Borrowed Violins

POV: Felix

The cello case had two bottoms, and Felix was prouder of that than of anything he had made in his life.

"Look," he said. "Look. You press here. No, here, on the scroll. It's a little spring. And the whole floor comes up like a drawer. It's a false bottom, three inches deep, lined in felt so nothing clinks. And the wood on the outside is exactly as thick as it should be, I measured, I measured twice, and if anyone lifts it the weight is right, because I ballasted the top half with a lead strip and a bag of sand—"

"Felix," said Hollis.

"—and there's a groove for the wire, and a rack for the vials, and—"

"Felix."

"Yes?"

"You're holding it upside down."

He looked. He was. A hundred fine glass tubes in their felt sockets stared up at the rafters of the Odd Fellows hall, and the hall, he noticed, had gone very quiet.

"Oh," said Felix, and very slowly turned the case over, and set it down, and did not breathe until the last tube had stopped clinking. "That was fine. Those were the sealed ones. It's the unsealed ones that I'd be worried about."

"I'll put that on the list," said Hollis, "of things I now know."

…

The Odd Fellows hall stood behind the old Orpheum Theater in Ash Docks, a long, damp, high-ceilinged barn of a place with a stage at one end and a smell of pine rosin, floor wax, and a century of cheap tobacco. It had been rented for two weeks in the name of the Brandywine Quintet of Philadelphia, who were, at that moment, being fed oysters in a suite at the Hotel Crestwood and were under the firm impression that they had won a lottery. Felix had seen them once, from across the street, before they were whisked away: five solemn men in identical gray coats, with the pale bewildered look of musicians who had been told to stop worrying about money.

It was all very sinister. He was having a wonderful time.

The tools of the trade lay spread along the stage: five instruments in their cases, five sets of music, a pile of spotted mouse-colored program cards, and his own contribution, which now lay open and astonishingly useful on a wooden trestle. He had counted, packed, and repacked it three times. A dozen smoke pellets in waxed paper, each the size of a walnut. Twelve vials of a pale green liquid that did a great deal to glass and almost nothing to flesh. Forty feet of fine braided wire. A flint-and-steel in a tin. A pot of grease. A packet of something that he had labeled, for his own amusement, Emergency.

"What does that one do?" said Hollis, tapping the packet.

"Nothing, yet."

"What's it for?"

"For emergencies." Felix beamed. "I haven't had any."

Hollis looked at him for a long, slow second. Then he laughed, short and dry and surprised, the way he did when he forgot to be careful, and picked up the violin.

…

It was a good violin. That was the worst of it.

It was a handsome dark honey-colored instrument with a scroll like a snail and four strings that gleamed. Hollis held it by the neck, gingerly, as though it might bite. He had been a cowhand, and a trick shot in a Wild West show, and an exceptionally poor gambler. He had once explained to Felix that he had never in his life been asked to play anything that wasn't a harmonica.

"All right," said Hollis. "Chin here."

"It's a bit cold."

"Chin here. Left hand on the neck. No, softer. You're strangling it. You're holding it like a rabbit you're about to skin." He moved Felix's fingers, with a lightness that surprised them both. His right hand, the one with the dead knuckles, lay against Felix's wrist for a second. It was warm. It was dry. It was as steady as a table. "Now the bow. Easy. Pull."

Felix pulled.

The sound that came out of the violin was the sound of a cat being introduced to a bagpipe.

It went on. It rose, wavered, rose again, and the bow, which had a will of its own, skidded sideways across all four strings at once and produced a chord that no composer had ever intended. Somewhere in the rafters, a pigeon left the building.

"It's meant to do that," said Felix, with dignity.

"It is not."

"It's a, a modern technique—"

"Felix," said Hollis, "I am going to say this once, with great respect. You are going to be playing that thing in front of the Chairman of the Meridian Trust. If you do it like that, he'll have you shot."

"Well, he'd have to catch me."

"He's got a regiment."

"I'm very fast."

Hollis shut his eyes. His shoulders began, quite visibly, to shake. And Felix, who had not been so happy in two years, and who had no earthly idea why, started laughing too, a great helpless honking laugh that bounced off the rafters and brought the pigeon back.

…

By afternoon they were all in the hall, and the hall had become a kind of theater of its own.

Josiah had taken over the stage. He did not announce it. He simply drew a chalk line across the boards, and a second one, and put a sheet of paper on the lectern, and when Felix looked again the whole company was standing in a formation he did not remember agreeing to. They marched. They stopped. They marched again, to a count, with the violin cases under their arms. "Tighter," said Josiah, dry and exact. "You are a quintet, not a flock of geese. When the Maestro raises his baton, your bows move together, or you look like men who do not know what they are doing."

"We don't know what we're doing," said Hollis.

"Then you will look the part."

Roz had taken the left wing of the stage and sat on a stool with her eyes half closed, her hands on her knees. She was teaching them to breathe. "In for four," she said, softly. "Hold for four. Out for six. Slower. Slower. Your heart's going like a rabbit's, Felix. I can hear it from here. Bring it down." Her voice was gentle and perfectly pitiless. "If you're afraid, the worst thing you can do is hold your breath. Let it go. Fear's a tide. You can't push it back. You can only move with it."

Felix breathed. In for four. Out for six. The pounding in his ears began, a little, to ease.

He glanced across the hall. Josiah was standing very straight at the front of the stage, with his hands behind his back, and he too was breathing out for six, his shoulders dropped half an inch. He had his eyes shut. He did not look at Roz. She did not look at him. But it seemed to Felix, who had never been any good at reading people and was now reading everyone, that the space between them had changed a little, as a gap between two stones changes after rain.

How odd, he thought. They don't hate each other quite so much as they did.

He had not known it could be catching.

…

It was when he went to fetch the rosin that he saw the waltz.

He had gone down the little back stair into the green room, a dim and tattered chamber full of rolled flats and old costumes, with a cracked mirror over a sink. The door to the stage wing stood ajar. From beyond it came a low, rhythmic thump, step, drag, and a woman's voice, counting.

"One, two, three. One, two, three. No. Dex. You're leaning. Chin up. The floor is not your enemy."

He ought to have gone. He knew it. But Felix, who had lived in a laundry attic for two years with only a spirit lamp for company, had a weakness for other people's afternoons.

He put his eye to the crack.

They were in the wing, in a pool of dust and light from a high window. Viv had taken off her gloves. She stood with one hand on Dex's shoulder and the other lightly in his, her skirts gathered in her fist, and her face, which Felix had only ever seen composed, was frowning with fierce concentration. Dex stood opposite her. He had propped the cane against a flat. He looked, thought Felix, like a man being led to a firing squad that had unexpectedly turned out to be dancing.

"You can't dance on one leg," said Viv.

"I can dance on one leg and a half."

"If someone asks you at the Masquerade, you must be able to turn. A lady at the ball will want a partner. And if you say no, you'll draw eyes."

"I'll say I have a cold."

"You'll say yes. You'll turn her twice and bow, and she'll never know." She tugged his hand. "Now. It's a waltz, not a funeral. Step with me. One—"

He stepped. He stumbled. The bad leg gave, and he caught himself on her shoulder, and then he swore, quite softly, a word Felix had not known he knew.

"Don't stop," said Viv, gently. "Use me. Use the cane if you have to. Think of it as a third foot. It's got a very good sense of balance, and a lovely carved head."

"It's a rattlesnake."

"Then it'll warn first," said Viv, "and strike after."

Dex looked up.

It was a very small thing. His mouth moved, and something in the thin pale face cracked open, like a crust of ice on a puddle, and underneath it was a real startled laugh. She laughed too. The two of them stood there in the wing, locked in an awkward half-embrace, laughing like children, and she put out her hand and took the cane and put it into his, and he leaned on it.

And then, quite smoothly, he turned her.

It was only a quarter-turn. It was clumsy. The cane tapped on the boards, once, twice, three times, in a rough waltz measure. But she came round on his arm with her head thrown back and her skirt flaring, and for a moment, Felix saw them both exactly as they were: a boy with a ruined leg, a girl with a stolen life, dancing in a theater wing on a Tuesday afternoon as though nothing in the world could ever be owed.

Oh, he thought. Oh, they don't know.

They didn't. That was the extraordinary thing. They were the two cleverest people he had ever met, and they had no idea what they were doing.

He crept away from the door on tiptoe, with the rosin forgotten and his ears hot, and went to sit among the old costumes until his face went back to normal.

…

They ate behind the theater, on a loading dock, because Hollis said it was the only place with a view.

The view was a brick wall. But the afternoon had turned fine, and a slant of low gold light fell across the alley and lit the cracks in the bricks like a map, and the sky between the roofs was a clear cold October blue. Hollis had produced two paper twists of buns from a stall on Tallow Street, sticky with burned sugar and currants, and they sat side by side with their legs dangling, eating in a companionable silence that was only a little spoiled by Felix's habit of dropping crumbs.

"Your pa," said Hollis, at last.

Felix stopped chewing.

"You mentioned him. Once. When you were talking in your sleep, at the hall, and the Captain told you to shut up." Hollis was looking at the wall. "I didn't want to ask in front of people. What sort of man is he?"

Felix swallowed. He looked at his bun. He found that he wanted to say something intelligent and bitter, and that all he could find was the truth.

"He's very tidy," he said.

"Tidy."

"He's the tidiest man in the city. He has a bootmaker who comes to the house once a month to replace the heels before they're worn. He's never late. He's never drunk. He has never once, in my entire life, raised his voice." He found, to his surprise, that he was smiling, a small stiff odd smile like a mask he had put on out of habit. "When I was nine, I broke a window with a baseball. I stood in the hall for two hours waiting to be shouted at. He came home, and looked at it, and said, 'I see.' Then he had the glazier in, and it was fixed the next morning, and we never spoke of it. For three weeks I thought he'd forgotten. Then he gave me a ledger and told me to enter the price of the pane."

"That's cold."

"It's not cold. It's—it's very orderly." Felix dusted his fingers on his knee. "When Mother died, I was twelve, and he was— I think he was perfectly fine. I think he had the funeral done by Thursday. I've often wondered, you know, whether he felt it, or whether he was only extremely good at not." He laughed. It was a thin sound. "And then when I wouldn't sign the papers, he put a notice in the Courier. I sometimes think that's the nicest thing he ever did, in a way. He was honest. He made it official."

He stopped.

He hadn't meant to say any of that. It had come out like water from a pipe. He felt the blood climb in his face, and he looked down at his hands and saw the green stain of the glass-etching fluid under the nails, and the brown scars of the acid burns, and the scrape from the oven door.

Hollis had not laughed.

"Your father," he said, slowly, "lost more than you did."

"I'm sorry?"

"He had a boy who'd give him an honest look, and he put him out." Hollis took a bite of bun and chewed it, thoughtfully. "I've seen that kind. Out west, in the cattle trade. Men who build a fence around everything they own, so tight there's no room for anybody to stand inside it. And then they die in the fence." He swallowed. "He lost a son who'd stand up to him. That's a rare thing, and he threw it away."

Felix said nothing at all.

Hollis's eyes had come round, finally, from the wall. They were an odd light brown, the color of strong tea, with gold flecks. He looked at Felix's face, and then lower, at his hands. He looked for a long time. There was an expression on his face that Felix did not know how to read, the look of a man doing a long slow sum in his head, and not minding the answer.

"They hurt?"

"What?"

"Your hands."

Felix looked down. The burns. The cuts. A crescent of dried green under one thumbnail. "Oh, no. They're quite all right. I've got used to them. They're only hands."

"They're good hands," said Hollis.

He said it simply, and went back to his bun, and did not seem to notice that Felix had stopped breathing.

Well, thought Felix, after a long moment, with great solemnity. That's a new one.

…

The carriage came down Tallow Street at a quarter to six.

He heard it before he saw it. A deep, steady, rolling clatter, and the clean ring of well-shod hooves on the cobbles, the sound of a team that had never once been late. Felix lifted his head. Down at the end of the alley, across the width of the street, a black coach was passing, high and polished, drawn by two matched grays. There were no markings on the door. There did not need to be. Every child in the city knew that coach.

He saw the window.

It was half drawn. A gray-gloved hand rested on the sill, and behind it, in the shadow, a profile: a high white forehead, a clean sharp line of silver hair, a mouth set like a closed ledger. The man was looking at something on his knee. He turned a page.

Felix's heart stopped, and then began to pound like a hammer.

Father.

He did not decide to lift his arm. It simply went up, like a puppet's, stiff and foolish, and he heard himself say, in a small voice he did not recognize, "Father—"

The coach rolled on.

It did not slow. It did not stop. The profile did not turn, and the gloved hand did not move. The wheels went round, and round, and the black box swung past the end of the alley and out of sight behind the corner of the Orpheum, and the sound of the horses died away, steady and unhurried and complete.

Felix's hand was still in the air. He lowered it.

"Felix," said Hollis, very gently.

"It's all right. I wasn't, I only—" He laughed. His voice cracked on it. "I wave at everything. It's a habit. It's, I used to wave at the milk cart."

Hollis didn't answer. A warm hand closed over his forearm and stayed there.

Felix sat looking at the empty street. The light had turned the color of old brass. Somewhere inside the theater, Viv was calling the next run, and someone was counting a waltz.

Did he see me? he thought. Did he look? Was he turning the page so that he wouldn't have to?

He would never know. He understood it all at once, quite clearly, in the golden alley light. He could go his whole life and never know whether his father had seen him at the end of that alley, and chosen not to look.

It's better not to know, he told himself.

He said it three times, to be sure. It still sounded like a lie.