The Violin

New York Times

NEW YORK       SUNDAY     AUGUST 21, 2011

A violin valued at over 3 million dollars was turned in to the authorities this week. The instrument, the Davidov-Stradivarius, was stolen 16 years ago from the home of Erica Morini. The authorities have never had any leads.

1926

The music from her violin flittered from the stage like twinkling pink sunset light off a rippling pond. Tiny glossy notes followed each other from instrument to ear.

I hadn’t planned to go to the symphony that night. My date fell ill, and so I took Mother up on her offer to join her for the evening.

I had never heard Erica play before. I had never seen her before. Had never been mesmerized by her talent.

At the age of twenty, I found myself, for the first time, with silent tears flowing down my cheeks. I did not know I could be so moved by the sound created by a singular instrument. Mother smiled at me softly and squeezed my hand. She knew what it was to be moved by music, even if I did not.

When the symphony was over, all I could think was that it would be an honor to meet the beautiful musician who brought me to tears with her stunning and magical violin. I had no idea how that moment, that thought, would change my whole life.  

******

It was several weeks later when I saw her sitting in the corner of a coffee shop. Her violin case sat on the edge of the table, walling her off from the rest of the room. Her head was over a notebook, her coffee, no longer steaming, sat forgotten in its mug. A half-eaten piece of cake was discarded in one corner.

I ordered my tea, looking over my shoulder at her every few seconds.

She was stunning. Her dark hair, perfectly styled to the side, hid one half of her face. She never looked up from her notebook. Her attention was singularly focused.

After collecting my tea, I approached her table. I stood for a few silent seconds. Summoning my courage to speak.

She was first to break the silence. Her heavy Austrian accent enhancing her irritated tone. “Are you going to just stare at me all day or do you have something to say?” Her eyes never left the notebook, her pencil pausing only briefly above the page.

“You are Erica Morini,” I said.

“I am aware,” she responded.

Without being asked I quickly sat across from her. Her eyes met mine now. She sighed heavily and dropped her pencil.

“Please. Sit down,” she said with a sarcastic nod.

I took a deep breath, looked at my hands, and finally spoke.

“I heard you play the other night. I know… I KNOW that a lot of people listening probably feel this way, but I have never been moved by music the way I was by yours. Before I knew what was happening, I was openly weeping. I just.. I wanted to tell you. For some reason, it felt like it…. mattered.”

She looked me up and down then.

My blouse, peek-a-booing out from my heavy winter coat and my hat, pinned tightly into my taunt auburn bun, felt suddenly cumbersome. She met my eyes and held my gaze.

I held her stare as long as I could before looking down at my hands, fidgeting with my tea.

“I saw you there,” she said. My eyes flew back to her face.

“You did?” I almost whispered, glad now of the violin-case-wall guarding our words, the jail keeper of our conversation and protector from eavesdroppers.

“Yes. I did. It is not very common to see someone crying in an audience as uptight as that one. Most people are too stoic and concerned with what everyone around them thinks to actually listen to the music. But you, you were different.” She paused, watching me. “Who were you there with? Your mother? Lover? Friend?” She picked up her coffee then and regarded me from over the lip of the cup, her head tipping slightly as she watched.

“That was my mother,” I replied. Her use of the word “lover” tickled the back of my mind, like the earworm of a song you cannot stop singing.

As if she could read my mind, she asked, “Does the idea of a woman lover bother you?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I have never had the idea before.”

She smiled then. It started with one side of her mouth and then spread. It lit up her eyes and revealed the deepest of dimples.

“Hmmm….,” she almost hummed.

“I am nearly done here, but I must turn this in today. Would you like to meet me for dinner? My husband is out of town, and I am free this evening,” she asked.

It was my turn to smile. “I would be honored.”

1930

Erica and I sat between her husband and my date. The half-moon booth’s red upholstery gave us all a sun-warmed glow in the late summer evening. The candles flicked light into our pupils, and Erica whispered to me more than once that she could see the fire in my eyes.

Under the table, we held hands.

Her Stradivarius violin sat between her and her husband. He was meant to guard it from theft or loss, or so she told him, but I knew it was her way of separating them. It was the wall keeping our intimacy secret. Her husband did not seem to mind, and my date, Arthur, did not notice. They simply yelled over us to converse with one another.

The current subject: The stock market. Then the war. War was good for the stock market.

Erica was good for me.  

I stroked her hand under the table, letting go only briefly to run my fingers up her thigh. She turned to face me; her brilliant gift of deception momentarily ruffled when she met my eyes. I could hear her breath catching in her throat. “Darling,” her voice was suddenly powerful, catching us all off guard.

“Yes, love?” Her husband turned.

She, seemingly reluctant to let go of my gaze, turned to him.

“Cecelia and I are quite worn out this evening. We would like to go back to the apartment and skip going to the games with you. Would that be alright?” She smiled at him sweetly. “Besides, we don’t want to drag this around with us. It should be locked up.” She casually pointed to her instrument case.

His brow furrowed. “Are you sure? That’s not too boring for you, Cecelia?” he asked thoughtfully.

I swallowed down a giggle. “No Felice. Time spent with Erica is never boring, but I thank you for your sincere concern and thoughtfulness.”

*****

Erica sat in the chair in our hotel room wearing only a white sheer robe and heels. Her violin was on her shoulder. Her legs parted. Her eyes closed.

I knelt at her feet, watching her face contort with passion as she tried to play music while my tongue ran over her. The notes streaming from the Stradivarius guiding the rhythm of my motions. High notes held meant suckle. Low notes thumping communicated to my hands. The tempo dictated her climbing, climbing, climbing to climax. The screech released by that beautiful instrument at the end let me know she was satiated and spent. She played to our love-making as she had the first night I saw her, and it always made me weep.

1931

Arthur and I shared our first dance as man and wife on the beautiful ballroom floor of the Hotel Chelsea. Our dearest friends and family, members of the community and staff all watched as he spun me around the room to Erica’s brilliant playing. Her Stradivarius silenced the room. Every soul was in awe.

She stood on the stage in a beautiful pink gown and played a song that everyone in the room heard as romantic, but I knew better. It was the song she played when she was melancholy. For them, it was a love song. For us, it was a melody of grief.

1933

“Cease?” she whispered as she moved a strand of hair off my cheek.

I could barely open my eyes. Thirty hours of labor left me exhausted, and the adrenaline rush of the first few hours of motherhood had dissipated. Cracking open my eyes, I saw Erica standing over me. Still in her coat, she held flowers in one hand and her violin in the other. The bright afternoon light lit up her face.

“Did you meet him?” I managed to croak out.

“He is beautiful,” she said. Setting down the flowers and case, she picked him up and brought him over, sitting gently on the edge of my bed.

I watched her then, staring at my child with the most brilliant of smiles on her face.

“His name is Eric,” I whispered. “After the love of my life.” Tears welled up in my eyes.

She looked at me then, as I lay there, covered in sweat and tears and being more exhausted than I had ever been before.

“You have never been so beautiful to me as you are right now,” she whispered. “My beautiful CC and our beautiful boy.”

She laid Eric in the crook of my body, squeezed my hand and retrieved her violin.  She played for us as we drifted off to sleep.

1940

Eric was due home from school at any moment, so we quickly dressed, rushing to return to the living room. After pinning my hair, I reached for her face. Rubbing my lipstick from her cheek as she did the same for me.

“He is going to be over the moon that you’re here,” I said as we made our way down the hall. “He loves you so.”

“Hmmm,” she hummed, reminiscent of the day we met. “He is impossible not to love, Cease. I have never really been a fan of children, but he is different.”

Moments later Eric burst through the door. His energy radiating from every cell of his being. The nanny behind him taking his coat and bag before he could drop them.

Spotting Erica he rushed to her, throwing his arms around her. “Auntie Erica! You’re here!”

“I am, little one,” she responded as she held him. “And how was your day?”

“It was great! We built bridges in class and mine held the most weight!”

“Wow! Well aren’t you turning into quite the engineer?” I followed.

“Auntie Erica will you please play for me?” he asked as he pulled back to look her in the face. “I haven’t seen you in so long and no one in school believes that I know you.”

She threw her head back in laughter. Fame, like a cloak, always weighed her down in the world. Impossible to discard, she often laughed at it to lift its weight.

“Of course I will play for you, my darling,” she said.

We spent that afternoon as we had so many others before it, snuggled together on the couch listening to Erica play our favorites. A private performance for those she loved most.  

1966

Erica sat silently staring at her violin. Its case lay open on the kitchen table and the strings glowed under the bright chandelier.

Her dimples, now hidden behind deep smile lines, and the gray in her hair only made her more beautiful to me.

I watched her from the doorway, knowing nothing I could say would help her. Tonight would be her last night on the New York City stage. Her hands, failing now, had become too tired to play.

I could hear Felice and Arthur entertaining Eric in the billiard room. The clack of balls interrupting their conversation sporadically. The clinking of glasses being refilled.

I brushed my skirt and walked to the table.

I sat across from Erica and met her eyes. Tears brimmed at the bottom, but knowing her nature, they would never, ever fall.

I reached out and gently touched the instrument. There had been so many I had heard her play over the years, but the Stradivarius was special. It seemed to be ever present in our lives. Its sound perfect. Its aesthetic unmatched. My personal attachment to it grew each time I heard her play, whether we were alone, or in an auditorium bursting with socialites. The notes she created from that instrument belonged to us, the sound of our story.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

She met my eyes and smiled gently. “My sweetest CC, you have done it all already.”

Taking my hand, she ran her thumb up my wrist, gently swirling it around the bright blue veins. “These veins here always make me think of roads,” she whispered. “Like the place where souls meet.” She paused thoughtfully. “I always wondered what our journey would have been like if we had met in a different time and place.”

I watched her hand, its skin thin now like tissue paper, holding my own.

“I do too,” I whispered. “But I am glad for the gifts this path gave us. It may have been imperfect, but you were here with me, and that made it perfectly imperfect.”

1976

Erica and I sat next to each other in the cab on the way to Hunter College. Her eyes stared straight ahead. Her spine, rod straight, held her nervousness at bay. The Stradivarius case between her knees shined from its cleaning.

It had been ten years since she had played for anyone other than me or Eric’s family. Her nervousness was palpable.

“You are going to do fine, E,” I said squeezing her hand.

She half smiled, flicked a look in my direction and returned her stare forward.

There was no way I was going to be able to calm her. We knew, both of us, that this would be the last time she played for an audience, and the terror and sadness gripped us both. Death, and all its horrors, was coming for us, and the last of anything you love is both the tragedy and beauty of this one tiny little life.

1995

It had been only a week since my last visit. The decline in her health was rapid. Like a savage monster ravaging her shell from inside, she was suddenly sunken and gray.

Her beautiful gray hair framed her face like a halo. She lay on large clean pillows, a nurse by her side.

I approached the bed slowly, my walker rolling gently over the lush wine-colored carpet in her bedroom, and I sat in the chair that had been left for me.

Erica opened her eyes when I touched her hand and looked at me sideways. With her gravely aged voice and heavy Austrian accent she said, “I waited for you.”

I swallowed and looked at the nurse then.

“Please give us time alone. I will come get you if we need you,” I said.

He nodded and left the room, gently closing the door behind him.

“I am here now my love,” I whispered to her and moved carefully from my chair to the bed. I slowly lay next to her and stared at the side of her face.

“Are you going to just stare at me all day or do you have something to say?” she whispered.

“I am just going to stare at you all day,” I whispered.

*****    

New York Times Obituaries

NEW YORK       FRIDAY     NOVEMBER 2, 1995

Erica Morini, world renowned violinist, passed peacefully in her sleep on November 1, 1995. She was 91. Morini had a notable career in New York City’s music scene until the 1970s. Please see our full-page article on her life and the theft of her valuables in this Sunday’s New York Times.

1996

I decided to write the letter to Eric exactly one year after Erica’s death. It was becoming increasingly difficult to travel without assistance, and I knew the Stradivarius needed to be locked up before I could no longer walk.

I took it from Erica’s the last time I saw her. Valued in the millions, the theft was sensationalized in the media.

If I am honest, I am not sure she would have wanted me to have it. It did me no good. I could not play. But that instrument was the keeper of our secrets. It was the reason we met. It was present for every stage of our love and lives. It created the soundtrack of our journey. I could not stand the thought of it going up for auction.

2011

Dearest Eric,

Oh my loveliest boy. If you are reading this, then I have passed from this life to the next. I will not be foolish enough to ask you not to be sad. Death is horribly sad. I only hope that I have been a mother worthy of your sorrow.

Inside this envelope is a key to a safety deposit box. Inside that box is Erica’s Stradivarius and a letter you can give to authorities when you turn it over to them. I took it from her apartment days before she died.

My sweet boy. I loved your father. He was a good, kind and decent man, but he was not the love of my life. Erica was. I took her violin because she had played it through the greatest moments of our lives. I needed it with me when she could not be.

Now, with my death, it can be returned. I am sorry you must learn about us this way. I wish the world would have been different. But I know that if it had been, then I would not have been blessed enough to be your mother. My wish for you, son, is that you only know a life of joy and love.

I love you forever,

Mom