Melanie ducked through the doors of
the metro, careful to hold her violin case in front of her to avoid any bumps.
The oppressive cold of Montrรฉal
had abated somewhat now that it was March. On this comparatively balmy Tuesday,
Melanie found herself leaving the house in a long plaid skirt and a grey
cashmere sweater, her brown hair in two hasty braids. She settled into a seat and stared past her
fellow passengers into some middle space. The train snaked through the tunnel.
“Prochaine Station
Place-Saint-Henri” offered the smooth voice over the intercom. Despite it
being her second year in Montrรฉal,
Melanie still barely spoke French. She could get through customer service
interactions, usually order what she meant to, and navigated the metro more by
memory than any sense of understanding. Being a conservatory student gave her
more than enough to practice and memorize, and she couldn’t find it in herself
to do much else. Everyone was always talking about the language of music, but
it wasn’t a particularly useful one in this city.
“Prochaine Station Lionel-Groux” prompted
Melanie to refocus her gaze and grip her case tighter. She was always enamored
with the way the metro moved and the smooth connections between cars that
allowed her to get totally lost at the edge of what her eyes could make out. She
exited the train, switched lines, and rode the four subsequent stops to school.
She arrived at her first class, found her usual seat, and was immediately
accosted by Ryan, who was already mid-sentence before she sat down.
“-knew you wouldn’t. And you didn’t,
so I was right,” he finished, glancing at her expectantly from his seat next to
hers. Saying hello wasn’t Ryan’s way. This was his issue in music too – he
always started the piece too fast.
“Say that again? Also, good
morning.”
“Yeah, yeah good morning, you
totally stood us up last night. Sarah was really sad,” he offered, nearly all
in one breath. Sarah liked to joke he was wasting his lung capacity as a
pianist. She probably wasn’t that sad, though.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Should have
texted,” Melanie mumbled as she reached into her backpack for a notebook.
“Yeah, you should’ve, we barely
managed to find a third, we had to go with Sarah’s friend who didn’t know
anything about anything at all.” Melanie knew that Ryan wasn’t really upset,
but she still felt a twinge of guilt. As she paged open her notebook, she
pondered the previous night spent alone in her room studying. They’d invited
her out at lunch the day before, but she had those pieces to review. Never mind
that they only took her two passes through each and she was done before 10.
Ryan settled down, and the class
passed in a blur. Theory and Analysis 3 was exactly as bland as the name would
suggest. A compositional form being common to the 18th century
didn’t make it interesting, but Melanie was still required to know its name and
be able to recognize and replicate it in a vacuum. She had spent a lot of hours
studying the midterm and would spend many more cooped up in the library before
the final. If that was what it took to get a degree in classical violin, so be
it.
After class, she found a practice
room to warm up in before her lesson. She tuned, played through a few scales,
and reviewed the piece she’d been assigned. Her limbs worked through the
motions carefully, precisely, each finger right where it needed to be, each
note perfectly translated from page to air. Her movements were smooth, and her
face was placid.
At her lesson, her instructor didn’t
have any notes.
“Well done,” he said. “That’s a
difficult piece.” He was in his 40s or so and had a tight beard that was
gradually becoming less blond. Melanie knew that meant the praise he gave.
“Thank you,” she replied. She barely
remembered how what she just played had gone, but it was up to standards. That’s
what mattered. That’s what had always mattered to everyone else.
“I’ll send you something for next
time,” her instructor said. “I want to find something with pizzicato. It’s been
a while and you need to stay sharp.” Melanie didn’t mind, but what she was
staying sharp for was hard to say. Orchestra wasn’t hard, and her lessons were
technical but uncomplicated.
With that, her lesson ended and she
began her journey home. On longer days she would wander stunned into the metro station
after three classes, private lesson, and orchestra practice. She would miss her
stop and ride until the line ended, swaying.
She lived in a tiny apartment on
Sherbrook above a crepe shop. There were always four or so guys behind the
counter, and only two or three customers, so she was about 90% sure it was a
front. It made her apartment smell nice, though. She unlocked the door, set her
violin on the table, and lay down on the couch. She had a piece to memorize for
orchestra tomorrow, and the sheet music taunted her from its stand in front of
the window. Its rigid staves and flowing clef that was always the same stared
at her as she drifted off to sleep.
The next day was Saturday, but
Melanie, along with Sarah and Ryan, had been asked to help audition some
prospective students. Melanie showed up on time in her concert blacks, hair
carefully pinned back. Ryan waved at her from the audience, and as she walked
over, Sarah smiled. They exchanged hellos, and Melanie put her things down and
went to check in with the professor running the auditions. Upon her return to
her seat, Sarah and Ryan were engrossed in a crossword on Sarah’s laptop.
“Melanie! Rare bird: O blank blank I
blank Y,” Sarah prompted. Sarah was a lot like a bird, with wiry limbs and a
high-pitched voice. Melanie thought for a moment.
“No clue, sorry,” she resigned. “I’m
not very good at those.”
Over the course of the afternoon, a
string of students took the stage. Sarah or Ryan always had something to say.
“Wow she’s nervous. Can barely sit
still,” offered Ryan about a blond pianist who somehow still had braces.
“You would think he’s never heard a
metronome in his life,” said Sarah, referring to a scruffy cellist.
Melanie kept quiet, keeping her
marks to herself. A missed note here, a lack of finesse there, but she didn’t
get personal the same way as her classmates. Sometimes it felt like she was the
only one who remembered being a freshman, even though she was at the top of her
class. As they were leaving the concert hall, Sarah invited her to trivia that
night. She said yes and promised that this time she really would make it.
She spent the remainder of her day
trying to focus elsewhere. She spent a few hours watching TV, and another whole
hour just sitting in the crepe shop downstairs. Knowing she would be early but
wanting to leave the house, she walked out the door and down the busy avenue to
the metro. It was just three stops to the bar. It wasn’t a large venue, only
six booths in a ring around a handful of smaller tables. It had a dusky air to
it, and not many college students went, but Sarah was especially crazy about
trivia. She had a schedule of every bar with a trivia night within half an hour
of her apartment and made her rounds on a weekly basis.
Tonight was quiet so far. Three men
sat in the far corner. A few more had been smoking outside. And there was one
man, sitting alone at a table, with an open case at his feet and a violin in
his hands. Melanie walked to the bar, ordered her dinner, and sat two tables
over from him.
The man was stocky, older, perhaps 60,
and had a very white beard and moustache. The beard was short, rounded, and
neither well-trimmed nor unkempt. He had a raggedy baseball cap, a half-smile,
a flannel, and a half-drunk beer. As Melanie watched, he began to play. She
didn’t recognize the piece, something with a fast, jumping, melodic tempo. He
played with beautiful economy of motion, each finger slowly moving into place,
each draw of the bow as smooth as a raindrop running down a window. The tune
furled and unfurled around him at a pace that seemed far beyond his body.
Melanie couldn’t say how long he played for, but when he finished, she realized
she was staring.
“What’s your name, miss?”
“Melanie”
“That’s a lovely name.”
He then began a slow tune which, if
she had been thinking of such things, Melanie would have recognized as being in
3/4. The tune had a melancholy to it but swelled to new heights after the
resolution of each phrase. Melanie found herself moving with the music, head
swaying and a foot slowly tapping. When he finished with a drawn-out note, she
found her eyes were wet.
“That was beautiful.” She was
smiling. He nodded.
“That one’s called Melanie’s Waltz. I
learned it once upon a time in Texas.
“That’s really very sweet,” she
stammered out. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Tom,” he said, and pulled at
his beard a bit. “I’m this pub’s self-appointed fiddler. I’m here playing most
days, and when they get someone else in, I’m here to listen. What brought you
in the door?”
“I was supposed to meet some friends
from conservatory for trivia,” she said. At the mention of conservatory, his
eyebrows raised. “I’m a classical violinist,” she continued. Each sentence felt
like work to her, her brain still swirling with the beauty of his song.
“Well, I’m sure you could tell me
ten ways what I just played was wrong then,” he chuckled.
“No! Not at all.” As Melanie spoke,
her phone began to ring.
“Sorry, let me get this. Hello? …
Yeah, I’m here. Where’re you? ... Oh! Okay I’ll be there soon, save me a seat…
Yeah, bye.” She glanced up at Tom, a little stunned.
“Everything alright?”
“Yeah, turns out I’m in the wrong
place. My friends. I’ve got to go but, uh, would you be willing to give me that
first song? Do you have a chart?”
“No charts. I could teach you
though. Come back sometime, any time, with your instrument.” He had put his
fiddle back in the case and took a deep sip of his beer.
“I will. I definitely will,” she
said, putting on her coat. “Goodbye Tom!”
“Goodbye, Melanie. It was lovely to
meet you.” He waved as she walked out the door.
Melanie’s head wasn’t really on
trivia that night, and it wasn’t really focused on her classes the next
morning. The first tune he had played was swirling in her head, and she was
constantly trying to remember pieces of it. It was stuck in a way nothing from
her lessons had ever been. In orchestra, she made a rare error, mixing some of
the song into her solo. Her conductor reprimanded her afterwards for her lack
of practice.
Over the next few weeks, Melanie
went back to the bar whenever she could. Tom was always waiting, with a pint of
beer and a new tune or two to teach her. She mentioned it to Sarah once, who
told her it was a waste of her time. It certainly wasn’t easy for her. She
could play all the notes, but Tom stubbornly refused to use charts.
“You don’t feel the music that way,”
he would say. “A chart is a way to detach yourself from it.” She had a
suspicion that he was making some of the tunes up on spot, but they were still
just as beautiful. On the last day she’d see him, he encouraged her to do the
same.
“But how?” she asked.
“Simple, just play what you feel.
Surely you’ve got a note or two in that brain of yours.” He looked at her
expectantly. She felt frozen. Of course she had notes, it was her whole
profession to have notes, but none of them felt important enough.
“Just put your bow on your strings,”
he said. “Your hand’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t think it will.” She looked
down. “You can just come up with something any time you like, but I just don’t
work like that.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked
at her and took another sip of his beer.
“I can’t do it!” she said. She put
her violin back in its case and closed it.
“Alright, I’ll see you next time
then,” he offered.
“Sure, next time.” She walked out
the door.
It would be a week before Melanie
would go back. It was finals week, she told herself, and she needed to stay
focused. When she finally did return, Tom wasn’t there. The bartender’s face
fell as she walked in the door.
“Hey Melanie,” she said.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Tom’s dead. He got hit by a car on
Tuesday and died in the hospital. I’m really, really sorry.”
Melanie couldn’t answer. She turned
and ran out the door, ran into the cold, ran down the street past every
bar-goer and their cigarette, past the trash and the busses, and down the
stairs onto the metro. She fumbled swiping her card, taking three tries to
finally get the turnstile doors to open. As she walked down the second stairs,
a train was just pulling in with a soft hiss. She boarded and sat.
The train picked up speed again,
rocking gently. There wasn’t anyone near her, but she wouldn’t have noticed.
Her eyes blurred as she pulled her fiddle from its case. As each fresh batch of
tears worked their way down her face, she began to play. Standing in the middle
of the empty car, she played like she never had before. She was scared when she
started. She was scared in a way she had never been scared to play before. She
had a stake in it. She cared about the music more than she possibly could’ve
before. She played what Tom had played that first night, and she played
something else entirely. Her music was blisteringly paced, carefully metered,
and echoed down the long train as it stretched into the tunnels. Melanie played
to the end of the line.
