We humans are such idiots. We always fall into the same trap.
“Sorry,” is all I say when I see that Mark has stopped the orchestra.
I messed up on a passage that I’ve been having trouble with.
“Let’s go back,” says my husband.
We go back and I realize that I’m blushing. I can’t stand being the center of attention because of a mistake. I never make mistakes, but this time I was thinking about something else and wasn’t paying enough attention. And I fell into the trap again.
I fell hard that time, too, perhaps because I needed to. I eventually forgave Papa for having disappeared during all my fourteen years of life—only because he came, he moved in and showered me with presents, and gave me everything I wanted. And also because he told me that we would take a trip, and we did—and because he told me that he would buy me a new violin, and he did. He had carefully listened to Teresa’s explanations, he had gone to see her—to Clara’s and my surprise. And I, who’d been so ashamed in front of my teacher for not having parents, felt good. I felt I could say, you see, I do have a father. In fact, I had swapped an invisible mother for a father with a real presence.
At the beginning, it didn’t matter that Papa was there. I felt my mother’s absence like a heartburn that was immune to every remedy. I was always waiting for her to come through the door: this woman who never even looked at me and gave me orders from up on her stiletto heels, who wouldn’t let me hug her or even touch her. I was waiting to be able to enrage her somehow, so she would come over and hit me—so I could have that feeling of pleasure that I was unable to find any other way or in any other place.
That first night, when she left, when I came home after spending the evening at the lake in the park, I locked myself in my room. I didn’t have dinner, because I thought that, if I ate, everything I swallowed would go down my throat into the bottomless hole and end up in my feet. I thought that my feet would get big and fat from all the undigested food. I stretched out on the bed and stared up at the ceiling of my room, where there was also water—because the park’s lake was reflected and playfully swung back and forth up there when the window was open. Then it got dark, and I heard the crickets. I kept staring at the ceiling, my eyes and my heart dry. And I was without a soul, because I had given that up to the lake—and now the tadpoles must be eating it up. Then Clara came, opened the door, and sat down beside me. She was a maid, but she was all I had. I hugged her and I cried.
I would hug Papa some time later. I would hug him, and I would think, foolishly, that better days had come. I would consider Papa both a father and a mother—and, for a few years, I forgot that he hadn’t been there for fourteen years, and he made me the happiest girl in the world. Until it all ended suddenly, because we should never trust those who show up late.
On the other hand, I had music, and I still do. I wanted to give up the violin, but Teresa had made me see everything differently. Even though Mama had told me that in the conservatory they wouldn’t pay attention to me. She was so wrong. On the first day, Teresa asked me why I hated the violin so much, and I was shocked that she had noticed, that she could tell I couldn’t stand to play it. I shrugged. Then she said, you have to hold it as if it were your beloved—like this. As she said, like this, she placed it gently on my shoulder. And now, you have to touch your beloved. My eyes grew wide as saucers. She joked, not like that, you have to touch his face and eyes and mouth to know what they’re like, because you’re blind. Close your eyes, like this. Very good. Now run the bow with an A. No, no—not like that. You aren’t touching it; you are scratching at it. There’ll be a time for scratching it, too—but for right now, you just have to touch it. Get to know it, like this; very good. Teresa spoke with a gentle, velvety voice—a voice like the sound that came out of the violin. It was a sound that I realized, from the very first day, had nothing to do with the sound I got out of it when I played with the hawk-nosed teacher. If your fingers hurt, take a little break, she said; you can’t be suffering as you play. She looked into my eyes as she said: While you’re playing, you have to make music.
And it turns out making music is easy. I only realized it with Teresa, after so many years of playing en souffrant. There was another path to reach the same destination. Why are you so nervous? Calm down and relax; you’ll never play anything like that.
Teresa told me magic words, Teresa taught me how to play, Teresa taught me to imagine. Teresa taught me everything. Later, when I switched from Mama to Papa, she must have noticed something. She said, completely naturally, that you could lose yourself inside music—distance yourself from the world outside. I’d never been told that before. The truth was that I couldn’t distance myself from anything, but I did feel calmer as soon as I ran the bow over the instrument. With each passing day, I felt more that the violin was an extension of myself—as if it were some strange, magical growth. Then, when Papa talked to Teresa and bought me a new violin, I could tell that my life was starting to go more smoothly.
Papa was always home when I got back from school. He would ask me if I had a lot of homework, and would help me to complete what was due the next day. He also would ask me if I had any problems so that he could help to solve them. At first I wouldn’t confide in him, but later, I did. He asked if I wanted to travel around Europe that summer, and I said yes. We spent a month traveling, and it was the best time of my life—even though I left my violin at home, I didn’t miss it at all. When we came back on the plane, I thought that maybe I had been wrong—that the tadpoles in the lake hadn’t eaten my soul after all.
I was sixteen years old when I first hugged my father. He had never forced me to; he could sense that I didn’t want to get too close to him, because I didn’t want what had happened with Mama to happen again. Inside me, I thought that the people we want to hug will one day or another slip away from us, and I couldn’t bear the thought of living without him after we’d hugged. The day I did it, he hugged me back. I realized that he was crying, and he said: My girl, I never looked you in the face when I came here, because—if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to leave without taking you with me. And your mother wouldn’t have allowed that.
He was crying. I was, too. The world was kind, life was different. Everything was changing, happiness was here and lasted until I turned eighteen. I’d finished school and, with Teresa, I had reached my final violin studies with flying colors. Clara had gotten married, and now there was a new girl who spent the day at our house, but then went home to her own to live and sleep. At night it was just me and my father, and we were happy.
We were happy until we went to the Palau de la Música to hear a concert and bumped into Teresa there.