Narrative Judit's Silent Day

Judit's Silent Day

Life at the family estate was not what Judit had hoped it would be.



No, not at all.

Judit had spent weeks envisioning the time she would spend with her cousin, Erzsebet, after her uncle had invited her to live with them in the ancestral home. But now that Judit had been living here a few months, those visions of teaching and talking, of hearing and being heard - were just disappointed dreams.



A single child, with an orphan for a mother and a disinherited gambler for a father, Judit had grown up with the unshakeable belief that the reason others had found her so off-putting was because they didn't share her blood. She used to tell herself: surely another child of the House of Droga would understand her! Surely Erzsebet, or even Korinna, would have been able to recognize the harmony they shared because of their lineage. It became a prayer against all humiliations.

So when Judit arrived and began to say without speaking, "I am alive," to Erzsebet, she had taken it for granted that the reply would be a wordless but resounding "I see you."

Yet no reply had come; Judit remained alone in the silence.



The weeks had passed slowly. Summer sunk into autumn, and autumn out there in the borderlands was a grey and damp affair. Day after darkening day, Judit retreated back within herself.



And in that silence, Judit nursed her greatest dream of all: life after death.

But to accomplish that, she had to keep her focus up on what she was beginning to feel was the only thing that mattered...



Music.

If she couldn't find kinship anywhere amongst the living, she found it in the dead: in the music of those ancient composers. Judit's hands were their hands as she drew the bow over the strings, her feelings were their feelings when she listened. They lived through her just as she lived through them.



Just as one day, others would live through - and understand - her.

So even though the forests beyond her warped window were empty, and the manor halls were hushed, and no letters arrived addressed to her, Judit poured herself full of music, and could not help but hope.



Still... she didn't know what would happen after her cousin Korinna's return. Perhaps her uncle would send her back to the city, to those old humiliations. Or perhaps she would be allowed to stay on, even after her failure as Erzsebet's governess!



It wasn't like she was in control of things, in any event. All she could do was dream, and hope, and play - for as long as life would allow it.
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