Violists | Page 3

with a nice cup of tea. Perhaps the
lights are out, and the amber glow of the terminal spreads faint warmth
through the room; overstuffed bookshelves loom behind in the darkness.
If the evening air is crisp and a soft snow is falling outside the window,
so much the better--a view of icicles would be a magical touch.
-- Richard McGowan San Jose, California January 22, 1994
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VIOLISTS
by Richard McGowan (Opus 22)
1. Gretchen in the Library 2. The Hungarian Lightbulb 3. Christmas
Concert
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GRETCHEN IN THE LIBRARY
In winter the interior of the university library was hardly warmer than
the outside, and it was terribly drafty. The sole difference between the
interior and exterior, Gretchen often remarked to herself, was that the
latter received an occasional snow. The library at least was dry. On
most days in the unfrequented areas--the closed stacks on the second
and third floors--one could see one's breath in the middle of the
afternoon. Gretchen thought it hardly the sort of climate she would
have chosen for her own books. But the cost of heating such an
enormous building--well, she decided she could hardly imagine so
extravagant a sum. On the coldest days, she often wore two petticoats.
She found the best method of staying warm, though, was to bustle as
quickly as she could. Primarily, she worked in the stacks, extracting
books for the library's patrons and reshelving books that had
returned--and keeping the shelves in good order.
Gretchen's twenty-ninth birthday had arrived--quite too quickly--the
day before, and she bustled with an excess of alacrity to relieve her
mind from the brooding that had occupied her for several days. She had
spent the evening alone, though she knew it did her no good to seek

solitude. To accept being past her prime of life would be simpler
perhaps, and productive of less anguish, than fretting over what could
not be changed. She was nearly thirty, though--and she knew what lay
in store for her a few years hence. She had only to look at the assistant
reference librarian, Miss Sadie, to see how she herself would be in but a
few more years. The thought nearly made her shudder, and if she
allowed herself to think too deeply upon the matter, might have brought
her to tears. Thankfully, Gretchen told herself, she could grow old
among the books, where at least she had the company of great
minds--or their legacy--rather than spend a life straining in a factory--or
under the yoke of an old-fashioned man.
She had been estranged from her family for six years and rarely given
them serious thought since fleeing Connecticut. A simple enough row it
had been to start--what should she do now that she had finished
university? Of course her father recommended marriage and settling
into the domestic life--a pretty girl like her. Him and his antiquated
ideals--a pretty girl in the kitchen, indeed! At twenty-three she had
finally come to her senses and refused to marry the young man to
whom she had been betrothed, no matter how well matched her father
thought they were.
Her mother had frequently confided to Gretchen her views on the
varied pleasures--and trials--inherent in marriage, admitting that as the
years passed she found the pleasures perhaps not worth the other
hardships--the outward subjugation of her own feelings and the
constant deference she was required to display within the confines of
that marriage, as if she had no independent mind. Gretchen had long
since determined that would not be her fate. She had come to believe
that no suitable man could be found, yet she remained unsatisfied. The
only true regret she had about casting off her family ties was that she
had disappointed her mother. It was her mother who had worked so
hard, really, to see that Gretchen had an education; her father only
begrudgingly went along for the sake of domestic tranquility when all
efforts to dissuade her had failed.
At university Gretchen had imbibed the rarefied intellectual atmosphere
with increasing eagerness and found herself drawn irresistibly up the
slopes of Parnassus. She had always intended to work after completing
university--and work she did, though she had difficulty making due

with what employment she could find. Even a superlative education,
she had learned in six years, did not buy one certain rights or
reasonable wages. She hoped that she would yet see the flowering of an
age that she could call an enlightened one. She might have been bitter
had she higher material aspirations, but she was content with little in
the way of physical comforts. Why the privilege of spending nearly all
her days in the library would have been worth almost any
sacrifice--what need had she of wages!
It was lamentable, she decided, that she should