MEDITATION IN E MINOR
Well, well, well. The lady pianist will now oblige with something very refined. When in the name of 750,000 gods of reason will I ever learn enough to stay at home and go to bed instead of searching kittenishly for diversion in neighborhood movie and vaudeville houses?
No. Wrong. The lady is not a pianist. She is merely an accompanist. She is going to accompany something on cares? They are no more than the ripples which one's ego a face! Two hundred and eighty-five years old, if a day.
Aha! His nobs. A fiddler. "Silver Threads Among the Gold," and something fancy from the opera. And all dressed up in his wedding suit. The white tie is a bit soiled and the white vest longs mutely for the laundryman. And if he's going to wear a dress suit, if he insists upon wearing a dress suit, why doesn't he press his pants?
But how did a man with a face like this ever happen to think he could fiddle? An English nobleman. Or maybe a Swedish nobleman. Hm! A very interesting face. A little bit touched with flabbiness. And somewhat soiled, intangibly soiled. Like an English nobleman or a Swedish nobleman who has stayed up all night drinking.
And he holds his fiddle in an odd way. Like what? Well, like a fiddler. Like a marvelous fiddler. It hangs limply from his hand as if it were nonexistent. Kreisler holds his fiddle like that. A close-cropped blond mustache and the beginnings of a paunch. Nevertheless a very refined gentleman, a baron somewhat the worse for a night of bourbon.
The idiotic orchestra, the idiotic orchestra! Did anybody ever hear such an idiotic orchestra? Three violins, one cello, one cornet, one flute and a drum all out of tune, all out of time. The prelude. And his nobs grins. Poor fellow. But who taught him how to hold a fiddle like that?
We're off. An E minor chord from our friend at the piano. Hm, something classical. Ho, ho! Viotti. Well, well, here's a howdeedo. His nobs is going to play the concerto. Good-by, good luck and God bless him. If I was in bed, if I was in bed, I wouldn't have to listen to a refined gentleman with his swell pants unpressed murdering poor Viotti. A swell gentleman with his eyes carefully made up. I didn't notice his eyes before. All set, Paganini. Your turn. Let's go.
Ah, that was a note! Well, well, well, his nobs can play. Hm! A cadenza in double stops! And the E minor scale in harmonics! Listen to the baron in the dirty white vest. The man's a violinist. Observe—calisthenics on the G string and in the second position. A very difficult position and easily faked. And when did Heifetz ever take a run like that? Up, down and the fingers hammering like thoroughbreds on a fast track. Pizzicato with the left hand and obbligato glissando!
Hoopla! The fellow's showing off! And it isn't a Drdla souvenir or a vaudeville Brahms arrangement. But twenty years of practice. Yes, sir, there are twenty years and eight hours a day, every day for twenty years, in these acrobatics. There are twenty years, twenty years, behind this technique. And well-spent years.
But tell me, Cyril, for whom is our baron showing off—for whom? Our baron with the soiled tie and the made-up eyes, fiddling coldly, elaborately for a handful of annoyed flappers, amused shoe clerks and bored home lovers sitting stolidly in the dark, waiting stolidly and defiantly to be diverted?
Bravo! Five of us applaud. No, six. A gentleman in an upper box applauds with some degree of violence. And there is the orchestra leader—a dark-skinned, black-eyed, curly-headed youth, nodding and smiling.
Next on the program? Ah, a ballad. A thing the cabaret ladies sing, "Do You Think of Me?" A faint smile on our baron's face. But the fiddle leaps into position as if for another cold, elaborate attack. It takes twenty years, twenty well-spent years to learn to hold a bow like that. Firmly, casually, indifferently as one holds a pencil between one's fingers.
Admission 33 cents, including war tax. But this is worth—well, it is what the novelists call an illuminating experience. This gentleman of music whose fingers have for twenty years absorbed the souls of Beethoven and Sarasate, Liszt and Moussorgski, this aristocrat of the catgut is posturing sardonically before the three bored fates. He is pouring twenty years, twenty well-spent years, into a tawdry little ballad. Ah, how our baron's fiddle sings! And the darkened faces in front hum to themselves: "When you're flirt-ing with another, do you ever think—of—me."
Yes, my tired-faced baron, there's a question. Do you? We, out front, all have our little underworlds in which we live sometimes while music plays and beautiful things come to our eyes. And yours? This tin-pan alley ballad throbbing liquidly from the strings of your fiddle—"When you're flirt-ing with another do you ever think—of—me?" Of the twenty years, the twenty well-spent years? Of the soul that your fingers captured? Of the dream that took form in your firm wrist?
And now the chorus once more. In double stops. In harmonics. With arpeggios thrown in. And once more, largo. Sure and full. Sobbing organ notes, whimpering grace notes. Superb, baron! And done with a half smile at the darkened faces out front. The tired faces that blinked stolidly at Viotti. A smile at the orchestra leader who stands with his mouth open waiting as if the song were still in the air.
Applause. All of us this time. More applause. Say this guy can fiddle, he can. Come on, baron, another tune. The tired faces yammer for another ditty. "Träumerei." All right, let her go, Paganini. And after that the "Missouri Waltz."
* * * * *
I will stay for the next show. I will stay for the three shows. And each time this magnifico will come out and make music. But better than that. I will go back stage and talk with him. I will ask him: "How does it happen, sir, that a man who can fiddle like you, a man who could play a duet with Kreisler—how does it happen you're fiddling in a neighborhood movie and vaudeville house?"
And he will unfold a story. Yes, there's a story there. Something happened to this nobleman of the soiled white vest and the marvelous fingers. There was an occurrence in this man's life which would make a good climax for a second act.
No, that would spoil the picture. To find out, to learn the clumsy mechanism behind this charming spectacle would take away. Better like this. The lady at the piano. Ah, indeed, the lady at the piano, a very elderly lady with a thin nose and hair that was once extremely beautiful, perhaps she had something to do with it? The orchestra pounds and scrapes away. And the movie jumps around and the heroine weeps, but somebody saves her. "Where there is no faith there cannot be true love," confesses the hero, folding her in his well-pressed arms. And that's that.
Now our friend, the baron, again. No, better to leave. He has left his smile in the wings this time. He is very serious or perhaps very tired. Two times tonight to play. Too much—too much.
My hat, and I will walk out on his nobs. And, anyway, Huneker wrote the story long ago. About a piano player in Coney Island that he called—what was it? Oh, yes, "A Chopin of the Gutter."