by Ursula Bloom
The man read the letter. He said: ‘I do not know this woman.’
‘She played with you at the Opera House in Madrid,’ said Jan, still with a smile, but Matina knew him well enough to understand that behind that smile he was afraid.
‘Hundreds of women have played with me. Still I do not know her, and I do not take strange pupils.’
‘But the boy is a genius.’
The little man turned to Jan. ‘To every father every son is a genius,’ he snapped.
Matina tried to speak. ‘If you please, it would mean so much to us, and we are so anxious that he should come to you. We could pay.’
The man turned his eyes to her, and at that particular moment she knew that he was a genius himself, but that the fire of it had burnt out all other emotions, and that he had no thought for anything outside his own music. He said: ‘Money means nothing to me. I have no time for more pupils. I could not take him, even if he were all you, and this woman whom I have never met, say that he is.’
He handed back her letter with a flourish.
There was nothing to do but to walk out. Nothing for it but to pass into the quiet street, sweet with July sunshine, and the smell of the roses in a neighbouring garden. Quietly Matina slipped her hand into Jan’s.
‘You wanted it so much?’
‘I want to do the best for Josette’s son. I want to do all that I can for him. I have put everything else out of my life save that one goal.’
‘The way will be shown to us.’
‘Madame Hubac says this is the man. It is dreadful that he will not take the boy.’
‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘I could try again.’
‘No. He was determined. I do not believe that he ever knew Madame Hubac. She is the person that I blame.’
Matina shook her head.
‘You do her an injustice. These great men get so absorbed with their own greatness that they have no time to think outside themselves. He has forgotten the women he met when he was not so fine a fellow. I do not blame her. She is sincere. I blame him.’
Jan came to a standstill outside a pleasant suburban garden where the Madonna lilies were just budding, greenly white, beside the tiger lilies which are spotted like fangs.
He said: ‘If Luis is a genius, will he grow like that too? Forgetful of all save his music. Forgetful of us and everything that we have done for him?’
‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘no, of course not.’ But she was afraid.
They drove home in the bus without speaking. They got out at Shaftesbury Avenue, which smelt of tarmac, and hot humanity, and of petrol.
‘What do we do next?’ asked Jan again as they turned up the little street which led into Soho Square where the plane trees were green and dusty.
‘The way will be shown us,’ she said once more, and she believed it.
At that identical moment they saw the Maestro coming towards them.
Three
I
It was a strange meeting of these three friends in the narrow street, with the restaurants around them, and the grocery, and coffee shops, and all the polonies and sausages hanging in strings.
The Maestro had aged very much. He wore his big sombrero hat and his flowing cloak, and had he been in any other quarter of London undoubtedly he would have been stared at, but here the people were used to strange sights, Madame Hubac for instance.
Jan and Matina flew to him one each side. They all three kissed one another excitedly, and Jan began to sing. In this way they came back to the Amalia. Forgotten was the interview with the horrid little man in the suburbs, who had refused to teach Luis, and who would not even admit that he knew Madame Hubac. Everything gloomy had melted before the unexpected joy of meeting the little old Maestro, whom they had thought was pleasantly fiddling away at the Golden Galleon, and who instead had come here to see them.
‘I missed you,’ he said.
The Maestro was sitting in the restaurant, and the chianti was tapped, and brought to the table. It was an occasion! There was so much to ask that there was no time for questions. There was so much to say that there was hardly the breath for words.
He laughed a lot, and his eyes crinkled at the corners just as they had always done. He took life as being gay, he accepted everything as it came.
The Galleon, he said, had closed. The Padrone had died only last week. He had overworked considerably, and had fretted because the place had lost its popularity. To-day everybody went to Capri. Capri was the craze, and nobody came to a little out-of-the-way place like Amalia, as once they had done. They were such snobs, these tourists, they liked to head their paper with a famous name, and Amalia was not a famous name.
Jan had seen some of that on the Riviera where everybody had gone to Juan-les-Pins, and Cannes, and Monte, because they were names, and where fewer came to Villefranche which had twice the charm but was lesser known.
The Padrone had broken his heart; he had grown thin and anxious, and his strength had left him so that when illness overtook him, he had not the power to resist it.
The Maestro had not known what to do. He had made money and had saved it, for he had lived very simply, his wants being few, and he had a well filled coffer. He had stared at the shutters of the Golden Galleon, closed across the windows out of which had flowed so much of his music. He had stared at it, and had thought of it now as merely the husk from which the fruit had been spilled.
No more.
He had turned homesick for the people that he had cared most for, and on impulse had taken a little boat and had come here. It had been hell in the little boat, he held his stomach, and made a grimace, but he had got here! People had told him that it was cold and wet in England, but he found it warmly pleasant. Was it always like this? No, they assured him, and they laughed. He should see it in the autumn when the leaves sludged down into the gutters, and the cold fogs came up, and it was damp, and penetratingly cold.
He said: ‘I do not care about that. It is pleasant now.’
He drank another glass of chianti, and looked at them amiably. ‘You have done well. This little restaurant is very pleasant.’
‘Yes,’ they said.
‘And the bambino?’
‘He is a big boy now,’ said Jan.
It was Matina who cut him short. She put out a hand. ‘Cannot you see that it is Fate that has sent the Maestro here to us? He will tell us what to do for the future. The way has been shown to us, just as I said that it would be,’ and she laughed. Her eyes were fine and dark; there was a new lustre about them. Looking at her, Jan saw in her some burning flame of beauty. She is different, he thought, she is strangely moved at seeing the old man again. She must have cared deeply for him yet she left him to come to me.
‘What is it about the bambino?’ asked the old man.
‘He is a genius,’ said Matina slowly. ‘He plays the violin.’
‘Many play the violin, but there are few that you can call genius,’ said the Maestro.
She smiled confidently. ‘I dare say, but you will find that he is very different from those others. He is so clever. When he plays, the violin sings for him. Somehow you know that the violin likes to have Luis hold it, and play it, and whisper to it. Somehow you know.’
The old man looked closer. He said: ‘I must hear him play.’
‘To-day,’ said Jan, ‘we have been to see a very great violinist, because Madame Hubac who teaches Luis can teach him no more. She admits it. We went all the way out to Highgate to see this man, but he would not take Luis as a pupil.’
‘I knew him when he was not really great,’ said the Maestro, ‘he was always the kind that gets the swollen head.’
‘It has been a bitter grief,’ said Jan.
‘We have saved money to have Luis taught properly. We know how much is lost if the child cannot have the correct lessons, and we want to avoid that,’ Matina said slowly.
All the time the Maestro watched her.
He remembered her as she had always been, a
devout lover of music, a girl who had longed to see the flame of genius burn in her own bosom and who, in spite of all her efforts, had never been able to light that flame.
‘I must hear the boy play,’ he said.
At that very moment Luis came in, carrying his violin with him. He hung up his cap, and came into the restaurant, looking rather apprehensively at the Maestro.
‘Come, Luis,’ said his father, ‘this is a very old friend. He is so old a friend that he knew you when you were but a very little bambino, and he loves music.’
The boy came forward shyly. He stood there uncertainly staring at the Maestro as though he did not know what to say.
The old man looked at him. Into his faded rheumy eyes there came some spark of inner fire. He said: ‘You play the violin, eh?’
‘Yes,’ said Luis.
‘You will play for me?’
The boy looked at his father for guidance.
‘Go on,’ said Jan. ‘Play for the Maestro. He wants to hear what you can do.’
Slowly the child opened the case, and drew out the violin. He touched it with loving fingers as only masters touch a beloved instrument. He fitted it beneath his chin and took the bow into his hand. For a moment he hesitated, then he drew it across the strings.
There was silence in the little restaurant, even the gay curtains stayed still, undisturbed by the light wind which stirred the leaves of the Virginia creeper; it was as though the whole place listened.
The child played gravely.
It was the music that the Maestro had always loved, the music that he himself had never been able to make. He heard the notes quivering out into space, he heard them as he had always wanted to hear them coming from his own violin, and he knew that Jan and Matina had been right, for this boy was a genius.
He listened to the sound of the music and knew that he was carried back to his own youth, to the time when he had strode across the hills which lie around Rome, and had looped the large-eyed daisies in Tuscany; to the days when he had known courtship and romance, and had lazed on the green canals of old Venice. He went back to the happiness of his first triumphs with his fiddle in the opera houses all over Italy.
It seemed that the dreams of youth had come back to him again, and they were bright once more with that enthusiasm which once had made them such an exquisite pattern. The child could take him back that far.
Luis finished playing.
The sound died down, and the little restaurant became once more just Soho on a hot summer’s afternoon, and the Maestro knew that he was an old man in whose breast enthusiasm was growing dim, and in whose tired eyes the light was fading. Rome and Venice and Tuscany were a long time ago; it had been genius that had lit the torch to show him the way back.
The boy was kneeling on the floor putting the violin into its case again.
‘Well?’ said Jan with inquiring eyes which burned with a fever-brightness.
‘You play well, my boy, you will go far.’
‘Yes,’ said the child, apparently without interest.
He wanted to go into the yard with the other children, and he pushed the violin case under the far table, and got up.
‘Run along,’ said his father, seeing his look.
II
When he had gone the Maestro turned to them, his eyes eager, and his hands emphasizing his words.
‘I maligned you. I thought that you did exaggerate because it was your child, and every man loves his own child, because it is part of himself. But you were not wrong. The boy is a genius! He will be amongst the great.’
‘I said so,’ said Matina with relief, and she sat back in her chair to survey him. There was pride in her eyes.
‘He must have lessons, the right kind of lessons from the proper masters. He needs the greatest possible care. He must go to be trained at Dresden and Prague. He must travel about the world.’
‘But how?’ asked Jan.
‘That is what we have got to arrange.’ The old man thrummed the table impatiently as though he wanted to emphasize a point which, at the moment, he was not able to make. He thought hard. ‘This is going to take money,’ he said.
‘The restaurant is paying very well.’
‘We have something put by,’ said Matina, ‘anything that we save belongs to the boy. We want to make him great. We are proud of him and we want him to be proud of us.’
‘He will be proud of you, and you will be very proud of him. You must give me the time to think this out. We have got to think hard. We must not make any rash decisions, whatever else we do.’
They said no, they must not rush into any rash decisions!
Matina got up and went to see Tessa about the evening menus. There was work to be done. Presently Jan went upstairs to tidy himself, and get ready to receive the guests who would be arriving shortly.
But the Maestro sat on dreaming, and he was deaf to the sounds of this little street and blind to the sight of the people beyond the gay curtains. He was thinking of the music that the child had made, and the memories that it had awakened. He was going right back to his own youth and all those inflamed fancies of the young man in love.
If he had had the right lessons he himself might have gone far. He must personally care for this child. He must see that Luis’s feet were set along the pathway which leads to pure music. He made a covenant with himself on this score.
Four
I
The Maestro stayed for three weeks; he made friends with Madame Hubac over the little milk shop and together they made plans for Luis’s future. There was so much that had to be arranged, they said. They discussed and compared the great teachers, and in the end the Maestro came back to Jan and Matina with a plan.
He had mapped out the whole of Luis’s musical education, and if it could pursue these lines, he was sure that the day would come when the boy could be launched as the great genius in a big concert. He was the most excellent material and it would be possible thus to make him one of the greatest stars in the musical world.
‘I am sure,’ said the Maestro.
But it would be impossible unless he had the right tuition, from the proper people, and in the right form. It was all planned out and arranged here on paper. The three of them pored over it.
Jan and Matina were staggered at the boldness of the plan. Here were names of such great men that they could only gasp. They agreed that they were the men to train a young boy like Luis. They were quite sure that the arrangements were excellent but it would take so much money.
‘The restaurant pays well,’ said the Maestro.
Yes, they agreed.
Then how could they send so young a child to foreign countries to train under the great professors, when they themselves were chained to this little restaurant, and if they were to have the money to send him to such masters, they could not possibly forego the restaurant.
‘I will take him,’ said the Maestro.
He had it all arranged. He had some money and he was prepared to spend time and money in travelling with the boy. In ten years he would be a star. In ten years the Maestro might be very old, but at least he would have justified his reason for living, because he would have produced a child who would play divine music.
‘I have no child of my own,’ he said, for all his romance had died in old Venice at the time when he was a very young man, and the voice of the Serenata drifted down the lagoon, and the women were fickle, and his heart had suffered a break. ‘I have no child. Give me your boy, and I will make him great. Give me the chance.’
They did not know what to say.
‘Is it that you do not trust me?’ he asked.
They trusted him. They trusted him even more than they would have trusted themselves and they said so. In the end the arrangements were made.
Jan asked the boy what he thought of the idea.
‘I want to go,’ said Luis.
‘It will mean leaving me and Matina.’
‘It will mean being a great violinist.’
For a moment it struck Jan that it was sad that the boy could put his desire for greatness before his love for the two who had cared so much for him; then he dismissed that idea, he must not let sentimental foolishness stand in the child’s light.
‘You will not forget us, Luis?’ he asked. ‘If we make this big sacrifice for you, if we send you, and work hard so that there is the money to pay for your training, you will not forget us?’
‘No,’ he replied.
He was not thrilled and excited as other boys of his age might have been over the idea of visiting a foreign country. He was prepared to go away and quite happy about it. He was queerly reserved, and somehow Jan felt that he had not known him very well.
‘But it is for his good,’ he kept telling himself, ‘only a selfish father would want him to stay. He will go away to train to become great, and that is what Josette would have wished for him.’
The Maestro accepted it calmly.
The night before he was to start, the Maestro and Matina went for a stroll round the square. It was very late at night, and the restaurant had closed. Jan was doing the accounts. They left him poring over the books, which invariably gave him a headache, but he would never go to bed until they were proved.
Outside in the square it was cool, and there were stars twinkling through the plane trees, and the hum of traffic had died down.
The Maestro leaned on Matina’s arm.
He said: ‘Yours is a strange household,’ and then, ‘you love Jan very much?’
‘Very much,’ she said, and she would not have confessed it to anybody else in the world.
The old man walked heavily and slowly, he was weighing out his words.
He said: ‘Why have you not married?’
‘Because he has never asked me.’
‘Then he must be blind to his own happiness, blind to everything that matters in his life. Does he not know that he is in love with you too?’
She shook her head.
‘No, he is not in love with me,’ she said, ‘all his feelings like that were tied up in Josette; he has never loved me, he never will now.’