Goodbye, Paris

by Anstey Harris

  I sit down on a park bench. The light has just gone and the evening is relying on the glow from the shops and houses behind me. I am enjoying the quiet. This feels like the first moment I’ve stopped in weeks; the first minutes of actual calm. I concentrate on my breathing and the soft sounds that float around this oasis.

  There is a busy street behind me; I can hear the people chattering on their way past the park. The city will be full of violin makers and players. There is a huge trade fair here, timed to coincide with the competition, and it attracts people from all over the world. I will catch up with numerous old friends and acquaintances over the week; it’s inevitable. I wonder what I will tell them about myself. That will depend on who I am, on who I turn out to be once the dust begins to settle.

  The last few weeks have been insanely busy. I made a cello front in five days as I had set out to do. I left the knot in the wood almost bare of varnish; it had become precious to me, that simple flaw. I didn’t want to hide it.

  Nadia and Mr. Williams did their very best to help. Mostly it took the form of coffee—from Nadia—and hot homemade food from Mr. Williams. As much as they wanted to, there was little they could do to help me with the instrument itself.

  I spent some late nights in the workshop with them; sometimes one, then the other. They tried not to leave me alone and I’m grateful. I needed those hours filled.

  Nadia has been preoccupied in the run-up to Italy.

  “Do you not have to go home? Not even sometimes?” I asked her when she’d spent the fourth consecutive evening watching me work.

  “I haven’t done for years. Did you spend your evenings at home when you were my age?”

  “Wrong person to ask, Nad. I actually did.”

  “Loser.”

  I took my caliper and tested the thickness of the cello belly. It was beginning to take on its bowl shape, curving up at the sides to—literally—scoop the sound into it. I squinted to check the reading on the gauge. “Really, though? Is everything OK?” The brass stud of the gauge made a soft tick, tick, tick as it connected with the wood.

  “It’s the same as ever.” She was getting the front room of the shop ready for a coat of paint. Her black hair was splattered with tiny specks that she’d rubbed off the woodwork. Her nose was powdered with the dust. “They’re starting to talk about actually moving out now, though. I think they’re fighting over who gets freedom and who gets me. Fuckers.”

  “I’m sure they’re not.” It was hard to tell if she was joking, but when I looked up over the curve of the cello, I realized she wasn’t. “They both love you very much.”

  She pointed her paint scraper at me and sneered. “I’m not five. I am an adult.”

  You’re not an adult, I thought but didn’t dare say. You’re a wounded girl who wishes everything at home could stay the same forever. The specter of David’s nameless children flashed across my mind like a storm cloud, but I moved it swiftly away.

  “Trust me, if I had anywhere else to go right now . . .”

  Experience told me to be still, that she has to weather this; she has to muddle her way through the collapse of her parents’ marriage as best she can. “What about going back to school to finish your A-levels? Uni would mean you could leave home far sooner than any other way.”

  “And my symphony?” She looked at me with such conviction, such confidence, that I had to backpedal.

  “Sorry, yes. I just—you know—wondered if you could do both.”

  “No.”

  She turned and walked back into the shop with her paint scraper. Dots of dust lay in her wake.

  Nadia stayed till late every evening and was back first thing in the morning. She had a brain wave when we first sat down and talked about the rescue plans. She, Mr. Williams, and I sat together, coffees and biscuits on the table in my kitchen, and made a schedule. Nadia insisted that we take the opportunity to paint the shop walls; that way, any customers who wondered why I had been closed, why the blinds were down for so long, could have a rational and plausible explanation. It was a good idea.

  Mr. Williams kept slightly less demanding hours, but he must have spent a lot of time cooking when he was at home.

  The cello front began to take shape. The grain didn’t have the definition of the original and the pattern took on the shape of contour lines where it hit the knot. I scraped it and scraped it into a shining silver finish. The heart of the knot was as black as a burn and the thick lines around it a hearty mahogany. There was no disguising the imperfection, so I didn’t try. It would have made things worse.

  I let Mr. Williams put the base coat of stain on the front. It darkened the wood in stripes as he worked the brushstrokes. Here and there the stain pooled too thickly, but I bit my lip and let him carry on doing it his way. I pointed out the areas that needed a little more or a touch less as gently as I could.

  “This reminds me of making treasure maps when I was a boy,” said Mr. Williams. “We used to paint them with tea and then set fire to the corners for a little authenticity.”

  “I’m not surprised it reminds you,” I said. “That is tea. Good old builders’ blend. Ancient violin makers’ trick.”

  He sniffed the tea in the jam jar. “Sometimes it’s more romantic not to look behind the curtain, Grace. I shall continue in the mistaken belief I’m painting on some potion of tree roots and harmony.”

  The black tea leaked into the wood, more or less where I wanted it. I kept half an eye on Mr. Williams’s progress while I made up the size. Size is the next part of the process; a thin solution of glue, water, and alum that keeps the varnish from soaking into the wood.

  I opened my cupboard of jars and bottles and took out a small box of alum. I sprinkled the white crystals into the bowl of glue and water.

  “Sugar?” Mr. Williams asked.

  “Alum.”

  “It looks like Epsom salts.” He went to poke the powder.

  “I wouldn’t touch it,” I said. “I don’t think it would be very good for you.”

  “What does it do?” he asked.

  “It’s what the old Cremonese makers used. Nothing the Renaissance craftsmen could get hold of was very fancy.”

  I carried on explaining. It made me feel purposeful and able; something I hadn’t been in a while. “The watered-down glue and the alum, the size, makes a barrier—an isolating barrier, technically—so that if or when the varnish ever wears off, the wood stays protected. The size is the most important stage of the varnishing.”

  “Size matters?” Mr. Williams said in a coy voice.

  I gave him a withering stare by way of an answer. “Do you want to put the size on? Or not?”

  He was delighted and hummed away to himself as he completed the task. “Do you know, Grace, I would never have imagined I’d be involved in something like this. How super. I feel like I’ve made it myself.”

  I thought of the journey he had made to this humble job of washing the size onto my cello. It is a story that starts with the death of his best friend and ends with the destruction of his personal—and valuable—property, and yet here he was. He was actually grateful. I tried to put it into words. I made a bit of a hash of it, but he got my meaning.

  “Isn’t that the beauty of life, Grace? Those unexpected moments where a turn that feels so wrong, so awkward at the time, blossoms into an opportunity like this? I’ve led a life of surprises, dear, and of contrasts. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

  I didn’t want to point out that he and Leslie were separated by circumstance during their relationship; that his partner died in the wrong house, with the wrong person, because of the hand life had dealt them.

  Mr. Williams seems to have a gift for reading my mind, for guessing my thoughts. “And although things would have been easier—more open—for Leslie and me if we’d been together nowadays, so many other things would have been wrong. We were part of a great movement, a tide of change for the future.” He looked up at me; his forehead wide and smooth and his slicked
-back white hair still immaculately in place. “We campaigned, quietly, to reform the law and society. We only did that because we were in a compromised position, because we were persecuted, but it did help; we were part of lasting improvements.”

  I felt very insignificant. I put a hand on his arm. “I am slowly getting a grip, I promise.”

  “I think you’re doing rather well.” He smiled and went back to his work.

  The radio was on, a Shostakovich piece that had us all working with more gusto to keep up with it. I remembered a story I’d loved as a child: “The Elves and the Shoemaker.” The elves come every night and busy themselves in the shoemaker’s workshop; they do all his work and make sure he becomes shoemaker to the king. I could improve on that. My elves were here, in the room beside me. They didn’t appear in the dark and help behind the scenes; they were next to me, ready to—literally if need be—hold me up at any time.

  * * *

  It took until the final available minutes to do the sound-post adjustments on the new setup. I had slept well for the first time in weeks the night we glued the cello together and there was nothing more to be done than wait and hope the clamps did their work. I didn’t have time to miss David. I didn’t dream. I was so tired that my sleep was like a practice for death.

  We stood around together—Nadia, Mr. Williams, and I—to undo the clamps. I left three in place and we took the screw of one each.

  “Ready?”

  “What if I undo mine and the top pings off?” said Nadia. “I’m nervous.”

  “I wouldn’t risk it.” My smile was genuine. I was proud of my—of our—achievement. “I’ve taken off all the ones on pressure points. These don’t do much on their own. Watch your fingers on the top, though, the varnish is still tacky. We don’t want it dotted with fingerprints.”

  Three turns of the screws and the clamps slid neatly off the body. The cello was whole again. It wasn’t a prize-winning job, even a layman could see that, but we had known it wouldn’t be. As the symbol of wholeness it had set out to be, it ticked every box. I knew then, if I hadn’t before, that Mr. Williams was a very wise man.

  * * *

  After the fastest setup I had ever done, I put the cello, still clingy with varnish, into its case and had to drive Mr. Williams to the airport; if he had taken his own car and had to waste vital minutes parking he would have missed the plane. It was that close.

  Nadia wasn’t able to get on my flight; it was packed. She will arrive tomorrow, soon after Mr. Williams takes the train up from Venice. I have this one night to gather myself, to inflate and deflate my lungs and let things go as my breath pours into the night air.

  There are months of work waiting for me at home, but the shelves are full again and violins hang over the double basses in their stands for all the world as if nothing ever happened. The shop is fresh and white, all the corners are cleaned and smart, all shadows and ghosts chased away. Two or three of the instruments have been rehomed, literally dead wood. They are things that I’ve had for years, stock that wouldn’t sell and that wasn’t of sufficient quality to fix.

  There are empty spaces everywhere. Some empty spaces are physical; gaps on my shelves where instruments are temporarily missing, the silence on the phone that David and I use to communicate with each other. I keep my phone charged and check it often; I don’t want to and I know it makes me a fool, but I can’t help it. The other empty spaces are my secrets, feelings that I keep from Mr. Williams and Nadia; the deep and incomprehensible loss of David, of my balance. I begin each day, each minute, each word I speak, with a quivering fear. I have lost my understanding of the world and my place in it; my interpretation was wrong and that has sent me toppling. Mr. Williams’s clever plan and Nadia’s bubbling company have kept it from turning into a long, loud scream, but all the feelings are still there.

  Just below the surface of my life runs a bitter seam; a desire to claw gaping holes in reality, to scratch and kick and fight my way back to what I used to think was my life. I’d give anything to return to my comfortable ignorance. This is something I can never share with the people who have tried so very hard to fix me. Every part of me—every aspect—is broken and every second, every heartbeat, feels like it might be my last.

  It is turning from evening to nighttime here, the light has changed and the birds have stopped pecking around the benches. I get up to look for Stradivari’s grave.

  This park isn’t the most auspicious of resting places; as I walk towards the back of it, it’s really quite run-down. The dark corners are uninviting and there are too many bushes and trees for the streetlights to get through. At the edge of the gloomy area is a plaque in the grass. It explains, first in Italian and then in English, that Stradivari has gone to rest in the cathedral; this site is just where the original church he was buried in used to be.

  Missing the first stop on the tourist trail frees me and I fold the map, slip it into my jeans pocket, and start to wander the winding streets instead. I allow myself to pause and peer in shopwindows. The shops directly behind the park are elegant and expensive. Bags and shoes, belts and coats, are artfully arranged in every shade that leather comes in and some that it hadn’t before. The price tags are mind-boggling. When I look around me at the smartly dressed Italian men and the immaculate women, I can see that these shops are well patronized and sell plenty.

  I am more interested in the food shops a little farther along. Cremona is famous for nougat—torrone—and it comes in huge, flat slabs. They are stacked on top of one another in the shopwindow, pistachio green against the soft cream of almonds, highlighted against a dark bruise of chocolate. It looks delicious.

  Next door to the sweets there is a whole shop dedicated to ham and cheese. Dark pink legs hang drying in the window, the dotted black writing on their iridescent skin the same as on the cylinders of Parmesan below. Slices have been cut out of the Parmesan like a child’s drawing of a cake, and I can see the salt crystals inside the cheese. It makes me hungry.

  I walk around the streets looking for the right sort of bar. I want somewhere busy enough to be anonymous but not modern or garish. I want to watch other people and try and live outside of myself for a bit.

  The square in front of the duomo is perfect. There are tables and chairs lined up along the street and it’s still plenty warm enough to sit outside. The cathedral itself is stunning; each side of it seems to boast a different architecture, written in different stone. Under the portico running along the opposite side of the cathedral square, two mandolin players are busking to the evening crowds. I don’t recognize the tune but it’s beautiful. I sit close enough to hear them and order prosecco when the waiter comes to my table.

  The drink comes with two squares of focaccia, one topped with black olive tapenade and the other with a sliver of mozzarella that leaks milky drops onto the plate. I eat them both before I’m even a quarter of the way down the glass. I need something more to eat, really, and when the waiter comes back I ask for a menu.

  People are out strolling in couples and groups. I have never seen so many violin cases; not even at music college. Everyone who is anyone on the stringed instrument scene is here; the great and the good of the violin world. I see a few people I know walk past, people I have met through shows or exhibitions. I’m not ready to draw anyone’s attention to me yet; I’d rather not get into any small talk. I do wonder what on earth they’re going to say when they see my cello in the exhibition hall. In the week since Mr. Williams dropped it off I haven’t heard anything from the organizers, so I’m assuming that it hasn’t been disqualified.

  The influx of people means that Nadia will have to share my hotel room when she arrives tomorrow. I don’t mind; it will give me a chance to talk to her, to try and dig a little deeper into her doomed romance and her refusal to finish her A-levels. She is fragile beneath that gritty front and I will choose my moments wisely.

  First, we all need a holiday. We need to relax.

  I’ll enjoy their company. Mr.
Williams managed to rent a room from a friend of a friend. He will be just outside of the city center but an easy taxi or bus ride away from us.

  I heard him on the phone making the final arrangements for his stay. Italian turns out to be in his skill set too. I hardly speak any; my Italian is strictly violin based or touristic, but his sounded pretty good.

  The waiter brings my pizza. It is perfect, thin and crispy with just a light topping. I can see the dough through the cheese and know it won’t drown the flavor of the sun-ripened tomatoes. I order another drink and settle into my own company.

  The mandolin players move on from the portico and I walk slowly back towards the hotel after my meal. The streets are beautiful; the pavements tiny and narrow, the buildings tall and leaning in towards the road. I don’t see a single supermarket between the square and my hotel, although a lot of buildings have shutters pulled down to keep out the night and the modern world may just be hidden behind them.

  The shops that are still open are dazzling; one sells nothing but pasta, from tiny balls like beads to flat, soft pillows of warm orange that are the size of my hand. People are walking in and out of its door, buying their supper in what looks like cake boxes. The next shop on is full of preserved fruits, jars of spiced syrups with all the colors of autumn caught against the glass. The bakery has closed and its flat trays are left empty but for flour in every shade of brown that dusts like soft sand across the bottoms.

  At the end of the road I can see the hotel. It reminds me again that I am here without David. I have gotten used to the idea that I am not here alone, at least not for long, and I’m far from sorry to be walking these streets on this beautiful evening, but I still miss him. It is inevitable.

  There is a bar on my right. Outside there are six or seven tables and a gaggle of people send warm laughter floating towards the red roofs. The end table has no one on it and I sit down and take my book out of my bag. The waiter takes my order and I open the page at my bookmark.