Chapter 1 : Falling Rain
They say that you can still hear his music echo through the halls. They say that, when you hear it, the notes have the power to grab at your very soul and cut it into a million crippling pieces. It rings under the earth, and pierces the rusting steel tracks throughout the city. A pretty song and an attentive audience, he had once said to me, is all you really need to be happy. What a lovely day it is then, to hear the sound of a violin flitter through the air.
Maybe I really was crazy the day I walked up to him. I really don’t know anymore. I suppose there was just something about the way he could start a song and render everyone, silent with astonishment. Whenever I heard the notes slide off his instrument and into the wind, I felt like I had no choice but to go to it. But ever since I woke up in the hospital, our time together has been slipping away from the comfort of my grasp. The images of him and the era of our friendship are at once beginning to blur, like an antiquated film scratching out all of the essential scenes. All of my memories seemed to have boarded that one murderous subway and traveled to the other side of the earth. It’s as though my time here has all slurred together into a state impossible to depict again. Much like hemiolas on a score sheet, the days are always overlapping, and they never hesitate to speed to the finale. Although, if it does count, I do remember one thing: I would always come back to listen.
The night that changed my life forever started with an extensive amount of liquid. What I was doing there, well, I was just minding my own business, walking down the streets after a long day of classes. The evening sky, that was so calm before, abruptly burst into tears, letting an army of transparent orbs attack the inhabitants of New York City. Each watery soldier penetrated the rough carcass of my skin mercilessly, freezing it as though they were the Winter Queen. Drenched and lacking of an umbrella, all I could do was look up and observe the way the lightning slashed its way through the ashen clouds. My wobbly legs then took on their own mind and galloped to the nearest entrance, but each door I shook vigorously mocked my misery, locked as though it guarded a national treasure.
For what seemed like an eternity, I ran and ran, desperate to get out of the showering rain and gloomy sky. “Why are you so sad, sky?” I said with all the sarcasm I could muster, and cursed my decision to take a walk after my evening classes. I felt my feet embracing the mud under fresh grass, and haphazardly banked sharply to my right, as to not ruin my brand new Calvin Klein shoes. The jacket I was wearing was plastered on to my body, cemented firmly by the pouring rain. Annoyed, I pulled on the suffocating fabric, trying to breath in some sort of air through the newly created human-aquarium. The cadence of my rapidly beating heart thudded against my chest, and the storm pounded deafeningly in my eardrums. The deluge that made New York suffer made me suffer as well. It was like trying to fight and survive against the blazing and fiery wrath of Mother Nature. But you can never fight, all you can really do is run. I started to wonder where my body would be found in the morning.
And then I saw it: a 24/7 all you can eat Japanese restaurant. Swifter than the lightning that stroke the heavens, I ran to it. Its incandescent neon lights came closer and closer, comforting the very chill in my bones. One, two, three…and then darkness. Its shadows came upon the streets, and I felt my body lurch over and plunge down an endless abyss. The ribs in my chest cried out in agony, and the wind was knocked out of my lungs as I descended down an askew floor. The only light I had escaped from my eyes, and I blacked out. Falling down, falling down, where would my body be found? My shoulder landed with an echoing thud, and all I remember was the sad song of a violin getting louder and the realization that I would never get to that Japanese restaurant.
**************
There was this time when I was younger when my brother and I decided to go on a quest of sorts to find hidden treasure. (Keep in mind that we were only four or five or so, and only had the television as a third companion). Having my parents always slaving at their work, they hired a nanny to take care of us. She was a very old nanny who, like most, was in need of money, and thus she lied about her terrible eyesight. Really though, she might as well been a bat for all I remember. Whenever my parents were there, Nanny Agnes stashed her thick horn-rimmed in the dark gloms of the inside of her shirt, smiled, and dismissed herself politely. She noticed us staring at her one day and told us to keep quiet about it, bribing us children with freshly-baked cookies. We ate them with hesitancy, but then discovered how excellent a baker she was.
The day we decided to sneak out, it was a day when the sun shot its blazing rays at the windows, and when the windows magnified those rays and cooked all those on the other side of it. Positive we were being tortured at the gates of hell, we took advantage of our nanny’s bad eyesight, took a two-party exodus out of the apartment, and went into the streets to find the treasure. What treasure, well we really didn’t know, but we were on the hunt to find it anyway.
Holding hands, we skipped merrily around the city. But realizing how lame that was (because we saw girls laughing at us), we pretended we were the magnificent Jack Sparrow and Will Turner.
Pretty soon, we had no idea where we were, and began to just run anywhere. Our hearts were pumping and we were on the brink of tears. No adult took notice of us. They just averted their eyes and kept on walking as if we were just trash blowing on the curb. God finally took mercy on us, and so then we saw a park where we sure we’ve been before. Hurriedly, we crossed the street and found ourselves sitting on a bench, flooding the ground with our tears.
“I want my mommy!” it was all we could say now. And we said it so furiously that all the birds around us flew away to safety. We were done for, and no decent person wanted to help. We shook and shivered, even though the sun still shone through the cloudless sky. Then a young man stepped us to us. His eyes were brimming with concern, shedding all kindness we were deprived of that day. There was something wooden tucked into his arm, and he asked us if we were lost. With wide eyes, we nodded through our tears. Then he told us he would bring us to the police station so that our parents could find us quicker. We figured we could trust him, even if he did look rougher than the adults that passed us. Attempting to say yes, us four-year old boys could only mourn our sorry selves. The young man patted our heads so gently with his deep cinnamon hands that it seemed like an angel touched me, “Shhh, shhh. It’s gonna be okay.”
Against his wishes, we just couldn’t cease our behavior and went on bawling. With the spark of an idea, he lifted the mysterious wooden object to his chin and winked at us. Instead of the windows, the sun glinted off the thing and shined brilliantly in our eyes.
“This is a violin,” he told us through a grin, and with a steady hand, he pulled a stick with white hair across one of the strings. His fingers danced and sound came out. A beautiful, happy sound that could steal all hearts away. My brother and I were in entranced by this, and as to not ruin the magic before us, we stopped crying. There was a strong hint of a smile on the man’s face when he glanced us over. It was an unspoken finding, but we knew exactly why he smiled. My ears have never been this happy before and I just knew, it was because we finally found the treasure we’ve been looking for.
***********************
Till this day, I still haven’t a clue about what had happened that stormy night. All I remembered was dreaming the flashback above. But you know what? That’s okay! Because being unconscious in the rough streets of Harlem is not something I would prefer to do again. Especially since the probability of having another random musician mingling there is highly unlikely.
I woke up, like many others do, through vibrations traveling in my ears, disturbing the serenity and nothingness in my overworked brain. At first I assumed that it was my alarm clock, and threw my arm across my chest to put it to rest. Little did I know, my shoulder was damaged, shooting an excruciating pain throughout the expansion of my arm.
“Gah!” I groaned, clutching my demolished shoulder bone in pain. Desperately, I attempted to caress it and relocate the shards back into its rightful place.
“If you move it, you will only make it worse.”
I popped open my eyes, ignoring how exhausted they were, and searched for the source of the hoarse and masculine voice. Whipping my neck left to right, I scrutinized for some sort of a clue. I didn’t see anything and lay back down. Guess my conscience was just warming me, I concluded and tried to go back to sleep. But even though all my energy was drained, I couldn’t seem to recede back to dreaming, and I sat up gently, considerate of my aching injury. My eyes were still closed as I breathed heavily, trying to calm the fever in my forehead. While I scraped the bangs out of my face with my still intact hand, I wondered, Where am I?, and stretched my arms back as much as it could bear. The ripe smell of downtown New York slums filled my nostrils, compelling me to start a coughing fit. Then the sound of a low chuckle wisped into my eardrums.
“I see you’re new to this part of town,” it had said, jolting me back to an upright position, and so I saw him. His side was turned to me and he leaned back on a gum-coated pillar, smirking as if something amusing had happened. His shiny, chocolate skin glowed under the dim lights of the subway station, and shallow lines eclipsed his aging face. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, but the way his crisp skin wrinkled like leather suggested that he was all the more worn out and tired.
“You’ll get used to it though…Everyone does,” he laughed again and ran his thumb over his lips. It was a throaty chortle, one that thawed the ice plastered on my biceps. I looked away, self-conscious and embarrassed at the state he saw me in. How did I get here anyway? My eyes automatically glanced down, my still-drenched jacket was hanging on a rusty rail and I was covered in a grimy blanket tattered with what seemed like a thousand holes. My baffled expression probably gave me away, he told me that he was sorry he didn’t have anything better and looked as embarrassed as I did.
“Sorry, man. It was all that I had….but it’s better than nothing right?” he said, half grinning, half flustered, but all warm.
I stared at him, soaking in everything that he was, and realized the jump of our social classes. Unintentionally, I almost gasped at my fright. The clothes he was wearing were all mismatched and in discord, like he had just run around at the swap meet and grabbed whatever was in his way. I looked at his face and saw how unshaven it was, which was not a sign of a typical urban man. His obscene hair, that reached out to the heavens, poked out of the fawn, dilapidated hood that covered his head too loosely, and all of his chewed finger nails had rich soil nested under the beds. He’s homeless, I thought, barely believing it, and choked on the saliva building up in my mouth.
“A little jumpy are we?” he remarked, and noticed the twitch in my eyes, laughing once more, “Here, why don’t I play something for you to get your spirits back up and running. Ha-ha. Just a little something to celebrate God blessing us with another day.”
In my bewilderment, never did I notice the wooden object calmly napping in the crook of his elbow. When he lifted it, its back glistened and radiated a lustrous glow. It was beautiful, carved as if it was meant as a gift for the great beyond, and coated a mahogany so deep you could see your face reflecting in it. It was the Queen of all violins. I counted five silvery strings, abnormal for how it’s usually made, but somehow so much superior to the others. The man smiled softly while he cradled the violin under his chin, making the wrinkles around his eyes crinkle, and the laugh lines at his mouth deepen. With his free hand, he brushed back the locks of hair covering his face, and then exchanged the bow from one hand to the other. And ever so delicately, he set the bow parallel to the bridge in an unhurried manner, caressing its neck as if the instrument was as fragile as glass or like an infant-child. Inhaling deeply, he squared his shoulders proudly, and pulled the bow across the strings.
****************
That crisp, cloudless morning, the homeless violinist stole my sleep, my thoughts, and my breath away. While he played, it seemed as though his fingers waltzed about the neck of it, shifting from string to string with absolutely no flaw detectable. His hands, long and slender and born for music, were masters at what they did. Each note, in which sang clear as a bell and amplified off the steel of the subway, was drenched in the sweat of his perfection and ingeniousness. It was absolutely delicious, like a lemon drop on a rainy day. My throat was conceived of all its saliva as the notes massaged the pinnas of my ears.
He played that five-stringed violin with such magnificence that I almost wanted to cry for its maddening beauty. The chords that flung out of the F-holes constricted my very heart, leaving me breathless, thoughtless, and in a complete breakdown of words. Never have I witnessed, let alone apprehended, what real music could be created in our now shabby world. In my eyes, the concert master of the London Philharmonic couldn’t even compare to this person’s mastery, because even if he was a being that no one could care less about, this man was truly a musician.
And we were just there, just the two of us, as the song’s melody resonated under the sleeping city. Me still sitting under his blanket, him standing on the lowest step of the staircase, and the music that closed the spaces between us. Sealing my eyes, I began to sway to the life in its intimate harmony. And I began to wonder. Did the others know what magic lay beneath them and their busy lives? Did they know that if they just listened, they would get to hear something so wonderful? If music is the language of emotions, then isn’t that man at once fluent and articulate, exclusive and inspiring? And if beautiful music has the power to heal the world, one heart at a time, his songs are indeed a an essential antidote for the earth‘s tranquility. His exuberant and shining song began to paint enchanting pictures across the universe, bringing the color back to this modern, neutral society. It was as though his soulful melody made the city of New York into the utopia it’s been thriving to be, taking all who listened to it on a marvelous inner journey. And I realized then that that the gift and talent of music could be discovered anywhere and in anyone. It was as though the little boy from so long ago had shoveled his way back out, finding what he had been desiring for the past seventeen years. The treasure he was so determined to find again, has now found him.
