The Rock Beyond The Fountain

In the middle of a large open plaza stood a dry circular fountain. The sun was shining intensely that day, making the surface of the fountain shine like a giant mirror. People walked through the plaza, in little groups of two and three, talking without pause and only sporadically looking at the trees that surrounded the fountain or at the fountain itself. A couple of older women sat on a green bench a few feet away from the edge. They talked in whispers and looked around every so often, as if to confirm through direct observation their soft little statements. In the middle of the fountain, there was a smaller fountain that held a bird bath. The bird bath was dry and there were only a few black birds that came to play in its concave surface out of habit and inertia. The air seemed to be touched by the brown color of the dirt and the little dry trees and the surface of the fountain; the brown made the air a little thicker, a little more opaque, as if a very faint cloud sat on top of the plaza, surrounding all the people that moved through it. The sound of cars could be heard in the distance, only partially covered up by the music of an old man playing a strange violin.
Inside the fountain, there were three children playing. One was a thin little girl with long blonde hair tied in a pony tail. She was wearing a long pink dress, tied around her waist with a soft belt of the same color. She also wore little white shoes that clicked and clacked on the hard surface of the fountain as she ran back and forth. Another was a little boy with blonde hair and lost eyes. He wore a pair of blue jeans and a checkered blue flannel shirt, which was mostly unbuttoned. The third was a little girl, smaller than the first, with long black hair, also tied in a thick pony tail behind her back. She wore a blue and white button up shirt with long vertical stripes and blue jeans. Her eyes were bubbly and bright as she scanned the many fun possibilities that opened up around her.
At this moment, they were holding hands near the bird bath. The little blond girl would say "jump!" and all three would jump together, or mostly together. One of them might stumble and then they would all laugh and get back into formation. Then the little blond girl would say "jump!" again and it would all repeat and the laughter would be just as fresh and free as it ever was and, after the sound of their voices had faded off into a faint echo that bounced off the distant corners of the plaza, all three of them would return to their original places and the game would start all over again. Without any warning, after one of the rounds of jumping, the little blond boy walked off and started to wander around the fountain, flapping his arms around like a marionette cut loose from its guiding strings. His head would also shift back and forth, as if the muscles of his neck had been released from their normal functions and were now moving in all directions without cause or reason. When the girls saw him move like this, they laughed harder than ever and the little girl with black hair said: "Look at him! He’s crazy!" The little boy did not respond but just kept on shifting around aimlessly around the perimeter of the circle, wandering close to the short little curved wall that formed the edges of the fountain.
As he moved around and around, his head sometime shifted so drastically forward that he would look momentarily over the edge and his eyes would focus on a leaf or a pebble or a piece of wrapper that was lying on the ground. The little girls kept on laughing and the blond girl said, as if she had just thought of it: "He’s gone crazy! Look at him!" The little boy kept on circling and his body was swinging so wildly that he came to rest his full stomach on the curved edge of the fountain. Then he stopped and the little girls looked at each other, wondering what had happened.
The little boy extended his whole body over the edge and reached out with his hand toward the ground outside the fountain. There was a little rock there that was shining in the sun. He reached as hard as he could but his arm wasn’t quite long enough and he couldn’t quite reach it. He pulled back and looked around himself to see if there was any other solution. Coming to the conclusion that he couldn't leave the fountain, and also realizing that he had to get the rock, he extended his body over the edge once again, trying harder this time, grunting with the effort.
The girls looked at each other once again. The little girl with black hair said: "I wonder what he’s doing." The little girl with blonde hair said: "I don’t know what he’s doing. I want to sing." The little girl with black hair responded: "Yes, if you sing, then I can dance. I will get him so we can dance together while you sing!" The little girl with blonde hair nodded happily and watched while her friend ran towards the grunting little boy.
"Come over here! Leave that alone! We want to sing and dance and I want you to dance with me!" she said and, as she said it, she tugged the little boy by his left hand.
The little boy did not respond but he did not give in. Instead, grunting harder, he extended his little body even farther and he moaned softly with the pain of stretching his right arm so far. The rock was still a few inches away from his fingers.
"I’m telling you! Come with me! I want to dance with you! Leave that alone! You can’t reach it! Come and dance!" and she tugged on his left arm a little harder.
But the boy would not budge and he leaned over so far that it looked like he was about to slide over the edge and land on his head on the ground outside the fountain. The two older women looked over with a slight look of alarm on their faces. The little girl with black hair turned to look at her blonde friend who shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. Then the black haired girl released the little boy and walked away, shaking her own head in disbelief. As the little boy felt the release on his left hand, he reached even farther and his finger closed around the shiny surface of the rock. He immediately pulled back with one swift motion and he landed on his feet inside the shining circle. He dropped the little rock inside his shirt pocket and smiled with satisfaction. His shirt was covered in light brown dust and his face was covered in thick sweat which made his eyes water.
He turned around towards the bird bath but the girls were gone. He could see them walking down the path towards the big buildings beyond the plaza. He burrowed his forehead, wondering why they had left. Then he heard the sound of his mother’s voice, coming from the opposite direction and he started to run. He skipped over the edge of the fountain easily and he ran past the two older women and the man with the strange violin. He was smiling as he ran and the little rock was rubbing against his sweaty chest through the thick fabric of the flannel shirt. The fountain was lonely once again, except for the few birds that still came, out of habit and inertia.

A Melody From Lost Days

The old man walked down the cement steps slowly, holding onto the metal rail with his right hand while he held the violin case with his left. As he leaned forward, the sunlight fell invisibly upon his short black hair, which showed long streaks of white and little spots of naked pink scalp in the strong clear light. One step at a time he moved, breathing slowly, while small groups of people walked past him in a rush. A Latin couple holding hands and talking in soft whispers, their heads almost touching. A proud middle aged man, his head up high and pulled backwards, examining the plaza as if it was his private kingdom, and his two beautiful brunette daughters in smooth elegant dresses, the thin fabric subtly tracing the outlines of their soft thin bodies. A group of three middle aged women talking loudly about the sunny weather in voices that echoed through the small trees, words that attempted to hide too many afternoons passed away in restless boredom and troubled vague angst.
The old man would nod slowly at each stranger that passed by him, whether they acknowledged it or not, and then he would continue moving at his own slow pace. He stepped down onto the light brown dirt path that led to the dry fountain and he moved a bit faster on the flat surface, carefully looking forward with slim, tired eyes. He came to an empty green bench, next to the short baby trees that were not tall enough or full enough to offer shade from the sun, and there he sat down, nodding his head back and forth in a simple affirmation of his actions. Placing the violin case on the bench next to him, he leaned back and took a few deep breaths with his eyes closed, his brow furrowed in a sincere effort at concentration. The sound of kids playing came from the direction of the fountain. The sound of cars honking came from the direction of the museum. The sound of birds singing came from the short little dry trees all around the path. After a few moments of darkness and deep inhalations, he opened his eyes again and he looked all around him, his eyes blinking at the light as if he had just woken up from a long sleep. Then he stretched his arms and took hold of the violin case.
He opened it carefully, unfastening one lock at a time. Very slowly and methodically, he took out the Gao-Hu, the traditional Chinese violin that his father had given him on a sunny afternoon much like this one, many years ago. He looked at it for a moment, examining its short, fat cylindrical body, its long thin neck, the two taut strings and the two large tuning knobs, all carefully polished, as shiny as the day he had first laid eyes on its delicate curved shapes. He leaned back once again, opened his legs and placed the instrument between them. Then he pulled out the bow and ran it softly across the strings. A thin ghostly sound emerged that echoed over the noisy plaza, trailing away into the distance to become intertwined with bird song. Two older women turned over to look at him. They were sitting on a bench much like the one he was sitting on, but closer to the dry fountain. Their attention held on him for a moment and then it faded and they returned to their conversation. The old man rearranged himself on the wooden bench. He propped up the violin case and left it open, in case someone wanted to pay him for his effort. Then he turned his eyes back towards the violin itself.
He allowed the sounds of the kids playing in the fountain to drift into him, like cool water sliding into a finely crafted vase. The laughter, the screams, the calls, they all resonated within him, and he could almost be a little boy once again, a little boy that could now hear his father calling, asking him to come and play the violin while he ran away into the woods, ‘no, no violin today. I want the creek. I want the forest. I want to run. No violin. No.’ And the kids screamed louder and their screams rang through the plaza and then he pressed the bow onto the strings, and he pressed the strings with his left hand. He closed his eyes once more and then ran the bow over the strings in a single decisive move, and the sound was now loud and present and full, resonating through the plaza with the confident beauty of folk tales and mythic legends, and the sound of running laughing children was like a tinkling counterpoint to the lilting melody that sprang from his hands, growing from a faint whisper to a soaring musical statement and then back again. Up and up, sliding into a higher octave that bounced off the sunlight like electrical explosions over a charged metal plate, he pulled his head back and the light fell on his closed eyes and it was as if the music had flared into fire and the fire was all over his skin and it ran like little incandescent rivers over the trees and up to the sky and the melody was slow and stately and sad and it was all coming from him, through him and around him. In the midst of clear resonant ecstasy and lost conversations that mingled like frenzied ostinatos under the vibrant power of the simple song, only he could remember. Only he knew that it was the same sad melody his father had played, back when time went on forever and no danger could stop a little boy from running into dark waters or jumping over dark holes in the ground. Only he knew that it was the same melody he never learned when he had his father for a teacher, and that he now learned when he only had himself in a cold land of ghosts.
He opened his eyes as the melody came sliding down to its original register. The ladies across the path were looking at him once again, smiling. He had made some mistakes, he knew the melody wasn’t perfect, not yet, it wasn’t quite the same melody that he remembered, but he was getting closer, a little closer every day. He nodded at the ladies as he played the final low note, making the strings rumble with grounded finality. He pulled the bow away from the strings and took a very deep breath. Two men in thick leather jackets walked by talking of finances. He looked up at them but their faces were turned away, not even interested enough to purposefully ignore him. He looked back towards the stairway and saw a teenage girl in a light brown summer dress walking by slowly, her half closed eyes turned towards the thin clouds and their clear blue background. Then he looked back at the two ladies and smiled and nodded.
He leaned backwards and pressed the bow to the strings. He heard the first strains of the little melody roaming through him once again, like the fingers of his father’s hand petting his little head, like his father’s voice telling him about the future, about countries far away where things would be better, about dreams, about disappointment and about sadness. He closed his eyes and slid into the melody with renewed commitment, with a sense of rediscovered passion, letting the notes take him far away, to a place that had no beginning and no purpose, a place where death was an illusion and loneliness was just a drink of cool water from a gentle lagoon in the middle of a meadow. The melody stretched and soared, bursting from his old wrinkled fingers like a flock of pigeons seeking the emptiness of the open sky. It was almost there. Maybe this time he would get it right. If not today, then tomorrow. Soon enough, the true melody, the one he remembered in dreams and hummed while he walked in the morning, the one that made his heart shiver like crystal tears about to shatter, that melody would come out from the old violin, soon it would live again and it would fill this sun soaked plaza in the middle of a noisy urban park, and it would touch it with the same gentle colors of melancholic hope that had once washed over that little wooden cabin, peaceful and delicate, sitting quietly by the side of the forest.