Adagio for Strings

From the first moment I saw her, just a glimpse from across the dining hall on the first night of the term, I knew how she moved. I hadn't seen her do anything but stand in the food line, but right away, I could tell. I could picture exactly the dynamic way she walked and talked and lived, the precise way it sent her hair flying about her. It hadn't been any more than a hunch at first, a gut instinct stemming from a striking familiarity, but as I caught glimpses of her around campus, I saw that I had been absolutely right. She always walked with her head held high, with a certain lightness in her step. Her every movement had the grace of a dancer. On those rare occasions I saw her speaking, her hands flew through the air, and on the even rarer occasion that I was close enough to hear her, the energy and enthusiasm in her light, melodious voice were apparent. Her eyes, when I drew near enough to see, were breathtakingly gray, sparkling with vivacity and life, constantly taking in the world around her, or else hazily unfocused, seeing something—I was sure—beyond the physical world.

If her movements were graceful, though, they were nothing compared to her music. Her violin was an extension of herself. In her hands, it was a living thing. Her hands were tender on the fingerboard, and she moved her bow across the strings like a lover’s caress. The gorgeous spruce instrument went almost everywhere with her, and she played it almost everywhere she went. It wasn’t uncommon to see her on the quad, sitting or standing under her favorite oak tree, giving a concert to the roots and the grass, who listened with rapt attention, spellbound. She would stand in the hallways or in the dining hall or an empty classroom, or even as she walked to class, and just play. Wherever she went, her music followed her.

It was beautiful, that music, dazzling, breathtaking. She coaxed sound from her instrument, pulling it out like a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel, teasing it and molding it to her exact will. Her music floated out and enveloped the entire school, her soaring, heart-wrenching melodies captivating anyone who heard them. The whole campus had come to an unspoken understanding: on those nice but unremarkable days when they would have otherwise stayed inside, people took their studying out onto the quad to listen to her play. At first I mimicked everyone else, only listening with my head bent over a book, or while laying down in the grass as if napping. Later, though, I would just take a quiet spot by myself as she played, and just watch her, or else close my eyes and let her music wash over me in cresting, crashing waves, until it seemed impossible that it all issued from four strings and a horsehair bow.

In the first few weeks, I don’t think I heard her play anything fast. She’d wander the campus as if in a dream, and sad, soulful music would pour from her violin. But one day on the quad, she took up her instrument and launched into a spirited, dancing melody that bubbled over with joy. She swayed in time with the song, her bow jerking exuberantly across the strings. It felt as if the sun had just burst through a dense fog, and I remember thinking, my heart swelling with happiness for this girl, 'she found a friend.'

I didn’t know what went on in her life, how she was doing in her classes, who she spent her time with. That sort of involvement would have been entirely inappropriate for a faculty member. I was burningly curious, though, I ached to know her. I had never had what one could call "friends" among the students. I had seen many brilliant minds come and go, but I had never been so fascinated by a single person before. I'll admit that I watched her from afar, listening, trying to gain an insight into her life—her music carried with it such a transparency, such a clarity of emotion, that it was as if she had lain her diary out before me. She played soaring, exultant melodies or bright, spirited dances, and I would theorize: she had passed a test with flying colors, or she had had a long and fulfilling conversation with a dorm-mate she admired, or the dappled sunlight shining through the leaves of her oak tree was looking particularly beautiful that day. A ferocious, rushing piece that threw fire from her bow as she played, it was clear in my mind, meant that she was angry, furious, about some new unfairness, something so wrong with the world that it made her sick. It made me prouder than I could say, that the injustice of the world provoked such a vehement response from her, that the suffering of others was her call to arms. It was nice to be able to see into her life, to confirm everything I had ever thought about her with my own conjectures.

What broke my heart were the slow, mournful pieces, heavy with melancholy, that spoke of a deep, untraceable, ever-present sadness. These pieces were her most beautiful, I thought, and perhaps the kind she played most often; she rendered them with such truth and raw emotion that they brought any listener to the verge of tears. She was sad so often. I could see this: for all the joy she took in the world, its weight crushed her. The depth of her pain was clear in her music, and it made me want to weep for her. No one deserved to feel pain like that, especially her, such a gifted, talented, inspired, utterly unique person. I didn’t know the cause of her suffering, but I wanted to protect her from it.

I wished I could go speak to her. I had played out the scene in my mind a hundred times. I’d find her on the quad as she was putting away her violin. “I wanted to tell you—” I’d begin, and she’d turn to face me, maybe with a start. “I know I don’t know you, but I wanted to tell you that you play beautifully. I’ve heard you around school, and it’s absolutely… gorgeous. Transcendent.”

A smile would slowly spread across her face—this is, I can imagine, one of the first such complements she’s gotten since coming here. “Thank you,” she'd say, genuinely touched, and turn to pick up her violin.

“You,” I blurt in my imagination, “I-I-you…” (My own mind betrays me here, because I know that I would stutter as I said this.) “You… I-I think… you… remind me of my daughter.”

She stares at me, awestruck, and puts a hand to her heart. I smile gently at her, and hold her eyes for a moment before I turn and slowly walk away. And she will know that she has friend on this campus, someone on her side.

* * * * *

I never knew her name until I read it on the monument—it was just a small stone plaque with some words and dates chiseled into it, but there would always be candles and sticks of incense by it. Not much, not as if it the whole school turned out to pay her tribute, but a few people, whenever they noticed the little altar to be bare, lit a candle.

I wonder if they noticed her, wondered about her, if they saw that she was something special. I wonder if they curse themselves as I do, for not being able to save her. Whenever the ground beneath the little stone is bare, I light a candle, or lay a bundle of wildflowers on it. Whenever I pass by, no matter how rushed or preoccupied I am, I always pause and bow my head in respect, in reverence, in awe of the person she was—or, of the person she was to me, in my mind, from what I saw of her from all the way across the campus, listening to her play.

Someone had the sense to put it under her favorite tree.

I remember where I was when I heard—everyone does, don’t they? Or they’re supposed to. I know that I was sitting in my office when the phone rang: the dean, summoning me to an emergency faculty meeting where they sat around the large round table hunched over their briefcases and told us a girl had killed herself, talked about how delicately this had to be handled in order to avoid upsetting the other students. I remember that, of course, but patchily, fuzzily, like a television station slipping in and out of focus. It’s the next day that is crystallized in my memory.

I woke up slowly, I remember, from a dream I hadn’t retained any of, except that it was pleasant. I woke up with a smile on my face, and my bed was warm and comfortable. And then my eyes flickered open to the gray stuccoed, pockmarked ceiling overhead, and I remembered.

It was a long time before I could bring myself to even get out of bed. It was cold, so cold outside of my cocoon of blankets—it was hardly cold at all, of course, a nippy but pleasant March day, but to me, the very air felt icy. It didn’t seem worth it, to stand, to dress. As long as I stayed in bed, I could pretend that this was all a dream. I closed my eyes and rolled onto my side, willing myself to fall asleep again, willing the world to go away.

My radio alarm clicked on, fuzzy-sounding people with cheery voices started talking about the weather. The sun brightened outside my window, bloody-red through my closed eyelids. Birds chirped gratingly outside, obnoxiously chipper. There was a rushing sound in my ears. I thought I heard music, mingling with the birdsong, strains of violin. I couldn’t hear. I pulled the blankets over my head, trying to block out the sun, the voices, the birds, listen to the ghostly music. The sheets were suffocating me, I couldn’t breathe, the radio was deafening and the sun was blinding—

I tore the radio from its wall socket and flung it across the room. It clattered against the far wall and broke into several pieces. All was silent once more, the sun shining innocently at me with a soft yellow light. I stared after my radio for a moment more. All of the emotion that had filled me a moment before was gone. I felt drained, empty. Blankly, I shrugged off my comforter and stumbled out of bed.

I made myself breakfast, because that’s what you’re supposed to do in the mornings. A bowl of cereal—a bowl of cereal with sliced fruit, and a slice of toast, cut into triangles, buttered, a glass of juice and a glass of milk, an orange, peeled and segmented and laid out on a plate. All this, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had done more than grab a granola bar as I dashed out the door. My tiny kitchen table looked like the one rendered in bright colors on the back of children’s cereal boxes. I sat down in an old, rickety hardwood chair and stared at my complete balanced breakfast. I stood up again. It was useless.

Because I knew it was what I was supposed to do, I picked up the phone and dialed the extension of the attendance department. “Hello—yes, this is he—I won’t be able to take my classes today… Yes, could you post a notice, please?” My voice sounded flat, even to my own ears. “Thank you. I apologize for the short notice,” I said mechanically. “Yes, thank you. Have a nice day.”

Hanging up the receiver, I stood, looking around the small, dingy room..

There were papers littering every surface of my apartment.. I started sorting, sifting through them and putting them all into neat piles according to topic and priority, storing them in folders in my desk. There were clothes tossed on the floor and slung over the backs of chairs. I folded them neatly and placed them in drawers or in my closet or in my laundry bag.

I scanned the room for things to do, any task to keep my hands busy. I contemplated alphabetizing my books. I contemplated sorting my CD collection by genre and by artist, alphabetizing them within that. Would I alphabetize the genres too? Classical would come first then. I picked up a CD.

Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto in E Minor. I’d recognized her playing it, one day. I wasn’t a classical music buff, though after I’d started hearing her play around campus, I'd started buying more CDs, tried to educate myself a bit. Though of course, she never played the same piece twice.

I hadn’t realized I’d been thinking about her until the thought hit me, driving the breath from my lungs: she would never get to play a piece twice, three times, a hundred times, when she found that piece in her stacks upon stacks of music books that she loved even more than any of the other hundred pieces that she loved.

She would never play another piece.

Abruptly, I wondered if there would be a service. Who had informed her parents? What was being done with her possessions. Her violin, where would it go? Burned? Sold? Kept on a shelf as a bitter reminder, never played again?

She wouldn’t want that, I knew she wouldn’t want that. She loved that violin, I’d seen it in the way she held it and the way she played, she cherished it almost as much as she did the music itself. I could only hope that someone would play it again, like she did. She would want someone to make music like she did, enjoy it, exalt in it, brighten the world.

Everything seemed so dark now.

I wondered if I should be crying. I hadn’t at all since I’d heard. Crying or wearing black or moaning and keening and rocking back and forth. I didn’t feel like crying. I didn’t feel like anything. I felt like the opposite of anything. I wanted to crawl into bed and fall asleep and for everything to go away.

What had driven her to this? How could someone who took such joy in life be so sad? Had everyone really been so cold? Had she really been so unhappy? So much of her pain and sorrow came out in her music—how was is possible that she had any left over inside herself?

Was this my fault?

I should have spoken to her, should have said something to her, should have offered her my ear and my shoulder. She would have poured out her soul to me, I would have offered words of comfort and solace. I could have put her through therapy, medication, to treat depression or bipolar disorder or whatever it was that she had.

No, no medication. She wouldn’t have accepted it.

Still, this was my fault. I could have saved her, if I’d only reached out.

Never again, I vowed to myself, sitting there on the floor of my bedroom. I would never be too late again.

If I had another chance, a chance to save her…

I reached for the phone. I dialed Directory Assistance, waited for an answer.

“Operator, what city please?” answered a tinny voice on the other end of the line.

“I-I-I,” I stammered, “I’d like a number for Glass, Katherine, in Chicago, Illinois.

There was a moment of silence, then the voice asked, “should I ring this through?”

“Y-yes please.”

“Just a moment,” said the operator, and there was a click. The phone rang. Once, twice. My heard pounded in my chest. My hands were clammy, and I shifted the receiver to my shoulder to wipe them on my pants. Three rings. My entire body was tingling in petrified anticipation. Four rings. Don’t go to voicemail, I prayed, don’t go to voicemail or I’ll lose my nerve.

A click, a shuffle. “Hello?” said a voice. Light, young, female. Her voice was like music, still. She was what, twenty-one now? No, twenty-two. It had been five years.

Five whole years.

I swallowed.

“Hello?” she said again. I opened my mouth. My throat was dry. No sound emerged.

“Hello?” she said a third time, a note of irritation in her voice. "Hello? Is someone there? Who—"

I clicked off the phone. Numbly, I stood, letting the receiver drop from my hand, and made my way over to my bed. My knees gave way beneath me and I sank onto the soft of the mattress, pulling the covers up to my chin as if I were seven and my mother were tucking me in. Suddenly, that was all I wanted: someone tucking me in and kissing me on the forehead, telling me that everything was going to be alright, back when the only thing to be afraid of was the dark.

Though maybe things weren't so different now.

Hating myself, I lay there and waited for sleep to come.

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