The House of Silence (17 page)

I followed him to his room. I knew that, after working together for those past couple of years, we had created an unbreakable bond, one that was different from the one he shared with other women, a bond that allowed us to share a certain intimacy, to understand each other with just a glance, and I knew that on this trip, even though he'd been sleeping with Anna, I was the one he most trusted. As much as Karl T. could trust anyone, that is, which wasn't much.

We went into his hotel room and he closed the door. What's wrong? I asked him immediately. Nothing, he said as he staggered
over to the bed. I was frightened, you definitely don't look like nothing's wrong. I helped him to stretch out on the bed. He was breathing slowly, as if he was afraid he wouldn't have enough air otherwise. I just need a hug, you don't mind, do you? he said. He looked at me as if he was desperate for a candy. And at that moment I wondered if the great Karl T. had stage fright and wanted the support of a mother figure. I wondered a lot of things in a few seconds, and then I went over to him and hugged him, just as he had asked. And when his head was resting on my shoulder, I heard him say, this concert here is very important. If anything happens to me, he will conduct. I was shocked by his words, but Karl was referring to a name and phone number on a piece of paper he put into my hand. It was that of a well-known orchestra conductor, from Berlin, whom I was quite familiar with. But what are you saying, you are ill, do you want us to postpone the concert? I asked, frightened. No, no, he answered, lifting one hand, I just want the concert to go on, please, promise me. He looked at me as if he were asking me to promise that he would live. I made the promise, but then I asked him what was going on, whether he was feeling okay. I'm not well, he answered, and, I'm no spring chicken. He smiled a little as he said that, joking. I looked at him and, in that precise moment, I realized that Karl T. had gotten old. And not only that, but it looked like he was on his last legs. I didn't ask any more questions, he seemed tired.

Then there was a knock at the door. What do they want now? muttered Karl, thinking that it was the hotel staff. With a glance, he asked me to open up and I did. But it wasn't the bellboy, no. It was Anna, standing there with one of those expressions that say it all.
Oh, no,
I thought, closing my eyes for a fleeting moment.
Obviously, it was too late for me to hide. Excuse me, my mistake, she said. And she disappeared.

I closed the door gently and sighed. Then I walked over to him. He looked at me with fear in his eyes for a moment, but then he asked, where were we? I hugged him again, not without some concern, because I wondered what that twisted girl was capable of.

Anyway, it was odd that Anna caught us together on the only day we were alone together without making love. Stranger things have happened. I left once I was sure that Karl was okay and just wanted to sleep. I was worried something might happen to him that night and I offered to stay, but he assured me there was no need. I placed a note by the telephone, where I had written, very large, my room number. Then I left.

The next day, our conductor was fresh as a rose. As if nothing had happened. And we performed the concert in Berlin, and he left very early the next day for Vienna, while all the musicians remained in the German capital for one more day.

It's raining. It's raining and the leaves on the ground look like plates holding water. And the water holds more bits and pieces of my soul. It's here in the river, and in the lake in Barcelona. I've got bits of my soul everywhere; it's odd how something so intangible can divide itself up like that. But I can't gather up those pieces, I've tried, but there's no way. It's not the water's fault anyway. It's everyone's fault, everyone who broke my soul and threw it into the lake by the house and said, go on, sweetheart, go find it, and if it's broken, piece it back together. I never did piece it back together. At first I tried to and then, when it no longer hurt, I let it go, if my soul wanted to be in the water, all broken up in bits, then so be it. It wasn't my fault, it was everyone else's. Including Mark, who won't even let me into his dressing room. It's everyone's fault.

It's very dark. Night had already fallen when we arrived; here the days are short and the scant sunlight doesn't last long. It's still raining. I'd like to take a walk, dragging my feet through the puddles, letting them get soaked. I'd like to, but I have to perform
soon, in presentable shoes. Everyone has gone back inside for the beginning of the second part. It's the second part in every way. The second part of the comedy of my life, with a human being deep inside me and water falling constantly but without making a sound, as if trying to go unnoticed. The Berlin natives, who are used to this weather, walk quickly beneath umbrellas of every color. And I'm thinking about when I found out that Teresa and Karl were lovers.

I think it was the last time my soul broke into more pieces. That was when I realized that Teresa, who had been a point of reference in my life, really lived to hurt me. That she must not have any other goals in life. When I caught them red-handed in that hotel room, in this very city, I made a colossal effort to make it look like I couldn't care less. Teresa's apologetic expression, as if she were innocence itself, as if playing at its being some misunderstanding, was what incensed me more than anything. I left there as quickly as I could, wondering how she could be so nasty, so twisted, how I could have ever trusted her. It seems, as kids, we can fall for anything.

That day, when I got to the banks of the Spree, I could barely breathe. The water flowed peacefully, but I was gasping for air. I screamed, leaning over the railing above those abundant waters, and then I started to breathe quickly, mixing gulps of air with sobs that came out all at once, the sobs of an entire life, sobs of truth, over that woman who was determined to finish me off, over that woman who is about to play Bach's
Concerto for Two Violins
with me onstage. I'm sure the evil bitch seduced Karl, tricking him somehow to get him into that hotel room, I'm sure she saw that there was something between us and she thought,
well, I'll snatch him away, and leave Anna alone, with nothing and no one.

The world is difficult for some people, and I was one of them; the hawk-nosed music teacher had been right, my fate was to live
en souffrant
—until I decided that enough was enough, one day ten years ago, sobbing above the River Spree. I wondered how Teresa had managed to get the spot as the other violin in the Bach concert, how she had managed to get close to me again, to find another way to hurt me. And when I'd first seen her, I thought it was just a coincidence, a perverse coincidence but a coincidence just the same. But, of course, after everything that's happened, I no longer believe in coincidences, it's not possible, there has to be some trick, and the trick is Teresa, who won't miss a chance to screw me over. I saw that clearly that day above the Spree. And that was when I said enough is enough, I wasn't going to play the fool anymore, I would never again be so naïve. I wished I had the Stainer with me then, but I didn't. I had just given it to Karl. To Karl, who had promised to marry me when we got back from tour, to Karl who I believed was mine.

I had believed that Mama was mine, and Teresa, and Papa, and Karl. And none of them were, they had all deceived me. But now Mark will be mine, because of this baby inside me. And now I have the violin to flaunt in front of Teresa. She doesn't even glance at it, she acts like she doesn't care that I'm touring the world with an instrument that had been hers since she was a child, according to what she told me. One day I asked her who had given it to her, it seemed weird that someone would give a little girl a Stainer, and Teresa told me that she had found it. I gave a start. What, and you didn't return it? It had been abandoned, she said quickly, then changed the subject. I don't know what she meant by that, but
some time later, when she did all that to me, when she stole Karl from me, I thought that it might be a good idea to discover where she'd found it, who she'd stolen it from, because obviously no one just leaves a Stainer on a park bench like an old sweater. Maybe at first I'd half-believed the story of the abandoned violin, but years later, when the scales fell from my eyes, I saw the truth and I understood that Teresa had stolen the violin. But after thinking over the idea of finding out whose it really was, I let it go because then the violin was mine again, and if I discovered its true owner I could lose it again.

I remembered that, when that happened, when I caught Karl with that nasty bitch; it was right before the concert, the evening before. And I needed that time to recover, there by the banks of the Spree. I wanted to show up for the concert with a clean face and not a single tear, and it wasn't easy for me to pull off. I can't say I performed my best that day, I had trouble concentrating, and I felt as if there were an electrical current between me and Teresa, and I struggled to turn my focus the other way, toward Karl, toward the man who had promised to marry me. And then, in the middle of the concert, during the second movement, I said to myself, he will marry me, he's promised to and that was the only way I could hurt Teresa. That was my best revenge.

But we didn't get married. Karl boarded the plane the next day, while we were sightseeing in his native city. And we were at the Brandenburg Gate listening to the explanations of a tour guide when the manager's phone rang. He stayed behind while we kept walking, and then he called out to us and we turned. I can still
remember the image of that small man, silhouetted in the backlight, with his cell phone in his hand, when he said to us, he's dead. No one asked who. Everyone knew, I don't know why; we all knew he was talking about Karl.

That was the end of the sightseeing, that was the end of the tour, and that was the end of my future. But I thought that I had lost the violin—and it turns out that, no, that was the one thing I managed not to lose.

Many people attended Mr. Karl's funeral. The ceremony was led by a man who wasn't a priest, but it was almost as if he were, anyway; he bid farewell to the deceased. And they played the most beautiful music. Miss Teresa was near the front, crying. I didn't see Miss Anna. And Mr. Mark was also crying, sitting in the very first row. He asked me to sit with him and at first I said no, but he was crying so much and finally he said, don't leave me alone, Maria, and I understood that he needed me, so I sat there with him. Even though, honestly, I didn't feel it was my place.

My heart was shattered. That death had destroyed my life, and I knew it would be very hard for me to recover from it. I had climbed a mountain little by little, a very high mountain, and when it seemed I was just reaching its peak, it turned out I wasn't going to make it. I didn't want to look at the coffin; when I closed my eyes, the image of Mr. Karl appeared, images I knew so well: him scooping up spoonfuls of hot chocolate and laughing the way he did; him gazing at me as I played the song about the peasant girl
and the shepherd; images of the man who had written me that letter, and even of the one who entertained so many women on that black leather sofa. And then I opened my eyes and I saw that wooden box. It couldn't be, the man inside there couldn't be the one I remembered.

Miss Anna hadn't gone to the burial, but she did come to the house four days later. It was the same Miss Anna of today, ten years younger. She was pretty, and she still is, but she's getting too many lines on her face, and she has two prominent wrinkles on her forehead from that worried expression she makes when she plays. Mrs. Anna has become scary, like the stepmother in
Snow White
that I would sometimes hear the nannies in the park telling kids about. But today, despite her scariness, even though she's an evil witch, she looks very elegant. She's wearing a long black dress with a plunging neckline, and I've noticed that all the men are looking to see if they can catch a glimpse of her breasts. It's funny, years ago I would have been shocked by the mere thought. And now, it makes me laugh.

I'm not wearing a revealing dress, but I do look elegant. It's a shame my stomach is so bad, that I don't feel well, because today could be one of those days to hold my head up high and feel the eyes on me, even though my feet are dragging somewhat because I'm tired and too old to be wearing heels. It would be great to just walk on solid ground, it gives you the feeling that you know where you are, that you are in charge of your own fate. But no, with these high heels, no matter how low they are, they only let you walk on tiptoe, and you don't know what galaxy you're in. Not to mention how uncomfortable they are. I like my dress though, I went
shopping one day to see what I could find and I chose a brown dress that looks quite good on me. Mr. Mark said, wow, don't you look elegant, Maria, and I puffed up like a peacock. He said it when Miss Anna wasn't around, of course, because no ever says anything like that in front of her.

Miss Anna came over ten years ago and said, hello, I've come to pick up a violin that I left the last time I was rehearsing here with Karl. I looked at her and a shiver ran through my entire body: When Miss Anna started to come to the house, Mr. Karl had told me, that woman has the devil in her, and I swear it's true.

Now it's time for me to get up and do my job. The job I came here to do.

I just saw Maria over there, in a corner. It seems like she scurried off when she saw me watching her. What in the world is she doing here? Isn't she supposed to be sitting in the audience listening to the concert? I don't even want to know. Maybe she's looking for someone, but if so it's not me, because otherwise she wouldn't have scampered off when she saw me.

This music brings back so many memories of Karl. I think, in that period before his death, he had come to think of me as some sort of mother figure, or like an older sister. We hadn't been physical for some time, I guess because he had enough of that with Anna, and yet, since I was probably the only woman who hadn't gotten upset with him when the business on the sofa ended, he must have had a special love for me. The truth is that I didn't have it in me anymore, I had loved Maties so much that I couldn't love any other man that same way again. So, from the very beginning, I understood the whole thing with Karl as a life experience and nothing more than that. The thing is that, when Anna found out,
it was all over between us. In fact, the next morning, in the light of day and before the Berlin concert, I thought that it had just been that Karl needed some human warmth before the performance. Later, I realized that he needed more than warmth. He needed a doctor. But, of course, I had no idea at the time. Only his son and Maria knew about his heart problems, and they were both home in Barcelona. And as far as Karl was concerned, the music came first and his health wasn't even a close second.