Impossible Stories

by Zoran Zivkovic

  At the thought of death he was overcome with fear. That had never happened before, but now something had undermined his previous readiness to die. For a while he could not identify it, but then it dawned on him: if he were to die right then, he would take the knowledge he had just gained to his grave. It would be as if nothing had happened, as if he had not finally comprehended. He had longed for it primarily to satisfy his own curiosity, but now that seemed selfish. No, he must at all costs leave a record of what he had learned.

  But how? What could he do, lying here on his deathbed? And how much time did he have left? Certainly not much. He felt a cold wave of panic creep down the back of his neck. He started to look feverishly about the dark room, perceiving the outlines of familiar objects. Nothing he saw seemed of any help, until the lighted figure of the nurse in her cubicle came into his field of vision. His heart began to beat faster. That was it! There was no other choice. She was his last hope.

  “Mrs Roszel,” he called, his voice raised and impatient.

  The nurse lifted her eyes from her book, then got up and hurried to her patient.

  As he watched her approach, it crossed his mind that he didn’t actually know how to tell her what he had to say. The best thing would be if he had a violin. Then he could play it all to her, transmitting what he had just heard with utmost fidelity. There would be nothing of the vagueness, ambiguity or imperfection that went with words. Everything would be crystal clear, even the most difficult aspects. But there was no violin, unfortunately. He had to rely on language.

  He did not hesitate for a moment over which language to use. The gears might sound rusty, but they fit together most precisely, leaving the least room for idle motion, friction and resistance. He thought with a smile how strange it was that this language, which came nearest to music in terms of expressiveness, was farthest away in terms of sonority. In addition, it was the language he felt closest to. He would never have been able to express something as complex in a foreign language. Even in his mother tongue he would have considerable trouble.

  There was no time to waste on an introduction so he went straight to the point as soon as Mrs Roszel reached the head of the bed. He spoke quickly, concisely wherever possible, more extensively when that could not be avoided. He was full of sympathy for the expression of bewilderment and disbelief upon her face, and for her periodic helpless shrug of the shoulders. What he was revealing to her was the very foundation which upheld the universe. Fortunately, she did not need to try to understand what he was saying. It would be enough to remember his words, clear and coherent, so as to transmit them faithfully to those who were capable of comprehension. That, at least, would not be difficult.

  He was describing the last part of the puzzle when he felt the links between the spheres finally loosen. He was not afraid that time would run out before he finished. There was justice in the world, was there not? The ways of the Violinist might be subtle, but He was certainly not malicious. What would be the sense in stopping him now, at the very end, after everything He had offered him? None, of course. The professor continued to speak softly to Mrs Roszel, who was still listening carefully. The patient darkness waited for him to reach the end before engulfing him. He fell into it cheerfully, with a feeling of accomplishment. He had given the world his greatest legacy. Had he dared hope for anything greater?

  17. The Violin-Maker

  To the police inspector, it was an open-and-shut case. Mr Tomasi, master violin-maker, had committed suicide by jumping from the window of the garret of the three-storey building where he lived and ran his celebrated workshop. The tragic incident was reported by two eye-witnesses, a baker’s roundsmen, delivering bread and rolls, who had been crossing the square early that morning. After hesitating a moment they had fearfully approached the place where the unfortunate man lay. He showed no signs of life, even though they could not see any external injuries.

  Inspector Muratori quickly arrived at the scene of the incident and found out from the agitated young men, who had never seen death at first-hand before, that nothing had heralded the falling body. They had heard no sounds before the dull thud on the sidewalk, which had frightened the pigeons at the little fountain in the middle of the square like a sudden detonation. Most suicides who take their lives by jumping from a height make their intentions known by shouting once they have stepped into the abyss and it is too late to change anything. Only those who are firmly convinced that they are doing the right thing remain silent to the end.

  One glance at the three-storey building told Inspector Muratori where Mr Tomasi had jumped from. The only open window was in the garret. Actually, he could have jumped off the roof, but there was no reason to choose such a steep, inaccessible place since the window was far more suitable and served his purpose equally well. Although one might not expect it of a suicide, the policeman knew that they did not, as a rule, make their last moments more difficult than necessary.

  His examination of the inside of the house revealed nothing to conflict with the suicide hypothesis—on the contrary. When he climbed up to the garret that looked out onto the square, the inspector found the door locked from the inside. This was a precautionary measure typical of someone who did not want to be deterred from carrying out his intention. The door had to be forced, because there was no way to push the key out of the lock so as to open it with a skeleton key. The small room was sparsely furnished: a table and four chairs, a single bed, a washstand with a basin and pitcher in the corner, a large mirror. There was no rug on the floor, no curtains at the window, no pictures on the walls.

  Mr Umbertini, the tall, thin man in his late twenties who was the late master violin-maker’s assistant and lived alone with him in the house, explained that the garret was used exclusively for the final testing of new instruments. Mr Tomasi would go inside and play there alone for some time. Then he would come out, either with a smile on his face, which meant that he was satisfied with his work, or with a handful of firewood and broken strings; then it was best to stay away from him.

  The inspector’s efforts, with the help of the visibly distressed Mr Umbertini, to find a farewell letter that his master might have left somewhere produced no results. This was not unusual. Those who did not really want to kill themselves, even though they actually did in the end, were the most frequent writers of such messages. Determined suicides did not find it necessary to interpret or justify their actions to the world, or to make their farewells.

  By all appearances, Mr Tomasi belonged to that category. Obviously the man had been firmly resolved to take this step, and had set about it without hesitation. It was a textbook case, clear and unambiguous. There was nothing more to investigate. The causes that had led the esteemed master violin-maker to commit suicide had not been established, but were of no interest to earthly justice.

  Let divine justice handle them, for it alone could know what had been on the suicide’s mind.

  Inspector Muratori ordered Mr Umbertini to pack his things and leave the house so that it could be sealed pending probate. For a moment it seemed that the assistant wanted to make a comment or add something, about this or some other matter, but he held back. That was just as well. Everything had already been said, and the policeman could by no means help the poor man who was suddenly out on the street. But Inspector Muratori had seen far worse fates. This fellow would manage. A man who had learned the violin-maker’s trade under maestro Tomasi need never be without an income. Such a recommendation would easily find him a job with another violin-maker, or he might even open his own shop.

  The experienced policeman was rarely mistaken in his conclusions about people and their fates, but he was wrong this time. Mr Umbertini neither looked for new employment nor tried to set up making violins on his own. With the savings he had been putting aside for years, he rented a small room in one of the narrow little streets off the square where he used to live. The rent was not high because the room was partially below street level and quite humid. This did not bother him u
nduly. In any event he only went there to sleep.

  Mr Umbertini spent most of his time in a tavern not far from the maestro’s house. He had not frequented the place before, primarily because he hadn’t been the least inclined to drink, but also because it had a bad reputation as a hangout for the demi-monde. Now neither reason mattered. He started to drink, first moderately, just enough to feel slightly intoxicated; then more and more. He hardly felt when he crossed the line and became addicted. The tavern only served cheap, low quality wines and spirits that made Mr Umbertini’s head ache for a long time after waking in his dirty basement bed, but that did not deter him from going there every day.

  At first the other tavern regulars were suspicious of the new patron and avoided his company. With his genteel manners and appearance, he was not part of their world. But as time passed and he became more and more like them in his person and behaviour, they slowly started to warm to him. He no longer drank alone; they began to join him until finally all the places at his table were occupied almost all the time. They were a motley collection, and just a few months ago he certainly could not have imagined himself among them: frowning mercenaries from a regiment camped near the town, rotten-toothed and withered prostitutes, pickpockets on their way back from forays to the outdoor markets, tattered beggars, blemished and maimed.

  Although Mr Umbertini had no desire to talk about the suicide, with these people or with anyone else, the topic could not be avoided once their relations with the former assistant to the celebrated violin-maker, by now a thoroughly unkempt drunk, became familiar enough to remove their inhibitions. Unlike the police, who found it unnecessary to delve into what had forced the maestro to suicide, this mystery had never stopped intriguing prying minds, even in such a hole as this. Mr Umbertini was subjected to a variety of approaches, from flattery through cajolery to threats, to get him to explain what had happened, but he withstood all such pressures without uttering a word. However, he could not avoid listening to the conjectures expounded by his fellow-drinkers at the table in the tavern, through the dense, stale cigarette smoke and sharp smell of sour wine.

  One of the mercenaries, a man with a black patch over his left eye and a face full of scars, claimed that he had heard from a reliable source that a legacy of madness in the family lay behind it all. Mr Tomasi’s paternal grandfather, a carpenter from a nearby village, had also taken his life, but in a far more painful way. When his mind had gone black he had shut himself in his workshop and started to stick every sharp tool he could find into his body. Not a single wound was fatal, but he died in prolonged agony, from blood loss, without uttering a single cry during that multiple, self-inflicted impalement. When his household forced their way into the workshop they beheld a horrible sight. The carpenter’s body on the floor, arms outstretched like some horizontal crucifixion, resembled a hedgehog with thirty-three quills sticking out of it.

  His wife, who was five months pregnant, had a miscarriage and his only son, who was four at the time, was haunted his whole life by nightmares that caused him to wake up screaming.

  Mr Umbertini could easily have refuted this awful story, but he didn’t. In the early days of his apprenticeship he had met the maestro’s paternal grandfather. He had been a watch-mender here in town and had died in his sleep from heart failure at an advanced age. He had outlived his wife by several years, leaving seven children. The third of them, the first son after two daughters, was Mr Tomasi’s father, a cheerful and rather unruly man, certainly unburdened by dark stains from childhood, who died of suffocation on a fishbone, having been so incautious as to refill his mouth before he had finished laughing. Although not yet full grown, the younger of his two sons, Alberto, who had inherited his mother’s fine ear for music, took over his father’s workshop where musical instruments were made and repaired. Not long afterwards he narrowed his activities exclusively to making violins, and over time earned a reputation for his exceptional workmanship.

  One of the prostitutes, whose original beauty could still be discerned despite her dilapidated state, though she was barely over thirty, had a completely different story. She had learned from someone completely trustworthy that the cause of Mr Tomasi’s suicide was unrequited love. A travelling circus had camped near the town the previous summer and given performances on the square. Three musicians accompanied most of the acts, among them a young Gypsy woman who played the violin. At first the master violin-maker had complained about the noisy disturbance every evening in front of his house, but when he saw and heard the girl he became more cordial.

  He went to the window evening after evening and pretended to watch the events on the square, but never actually took his eyes off the young Gypsy. Finally, he went up to her at the end of a show, bringing the best instrument he had ever made. He invited her to his house and proposed that she play this violin for him alone during the coming night, promising to pay her generously in return. The girl whispered briefly to one of the other two musicians, and then accepted. When she left Mr Tomasi’s house the next morning she was carrying the precious instrument wrapped in brown felt.

  The next evening the master violin-maker waited impatiently on the terrace for the customary circus performance, but no one appeared. In the meantime the travelling show had decamped and continued on its way. Mr Tomasi hired a horse at daybreak and set out in frantic search of them. He went to many of the nearby towns without finding a trace of the entertainers. The earth seemed to have swallowed them up. Completely crushed, he had finally been forced to abandon his search. He returned home, hoping that time would heal his wounds and that he would somehow forget the beautiful violinist, but he couldn’t get over her. He fell into a deeper and deeper depression, slowly losing the will and ability to make any more instruments. Finally, sunk in total despair, he decided to end his suffering.

  The late master violin-maker’s assistant knew from the outset that this story hadn’t a grain of truth, but he didn’t say so, among other things so as not to ruin the woman’s pleasurable excitement as she recounted her tale. There was, in fact, a sad tale of love in the violin-maker’s life, but it dated from his much younger days, when he was still learning the skills of his trade. Love blossomed between him and a close cousin on his mother’s side. Although forbidden and clandestine, it was tempestuous, as often happens at that age. Who knows how things might have ended had illness not intervened. The girl came down with galloping tuberculosis and died only a few weeks later. He never became attached to a single woman after that, although he did not renounce them. He tried to be as inconspicuous as possible when he slaked his urges, usually going to other towns for that purpose.

  One of the pickpockets, a man with long, clever fingers, but a face that was the very incarnation of innocence, swore on his honour that he had first-hand knowledge about the real reason why Mr Tomasi had killed himself. It was because of a huge gambling loss he had suffered. The violin-maker had been in the clutches of this obsession for some time, although no one knew anything about it, not even his assistant who lived under the same roof. A group of gamblers used to meet secretly at his house every Friday, going up to the garret from which he had finally jumped to his death. They would cover the window with the blanket from the bed so no one would suspect anything from outside, and then the game that had started by candlelight would often last till dawn.

  As an honourable man, the violin-maker had been convinced that his companions were his equals in integrity. He had had not the slightest inkling that he had fallen into a network of shrewd and unscrupulous cheats. At first they bet small amounts, and he mostly won. Then Lady Luck suddenly turned her back on him. He started losing, not only his money but his common sense. He agreed to increase the bets in the futile hope that he would win back what he had lost, but he only sank deeper and deeper into debt. When his cash and valuables disappeared, he started to write IOUs. First he lost his large estate in the country, then his house in town. He still managed to hold up somehow, but when the cards took away the last of hi
s expensive instruments, he realized he had hit rock bottom. In the end he caught on, realizing he had been the victim of a trick, but there was no turning back. Unable to live with the thought that his violins were in the hands of cunning thieves, he sentenced himself to the ultimate punishment.

  It was pure invention, of course, but Mr Umbertini still made no comment. Gambling organized every Friday, however discreetly, would never have escaped his attention. Moreover, Mr Tomasi had never had a country estate to lose. Far more important than these details, however, was the fact that gambling was the last vice to which the maestro would have succumbed; without ever being touched by it personally, he had experienced the grievous consequences of this addiction.

  The violin-maker’s older brother, Roberto Tomasi, had been a regular attender at large casinos since he was a young man. He had left his share of their father’s inheritance in them long ago, but for some time afterwards continued to gratify this irresistible vice thanks to his brother’s generous support. Alberto had shown a strange compassion for Roberto’s weakness, agreeing to pay his gambling debts, until one day he refused to give him the large amount he had come for. Thereupon Roberto had, in a fit of rage, seized a newly finished violin and smashed it against the wall. The two brothers never saw each other again after that, even though the older brother had sent many letters of apology and even gone to plead at his younger brother’s door.

  A crippled beggar, who claimed to be the illegitimate son of a duke, patiently listened to all three stories and announced self-confidently that none of them was true. The master violin-maker had not committed suicide at all, whatever people thought. He did not jump from the window, he was thrown out of it. There was a third eye-witness to this tragedy, as well as the two baker’s men. He was a beggar who had left town in a hurry immediately after the fateful event, fearing what he had seen, and pausing only long enough to confide in his lame friend.