The House of Silence (2 page)

That was the house of silence. Music played, but it played at a distance, Mr. Karl would close himself up in a room and do his thing, I mean he played the violin or the piano, or both, or he'd sing too, and he sang very loudly. One day I saw that afterwards he would write down notes on a piece of paper. I didn't understand what that was, but I didn't dare ask. He looked into my eyes and said, I'm composing, Maria. But that was when we started speaking to each other. Because at first we didn't speak at all, no. At first it seemed that Mr. Karl didn't want to tell me anything about what I should or shouldn't do. I would ask him, sir, what can I do for you? And he wouldn't hear me or pretended not to. Finally he said, I hired you to do what you think needs to be done; I don't have time to think. Okay, sir, I said, and I left and I thought,
Maria, make a list
of what needs to be done in this house, because from now on it's as if it were yours.
The same thing happened when I went to get my wages for the first time. I saw how the days passed and Mr. Karl didn't pay me, and, when I had been there for two months and hadn't seen a dime, I got the nerve up to say something. And he had me follow him to a desk, and he took a small key out of a jar and opened up a drawer. And I saw that there was money there, a lot of money. I didn't say a word, but my eyes were like saucers. Here, he said, take your pay every month; I never remember these things. And, if some month there isn't enough, let me know. Okay, sir, I said again. Then he left and there I was alone, grabbing my month's pay myself, and thinking,
I could take it all right now and never come back.
But after considering the temptation briefly, I decided that I was no thief, and I forgot about it. I closed the drawer, turned the key, and put it back in the jar. I looked at my money and realized I still didn't have enough to buy any jewelry, but I could buy some chocolate just for me.

After the trumpet player, they all start to show up. Everyone except Anna and Mark. They are late. Instinctively, I imitate the violinists in the orchestra, putting my violin on my shoulder to tune it. Now there is no longer silence. Later, if I have time, I'll go over the difficult passages, when the violin plays that wonderful game of tag with Bach's notes. And I already know that, once I get started, the concert will bring tears to my eyes and fill my heart with sadness. It will remind me of the last time we played it, here, and also of the day Karl invited me to his house to play with him for the first time. He told me, I've heard you play, and you perform Bach the way I believe he should be played.

Karl has been dead for ten years, but sometimes it doesn't seem that long ago; it seems that he'll come back today, to tell me not to put so much of my soul into it. Well, if you don't want me to put my soul into it, why did you ask me to play? I said one day, in exasperation. He looked into my eyes and replied, because it's easier to take out a bit of soul than to try to add it in. And there are very few people who put soul into their music.

If there was one thing I've always put in, it's soul. Music made me cry. Of course, today, I'll have trouble staying calm, but for many years the moment I started to play I was wiping away tears. I cried at seven years old, the day I brought the violin home with my mother's permission, even though I didn't even know how to properly hold the instrument, nor how it should sound. I looked again at the letters inside it, and I still didn't understand them. I only understood the 1672, and I tried to remember the drawing of the girl who played the violin in the book. I tried to remember how she held it, and I lifted it to my shoulder before running the bow over the strings. The result was an electrifying sound, slightly flat but deep, a sound that enthralled me and left me breathless. I never understood how someone, in times of hardship, could throw away such a valuable violin. It had even been more or less in tune, and the bow's strings were taut when I found that.

Mother and I lived in an apartment that was just a bathroom, a kitchen, and a bedroom. All our belongings were there, piled up in a corner because there was no closet. But none of our things were as valuable as the sewing machine, which was our means of survival and the only thing Mother hadn't sold when she'd had to leave the apartment where she'd lived with my grandparents until she was left all alone. A few years later, I was born. With the money she made from her sewing, she'd been able to rent that little place where I was born and grew up, and where I always had a bit of bread in the mornings and a small plate of food on the table at lunch and dinner. It wasn't much, but every once in a while, the neighbors would give me a piece of compound chocolate, which at the time I thought was delicious. If I ate it now, I'd probably retch. Sometimes, Mother
was too busy working to eat, and she sewed and sewed while I ate my lunch or my dinner. If there was nothing left to sew, she cleaned. I watched her nervously work, with my mouth full, even though I quickly finished off my plate—which never really had that much on it to begin with. I would watch her until, one day, she fell to the floor before my very eyes. I screamed—I must have been five years old, and Mother was my whole world. I shook her a little bit: Mother, Mother. And she didn't react. I had heard her hit her head as she fell, and I was so scared that I went running to look for the neighbors, the ones who sometimes gave me compound chocolate. I knocked frantically on their door, and I started to cry. When they opened up, I could only say, Mother is on the floor, I don't know what's wrong with her—in fits and starts, sobbing and hiccupping, terrified: Mother is on the floor with her eyes closed. I couldn't get my brain around it; mothers aren't supposed to fall to the floor. They had come in, both the man and the woman, and he had run to call a doctor while she tried to get my mother to respond. When the doctor arrived she'd been murmuring for a bit and asking what had happened to her. Then, they sent me out, but as they pushed me toward the next-door neighbor's house, where there was a woman and her son whom I sometimes played with, I heard the doctor saying, this, ma'am, has but one name—and that's hunger.

The neighbors fed us for a few days. They didn't have extra money, but the man worked—and, at least, they had enough to eat. Mother was so weak that she couldn't sew while she was recovering. Now what will you do? the neighbor lady asked her in a whisper when she thought I couldn't hear. At first mother began to cry—but then she said: As soon as I get better, I'll find something;
the girl needs me strong. And that was how Mother thought up our work at the dump.

Bach consumes me. Mark always looks me straight in the eye to tell me to start the first note, my job; the first note has always been my job since Mother died. She didn't die then; she couldn't afford to yet; she still had to raise me. She died a few years later, when I was already teaching at the conservatory and was no longer cleaning apartments—because for a while I cleaned like she did. By then our trips to the dump had stopped. There were ladies who looked for women to clean their apartments at the other end of the city, and they wanted you to work by the hour, a few each day. You would arrive there and do everything: iron, wash dishes, clean bathrooms. Then you'd pick up the kids after school and take them to the park for a little while.

I cleaned apartments and I played the violin.

Mrs. Anna made sure to put down her violin case so that it rammed into my legs. I guess she does that to make me complain, but I'll never complain about not fitting into a taxi because of a violin, even if it's the Stainer. She does everything in her power to make my life impossible. I suppose she does it so I'll leave. She doesn't know that I can't leave now; I have to stay, because I have a job to do.

I made a mistake and threw the good violin into the trash. I don't know how it happened. I mean, I know how it happened—because, really, he was the one who made the mistake: Throw out the violin that's on the chair, he told me. I grabbed the violin that was on the chair and I threw it out. Now that I'm so slow to do anything, now that I drag behind as we walk to the taxi that will take us to the theater with the strange name—like everything in this city—I think of how quickly I grabbed that violin, and I went and threw it into the cart with all the trash. I was singing, since I was out of the house and he couldn't hear me. And I went back to the house singing, calm as could be. Now when I think of it, my hair
stands on end. Especially when I think about what Mr. Karl said.

He noticed a few hours later, when it was already time to go to sleep. Where is my Stainer, he said, because that was a violin that had a name and its name was Stainer, which was quite a mouthful. At the time I thought it was a very pretty name, but surprising for a violin. After a moment of shocked silence, I answered: Sir, you told me to throw it out. Then he was the one who was shocked. After looking at me incredulously, he let out: What are you saying, Maria? I told you to throw out the broken violin. He had a note of desperation in his voice, but I had no intention of letting myself be intimidated: No, sir, you told me to throw out the one on the chair, and that's the one I threw out. Then Mr. Karl began to say
O, mein Gott, O, mein Gott,
and he kept saying
mein Gott
, looking all over for the other violin until he found it beneath the piano. He lifted it up with both hands and said, this is the violin to be thrown out. Petrified, I looked at the violin that wasn't even a violin anymore because it was like inside out. Mr. Karl held it up in front of my face and told me: This is worthless; I left it out in the sun, and look. And I looked at it and it looked strange, like deformed, as if someone had sucked the lids from the inside. The truth is, if I hadn't been feeling such terror and regret, I would have burst into laughter at that ludicrous situation and that funny-looking violin.

Where is it? he said suddenly, meaning the good violin. He placed the destroyed instrument back where he had found it. In the trash, in the cart, I already told you, I said without blinking. Yes, but where does the cart go? he asked me. To the dump, I said, stupefied, and nothing more came out of my mouth. We both went out to the street and, when he looked at me questioningly, I told
him in a thin voice, the dump is very far away. He stopped for a moment and I had my head lowered, but I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck. Then I saw that he was hailing a taxi, and I went into the taxi dressed as a maid, with apron, cap, and everything, because he pushed me inside it. He got in himself and ordered: to the dump. The taxi driver, without saying a word, took us there. It was far, out in the middle of nowhere, and the trip was horrible, because neither of us spoke. But Mr. Karl's leg moved on its own every once in a while, and it made me jump every time. We arrived, and Mr. Karl told the taxi driver to wait while we got out and looked over that immense pile of rubbish and stink. They must have already emptied all the carts in the city because there wasn't a single one there. It was very late. Come on, said Mr. Karl, and he took me to the very edge of the garbage. You couldn't see much. I knew there were people who rummaged through the trash, but they did it during the day. Now you couldn't see anything. But Mr. Karl didn't let that stop him: Go on, get in there, he told me. Who? Me? I asked in alarm. Yes. Mr. Karl didn't want to hear any excuses, I could see that. I picked up my skirt and took a step. And then another and then another. And that was how I went straight into that disgusting dump, something I had certainly never done before, not here and not in Andalusia and never again since. Virgin of the Macarena, help me, I whispered. And I started to pick through all kinds of rubbish with my hands, and I got all dirty, and everything smelled really rotten, but I had to find that violin. I rummaged through everything I could for a good long while—up and down, there where the carts were emptied out, and it turned out that the violin wasn't there. I felt lost, it's not here, sir, I finally
said, rising out of the filth. I saw him backlit, dark. I couldn't make out the expression on his face. I only heard him say, Come back. I went back and I couldn't find him. Mr. Karl had gotten back to the taxi and I thought he'd forgotten about me. I didn't say anything, I let him leave and I thought I'd have to walk home, and I tripped and I fell facedown and split open my forehead. Then I saw that the taxi was still there and that the rear door was open, waiting for me. I leapt toward the car. Mr. Karl didn't even look at me. He was glued to the other window, with his hand furtively covering his nose the whole time, but his leg no longer moved of its own accord. The taxi driver gave me a look through the rear-view mirror—a look that made me think,
Maria, you must stink to high heaven.

Reaching the house after a trip in silence, I went to my room and washed up, cleaning the wound on my forehead as best I could. Then I packed my suitcase. What a way to lose a good job, I said to myself sadly. I'd only been working there for six months, but I'd realized that I had found one of the best houses to serve. I was happy there, and it seemed that Mr. Karl had been pleased with me. But all good things come to an end. With my coat on and my suitcase in one hand, I went to say goodbye to Mr. Karl. I found him sitting on the sofa, looking up, sighing over the lost violin. I said: Sir, I'm terribly sorry about what happened; forgive me. He looked at me in surprise and asked: Where could you possibly be going at this hour? I'm leaving, I said, confused; I figured after what happened . . . He got up and addressed the piano saying, don't start with that nonsense now; I was the one who told you to throw out the violin on the chair. And take care of your forehead; you've got a gash.

The harpsichordist needs help to move her instrument over a bit. Two cellists have gotten up to assist her, along with some other boy who came out of nowhere and looks like a Goliath. We always think that people who seem strong are—until, in the end, they prove themselves to be people. I thought my mother was strong until she showed me her weaknesses, that she needed to eat in order to live, like everyone else—and, what's more, that she needed someone to give her support. Someone who wasn't a little girl who was really a burden, who made her have to work more just to get by.