Rike

Rike was a musician who spoke very little unless somebody asked him about instruments, and who was usually to be found repairing something that did not belong to him.

Zarina came to the boarding-house courtyard one evening and found only him, sitting against the wall working on the bridge of an old instrument. She asked where everybody was. He said not here. She said she could see that. He kept working. She asked whether they were coming and he said probably, and when she asked whether he knew, he said no. Months earlier that would have irritated her past bearing. She sat down opposite him and waited instead, and Tessa arrived an hour later, and Leni did not come at all, and Oren turned up after midnight complaining that everyone had started without him, and they stayed until nearly dawn.

He asked her once whether she knew how to tune a stringed instrument. She said no. He asked whether she wanted to, and handed it over, and corrected her fingers several times without losing patience, and when she finally produced something close to the right note he said only, “Again.” She kept at it for the better part of an hour. Nobody applauded. Nobody praised her for learning quickly. Nobody turned it into an achievement that could be reported to her father. Her fingertips hurt afterwards and she liked that too.

He is the one who repairs the flue when somebody drags a badly smoking stove into the curtained room in midwinter, and who can be heard arguing quietly with a stranger about a broken string while the rest of the table talks over him. Asked whether he was Velvet Veil, Tessa said she did not know, which was probably honest and was certainly typical. Nothing in that world had a clear edge, and Rike had never in his life volunteered a fact about himself.

He handed her the instrument, corrected her fingers, said “Again,” and let her sit there for an hour getting it wrong. It was the first thing anybody had ever taught her that nobody intended to be told about afterwards.