Violin Lessons

Lena was raised on violin lessons and minimal parental supervision.

We called her Diva because we never learned her name until the day she was moving out. For three years, she lived above us and we never had any contact with her, other than to hear her perfectly executing an etude on her violin in superb fashion. Or singing along in angelic soprano to an opera recording. Sometimes, it would feel as though the heavens above had opened up to invite us upward in the purest transcendence.

May we introduce? Today, we are Alex, though some days we are Alexandria, depending on our mood and what Diva, we mean Lena, is doing upstairs on any given day. Last Saturday evening while she performed a full hour-long concerto flawlessly — for us and only us, we are quite sure — we were so exquisitely elevated to an ethereal plane that Alexandria dressed for the occasion. A midnight blue velveteen gown, gold earrings and bangles.

An updo was in order and black eyeliner, a splash of glitter across our cheeks. We sat in reverent silence and attention as Diva Miss Lena performed, standing on her living room floor, a mere five feet above our head. Our ears filled up with each elegant bow stroke and flourish of Meditation. Jules Massenet. We were transported to someplace other.

That’s what Lena did for us. Without knowing. Because how could she know? She rarely emerged from her second-floor chamber. We knew her by sound only. Well, occasionally we could hear her watching a rerun of “Friends” on what felt to be a particularly lonely evening for her. And incongruous to her otherworldly incarnation.

She was a lonely heart.

Except for this one time when a handsome young man visited her for two weeks to disrupt our reverie. We could hear them laughing together and sometimes hear them making love up there. They would leave together in the morning for a late breakfast out, hand in hand. Then as quickly as he appeared, he vanished. As if a mere apparition in all our lives. Followed by weeks of silence.

Then finally. A melancholic Liebesleid on violin would awaken the vacant air. Eventually she would regain energy enough to serenade with Boccherini’s Minuet. A few days later, her soprano would resurface in Clair de lune, and, hallelujah, we had her, we had her all to ourselves again.

One afternoon we passed her on the sidewalk a few blocks up from the apartment building and we knew it was her. She couldn’t know us, well, maybe as Alex, because we encountered her by chance once returning from the garbage cans down by the side yard as we were carrying our recycling down in torn jeans and a dirty t-shirt.

We caught a good glimpse of her that day, but she didn’t look our way at all. Stared at the ground, steady on the trajectory of her mono-focused task. So painfully shy, we thought. Couldn’t we possibly meet for real one day? Share a cup of tea? It was not to be, however. Diva Lena was in a singular orbit.

Anyway, as we were saying, we passed her on our return from the market one afternoon. She came walking towards us on her way into town, big Jackie O sunglasses covering her petite face, a Grace Kelly scarf about her head and thrown back across her slender throat.

Her hair held tautly captive inside. Expensive knee-high black boots, a huge satchel slung across her tiny shoulder — we notice these details, ha — hands tucked safely into a suede riding jacket as she walked briskly up the sidewalk with purpose, perhaps heading for the train into the city to school or to a job. A violin lesson, perhaps.

We stared as she walked towards us, hoping to make contact but it was impossible to know where her eyes were behind those darkened Nina Ricci’s. It was like passing a movie star, to us at least, and in deference and admiration we nodded but were in receipt of nothing, not even a tiny parting of lips or any other subtle indication of recognition. No smile was cast across her face in acknowledgement. A blank canvas. Above us. Beyond us.

We paused, groceries in arms, turning to watch her walk farther away from us on that sidewalk, imagining all sorts of possible destinations for our Diva. Much later in the evening, we would hear her boots on the stairs, ascending to the second floor. The opening then closing of her door, her confident stride across the hardwoods above as we would wonder about all the places she’d been.

We knew we would never know. Never learn the secrets of her soul. Her aspirations and valiant efforts, her joyful coups, her heartbreaks, her hopes, her destiny.

The canvas finally got a few splashes of color on her last day as a tenant in our apartment building.

We watched from the window one late Friday afternoon as an older couple, swarthy and reeking of riches, stood on the stoop leading to the main entrance and rang the bell. We heard its sounding above our heads and looked up at the ceiling in expectation, listened as Diva Lena crossed the room, felt the creak of her opening door and hurried movement down the stairway to answer the call.

Our eyes followed the sound and, inching closer to the window to pull back the curtain just enough to peek through, we watched as she hugged the elder couple and invited them in. We heard their exited voices and footfalls on the stairs in concert. The door opening and closing again. The active interactions of unknown strangers. With our Diva.

Who are they, we wondered? Her benefactors? Her mentors? Big wigs from the opera, the symphony? We tried to follow the conversation upstairs to glean some meaning and explanation, alas, to no avail. We watched as the threesome left the building together and got into a car, Diva Lena in the backseat like a starlet being chauffeured off to her next engagement.

The next morning, we saw our chance. While much up and down and up and down the stairs erupted around us, we emerged onto our front stoop to see what all the commotion was about.

“Oh, hello,” we waved to the older couple, swarthy and beautiful now in full bloom of daylight’s unobstructed view, ambling slowly up the sidewalk from their parked car. The woman smiled at us and waved like we were all old friends. The couple slowed their pace to stop just in front of our stoop.

“Hello!” the dapper gentleman said, “You must be one of Lena’s neighbors?”

“Yes, we — er, I am,” we replied. “Alex. Pleased to meet you,” we said, deciding we were Alex because we were wearing old sweatpants and a flannel shirt and just shy of a shower.

Brushing away a rogue feather tickling at our chin from the boa we had adorned ourselves with the night before to watch Funny Girl for the hundredth time, we became aware from a smudge of lipstick that landed on our hand, that a trace of Satin Glam Black Cherry was still staining our lips. We wiped it off our hand onto our sweatpants in a nonchalant gesture.

Reaching out a clean hand to the friendly new visitor, we inquired, “And you are, sir?”

“Manfred. Pleased to make your acquaintance. My wife, Abha,” he said, nodding to the glowing beauty to his right as he gently released his hand from ours. “We are Lena’s parents.”

“Oh! Wow! Lena!” we said with a smile.

How is it that in three years we had never laid eyes on these two lovely people before? Diva’s — Lena now — Lena’s parents! They had never visited her once. Did they live in some far away, exotic palace on a hill or did they simply not need to see their child? An independent girl with a mind of her own and a life to explore without any parental guidance? Reassurance? Love?

“We are helping her pack her things, getting her to the airport today. She is moving to South Africa on a fellowship,” Manfred said, a hint of wistful hope in his voice.

“Music?” we said, though we would have imagined Italy for our Diva. Europe, at the very least.

“No, no. Lena is a research scientist,” Manfred said as a matter of fact, as though he thought we must know that of her and had simply misplaced it.

“Oh. We, I didn’t know, we . . .”

Hell, we let go of trying to control the whole pronoun thing anymore then. Let them sort it out.

“We assumed because she has such a beautiful singing voice and her violin playing . . .” we began to say.

Lena’s mother Abha laughed.

“Yes, yes she is very talented, but that is just a hobby,” Abha said.

A hobby. How can it be just a hobby? we wondered.

“Lena is a very serious and disciplined person. She has had violin lessons since she was a child, of course, but she has stronger interests in the world around her. She was born old!” Abha laughed again. “An ancient soul, that one. We barely even raised her. She raised herself it seems,” Abha explained, as Manfred nodded in agreement.

“Yes. Yes, of course,” we said.

It was a bit of a letdown. Not just that the image of who Diva Lena was, is, so shattered us, but the fact that now that she was leaving, we were finally learning something about her. Now it was too late.

Was it all for the best that we hadn’t known anything all these years? Hadn’t needed to know the truth of her story?

Lena emerged from the building and strolled over to her parents, not even noticing us on the stoop. But something was different. Her face, free of sunglasses, was so fresh and sunlit, her eyes, big and brown and bright were wide open, her black hair loose around her shoulders.

For the very first time, we could honestly witness her personage. She wore a flowing spring dress and a floppy sun hat with a pink ribbon adorning its brim. She handed a small red suitcase to her father. Manfred popped the trunk of the car parked a few feet from us at the curb, depositing what appeared to be the last of Diva Lena’s belongings and returned to the sidewalk to face us and say goodbye, nice meeting.

We looked at Lena.

She looked at us. Finally.

We nodded to her and smiled. Lena. Diva. Our special girl. She blinked a few times. Then released the most beautiful smile at us. The first and the last. A mystery solved, however disappointing, and we made a connection though nothing more beyond this day could hold any promise.

We had only this moment. Then it was gone. We watched, entranced in a faint, ghostly nostalgia, as the Diva Lena family waved to us and got in their car. We watched from the stoop as they drove away, waving to them until they were out of sight.

We lingered a bit then, perplexed. Wondering about who we all are, really.

The internal space we occupy inside these bodies, the who of what we are. The details we are willing to expose, to share. Reveal. Does anyone ever really know another person, what goes on inside the room upstairs? Between the walls and behind the doors and the lights that dim into the blackness of night?

Is it the intangible, undefinable parts, the secrets untold that make it all interesting? Being human, that is. All the ways to express what that even means. The choices we must make within a fleeting embodiment that we have on lease.

An airplane passes overhead and our eyes scan the jet stream for answers. We catch sight of the crow on the wire above, gathering to take inventory of everything below. We feel the breeze dance across a day already warm on this late morning. Cars pass in front of our building, people coming and going. World turning, tides turning.

We turn. Go inside and close the door.