Читать книгу Stradivarius - Donald P. Ladew - Страница 10

Chapter 6

A month after Luther returned from Korea he knew it wasn’t going to get better. He’d blacked out three times that he could remember. He couldn’t concentrate long enough to do a decent day’s work.

He went looking for his father and found him in the barn putting up hay, his face sweaty, streaked with dirt and chaff. Nathan Cole stuck the pitchfork into the hay and motioned Luther out side. They sat on a wooden bench and looked across the fields.

Luther’s father wiped his face with a checkered cloth and slowly rolled a cigarette. The leaf was rough cut and pungent. He grew and cured his own tobacco like his father had before him.

“Not goin’ too good, is it, Luther.”

“No, Daddy. I feel worse ‘cause it troubles you. I know you don’t mind, but it bothers me somethin’ terrible.” His father waited patiently. Luther went on.

“What kind ‘a shape is granddaddy’s place up on the mountain?” Luther looked toward the hills turning orange in the sunset.

“Why boy, I don’t rightly know. Been four, maybe five years since I been up there. Went huntin’ with Cousin Joe Barkwood up that way.” He took a drag on his homemade, and watched the blue smoke catch on the wind.

“He built it good, mostly stone, red oak, and pine. Door still worked: roof weren’t broke. Course that slate probly last three hundred year. Went down to the spring. Big jack pine fallen down and messed it up some, but the waters’ still sweet. “Man could make good whiskey with that water.” He paused to stamp his cigarette out in the dirt. “You fixin’ to go up there are yuh?”

“Uh, huh.”

“Bothers me some to think you might come on one of yer spells out in the forest with no one to look after yuh.”

“Figured it would, Daddy, but I got to do it. I just cain’t stay here no more. I’ll be alright, stay close to the cabin and all. Gonna go to Elkins, get me a new pickup, some tools and such. I’ve got me the money from the medal and my mustering-out out pay. Don’t need much. I’ve got to live simple, not be no trouble to no one.”

Luther raised his hand as his father started to speak. He reached out an took his father’s worn hand.

“I know you don’t figure I’m trouble, but I do, and it makes it harder, a lot harder.”

Luther’s father looked down at his son’s hand, so much like his own. “All right, boy, you do what you want, you’ve the right.”

PADUA, ITALY, 1719

The night was hot, close. The “civilized” world was still tortured by the idea that windows must be kept closed to prevent the night air, source of evil humors and of a multitude of diseases, away from the body.

Against the advice of his wife, Tartini had eaten two game pies. Now he paid the price. He went to bed early. It took a long time getting to sleep.

The dream came slowly, without form, and then there he was, making a pact with the Devil. It went well. He felt no remorse, no Faustian indecision.

The Devil asked if he might play his violin, the Hercules. Tartini gave it to him out of curiosity. Then he was amazed to hear the Devil play a sonata so miraculous and beautiful that it exceeded all imagination.

It enchanted Tartini. His breath stopped and he awoke. He reached for his violin, the Hercules, to reproduce some of the sounds he heard in his dream.

As he told the French violinist, Lalande, years later, “The music I composed at that moment is no doubt the best I ever wrote - and I call it the Devil’s Sonata - but it is a far cry from what I heard in my dreams.”