by Rusalka Reh
But then, as if he were made of two Archibalds, one of whom thinks and the other speaks, he clears his throat. “Archibald Archinola, master violin-maker,” he hears himself say and puts out one large hand towards the boy.
The boy takes hold of it timidly. His own, much smaller hand is ice-cold.
Ben gives him a nudge. “Tell him your name!” he murmurs.
“Darius Dorian,” whispers Darius.
He suddenly goes as white as chalk and closes his eyes. But before he actually falls down on the mat outside Mr. Archinola’s front door, the violin-maker seizes him under the arms, picks him up, carries him to the thickly carpeted guest room, and lays him down on a felt-covered sofa.
“It’s all been a bit too much for Darius today,” Ben says quietly to Mr. Archinola. “Don’t worry, all he needs is a good night’s sleep, and then he’ll be perfectly okay.”
“I see,” mumbles Mr. Archinola, who still finds it all very confusing.
Throughout the night, Darius tosses and turns. When he opens his eyes, everything around him is unfamiliar. The light from the street lamp outside throws the cross-shaped shadows of the two huge window frames onto the ceiling and the walls of the room. Between them are the trembling shadows of leaves from a tree. Darius dreams. In his dream, a large bearded man is sitting beside him, holding his hand. Darius can feel that there is something special about the man’s hand. It’s strong and warm. He feels its warmth and strength flowing into his own hand, then climbing up his arm and gradually spreading through his whole body, like a light illuminating a pitch-dark room. The impressive-looking bearded man does not say a word. He simply sits there holding Darius’s hand, as if at this moment there were nothing more important in the world.
The dawn breaks.
A nightingale sings its song loud and clear, and then lots of other birds join in a chorus of wild twittering.
Darius lies there, wide awake. He feels good.
Outside the window, the roof of the church is glowing green with moss.
The next morning, Mr. Archinola is still so drunk with sleep that at first he doesn’t even remember what happened last night. He lets out a loud yawn and switches on the crystal chandelier above the wooden table in the kitchen.
Then he hears a noise from the guest room. To be more precise, what he hears is music. Very soft and somehow muted, like a sort of miniature orchestra playing in a saucepan with the lid on. He quickly creeps to the door and puts his ear up against it.
Antonín Dvoák! Not bad at all—in fact, the very beautiful Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in B Minor, Opus 104, thinks the violin-maker sleepily, creeps away again, and slides his feet into his leather shoes. He is so tired that it doesn’t even occur to him to wonder why there is music coming from the guest room. He’s about to go to The Golden Crust, his favorite café, for his indispensable morning cup of coffee. Then the thought goes through him like a flaming arrow—the boy! He’d almost forgotten the boy!
He gently knocks on the door, behind which the soft music is still playing. No answer. Mr. Archinola opens the door. His gaze falls on the felt-covered sofa. There is no sign of the boy, but instead the bedcover is towering up in the form of a tent.
“Ahem!” Mr. Archinola goes to the sofa. “This is Mr. Violin-Maker Archinola speaking to you in person!” he says, with a little cough, because he doesn’t know quite how one greets a child in the morning, and a little cough actually goes with any situation.
The music suddenly stops. The tent moves. An untidy mop of curly hair pokes out from under it, and then the rest of the boy crawls out. In his hands he’s holding a pretty hideous pink radio.
“Are you feeling better today?” asks Mr. Archinola, somewhat formally, and gently strokes his beard, as if there might be trouble ahead.
“Yes,” replies Darius softly. “I had a fever, but that sort of thing never lasts more than a night with me.”
“Ah, right, okay then, we can go and have some breakfast,” says Mr. Archinola and makes as if to leave. Then he turns around again. “What were you listening to just now?”
“I don’t know,” says Darius, shrugging his shoulders. “Music.” He looks up and suddenly smiles. “Beautiful music.”
“Do you like music?” asks the violin-maker, looking curiously at the boy.
And without hesitation, Darius answers, “Yes!”
CHAPTER SIX
Schubert and Extra Cream
What Ulrich Needham likes best about his new job is the breaks, which he can spend in The Golden Crust. That is the bakery and café around the corner from his spanking new doctor’s office, on St. Matthew’s Square. At the café you can get cream puffs, doughnuts, miniature puddings and cakes to die for, not to mention famous people to gawk at, like actors who everybody knows from TV. And he finds that a thousand times more interesting than all those awful sick people who, for the last two weeks, have been boring him to death with their daily tales of stinking feet and diarrhea.
Hardly has the man with the thin fair hair sat down at a table outside, from where he has a splendid view of St. Matthew’s Square, when he hears the voice of his mother.
“Ulli!” she rasps, although she’s still at least a hundred yards away from The Golden Crust and her clattering heels won’t carry her as far as her son for ages yet. “Ulli! Bunny, darling!”
Ulrich is so embarrassed he could sink into the ground. The couple at the next table starts giggling. Even the waiters have difficulty hiding their laughter. He grasps his knotted tie, which suddenly seems a lot too tight. The cloudless sky is a radiant steel blue. He takes off his rimless glasses and puts on his sunglasses with reflecting lenses.
“Those glasses look ridiculous on you!” That’s his mother, who is now getting very close. “Take them off, or I’ll never speak to you again!”
Sulkily he takes his sunglasses off and puts his rimless ones back on. This spring, with all its buds and blossoms and its endlessly twittering birds, is getting on my nerves, he thinks to himself, blinking in the sunlight. I’ve been too long in the dark. Much too long. In any case, long enough for this life. It’s high time things changed.
“Have you seen those glorious magnolias in full bloom?” asks his mother, sitting beside him and taking him by the hand. “A day for kings, this is. A day for you, Bunny!”
The waitress puts a cream puff down on the table. “With extra cream for you, sir,” she says. “And a Coke. I hope you enjoy it.”
“What’s this, what’s this?” sighs his mother, raising her eyebrows. “Think of your cholesterol!” She pats his hand. “We have a long and difficult journey ahead of us until we reach our great goal. So until then, please set others a good example! After all, you’re a medical practitioner now!” And with the word practitioner, she rolls the r like an opera singer. With a gracious smile, she looks around, as if she were surrounded by admirers, and then she waves to the waitress. “For me, a glass of hot skim milk, please. With three artificial sweeteners.”
“Mother,” says Ulrich wearily, pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, “what’s this all about?”
His mother looks at him indignantly. “What’s what all about?” She lets out a hacking laugh that sounds like a lawnmower.
The waitress puts a glass of milk down in front of her. “I want you to achieve something extraordinary! The bad times are past.” With an air of conspiracy, she leans over to him and whispers, “You know what I’m talking about.” Then she continues in a normal voice. “Soon everybody will know you and respect you. You have the means to do it.” She swallows a mouthful of milk, which leaves her with a little white moustache. “And no one will figure it out, because we’re too…”
With shining eyes and reddened cheeks, she takes hold of his tie and fiddles with the knot.
“We’re too what?” Dr. Needham wants to know.
His mother doesn’t answer and lets her gaze wander, as if at random, around St. Matthew’s Square. “Oh, look who’s coming!”
/> With a sugar-sweet smile, she waves to the man in the billowing coat who is just crossing the road. Behind him is a boy who is evidently having trouble keeping up with him.
“Master Violin-Maker Archibald Archinola! He’s famous all over the city! I have the greatest admiration for him! Don’t you?”
Violin music! Awful stuff! thinks Ulrich, but aloud he says, “Yes, indeed,” and nods politely to the violin-maker as the latter sits down two tables away in the April sunshine. “Who’s the boy with him?”
“How should I know?” snaps his mother impatiently and smiles her gracious smile in the direction of Mr. Archinola. “Maybe an apprentice or something like that.”
Ulrich Needham puts his reflecting sunglasses on again. Through them he can look at the boy, and no one will see him doing it.
His mother has now leaned across, and she calls obsequiously to Mr. Archinola, “When are you going to give another of your legendary musical evenings, which I’ve heard so much about?”
Ulrich watches the violin-maker say a few words to the boy before he comes across to their table. He gives a little bow.
“I’d be delighted to welcome you as my guests at my next Sunday concert,” he says to them in the friendliest of tones. Then he turns to Ulrich. “I hear you’ve recently opened an office around the corner from here. You have my very best wishes for its success.”
“Oh, that’s right. My son is such a gifted doctor!” cries Mrs. Needham and pats her son’s hand, which is lying limply on the table. “And how charming of you to invite us. And what will you be performing for us, if I may ask?”
Mr. Archinola smiles. “Schubert’s String Quartet in G Major.” He takes a card out of his jacket and puts it down beside Mrs. Needham’s glass of milk. “Here’s your invitation. Do you like Schubert?”
“Oh, how could one not like Schubert?” trills Mrs. Needham, kicking her son under the table.
“I…um…like him…too,” stutters Ulrich. The fact is, he doesn’t know the first thing about Schubert. He gives his shin a furtive rub.
“Then I shall look forward to seeing you soon at my place.” Mr. Archinola bows again and returns to his table.
“Those are important people, my son,” gushes Ulrich’s mother and looks almost lovingly across at the violin-maker. Lost in her thoughts, she tears off a corner of the invitation card. “That’s the sort of person you must get to know.” She is shocked to see the torn piece of paper and hurriedly stuffs the two bits into her purse.
“Old habits die hard, eh, Mother?” says Ulrich with a snicker. “You’ll have to wean yourself of that one.”
His mother irritably reaches for her lipstick. Ulrich bites into his cream puff, and the cream oozes out of both sides and sticks to his cheeks below his sunglasses.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Old Cabinet
The Work People Do. Three Job Shadowing Weeks with Violin-Maker Archinola, writes Darius in his notebook and uses a ruler to underline it.
The old walnut desk at which he’s sitting stands in the workshop between two large open windows that look out over St. Matthew’s Square. It’s now afternoon, and in the distance one can hear the noises from a construction site. In the plane tree, a blackbird is chirping an intoxicated song of spring.
Although he’s already been here for two days, and has talked with Mr. Archinola and watched him at work, Darius is still in a state of amazement. He swivels on the office chair. The violin-maker is standing at the workbench in his blue apron.
“This is maple, you see?” says Mr. Archinola as he hammers at an almost white piece of wood in a clamp. “It’s particularly hard. Because violins are meant to last a long time, you understand? There are some that are over three hundred years old, and people are still playing them! Can you imagine that?” There’s a soft rattling noise as he cuts into the wood. “The famous violin-maker Stradivarius learned from a woodcutter in the forest that some trees have such wonderful wood that it’s as if they were created for the sound of the violin.” He blows on the wood, and the shavings fly through the air, do a little dance with the grains of the dust in the sunlight, and then flutter to the floor. “It’s even important to know whether it rained the day before the tree was cut down and if there was a full moon.”
People use magic to make violins out of certain trees, writes Darius in his notebook.
He really likes the violin-maker. Mr. Archinola may not be a giant like Ben, but he is one all the same, in his own way. Because he makes violins. Because he is able to make violins!
The doorbell rings.
Mr. Archinola puts his chisel down on the workbench. “Hold on a second.”
He goes out into the hall. A minute later, he returns. Behind him, a girl enters the workshop.
Darius doesn’t know why, but for a moment he catches his breath. The girl has straight black hair that shines like polish, and the outer corners of her eyes bend upwards like the corners of a smiling mouth.
“This is Mey-Mey,” says Mr. Archinola, introducing the girl. “She’s twelve, just like you. And this is Darius,” he says, beckoning to Mey-Mey. “He’s studying the secrets of violin-making.”
The children nod to each other. This girl, thinks Darius to himself, has eyes like two lakes with not even the tiniest wave.
“May I?” she asks, pointing to the room behind the open double door. Mr. Archinola calls it his “salesroom.”
“Carry on,” he says.
Darius watches the girl as she walks across the room. There is a cello leaning against a music stand with an open score. In the middle of the floor is a wooden chair with blue upholstery and curved legs. And in an old display cabinet, reddish, yellowish, and brownish violins hang by their scrolls. This is where Mr. Archinola keeps his collection of violins that nobody wants—like those he has found at flea markets or some that have been given to him to repair but have never been reclaimed. One day, he says, when he’s very old, he will take a closer look at them all and will restore their varnish.
When Darius’s gaze wanders over the glass doors of this cabinet, he suddenly sees something strange. There’s a blue light—no doubt about it—coming from one of the violins! To be precise, it’s the second one on the left. He blinks rapidly three or four times. The blue light is still there! In fact, the glow is getting even brighter, almost like a sunbeam. Has Mr. Archinola seen it too? Darius squints across at the violin-maker, but he’s completely absorbed in his work again. Darius shakes his head like a wet dog trying to get the drops out of his coat, and then he looks at the violin again. But the light has disappeared.
Only now does he see that Mey-Mey is kneeling over a violin case on the floor. The clasps click as she opens it. Carefully she takes out a violin and bow.
“Mey-Mey hasn’t got a violin of her own,” whispers Mr. Archinola. “Her parents aren’t too keen on this passion of hers. That’s why she often comes here to practice.”
The girl strokes the strings of the bow with a little stone of yellow glass.
“She doesn’t even go to the swimming pool or the movies or buy herself an ice cream—she prefers to play the violin,” says Mr. Archinola, and it sounds as if he’s really proud of Mey-Mey. Then he lets out a sigh. “But she’s got this problem.”
“What sort of problem?” asks Darius curiously. “Well,” whispers Mr. Archinola, pointing his iron file in Mey-Mey’s direction, “just look closely. She’s got a stiff left forefinger. That’s not good for a violinist, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
He starts filing. The jars, brushes, and chisels on the workbench shake to the rhythm of his filing. Inside a corked bottle, something liquid wobbles up and down like a tiny ocean in a tiny storm.
“But can she play or not?” persists Darius, looking surprised, as Mey-Mey has just placed the violin against her shoulder. Now he can see that her left forefinger is sticking up in the air, while the rest of her fingers are on the strings.
“Oh yes,” says Mr. Archinola, nodding. “And she’s go
od too. But grass doesn’t grow under the competition, if you know what I mean. That stiff finger has closed a lot of doors to her. Five flexible fingers are better than four—at least that’s the way people think in the musical world. Yes, indeed, it’s a real shame.”
From the salesroom a melody now wings its way into the workshop. Clear and warm.
Darius lays his pen on one side, leans back, and folds his hands behind his head. The melody slides deep into his body. It’s beautiful. It’s a thousand times more beautiful than with the pink radio under the sheets. He closes his eyes. And although his eyes are closed, he can see something wonderful: the workshop doesn’t have an ornate ceiling as it did before. Suddenly there’s a flock of birds—white, light brown, and silver. Darius can see the sky above him, and the birds soaring up into a vast, bright expanse of blue. So freely do they fly into this blue that Darius follows them, higher and higher. And up there, in the midst of the music and the blue, suddenly all other sounds have faded away. There is silence. A bright, total silence…
Darius gives a start.
Mey-Mey is standing beside him. It seems that she’s just asked him something.
“S-Sorry?” stammers Darius. With difficulty he returns from the distant blue to the wooden floor of the workshop. The music seems to have ended long ago.
“Are you writing a poem?” she asks, looking inquisitively at his notebook, which is lying there open.
Darius notices a brown stain on her neck. Then he stares at the last sentence in his notebook: The violins make me disappear into heaven.
He can’t remember writing it. He feels awkward. In embarrassment, he covers the sentence with his hand.
