Memories are the closest we will ever get to time travel. Unless, of course, you’re the protagonist of my new short story, Stradivarius.
Before we dive into a discussion about the story and some of its themes, I encourage you to read it. Stradivarius was published this week by the good folks at Creative Colloquy, and you can read it now on their website:
Spoilers ahead…
In the story, Dylan has a very peculiar ability—she can experience memories embedded in inanimate objects. In her line of work, this ability is an asset, but she winds up in over her head when she’s tasked with recovering a priceless heirloom, a stolen Stradivarius violin.
I first learned about the instruments made by Antonio Stradivari when I took violin lessons in the 5th grade. I was not that interested in playing or practicing the violin, but I was intrigued by their history. Almost nothing is known about the Stradivari himself aside from his incredible output—over 1,000 violins (and other stringed instruments) over a seven decade career. Of the remaining 600 or so, each has a sobriquet, a nickname picked up from a famous owner or event in its lifetime, with evocative names like The King Maximilian, The Canadian or The Golden Bell. Over the centuries, his violins have been highly prized, bought and sold for enormous sums, fought over, and stolen many times.
So, I started the process of writing this story by constructing a fictional backstory for the violin at the center of the tale, an instrument known as The Bohemian. I decided The Bohemian was constructed during Stradivari’s Golden Period and that it had seen plenty of tragedy, passing from the hands of the master first to a Habsburg nobleman (the Bohemian for which the violin is named) as a prize following the sacking of Milan, then to his eccentric mistress and finally to a young musical prodigy before disappearing from the historical record.
With the violin at the center of the story, I could pull on many threads of Western history, from the U.S.’ shameful refusal to accept European refugees on the eve of World War II to the massive theft of Jewish property by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The violin bares the scars of it all.
Dylan relives those memories in the space of a few minutes when she arrives at the apartment. And when the job goes south, she must decide how far she’s willing to go to undo generations of theft and return the violin to its rightful owner—if such a thing exists.
Stradivarius is the kind of story that poured out of me unbidden, like the music when the young violinist first encounters the instrument. It’s a story about memory, about the intersection of the historical and the personal, and it’s a story I’m pleased to be able to share with you.
Thanks for reading!
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Jonny Eberle is a writer, podcaster, and storyteller. He lives in Tacoma, WA with his family, a dog, and three adorable typewriters. His writing has been published in Creative Colloquy, Grit City Magazine, and All Worlds Wayfarer. You can listen to his audio drama, The Adventures of Captain Radio, and his writing podcast, Dispatches with Jonny Eberle, wherever you enjoy podcasts.
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