A Novella in installments, tracing the intermingling autobiographies of a boy and a violin, spanning over a century. The previous episode is right here. To find any episode, look here.

(The protagonist posing with some old friends: a Japanese shakuhachi, A Zimbabwean mbira, and a good ol’ American jaw harp.)

(13) – Widowed in the Cupboard, NJ, 1959

My years with Iain, the honorable Mr. Iain Markey, nearly sixty of them to be all factual and pedantic, were literally all that a violin girl could ask for. Devoted as he was to me, to us, he became a fine young violinist by his early 20’s, concentrating mostly upon classical stuff. Mozart, Vivaldi, Saint-Saens. He even tried a little Paganini at one stretch — that was a wild time before the Great Depression. He even took me travelling once. Dublin. That was the time he landed a substitute gig as a second with an orchestra invited to Europe to demonstrate that American musicians could actually play. But Iain — his probing fingers still scorch my ebony neck with desire — also had a singular side, musically speaking. He had a love for Tchaikovsky’s string quartets though he never quite mastered them. And the “angularity” of Bartok’s sense of melody, as he would call it. Beyond this there were his peculiar flirtations with folk music. Especially of Ireland and his forbears’ native Scotland. He knew obscure old tunes from the Shetlands. And even dabbled with me into Appalachia. Those mournful drawling long tones, bending just slightly demonic into the quartertones, Iain forcibly massaging into my cords! It was enough to bring me to a conclusion! And he even composed a waltz or two in the Celtic style. That was how we met Josephine.

Josephine, born in Cornwall, came to the U.S. to study jurisprudence and ended up never departing, propelled by a tenacious interest in the woman’s suffrage struggles earlier in the century. She wasn’t exactly my rival for Iain’s attentions — I mean, seriously, she was human, and I a musical elemental. Still, there was a mood of competition there. As it happened she visited a quaint pub in Saratoga Springs the same evening Iain chose to bring me to an open session night, a fine Saturday in May. A raucous evening it was, as befitting the jigs and reels. But as the festivities wound down and the flowing Guiness morphed into politer teas and coffees, and both the audience and the players’ ranks thinned, it came intimately around to the usual quieter and more contemplative closing tunes, the meandering aires and poignant ballads. It was here that Iain evoked one of his romantic waltzes from my body, and in the ensuing swoon I heard the young lady speak up with guileless admiration: “oh that one was absolutely fetching… a traditional tune? Can you remind me its name?” And no sooner had Iain let loose that it was his own composition, fair Josephine was, sure as sunlight, duly smitten. Myself, a third wheel in this enamorous dawn.

But let it not be omitted that this was a two-way street, these burgeoning affections. For Iain was keenly impressed with her direct sensitivity and political passions, not to mention her lively conversation, and it was not even two years hence they were wed and searching about for an abode. And it was south they tended, finding first this apartment and then that, responding to suitable employment opportunities for the both of them. Till at last, just before the war, they purchased a charming cottage with a bit of land on a quiet street in a sleepy, as yet sparsely populated, northern New Jersey town. And they rapidly made this place their own, filling it with art and hobbies and investigations of all sorts, dinner parties, and love and Iain’s music. Jo-jo, he came to call her — that was Iain’s nickname for Josephine. While propriety forbids me to tell you her pet name for him during their numerous dalliances.

They had a fulfilling life together, and me as well. Sadly, Bow got replaced as various experts cited the need for a higher quality bow to facilitate Iain’s playing. New Bow, though interesting, was far less cultured than old Bow, and so I found myself assuming the seniority position. Even our case had to be updated to withstand the travelling. But I learned much about the world, the world of humans, and of music, and also of the secret elemental world, during the 20th century’s furious unfolding. But more about this other world later…

Iain finally passed last year, leaving behind two widows. Though Iain had a perceptive openness for things immaterial, this was not the nature of Jo-jo, who carried a flaming core of practicality about her all the time. I liked her presence well enough, but never felt that she could sense me the way Iain sometimes seemed to. Thankfully, after her initial grieving period, Jo-jo decided to keep me around the cottage. She had a sentimental strain in her and found it unpalatable to discard me, something so important to her late husband, and so reminiscent of him. So, I was given a prominent “knick-knack” location in the kitchen passageway. In a glass-doored wooden cabinet which Iain himself had built there years before. So I could observe the comings and goings in the house. But such comings and goings dwindled indeed with time. Jo-jo lived alone. And seemed to prefer visiting others to hosting herself. She, alas, could not play music much. So I watched. And watched. And an interminable ennui began to set in. For I had lost, in many ways, the love of my life. It is a sad reality that many violins, if well made, outlive their musician owners. And I had not become philosophical enough at this point to begin wondering about the possibility of seeking a new romance. Weeks ate weeks and seasons ate seasons. And years began devouring old years.

It began to become difficult for me to remember what it felt like. To vibrate harmony. To know my entire body voicing song.

_______RS

NOTE: The next episode, if it exists yet, is right here. To find any episode, look here.

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