Bariolage

{Denise gracefully hosts Six Sentence Stories, where writers unleash their magic under one simple rule: in no more or no less than 6 sentences.
This week’s prompt word is : VAULT }

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My favourite time of the night …when all sounds of the city mute themselves, as they obey the raised hand of an invisible conductor, holding all instruments silent, before the first notes of a Concerto Grosso are unleashed.

 I can read undistracted now, I thought as my hand caresses the fine covers of my books; first editions or not, all crafted with love and written with an unwavering embrace of life, they all have their place in my heart and at my library…yet my soul yearns for something else, something burrowed deep inside.

One pull of “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” by William Blake followed by a precise push of “Μετά τα Φυσικά” by Aristotle and the mechanism is set in motion filling the air with a low octave glissando, opening the secret door to my vault room.

“If you die before you die, you will not die when you die” is carved at the inside of the heavy door, surrounded by ornaments that defy any attempt to decipher the technique used to create them… so many times I have passed through this threshold, never has a hint of a smile failed to form – as I am the living embodiment of that inscription.

My eyes move from one artifact to the next, each at its own glass case, with its own light over it, telling its own story, a story I witnessed; from the ring, Emperor Theodosius II gifted me for helping him when he fell from his horse that spring day of 450 AD while hunting at the outskirts of Constantinople, to the 1960 Ω Slimline watch prophetically engraved, with the hands stopped at 12.30 (mine is the original, Jackie gave a copy to the Museum in Biel).

Sangue mi chiama as I pick up the violin from Cremona, the one varnished with the blood of the legendary violin maker’s deceased wife…the things we do for love…only a bariolage* can help my soul to find some semblance of peace, an appoggiatura** to aeons of desolation.

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* Bariolage is a French word for a bowing technique that involves rapid changing of strings, often between open strings and “stopped” strings—that is, strings with the fingers down. The effect, which produces a rapid flurry of notes, is used in a great variety of music, from Bach to bluegrass fiddle and beyond.

** Appoggiatura, (from Italian appoggiare, “to lean”), in music, an ornamental note of long or short duration that temporarily displaces, and subsequently resolves into a main note.

 

BY THE COMPANY OF WARRIORS I KEEP

Spira / Nick © December 2022

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