The Apartment A Novel(40)

I looked up at Schmetterling. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been talking, but the room was darker and I felt guilty about keeping him there. I also felt that, having heard what I had to say, he had good reason to want to get away from me. Schmetterling wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at his own crossed knees. And when I finished speaking he patted my shoulder, still looking down, and I was thinking of the Iraqi curator who had wept over an artefact and my own desire to do something to reassure him that I believed in his right to weep over a thing, though there, in front of Schmetterling, I felt no need to weep over the man they’d taken that day. We stood, Schmetterling and I, and walked out, and he said goodbye to the girl who was sitting in a booth beside the entrance, and who would presumably be locking up. Schmetterling and I walked together toward the underground. It was still sleeting, but Schmetterling, not surprisingly, had a gigantic umbrella. We made small talk for a little while. The sidewalks were slippery, and Schmetterling wore leather-soled shoes that required an absolutely snail-like pace. But, he said, picking up the previous conversation without any warning, you may be surprised to hear that the violin was not, originally, a Western idea. Yes? I said. Indeed, said Schmetterling. Well, perhaps the violin itself – what we today know as the violin – was first produced in Italy, in Cremona, in 1555, probably by Andrea Amati, though it is also possible that Gasparo da Salo invented it. The most beautiful and arguably most famous violin ever constructed, by da Salo in 1574, was made for Archduke Ferdinand II. This Archduke Ferdinand, said Schmetterling, was an interesting character, because he collected and adored art, but he also led one of the most brutal campaigns against the Turks, a campaign that took place not too far from here, in 1556. Which is ironic only insofar as the instrument he would cherish among his most prized possessions had come from that direction. Schmetterling saw that I finally understood what he was talking about, and paused for a moment to let the recognition soak in. You see, he said, the idea of a small, stringed instrument that could be played with a bow came to Europe first via the pear-shaped Byzantine lyra, and secondly via the boat-shaped rebec, which the Moors brought to the Iberian peninsula in the eleventh century, and which, in some models, could be played while held under the chin. The rebec’s predecessor was the rabab, a Medieval Arab two- and three-stringed instrument from the ninth century, which is likely the predecessor to the Byzantine lyra as well, and therefore the single precursor to the violin. And all this interests me, said Schmetterling, especially this evening, because the Chaconne, which I believe to be the greatest piece of music ever composed, argues for a Western ideal, and justifies, in its own way, Western dominance of science and art and light and combustion and music and trade, and the embryo of the instrument used to argue this – the only instrument, ironically, capable of making this argument – emerged a very long time ago in a most decidedly un-Western place, had a one-octave range, and never dreamed of what it might become. We arrived at the underground station and discovered that we were going to be travelling in opposite directions, so we shook hands and he suggested I return to the museum in daylight, and try to find a good recording of the Chaconne to listen to, and perhaps even buy a book on it or Bach or music of the Baroque period. There was, conveniently, a shop in the museum where I could pick one up.

The taxi arrives at my apartment, and I grab my things and pay the driver. I have already forgotten which key is for which door, and my hands are shaking from the cold. Saskia is bouncing up and down with her arms crossed, saying, I think it’s that one, I think it’s the other one, it must be the last one. The door opens and we head inside. The corridor is cool. We head up the steps and arrive at my door. So, she says, this is your new apartment. I say, Pretty cool. I open the door and we walk in. I drop my bags by the door and immediately realize that if we stay longer than five minutes, we’re not leaving. I say, Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible and get something to eat. She must be thinking the same thing, because she says, Sounds good. I change shirts and wash my face and brush my teeth, while Saskia, without taking off her coat or shoes, paces the big hallway. We leave the apartment. The night sky is green and pink, and it pours forth heavy soft snowflakes. There’s a bus stop on the road with the cemetery, so we walk to it and wait. The bus arrives after about five minutes, and it’s empty, but the floor of it is covered in water that feet have carried in as ice and snow. Those feet have also tracked in sand and grit. The inside of the bus is exceptionally cold, because the heaters are not on, or are broken, so we sit close together in our coats and gloves and scarves and hats, and we can even see our breath, and Saskia’s teeth are chattering.