The ticking of the old clock filled the emptiness of the old living room, the chimes called out in the silence. The hours where all I can hear throughout the old house is the ever-constant ticking of the clock and the drumming of rain on the roof are the hours in which I am dead. The mundane nature of the hours that is the day make me feel as though I were living in purgatory; trapped between joyous moments when people so much as glance at me, and bleak hours when the house is empty. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration. I am not dead, nor in purgatory, rather I am simply not alive. This may make very little sense to you now, but if you have some time, I may as well explain this…I have ample time anyways.
I was born, or rather ‘made’ in Germany in 1715. I was made of fine spruce, fitted with the loveliest ebony pegs, and varnished in such a way that the grain of the wood appeared flawless. I was –and still am- a fine violin. I remember sitting in the front display of the Luthier’s shop-his pride and joy. One fall day in 1725, a man walked in and picked me up. It was impossible not to respond to his skill, his quiet yet powerful emotion with which he played. For the first time in ten years, I felt alive. He brought me to his house where he played me for years; I aged along with him, watched as his children grew, while one of them died from a terrible illness. I remember that time, when his only son, a boy of three years, died as we played a reverie for him. I remember the ache I could feel in the man’s fingers, his arm heavy from grief. I remember how the last note hung heavy in the air, and the absolute silence that followed as the boy’s chest laid still. After the boy’s death, the man’s grief engulfed the house like flames and after the violent burn, it was as though everything became still and like a fairytale, a spell had been cast. The house lay still, dormant for three years. I wasn’t touched in those years; instead I lay deep in a closet, deprived from the joy that came from the caress of the man’s fingers.
At the end of the three years, I was finally pulled from the closet. I was surprised to see the man’s face had become creased with lines. At first he played me gingerly, afraid to apply any pressure, as though I were as fragile as china and would break as soon as he did. We became one again; the volume grew as his grief lessened, the tone improved as I became used to his touch again. Years passed, and we healed together; the dark period passed with each note. Our shared emptiness became fullness once again. However, It soon became apparent that he was frail. It was a sixth sense that came with being played by the same person for so long. I could feel the labor in his joints as he moved through a difficult passage. I could feel the crack of his fingers as the came in contact with the fingerboard. I could feel his endurance lessen, and was never surprised when he stopped playing suddenly and retired to his bed. While I became stronger with age, the man withered into nothing. One day a doctor came to the house. I remember watching him as he informed the man’s daughter who sat dutifully by her father’s side, that he didn’t have much time left. He would be dead by night. She turned pale, excused herself for a few minutes. I was disgusted with the doctor. Wasn’t it his job to save people? Yet he just stated the man’s death like a fact recited from a textbook. The man, who had now grown old and pale from the illness inside of him, smiled up at the doctor.
“Bring me that violin over there, will you?” he rasped. The doctor began to object, but the man just shook his head.
“This is the one pleasure I have left” he whispered, and with that the doctor brought me over to the man, then left.
“You’ll have to play for me now, old friend.” And I did. His apparent labor as he pressed against me sunk deep into my frame, and once again we shared our grief. He played the notes for me, but I played the song for him. The last note hung in the air, just as it had when his son died, all those years ago. I realized, too late, that it was the same reverie, and he was saying goodbye to me again. This time I knew I wouldn’t be shut away in a closet for three years. This time, I wouldn’t see him again.
And I was right. Now, two hundred and seventy years later, I sit in the same spot I did when the man lived here, only now I am in a glass display case. The house has been preserved, and looks exactly as it did nearly three centuries ago. After the man died, his only daughter and her family lived here. The daughter would play me, as would her children, but it was never the same. I felt utterly empty every time they would play me, and I would never respond the same way I did to them as I did to the man’s touch. I have been played by every person that has lived in this house, and yet, I haven’t kindled anything close to the relationship I had with the man. The last of his great, great, great grandchildren lived here until her death nearly three years ago. I am told, by the piano, that after she died, the house became a heritage home. Apparently, the man who played me for years was a politician of some kind, rather famous I’m told. To me, he was just the man that played me, made me a part of him. Now all of the people that walk through this house comment on what a lovely violin I am. What excellent condition I’m in. What a lively sound I must have, even though not one of them has heard me. The truth is, a violin’s sound is only as alive the person who truly played it. I haven’t been alive for two hundred and seventy years