Light From Uncommon Stars(32)

She nodded to her son, then went back to the violin. “Shizuka Satomi came in with a new student. They brought this.”

“That’s—”

“A violin from China,” she said without looking up. “Yes, I know.”

“No, I mean, it’s all in pieces.”

“Yes. So are we all.”

There is a reason that most luthiers never let players see what they do to their instruments. They would faint.

Violinists often think of their violins as fragile, delicate creatures.

But what do mere players know?

What makes a violin special is not its fragility, but its resilience. One can change the strings and adjust the bridge. One can slide a sound post, replace the fittings, rebore the pegbox, carve a new bass bar, even change the angle of the neck.

If one did analogous things to a painting or book, the piece would be ruined. Even pianos, for all their pomp and circumstance, are tragically temporal things. Modify the action of an Erard or Pleyel, or do what was done to that poor Cristofori at the Met, and one effectively destroys it.

But a violin’s existence, its vitality, depends only upon its capacity to sing.

With the violin disassembled, Lucy could better feel the warmth of the wood. She ran her eyes along the joints, the edges, the curve of the ribs. She examined the inside pieces—the bracings, the top and bottom blocks—for any carelessness or lack of craft. But every element of this Chinese violin was textbook.

Textbook?

Of course. Now this violin made more sense. It was not made by a dedicated luthier, but by a carpenter.

That was not necessarily a bad thing—this was a very good carpenter, someone who knew wood, who could craft strong and proper structures, who worked with the grain so the parts expanded and contracted with humidity and temperature, yet never warped out of place.

Yet strong and proper is not enough. A violin is not a footstool; it must risk breaking if it is to give everything to its song.

Lucy twirled the faceplate on her fingertip, rapped it with her knuckle, and listened. With a pencil, she freehanded a shape into the wood. Then, she began carving, first with a finger plane, then with a knife, taking a millimeter here, a half millimeter there, and listening all the while.

“Can you get me that scraper blade over there?” she said to Andrew.

“Yes, Mom,” Andrew said automatically.

His mother’s hands.

Andrew Matía had seen her hands shake nervously when speak ing to Mr. Zacatecas. He had watched them quiver when eating a burrito.

Yet, as those hands began scraping steel against spruce, he thought of something his mother had told him—that as a little girl, she would hear a music that no player could ever create, a music born not of composer, nor player, but of the hands of her grandfather at work.

But Andrew had never known Catalin Matía, and when he thought of his grandfather, all the sounds he remembered came from yelling and tools being thrown.

All the sounds he remembered were his mother cringing, apologizing, calling herself stupid when lunch wasn’t on time or when that bastard felt the shop was too dusty, too noisy, too empty, too full.

Even now, his mother would flinch whenever she heard an unexpected noise, or anyone entered the store.

Such things are music, too.

Yet now, his mother’s hands were a rich, seamless legato, with neither stutter nor apology.

“That’s better, isn’t it? But I think we can go a bit further,” she said to herself.

She removed a bit more wood, then a bit more. Then she paused.

“Gotcha,” she murmured.

She tapped the wood, and suddenly Andrew heard a ripple of color. And as the night grew dark, Andrew Matía’s heart began to fill with the rush of spruce, the flare of maple, the cadence of sandpaper and steel.



* * *



Katrina had never eaten veal before, but she had always imagined it breaded and fried. Here, however, it was stewed, with minced garlic and sliced mushrooms, all in a thick, buttery, cream-laden gravy. Miss Astrid said this was a family recipe, but Katrina had never known a family that ate food like this.

“I experimented a bit. I used winter melon from the Lieus. And usually, I would serve this with aubergines, but unfortunately they aren’t yet ready, and Miss Satomi wanted rice.”

Aubergines? Katrina perked up. She had no idea what aubergines were, but the word made her mouth water.

“So, Katrina, how did you like the Matías?” Shizuka asked.

“The Matías?” Astrid stopped, surprised. “The Matías took the job?”

“Of course. Lucía was fascinated by Katrina’s violin. By the way, this veal is wonderful.”

“Katrina, you’re very lucky. They are the best of the best,” Astrid said.

Katrina thought back to the neighborhood. An auto glass shop. Another auto glass shop. A nail salon. A sign store with all sorts of LED MASSAGE signs flashing in the window. And down the street was Starrgate Donut.

There was nothing quaint and picturesque about it.

“Miss Satomi, why is a violin shop like that … there?”

“Places like the Matías’ are usually out of the way,” Shizuka explained. “Many musicians like to keep their secrets.”

Something to ask about later, Katrina thought.