When Mr. Mark told me that his father was dead, I thought that all of a sudden the air around me had frozen. The priest had talked about the apocalypse at Mass the previous Sunday and he’d said that the heavens would fall and the earth would sink and if anyone was left alive, the angels would come down and start cutting off heads to make sure that we were all dead, because they don’t call it the apocalypse for nothing. So when I heard that Mr. Karl had died, I thought that the heavens were falling and the earth was sinking. And before the angels swooped down and started cutting off heads, I went to my room, closed the door, hugged the Stainer and the letter, and I just lay there, looking at the ceiling, stretched out on the bed, for a long time. I wanted to cry and I couldn’t. I had a thick, cold rock inside me that filled me up, a frozen rock that numbed me from inside. But it couldn’t numb me entirely, no, because there was still a hot drop somewhere inside me and that drop gradually multiplied, and it melted the ice and made more and more drops, so many that they became a sea and all poured out. It was hard for me to cry, but when I did I couldn’t stop for hours. And, as I cried, I thought of all those years, all the things that had happened, Mr. Karl playing, Mr. Karl on the sofa, and me throwing the violin into the garbage, and making hot chocolate, and doing everything for him. And that was how I greeted the dawn, dry after many damp hours throughout the night, breaking the silence that was always there, beside that park that changed so much over the course of a day.
And it turned out that a new day had dawned, but without Mr. Karl.
After a long while, Mr. Mark came to see me. He knocked on the door and I thought that I had to open the door. I wiped away my tears and hid the Stainer in the wardrobe first. Outside there was a boy who was also crying, a boy who had lost his father. And I didn’t dare to hug him, I didn’t know if I should, but I wanted to, I needed it as well. He was the one who reached out to me, and we embraced, both crying, for a good long while. I don’t remember having felt the warmth of another person so close in many years, I didn’t remember how warm a hug could be, and Mr. Mark’s hug reminded me of the ones my mother gave me when I was little, which made me feel sheltered from all the ugly things in the world.
I’m going to get everything organized, he said, after drying his tears. I’ll call you for your help, okay, because we have a funeral to set up. I nodded, swallowing my tears. If he had dried away his, I had to do the same.
When Mr. Mark left, I went to the church to speak with God. God, I asked, how is it that just when you’ve given me everything, you take it all away? And God looked down at me from the cross he was nailed to on the other side of the altar, and he said, dear girl, complete happiness doesn’t exist. Well, I don’t know exactly if God said that to me, I don’t remember; maybe I said it to myself, but it somehow echoed in my ears, and I started crying again, with sobs that could be heard in every corner of God’s house.
I went back to the house and opened the wardrobe in my bedroom. I pulled out the Stainer and looked at it. Then, I picked up the letter that I had read so many times. I looked at it, too, but without reading it, because now that the man who had written it was dead, I couldn’t find the strength—even though when he gave it to me, I read it a thousand times, at least. I saw him again, the way he had come to see me on the day he left for Berlin. He gave me such a special look when he said, come on, Maria, make me a hot chocolate with whipped cream. And I made him a hot chocolate with whipped cream. It had been a while since he’d asked me for one. I poured myself a little too and we both ate it in the kitchen, and he told me about the concert he’d prepared, and he told me he was very excited to perform that piece he always played on Sunday mornings, because he had conducted it many years ago in his country but never since then.
He wiped his lips and told me not to move. He came back a little while later, already dressed for the trip, with the Stainer in his left hand, and the bow and an envelope in his right. He looked at me in such a special way, like when I would play the song of the peasant girl and the shepherd, and he put the violin gently in my hands. I got this back for you, he told me. I couldn’t believe my ears. At first I was struck dumb, but then I blurted out, Mr. Karl, you’ve lost your mind. But he shushed me and held out the envelope, and this is also for you. And I took the letter and was about to open it. No, he said, placing his hand on mine, open it once I’ve left, please. There are some things that have to be said in writing. I looked at him and, for the first time ever, I thought I saw him blushing.
The last time I saw him, he went out through the door, backlit, with his suitcase, to the waiting taxi. I would have liked to hug him, I don’t know what I wanted to do to him, I had a Stainer in one hand and I couldn’t believe it was mine, and I had no idea what it said in that mysterious letter, but it must have been something big because Mr. Karl wasn’t the writing type. He never wrote anything except for notes on the staves. Maybe he has written a score for me, I thought. And I went into my room to solve the mystery that had me so intrigued, trembling with excitement, the violin in one hand and a white envelope in the other.