Читать книгу Time's Door - Esther Meynell - Страница 15

On one occasion Paganini took Giovanni on a pilgrimage to a mountain Convent. They hired asses to convey them up the steep and rocky paths. Giovanni was enchanted with the views that unfolded beneath them as the sure-footed creatures slowly ascended. Half-way up there was a little plateau on which was a Calvary, with the life-size Figure of the Crucified hanging under a small pent roof of straw. Giovanni slipped off his mule to say a little prayer. Paganini gave the Calvary a pained glance, but was passing by when he was nearly thrown to the ground by his mule suddenly going down on its knees. The mule attendant laughed, even as he genuflected and crossed himself.

“Ah, that is our holy ass!” he said. “He onceTHE HOLY ASS belonged to a monk, who trained him never to pass a shrine to Our Lady or a Crucifix without going to his knees. I should have warned you.”

“I am properly rebuked,” Paganini answered, “slack son of Holy Church that I am.” He went up to the ass and rubbed its ears. “I will buy this animal,” he continued, “and give it to the Brothers, so that it may live a good life.”

“But it does not matter what happens to them,” said the ass driver with good-humoured indifference, “They have no souls.”

“But they have bodies and they can feel, just as you can,” Giovanni burst in, for he had inherited a tenderness towards animals from his mother, and had rescued little hapless creatures on many occasions from Latin hands.

The man stared at his vehemence.

“I do not use my asses ill,” he said, “or they do not work and then they put their silly hoofs into my pocket. But as for their feelings”—he shrugged—“Were there no goad they would eat all day and work not at all!”

After this little episode they mounted higher into the sky and at length, towards evening, came to the gate of the Monastery.

Sharp and beautiful were Giovanni’s impressions of it—bare white walls, little cupolas roofed in rose-red tiles, brick floors echoing underfoot to the slurring sound of the monks’ sandals, a sky rose and gold with sunset, the dark notes of cypress trees and ilex against that radiant colour. There was a hurry of welcoming figures, people climbing up the mountain track behind them—people who were coming to listen to Paganini—bells ringing, gleam of tapers wandering uncertainly about, a glimpse through a lifted leather curtain of a golden shining Altar.

Then Giovanni found himself set down with Paganini at one end of a narrow trestle table, to which a Lay Brother brought for their refreshment bowls of soup, platters of eggs and beans, cheese, bread, a flask of wine in a straw-cased bottle. One of the older Brothers, who was the Guest-Master, sat with them, his hands folded in his wide sleeves, and talked placidly while they ate. Giovanni, whose hunger was sharp, said little, but as he ate watched the faces of Paganini and the Brother. He thought it impossible to imagine two human faces more unlike—Paganini’s so bitten into fantastic hollows, so ravaged like a landscape swept with fire; the monk’s, though old and withered, showing no line that did not spell serenity, with a sort of silver shining on it, like a reflected light.

“Here, in the cell, there is much peace,” he wasCONVENT CONVERSATION saying in his quiet voice, “Much peace. But the world is full of many troubles—we can feel it washing in waves down there in the Plain, and we wonder why the poor people do not climb up here and come out of it, like those who went into Noe’s Ark when the world was flooded—lift themselves out of it on a little prayer.”

“You cannot escape your troubles by climbing up a mountain,” answered Paganini, “And we do not all want to enter that Ark of Noe. I lift myself on a wing of music.”

“But music soars not so high as a prayer,” the Brother said calmly.

“No?” Paganini twisted his lip in a smile, “You listen how high my notes ascend. Maybe your prayer and my music are the same thing—only my notes are the purer, for they ask for nothing, they bear no burden of human requests. Surely the Almighty must get tired of the eternal human cry for the things it wants!”

“He told us to pray,” said the monk with undisturbed peacefulness, “He shaped our lips to the Paternoster before the beginning of time.”

“Well, I pray with my fiddle.”

“That,” said the Brother, “is permissible and right. All things should serve God, and music is His handmaid. Know you not that the holy Saint Francesco longed for music in the suffering of his last days?”

“Nay,” answered Paganini, whose mouth had twisted a little at the phrase of music being a handmaid, “I know not that story of the Saint, though I have heard others, of birds and of a wolf.”

“They also are good stories, but this is more holy. Know you then that when the Poverello was near to his end and in much pain, a desire came upon him to hear the music of the viol. So he turned to one of the Brothers who had in his worldly days played upon that instrument, and said to him, ‘Brother, the children of the world have no understanding of divine sacraments, and musical instruments which in former days were set apart for God’s praise, man now wantonly uses for the carnal delight of the ear. Now I beseech thee to go secretly and borrow a viol and thus bring comfort with some honest melody to Brother Body who is so full of pains.’ But the friar thus requested had scruples and thought such things not suitable. ‘Let it be, then,’ said the Saint meekly, ‘It is better to put aside good things than to cause scandal.’ But still his thoughts dwelt on music, and as he lay awake in the night he heard the notes of a viol and music whose sweetness was not of this earth came to his ear. As he lay listening all his pain left him. In the morning he told of his experience and said, ‘Brother, our Lord, who consoles the afflicted, never leaves me without consolation. I could not hear the viol of men, but I have heard one far sweeter.’ ”

Tears came to Giovanni’s eyes as he listened toPAGANINI’S PRAYER this tenderly told tale, and Paganini’s face had grown less harsh.

They rose from the table and stood for a moment while the thanks were murmured in swift Latin.

“And now I will show you how my fiddle says its prayers,” Paganini said smiling a little to himself.

The small white Chapel where Paganini was to play was crowded to its doors, for people had come from all the hamlets round and toiled up from the Plain below. The office of compline proceeded calmly and when the melody of “Te Lucis ante Terminum” flowed softly through the air it was taken up by a voice that sent a shiver down every spine—a voice remote and pure as though it came from the first large star, just glimmering above the campanile of the Convent Church. It was the voice of Paganini’s violin, breathing from muted strings, so faint as to be hardly heard, yet of such a strange remote perfection that the listening ear heard nothing else. Then all other music ceased, prayers were ended, and the hidden violinist stood forth to play.

When he had finished—and Giovanni, listening, felt that never had he played with more beauty or more gravity, throwing aside entirely those dazzling fireworks of the virtuoso with which he at times displayed his powers and his bitter contempt of his audiences, all the best in him brought forth by these simple listeners, these monks and peasants—the little Chapel witnessed a scene unknown since its building five centuries earlier. The congregation forgot where it was and broke into frantic applause and cries, it stood on benches, and sobbed, and wiped its eyes, and applauded again. The monks hastened from the choir, and some with shocked frowns and others with understanding smiles, repressed and checked and quietened and recalled the people to a sense of the place in which they were.

“But the gracious Lord Himself will understand,” whispered one young Brother to another, “ ’Twas as if the gate of Heaven had opened a little way and we heard the music there.”

When Paganini came out of the Church, Giovanni close behind him holding his fiddle, the people, still quivering with emotion, thronged after him, pressing round him.

“Maestro, play to us again—once more—for us to remember when we die—for the Blessed Virgin’s sake!” They seized his fingers and kissed them, they clutched at his coat, one or two even fell on their knees and put up their hands as though they were praying.

“Shall I?” Paganini asked Giovanni, and took his fiddle from him. “Make me a little space for my bow arm,” he said, looking at the excited people round him with eyes that glowed like coals in their sockets. They fell back from him, so that he stood alone.

Giovanni drew a breath that went through himEVENING SCENE with a sharpness as though it were his last. Every detail of the scene penetrated to his inner mind where it remained unforgettable and perfect. The sky of deepest blue was now thronged with stars. A yellow patch of light streamed out to the little courtyard where the shadowy forms were gathered, and on the wide steps by the door in this light groups of the monks were standing together, as silent and as still as though they stood in the background of some altar painting. The roof of the Church, with its campanile pierced by the turret where swung the solitary bell, was outlined sharply against the last faint primrose light left by the sunken sun.

And Paganini lifted his Josef del Gésu to his chin and played.