The Luthier

Perhaps it was luck, or perhaps something beyond understanding, that made a luthier walk that day near the sawmill where the planks of the tree rested. A luthier looking for wood for new instruments. In his long professional career he had made a good name for himself, but he had not managed to get beyond the limits of the old city where he resided. However, he knew he possessed a great virtue, he knew that his instruments would one day immortalize his surname. He handled the tools as a musician, not as a carpenter, perhaps because of the gift that accompanied him since his birth and of which he never knew his name; he had perfect pitch. Having the advantage of perceiving in the wood certain nuances of sound that are invaluable by the rest of the colleagues in the guild, he turned his instruments into objects of desire for his closest circle of musicians. Knowing his gift, it was a matter of time before he one day reached the ears of a great musician about his prowess. When that happened, his life would change.

And it so happened that word of mouth worked as the most effective propaganda. The opportunity came from far away, from beyond the ocean, from the old continent. It was then that he understood that he would need a different wood to surprise his special client, he also understood that this would mean the takeoff that he had wanted so much. For months he had gone through a multitude of sawmills and had not found what he was looking for, but that day everything changed, that wood was something out of the ordinary: soft, smooth, of an intense color, so much so that he immediately prepared to take out of his backpack a round wooden stick with which he began to hit along the planks to make resonance tests. He searched through mountains of pieces, hitting each one of them listening to his response, he wanted to locate the closest planks to the center of the tree, From experience he knew that these were the best, but there were too many there, it was not possible that they all came from a single specimen, he was alarmed to think that they could have cut down a forest. He chose a plank that seemed peculiar to him.

"It's not for sale," shouted the worker in charge of guarding the boards. "Get out of here right now," he insisted rudely. The luthier descended slowly with his plank in hand, ignoring the guard's words. Once downstairs, he reached into his pocket leisurely, leisurely, pulling out a tangle of bills that he uncounted he offered to the watchman. .

—Nobody will know anything, this is a business between you and me.—said the violero without fuss, without taking his eyes off the manager who kept his gaze unblinking, but ended up grabbing the money and turning around.

"Okay, but don't take too long to get out of here," he muttered as he turned, placing the bills to be counted in the booth.

It was a wood like few he had seen until then, it was not rosewood, not ebony or mahogany, not even koa, he studied it thoroughly checking its density, hardness and contraction, to obtain precise information about it. He always did before building an instrument, but he got no clues as to the type of tree it came from. He asked colleagues in the union, nobody knew how to tell him.

“Perhaps it comes from an exotic tree”, he said to himself and did not want to dwell on the matter, focusing on what really mattered. He did not doubt for an instant the success of his mission, gazing with delight at the uniquely grained plank. He dedicated years and all of his talent to transforming that piece of wood into something extraordinary. He spent entire nights calibrating the fingerboard, expertly cut the slots in the frets to obtain a homogeneous depth, locked himself in his workshop for days achieving a rosette worthy of the instrument he intended to build, calculated to the millimeter how long the string stretches when stepped on, preventing the slightest mistake from ruining his effort. In his search for perfection he became obsessed with varnishes, searching in ancient treatises on alchemy for the formula that would allow the instrument to be protected by allowing the wood to perspire. He blended tinctures into oily formulas providing a light touch of color that would identify his creation to enhance his name. He took great care of all the details of the construction, he knew very well that in the end any calculation error, choice of wood, placement of the strings, would affect the quality of the result, so he decided that it would not be the lack of care that caused it.

The surprise came later, despite the effort, the sound was not what was expected for an instrument of that quality and this was the least of its evils. He reviewed the entire process trying to improve the resonance, he wondered what he was doing wrong, but absorbed in his thoughts, he turned his head from side to side, denying any fault on his part. His dream was fading and, in his desperation to make her unique, everything turned to the contrary. He could not believe what was happening, he had never had in his hands a raw material of such quality and that would give worse results, he did not stop insisting and sanding day and night, altering his nerves and his health. He took it for granted that something strange was happening and that he was escaping within close range of him. He had strange dreams and came to suppose that the wood was enchanted or bewitched, he couldn't say exactly what. When she woke up in the mornings she murmured.

—Nonsense! —refusing to give an irrational explanation to everything that was happening to her, not even when the strings jumped when trying to tune her. "Nonsense!" she growled over and over sullenly. Finally he ended up hanging it in the window.