The House of Silence

by Blanca Busquets

  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.

  Teresa

  The first part went quite well and there was a lot of applause. Mark left wiping his forehead and went to the dressing room followed by Anna. It seems he doesn’t like her always keeping such a tight rein on him. I know why she does it; I know that Anna is, really, an unhappy soul searching for someone who will be there for her, because she had no mother and she thinks she had no father either, but that isn’t true, she did have a father. Still, a normal father/daughter relationship wasn’t enough for her. She needed to have him all to herself, and, now, the only thing she has all to herself is the Stainer. So I guess I have to think of my gift as an act of charity. I don’t know what to think about that girl, I just don’t know what to think.

  Mark insisted that I come to this concert. Ten years since Karl’s death, it’s an homage and they wanted everyone who played with him then to perform. He had called me up. Is Anna coming? I finally asked. Yes, he said in a thin voice. I let out a discreet uh-huh to give myself time to think. Finally I asked, and she has no problem with me coming? Mark answered immediately, oh, she wants it to be a success, like me and like everyone. In other words, I thought, she doesn’t want me to come. But I knew that the idea was for the homage to be with both of us, and if I didn’t go, Mark would have a real problem. And, after all, it wasn’t his fault. Okay, I’ll come, I agreed in the end. And on the other end of the line, I heard a relieved sigh and a thank-you that made me smile. I could put up with Anna if I had to; it wasn’t like I was marrying her, it was just one concert.

  The rehearsals ten years ago turned into real chess matches. Since Anna and I don’t speak to each other, it was as silent as a tomb when we were together in the piano room of Karl’s house. We just listened to him, we were both very attentive, and when he’d told us what he needed to, we began to play. Anna picked up her bow nervously, lines appeared on her forehead, the same ones she’d had as a child, and she played nervously as well, as if she wanted to defeat me with the notes. She really didn’t have to get so worked up, I’d never be able to play as fast as her. I had other virtues, but speed wasn’t one of them. I’m still not very fast, and she knows it, and she shoots me a defiant look before the start of the first and third movements, it’s always the same, and I just ignore her, there’s nothing to be done, and then comes the second movement, which is where I shine, because when it comes time to play with soul, Anna’s lost, since she has none.

  I looked at the black leather sofa and thought of days gone by, of Karl and I embracing and kissing, of Karl and I pretending we loved each other. When Karl hypnotized me for the first time, I told myself that it was a good thing and a good solution. I knew that he didn’t have anyone either, that he went from woman to woman, and that there were women everywhere who were bitter after he was through with them. He paid them no mind, I think he was unable to realize the pain he caused when he moved on. Since he gave no importance to the scenes on the sofa, how was he going to imagine that his ending them abruptly could be important to anyone else?

  When I sensed that Anna had also spent time on the sofa, I said to myself, Teresa, that’s the end of that. My heart shrank a little, but just a little. I figured I would get over it, since I had always seen it as both of us just getting our needs met. But I knew that Anna wouldn’t take it that way and that the day he was finished with her, there would be hell to pay. But on that day, I would do my best to not be around. I could see in her eyes she had Karl, that feeling of possession gave her a special glow, it was clear she lived for that right then, that she was happy in her way, the cruel way she had been taught by life and circumstances. Anna hadn’t ever believed in human beings and that hadn’t changed.

  I’d like to say I had no part in what happened that day on tour, but I have to admit some of the fault is mine.

  All the musicians were on the same plane except for Karl, who had left two days earlier so he could lock himself in his hotel room and rehearse. Obviously, on the flight, Anna and I sat as far away from each other as possible. Mark wasn’t there, Mark was a nobody; his career only took off when his father died. These things happen, it’s human to make an example out of someone, when that example is no longer there, we check to see who’s waiting in line and we say, next.

  When we arrived in Berlin, we didn’t see Karl. We didn’t know if he was in the same hotel, we were set to meet twenty-four hours before the concert for a sound check in the concert hall, and there he was. We rehearsed for barely half an hour, and then we each went our own way. As I was putting my violin in its case, he came over to me and said, come with me, please. And I turned and I didn’t like what I saw in his eyes, it was need but not like the other times, not like in the past, it looked to me like he wasn’t feeling well, and I quickly said yes and went with him to his hotel room. I didn’t know he was ill; he never mentioned it to any of the musicians, including me, until that moment. He told me that a few days before the trip, he had spent two nights in the hospital with heart problems. Suddenly, he was drinking whiskey every time he made an extra effort, in other words, every time he had to conduct a concert. And he had an expression which I still hadn’t identified with anything, and which I later understood was an expression of the pain of someone who needed medicine to keep going. It was an expression that scared me, even though I didn’t know why at that point.

  I followed him to his room. I knew that, after working together for those past couple of years, we had created an unbreakable bond, one that was different from the one he shared with other women, a bond that allowed us to share a certain intimacy, to understand each other with just a glance, and I knew that on this trip, even though he’d been sleeping with Anna, I was the one he most trusted. As much as Karl T. could trust anyone, that is, which wasn’t much.

  We went into his hotel room and he closed the door. What’s wrong? I asked him immediately. Nothing, he said as he staggered over to the bed. I was frightened, you definitely don’t look like nothing’s wrong. I helped him to stretch out on the bed. He was breathing slowly, as if he was afraid he wouldn’t have enough air otherwise. I just need a hug, you don’t mind, do you? he said. He looked at me as if he was desperate for a candy. And at that moment I wondered if the great Karl T. had stage fright and wanted the support of a mother figure. I wondered a lot of things in a few seconds, and then I went over to him and hugged him, just as he had asked. And when his head was resting on my shoulder, I heard him say, this concert here is very important. If anything happens to me, he will conduct. I was shocked by his words, but Karl was referring to a name and phone number on a piece of paper he put into my hand. It was that of a well-known orchestra conductor, from Berlin, whom I was quite familiar with. But what are you saying, you are ill, do you want us to postpone the concert? I asked, frightened. No, no, he answered, lifting one hand, I just want the concert to go on, please, promise me. He looked at me as if he were asking me to promise that he would live. I made the promise, but then I asked him what was going on, whether he was feeling okay. I’m not well, he answered, and, I’m no spring chicken. He smiled a little as he said that, joking. I looked at him and, in that precise moment, I realized that Karl T. had gotten old. And not only that, but it looked like he was on his last legs. I didn’t ask any more questions, he seemed tired.

  Then there was a knock at the door. What do they want now? muttered Karl, thinking that it was the hotel staff. With a glance, he asked me to open up
and I did. But it wasn’t the bellboy, no. It was Anna, standing there with one of those expressions that say it all. Oh, no, I thought, closing my eyes for a fleeting moment. Obviously, it was too late for me to hide. Excuse me, my mistake, she said. And she disappeared.

  I closed the door gently and sighed. Then I walked over to him. He looked at me with fear in his eyes for a moment, but then he asked, where were we? I hugged him again, not without some concern, because I wondered what that twisted girl was capable of.

  Anyway, it was odd that Anna caught us together on the only day we were alone together without making love. Stranger things have happened. I left once I was sure that Karl was okay and just wanted to sleep. I was worried something might happen to him that night and I offered to stay, but he assured me there was no need. I placed a note by the telephone, where I had written, very large, my room number. Then I left.

  The next day, our conductor was fresh as a rose. As if nothing had happened. And we performed the concert in Berlin, and he left very early the next day for Vienna, while all the musicians remained in the German capital for one more day.

  Anna

  It’s raining. It’s raining and the leaves on the ground look like plates holding water. And the water holds more bits and pieces of my soul. It’s here in the river, and in the lake in Barcelona. I’ve got bits of my soul everywhere; it’s odd how something so intangible can divide itself up like that. But I can’t gather up those pieces, I’ve tried, but there’s no way. It’s not the water’s fault anyway. It’s everyone’s fault, everyone who broke my soul and threw it into the lake by the house and said, go on, sweetheart, go find it, and if it’s broken, piece it back together. I never did piece it back together. At first I tried to and then, when it no longer hurt, I let it go, if my soul wanted to be in the water, all broken up in bits, then so be it. It wasn’t my fault, it was everyone else’s. Including Mark, who won’t even let me into his dressing room. It’s everyone’s fault.

  It’s very dark. Night had already fallen when we arrived; here the days are short and the scant sunlight doesn’t last long. It’s still raining. I’d like to take a walk, dragging my feet through the puddles, letting them get soaked. I’d like to, but I have to perform soon, in presentable shoes. Everyone has gone back inside for the beginning of the second part. It’s the second part in every way. The second part of the comedy of my life, with a human being deep inside me and water falling constantly but without making a sound, as if trying to go unnoticed. The Berlin natives, who are used to this weather, walk quickly beneath umbrellas of every color. And I’m thinking about when I found out that Teresa and Karl were lovers.

  I think it was the last time my soul broke into more pieces. That was when I realized that Teresa, who had been a point of reference in my life, really lived to hurt me. That she must not have any other goals in life. When I caught them red-handed in that hotel room, in this very city, I made a colossal effort to make it look like I couldn’t care less. Teresa’s apologetic expression, as if she were innocence itself, as if playing at its being some misunderstanding, was what incensed me more than anything. I left there as quickly as I could, wondering how she could be so nasty, so twisted, how I could have ever trusted her. It seems, as kids, we can fall for anything.

  That day, when I got to the banks of the Spree, I could barely breathe. The water flowed peacefully, but I was gasping for air. I screamed, leaning over the railing above those abundant waters, and then I started to breathe quickly, mixing gulps of air with sobs that came out all at once, the sobs of an entire life, sobs of truth, over that woman who was determined to finish me off, over that woman who is about to play Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins with me onstage. I’m sure the evil bitch seduced Karl, tricking him somehow to get him into that hotel room, I’m sure she saw that there was something between us and she thought, well, I’ll snatch him away, and leave Anna alone, with nothing and no one.

  The world is difficult for some people, and I was one of them; the hawk-nosed music teacher had been right, my fate was to live en souffrant—until I decided that enough was enough, one day ten years ago, sobbing above the River Spree. I wondered how Teresa had managed to get the spot as the other violin in the Bach concert, how she had managed to get close to me again, to find another way to hurt me. And when I’d first seen her, I thought it was just a coincidence, a perverse coincidence but a coincidence just the same. But, of course, after everything that’s happened, I no longer believe in coincidences, it’s not possible, there has to be some trick, and the trick is Teresa, who won’t miss a chance to screw me over. I saw that clearly that day above the Spree. And that was when I said enough is enough, I wasn’t going to play the fool anymore, I would never again be so naïve. I wished I had the Stainer with me then, but I didn’t. I had just given it to Karl. To Karl, who had promised to marry me when we got back from tour, to Karl who I believed was mine.

  I had believed that Mama was mine, and Teresa, and Papa, and Karl. And none of them were, they had all deceived me. But now Mark will be mine, because of this baby inside me. And now I have the violin to flaunt in front of Teresa. She doesn’t even glance at it, she acts like she doesn’t care that I’m touring the world with an instrument that had been hers since she was a child, according to what she told me. One day I asked her who had given it to her, it seemed weird that someone would give a little girl a Stainer, and Teresa told me that she had found it. I gave a start. What, and you didn’t return it? It had been abandoned, she said quickly, then changed the subject. I don’t know what she meant by that, but some time later, when she did all that to me, when she stole Karl from me, I thought that it might be a good idea to discover where she’d found it, who she’d stolen it from, because obviously no one just leaves a Stainer on a park bench like an old sweater. Maybe at first I’d half-believed the story of the abandoned violin, but years later, when the scales fell from my eyes, I saw the truth and I understood that Teresa had stolen the violin. But after thinking over the idea of finding out whose it really was, I let it go because then the violin was mine again, and if I discovered its true owner I could lose it again.

  I remembered that, when that happened, when I caught Karl with that nasty bitch; it was right before the concert, the evening before. And I needed that time to recover, there by the banks of the Spree. I wanted to show up for the concert with a clean face and not a single tear, and it wasn’t easy for me to pull off. I can’t say I performed my best that day, I had trouble concentrating, and I felt as if there were an electrical current between me and Teresa, and I struggled to turn my focus the other way, toward Karl, toward the man who had promised to marry me. And then, in the middle of the concert, during the second movement, I said to myself, he will marry me, he’s promised to and that was the only way I could hurt Teresa. That was my best revenge.

  But we didn’t get married. Karl boarded the plane the next day, while we were sightseeing in his native city. And we were at the Brandenburg Gate listening to the explanations of a tour guide when the manager’s phone rang. He stayed behind while we kept walking, and then he called out to us and we turned. I can still remember the image of that small man, silhouetted in the backlight, with his cell phone in his hand, when he said to us, he’s dead. No one asked who. Everyone knew, I don’t know why; we all knew he was talking about Karl.

  That was the end of the sightseeing, that was the end of the tour, and that was the end of my future. But I thought that I had lost the violin—and it turns out that, no, that was the one thing I managed not to lose.

  Maria

  Many people attended Mr. Karl’s funeral. The ceremony was led by a man who wasn’t a priest, but it was almost as if he were, anyway; he bid farewell to the deceased. And they played the most beautiful music. Miss Teresa was near the front, crying. I didn’t see Miss Anna. And Mr. Mark was also crying, sitting in the very first row. He asked me to sit with him and at first I said no, but he was crying so much and finally he said, don’t leave me alone, Maria, a
nd I understood that he needed me, so I sat there with him. Even though, honestly, I didn’t feel it was my place.

  My heart was shattered. That death had destroyed my life, and I knew it would be very hard for me to recover from it. I had climbed a mountain little by little, a very high mountain, and when it seemed I was just reaching its peak, it turned out I wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t want to look at the coffin; when I closed my eyes, the image of Mr. Karl appeared, images I knew so well: him scooping up spoonfuls of hot chocolate and laughing the way he did; him gazing at me as I played the song about the peasant girl and the shepherd; images of the man who had written me that letter, and even of the one who entertained so many women on that black leather sofa. And then I opened my eyes and I saw that wooden box. It couldn’t be, the man inside there couldn’t be the one I remembered.

  Miss Anna hadn’t gone to the burial, but she did come to the house four days later. It was the same Miss Anna of today, ten years younger. She was pretty, and she still is, but she’s getting too many lines on her face, and she has two prominent wrinkles on her forehead from that worried expression she makes when she plays. Mrs. Anna has become scary, like the stepmother in Snow White that I would sometimes hear the nannies in the park telling kids about. But today, despite her scariness, even though she’s an evil witch, she looks very elegant. She’s wearing a long black dress with a plunging neckline, and I’ve noticed that all the men are looking to see if they can catch a glimpse of her breasts. It’s funny, years ago I would have been shocked by the mere thought. And now, it makes me laugh.