Playing second fiddle to the viol
MY HUSBAND'S mistress has broad ribs, sloping shoulders, and a rather flat neck. Her complexion is gorgeous -- she always wears a golden tan. But it is her subdued, mellow voice that seduces him, time and again.
She sounds best in our music room, alone, or in the company of other beauties like herself, all of them embraced from behind by lovers whose hands are busy somewhere in front and whose attentive heads are bent over those delicate shoulders. She bears a foreign name with an aristocratic flourish: viola da gamba. Her friends call her the viol.
The viol, as you may have guessed, is a bowed string instrument that resembles a cello. It is played between the legs (this suggestive phrase comes directly from the respectable website of the Viola da Gamba Society of America). Viola da gamba means leg-viol in Italian. There is a kinship between her family and the upstart violins. But the aristocratic gamba clan appeared first -- in Europe in the late-15th century -- and subsequently became one of the most respected of Renaissance and Baroque instruments.
Some venerable members of that early crowd are still around, used by gifted virtuosi, or on display in museums. My husband's special friend, though, is only 20 years old. She was made for him by a Parisian luthier who is rather lovely herself. Really, I sometimes wonder how I tolerate it all.
Amateur musicians are fanatics. Music claims their souls, and they are able to make beautiful sounds. But the beauty they produce doesn't match that produced by the great professionals. Thus they feel glory, power, and sorrow, all at the same time. This is a heady sensation that they seek again and again, forsaking their hearths, forgoing ordinary pleasures, forgetting to take out the trash.
The viol can be played in consort or alone. Renewed interest in Renaissance and Baroque music means that we who live in Massachusetts can attend viol concerts from time to time. The Aston Magna festival begins this weekend in the Berkshires and the Early Music Festival, recently held in Boston, let us hear the heavenly instrument night after night. I am thrilled at these performances. And my husband is thrilled, too -- though his thoughts sometimes turn to the dear one left at home.
Yes, I am jealous. Sometimes I am very jealous. Sometimes I put my ear to the wall of the music room when the two of them are practicing. I listen to their delighted phrasing. I dream of doing her in. I imagine seizing my own instrument, the rose pruner, and snipping one of her strings . . . or maybe two . . . or maybe all six. With nail polish remover I could ripple her veneer. I could break her bow over my knee.
I master these wishes. If you must have a rival, the viol is preferable to watching football on television or FreeCell; and she is far preferable to flesh and blood. Her hips are wider than mine. Her tête, carved by that exquisite Parisian luthier, has only one expression.
She is, when you come right down to it, wooden. And when my envy becomes extreme, and threatens to disturb the equanimity of our ménage à trois, my husband favors me with a sympathetic smile -- and shuts her up in a case.
Edith Pearlman is a short story writer who lives in Brookline. 
