Intermission. The audience is riveted and applauding passionately. That’s rare here, because this isn’t Barcelona, where audience members really show their feelings. It’s really strange: At first you’re surprised by the different reactions between audiences from place to place when your performance is almost exactly the same. Later, you realize that the Mediterranean spectators show more feeling than the Nordics. It must be something in our blood; it runs hotter and we get emotional more easily, and we also get annoyed faster, and we have less tolerance when someone tries to pull a fast one on us. Here, on the other hand, they give a few claps and that’s it, no matter how great the performance is. Well, that’s what they usually do, because from what I’m hearing, tonight this concert hall is really spirited.
The rehearsals with Teresa and Karl were spirited too. Luckily, we only did two before joining the entire orchestra. And this time we just did one, right before the first orchestra rehearsal.
I pick up the violin and leave my dressing room. I see Teresa from a distance, and again I think that she’s not what she used to be, I remember, not many years ago, envying her impressive physical presence. I was slim and stringy, and she was tall and strong. But now she’s showing her years. And it’s too late for her to have children; maybe she thought my father could have given her one, I could have had a little brother or sister. Not from that woman, ugh, what a horrible thought.
Now Mark leaves the stage, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a white handkerchief—one of those he always carries in his pocket, asking me if they’re clean, and I’ve given the maid special instructions to prioritize Mark’s handkerchiefs, to put them before even his shirts. He has an obsession with them. Now I smile at him and ask if it went well. He doesn’t answer, just nods. I run to his side, to walk him to his dressing room. He doesn’t pay much attention to me. He must be tired.
“Can I bring you anything?” I ask at the last minute when I see he wants to hole up in the dressing room.
“No, thanks,” he says with a half-smile. “See you later, sweetie,” he says, gently getting rid of me.
The door closes and I am left outside. I feel deeply wounded, run through with a blade that hit my lungs, and suddenly, I can barely breathe. It makes me think of the hospital and when I was released, because I felt that way then too. I had trouble taking in a deep breath, and the maid had to come with me everywhere because I was afraid to go alone. But that ended, and now it was happening again. It’s not the first time. Sometimes Mark will do something that makes me feel like that, as if I’ve been hit in the lungs, hit badly. I turn around slowly and make sure no one saw the scene. I put the violin down onto a chair, carefully so that it’s protected from blows, and go outside, mechanically putting one foot in front of another. There are musicians who’ve gone outside to smoke during the intermission, even though it’s raining. Yes, it’s raining, small but constant drops, the kind that fall silently and slowly soak everything, making the leaves on the ground shine. Really, it’s my soul, breaking into bits and pieces; I watch it lengthen and come apart as it hits the ground and mixes in with the colorful leaves that are dark now because there’s no light.
Yesterday, at the Spree, my soul flowed rapidly downstream. Not now, now it’s broken into pieces.
I liked that Karl lived so close to my house, but he must not have had the lake drawn on the ceiling of his room because it wasn’t as close to him as it was to me. I’m not sure; I never found out because he never showed me his bedroom. He insisted we stay in the piano room. Karl would devour me with his eyes every time we finished playing; his whole being gave off flames, and I felt myself burning, too. He was nothing like Mark, who’ll never know what it’s like to feel inside another person the way I felt I was inside Karl and he felt he was inside me; we were one, it was as if we didn’t need anyone else in the world, and it didn’t matter that he was so much older than me. I only worried about the maid showing up—but, even though she’s a horrid witch, she’s discreet, I’ll give her that. She never walked in on us and we never heard a peep out of her.
And then there was that scene with the violin. I showed up with my Stainer to impress Karl, and he certainly was impressed—but not the way I’d hoped. He grabbed the instrument from me, looked at it carefully and asked if he could borrow it for a moment. I said yes and he left. And I thought that he must be checking something that he wanted to see alone—because there was no one else in the house, except for Maria. I still don’t know what he was doing, but when he came back he was looking at me so strangely that I felt myself blushing as if he were accusing me of something. So I said the first thing that came into my head, which was that my father had given it to me, and I didn’t know where he’d gotten it. And then he blurted out: How much do you want for that violin? I was shocked and, after a few seconds of silence, I answered, nothing, it’s not for sale. He wasn’t fazed and made me an offer. No, no, it’s not for sale, I shook my head, thinking that the poor man didn’t know that the only thing I had was money, that I’d lost my father and my mother, but that I was surrounded by wealth. It seemed he had let it go and we began to play. And, after we’d finished, he came over and kissed me. I had never been kissed by a man because I never let one come near me, I didn’t want anyone to touch me, I didn’t want anyone to profane my physical solitude, and I was already almost thirty. But I couldn’t say no to him, he had me hypnotized; we were still under the effects of the outpouring of music, of that which only music can achieve—and something held me where I was, and then I felt what it was like to be kissed by a man, and not just any man but him. A man I thought was old enough to be my father, and when he died I found out that he could actually have been my grandfather. But that didn’t matter in those moments: Karl kissed me passionately and, being so large and tall, it felt like he wanted to swallow me up entirely. He pushed me onto the sofa. At first I resisted a little, but he gently moved my hands away, and finally I gave in. I succumbed and I liked it, and I liked it that day and all the others that followed. I liked it until everything was ruined by the person who always ruins everything: Teresa.
But that would come later. For the moment, I had Karl just for me, even though, sometimes, he didn’t remember that I was there, or he didn’t pay me any attention, or we would play and then I was the one who had to go after him. And that was when I had my great idea, when I figured out how to get him to be mine and only mine. And one day I just came out and said it, I’ll give you the Stainer if you marry me.