The Violin & the Elf

The Violin and the Elf

* * *

ere comes the night, dark thing but nice; on the lower branch of the tree Dillin the handsome elfmaid sits with a comb; and here she sits and combs with beautiful comb her long red hair and looks at the stars, and she feels as good as even an elf cannot feel when looking at the stars; and why is it so good at all that you are laughing and crying at once? it all was the same yesterday, and the day before, and hundred years ago, if only it was not raining; and here is why: suddenly she understands that for a long minutes she is listening to the violin, excellent violin, non-human and non-elvish, tender and soft as a brook, or strong as a shower of a rain beating naked shoulders, breast, making hair cling to the body; violin weaves itself around her body, embracing her, caressing, calling to somewhere; she sees not a musician, but unwillingly she scans the forest, and breaks in long run, forgetting her comb, and runs to nowhere, full of pain and delight; but the violin carries on and calls and calls her, until she staggers upon some root and falls, – little bell rang softly – to the very feet of a thin long-nosed human boy; and the music stops, he takes the violin off his chin, the bow falls to his knee, and he looks into her excited eyes and understands that it's an elf before him; and she, forgetting to stand up from the ground, softly asks him: "Play, play on, please!"; and he rises his bow again, and again the music sounds, and in it a question – "Who are you?", but she answers not, she's listening; and at last he finishes to play and leans his back to the elm, pale as night flower, no, as waters of Great White Lake, and he looks at her, and she looks at him, and everything is good, if you see what I'm about...

* * *

"Who are you?" asked Dillin, pulling her knees up to her chin.

"I'm Ervi", said the violinist, "Ervin Schneider."

"Schneider?"

"This is my ancestors' second name", explained he, "My grandfather is Schneider too. Yosef Schneider. And you?"

"I'm Dillin. You've played so..."

"So long", Ervi shook his head, "that the city gates are already closed. I won't get back home until the morning."

"But why are you here, in the wood?"

"That's why", he showed her a basket of mushrooms, big, withe woven basket with two grips. "I'll dry them for the winter. You see, there's no place for more mushrooms, and now I have to walk in the wood until the morning."

"You love mushrooms so much?

"Me – not at all", admitted Ervi, "but I love to gather them. There is a heat, an excitement of a kind; and besides, in winter, when quite nothing else is left, mushroom soup is not bad, you know."

"Tell me, how do you live in the city?"

"We, my grandfather and I, work in the city Museum, and the magistrate pays us something; a trifle, to tell the truth, and we spend a lot on the Museum and on books, but there is always something left for life too. And in spring and in autumn the ships with coloured sails come to us and they bring fruits, spices, clothes, grain... From my tower I see how they pull in to the haven and take down their sails, blue, green or crimson. Our city is a port, and in the port you can find everything you want. We have the best musical instruments in the world – and the dirtiest taverns and joyhouses; our Museum have been built thousand years, and now the people build their huts on silted islands in the Cold Sea – this is our glorious city of Danpul.

"How fair is your speech!" said Dillin, "Come on for a walk. Seldom we speak with men, but you, of no doubt, are best of them; come on. We live far from here", told she, "in Eltanore, in Idrys Castle, but I went off for a walk – yesterday, perhaps? – and ran too far. Do you play violin for a long time?"

"Before I learned to speak."

"Really?"

"Well, not from the very birth; it's just that I did not speak until twelve, and taught my violin to speak words instead, and then, when I was on Tyrell Island, I was frightened, and I began to speak. So I speak now."

"Tyrell... Wish I lived on Tyrell with other elves..."

"Why not?"

"My parents. They have secluded themselves in Idrys, and I was born. I have grown up already, but they still don't notice the time, and I with them, and I love them. And you, do you have somebody with you, except your grandfather?"

"I have parents and a sister, but we almost don't see each other; once they have resigned me, and then I myself didn't want to have anything in common with them. Well, no, we meet on holidays, sometimes they bring me presents, but we are strangers."

"How can this be?" Dillin was terrified, "They are your parents, they loved you!?"

"It seems they loved themselves more. My mother married another man when my father died, and I was left out of the way..."

"And who taught you to play violin?"

"No one, I think. The violin was a present from my grandfather. What's it shining there?"

"It's Beriluid, Brown River; come on to it!"

The river made there a bend, and in the curve there was flat bare peninsula, lighted from three sides by the water of the river; Dillin ran onto the middle of peninsula and exclaimed:

"Play for me, and I will dance for you!"

And he rose his violin and she rose her hands; he played, she danced, and what more can be said here? The moon also rose, and what at all can say bleak human words about the music of the midnight violinist and the dance of the elfmaid in the ray of moonlight? He played for her, and she heard the words in the voice of the violin, and he was saying to her that he felt in love with her at once, in the first second when she so suddenly appeared before him, and he wishes to stay here with her for ever; and she answered to him in her dance, "No, there'll be nothing, you are beautiful, but you are not John Trend and I am not Elanseili, and what may come out of such a marriage? But this one night I will dance for you, while the moon is shining..."

He played for her like he never played before, and all the world laid at his feet like a street dog, and it seemed to her that the trees fall around and sprout out with flowers, lilies, white, beautiful, crisp lilies, and irises, violet and yellow, and hyacinths, and sometimes it seemed to her that it rains, but the moon was shining bright, and she danced, danced; he played and was getting pale more and more, delight and sorrow were filling him, and it seemed to him that he is dying – or resurrecting? Music which sprang from under his fingers enslaved him – but he was its master; and when he lead the melody to the highest point, to the upper B, he realized that this is the end, and the note hanged on air like a cry of seagull, and he slipped down by the rough tree trunk, holding his heart, and remained there sitting, throwing behind his curly head and keeping the violin and the bow to his chest; Dillin stopped too, having thrown her red hair on the ground; but she rose and went to him, sitting without move, took the violin from his hands, put it reverently into the case and lead a hand through his pale forehead. He opened his eyes a little, looked at her tenderly and asked in a whisper:

"Why?"

"Because children of man and elf are unfortunate, they have no place in the world. Like poor Dreisinel."

"You know Cathy? The one you call Dreisinel daughter of Trend?"

"Everybody knows her, but that doesn't help her. She is alone – neither with men, nor with elves."

"Yes, I see."

And he closed his eyes again.

"It hurts you?" asked she.

"I've got used to it", said he. "It's since childhood."

"When we get hurt, we can go to heaven halls and have a rest."

"When we get hurt, we die", said Ervi, "but no one knows where to we go then."

"No", she laughed, "you will not die, I know", she took from somewhere a little silver bell and rang it, and his pain immediately was gone, dissolved, turned into warmth and peace that were carrying him away, afar, like a little boat on a slow river; and Dillin put on his finger a simple silver ring and laid him on the moss carpet, and poured green and golden leaves over him, and ran away from there, laughing and crying on the run – southward – away – to the parents-lovers in Idrys Castle – away!

* * *

And here Ervi Schneider awoke on the soft moss under the pine, and no one was beside him, and the violin was lying not far, carefully wrapped in black flannel and shut up in the case; and the basket – basket full of red and brown mushrooms; vaguely he remembered some beautiful dream, but beautiful dreams are usually hard to remember, and he got up and went to north-west, to the city gates, and only in the city, some hours later, he concised on his finger a silver ring – on the forth finger, and the forth finger on the left hand, that meant "Don't seek for me"; and having come home, Ervin climbed to the very top of his tower and played there to himself; and grandfather smiled sadly down there, for he understood all too well what had happened to his grandson.

1993