You learned to repair the steel and copper strings yourself, because there were so few who knew how to do it, and finding a repair shop in our constellation of rural towns was never easy. Or cheap. And there was no one you really wanted to trust with the instrument your grandfather had left you. Your grandfather, who performed in both city squares and grand halls, and who you thought of when your music teacher watched you, her stare so intense it burned into your back.

She is beautiful, your music teacher, but I think her beauty dimmed to you every time she pushed you to play the Liszt again, even when you were past the time the lesson was meant to end, even when your tendons felt like they were tearing apart in your wrists. Even when your forearms felt like they were turning to flames.

Your mother, you told me, worried as you iced your wrists at night. And you told her not to, that if musicians wanted to become great, sometimes it involved pain. She pressed her lips together and made you lay bags of frozen peppers under your forearms, because if you had to ice your wrists you might as well bring yourself a little luck at the same time. After a bag had half-thawed, she would throw it into a heated pan, add it to what she was cooking. You told me that, later, when your family ate together you couldn’t decide if you were eating your own pain or your own luck.

Any bystander might not think the instrument you love so much would wear down the tendons in the wrists and forearms. They would simply marvel at how quickly your hands moved, how precisely you struck the beaters against the strings, the tips making the timbre sound different depending on whether the leather is hard or soft. But that is because your skill, your effort, the hours of practice on your grandfather’s cimbalom and the one at your music teacher’s house, made it look easy. Your hands flew, changing direction as quickly as hummingbirds, always finding the right place to land.

But any bystander would not feel the collecting effect of all those impacts. They would not know the wearing down caused by, hundreds of thousands of times, striking the beaters just where they needed to hit. They would not guess at the tension in your wrists, the taut muscle in your forearms, the tiny friction every time you bring a beater down.

Do that enough times, and the pain in your wrists will probably be enough to wake you up at night. Do that enough times, and it will startle you out of sleep, leaving you with the memory of dreams in which your arms are branches on fire.