Family Objects: A Music Box Took Her Back to Buenos Aires

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Sitting at her writing desk in Paris, Virginia Fineberg listened to the songs on her little Swiss music box and was transported back to her grandmother’s apartment in Buenos Aires. She was writing her family story, and the Viennese and French melodies brought back long-forgotten memories of time spent there with her mother and sisters.

I suggested she begin by writing whatever the music box brought to mind, and before long, she’d written her first story Slice.

The music helped Virginia start writing and then became part of her weekly writing ritual. She’d begin by listening to the melodies, letting them carry her into the right frame of mind. How fitting that the family story book she wrote for her children opens with the Slice about her family’s music box.

If music brings a parent, grandparent, or family place back to you, let it help you begin.

Music does more than remind you of the past. It takes you there.

Here is Virginia’s first story Slice, inspired by the little Swiss music box.

The Music Box

By Virginia Fineberg

When I was about 4 or 5 years old, I would often get taken to my grandmother Beatriz’s apartment, located at Juncal Street, in the heart of Barrio Norte, near Plaza San Martín. To me, as a little girl, the apartment seemed so huge and cavernous that when I went there with my sisters, we had an unspoken agreement that we would not wreak havoc or run wild from room to room. I remember that my eldest sister, Gabriela, a fragile and gentle soul, would go to my uncle Lolo’s former bedroom and sit and admire a butterfly case where several beautiful specimens were pinned for eternity. My middle sister, Claudia, and I would invent games, as was our custom.

A Hidden Family Keepsake

But I had my own ritual: in the first reception room, coming in on the right, there was a curio cabinet from Maple’s, an English furniture store long established in Buenos Aires. My mother, Inés, kept it until the end of her life. The cabinet was originally bought for Reflejos de París, my grandmother’s costume jewelry shop. It was made of finely-tooled marquetry and had three shelves. Beatriz placed in it her favorite objects, several of which I still own. Lower down, out of sight if the door was closed, there was another space. When I opened it, I was greeted by a musty, sweet odor, mingled with the smell of the padding over the walls of the cabinet. There I would find the wonderful thing I was looking for, the music box that is here beside me as I write. It is a typical Swiss chalet, which has survived for over 100 years intact. It has two small windows with curtains, a flower bed, a bench with a jar, and a closed door. Above the door, there sits a small stack of firewood.

The Music and the Memories

But the most important thing was that when the roof was raised, a mechanism was set in motion, and a song began tinkling away. The bottom of the box still carries a label, which reads “The Harry Lime Theme—La Vie en Rose.” I don’t know why the craftsman chose that theme, composed by Anton Karas, but it was one that resonated mysteriously in me. Harry Lime is one of the main characters in “The Third Man”, a film made by Carol Reed in 1949.

Enveloped in that familiar, protective smell, I would wind up the box and listen enraptured to the music. The amazing thing is that I can still do it, because it works to this day. I don’t remember anyone telling me I couldn’t touch anything in that curio cabinet. Sometimes Claudia would join me on my expedition, and we would sit together to enact that secret ceremony. But it never lasted too long because it felt a bit like trespassing. Afterward, I would place the box carefully back in its hidden space until the next time.

From Buenos Aires to Paris

I don’t know how that music box came into Beatriz’s possession. Maybe she bought it on one of her trips to Europe, or someone gave it to her as a gift. However, that might be, for a long time I completely forgot about it. But many years later, I discovered it in the same old curio cabinet, which was by now in my mother’s new apartment. It had remained intact, having survived many moves. I asked my mother to give it to me on one of my trips to Buenos Aires, explaining that the little music box and I had had a long story together. Convinced by my arguments, she let me have it. So I have it here, occupying a place of honor in my own curio cabinet in Paris, protected and in the company of other objects from Beatriz’s and Inés’s collections. My idea is, one day, to give it to Elena. In this way, four generations will be successively custodians of the music box.

Inés didn’t like to be separated from her objects, but over the years, she gave me several of her paintings and other objects from Juncal, as we called that majestic, gloomy apartment, where Inés, myself, and my sisters also lived for some years.

Every now and then, I still dream that I wake up there.

I stop writing, I take the music box out of the curio cabinet, and open it. And memories spring up with the tune. Beatriz and Inés, two women so special to me that I cannot help but tell their stories.

From Family Heirloom to Family Story Book

Virginia continued writing the stories of Beatriz and Inés. Read how she created a family story book in How She Wrote the Stories of the Women Who Raised Her.