In the back room, Sasha is snuggled up in the dog basket. Late afternoon comes faster than expected, and Erik flinches when a hand touches his shoulder. With wide, uneven eyes, he stares first at the hand and then at the person who dares to touch him. He stares into Christine's sky-blue eyes. “Closing time.” she comments.

The Saturdays are passing quickly in January. There are lots of repairs to be done, but fewer walk-in customers. The work shifts to the small workshop. “I'll finish it,” grumbles Erik and turns back to the violin. With a soft clunk, he pushes a damaged frame out of the violin. The frame of the violin is located all around the violin body. A repair of this kind is more special, and Erik has been trying his hand at it since the morning. Afraid of damaging the violin even more, he spent half an hour just staring at it.

The damaged frame lies on the workbench next to Erik's peppermint tea, which has gone cold. He puts the violin to one side, rubs his neck and groans like an old man. He slowly realizes why Gustave has problems with his back. Thoughtfully, he reaches for the tea, takes a sip, and shortly afterward reaches for the defect frame. Then he walks through the small room looking for scraps of wood. The structure of the wood has to match. It is important not only to choose the same type of wood, but also to pay attention to the texture. A mistake when gluing, the wrong structure or if it is sanded too thin, can distort the entire sound of the violin.

After a while, he finds what he is looking for. And begins to plane the wood, it must be exactly as thin as the original frame. A perfect copy.
Some time later, he cuts the wood to the perfect thickness of 2.2 mm. He leans back, wipes the sweat from his forehead, and stands up with the piece of wood. He looks for the water bottle and sprays fine water dust onto the thin wood, while the bending iron heats up. Then he clamps the damp wood onto the bending iron, and a loud hiss followed up by steam, shows how hot the iron is. The heat hits him in the face, causing small points of pain over his scarred eye. He is surprised that he can still feel something like heat sensitivity, where everything is so immobile and thick.

He removes the wood a moment later and places it in the bending mold.
Then he looks for the paint. He has resolved to mix the right color now so that he can make a little faster progress the next day. As he bends over the pots of paint to find the right color to mix, there is a knock on the door frame.
Sasha wakes up from her slumber and jumps out of her basket, barking. Full of joy, she sprints to the visitor and jumps up on his legs.
“Pojke, dinner,” says Gustave and leans down to Sasha.
“I'll pass...” Erik mumbles without looking up.
“Pardon?”
“I want to finish this. Not hungry.” mumbles the punk.
Gustave slowly approaches and stands next to Erik. “Pojke,” he begins, ”you've been working late into the night for weeks.”
“Yes.”
“You need to take a break,” Erik doesn't raise his eyes, instead he grabs two shades of paint and turns away from Gustave. “I don't need to...” he growls. For days now, Christine and Gustave have been taking it in turns to try to lure him out of the workshop.

Without success.

…

Erik shifts uneasily in bed. His uneven eyes pop open, and what remains of the dream is the dull feeling of a neck slap and the smell of stale coffee. Slowly, he sits up and tries to get his orientation. The back of his right hand strokes the open corner of his mouth. The other hand strokes first over the bedsheet, then over Sasha's soft fur. Slowly, he leans forward and presses his deformed face into her fur.

Just a little.
A few seconds.
Just to reassure himself.

And like every time, he pulls his head out of the fur with a jerk and sneezes. With a nose, it's a challenge to push his face into the long fur, but without a nose it's almost impossible.
The mattress of the bed rises as Erik's scrawny body rises upright. He rises like a dark tower in the small room. He shuffles across the room, reaches for his trousers, pulls them on and heads for the door. “Are you coming?” he asks his dog. She stares at him for a few seconds, sneezes in agreement, stands up and stretches. Yawning loudly, she jumps off the bed and trots over to him.

And so the lights of the workshop are also on this night.

Erik slept well for the first few weeks in his new home. He got used to the mattress and also to the fact that there was almost no ambient noise. It was a good feeling of security. Comfort. It was all good. Until his condition changed, and the restful sleep turned into nightmares. In the last few years, the young punk had hardly been able to sleep enough to avoid slipping into either the dream phase or deep sleep. He was constantly on guard or his sleep was disturbed by other people on the street.
But now it's different.

Now his mind has time to process everything.

The clock reads 3:32 a.m. while the second hand ticks on incessantly. The smell of paint hangs in the air as Erik mixes new color mixtures. Over the past few weeks, he had quickly discovered which activities in the house were almost impossible to hear. These included small jobs such as mixing paint, sweeping, sorting screws and nails. Little things that make everyday life at Paganino a little more pleasant.

He hums quietly to himself as he prepares the varnish for his current violin project. He is even a little excited, it is the first frame he has been allowed to repair without Gustave's guidance. He can hardly wait to see the finished result.
“Erik?” a soft voice reaches him. He startles and spills some paint. “Shit...” he growls and hastily tries to wipe the paint off the workbench with an old rag. “What are you doing here?” asks Christine, slowly coming closer. “Mixing varnish...” he answers honestly, but doesn't look at her. She sits down on the stool next to him and examines the varnish. “Defective for the violin with the ribs?” she finally asks, and he raises his eyes in astonishment. He had expected her to ask him why he was awake, to lecture him that he shouldn't work at night, but sleep.
But nothing of the sort.
Only interest radiates from him.
His uneven eyes check her out, she looks tired, he notices. He particularly likes those little freckles on her nose and cheekbones, he notices.
What am I thinking?
He turns back to the paint and nods, “The shade is not... easy to match. I guess...”

With a soft flop, she slips off the stool and shuffles with her soft bunny slippers through the workshop to the disassembled violin. “Hmmm, that's right.”
Erik takes some varnish, spreads it on a piece of test wood and follows her. He holds the paint sample next to the violin. “Like something's missing,” he mumbles. Christine crosses her arms and leans slightly in his direction. Almost imperceptibly, like a fluid movement, Erik slides to the side to close the distance.

“Add a little yellow. Not much, just a little whoop”
“Whoop?”
“Wait,” she hurries to the colors and looks for a sunny yellow. “If you add that to the red-brown, it will make it warm. It gives the wood a fresh, warm kick.” She pours some yellow into the mixture and stirs. Then she spreads some on a new piece of test wood and hurriedly shuffles over to Erik. He takes the outstretched piece of wood and holds it up to the violin for comparison.
It fits.
“Christine!”
“Yes, I know, master of colors, they call me in the Shire!” she pats him on the shoulder, laughing.
And again, almost imperceptibly, he sinks away under her touch. He has almost managed to stop completely sagging under this friendly gesture or being scared to death. That's progress.

“Brilliant,” he breathes in fascination. “Now that that problem is solved,” she begins, ”what do you say we go back to bed?”