her back.

She reached up. She lifted the violin from its peg. The peg was wooden, turned on a lathe, smooth, the violin hanging from the scroll by a loop of twine, the twine soft and strong and knotted with the particular knot that Giovanni used, a knot she did not know the name of but that she could now tie because she had watched Giovanni tie it, had watched him loop and twist and pull with the economy of a man who has tied the same knot ten thousand times, and the tying was the same as the planing and the carving, the same act repeated until the act became the person and the person became the act.

The violin was in her hands. She held it by the neck with her left hand and by the lower bout with her right, and the holding was familiar, was the most familiar thing she had done in twenty months, the shape of the neck against her palm, the curve of the bout against her fingers, the weight of the instrument distributed between her two hands in the proportion she knew instinctively, had known since she was four, the proportion of the violin divided between the hands being one of the first things a violin student learns, the holding that precedes the playing, the holding that is the prerequisite, and the prerequisite was met, and the prerequisite had always been met, the prerequisite was the easy part, the part that the injury had not touched, because the injury was specific and the holding was general and the general survived the specific and the survival was the cruelty, the cruelty of being able to hold the thing you cannot use.

She found the bow. It was in a drawer beneath the display cabinet, a drawer lined with velvet, and in the drawer were three bows, wooden bows with horsehair strings, the bows that Giovanni used to test his instruments, the bows that were working bows, not performance bows, not the Tourte or Pecatte bows that soloists used, but honest, well-made bows that produced a clear tone and allowed the player to assess the instrument's voice without the bow's own character interfering. She took one. She tightened the hair, turning the screw at the frog with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, the tightening automatic, the tension gauged by the spacing between the stick and the hair at the center of the bow, the spacing that she measured by eye, by habit, by the twenty-two years of tightening that had calibrated her hand to the correct tension without thought.

She found the rosin. A cake of amber resin in a wooden box, the surface of the cake scored by the bow hairs that had been drawn across it, the scoring a pattern of parallel lines that was the record of every rosining, every bow preparation, every testing of every instrument that had been made in this workshop, the pattern accumulated over years, the rosin cake slowly diminishing, the diminishment the measure of the work, and the work was the testing, and the testing was the playing, and the playing was what she was about to do.

She rosined the bow. She drew the bow hair across the rosin cake, the motion deliberate, the friction coating the horsehair with the microscopic particles of resin that would grip the string and set it vibrating, the particles that are the catalyst, the necessary intermediary between the bow and the string, without which the bow slides uselessly across the string and produces no sound, the rosining being the preparation for the sound, the last step before the sound.

She tucked the violin under her chin. The chinrest pressed against her jaw. The shoulder rest — she had no shoulder rest, there was no shoulder rest in the drawer, and the absence was a relief because it forced her to hold the instrument the way she had learned to hold it as a child, before the shoulder rest became standard, before the ergonomic considerations became paramount, before the equipment became more important than the contact, the direct contact between the body and the instrument, the wood against the collarbone, the varnish against the skin, the instrument held by the body rather than by the accessories.

She adjusted the violin's position. The scroll pointed up and to the left. The bridge was vertical. The strings were four parallel lines disappearing into the distance of the fingerboard. She looked down the fingerboard and the perspective was the performer's perspective, the view from inside the instrument, the view that no audience member sees, the view that is the player's private geography, the landscape of the fingerboard stretching away from the body like a road, a road that the fingers travel, a road that the fingers know.

She drew the bow across the G string. Open G, the lowest string, the string that produces the violin's deepest note, the note that anchors the instrument's range, the note that is the foundation. The bow contacted the string. The string vibrated. The vibration traveled through the bridge into the top plate and the top plate vibrated and the vibration became sound and the sound filled the front room.

The sound. She heard the sound and the hearing was an event, a detonation, a breaking of the twenty months of silence, the silence that had not been the absence of sound but the absence of this sound, the sound of a bowed string, the sound of horsehair on gut, the sound that her body knew the way the body knows its own heartbeat, the sound that had been the constant of her life from the age of four to the age of twenty-six and that had been missing for twenty months and that was now here, now present, now vibrating in the air of a room in Cremona where seven violins hung from the walls and the varnish glowed and the morning light came through the window and the sound was the sound and the sound was everything.

The G string rang. The note was rich, dark, full, the voice of Giovanni's instrument, the voice that the spruce top plate and the maple back plate and the graduation and the arching and the f-holes and the bass bar and the sound post and the varnish had combined to produce, the voice that was this instrument's voice and no other's, the voice that was as individual as a human voice, as recognizable, as particular. The note sustained and Nadia held the bow on the string and the sustaining was the holding, the acoustic holding, the bow maintaining the vibration the way the hand maintains the grip, the continuation of the sound the product of the continuation of the effort, and the effort was the right hand, and the right hand was fine, the right hand was uninjured, the right hand could draw the bow as it had always drawn the bow, with the control and the pressure and the speed that twenty-two years of training had developed, and the training was intact, and the intact-ness was both a gift and a taunt, the right hand working perfectly while the left hand did not, the partnership broken on one side, the collaboration ended by the failure of one partner, and the failure was not the right hand's fault and not the left hand's fault but the brain's, the motor cortex's, the neural pathway's, and the pathway was damaged and the damage was permanent and the permanent was the thing she carried.

She played a scale. G major. Open G, then the first finger on the G string for A, the second finger for B, the third finger for C, and then the open D string, and the scale climbed, note by note, the fingers of the left hand pressing the strings against the fingerboard, the first finger and the second finger and the third finger working, pressing, producing the notes, and the notes were accurate, the intonation was correct, the pitches were true, because the first three fingers were undamaged, the first three fingers retained their trained precision, their fine motor control intact, their neural pathways clear.

She continued the scale. D, E, F-sharp, G. The first finger and the second finger and the third finger on the D string. The notes climbed. She reached the A string. A, B, C-sharp, D. She was in the second octave now, the fingers climbing higher on the fingerboard, but still in first position, still using the first three fingers, still in the territory that the injury had not claimed.

She did not continue to the E string. She did not continue because the E string in the upper positions would require the fourth finger, would require the finger that the dystonia had disrupted, and she was not ready, was not prepared, was not willing to hear the fourth finger fail in a room full of violins made by a man who had spent his life making instruments for hands that worked.

She played the scale again, descending. D, C-sharp, B, A, G, F-sharp, E, D, C, B, A, G. The notes descended and the descending was a retreat, a return to the starting point, a going-back that was not a giving-up but a staying-within, staying within the range of what the hand could do, the hand's reduced range, the territory that remained after the territory that was lost, and the territory that remained was not nothing, the territory was a scale, was a key, was a set of notes, was a music, was a diminished music but a music nonetheless.

She played a melody. A simple melody. She did not decide to play it; the melody arrived in her hands the way melodies arrive in the hands of a musician who has played for twenty-two years, unbidden, unplanned, the muscle memory producing the notes before the conscious mind has named the tune, and the tune was a Croatian folk song, a song her father had sung to her as a child in Minneapolis, a song about the sea and the boats and the fishermen of Dalmatia, a song in a minor key, a song with a melody that stayed within the range of a fifth, that did not require the fourth finger or the fifth finger, that used the first three fingers in first position, that was simple in the way that folk songs are simple, the simplicity not a limitation but a purity, the melody stripped of ornament and elaboration and virtuosity, stripped down to the notes and the notes alone.

She played the folk song and the folk song filled the room and the room was the front room of a violin workshop in Cremona and the violin was an instrument made by Giovanni Ferraro and the bow was a working bow from a velvet-lined drawer and the morning was a Sunday morning in October and the light was the light of autumn and the sound was the sound of a woman playing a violin for the first time in twenty months, playing the song her father sang, playing the melody that her hand could still play, the melody that the injury had not taken, the melody that remained.

The sound was beautiful. This was the thing she had not expected, the thing that surprised her, the thing that broke the careful distance she had maintained from the grief, because the sound was beautiful and the beauty was unexpected because she had expected the sound to be painful, had expected the playing to be an exercise in loss, a demonstration of what was missing, a catalog of what the hand could no longer do, and instead the sound was beautiful, the melody was beautiful, the simple folk song played on a fine Cremonese instrument with a bow drawn by a trained right hand was beautiful, and the beauty was not the beauty of virtuosity, was not the beauty of the Tchaikovsky or the Brahms or the Sibelius, was not the beauty of the concert stage, but was beauty, was genuinely and undeniably and heartbreakingly beautiful, and the heartbreak was not the expected heartbreak of loss but a different heartbreak, the heartbreak of discovery, the discovery that the music was not gone, the music was still here, the music was diminished but not destroyed, reduced but not eliminated, and the not-eliminated was the thing, the thing she had not known, the thing that the twenty months of silence had hidden from her, the thing that the front room of the workshop was revealing.

She put the violin down. She put it down because if she did not put it down she would cry, and she did not want to cry in the front room of a workshop where seven violins hung from the walls and each violin could hear her and each violin was a judgment and she did not want to be judged, not by the instruments, not by the workshop, not by the tradition that the workshop represented. She put the violin down on the display cabinet, gently, the way you put down a sleeping child, the way you put down a thing that is precious and fragile and alive.

She stood in the front room and she breathed. She breathed and the breathing was the recovery, the recovering of the distance, the re-establishment of the careful space between herself and the grief, the space that the playing had collapsed and that the breathing was rebuilding, and the rebuilding was necessary because the grief was large and the space was the only protection and the protection was the only way she could continue, could continue working in the workshop, could continue learning the craft, could continue standing at the bench every day with the gouges and the planes and the wood and the man who made the violins and the man who was learning to make the violas and the sounds of the tools and the smell of the spruce, the daily life of the apprentice, the daily life that required the distance, that required the space, that required the not-crying.

Giovanni came home from mass. She heard the front door open and close, heard his footsteps in the hall, heard him climb the stairs to the second floor where his apartment was, above the workshop, above her room, the building organized vertically the way the tradition was organized vertically, the workshop on the ground floor, the apprentice above, the master above the apprentice, the arrangement not hierarchical but architectural, the building built for this purpose, for the housing of the maker and the making.

She heard him descend again, heard him enter the workshop through the internal door, heard him move to the front room, and then he was in the doorway and she was in the room and the violin was on the display cabinet and the bow was in her right hand and she had forgotten to put the bow down, had forgotten that she was holding it, the holding so natural, so habitual, so ingrained that the hand had not registered the bow as an object to be put down but as an extension of itself, and the extension was the training, and the training was still there, and the still-there was visible to Giovanni, who looked at the bow in her hand and looked at the violin on the cabinet and looked at her face and understood, understood everything, understood the playing and the stopping and the distance and the grief and the beauty and the not-crying, understood it the way a maker understands wood, by looking, by assessing, by the quiet attention of a man who has spent seventy-eight years in a workshop where the primary form of communication is the attention itself.

He said nothing.

The nothing was the right thing to say.

He walked to the display cabinet. He picked up the violin. He returned it to its peg, third from the left. He took the bow from Nadia's hand, gently, the way you take a tool from an apprentice who has finished with it, the taking not a correction but a completion, the putting-away that follows the using, and the putting-away was the closing and the closing was the care and the care was the nothing that he said and the nothing was the everything that he meant.

Nadia loosened the bow hair. She returned the bow to the drawer. She closed the drawer. She stood in the front room and Giovanni stood in the front room and the violins hung on the walls and the morning light came through the window and the light touched the varnish and the varnish glowed and the glowing was the beauty and the beauty was the sound made visible and the sound had been in the room and the sound was gone but the room remembered, the room held the memory of the sound the way the wood held the memory of the tree, and the memory was the thing, and the thing was the music, and the music was still there, and the still-there was the discovery, and the discovery was the morning, and the morning was a Sunday in October in Cremona.

Giovanni went to the kitchen. He made espresso. He brought two cups to the workshop, one for himself, one for Nadia. The cups were small, the espresso dark and thick and bitter, the Italian espresso that is not a beverage but a punctuation, a mark on the day, a comma between one activity and the next. They drank in the workshop, standing at the bench, the bench where the clamped top plate lay, the plate that was becoming the violin, the violin that was becoming the sound, and the sound was the future, and the future was being built, and the building was the work, and the work was the morning, and the morning was the espresso, and the espresso was the nothing, and the nothing was enough.

Nadia set her cup on the bench. She looked at the top plate. She looked at the grain of the spruce, the tight parallel lines, the bookmatched symmetry, the wood that was waiting to be carved, waiting to be shaped, waiting to be graduated into the plate that would vibrate, that would produce the voice, that would make the sound.

She would hear that sound. She would help make the instrument that produced that sound. She would stand at the bench and hold the tools and carve the wood and shape the arching and graduate the thickness and she would be part of the making, part of the process, part of the craft that produced the thing she could no longer play but could still hear, could still love, could still be moved by, the thing that the folk song had proved she could still be moved by, the thing that was not gone, the thing that was still there, the thing that was the music.

The music was still there.

The music was still there and the still-there was the thing she had come to Cremona to find, and she had found it, not in the workshop, not in the tools, not in the wood, not in the craft, but in the front room on a Sunday morning in October with a violin under her chin and a bow in her hand and a folk song in her fingers and the sound filling the room and the room holding the sound and the sound being beautiful and the beauty being the thing, the thing that the injury could not take, the thing that the dystonia could not disrupt, the thing that the loss could not erase, because the thing was not the playing, the thing was the music, and the music did not live in the fourth finger or the fifth finger, the music lived in the sound, and the sound lived in the instrument, and the instrument lived in the workshop, and the workshop lived in Cremona, and Cremona lived in the tradition, and the tradition was the making and the playing and the listening and the making again, and Nadia was inside the tradition now, inside the making, inside the workshop, inside the work.

And the work was the thing.

And the thing was the music.

And the music was still there.