The Story of the Egg and the Violin Bow

I stood there in the pleasant cool and I caught the smell of polish. The violins were responding to each other; you could have composed an entire polonaise from their soft sighs, as if composing a game of chess. All you would have had to do was rearrange the order and the sounds a bit. Finally, out came the Hungarian who owned the instrument shop. He had eyes the color of whey. Red, as though e was about to lay an egg, he displayed a chin shaped like a small belly with a navel.

He took out a pocket ashtray, flicked ashes into it, carefully closed it tight, and asked whether I had not made some mistake: "The furrier is next door. People are always coming in here by mistake." Nobody had come into his store for the past seven days, except by mistake. In fact, his store had no doors; one might say it had the creak of a door but no real doors, just a small shop window with a handle that swung open into the shop, letting the customer into a cramped room. I inquired whether he had a small violin for a small young lady, or a midget cello, if they were not too expensive.

The Hungarian tuned to go back from where he had come, from where wafted the smell of paprikash. Just then, the hen picked itself up from the cap, clucking at the freshly laid egg. The Hungarian carefully took the egg and placed it in a drawer, having first penciled on it a date--October 2, 1982--which I noted with surprise was still several months away.

"What do you want with a violin or cello?" he asked, turning around at the entrance of his small back room. "You have records, the radio, television. A violin--you know what a violin is? A small violin, my good sir, has to be plowed, sowed, and reaped every year, from here to Subotica, with this here!" And he pointed to the violin bow hanging from his belt like a sword. He drew it out and pulled taut with fingers that wore rings around the nails, as if to hold them in place and keep them from dropping off. Then he abstained from further conversation, and with a wave of his hand again turned to leave. "Who needs it?" he said on his way out. "Buy her something else; buy her a scooter or a dog."

I just stood there in the shop, not coping very well with this decisiveness voiced in such an indecisive, undulating language, like food that may be filling but is unappetizing. Actually, the Hungarian had mastered my language very well, but at the end of every sentence he would add for dessert a Hungarian word that I couldn't understand. He did this now as he gave me his parting words of advice: "Find something else, sir, to make your little girl happy. This happiness is too difficult for her. And it's belated happiness. Belated." he added through the wafting aroma of the paprikash. "How old is she?" he inquired, assuming a businesslike tone.

With that he disappeared, and I could hear him getting dressed and preparing to go out. I told him Gelsomina Mohorovichich's age: seven. He flinched at the number as though touched by a magic wand. He translated it into Hungarian, and a strange smell enveloped the room, the smell of cherries; I saw that the smell followed his change of mood. A glass pipe now appeared in his mouth, through which he sucked cherry brandy. He crossed the shop, stood on my foot as if by accident, took out a small child's cello, and offered it to me, all the while standing on my foot to show me how cramped his shop was. I stood there and, like him, took no notice, except that he was doing this at my expense and to my own detriment.

"Take this," he said. "The wood is older than you and me together. The lacquer is good. . . . Hear for yourself!" He strummed the strings. The cello vibrated with a four-note chord, and he stepped off my foot as if the chord could ease all the troubles of the world.

"You hear?" he asked. "Each string contains all the others. But to hear it you'll have to listen to four different things at once, and we're to lazy to do that. Do you hear it or not? Four hundred and fifty thousand," he said, translating the price from Hungarian. The amount struck me like a rock. It was as though he had peered into my pocket: he knew exactly how mush I had. I had been saving it for Gelsomina. It's not all that much, I know, but it took my three years to collect even that. I told him I would gladly take it.

"Take it?" asked the Hungarian, shaking his head disapprovingly. "Sir, is that how one takes an instrument? Don't you want to try it?"

Disconcerted, I looked around the shop for something to sit on other than that cap, as though I really did want to try that cello.

"You need a chair?" he asked. "A duck sits on water, and you don't know what to do on dry land? You don't know?" Scornfully he took the cello from me and placed it on his shoulder like a violin.

"Like this!" he said, giving me back the instrument.

I took it, and for the first time in my life played the cello like a violin. De Falla didn't sound too bad in the deep fifths, and I even seemed to hear the notes more clearly through the wood pressed against my ear. Suddenly the Hungarian changed his smell. This time it was the odor of pungent male sweat. He took off his coat and was in his undershirt, two gray braided beards suspended from each armpit. He pulled out a drawer, sat on the corner edge, took the cello from me, and played. I was astounded by his marvelous improvisation.

"You play very well," I said.

"I don't play the cello at all. I'm a harpsichordist, and I like the violin. But I can't play the cello. What you heard wasn't music, although you know nothing about it. That was just an arrangement of all the sounds, from the highest to lowest, so to judge the capacity and other elements of the instrument. Shall I wrap it up for you?"

"Yes, please," I said reaching for my wallet.

"That will be five hundred thousand," said the Hungarian.

An icy chill went down my back. "Didn't you say four hundred and fifty thousand?"

"I did, but that's for the cello. The rest is for the bow. Or don't you want the bow? You don't need the bow? I thought that a fiddle and a bow went together. . . ." He unwrapped the bow and put it back in the display window.

I stood there at a loss for words, struck dumb. Finally I recovered from all the slaps of before, and from this Hungarian, as from and illness, a hangover or torpor. I cam e to my senses, sobered up, and at last stopped playing in the is comedy with this Hungarian who picked at his teeth. Actually, I had forgotten about the bow. I didn't have the money to buy it, and I told him so.

Suddenly, he slipped on his coat--there was a smell of mothballs--and he said, "I haven't got time, my good sir, to wait around while you earn the money for the bow. Especially if you haven’t been able to do so by the age of fifty. Better you should wait than me."

And with that, he made to depart, leaving me there alone in the shop.

He stopped at the door, returned, and said, "Shall we make a deal? You take the box on an installment plan."

"You're joking?" I replied, no longer willing to play his game and wanting to leave.

"No, I'm not joking. I propose a deal. You don't have to accept it, but at least please listen." The Hungarian lit his pipe with such pride that it was obvious he had already fumigated Pest with it.

"Alright, let's hear it," I said.

"You will buy the egg along with the bow."

"An egg?"

"Yes. You saw the egg the hen laid a while ago. Well, that's the one," he said, taking the egg out of the drawer and shoving it under my nose. Written in pencil on the egg was the date October 2, 1982. "You'll give me as much for the egg as for the bow, repayable in two years. . . ."

"What did you say?" I asked, not believing my ears. From the Hungarian again came the smell of cherries. "Are you telling me your hen lays golden eggs?"

"No, my hen does not lay golden eggs, but it does carry something that you and I, sir, cannot lay. It carried days, weeks, and years. Every morning it lays a Friday or a Tuesday. Today's yolk, for instance, has a Thursday instead of yolk. Tomorrow’s will have a Wednesday. Instead of a chick, it will hatch a day of life for its owner! What a life! These are not golden eggs, they're time eggs. And I'm offering them to you at a cheap price. This egg, sir, holds one day of your life. It's closed in there like a chick, and it's up to you whether it will hatch or not."

"Even if I were to believe your story, why would I buy a day I already have?"

"Use your head, sir. Think. Do you think with your ears? Why, all our problems in this world stem from the fact that we have used up our days such as they are--from the fact that we can't skip over the worst ones. That's the point. With my egg in your pocket, you're safe from misfortune. When you notice that the coming day is too bleak, you just break the egg and you'll avoid all unpleasantness. In the end, of course, you'll have one less day to live, but in return you'll be able to fry yourself a fine plate of scrambled eggs out of that one ugly day."

"If your egg is really that valuable, why don't you keep it for yourself?" I said, looking him in the eyes but finding in them nothing I could understand.

He looked back in pure Hungarian. "The gentleman can't be serious? How many eggs do you think I already have from this hen? How many days do you think a person can break in order to be happy A thousand? Two thousand? Five thousand? I have as many eggs as I want, but not that many days. Anyway, like all eggs, these are only good for so long. After a while they go bad and can't be used anymore. That, sir, is why I am selling them before they lose their effect. And you aren't in a position to choose. You'll give me a receipt for the loan," he added at the end, scribbling something on a scrap of paper and shoving it at me to sign.

"And can you egg," I asked, "Dispense with or save a day or an object--like a book for instance?"

"Of course, you just have to break the egg on the blunt end. But then you will have missed the chance to use the egg for yourself."

I signed the paper on my knee, paid, was given the receipt; again I heard the hen clucking in the next room as he carefully wrapped the cello with the bow and the egg and I finally left the shop. He came out with me, asked me to pull the door handle tight while he locked the shop window; once again I was drawn into one of his games.

He went off without a word, then turned back at the corner to add, "Remember--the date on the egg tells you when it expires. After that the egg is no good anymore. . . ."