NotWriting, the blog

Sonata for Knife and Violin in F Major; Op. 1 “Revenge”

by Chris Orcutt

At the moment he plunged the knife into Vito's chest, Nikolai Vernikov recalled his recent liberation from an anal-retentive habit: dicing up watermelon and eating each cube with a fork. Vito's chest crunched like the melon had when the blade pierced the cold, dewy rind. That afternoon, he had hacked off chunks of the melon and eaten them standing at the kitchen counter. Then he returned to the living room, practiced the Kreutzer Sonata, and when he got hungry, he fed on the melon. Slapping the blade into the red pulp, a thrill came over him; for the first time, he experienced the joyful freedom of gross physical movements. There was a delicious abandon to them; something primordial was awakened.

Between his career as a concert violinist and his hobby of building model ships in bottles, Nikolai's entire existence to that point had been a study in fine motor skills and precision. He had never swung a baseball bat or even thrown a punch. Since the violin was his livelihood, he wore black leather gloves everywhere he went, even in summer, to prevent injury to his hands, and he wore them now as he drove the knife deeper into Vito.

The former bully's nostrils flared. His hands shot out and clawed at Nikolai's shoulders. As Vito sank to the floor, he tried to speak but the gurgling of blood muffled his voice. Whatever the idiot wanted to say, Nikolai was certain it wasn't an apology.

Standing over the body, taking in the astonishment frozen on Vito's face, Nikolai drifted away to the summer of '77—“the Summer of Sam”—when his family escaped from the Ukraine and made it to Brooklyn. Almost immediately, and for no conceivable reason but to be cruel, Vito and his friends began to torment him and his sister Katerina, calling them “Commie bastards,” punching him, lifting Katerina's skirt, spreading rumors through school that Nikolai's father was a Soviet spy. From the beginning he and his sister pleaded with their parents to move, but they wouldn't listen and the situation only got worse, culminating in Vito and his gang ambushing Nikolai, hurling baseballs at his head, and smashing his violin—a gift from his grandfather in Minsk. Bruised and sobbing, he ran home, took father's rifle from the closet, and sat on the bed weighing his two options: either kill them or kill himself. Luckily his mother found him before he could choose, and they finally moved away.

Nikolai yanked the knife out of Vito's lifeless body, carried it to the kitchen, and washed it off in the sink. Some blood had sprayed on his face and gloves; that got washed off, too. He wiped the 12” chef's knife dry and returned it to his gym bag. As for the poncho covering his clothes, he would dispose of it elsewhere.

Tomorrow morning were the auditions for first violin—concertmaster—with the New York Symphony Orchestra, and he wanted to get in an hour's practice before bed. Conductors, critics, and his fellow musicians concurred: Nikolai was a superlative technician—a human metronome with freakishly perfect pitch; however, they also universally agreed that his play was an emotional desert, which is why he could never expect higher placement in the orchestra. A small voice inside him was determined to prove them wrong.

Maestro Holbrook Robinson squinted over his reading glasses at Nikolai as the Ukrainian strode onto the stage.

“Hello? Mister Vernikov? I didn’t know you were auditioning.”

“It is an open call, no?”

“Yes, but…”

Nikolai held the violin to his ear and plucked the strings to check the tuning. The violin was ready, and so was he.

The Maestro sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Very well, but we need to stay on shedshule, so if you please...” He waved for Nikolai to get on with it.

Nikolai handed the score to the bald-headed pianist, which prompted an immediate frown from the man.

“The Kreutzer? Overkill, don't you think?”

“Not for first violin.” Nikolai stared at the pianist.

“I'm not sure if—”

“Just follow my lead.” Nikolai lifted violin and bow simultaneously. “Open adagio and build to presto, thank you.”

Of all of Beethoven's violin sonatas, the Kreutzer—and especially the tempestuous first movement, which Nikolai was about to play—demonstrated virtuosity with the violin more than any other. Months earlier, when Nikolai learned that James Chen, the former concertmaster, was leaving for Berlin, he had made a calculated decision to use this piece to showcase his skills as a soloist. He knew the Maestro viewed him as lacking the charisma necessary to captivate an audience, but ever since he’d joined the symphony he had coveted First Chair, and with a chance now to seize it, he was ready to lay bare his skill and suffer the Maestro's venomous critique afterwards.

The plaintive opening strains of the Kreutzer failed to get Maestro's attention; Robinson chatted with one of the board members instead of watching Nikolai. However, as the tempo picked up, Nikolai gave in to the music and forgot all about the audition. He loved this piece, with its harmonic interplay, its musical cat and mouse between piano and violin. The pianist was good; he maintained even time and kept grandiose flourishes to a minimum. With the piano somewhat subdued, the richness of Nikolai's strings sang above it all. Usually while playing Nikolai had a mental image of his body as a musical machine, his bow arm a great driving piston and his fingers flying up and down the fingerboard, compressing and releasing strings like so many valves opening and closing shut. Now, however, the music coursed through him and he thought nothing of mechanics. His torso swayed in time, although he wasn't directly aware of that either. It was as though he was hovering over his body, and for the first time in 32 years of playing he ceased to see the notes in his head—trailing past his mind's eye like a stock ticker—and instead perceived the music the way Beethoven had intended it—as a transfer of pure emotion. A hot flush washed down his neck, through his arms, and into the instrument. Suddenly he understood the composer's tortured mind when creating this piece—his soaring, joyous highs, and his abysmal, homicidal lows.

Sweat streamed down his cheeks, which was unusual because he never perspired during a performance. What was wrong? His fingers buzzed, his bow arm throbbed. Plucking his way through the pizzicato sequence, glimpses of Vito's murder came to him—thrusting the knife in, licking his teeth in ecstasy of the bloodlust, reveling in what had to be Vito's final realization: that Nikolai had gotten his revenge. The liberation was fabulous; it reminded him of his father's tears of joy when they arrived in America. Killing his former tormentor had given him life, and that life now resounded through his violin.

In the remaining seconds of the piece, Nikolai lost consciousness of the notes entirely. He felt himself atop a magnificent stallion in a driving gallop for the finish. Always he had held back; but this time, into these final few notes, he put the last full measure of his devotion: his hopes, his dreams, his fears, his breath—his very life he gave to this music, resolved that if God should strike him down there and then, he would die a contented man.

He scraped the bow across the strings for the last note and dropped his arms in exhaustion. When he opened his eyes, the Maestro was on his feet, clapping.

“Nikolai Vernikov!” The Maestro came to him, held Nikolai's face in his hands. “Where did this come from?”

The murder. There was no other explanation. Nikolai pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.

“Steady practice,” he said. “Practice, and channeling my emotions, I suppose.”

III. Adagio espressivo; azione aumentante, complicazioni

Between July and November—a four-month period of waiting for the Symphony to begin its new season—Nikolai played in The Moonlight String Quartet. Whether a city-sponsored concert, a fundraising gala at the Plaza, or a simple wedding, the Quartet took whatever work it could get to pay the bills and stay sharp for the next season. This Sunday they had just finished a 50th wedding anniversary party on a Fifth Avenue rooftop overlooking Central Park. The October foliage sparkled in the late afternoon sun, and although it was cool, he decided to walk home to his West Side apartment via the park.

Outside, he crossed Fifth Avenue and cut into the park at 81st Street, next to the Met. He was a hundred feet in, strolling past a touch football game, when behind him the clip-clop of a woman's shoes and the grinding sound of rolling wheels echoed on the asphalt path.

“Nikolai, wait for me!”

It was Jane Halstead, cellist in the Symphony and their quartet, running unsteadily toward him, dragging the cello case on wheels behind her.

Nikolai went stiff. He had no idea what to say. The black party dress she wore clung to her petite body and stood out sharply against the fiery red of a sugar maple behind her. He longed to scoop her into his arms, carry her to a pile of freshly fallen leaves, and feel her fragility beneath him.

She finally reached him and put a hand on her chest to catch her breath.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you…congrats on first chair.”

“Thank you.”

Recently Nikolai's sense of smell had become strangely acute. Although he had been close to Jane countless times before, this was the first time he detected a fragrance around her. But it wasn't perfume or soapy skin; the sour scent was faint as a whisper, yet it gave his nose the same prickly sensation as ozone after a thunderstorm. After a moment, he realized it was her lusty pheromones he smelled.

She nudged him with her shoulder. “So…who’d you have to kill?”

His eyes shot open.

“What?”

“C’mon, Maestro’s a sonovabitch,” she said. “I thought for sure he’d get someone outside. What’d you do, bump off some Cleveland hack?”

“No, just practice.”

“Sure, that’s what they all say.” Jane shivered. “Brrr, forgot to bring a coat. Brilliant, huh? I mean, it is October.”

Jane had been walking awkwardly in the short heels, so when she tripped, Nikolai was right there to grab her. He caught her by the waist. Regaining her balance, Jane held his gloved hand.

“Hey, by the way—what’s the deal here? Don’t tell me you’re one of those germophobes.”

Nikolai drummed his fingers on her flat tummy.

“Sensitive instruments,” he said.

They were beneath a stone bridge when she stopped short, pushed him against the cool rock wall, and kissed him.

“Speaking of instruments,” she said. “I’ve got one that needs tuning. Come back to my apartment with me, maybe you can fix it.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Within a week, they were practicing together daily, taking long walks up Riverside Drive to Grant's Tomb, and on days when they had no commitments, having picnics in bed and making love incessantly.

At the opening concerts of the season, Nikolai was hailed by critics as the next Itzhak Perlman or Yehudi Menuhin. Nikolai framed the review of a Times critic who had previously shredded one of his performances with the Moonlight String Quartet. Recanting, the critic wrote, “Vernikov radiates a love for the violin so profound, it is as though he has dived into a deep pool, experienced music in its purest form, and returned to share his discoveries. Feeling the notes through Vernikov is tantamount to a religious experience.”

But then, without warning, as quickly as his newfound sensitivity had appeared, it vanished—during a complex Brahms solo. His playing suddenly went limp, and while the audience seemed not to notice, Nikolai did. He brooded over it that evening with Jane.

“So you had an off night?” she said. “You can't be perfect all the time.”

He went to bed pondering this. She didn't understand, but as long as Nikolai kept her in the dark about the cause of his transformation—the murder—she never would. Killing Vito had given him the ability to feel deeply and truly, and that evening it drained mercilessly out of him, leaving his body as empty as a blown-out eggshell.

Jittery and unable to sleep, Nikolai wandered out to the kitchen and removed block of Muenster from the refrigerator. As he cut and ate, he recalled the incident that had started him down this path...

It was an accident. He was on his way out of the 65th Street stage entrance when Vito bumped into him. Vito had been carrying a bag of cement on his shoulder, and the impact knocked Nikolai to the sidewalk.

“Hey, watch where you’re going, buddy,” Vito said.

Nikolai looked up at him. Vito was fatter now, of course, and his hairline had receded, but the tell-tale sign of a bully—the simian smirk—was exactly as Nikolai remembered it. With the cement bag still on his shoulder, Vito stepped closer until his head cast a shadow over Nikolai's face.

“Holy shit, I thought you guys went back to Russia.”

Nikolai stood up. Vito dropped the cement bag on a pallet at the curb.

“Sure left in a hurry,” he said. “What happened, your father get caught spying?”

Vito was still intimidating, and if it came down to it, he could probably beat Nikolai in a simple street fight. But deep in the center of his being, Nikolai detected a faint glow, like an ash-covered ember, and he knew he was not a tentative, frightened child anymore. Mastery of the violin, and the thousands of hours of solitude it had entailed, had made him uncomfortably familiar with his most secret self and the violent fantasies that resided there. To prevent the situation from escalating, it was better to ignore Vito and leave. Besides Vito was beneath him, and a horse never acknowledges a dog. Clutching the violin case under his arm, he started down the sidewalk.

Vito called over his shoulder. “Guys, come here. I want you to meet my Commie friend.”

Nikolai's gloved hands balled into fists. Although tempted to turn around, he knew such a course of action here, on a busy Manhattan sidewalk, would be disastrous. Instead, he glanced at the ripe melons on the corner fruit stand, foresaw how he would extinguish Vito, and smiled at the soon-to-be extinct bully.

“Another time.” And with that, he had walked away.

Nikolai popped a chunk of cheese into his mouth and dropped the knife into the sink. Snuffing out Vito had transformed him from a sterile musical contraption into a real person who experienced every moment with blinding, soul-searing intensity. He could never go back to the way he used to be, which meant only one thing: he would have to kill again.

For a month after the first killing, the new energy coursed through him. He was indefatigable; his senses sang. By the fifth week, however, the life-force had dissipated to a fraction of the original, and Nikolai found himself staggering zombie-like to meetings and rehearsals with the maestro. At this rate—assuming two weeks’ vacation, of course—he needed to kill ten people this year to maintain his new level of playing. An intimidating number, but Nikolai resolved to approach it the same way he did a new score: one measure at a time. He wouldn’t be killing all ten at once; rather, he needed to kill one person ten times. A big difference. And far more manageable.

The second week of November, Nikolai returned to the old neighborhood for one of Vito’s co-conspirators, Danny Carozza. Finding him alone in his garage one night, Nikolai snuck up behind him and with one swipe of a crowbar, snapped his neck like a pretzel stick. Immediately, his play soared again.

He was okay until the week before Christmas when the long run of holiday performances had left his body exhausted and his spirit spent. And with three weeks still left in the orchestra’s season, he knew he wouldn’t be able pull it off without an energy boost.

With a bit of research, Nikolai traced the last of Vito’s confederates, Peter Olson, to a remote lake house in the Catskills. He borrowed Jane’s girlfriend’s SUV and drove there in a pre-dawn blizzard with the menacing first movement of Schubert’s Symphony No. 8—the “Unfinished” symphony—blaring on the stereo. When he arrived, he drove partway down the long, secluded driveway, parked, and grabbed the claw hammer from his knapsack. He hiked through the snow the rest of the way to Peter’s house.

In a stroke of luck, Peter was carrying a load of wood from the shed when Nikolai showed up. It was remarkable how much this Peter resembled the seven-year-old version—still with a crew cut, just taller and puffier. He had wanted to strike Peter in the back of the head, but the crunching snow gave him away; the moron turned at the last moment, and the hammer claw splintered his windpipe instead. Perpetually attuned to sound, Nikolai couldn’t help noticing the agreeable thunking the logs made as Peter’s body collapsed in the snow. Nikolai erased their footprints and walked back to the car.

Driving the deserted, snowbound roads on his way back to the interstate, Nikolai lamented at the sloppiness of this one compared to the first two. Yet, he reasoned, one shouldn’t be picky; after all, dead is dead.

He was on his way into a meeting to discuss phrasing and tablature for a special Bach Easter concert when, just outside the Maestro’s office, he overheard Robinson talking about him on the phone.

“One of the great musical mysteries,” he said. “Sometimes I look at him and can’t believe it’s the same man. Few months ago, just another second violin. Barely heard him, to tell you the truth—what with my brass and clarinets drowning him out back there. At least with that twelve-year-old at Julliard, people saw it coming—the boy had written four symphonies for goodness’ sake. But this...well, I don’t know what to make of it.”

Nikolai stood back from the doorway and waited. Across the room, the water cooler gurgled. The maestro sighed in his office.

“Have to make a few changes in the new year, unfortunately. No, no, not him. My cellos. Weak, I’m afraid. Yes, he’s dating one of them, so I’ve heard—too bad some of that skill couldn’t rub off. Mmm, know what you mean. Something strange afoot, but damned if I have any idea. Well, should ring off now. He’ll be popping in any minute.”

Nikolai leaned against the wall, caressing his supple leather folio of sheet music. Maestro was suspicious, but there was no way he could know anything. Still, this wasn’t the first time the idea of eliminating Robinson had occurred to him. If killing those mutts increased his perception and creativity ten-fold, imagine the transformation he would experience by taking the life of a brilliant and sophisticated conductor! He might not need to kill again. Now was too soon, but in a few months the situation would be ripe. All he had to do was hold on.

Out of curiosity, Nikolai scanned the newspapers after each murder. The first two appeared in short, back-page pieces, but his killing of Olson was never mentioned. Although only two-and-a-half hours from Manhattan, the Catskills were still a world away.

Not that he was concerned about being caught. Besides elevating his violin skills, the murders had imbued him with a divine clarity of hindsight and foresight. From the beginning, he had varied his modus operandi to prevent the police from establishing a pattern. No one had ever seen him, and he had always worn his gloves, so there were no fingerprints. Frankly, he was amazed with his planning; if he hadn’t been raised a violinist, he might have become a great chess player—another Kasparov, perhaps.

But the creative beast in him was not impressed with his inventive plans or their crisp execution. Again and again and again, the beast demanded fresh blood; and each time, the duration of his bliss grew shorter, and he had to kill once more. This was a problem because with each killing he lost another deserving victim, gradually forcing him to lower his standards. Of course there were plenty of people he wanted to kill—his building super, whom Nikolai caught poking around in his apartment; a realtor who had lied to him about the apartment’s condition and charged him an exorbitant fee; a smug neighbor from the next block who walked his dog to Nikolai’s street every morning and let the animal shit on their sidewalk—yes, there were dozens of these people, but all were sadly off-limits because other people knew he loathed them, and his crimes would be traced swiftly back to him.

So, Nikolai had to settle for more distant, but no less deserving, victims. And in some cases, the killings were purely serendipitous. In February, after a night rehearsal that didn’t end until one-thirty, a drug addict cornered Nikolai on the stairs of the 66th Street subway entrance; so, following the briefest of deliberations, he shoved the addict headlong down the precipitous flight of steps, breaking the man’s neck. In March, he fed the beast a snotty young man he observed stealing a parking space from an old woman. And in early April, while shopping with Jane in the D’Agostino on 91st and Columbus, a drunk businessman bumped into him, causing Nikolai to lose his balance and knock over an apple juice display. The man sneered at Nikolai—still in his tux and carrying his violin case—and slogged away. Claiming he forgot a score back at the rehearsal hall, Nikolai left Jane to finish the shopping. Fifteen minutes later, he followed the man down a dark and misty Columbus Avenue, and finished him by ramming the point of his Mont Blanc pen into the soft flesh beneath his ear. Instantly, as though getting a fix of dope, that luscious creative power welled up inside him; but this time the craving remained.

IV. Finale: Adagio accelerando; morte dalla vita

He was at the kitchen table putting the finishing touches on his latest ship-in-a-bottle when his tuxedo shirt suddenly plopped onto the table. Nikolai’s hand, normally steadier than a brain surgeon's, jerked, and the tweezers tore down the ship’s mast and rigging.

“Dammit.” He looked up. Jane was leaning against the doorjamb. Maybe it was the harsh light from the kitchen, but Jane’s skin seemed to lack its usual vitamin-rich vigor. The bags under her eyes were almost purple.

“Sorry, hon,” she said. “Just thought you should know—you’re gonna need a new shirt. Couldn’t get the blood stains out of that one.”

He did his best to look puzzled. Now he knew how cheating spouses felt when caught in their lies. Jane turned away, picked lint off her sweater.

“Unbelievable blood stains. What’d you do, slaughter a pig?”

“Bad bloody nose,” Nikolai said. “You know how dry that rehearsal hall gets.”

“Makes sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“The stains.” She waved a hand. “They were mostly on one cuff, like you put your hand up to stop the bleeding.”

“That’s it, exactly,” he said. “You’d make a great detective.”

Jane nodded, held an imaginary violin under her chin and began to play.

“Practice with me? I could use a little accompaniment.”

“You look like you need a nap,” Nikolai said.

She stopped and glared at him. “What I need is practice. Are you coming or not?”

“Yes, just let me clean up here.”

A moment later the rich, resonant sound of cello scales emanated from the living room. Nikolai bowed his head over the tools of his hobby and softly wept. Jane would want to practice some sprightly piece no doubt; meanwhile, the tune that pounded in his ears was quite different: the second movement of Beethoven’s Third. The funeral march.

The night he had hoped would never come ultimately arrived. Jane was meeting her girlfriends for a late comedy show on the East Side, and Nikolai had ostensibly been invited to a dinner party at the Maestro’s (regrettably, his plans for Robinson would be delayed). He left the apartment first, kissing her goodbye next to the umbrella stand in the hallway, and somberly rode the elevator down. He waited in the alley across from their building. He waited for her.

She finally came out at quarter to ten, dressed oddly in her knee-high black leather boots and shiny black raincoat. It was cool for the first week of May, but that didn’t explain the raincoat. He quickly dismissed the thought and followed her across Columbus Avenue. She was headed for Central Park.

Jane entered the park at 79th Street, an act that despite the decline in muggings was strictly verboten; one simply didn’t go in there after sundown. From fifty yards back, Nikolai tailed her, his throat tightening up every time she skirted a bush or dipped into the shadows. Given what he had in store for her, such worry was absurd. In fact, her choice to stroll through the park at night with nary another soul in sight could only be considered fortuitous.

But random attackers, if they chose to kill her, wouldn’t do so with compassion and restraint as he soon would. They would drag her thrashing and screaming into the weeds, have their way with her, and dump her body in a shallow grave of last fall’s leaves. Nikolai, on the other hand, had planned this for a week and come up with a painless death for her: a Phillips head screwdriver, sharpened to a point, thrust neatly into her brain stem. He wished it didn’t have to be this way—Jane had been a talented and loving companion—but he couldn’t risk her exposing his secret, even if unintentionally.

She led him past the Delacorte Theater, where leotard-clad actors would soon be doing Shakespeare in the Park, and across the Great Lawn, where in a few weeks sunbathers would festoon the verdant grass. Continuing down the asphalt path, he was struck by a chilling piece of irony: she was headed straight for the stone bridge behind the Met—the place where they first kissed.

As the path snaked through the trees and descended into a hollow, he lost her. He’d been following her closely, carefully. How could this happen?

It wasn’t important right now. In a minute, they would be out of the park, and his best opportunity for killing her would be gone. Nikolai began to jog. She was still nowhere in sight. He started to run.

Ahead, only the outlines of the stone bridge were visible, and beneath the bridge was a thick pool of gloom. Hopefully rats wouldn’t be congregating there; he was scared to death of rats.

As he plunged into the darkness, Nikolai observed the lovely acoustics here beneath the bridge. Perhaps one day this summer he would come here to play, to enjoy the coolness and the cave-like echo. Tourists would gather, toss him money and—

Out of the blackness, a glint of something shiny flashed into view, and suddenly the sensation of white-hot needles gripped his chest. What, had he run into something? A pole? A section of scaffolding?

Whatever it was that hit him, it sent him reeling to the pavement. He got halfway to his feet, leaned against the rock wall, and slumped down so his back was against it. Now there was just enough light from the street lamp outside to see what had happened.

A large knife—his 12” Henckel’s chef’s knife, in fact—angled out of his chest like a bizarre coat hook. The clip-clop of footsteps filled the cavern, and then a shape squatted down beside him. The smell was unmistakable—it was Jane. His eyes adjusted, and she was on her haunches in front of him, cupping her chin in black gloves.

“Sorry, Nikolai,” she said.

He tried to speak, but she quieted him with a hand on his knee.

“Shhh. You don’t have long, so listen.”

He had the odd sensation of feeling hot and cold at the same time: the leaking blood, hot on his skin, and his insides, being drained of the blood, like jagged icicles.

“I kept wanting to know—how could this second-stringer develop the talent overnight to become concertmaster? How? I had my suspicions, like when you put 300 miles on Melinda’s car in that snowstorm, but it wasn’t until the night at D’Agostino’s that I knew. You see, I followed you. I watched you kill that man, and when I saw your mood and playing the next day, I knew why.”

Nikolai shivered. Jane took his hand in hers.

“I had to, Nikolai...you of all people must understand that. The fact is, I’ve never been more than an above-average cellist. I always wanted to be brilliant, to be a star, but didn’t have the talent. I had to, I’m sorry...Maestro is threatening to fire us, and my cello is all I have.”

She leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.

“Now I’ll have your strength.” She stood up and looked around. “I really should be getting back. Auditions for the new chamber group are tomorrow morning, and I need to practice. Goodbye, Nikolai.”

He watched her fade into the darkness and relished the woody echo of her boots one last time. And then the part of his brain that had memorized countless pieces of music conjured up the Kreutzer one last time. It was his lullaby as he drifted off to a clear and peaceful sleep.

THE END