"And what was that?"
Elias turned. His eyes were the color of old piano keys, yellowed and cracked. "If I play it, the note will hear itself. And once heard, it cannot be unplayed." Cantabile 4-- Crack
The violin shattered.
Not the Elias Varga of now—the stooped, half-blind man with ink-stained fingers. He saw the boy of seven, standing in the rubble of Budapest, 1956. He saw his father's hand, still holding a broken cello neck, protruding from the collapsed stairwell. He saw the silence that had followed the shelling—a silence so complete that he had spent the rest of his life trying to fill it. "And what was that
He set the bow to the strings.