White Violin

16. Root

I returned the plate to the maid with the cake on top. She glimpsed on the plate, smiled at me, and nodded as usual before leaving my room.

Tonight I read a book before sleep to distract myself from other thoughts. It was about the limitations of logic itself. I had always thought of myself as a person of feelings and perception, who acts out of intuition, but I was surprised to find that my intuitions are a part of some fundamental logic inside me. Is this fundamental logic programmed when I was born? Or were I created in such a way like a motor that could only turn in a certain way to learn about this world?

Satisfied with some questions to harbour in my mind to push me into slumber, I crept onto my bed. Looking out of the window and onto the garden, I thought about the white violin and the little girl again. Sigh. This was more difficult to avoid than I thought.

I got up and took a few deep breaths. The only true way to deal with something is to confront it. In my pyjamas, I walked out and to the music room.

The corridor was dark at this hour. My shadows shrank and enlarged as I passed through the corridor. Sometimes it sneaked up the wall, other times it feel plain and short. When I got to the door of the music room, I looked through its window: someone was inside.

This person was in dark black clothes, its back facing the door. I hesitated to turn the knob. It might be the small girl again, but this frame looked bigger than hers. She was only standing there, looking at the violin.

Then her dress waved. She was turning around. I held my breath.

It was Marie. She was wearing in the castle clothes, almost identical with the little girl's. She saw me and opened the door.

"You're curious too, aren't you?"

I nodded and walked in, closing the door as softly as I could.

"There is no other reason to come to this rotten castle than for this violin," Marie said, in a light commenting tone.

"Are you going to steal it?" I tempted.

"Steal? Why would I steal this ugly thing?"

"Isn't it only a decoration?"

"Quite bad taste if it is," she said.

"So you know something." I tried to see what she knew.

"Not any more than you do. Do you know what a white violin means?"

"No idea. It's painted white?"

"Oh please. What have you been doing your entire life? A white violin is a violin that hasn't been painted."

"So this is how it looks like when it is carved from wood?"

"Exactly. A white violin is the root of a violin. It's a violin's penultimate form before completion."

"So...what are you doing here?"

"I may as well ask you the same question, Luna. I recall you asked our teacher Lucy about this?"

This was the first time she called my name.

"Lucy doesn't seem to want to answer anything about this violin."

"Which makes it more suspicious, don't you think?"

Marie held her chin and smiled. Given her apathetic personality, I didn't know how to understand her witty smile.

"Let's think of it this way," Marie continued smiling, "Suppose finishing a violin is giving life to it. What would you call a violin that is not finished?"

"A...dead violin?"

"And why do you think there is a dead violin?"

"You can't be possibly serious that dead people can play a violin, Marie."

"No, it's not. It's not played by the dead."

Marie lifted the glass case and carefully touched the top of the violin with her index finger. Then she slid her finger from the top end of the strings to the arc where it ends. 

She grinned, "It's for the dead."