The Wizard

The sickening crack of hundred-year-old ribs made Jo wince. She craned her neck to see over the broad shoulders of the man hunched over the broken fame. The table was illumined by a harsh light, the beam occasionally adjusted by the expert hands to show the work to best advantage. Jo gasped as she caught a glimpse of carnage on the table; she had never seen the inside of a violin before. The luthier heard the quick intake of breath in the otherwise quiet studio, and chuckled.

“This is the worst part,” he said, gesturing to the exposed hollow belly of the instrument, “but it sounds worse than it is.” He held up the spruce-wood top to the light, which poured through the violin’s F-holes. “The cracking sound you heard, doesn’t come from the wood itself—” Jo inched closer and peered closely at the underside of the wood, where the luthier’s finger scratched at the hardened, yellowed bit flaking off the wood’s perimeter. “It’s just the old glue loosing its grip.”

He set the wooden top gently down on his work board and took up the sound box, turning it round in his rough hands so as to examine every inch with practiced eyes. Jo thought that, in the dimly-lit and slightly claustrophobic space of the studio, the luthier looked rather like his instruments—thin and hollow, but warm and, as Jo knew from experience, kindly.

This was the second time Jo had ever been inside her uncle’s workshop; the first time, her mother had taken Jo to set her up with a beginner’s violin outfit. Jo had been enamoured with the lovely instruments lining the walls, and her mother and uncle had laughed to see her wide-eyed amazement. Her uncle had leaned down to point out some of the more impressive models, and Jo had asked which instrument her mother played—“I want the same one!” The adults had chuckled at that and told that, in order to get an instrument like mum’s, she would have to practice a lot.

She walked out of the shop with a cheap, muted-sounding violin, which she knew even then paled in comparison to her mother’s superior professional instrument, but she had been cheered by her uncle’s promise that she could come back to visit him in his studio. “My little apprentice,” he had said, ruffling her hair—and now here she was, her first lesson.

“Look,” he said, pointing to something that Jo would have had to strain her eyes to see even in broad daylight, let alone in the lamplit studio. The offensive mark was a small crack near the the base of the fingerboard. Having identified the defect, the luthier further amazed Jo by pointing out three of four more hairline fractures in the wood.

The luthier hummed about his work, evidently pleased; “Not bad, for an instrument this old.” He brought the violin close to Jo’s face, offering up its insides to the scrutiny of her amateur eyes. “What’s that say?” He said, obviously referring to the small label adhered inside and just off center, positioned to be seen by peering into the F-holes of a fully-assembled instrument.

Jo gingerly took the violin from his him, placing her right hand under the instrument’s back and holding the unstrung fingerboard in her left, palms to the sun as if she was accepting an offering, or perhaps sending up a prayer to the god Apollo. The label was yellowed with age and the ink was smudged, so Jo had to squint to read the words inscribed there. She spoke them aloud as if chanting an incantation: a city, a date, and the name of a long-dead artist. The unfamiliar Italian language felt heavy on her tongue, but there was a melody to it.

When she finished the luthier nodded in approval. “1884,” he said, pronouncing the date as if it alone was a testament to the instrument’s quality; that was Jo’s interpretation—but, of course, the experienced luthier knew that it took more than a handful of years to fashion a worthy violin. His lecture on the skill of the Italian masters; the particularities of the nineteenth-century design, the quality of the wood, and subtleties of shape and sound were somewhat lost on the young apprentice, who herself had only played violin for a year or so on a shoddy beginner’s instrument rented from the academy, but she listed with rapt attention, drinking deeply, if unsteadily, from the craftsman’s font of knowledge.

As the luthier discoursed, he puttered around the workshop, preparing to make the much-needed repairs. Preparations done, he lapsed into silence, positioned his spectacles on the tip of his nose, and took up the top plate of the violin. Jo watched as he flipped it over, revealing an underbelly studded with small, square patches.

Jo pointed to the clusters around the F-holes, “What are those?”

The luthier held it up for her to see better. “These,” he explained, fingering the slightly raised patches dotting the wood, “show where cracks have been repaired. Others before me have patched up the cracks, by stitching it together with—” he paused, searching for the right metaphor to help her understand, “band-aids made of wood.” He smiled and let Jo feel the smooth surface of the bump, sanded down to create a seamless surface.

“Now,” he said, straightening his back and turning his body towards his workstation, “It’s time to get to work.” He hesitated for a moment, and then said confidentially, “Not just anyone is allowed to watch me work, you know—you must be very special.” He winked and Jo giggled, tripping behind up behind him to watch over his shoulders as he began to work his mysterious magic on the violin. Jo didn’t know how, but the instruments always looked and sounded so much better when he was done with them. Her mother had told her that Uncle Mark was a luthier, and, to Jo, that sounded almost mystical; “He must be some kind of wizard,” she had thought. Her mother had laughed at that, but then grew thoughtful, taking up her own highly polished and well-loved instrument and plucking the strings to coax out the strong, clear notes.

“I suppose he is a wizard, of sorts,” she had said, exchanging the violin in her arms for Jo, whom she covered with kisses.

Here, standing in the mellow glow of the lamplight, listening to the soft scratching of sand paper on wood, and surrounded by instruments in various stages of creation, Jo could feel that she was witnessing a transformation, and, finally, she understood what her mother had meant.