Читать книгу Time's Door - Esther Meynell - Страница 9

When Paganini came, when Giovanni led him in to his mother, Gerda stood up and curtseyed and gazed at him in silence. Her eyes seemed to sink into two dusky mountain pools as she looked into Paganini’s eyes, full of an unfathomable melancholy—she knew that for his marvellous genius he paid a bitter price. Paganini felt her understanding, he gave her neither greeting nor condolence—such things were unnecessary with people like Gerda.

“Do you wish your son to be a violinist?” he asked her.

“It is not what I wish, but what God designs,” Gerda answered.

“Or the Devil,” said Paganini with a queer little smile. “Anyway the boy will have to work as hard as the Devil works to catch the souls of mankind.”

“I will do that!” said Giovanni, looking up with eager adoration at the tall figure before him.

“Fetch your fiddle,” Paganini commanded, “and we will see what you can do with it.”

Paganini took the violin from him, ran his right hand down the smoothly swelling back in a kind of caress, touched the strings, tightened the peg of the A string by a hair’s turn, and handed it back to Giovanni.

“Holy St. Anthony, help me now,” murmured the boy under his breath. “If I fail it is the end. I will not play any more if he will not teach me.”

And suddenly it was as if he had stepped into miraculous waters which rose to his knees, to his heart, to his lips. He felt as though he no longer stood upon the ground.

“Play something that you love,” said Paganini,BACH SONATA looking at him intently, “not just to show what your fingers can do.”

“Bach,” his mother whispered from her seat at the keyboard.

Giovanni nodded, smiled, and just audibly to her murmured “The Fifth.”

She slipped into the lovely opening bars of the Largo. Giovanni lifted his fiddle to his chin and played his deep tender phrase with a restrained and quivering volume of tone that surprised himself. It was as though the violin spoke of its own volition, from its own heart. All apprehension had left him, he knew that he was playing as he had never played before, and that his desire would be granted to him.

Gerda and he completed the Fifth Violin Sonata of Bach, ceased and looked at each other with shining eyes.

“What is that you play?” was Paganini’s first word. The two players were amazed at this question. How strange to be in ignorance of Bach’s violin sonatas. Gerda explained a little.

“It is good music, it is beautiful, with both brain and heart,” said Paganini. “But I do not know the name. A Cantor in Leipzig, you say, and dead some long while? Well, I am of Italy, and I more generally play Italian music, usually my own. I know better what my fiddle can do—and the people pay much good money to hear it! They have never heard of this Bach, but they have heard of Paganini! But it matters not what your son play. I will teach him and then he shall know how to play anything under the stars. Whether I teach you for a long or a short time,” he said, turning to Giovanni, “I cannot tell, for my life is a wandering and a broken one. But in the time I teach you it is sure that you will learn something none other can give you—I, Paganini, say so. You shall come with me now.”

“Now?” Gerda’s question was so faint as to be like a sigh.

“Yes, now, Cara Signora. I take your boy away—but I will give him back to you made into what he could never otherwise become, a violinist. I take pupils almost never, but I will take him. You will let him go?”

He rose and put his hand upon the shoulder of Giovanni. They both looked at her for her releasing word.

As the drowning see their whole lives in oneWINGS TO FLY anguished moment, so past, present, and to come rushed over Gerda’s head like a great wind that lifted her up and held her poised over an abyss of sacrifice. She had given up her country for her husband, and now her husband had been taken from her—was her son to go too, leaving her alone? Might she not at least go with him? But the swift thought was followed by a swifter denial—she must stay near Luigi, for he might come back to the untenanted house of his mind and need her. She could not wander away over Europe with Paganini and Giovanni. And Giovanni did not want her—like every mother’s her heart was pierced with this sword. Her bambino had sprouted his little wings and would fly away. Perhaps he would return, but first he must fly. He would hurt himself and she would not be there. That also was necessary. And Paganini?—some said he was in league with Evil Powers. But no, she had looked into his sad eyes.

And there they both stood, waiting for her to speak. Her tongue seemed weighted with lead. She felt as if she were dragging herself from a far distance—it would be too late, they would be gone away, she would have failed her Giovanni. No, not her Giovanni—Paganini’s Giovanni.

“Yes, I will let him go,” she said.

Paganini bent over her hand, “You are a brave woman.”

But Gerda knew she was not a brave woman, only a loving one.