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We went to a spruce tree, a beautiful spruce surrounded by cut boughs piled halfway up the trunk, and we cut down more boughs and piled them even higher. Finally two workers came with a cross-cut saw, and the professor told me this was not just an ordinary spruce tree, but a resonating spruce. As proof, he pulled a tuning fork out of his briefcase, struck it on the tree, then held it agains the trunk and made me put my ear against the tree and listen. It sounded wonderful, giving off a very light, luminous, heavenly sound. So we stood there embracing the spruce while the girl sat on a stump smoking and wearing an expression not of indiference but of boredom and exasperation. Her eyes turned accusingly to heaven, as if heaven itself were to blame for her boredom here on earth, while I slid down to my knees and put my arms around the trunk, which was reverberating louder than a telegraph pole. When the workers knelt to cut it, I climbed up on the mound of boughs piled up around the tree and listened, and as the saw bit into the wood a loud wail rose through the spruce, and the graceful sound that I’d been hearing was overwhelmed by the sound of the saw as the trunk complained that they were slicing into its body. The professor hollered at me to come down, so I did, and in a while the spruce tilted, hesitated for a moment, and then with a cry that came from its very roots began to fall. Its fall was cushioned by the boughs, as though it were falling into outstretched arms that prevented it, as the professor explained, from breaking and losing its music. Spruces like this one were rare, and it was up to us now to trim the branches and then, according to a plan he had with him, carefully saw the tree into lengths and carry it gently on a feathery bed of boughs to the factory. There it would be sawed into planks, then into boards, then into thin sheets to be used in making violins and cello. But the main thing was to find the sheets of wood that still had the music inside them.