Music in the City

A Story by AnneMarie Buhl

Copyright 2010, AnneMarie Buhl

All rights reserved. Published by Doomed Muse Press.

This story is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to doomedmuse.press@gmail.com.

Cover designed by Greg Jensen with art by William Michael Harnett (“The Old Violin”, 1886) via artrenewal.org

Electronic edition, 2010

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Music in the City

by AnneMarie Buhl

Part One

Habin came home alone and as I folded my music stand, I knew tonight I’d probably sleep with him. He stood at the invisible threshold of our living room, telling a wild tale about nightclubs and false impressions. His scent crept through the room and I barely heard a word.

“... So here I am, trapped in Saturn’s witching hour, sans the fairer sex.” Habin flopped his hand to his forehead, palm up, as his lanky form draped the couch. “Colin, fetch me a stapler so I might affix my woe.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” Colin’s heels snapped salute and then carried him away down the hall. He did not return.

We sat listening to our breathing and the sounds of a city closed out by glass and red brick. Habin held his dramatic pose, frozen like a painting in the glow filtering in from the kitchen. After some minutes or perhaps only seconds, he let gravity take his hand and slid into a more natural position on the couch. To get my eyes off him I focused on the dark pile of his coat curled where he’d dropped it just inside the door.

“So,” he said, “Lana.” I gave in and looking at him bit my lip against all the inane things I might say. I should have bit harder.

“It’s nearly 2 am.”

“Your point?” Sardonic brows raised.

“The witching hour is eleven-thirty to twelve-thirty. It is a lot later, now.” I shrugged, looking away again.

“Ah. Irrelevant.”

Silence again, mixed with breathing. I chanced a glance, which Habin read as invitation. He shifted off the couch and to the floor. He moved over the carpet sleek, predatory. I lifted my violin case up to my lap, to protect it or myself, I’m not sure. Maybe both. He leaned against the plush chair I’d tucked myself into, looking up at me with intimate dark eyes.

“Play something, Lana. Play something for me.”

“Colin’s probably sleeping now,” I stated, envious of his escape. He’d left me with to the proverbial lion with nothing but a thin will and 100-year-old rosewood and horsehair to defend myself.

“Fuck Colin.” His hand slipped over the foot I’d left dangling. I hadn’t realized how cold I was until he touched me, his fingers long and smothering. I took out my violin, my bow. My shield, my sword. And I played.

* * *

I was 14 the first time I heard a violin and I decided then that it was the very sound of human suffering. As it was my mother’s memorial service, this thinking is likely influenced by the event, but nonetheless, I fell in love with the torment of those notes. There is suffering that no word can communicate.

Death is like this.

Anguish fills the body until it overflows into a parody of other emotions. Disbelief, anger, even a kind of emptiness that some call despondency. Nothing in life can prepare for the reality of never being able to say hello your mother again, and nothing human can express that feeling. The violin aspires with ululations pitched perfectly for pain. I heard its cry that day and felt movement within me, like a child shifting in the womb.

Violins are why I believe in souls.

Playing a violin is a pain in the neck and the ear at first, literally. After time and long practice the shoulders become accustomed, the wrist adapts, the fingers toughen, and real notes form from the bow strokes. Like a ballerina going up on point, I’m now inured to the discomforts; they’ve become natural and necessary. Now the notes work themselves out of my body through the instrument. Light and shadow mix in the tones that horse-hair coaxes gut. A violin’s song is full, round, pregnant. The music is sweet, unforced. The violin speaks and the stirring within wakes and listens. It cannot help but respond. Music is. Its being provides a million choices and none at all. It will make you think you’re free, and then it ends.

* * *

Habin’s immune to all this. To him, violins are dead things, constructed to be used, enjoyed, and put away. He commanded me to play for him but lost interest by the first rest.

I lifted my bow for one beat, two, then laid it back, stroking gently, allowing the music to build and shiver outward like a pulse under skin. I wasn’t playing for him, I doubt he’d even know the song or understand the irony if he did. Variations on a Theme by Prince Louis Ferdinand. It was written for two instruments, piano and violin.

Having only one, I improvised, letting the music carry me away from the burning hand moving up my leg, stroking ankle, then calf. Removed from my body, my mind indulged in irrational thoughts, like perhaps if I played long enough, Habin would lose interest and fall asleep. Or tell me he loves me, or that I’m especially beautiful: any number of entirely untrue and out of character statements.

He cut into the music, digging his fingers into the sensitive flesh behind my knee.

“Lana.”

I opened my eyes, letting the bow still, the music quiver and die. He winked then, managing to make it look sexy instead of stupid. “Come to bed.”

He took the violin from my submissive hands and set it on the floor, next to its case. I rose and reached down for it, but he was faster and caught my arm. “Leave it, it’s safe enough.”

He bent and kissed my shoulder just above where my tee shirt ended. At the edge of the hallway, I hesitated, but didn’t turn back. He peeled off his shirt, freed his pale hair from its ponytail, and pushed me into his bed. The sheets smelled of him, intoxicating to the point of nausea. As I lay there, letting him pull off my jeans, I imagined my violin on the carpet, exposed. It rested there, sweetly docile, waiting for someone to lift it, use it, and put it in its place.