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 Montréal 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 Montréal, 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.
