Beyond the window of Divad’s lutherie, heavy rain fell, causing a distant hum of white noise. Now and then a gust of wind pushed drops against the glass, adding a plinky tep, tep rhythm to the music of the storm. It was late, well past dark hour, as he sat smoothing the piece of old spruce. He moved the rough horsetail back and forth with the grain, adding another rhythm to the music of the rain.
As much as he liked the still, warm moments of morning in his luthier rooms, nighttime, when Descant slept, could be just as enjoyable. And the sound of hand tools applied to wood to shape and refine, simple as it seemed, put him at peace. Perhaps molding an instrument that did not ask questions (as Lieholan incessantly did) had a certain appeal.
Whatever the reason, working with his hands felt good. It reminded him that he lived a unique life, a privileged life. It also reminded him that it had not always been so.
He finished smoothing the piece of Ollie’s bar that would become the viola’s top, and removed it from his bench dog and vise. Using a rasp, he filed the edges to conform perfectly with his original trace, and set to purfling the piece with a thin border. He finished that up, and added more oil to his lamp before setting to the most important part of reproducing the viola soundboard.
Before beginning, he took a deep breath of the spruce-and-maple scent that lingered in the air. This, too, he loved. The smell had a settling effect. Then he bent over the original instrument, which he’d carefully pieced back together with some hide glue. It would never hold together over time, but it gave him a good sense of what the top had looked like before Belamae shattered it.
He ran his hands carefully, lovingly, over every fraction of it, lingering on the original imperfections it had received here and there. Marks, dents, scrapes. He felt these for depth, length, ridges. He needed to understand them entirely.
He repeated the whole process twice more, then placed the new, smooth top back into his bench dog and vise. He picked up a fine-tipped taper punch with a rounded end. Methodically, working from the tail of the original instrument forward, he found the first mar in the wood, ran his fingers over it several more times. Then he turned his attention to the new wood. He’d never found wood inflexible or difficult to work with. For him it was as potter’s clay. Just holding it gave him comfort. Particularly if that wood was on its way to becoming an instrument of some kind. Especially then.
When he felt ready, he began to score the new spruce top in the same place, and to the same depth and form as the broken viola. He worked slowly, applying a little pressure, compared the new mark to the old, then applied more pressure. He repeated this process until they seemed to him identical. Then he found the next imperfection, and worked that one.
He wanted everything as close to the original as possible, because he knew that all things affected the sound an instrument made.
The soundboard would vibrate when played. It transferred more sound than the strings alone. That was its whole purpose. It was key to the tonality of the instrument. And it all began with the wood itself. Spruce was stiff and light, growing slowly in alpine climes. It produced a lovely timbre. The age of the wood mattered. The manner of that aging mattered. The thickness of the soundboard also mattered. The walnut oil, as well. For Divad, there was also sonorant residue—the songs the wood had already heard. It was like a good chili. You never finished making it. You simply kept adding beans and peppers and corn and loin cuts. And the richness of the blend deepened as days went by. Good chili pots were never empty.
And past all that, an instrument received its share of wounds. Sometimes they were the result of careless hands, dropping something on the instrument or mishandling it in some way. Other times, the anger of a musician would have him lashing out. This almost always came from impatience with his own facility or technique. Still, it was often taken out on the instrument. More wounds. And then, of course, time takes its own toll. The smallest imperfection in the wood or the luthier’s assembly of the instrument would result in changes that affect its sound, if only in the smallest degree.
And with more time, all those practically inaudible changes would accrete to something audible, giving each instrument its own voice, a rich blend of resonances that could never be duplicated.
Divad meant to reproduce this viola in as much detail as humanly possible. To get back its voice. It mattered. And later into the night, when he fingered a long deep scar in the original instrument’s wood, he began to remember why.
With one hand holding forward her cowl, his sister, Jemma, held something out to him. “Take it,” she said.
They stood on the west side of Descant in the shade of mid-evening. A pleasant after-rain freshness filled the air.