Sonata for Violin

Sonata for Violin

I watched the violin soar across the room in slow motion, as though in its last adagio, twisting around, having been released from the hand by the neck. It wasn’t so much thrown as flung. Flung in anger, frustration or fear, maybe insanity, I didn’t know.
For some odd reason, I thought about cakes. I think the phrase, “This takes the cake” occurred to me fleetingly, and I thought that a cake is not complete until it’s iced. You don’t know whether it’s a birthday cake, a holiday cake, or whatever, until the packaging is applied. But that’s what I thought about the violin flying through the air – the icing on the cake.
It was a pretty good violin, too. The man who had given it to me was quite accomplished. He was first violin and then concertmaster for the orchestra and taught for many years at one of the colleges. When I first started seeing him as a Home Health Visitor, he’d bring the violin out and play for a bit while I was fixing him up a week’s worth of decent meals. I didn’t know anything that he played, but then I didn’t know much about violin music. Later on I found out that they were all his own compositions.
He was best when improvising. He closed his eyes and caressed that thing with the bow and made silk come out of it. When he did that, improvised, I mean, I could pick up on his repetitions and sing along – no words or anything, just adding satin or velvet on top of the silk. I could tell that he liked when I did this because he played to my voice. We’d switch back and forth between soloist and accompanist.
I’d been visiting him weekly for almost two years, fixing meals, checking his meds and blood pressure, giving him a sponge bath and sometimes washing his hair. We’d finish off with a coffee and cigarette, both against the rules of the Home Health Service, but we didn’t care. I liked being with someone who seemed to enjoy my company.
Sometimes he tried to teach me the violin. I could get a sweet tone out of it, but that was more the violin than me, and I couldn’t anything like a melody. But he loved to try and always told me how well I was doing.
He was in his eighties and, seeing him only once a week, I could see him decline. There was nothing specifically wrong with him. He was a lonely old man.
One day when I was packing up to leave, he asked me to bring him the case for the violin. I was a bit surprised because it was usually not far from his side, ready to pick up and play. I did as he asked, laid the case across his knees and watched him gently place the violin and bow inside, and snap it closed.
He held it up to me with both hands and said, “Take it.”
I looked at him dumbly and he repeated, “Take it. I want you to have my friend – my voice.” He was smiling.
I protested, but he would not hear me.
“Take the violin. You love the old thing. I know that. And I can’t play any more. It just frustrates me. Let her music keep you company. That would make me happy. Who knows? Maybe you’ll learn to play.”
In the end, I took the treasure, but I told him I’d bring it back with me every week. He smiled again.
When I went back a week later, he had died. I got there and the door was locked. I couldn’t see anyone inside. I drove to a store a few miles away and called the service. They told me he had died in the night a week ago and they didn’t know why I hadn’t been notified.
I was crying when my husband came home. Just sitting on the couch, plinking the strings of the violin which was resting cross-wise on my knees. I couldn’t talk to him and the rage started. I tried to shut him out as I had so many times.
Finally he grabbed the violin off my knees by the neck and threw it across the room. It hit the opposite wall and snapped apart, the tension on the strings pulling it all into itself in one final, triumphant dissonance.
The audience sat in stunned silence, and there was no encore, for the violinist had left the hall.