RUSH (City Lights, #3)(100)

I asked Annalie to walk with me to the Mozarthaus, and we listened to selections of Mozart’s work as we walked through the very rooms he and his wife, Constanze, lived in for a short time.

I did it to absorb the spirit of my favorite composer, and also to keep my mind off of Noah. The plane had hardly touched down when I’d been overcome with a terrible aching longing for him. I had to focus. To concentrate on the music, to immerse myself in it so that I could perform the way Sabina needed me to perform. If I didn’t keep myself distracted, at least at first, I wouldn’t last a week.

And I needed to see about getting a new violin.

“You’re going to tour with that piece of Schei?e?” Annalie asked me that morning as we unpacked.

I set my borrowed violin on the bed, sighing. “Until I can afford something better, I’m going to have to.”

But this was Vienna. City of Music. I figured I could walk into a music shop and buy something off the wall that was a hundred times better than even a fine product from an American store at half the cost.

As it turns out, I didn’t need to.

On my second day, I came back from a sidewalk café with Annalie and some of the other younger musicians. I’d drunk only one beer but it was from a stein the size of a small barrel and I was a bit tipsy when we returned to Hotel Domizil.

There was an oblong wooden crate on the small table in our room. An intricate stamp in black ink on the blond wood read The Hague. There was a packing slip taped to the front and I opened it. My small buzz from the beer evaporated, and my heart began to pound as I read the short typewritten note tucked in among the shipping details.

Charlotte,

I hope this has reached you in time, and in one piece. I also hope it’s not so damned old you’re afraid to breathe on it, let alone play, but Lucien assures me it’s fit for a virtuoso like yourself.

Make it sing, Charlotte, and maybe think of me when you do.

All my love,

Noah

I held the letter to my heart for a moment until Annalie cleared her throat and tapped my shoulder with a crow bar.

“Where on earth did you get a crow bar?” I asked, wiping my nose.

“My luggage.” She gave me a strange look. “You don’t have?”

We pried open the crate. A violin case rested snugly within the confines of packing material and Styrofoam buffers and shredded paper, stiff like straw. I unclasped the case and opened it. Butterflies took flight in my chest and my hands trembled as I lifted a small card, a certificate of authenticity and with the maker’s looping signature on the front.



“Oh my god,” I breathed. “I can’t believe it.”

Annalie clucked her tongue from beside me. “That is not piece of Schei?e. From your boyfriend you tell me? Noah?”

I nodded, blinking back tears. “Yes. My boyfriend.” The love of my life.

I let the card go and lifted the instrument from its case. The wood was dark and rich. Scratches told of its age—Cuypers made some of the finest violins in the world almost two hundred and twenty-five years ago—and I could see it had been re-varnished at least once, but the body still felt clean and light. A silver-mounted bow lay in the black velvet of the case and I took it in my other hand, staring dumbly at the yellowed horsehair stretched tight along its length that looked original. Impossible…

With shaking hands, I put the violin to my chin and set the bow along its strings, marveling at how perfect both felt in my hands. I played a short C. The sound was clear and vibrant, and I quickly lowered the instrument back to its case, overcome.

“How…? How did he…?” My words tapered away helplessly. I didn’t want to ruin the moment with crude thoughts about cost, but a Cuypers violin could run upwards of $70,000 depending on the condition. And then I knew.

He paid for it. Not his parents, who could have bought an orchestra full of Cuypers and Stradivariuses. Noah bought it with his own money because he sold his Camaro.

My heart swelled and tears came again. He sold off one of the last vestiges of his old life and used the money to help give me a new one.

Think of me every time you use it.

“I will,” I promised. As if I could help it.

*

We practiced for two weeks and then the tour began. A whirlwind of dates and cities, and one gorgeous concert hall after another, each filled with a rich history, and most far older than almost anything in the United States.

For two months, we toured. I was only a section violin, second chair, but I played as if I were our soloist. With every performance, I felt the music grow and bloom in me, my heart thawing from the longest winter. As an artist performing and perfecting her craft, and as a tourist of Europe, that held so much of the musical history and that had birthed so many of the world’s best composers, I was having the time of my life.

The only shadow over my happiness was Noah’s absence. He wrote to me on “poor blind guy software my amazing girlfriend saw fit to order for me” and while his letters were full of love and warmed my heart to read them, he gave no clue as to what he was doing or when we could be together again.

Wait for me, he’d asked and so I did, though I missed him so much there were nights I played with my heart in my throat and tears staining the chinrest of my glorious Cuypers violin.

One night in early August, our violin soloist, Gian Medeiros, a middle-aged man from Lisbon, got drunk in Munich, fell off the back of a park bench and broke his wrist. We were set to return to Austria the next night, to Salzburg, and perform an entirely Mozart series in honor of his birthplace.