Impossible rock

Many years later, still trying to leave a trace that would outlive him, the luthier Auro Montalverde wrote in his memoirs what made him famous and what made him finally lose his mind. At the time of the event, the instrument maker was the town's tormented soul, wandering its streets to kill time until his death. He had migrated from the other side of the horizon in search of recognition, to end up in a village that neither felt nor suffered the inclemencies of enlightened music. Upon his arrival, he had set up a workshop that would eventually become a store and music school, in the perseverance to evangelize the locals with the benefits of modal harmony.

Auro Montalverde felt himself faint on the hot afternoon when six men showed up at his house, armed and in uniform, carrying with them a dark bundle wrapped in cloth. With the authority they had while knocking to the door, they entered the house and occupied the dining room. Auro could do no more than making a vain invitation to past events. The one with the most glittering medals introduced himself as the governor of the region, who came with the intention of carrying out an errand. Two of the uniformed men stepped forward. They carried with them a huge block tangled up in itself.

They said that the material was impossible, that when it fell from the sky it still burned in colors that had never been seen before, that those who saw it had not been able to close their eyes for several days, looking for color everywhere. They said that the stone laminated like wood and percussed like metal.

While the governor spared no words about what an honor it was to receive such a commission. Auro's heart left behind the fear of eviction for non-payment and he fantasized about the opportunity he had always dreamed of. But after hearing the fifth story about the merits and virtues of his guest, the middle of the Montalverde, who was not familiar with the race of politician, interrupted the governor with the same impatience that he had inherited from his father and that had caused his brother to be killed.

—What do you want of me then?

—For you to make an instrument for the honor of the homeland — replied the other.

The deal was closed with a tight grip and a reasonable budget. The governor and his entourage left the house leaving the block and a check with which Auro was to collect payment for the instrument. Something that was not told, and Auro himself did not want to know, was the series of rejections that had taken that rock to the last hands of the chain. The government had turned the material over to the intelligence service, who had made several tests on it and had declared it "completely useless for military use"; the sculptors' guild returned the piece with some scratches and a letter swearing that each chisel to the material tempered all the chisels in the workshop and magnetized the hammers. In the attempt to deliver to the church an element of such strange qualities, such a commotion was created that the archbishop himself had to intervene.

—If this material has been sent by a god from the skies, it is certainly not ours.

As soon as he received the commision, the existential terror that had accompanied him since childhood dissipated like the vapors of mercury. Auro Montalverde had opened his eyes while still in his mother's womb, and from that moment on he had a certainty that can only be reached when leaving adolescence behind, the certainty that one day he was going to die. That fear had haunted him ever since and had made him run ahead of himself. He ran after glory, only to get caught, willing to leave everything to get away from the reality of the grave. That narrative made him believe that fate had led him to that remote village, that the hardships were a test and that the years under the embrace of depression were worth it. In the months that preceded he regained the joy and strength he had on his arrival in the country. Every morning Auro felt his limbs rise from the bed. He would drink a cold coffee that he had left ready the night before, sit down and work without rest, only feeding himself in the evening.

During these months the villagers only saw the luthier on Sundays, on his way to mass and while shopping at the market, radiating a joy that seemed to infect even the animals. During the same period, phenomena of almost random regularity and duration were noticed in the village. On some Tuesdays the roosters crowed two hours before dawn, the dust refused to settle on any flat surface, and at least twice a week the river created a new flow that ran in the opposite direction and from which the animals refused to drink. The instrument eventually took the form of a contrabass, colored lurid like the material and adorned with gold.

During the last two months of work, Auro Montalverde reappeared on public roads. He could be seen walking to the rhythm of the crowds or the chirping of birds; whistling the sound of creaking doors and striking his golden tuning fork against the statue of the virgin, the ovens of the bakery or the hooves of horses. His radiant joy had turned into dissociative concentration. He kept tuning that contrabass. He listened to its vibration at night and just before waking up. Until one day he noticed it. He noticed that the vibration was perfect, exquisite, he could hear it, it spoke to him.

The announcement was not long in coming, the instrument would be used for the first time in the month of April, making it concur with the beginning of the patron saint fairs. The whole town gathered to see that artifact. The contrabass seemed to emit the aura of an object that had spent a hundred years in an attic. Several of its parts were not connected to each other, but floated in an inexact magnetization. The governor had had an interpreter brought in from the capital, who ended up playing with shoes nailed to the floor, as long as the trembling of the instrument did not take him off the stage.

The silence that flooded the town when the artist began to play is still referred to in some masses. The audience hardly breathed, the babies stopped crying and the wood of the trees stopped creaking. But Auro could not enjoy the show, something seemed out of place. It was the sounds of the contrabass, it seemed to vocalize in a language he could not understand. The ovation was so loud that no one noticed a man who had lost consciousness for lack of air, everyone turned to Auro. Pale from a shiver that lasted for weeks, he swore he was certain that the instrument with its last note had gesticulated: "memento mori".

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Take look to a 3D recreation of the instrument