That afternoon Evdokiya wore a white linen shirt, a black pleated skirt. Her hair was wrapped in a bun. Orfeo was married at the time, Evdokiya engaged. Orfeo hadn’t meant to be so forward in the rehearsal hall; he’d have helped any one of his students with the same technique. But unlike the others, she distracted him that afternoon as he lifted her arms perpendicularly in the air. Her hair smelled of grass and cigarette smoke from the Number 4 bus she’d taken across the city—and there were freckles on the back of her neck, inches from his face. Cars honked out on Georgiev Street; the summer afternoon had grown hot. She sat with her back erect, perspiring, the heel of the cello nestled between her breasts. He could smell the deodorant under her arms.

When Orfeo stepped away from her, she kept her elbows held in the air, as if they were suspended by invisible strings. Then suddenly, self-consciously, she giggled and blushed and said: Just like a puppet! The light was coming in through the high clerestory windows; some other students had entered the room, talking to each other, setting up stands. Had she felt it too? He didn’t want to know. He was her professor; she was twenty years younger.

What else might he tell the others? How he’d left his wife and four children; how she’d run away from her fiancé. How scandalous it was at the time. He was chastised; she, shunned. He was a lech; she, an opportunist. But then, as the years passed, and they accompanied each other in concerts, and her abilities grew (and eventually outshone his own), they were mostly forgiven. It was meant to be, people said. It was love. How could it be helped? Yet his children and his ex-wife wouldn’t speak to him, and hadn’t in eleven years.

In their flat outside Sofia, Evdokiya practiced in the late afternoons. Orfeo liked to listen and coach her while he cooked dinner or read a book. What do you think of that G natural? he’d ask. Could the scherzo be pluckier? What of the pace? Sometimes while she was playing, he approached her from behind and touched the tip of her right elbow as a reminder, not of her bowing but of that afternoon. She still wore her hair in a bun, but her bowing was seamless now, beautiful to watch. Other times, he’d rest his palm lightly in the middle of her back, just below the two points of her shoulder blades. He liked to feel the musculature beneath her dress, the thoracic muscles tightening and loosening with each pass of the bow. It felt to him like a bird learning to fly.