The instruments in their cases began to throb, their noise swelling next to their owners. From the dark cases came discordant deaf-mute sounds, a cacophony of scrapes, the meaningless tonalities of deserted music. The violins sobbed like sick women; the viola and violoncello howled.
“Ach…” The four men put their right hands on the instrument cases. “Be silent.” And at that, the sounds subsided into moaning, and gradually into exhausted sighs, and then diminished slowly. “Rest,” the men admonished their instruments. They turned their dark eyes toward Herbert. “We have no more tears,” they said. “But they are different.”
The instruments were silent again in their cases, except for an occasional hiccup. “They still have hope,” the men explained.
Herbert thought of the harmony of these instruments, and the look of rapid fingering hands, the left ones, dancing and twisting against the strings. He remembered the courtly sway of the right hands as they bowed the music forth. Music curled out of stringed instruments as the musicians birthed it.
“You will help us,” the first violinist said to Herbert. The four men nodded in agreement. Herbert could not keep from looking furtively at the mutilated stumps of the final fingers. “Yes,” said the leader. “That is why we come to you, Herr Doktor. That is why we asked you to meet with us. It is for the sake of music that we come to you today.”
“What can I do for you?” Unwillingly, Herbert felt he was being forced into the piano part; that what was being played here was no longer a quartet, but a quintet, with the guest artist — himself — obliged to participate.
The first violinist nodded, as if Herbert had come into the music at the right place. On one breath, on the exact same beat, all four men answered him at once. “You will find for us our fingers.” There was a brusque, brisk silence, a silence thrumming with sound.
The little fingers began to twitch on the table, their stumps dancing in exasperated rhythm. “You can do it.” coaxed the viola player in a honeyed voice. “Our fingers. Ours,” the violinists said. The cellist said only one word, but it came from the bottom of his vocal register. “Please,” he implored softly, looking into Herbert’s eyes.
The instruments in their cases now also began to twitch and scrape, and once again sound rose from their dark coffins. A cacophony of discordant, jumpy agitations, warnings, confused like the shrieks of an ambulance or a police wagon or of men being tortured. The air was filled with suffering. “Find our fingers!” screamed the violinists. “You can help us,” the violist coaxed. “Please. Please!” groaned the cellist, wringing his hands.
Herbert could not stand it. He rose to his feet and clapped his hands over his ears. “Stop this noise!”
“Ah,” breathed the four waiting men at once. And with a sigh of relief, they sat back and removed their mutilated hands from the table, putting them discreetly into pockets, where the naked fingers could lie again in safe darkness, curled around one another, taking whatever comfort that remained in one another’s presence.
“They do not like to be reminded,” explained the first violinist to Herbert as the left hands relaxed into safe pockets. “It hurts them too much. We prefer to let them be quiet, to forget a little.”
And each man placed his right hand soothingly on the instrument case next to him and, bending toward the hinged closure, whispered a few quiet words. “They, too,” said the leader, indicating the instruments. “They were with us. They saw it all.”
The hands twitched a little in their pockets. “Shh, my little ones,” the first violinist said, admonishing the fingers. “It is all right.” He looked at all four men intently, then nodded, raising his head and staring directly at Herbert as he spoke. Herbert listened, as if in a trance, as if he already knew it, to the first violinist’s song.
For twenty years, the Tolstoi String Quartet had lived as one. They had traveled, playing the great concert halls of Europe. They had even, once, come to America. They had met at the conservatory, married one another’s sisters, but their first loyalty was to music. And to one another. The violist and the cellist were, additionally, first cousins.
Each night, in some dank hotel room somewhere, they lay next to their instruments and counted themselves the luckiest of men. When they were not playing together, they were preparing to play together. Each went home and practiced day and night, embracing his instrument and thinking only of the harmonies he made with the others. Because of this, they decided to live as close to one another as they could. After several years, two flats came vacant in a building next to that of the first violinist. There was a bit of a skirmish about it, but eventually the violist and cellist took the flats next door. The second violinist moved himself, his violin, and his wife into the parlor of the first violinist, where the two men lived happily, practicing their parts until the wee hours of the morning. So really, they were never separated, if they could help it.
The men did not even need to speak to know one another’s thoughts. Critics spoke of the unity of the Quartet, as if one person, one larger God perhaps, were breathing. And the Quartet, if they spoke at all, it was only of music.
At night, after a day of playing, each man wiped his instrument with a soft burgundy velvet cloth and kissed it tenderly. The soft beds waited for them, gleaming. Sighing, perhaps under the breath still whistling the theme from Death and the Maiden, they turned back the covers. They laid the instruments beside them on the adjacent pillows. Gratefully, each man slid into clean sheets, embracing his instrument. And there they slept, the satisfied sleep of a part of God, until morning, when they would resume music together again.
Even the cellist refused to have a special bed made to accommodate the larger violoncello. “I like big hips,” he explained, and he caressed his instrument all night.
Sometimes from the adjacent houses would emanate soft noises, something forgotten: the instruments playing a fragment of Haydn, perhaps, or of Mozart. The instruments, happy, sang in the arms of their masters. “Shh,” whispered the men. But the instruments could not help singing out, so deep was the ecstasy in unison.
“And your wives?” asked Herbert. “What of your wives?”
The four men looked at one another, and the second violinist took up the story. “They were good women,” he said. “They could not help themselves.” The four men nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, they were good.” The four men sat back, as if the wives, and the goodness thereof, were not of great importance.
For fifteen years, the wives served the Tolstoi Quartet. And for fifteen years, neither the musicians nor their wives questioned that arrangement. The wives of the men were the handmaidens of their music. They cooked the meals, served cakes when the Quartet practiced at home, kept quiet and behaved in an exemplary fashion. The men were clean, well fed, laundered, and their tuxedos and shirts were always spotless. “But,” added the cellist, “it was our fault. We simply didn’t realize.”
“Yes,” concurred the second violinist. “We should have seen it coming. It seems that they were jealous.” There was a thoughtful, regretful silence.
“Jealous!” That dark word cast a somber C minor shadow over the narrative. Herbert’s heart set up an answering vibrato. Dark wood, an ache like Pernambuco — the wood of a cello bow. His breast ached with the word and the overtones resonated throughout his body.
“Yes,” echoed the cellist, “jealous.” The word scraped in the air harshly.
During these fifteen years, the wives slept on the rugs beside their marital beds. For, of course, the musical instruments were in the beds, lying on the connubial pillow, beside their owners, where, all night, the men caressed their instruments and both man and instrument cried out in ecstasy.