The snow fell again, and with it fell also the muffled, mellow sounds of a violin. The old violinist had awakened at dawn as the first rays of sunlight bounced off the white landscape through his window, as he had done each winter day, each year. He bathed only every other day, but never bothering with a comb or a brush, his white bush of hair was equally dramatic on the days it received a wash and on the days it received but a run-through with his bow-hand. He abstained from breakfast, believing that he must develop a real hunger for his work, so it was on any day only a matter of minutes between the initial opening of his eyes and the tuning of his instrument.
The children busying themselves in the snow would not have known any of this, however. To them he was only a sound from the moment their mothers called them back in. They became accustomed to playing while he played. It was not exciting play early in the morning, but industrious, for the old man practiced his scales and arpeggios and other technical exercises then. The children, taking their cue from this, spent the morning building. Dividing into two groups, they would build barriers and forts. Everyone made snowballs and stored some behind the snowy barricades and others in secret places either behind a tree or buried beneath a thin layer of snow.
The older boys led the morning work. "Here, now—this isn't a wall," one would say, kicking at the weak snow. "It must be stronger," he would say, and wander off to work on his snowball collection. The younger builders would look at each other with question mark faces, for too often the reprimanding elder would be a member of the other team. But anxious for the second half of the play, the young builders would continue, drawing up the snow around them and building a bigger, better wall.
The old musician, had he known of the drama outside his window, would not have laughed or smiled at the children's frolic. He despised children as only old men can, and he attempted to keep his contact with them minimal. He thought of them only as potentials—potential conductors or pianists or violinists. He delighted only in young singers, whose pure voices he could only aspire to imitate with his instrument of wood and cat-gut. But children in the snow: they were nothing to him those mornings while his muse was with him.
The beginning of the second part of play was always distinct, like the light strains opening a scherzo. The old man broke his ascending and descending repetitions, and for two minutes there was silence from the house. The children did not know, and only took the opportunity to collect their secret snowballs and run behind their individual barriers to make final plans, but the violinist took these minutes not to rest but to rosin his bow and retune his instrument—neither of which was ever necessary. Once satisfied, the man replaced his instrument, took up his bow, and played.
The children sprung immediately from behind their fortresses with arms cocked. As the violent notes of the violin pierced the morning, a rainbow of white bullets sailed over the white earth, and it looked rather like the two armies were more juggling than fighting. The children yelled with glee, and a few bold ones ventured out from behind the walls with armloads of frozen ammunition. These brave souls were nearly always hit—not by an intentional attack but by one of the numerous balls that was thrown blindly from one side to the other—and most who felt that cold, harmless sting would cry out in exaggerated wails, clutch their powdery wounds, and fall to the earth. They were received by some of the younger boys who felt it their duty to act as medical officers and cart the dead and wounded from the field.
The children would play this game for the two hours that the man practiced his fiery solos, never waning in energy and excitement. No team ever successfully stormed the other's fortress; it was not allowed, for such would end the game too quickly. The children only fed their ark of snow, some gathering more snow, some forming new balls, and some throwing. Cries of "Aiiee!" matched the tones of the maestro's virtuosic passages.
Who knows what caused this day to be different? Perhaps there actually was no difference. Perhaps the play continued as it had all the days of all the winters—all the years before. Surely the old man's music was the same, and surely the children played the same game. But something did happen. The pattern was broken, and a solitary snowball errant found its way to the musician's window, knocked rather too forcefully, and welcomed itself. The violinist, startled, struck a wrong note; and, having placed himself entirely within the music, died with it.
