After a few days of clearing debris, Maria saw an opportunity to have the junk in her cellar trucked off for free. She wasn’t the only one with the idea. Broken chairs with the upholstery torn found their way into government trucks as property damaged in the riot. Sacks of clothes that had been moldering in some damp cellar corner. Bent bicycle wheels, automobile tires with rubber that wouldn’t take another patch. The streets were clear enough, the people of Clandish must have figured, so they turned to their junk rooms.
Maria sent Karel and Herr Miihlstein down to pluck out the worst of her collection and carry it to the end of the block. An empty keg of beer and crates of dry bottles—evidence of how she’d flouted the state prohibition—dried flower stems, watercolor paintings left by Anna. A pony Anna bent out of scrap wire, a wood elephant, a June bug of orange yarn, stacks of journals with poetry written in girly script. There were August Eigler’s army uniforms from the Civil War. Root vegetables that were too dry to be eaten. “Get rid of it all,” Maria shouted down the steps. “What do I care? Most of that I forgot about a long time ago.”
Karel found the instrument case where the dagger was. He’d put it right back where he first found it, August Eigler’s dagger, that Karel had held up impotently to Ignatz two years before. He opened the case. For some reason he thought the dagger would be gone, that Anna would have snagged it for herself when nobody was looking, but the dagger was right where he left it. Black gum on its blade, the handle holding together, tucked next to the violin. Karel reached into the case, but this time cradled the violin in his hands. A violin without strings, the fingerboard loose with the blond of its wood showing where the stain had faded. He’d never asked Maria about the violin, because he didn’t really care who it belonged to. If it was August Eigler’s, or Maria’s, or hidden in the cellar by the deceased luthier who lived here before the Miihlsteins. Karel was sure the violin would crumble in his hands if he picked it up. He grabbed the violin and it didn’t crumble. He held it up to the light from a window and saw an inscription on its back, one so faint it hardly showed, the sprucewood was beaten so badly. It read Treue der Union and Theodor Bruggemann and 1st Nebraska Volunteer Infantry. This violin hadn’t belonged to August Eigler. Karel had no idea who this other man could be. A deeper mystery.
Karel waited for Herr Miihlstein to come down then showed him the violin.
“What’s this?” Miihlstein asked. “This can’t be one of mine, is it?”
“No. I found it here.” Karel pointed to the case, empty except for the dagger and bow.
“Well,” Miihlstein said. His eyes lit up behind the lenses of his glasses. He lifted the violin, as Karel had done, lowered himself by bending at the knees so he could hold it above his head. “Can we save this one? Shall we take it to my table?”
Karel shrugged. He didn’t know the first thing about that.
“It isn’t so nice. The vintage is poor. Maybe I could make it sing again. Maybe not.” Miihlstein put the instrument to his side, held it only by the neck, and it didn’t fall apart. “Bring it up,” he said. “I’ll ask Maria if she knows anything. If the violin has some importance, I’ll fix it.”
Karel took the violin with both hands, shuffled it across the cellar to where the case was, and laid it to rest in the velvet. Closed the lid and twisted shut the brass clasps.
“What was it about her?” Karel asked.
Herr Miihlstein breathed in when Karel said this. “What is what?”
“My mother. You were going to tell me.”
“Yes. I was, I was. I was going to tell you, but you made me stop. And now you want to start again.” Miihlstein laughed in his flat way. He went to the steps to sit and wiped his hands on his trousers, then brushed at the filth that had rubbed off on the fabric. “I don’t like being down here,” he said.
“You like the attic.”
“It’s nice up there, yeah. You know that.”
“What were you going to tell me?”
“Oh,” Miihlstein sighed. “I’ve been wanting to tell you a long time. Your mother. They called her the Swallow. A vile thing to call a woman. She hated they called her that. Sometimes she didn’t mind, if it was a joke. She played along. I did too. Like I didn’t care.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I shouldn’t say that. I’m going to tell you what a wonderful woman she was. Because you heard some bad things. That’s why. Sometimes your sisters get excited about these things, the stories about your mother. They were old enough to hear what people said. Bad stories for them to know. I want to tell you her best qualities. What she smelled like when she cared what she smelled like. Lilacs. That’s what she smelled like.”
Miihlstein told what her voice was like first thing in the morning over breakfast. Nearly a whisper, as light as smoke. These her best qualities. How she stayed out late when possible. How she wore her hair up when younger, down as she aged. That she once played Cleopatra and kept the brass armband she wore for the role. She wore the armband until she was too fat. It was like their wedding band. Miihlstein had made the armband for the production, one of his first jobs, and stole it from wardrobe to give her once the show closed, because he knew she loved the prop. Like Cleopatra would have loved it.
“We ran off to Venice after we married—didn’t you know that? Of course not—before we had you kids. To make connections and find work. But I became deathly ill. The porter had to carry me out of the hotel because the manager thought I was contagious. I was going to die. But your mother took care of me until I was well again.”
“Herr,” Karel interrupted. “Do you miss her?”
Miihlstein looked confused, like he could cry.
“I don’t understand these words. Of course I do. She was my love. My only love.”
“She left us.”
“Yeah. That’s precisely right. There was only one of her and now she’s gone.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE