and twist the pegs.
Then he raised the bow and drew it down hard over the strings to bring out the first note.
I sat up and pushed myself back against the paneled wall and stared at him because I couldn’t believe the sound I was hearing.
He ripped into the song. He tore the notes out of the violin and each note was translucent and throbbing. His eyes were closed, his mouth a little distorted, his lower lip sliding to the side, and what struck my heart almost as much as the song itself was the way that he seemed with his whole body to lean into the music, to press his soul like an ear to the instrument.
I had never known music like it, the rawness of it, the intensity, the rapid glittering torrents of notes that came out of the strings as he sawed away. It was Mozart that he was playing, and it had all the gaiety, the velocity, and the sheer loveliness of everything Mozart wrote.
When he’d finished, I was staring at him and I realized I was gripping the sides of my head.
“Monsieur, what’s the matter!” he said, almost helplessly, and I stood up and threw my arms around him and kissed him on both cheeks and kissed the violin.
“Stop calling me Monsieur,” I said. “Call me by my name.” I lay back down on the bed and buried my face on my arm and started to cry, and once I’d started I couldn’t stop it.
He sat next to me, hugging me and asking me why I was crying, and though I couldn’t tell him, I could see that he was overwhelmed that his music had produced this effect. There was no sarcasm or bitterness in him now.
I think he carried me home that night.
And the next morning I was standing in the crooked stone street in front of his father’s shop, tossing pebbles up at his window.
When he stuck his head out, I said:
“Do you want to come down and go on with our conversation?”
5
F ROM then on, when I was not hunting, my life was with Nicolas and “our conversation.” Spring was approaching, the mountains were dappled with green, the apple orchard starting back to life. And Nicolas and I were always together.
We took long walks up the rocky slopes, had our bread and wine in the sun on the grass, roamed south through the ruins of an old monastery. We hung about in my rooms or sometimes climbed to the battlements. And we went back to our room at the inn when we were too drunk and too loud to be tolerated by others.
And as the weeks passed we revealed more and more of ourselves to each other. Nicolas told me about his childhood at school, the little disappointments of his early years, those whom he had known and loved.
And I started to tell him the painful things—and finally the old disgrace of running off with the Italian players.
It came to that one night when we were in the inn again, and we were drunk as usual. In fact we were at that moment of drunkenness that the two of us had come to call the Golden Moment, when everything made sense. We always tried to stretch out that moment, and then inevitably one of us would confess, “I can’t follow anymore, I think the Golden Moment’s passed.”
On this night, looking out the window at the moon over the mountains, I said that at the Golden Moment it was not so terrible that we weren’t in Paris, that we weren’t at the Opéra or the Comédie, waiting for the curtain to rise.
“You and the theaters of Paris,” he said to me. “No matter what we’re talking about you bring it back to the theaters and the actors—”
His brown eyes were very big and trusting. And even drunk as he was, he looked spruce in his red velvet Paris frock coat.
“Actors and actresses make magic,” I said. “They make things happen on the stage; they invent; they create.”
“Wait until you see the sweat streaming down their painted faces in the glare of the footlights,” he answered.
“Ah, there you go again,” I said. “And you, the one who gave up everything to play the violin.”
He got terribly serious suddenly, looking off as if he were
Then he raised the bow and drew it down hard over the strings to bring out the first note.
I sat up and pushed myself back against the paneled wall and stared at him because I couldn’t believe the sound I was hearing.
He ripped into the song. He tore the notes out of the violin and each note was translucent and throbbing. His eyes were closed, his mouth a little distorted, his lower lip sliding to the side, and what struck my heart almost as much as the song itself was the way that he seemed with his whole body to lean into the music, to press his soul like an ear to the instrument.
I had never known music like it, the rawness of it, the intensity, the rapid glittering torrents of notes that came out of the strings as he sawed away. It was Mozart that he was playing, and it had all the gaiety, the velocity, and the sheer loveliness of everything Mozart wrote.
When he’d finished, I was staring at him and I realized I was gripping the sides of my head.
“Monsieur, what’s the matter!” he said, almost helplessly, and I stood up and threw my arms around him and kissed him on both cheeks and kissed the violin.
“Stop calling me Monsieur,” I said. “Call me by my name.” I lay back down on the bed and buried my face on my arm and started to cry, and once I’d started I couldn’t stop it.
He sat next to me, hugging me and asking me why I was crying, and though I couldn’t tell him, I could see that he was overwhelmed that his music had produced this effect. There was no sarcasm or bitterness in him now.
I think he carried me home that night.
And the next morning I was standing in the crooked stone street in front of his father’s shop, tossing pebbles up at his window.
When he stuck his head out, I said:
“Do you want to come down and go on with our conversation?”
5
F ROM then on, when I was not hunting, my life was with Nicolas and “our conversation.” Spring was approaching, the mountains were dappled with green, the apple orchard starting back to life. And Nicolas and I were always together.
We took long walks up the rocky slopes, had our bread and wine in the sun on the grass, roamed south through the ruins of an old monastery. We hung about in my rooms or sometimes climbed to the battlements. And we went back to our room at the inn when we were too drunk and too loud to be tolerated by others.
And as the weeks passed we revealed more and more of ourselves to each other. Nicolas told me about his childhood at school, the little disappointments of his early years, those whom he had known and loved.
And I started to tell him the painful things—and finally the old disgrace of running off with the Italian players.
It came to that one night when we were in the inn again, and we were drunk as usual. In fact we were at that moment of drunkenness that the two of us had come to call the Golden Moment, when everything made sense. We always tried to stretch out that moment, and then inevitably one of us would confess, “I can’t follow anymore, I think the Golden Moment’s passed.”
On this night, looking out the window at the moon over the mountains, I said that at the Golden Moment it was not so terrible that we weren’t in Paris, that we weren’t at the Opéra or the Comédie, waiting for the curtain to rise.
“You and the theaters of Paris,” he said to me. “No matter what we’re talking about you bring it back to the theaters and the actors—”
His brown eyes were very big and trusting. And even drunk as he was, he looked spruce in his red velvet Paris frock coat.
“Actors and actresses make magic,” I said. “They make things happen on the stage; they invent; they create.”
“Wait until you see the sweat streaming down their painted faces in the glare of the footlights,” he answered.
“Ah, there you go again,” I said. “And you, the one who gave up everything to play the violin.”
He got terribly serious suddenly, looking off as if he were
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