The Lost Box

      Stefano sat playing with his back to her, his jacket off, his shirtsleeves rolled up. How unguarded he was, his back like a blank wall on which someone was bound to scribble a four-letter word. Or take a potshot with a beebee gun. A dark blotch of sweat was spreading across the back of his shirt. Sofia felt uncomfortable, as if she had no business watching his exertions, seeing what his music cost him.

      He was playing Beethoven, his arms drawn into the powerful rhythm like a canoeist heading into rapids, the tight cords of his arm and shoulder muscles pushing the phrases ahead. How physical a thing his music was - she'd never known this before. Even as he played a slower passage, it seemed as if his back were bearing an immense weight, a burden that might crush him. Yet whatever he carried, the music bore. On it, he shifted the weight of his life, stacked it and hauled it and drove it around like lumber on a flatbed truck, as if he were hoping to build himself a sturdier dwelling than the one he had.

      At the end of the movement, he stopped. He put down the violin and turned to face her.

       Sofia put her arms around him. She could smell the salt of his sweat and feel the dampness of his shirt, as if that, too, were part of the music - an unheard emanation, spilling over into scent and touch. She'd sensed this with Christopher, too, whose music couldn't be contained by sound. It overflowed into the optic nerve, blessing the eyes and filling the pores of the skin. It belonged to life itself.

           "Cara mia, you look tired," said Stefano.

           "I've had a long walk," she said.

           "Where to?"

           "I ended up in another year. I saw Aunt Julia and Uncle Paul. Before they married."

           Stefano stroked her hair. "Magia," he said. "It happens."

          "Isn't the past supposed to be - past?"

           "You can't see it anymore. That doesn't mean it isn't here."

       Yet sometimes you could see it. Sofia remembered her father's telescope. Light that began its travel in the era of the Caesars, stars through which you could gaze at distant time and contemplate a past still present to the eye. She felt as if she'd spent such an afternoon. In sunlight.

      She prepared the lemonade, then walked to the front door to prop it open. Outside, the huge beech tree was shining like a lantern. It's facing west, that's all. Only every leaf was brilliant gold and the earth was fragrant with jasmine. Christopher was curled up, sleeping on the bench that surrounded the trunk of the tree. Teresa was asleep in the carriage beside him.

      Where was the box? It wasn't under the carriage. It was nowhere in sight. In the living room, Stefano picked up his violin and drew his bow across time.