The Violinist

It was the beginning of winter in the November of 1973 when Joshua first appeared in the life of Myra. He was a boy in the second year of college studying music. She was a girl just out of college after completing her Bachelor in Arts and then employed as a librarian in the Old Library in Mussoorie. He came to her when she was sitting behind her desk in the library and asked for books on violins. She pointed in the direction of the music section.

He came everyday around afternoon and walked up to her desk asking for this book or that. She would duly point him in the right direction. He would come again before leaving to say goodbye. She would smile politely and return his goodbye. One day instead of asking for any book he asked if she would come with him for a cup of tea after the library closed at five in the evening. She agreed. That was exactly ten days before her twenty second birthday.

Joshua came every afternoon and spent time in the library pouring over books on violins. One day before her birthday Myra asked him why was he always reading about violins? Could he play a violin as well? He just smiled in reply. 

The next day Joshua did not come in the afternoon. He turned up in the evening instead just as Myra was picking her handbag and the library keys and was preparing to leave. She turned around and there he was standing in the dim light of the dusk coming in from the glass windows. She stood there looking at him as he put the violin under his chin and started playing with his eyes closed. Myra sat back in her chair as Joshua continued to play. She felt as if she was flying with notes of the violin. 

 

They lost count of the time. When he stopped playing it was dark outside. The library was lit only by the light of a single street lamp coming in from one of the windows. Myra asked what was the music that he was playing? Joshua replied that it was Nocturne No. 20 originally composed by Frédéric Chopin.  She said she loved it. Happy birthday he replied.

In a few months despite all her protests Myra was blackmailed by her parents into marrying Zishan, the son of a wealthy industrialist from Delhi. Joshua met her on the eve of her marriage and said that on her birthday every year, no matter where she was, he would come and play the violin under her window.

When Zishan and Myra were getting married at the Union Church, Joshua stood outside on the street and played the Nocturne No. 20 on his violin. Tears didn’t stop falling from Myra’s eyes.

Within a few months of their marriage the sweetness of the relationship faded and the fights became more frequent. On her twenty third birthday as Zishan and his family gathered half-heartedly around a pound cake to celebrate a violin started to play somewhere out on the street. Myra ran to her room upstairs and locked herself. She stayed in her room for the rest of the evening, listening to violin play in the darkness of the night.

Another year of marriage somehow went by and when November came she told Zishan that she wanted to go to Mussoorie to be with her ailing father during her birthday. On her birthday when her family gathered in the living room to cut the cake she excused herself to go to her room. When her father asked why was she going, she said that she wanted to listen to music. What music asked her mother. She didn’t reply. The violin played as she sat near the window and stared in to the darkness.

Myra never went back to Delhi. Zishan sought lack of a child as an excuse and got married a second time. Myra applied for the job of the librarian again. She decided to look for Joshua. She went to the college where Joshua was studying and got an address and a phone number. When she called the phone number Joshua’s mother picked up the call and informed Myra that he died in a bus accident two years ago.

Myra died at the age of 62 years in 2013, she never went back to Delhi or to Zishan and on the evening of each of her birthday Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne No. 20 played on a violin outside her window.

In November when winter is arriving, if you happen to visit the Old Library in Mussoorie on a lonely evening and you listen closely, you will hear someone playing the violin.

Author’s note: The inspiration for this story came to me while I was reading Sarah Winman’s Tin Man.