The House of Silence

by Blanca Busquets

  I look around. “Are we ready?” I ask, lifting the baton.

  “One second, please . . .” says Teresa, adjusting her instrument on her shoulder.

  I look at Anna out of the corner of my eye. She is ready; she’s always ready, and she gets impatient with the others, especially with Teresa. And then, when she is playing, she gets that wrinkle on her forehead, and her lips become more desirable than ever, more than when she smiled at me for the first time, more than when I saw her playing with my father and yearned to feel her close to me.

  My father came to the door with a few strides. He cut an imposing figure, so tall and stocky. The woman in the uniform and apron had disappeared. I spoke to him in German, I told him right away that I came from East Berlin. He seemed interested and smiled widely as he invited me in. I followed him into a large room, with picture windows that overlooked a park filled with trees. He had me sit down and rang a little bell to call Maria. He asked me if I wanted a tea, and I said okay with a nod of my head because I was struck dumb by the luxury he lived in, which I was so unused to. And then, with the tea in front of me, he just said, go ahead, tell me, thinking that I had come with a message for him. What he wasn’t expecting was that I would say I was his son. After a moment of shock, he asked me to repeat myself: What did you say? he asked. That you are my father. According to my mother, I was born shortly after you separated.

  My father, the great orchestra conductor Karl T., was speechless. He must have been unsure whether I was telling the truth or was some sort of scam artist. I pulled my brand-new passport out of my pocket, and handed it to him. He took a look at it, and it said that I was his son. And that my last name was the same as his.

  The great Karl T. was flabbergasted. Finally, he reacted, I’m going to call my—your mother. She’s dead, I said, as he was already getting to his feet. He sat back down and didn’t move, and I understood that he was in shock. That wasn’t surprising, considering that in a matter of seconds, he had learned that his ex-wife was dead and that he had a twenty-eight-year-old son. I pulled a letter out of my pocket, the one my mother had written before she died. It explained everything. They occasionally spoke on the phone; he worried over her, but she had never spoken to him about me. In the letter she said that it was because she didn’t want to lose her son. Given the political circumstances, if I went to the West, she would have never seen me again. My mother had put the letter into my hands shortly before she died: Go and bring it to him, she had said. And that was what I did.

  Teresa seems be ready. I tap the music stand with the baton:

  “Let’s go.”

  After the first moments of confusion, my father looked at me with those blue eyes my mother said I had inherited, and he said: It says here that you’re a musician. Stay. And I stayed.

  Maria

  I close my eyes and let myself be carried off by the music, as if I were dusting off Beethoven. The music pierces my heart. The violin sounds so lovely, even though it is Mrs. Anna’s. I can’t help smiling a little; the Stainer sounds so good.

  Look at the piano, Mr. Karl would tell me, because I was embarrassed to look at my hands there on the keys, with his guiding my fingers into the right placement. And now keep practicing, he would say; you have to work on it a little bit each day, do you understand? I nodded. Mister Karl would tell me that I had half an hour in the afternoons to play the piano and make music. Yes, sir, I said again, and continued doing scales, while he started to teach the notes: Do, re, mi, fa, sol, and he would ask me to do them out of order. Then he would ask me to give them with the corresponding sound, and I had to know exactly where the sound of the note was, because each had its own and you couldn’t just make it up; there was one and just one. I tried it with varying success; there were days when Mr. Karl seemed to lose his patience with me—but other days he would say: Very good, Maria, very good, and he would congratulate me. I felt so happy, as happy as when my boyfriend kissed me and put his arm around my shoulders as we walked down the street.

  My boyfriend and I saw each other on Sunday mornings, always after mass, because he couldn’t on Thursday evenings. And we were seeing each other for a year. At first he only kissed me. But later, one day, when we were sitting on a park bench, where no one could see us, he kissed me in a way he never had before—with a kiss that lasted a long time, and lit a fire inside me. It made him hold me tighter and tighter, and then he started to put his hand on my inner thigh, as if he wanted to touch me under my skirt. In spite of the fire I felt inside, I gave him a good slap and quickly said: What do you think you’re doing? But Maria, he replied, that’s what boyfriends and girlfriends do; you have to let me touch you. No, I said, not until we are married.

  Thinking about that now brings a smile to my face. But at the time, what I was thinking of was Mr. Karl and the opera singer and the smack he’d received. I was unpleasantly surprised; I didn’t expect that from my boyfriend, I don’t know why. I already knew that some people did those things that Mr. Karl did, but I thought he was a decent boy. He was the only boyfriend I’d ever had, and up until then I’d enjoyed it—but that day I suddenly stood up and repeated: not until we’re married. And I waited. I thought that he would say: Well then, let’s get married, and that he would kneel down in front of me and ask me for my hand. I really thought that: I was such a fool; for heaven’s sake! When you get older you realize all the stupid things you’ve done. Because that boy, that boyfriend of mine who sat in the back rows of the church, like I did, so it wouldn’t look like we were trying to blend in with the gentlemen and ladies of the neighborhood—well, that boy, despite how much he devoutly prayed, found some other girl who would let him put his hand up her skirt, and maybe more. I found that out because, when he didn’t show up at mass the next Sunday or the one after that, I got worried. When I went to his house, they told me he had gone out with his girlfriend. Of course, I thought that I was his girlfriend, and clearly I wasn’t.

  I walked back home with my heart hurting and my eyes filling with tears that I couldn’t hold back. I looked at the ground, so no one would realize that I had just lost my heart’s desire. When I got home, I couldn’t see a thing because everything was water clouding my vision. I felt abandoned, betrayed, and alone, I had no one. I’d thought that I had the right to end up one of those women who marry and have children. And it turns out it was not to be. I opened the door and, without a word, without even a gut’n Tag to Beethoven, I headed straight to my room, stretched out on my bed and cried. I only cried for half an hour, and that was it—because I had to serve Mr. Karl his lunch, but my tears returned just as I had finished cooking and bringing him his food. I prayed: Dear Lord, don’t let him notice, and he really didn’t notice for a while. But finally he did. Yes, toward the end of the meal, when I brought out dessert, he said: Is the fruit going to taste salty today? I looked at the plate and a tear had fallen in one corner. Oh, sir, forgive me, I said, all flustered. And I went back to the kitchen to clean the fruit and put it on a new plate. Then, when I was in there, I heard his voice: I guess you and your boyfriend broke up. Mr. Karl was a direct person, and it made me cry even harder. I’m sorry, it just happened; I managed to get out between sobs. It happens to everybody, he said with a small smile. He was talking about the opera singer, I guess, and I blurted out: Oh, no, sir, it’s not like that. I thought he was a decent guy and wanted to marry me. His reaction was immediate. Oh, fine, so you think that I’m not a decent guy. I was horrified: Oh, no, sir, forgive me; I didn’t mean that, I just thought that, that . . . I didn’t know how to explain myself. Then I lifted my head and saw that Mr. Karl was still smiling. It seemed he didn’t mind too much what I had said; it seemed he even found it amusing. He stopped smiling for a moment to tell me, with a look in his eyes that I will never forget: True music has to be found down deep in the depths, you understand? I looked at him, now without tears, and I said: No, sir, I don’t understand.

  Mr. Karl didn’t say anything, but that day he washed the frui
t himself, and he told me to take the whole afternoon off—that we would figure it all out tomorrow. Thank you, I whispered. I told myself that, when all is said and done, I was lucky to have a boss who treated me as well as Mr. Karl did.

  The next day he was waiting for me at breakfast time. I had managed to sleep and, despite my heartache, I was feeling better. Very well, Maria; we skipped class yesterday and we’ll make it up today. I was about to say that I wasn’t in the mood, but I couldn’t because he came over to me and said: Now that you know exactly what the notes are and how they sound, tell me, do you want to continue playing the piano or do you want to learn to play the violin? He waited for my answer and I had to say something, so I said, the violin.

  And that was how I began playing the violin, when I had already learned to do scales on the piano—and I knew exactly how the notes sounded and what flats and sharps were, and a few other things. Then, off-handedly, he said that he’d brought the violin that I’d thrown out from his walled country. That there he had inherited it from his father and that his father had gone to a place called Salz—something, I don’t remember what—to buy it, a place surrounded by white mountains. White mountains and violins, he said with shining eyes. And they let me take it with me, because when you had such a valuable instrument, they would let you take it to the West to make an impression. I was shocked because I understood that the instrument was much more important to him than I’d realized, and I was the one who had thrown it into the trash. Bah, I barely remember that, it’s been so many years, he said, patting my shoulder so firmly that I cried out. He never touched me, but that day he did and as hard as he could—and then he said: So, you want a hot chocolate? And there we were again, in the kitchen having hot chocolate with whipped cream. Mr. Karl was again laughing in that contagious way over something or another, and I really was heartbroken, but I was still laughing. I couldn’t figure out how to interpret his strange behavior. When he came to the kitchen, he laughed—but when he left he turned into that serious, stiff guy who only knew how to play the piano, sing, conduct with his eyes closed, say gut’n Tag to Beethoven, and play the violin. This was the violin he bought after he’d lost the Stainer. When he left the kitchen, it was as if he turned into another person and disappeared into the world of music—one that was his and only his, and no one else could enter.

  But those days were different. Those days, on the one hand, he came into the kitchen often and, on the other, he invited me to play the violin more. My fingers hurt from pressing the strings, but I liked trying to find the same note-sounds I had played on the piano. He didn’t say anything more about the boyfriend who had dumped me or that stuff about finding music deep down in the depths that had left me so puzzled. But for a few days, he said more to me than he usually did. And I noticed it—that he was more present with me. Fifteen days had passed since things had ended with my boyfriend, and as I served his dinner, I said: I’m feeling better. And I added, thank you.

  Anna

  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.

  Maria

  When Miss Teresa came to the house, I didn’t think of her as a lady because I had seen her in the park some years earlier, and I’d seen her very differently than she was now. She wasn’t a violinist or a musician or anything then; she took care of children in the park. She must have started the violin later in life, because then she was a young girl. But when she showed up at Mr. Karl’s house, I said to myself: That’s her, the same one. She wasn’t dressed the same or anything like that. But I immediately said to myself, she’s scrubbed floors and dusted just like me. In a way, seeing that Teresa had transformed into a lady spurred me on, and made me think that I could transform through music too. There couldn’t be that big a difference between us; she must have been about twenty when I saw her working as a servant, and I had started with the piano scales at more or less the same age. I had noticed Teresa because the kids would get away from her. In those days, I would walk through the park at about the same time each afternoon, so I’d seen how she wasn’t able to keep track of the two of them. I felt very evil, because it made me giggle, I found it funny. Poor girl, she didn’t know how to call them to order—but I wouldn’t have known how to either. I wouldn’t have been able to keep them both in my sight. The whole kid thing wasn’t for me—that’s why I had rushed to work in a house where there was just a single man who didn’t look like he was in any hurry to get married. The thing is, I saw Teresa the same way every day. It made me laugh, because it wasn’t anything really bad. I could see that the kids were just playing at hiding, not being naughty or getting hurt. They did it just to drive her crazy. Then she would try to catch them, and I thought: What long fingers, and what white hands. I even thought they would be really good for playing the piano, because since I was already trying to play the piano I would look at everyone’s hands and compare them to mine, then wonder if mine were long enough.