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.