The House of Silence

by Blanca Busquets

  I’m not wearing a revealing dress, but I do look elegant. It’s a shame my stomach is so bad, that I don’t feel well, because today could be one of those days to hold my head up high and feel the eyes on me, even though my feet are dragging somewhat because I’m tired and too old to be wearing heels. It would be great to just walk on solid ground, it gives you the feeling that you know where you are, that you are in charge of your own fate. But no, with these high heels, no matter how low they are, they only let you walk on tiptoe, and you don’t know what galaxy you’re in. Not to mention how uncomfortable they are. I like my dress though, I went shopping one day to see what I could find and I chose a brown dress that looks quite good on me. Mr. Mark said, wow, don’t you look elegant, Maria, and I puffed up like a peacock. He said it when Miss Anna wasn’t around, of course, because no ever says anything like that in front of her.

  Miss Anna came over ten years ago and said, hello, I’ve come to pick up a violin that I left the last time I was rehearsing here with Karl. I looked at her and a shiver ran through my entire body: When Miss Anna started to come to the house, Mr. Karl had told me, that woman has the devil in her, and I swear it’s true.

  Now it’s time for me to get up and do my job. The job I came here to do.

  Teresa

  I just saw Maria over there, in a corner. It seems like she scurried off when she saw me watching her. What in the world is she doing here? Isn’t she supposed to be sitting in the audience listening to the concert? I don’t even want to know. Maybe she’s looking for someone, but if so it’s not me, because otherwise she wouldn’t have scampered off when she saw me.

  This music brings back so many memories of Karl. I think, in that period before his death, he had come to think of me as some sort of mother figure, or like an older sister. We hadn’t been physical for some time, I guess because he had enough of that with Anna, and yet, since I was probably the only woman who hadn’t gotten upset with him when the business on the sofa ended, he must have had a special love for me. The truth is that I didn’t have it in me anymore, I had loved Maties so much that I couldn’t love any other man that same way again. So, from the very beginning, I understood the whole thing with Karl as a life experience and nothing more than that. The thing is that, when Anna found out, it was all over between us. In fact, the next morning, in the light of day and before the Berlin concert, I thought that it had just been that Karl needed some human warmth before the performance. Later, I realized that he needed more than warmth. He needed a doctor. But, of course, I had no idea at the time. Only his son and Maria knew about his heart problems, and they were both home in Barcelona. And as far as Karl was concerned, the music came first and his health wasn’t even a close second.

  I didn’t find out about his death until after the others. I hadn’t gone sightseeing because I was sure that Anna would be there, and I didn’t feel like seeing her. I thought that she and I could talk some other time, if at all. Maybe we never would because she would restrain herself, the way I had restrained myself the day before in the hotel, not going after her because I didn’t want another door slammed in my face, like the one in the hospital; I didn’t want that to happen to me ever again. And also because, it bears mentioning, I was starting to think that she deserved it all, that maybe Anna had to start to realize that, despite her own difficulties in life, other people had problems too and we didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

  No one told me what had happened until we met up to fly to Vienna. There, in the hotel lobby, only those who hadn’t heard showed up, the ones who didn’t know that the flight had been cancelled and we were going back to Barcelona the next day. How strange, there’s barely anyone here, commented a young woman from the orchestra. Yeah, said another, but, of course, none of us knew that the only ones there were those who hadn’t gone sightseeing, because everyone on the tour already knew. I remember those impressions and thoughts right before the manager dropped the bombshell, as if it had just happened yesterday. Then he came down and told us. And I was shocked stiff. The others were, too; Karl was their conductor, they had played for many years in the orchestra he had assembled, but it affected me in a more personal way, of course. I couldn’t keep myself from bursting into tears while the manager explained how it had happened. A few of the young women also shed a tear, and all of us, in general, were unsure what to do or what to say. The manager announced our departure time for the next day and disappeared, and I took my suitcase back up to my hotel room. There I cried for a good long while. From the depths of my heart, though, a little voice told me, thank goodness, Teresa, that you didn’t throw yourself into it the way you had with Maties. Because if you had, this would have sunk you forever. I did decide that, from that point on, I would be particularly careful with men, because it seemed obvious that, once I got involved with them, they met a tragic end.

  The return to Barcelona was a sad, silent one. I didn’t even look at Anna, I didn’t want to have anything to do with her, I wasn’t up for her sarcastic games or mocking looks. I stayed as far away from her as I could and, once I was home, one thought eased the pain I was feeling, which was that while I might see her at the funeral, I would never have to see her again after that. Never again.

  And I didn’t even see her at the burial, I don’t think she came. I’m not sure, because there were so many people there, but my guess is that she wasn’t there. And, oddly, the only women at the ceremony were the women from his orchestra. I alone of his lovers was there. All the rest were men. I figured that all of his former lovers had ended up angry with him. I was surprised to find out that he was much older than I had thought. You held up well, Karl, I thought as a silent tear slid down my cheek, to think I thought you were only eight or nine years older than me. And then, in a flash, I calculated the gap between him and Anna. My God, you seduced a child, I recriminated that silent coffin. And, for a few seconds, I felt sorry for her again, for that unlucky, abandoned, fragile girl. Just for a few seconds.

  Sometimes I think about how Karl was. He didn’t think of his sexual relationships as romantic affairs, no, Karl lived in another world and had no idea what was going on in this one. For Karl, a female musician who played with him had to take the music as far as possible, and that including getting involved with him. It sounds strange to say, but I’m sure that he thought it was the most normal, natural thing in the world, and he never meant to hurt anyone. He lived in his own world.

  But Anna didn’t live in his world, and she never could have. She is of our world, and she does try to cause as much pain as she can. When, a few years later, I went to see Mark, I discovered that Anna was two steps ahead of me, and not only that, but it seemed that Mark was really taken with her. I remember thinking, in resignation, This girl is never going to change. Mark lived in an apartment near where Karl had. That house belonged to the government, he explained to me, and they had let him use it when they granted him political asylum but it didn’t belong to him. But when I saw Mark’s apartment, I thought that all the money Karl had earned over his lifetime must not have been the government’s, no. It was obvious that his son had inherited a tidy sum.

  I went back to the conservatory and my quartet. We had worked and played in different places. Almost every week, we would go out and we enjoyed making music together. What more did I want? That was the life I had chosen from the day I found the magic violin at the dump.

  I still play with the same quartet, although less frequently. There came a moment when I’d had enough of all the traveling, a moment when I felt my age, or something like it, weighing on my shoulders. I also had no desire to work closely with any particular conductor the way I had with Karl, and I said no when I had offers. One of the ones who came looking for me was Mark. He had begun to make a name for himself, but I’ve always thought that he continuted to bear his father’s. Because Mark was an excellent cellist, but as a conductor I would never place him among the best. I was very pleased to see him again, but I immediately said no; I don’t r
emember what excuse I gave. Working with Mark surely would have meant running into Anna all the time. And that was the last thing I wanted.

  I lived alone, and I lived quite well, because I didn’t live in the neighborhood by the park but in a different part of the city where the rents weren’t so astronomical. And one day I ran into Maria.

  And another day, I saw a television interview with Anna about her Stainer, the violin that had lost its magic when it fell into the hands of that musical robot. Good Lord, and to think that I was once her teacher and I was unable to teach her to put anything more than speed into her music. Anna, on TV, showed off her trophy, explaining how rare it was and how difficult it had been for her to acquire. I was eating almonds as I watched the show, and I stopped chewing to exclaim, spontaneously: Sweet Mother of God, what nerve!

  Mark

  The first part went well. And the second sounds amazing so far. All our rehearsing paid off. The audience is silent, and I wipe the sweat from my forehead with my white handkerchief, like my father used to. It has to be white, always, it’s more elegant that way. That was what the great Karl T. said, and whether out of genetics or admiration, Mark T. says the same thing.

  Be careful with your heart, these things are hereditary, said Maria, before we said goodbye ten years ago. She said it with tears in her eyes. The poor thing hated to leave, but in my new apartment, even though it was large, we would have been on top of each other. I would ask you to come iron and tidy things up, but now you have money and you don’t want to clean apartments anymore, right? She was quick to say, oh, yes, Mr. Mark, of course I’ll come. Mark, I corrected her with a smile, and she said, sorry, Mark. Maria was so beloved to me, and she still is, she brings back such memories of my father, they lived together for forty years and knew each other inside and out. My father wasn’t easy to live with, he was a strange man, who only lived for music, and no one understood him. I’m not even sure I ever came to understand him myself, in all the years I spent by his side.

  When the will was read, I was left without a doubt that he and Maria had understood each other well. It was a will that he had amended a few years earlier, when I had come to Barcelona. So I was also included. If it weren’t for me, he would have left everything to Maria. Since my father had everything paid for, he was able to save every penny he earned, which was a lot. So Maria was able to buy herself an apartment and quit working. And I also bought an apartment, but I didn’t stop working. In fact, that was when I started to get a ton of work, mostly things my father couldn’t do. All of a sudden, I got all kinds of offers, I was traveling all over, like before, but now not to study or perform, but to direct, with the orchestra my father had left orphaned.

  When I met Anna I told her about Maria and what my father had left her, and she didn’t understand it. How could you let your father do that, you’re his only son, how could you not care that he left half of his fortune to a maid? Anna’s take on it left me shocked, especially when I saw how strongly she felt about it. Her eyes were flashing with anger as if it were her own father. I took a long, hard look at her, sure that it wasn’t a question of money, because she had plenty. What could it have been, then? I don’t know. What I do know is that what had happened really didn’t bother me; it seemed appropriate to me that Maria should inherit a good part of my father’s money. Well, I would have been upset if I hadn’t gotten anything, sure, I answered Anna, but I have enough with what he left me. It seems like a lot to me. Besides, the most important part of the inheritance was the last name, it suddenly opened up so many doors for me that allowed me to make music, my music.

  Anna came into my life about five years ago. I had only seen her once before, at my father’s house on one of the very rare times when I was there. Her presence made a real impact on me, it’s true, but I didn’t say a word to her. And five years ago, I called her for a concert and she showed me how she was capable of playing. She drove me wild, both the way she played and the way she was. When I saw her enter the room where we were rehearsing, her hips swaying and that gaze that was so deep and so dark, I felt lost and I had to make a superhuman effort to concentrate on what I was doing. I think that she could tell, because she seemed amenable. Right then, and from that moment on.

  And now I don’t know how to get rid of her. I know that it’s not nice to even think this, but that woman is suffocating me. I feel obliged to ask her to do all the violin solos, and she does play very well, but there are also other violinists that I’d like to try. And she never lets me walk alone, I can’t take two steps without having her at my side. It’s like I’m always dragging along a complicated burden. And every time there are other people around, she comes over to take my hand. All the love, all the tenderness that I wanted to give her in the beginning has vanished. There is none of it left, nothing of those first days in her house, when I would walk her home after rehearsal and she would say, come on in, I won’t bite. But it was a lie, she ate me up, and I liked it, it drove me wild. I don’t know what she did to me, but she had me blinded. And now she’ll come out and play Bach with Teresa, whom she loathes and wants to see fail. What is it with you and Teresa? I asked her one day. Nothing, she answered quickly. Well, you are always attacking her, and she seems like a good person. Then Anna got up suddenly, as if the button on a spring she had inside had been pressed, turning her so terrifying that even I was scared. Don’t be taken in by appearances, she said, pointing to the heavens with that tiny, decisive nose of hers. And I laughed a little, at that point I still found her funny, I still loved her, I still believed her.

  Tonight, after the concert, I’m going to tell her that it’s over. I’ve made up my mind.

  Anna

  Now as I’m about to go onstage, with the scent of rain that’s reached my brain, now that I feel my adrenaline rising, I remember the day I saw her again, just like now, before heading out on stage. In that concert hall you could see the audience from the wings, and I looked out at the seats and I saw her there, waiting for my entrance. My jaw dropped. She didn’t know that I had seen her, she wasn’t looking at me just then.

  Now that I have Teresa and her violin in reach, now that I can feel her resigned, silent presence, her loathsome presence, I remember the shock of glimpsing that other woman out there in the audience, before I went onstage. It took a titanic effort to recover. I had to cling to the Stainer, the Stainer that I had gone to get back from the maid, who looked like she was planning on keeping it. I clutched it tightly, and I closed my eyes and I said to myself, this can’t be. And I opened them again, and yes, it could be, she was still there in the audience, attentively watching the performance. And then our eyes met and I thought I wouldn’t be able to play. I had confronted a lot of things in this life, but that one was too much.

  Mark enters to roaring applause. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with his little white handkerchief and looks at us with a half-smile: “Okay, ladies, the stage is all yours.”

  I see that Teresa steps aside to let me pass, so I paint a smile on my lips and make my entrance. The orchestra stands up, the crowd claps. The applause is like a balsam for my skin, which is too thin and delicate. Luckily, I have the spotlights and the warmth of the audience, luckily, I’ve had it all these years, because some things are hard to overcome.

  What are you doing here? I asked when she hobbled into my dressing room, after a couple of knocks on the door that made me fear the worst. She smiled, I saw that you saw me, she said. And it was a twisted smile, a smile filled with wrinkles that had lost its youthful charm. You’ve gotten old, I blurted out mercilessly. She took it in stride, we all get old, she said. And then she added, I’m truly sorry about what happened, I didn’t want to leave like that, but your father forced me to. I arched my brows, everyone has their own version of the story, I said. He’s dead, isn’t he? she said. Yes, years ago, I answered. And then I asked her, what do you want? She paused briefly before answering, nothing, I just wanted to see you. And she added, you play very well, and you didn
’t even like the violin. It was the only thing I had, I shouted inside my own head. Well, now you’ve seen me, I said out loud, abruptly. She kept asking questions, are you married? do you have children? I didn’t know if I should answer, and finally I said, I live with a man. I didn’t tell her that it was the conductor of the concert she had just seen. Then, she seemed to find the way to tell me what she’d wanted to, look, your father didn’t take you, because he said that children should be with their mothers. I was silent, I understood less and less this cruel game of making foolish remarks that hit me like a punch in the stomach; now that I was over it, here she comes with her drivel. I looked at her and said, why couldn’t you have each had me part-time? What you’re saying is nonsense, Mama.

  I had said Mama. It had been so many years since I’d used the word. She sighed, he didn’t want to because he said that you would have wanted to just live with him. As I applied my lipstick, I thought, He may have been right. My mother finished her speech, I went to live abroad with a man, and now that I’m back, I try to come to all your concerts. I’ve also attended some of your concerts on tour, in Paris, Madrid, Lyon. I applied more lipstick and then licked my lips before saying, please, leave. I said it softly, very softly. She turned tail and I watched her—old, so very old—heading slowly to the door and opening it. Before she disappeared, all she said was, forgive me.

  So I found myself alone and I began to tremble like a leaf. The last thing I needed was to worry about running into Mama at every concert from now on. Then Mark came in and saw me sitting, staring at the floor, and asked me what was wrong. I’m not feeling very well, I said, I don’t know, I’m dizzy. It’ll pass. Mark and I had been living in the best of worlds for some time, he and I and the Stainer, in that apartment uptown, where the plants in the gardens delicately kiss the foundations of beautifully designed buildings. Sometimes, I would go for a walk to the lake to see if my soul was there, so I could tell it that I no longer needed it. But after seeing Mama for the first time, I did need my soul, and when I went looking for it, I found it had left once again. Suddenly, I had lost my peace and tranquility. I had Mark and the Stainer, but they weren’t enough. And then came a period of a lot of work, and at each concert I looked for Mama, and I knew she was there but she never came to see me after the show. And then I got pneumonia, and they tore the violin from my hands and forced me to get some bed rest. Mark had to hire a substitute for me in the concerts and I couldn’t stand seeing another woman put in my place and I asked Mark to let me do it, that I would do it well, that even sick I could do it, and I started to practice every evening when he wasn’t there. I would grab the Stainer and play and play with all the rage I could muster. I was imagining Mama watching the concert and watching the other violinist who Mark said played so well, who maybe Mama liked even better than her own daughter, maybe she was there for that violinist.