A man raised his voice in a song, and the exultantly melancholy pæan to beauty blended with the other sounds like a skillfully woven thread in a tapestry. It died away so gradually as to seem as if it had never been. The fiddles sighed to silence in a burst of expiring passion.
Nobody spoke for several moments. Music was bred in the bone of these wild folk. It held them as could nothing else.
"What of Giorgi Bordu?" said Tokalji presently. "Does he sing or play or dance?"
Nikka reached out his hand almost eagerly.
"I will play, if you wish. I vowed not to touch the fiddle again, but—"
His fingers closed lovingly on the crude instrument, and he cuddled it under his chin. His bow swept the strings in a torrent of arpeggios. He stood up and strode into the firelight as if upon a stage. And then he began to play, plaintively, at first, in a minor key. There were the noises of the night, a crackling fire, animals stirring, the cry of a child, awakening. The music brightened, quickened, became joyous. You felt the rays of the sun, and comfort of work. Men and women danced and sang. A harsh note intervened. There was a quarrel. Anger yelled from the strings. Turmoil ensued. Faster and faster went the tune. And then peace, and the measure became slower, almost stately.
The caravan had passed on. A forest encompassed it. Boughs clashed overhead, birds twittered and sang. Cool shadows fell athwart the path. But the way grew steep. The music told of the rocks and the slippery mud where a stream had overflowed, of the steady climb, of the endurance required. The caravan reached the height. A chill wind blew, but fair before them stretched a pleasant land, and the descent was easy to the warm, brown road that wound across the plain. Sunset and camp again, firelight, the moon overhead, talk of love, the sensuous movement of a dance. Then, languorous and slow, the coming of sleep.
I did not know it, but I was listening to the composition of Zaranko's Gypsy Sonata Op. 27, which some day, I suppose, will be as famous as the Revolutionary Etude or the Hungarian Rhapsody or Beethoven's dream of the moonlight. But no audience will ever hear it with greater appreciation than those ragged Gypsies who sat around the fire in the dirty courtyard of the house in Sokaki Masyeri. As Nikka resumed his place in the outer circle, only the whispering of the flames broke the stillness. The very children were frozen on their knees, drunk with the ecstasy of melody.
"Heh!" called Beran Tokalji, first to shake off the spell. "I do not wonder you vowed not to touch the fiddle, if you like the open road. With that bow of yours, Giorgi Bordu, you could wring hundreds of gold pieces from the Franks. You play like the Redcoats in the khans in Buda and Bucharest. Heh-heh! I have heard Niketu and Stoyan Mirko and Karaji, and they were not to be compared with you. It is seldom the bravest men have the touch of the fiddler."
Others spoke up readily in praise or asked questions as to Nikka's opinion on moot points of harmony and the desirable methods of interpreting various Gipsy songs. They would have had him play again, but he refused. I think he was emotionally exhausted.