In the Forest of Forgetting

by Theodora Goss

  I suppose she took my failure as a sign of her own. When she married my father, the son of a North Carolina tobacco farmer, she left Boston and the house by the Common that the Winslows had inhabited since the Revolution. She arrived as a bride in Ashton expecting to be welcomed into a red brick mansion fronted by white columns and shaded by magnolias, perhaps a bit singed from the war her grandfather the General had won for the Union. Instead, she found herself in a house with only a front parlor, its white paint flaking, flanked by a set of ragged tulip poplars. My father rode off every morning to the tobacco fields that lay around the foundations of the red brick mansion, its remaining bricks still blackened from the fires of the Union army and covered through the summer with twining purple vetch.

  A month after my first piano lesson with Mr. Henry, we were invited to a dinner party at the Beauforts’. At the bottom left corner of the invitation was written, “Violin Recital.”

  “Adeline Beaufort is so original,” said my mother over her toast and eggs, the morning we received the invitation. “Imagine. Who in Balfour County plays the violin?” Her voice indicated the amused tolerance extended to Adeline Beaufort, who had once been Adeline Ashton, of the Ashtons who had given their name to the town.

  Hannah began to disassemble the chafing dish. “I hear she’s paying some foreign man to play for her. He arrived from Raleigh last week. He’s staying at Slater’s.”

  “Real-ly?” said my mother, lengthening the word as she said it to express the notion that Adeline Beaufort, who lived in the one red brick mansion in Ashton, fronted by white columns and shaded by magnolias, should know better than to allow some paid performer staying at Slater’s, with its sagging porch and mixed-color clientele, to play at her dinner party.

  My father pushed back his chair. “Well, it’ll be a nice change from that damned organist.” He was already in his work shirt and jodhpurs.

  “Language, Cullen,” said my mother.

  “Rose doesn’t mind my damns, does she?” He stopped as he passed and leaned down to kiss the top of my head.

  I decided then that I would grow up just like my father. I would wear a blue shirt and leather boots up to my knees, and damn anything I pleased. I looked like him already, although the sandy hair so thick that no brush could tame it, the strong jaw and freckled nose that made him a handsome man made me a very plain girl indeed. I did not need to look in a mirror to realize my plainness. It was there, in my mother’s perpetual look of disappointment, as though I were, to her, a symbol of the town with its unpaved streets where passing carriages kicked up dust in the summer, and the dull green of the tobacco fields stretching away to the mountains.

  After breakfast I ran to the Beauforts’ to find Emma. The two of us had been friends since our first year at the Ashton Ladies’ Academy. Together we had broken our dolls in intentional accidents, smuggled books like Gulliver’s Travels out of the Ashton library, and devised secret codes that revealed exactly what we thought of the older girls at our school, who were already putting their hair up and chattering about beaux. I found her in the orchard below the house, stealing green apples. It was only the middle of June, and they were just beginning to be tinged with their eventual red.

  “Aren’t you bad,” I said when I saw her. “You know those will only make you sick.”

  “I can’t help it,” she said, looking doleful. The expression did not suit her. Emma reminded me of the china doll Aunt Winslow had given me two summers ago, on my twelfth birthday. She had chestnut hair and blue eyes that always looked newly painted, above cheeks as smooth and white as porcelain, now round with the apple pieces she had stuffed into them. “Mama thinks I’ve grown too plump, so Callie won’t let me have more than toast and an egg for breakfast, and no sugar for my coffee. I get so hungry afterward!”

  “Well, I’ll steal you some bread and jam later if you’ll tell me about the violin player from Slater’s.”

  We walked to the cottage below the orchard, so close to the river at the bottom of the Beauforts’ back garden that it flooded each spring. Emma felt above the low doorway, found the key we always kept there, and let us both in. The cottage had been used, as long as we could remember, for storing old furniture. It was filled with dressers gaping where their drawers had once been and chairs whose caned seats had long ago rotted through. We sat on a sofa whose springs sagged under its faded green upholstery, Emma munching her apple and me munching another although I knew it would give me a stomachache that afternoon.

  “His name is Johann Wilhelm,” she finally said through a mouthful of apple. “He’s German, I think. He played the violin in Raleigh, and Aunt Otway heard him there, and said he was coming down here, and that we might want him to play for us. That’s all I know.”

  “So why is he staying at Slater’s?”

  “I dunno. I guess he must be poor.”

  “My mother said your mother was original for having someone from Slater’s play at her house.”

  “Yeah? Well, your mother’s a snobby Yankee.”

  I kicked Emma, and she kicked back, and then we had a regular kicking battle. Finally, I had to thump her on the back when she choked on an apple from laughing too hard. I was laughing too hard as well. We were only fourteen, but we were old enough to understand certain truths about the universe, and we both knew that mothers were ridiculous.

  In the week that followed, I almost forgot about the scandalous violinist. I was too busy protesting against the dress Hannah was sewing for me to wear at the party, which was as uncomfortable as dresses were in those days of boning and horsehair.

  “I’ll tear it to bits before I wear it to the party,” I said.

  “Then you’ll go in your nightgown, Miss Rose, because I’m not sewing you another party dress, that’s for sure. And don’t you sass your mother about it, either.” Hannah put a pin in her mouth and muttered, “She’s a good woman, who’s done more for the colored folk in this town than some I could name. Now stand still or I’ll stick you with this pin, see if I don’t.”

  I shrugged to show my displeasure, and was stuck.

  On the night of the party, after dinner off the Sêvres service that Judge Beaufort had ordered from Raleigh, we gathered in the back parlor, where chairs had been arranged in a circle around the piano. In front of the piano stood a man, not much taller than I was. Gray hair hung down to his collar, and his face seemed to be covered with wrinkles, which made him look like a dried-apple doll I had played with one autumn until its head was stolen by a squirrel. In his left hand he carried a violin.

  “Come on, girl, sit by your Papa,” said my father. We sat beside him although it placed Emma by Mr. Henry, who was complaining to Amelia Ashton, the town beauty, about the new custom of hiring paid performers.

  The violinist waited while the dinner guests told each other to hush and be quiet. Then, when even the hushing had stopped, he said “Ladies and Gentlemen,” bowed to the audience, and lifted his violin.

  He began with a simple melody, like a bird singing on a tree branch in spring. Then came a series of notes, and then another, and I imagined the tree branch swaying in a rising wind, with the bird clinging to it. Then clouds rolled in, gray and filled with rain, and wind lashed the tree branch, so that the bird launched itself into the storm. It soared through turbulence, among the roiling clouds, sometimes enveloped in mist, sometimes with sunlight flashing on its wings, singing in fear of the storm, in defiance of it, in triumph. As this frenzy rose from the strings of the violin, which I thought must snap at any moment, the violinist began to sway, twisting with the force of the music as though he were the bird itself. Then, just as the music seemed almost unbearable, rain fell in a shower of notes, and the storm subsided. The bird returned to the branch and resumed its melody, then even it grew still. The violinist lifted his bow, and we sat in silence.

  I sagged against my father, wondering if I had breathed since the music had started.

  The violinist said “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.�
� The dinner guests clapped. He bowed again, drank from a glass of water Callie had placed for him on the piano, and walked out of the room.

  “Papa,” I whispered, “Can I learn to play the violin?”

  “Sure, sweetheart,” he whispered back. “As long as your mother says you can.”

  It took an absolute refusal to touch the piano, and a hunger strike lasting through breakfast and dinner, to secure my violin lessons.

  “You really are the most obstinate girl, Rose,” said my mother. “If I had been anything like you, my father would have made me stay in my room all day.”

  “I’ll stay in my room all day, but I won’t eat, not even if you bring me moldy bread that’s been gnawed by rats,” I said.

  “As though we had rats! And there’s no need for that. You’ll have your lessons with Meister Wilhelm.”

  “With what?”

  “Johann Wilhelm studied music at a European university. In Berlin, I think, or was it Paris? You’ll call him Meister Wilhelm. That means Master, in German. And don’t expect him to put up with your willfulness. I’m sure he’s accustomed to European children, who are polite and always do as they’re told.”

  “I’m not a child.”

  “Real–ly?” she said with an unpleasant smile, stretching the word out as long as she had when questioning Adeline Beaufort’s social arrangements. “Then stop behaving like one.”

  “Well,” I said, nervous under that smile, “should I go down to Slater’s for my lessons?” The thought of entering the disreputable boarding house was as attractive as it was frightening.

  “Certainly not. The Beauforts are going to rent him their cottage while he stays in Ashton. You’ll have your lessons there.”

  Meister Wilhelm looked even smaller than I remembered, when he opened the cottage door in answer to my knock. He wore a white smock covered with smudges where he had rubbed up against something dusty. From its hem hung a cobweb.

  “Ah, come in, Fraulein,” he said. “You must forgive me. This is no place to receive a young lady, with the dust and the dirt everywhere—and on myself also.”

  I looked around the cottage. It had changed little since the day Emma and I had eaten green apples on the sagging sofa, although a folded blanket now lay on the sofa, and I realized with surprise that the violinist must sleep there, on the broken springs. The furniture had been pushed farther toward the wall, leaving space in the center of the room for a large table cracked down the middle that had been banished from the Beauforts’ dining room for at least a generation. On it were scattered pieces of bamboo, yards of unbleached canvas, tools I did not recognize, a roll of twine, a pot of glue with the handle of a brush sticking out of it, and a stack of papers written over in faded ink.

  I did not know what to say, so I twisted the apron Hannah had made me wear between my fingers. My palms felt unpleasantly damp.

  Meister Wilhelm peered at me from beneath gray eyebrows that seemed too thick for his face. “Your mother tells me you would like to play the violin?”

  I nodded.

  “And why the violin? It is not a graceful instrument. A young lady will not look attractive, playing Bach or Corelli. Would you not prefer the piano, or perhaps the harp?”

  I shook my head, twisting the apron more tightly.

  “No?” He frowned and leaned forward, as though to look at me more closely. “Then perhaps you are not one of those young ladies who cares only what the gentlemen think of her figure? Perhaps you truly wish to be a musician.”

  I scrunched damp fabric between my palms. I scarcely understood my motives for wanting to play the violin, but I wanted to be as honest with him as I could. “I don’t think so. Mr. Henry says I have no musical talent at all. It’s just that when I saw you playing the violin—at the Beauforts’ dinner party, you know—it sounded, well, like you’d gone somewhere else while you were playing. Somewhere with a bird on a tree, and then a storm came. And I wanted to go there too.” What a stupid thing to have said. He was going to think I was a complete idiot.

  Meister Wilhelm leaned back against the table and rubbed the side of his nose with one finger. “It is perceptive of you to see a bird on a tree and a storm in my music. I call it Der Sturmvogel, the Stormbird. So you want to go somewhere else, Fraulein Rose. Where exactly is it you want to go?”

  “I don’t know.” My words sounded angry. He did think I was an idiot, then. “Are you going to teach me to play the violin or not?”

  He smiled, as though enjoying my discomfiture. “Of course I will teach you. Are not your kind parents paying me? Paying me well, so that I can buy food for myself, and pay for this bamboo, which has been brought from California, and glue, for the pot there, she is empty? But I am glad to hear, Fraulein, that you have a good reason for wanting to learn the violin. In this world, we all of us need somewhere else to go.” From the top of one of the dressers, Meister Wilhelm lifted a violin. “Come,” he said. “I will show you how to hold the instrument between your chin and shoulder.”

  “Is this your violin?” I asked.

  “No, Fraulein. My violin, she was made by a man named Antonio Stradivari. Some day, if you are diligent, perhaps you shall play her.”

  I learned, that day, how to hold the violin and the bow, like holding a bird in your hands, with delicate firmness. The first time I put the bow to the strings I was startled by the sound, like a crow with a head cold, nothing like the tones Meister Wilhelm had drawn out of his instrument in the Beauforts’ parlor.

  “That will get better with time,” he told me. “I think we have had enough for today, no?”

  I nodded and put the violin down on the sofa. The fingers of my right hand were cramped, and the fingers of my left hand were crisscrossed with red lines where I had been holding the strings.

  On a table by the sofa stood a photograph of a man with a beard and mustache, in a silver frame. “Who is this?” I asked.

  “That is—was—a very good friend of mine, Herr Otto Lilienthal.”

  “Is he dead?” The question was rude, but my curiosity was stronger than any scruples I had with regard to politeness.

  “Yes. He died last year.” Meister Wilhelm lifted the violin from the sofa and put it back on top of the dresser.

  “Was he ill?” This was ruder yet, and I dared to ask only because Meister Wilhelm now had his back to me, and I could not see his face.

  “Nein. He fell from the sky, from a glider.”

  “A glider!” I sounded like a squawking violin myself. “That’s what you’re making with all that bamboo and twine and stuff. But this can’t be all of it. Where do you keep the longer pieces? I know—in Slater’s barn. From there you can take it to Slocumb’s Bluff, where you can jump off the big rock.” Then I frowned. “You know that’s awfully dangerous.”

  Meister Wilhelm turned to face me. His smile was at once amused and sad.

  “You are an excellent detective, kleine Rose. Someday you will learn that everything worth doing is dangerous.”

  Near the end of July, Emma left for Raleigh, escorted by her father, to spend a month with her Aunt Otway. Since I had no one to play with, I spent more time at the cottage with Meister Wilhelm, scraping away at the violin with ineffective ardor and bothering him while he built intricate structures of bamboo and twine.

  One morning, as I was preparing to leave the house, still at least an hour before my scheduled lesson with the violinist, I heard two voices in the parlor. I crept down the hall to the doorway and listened.

  “You’re so fortunate to have a child like Emma,” said my mother. “I really don’t know what to do with Elizabeth Rose.”

  “Well, Eleanor, she’s an obstinate girl, I won’t deny that,” said a voice I recognized as belonging to Adeline Beaufort. “It’s a pity Cullen’s so lax with her. You ought to send her to Boston for a year or two. Your sister Winslow would know how to improve a young girl’s manners.”

  “I suppose you’re right, Adeline. If she were pretty, that might be som
e excuse, but as it is . . . Well, you’re lucky with your Emma, that’s all.”

  I had heard enough. I ran out of the house, and ran stumbling down the street to the cottage by the river. I pounded on the door. No answer. Meister Wilhelm must still be at Slater’s barn. I tried the doorknob, but the cottage was locked. I reached to the top of the door frame, pulled down the key, and let myself in. I banged the door shut behind me, threw myself onto the sagging sofa, and pressed my face into its faded upholstery.

  Emma and I had discussed the possibility that our mothers did not love us. We had never expected it to be true.

  The broken springs of the sofa creaked beneath me as I sobbed. I was the bird clinging to the tree branch, the tree bending and shaking in the storm Meister Wilhelm had played on his violin, and the storm itself, wanting to break things apart, to tear up roots and crack branches. At last my sobs subsided, and I lay with my cheek on the damp upholstery, staring at the maimed furniture standing against the cottage walls.

  Slowly I realized that my left hip was lying on a hard edge. I pushed myself up and, looking under me, saw a book with a green leather cover. I opened it. The frontispiece was a photograph of a tired-looking man labeled “Lord Rutherford, Mountaineer.” On the title page was written, “The Island of Orillion: Its History and Inhabitants, by Lord Rutherford.” I turned the page. Beneath the words “A Brief History of Orillion” I read, “The Island of Orillion achieved levitation on the twenty-third day of June, the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and thirty-six.”

  I do not know how long I read. I did not hear when Meister Wilhelm entered the cottage.

  “I see you have come early today,” he said.

  I looked up from a corner of the sofa, into which I had curled myself. Since I felt ashamed of having entered the cottage while he was away, ashamed of having read his book without asking, what I said sounded accusatory. “So that’s why you’re building a glider. You want to go to Orillion.”