The Blind Musician

by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

IV.

Joachim really did play well. He could even handle the more intricate violin, and there had been a time when on a Sunday at the inn no one had played the Cossack dance or the merry Polish Cracovienne better than himself. When seated on a cask with the violin braced against his shaven chin, and his tall sheepskin hat on the back of his head, he would draw the bow across the quivering strings, hardly a man in the inn could keep his seat. Even the old one-eyed Jew who accompanied Joachim on a bass-viol would wax enthusiastic, his awkward instrument with its heavy bass straining every nerve, as it were, to keep time with the light notes of Joachim’s violin, which seemed to dance as well as sing; while old Yankel himself, with his skull-cap on his head, would lift his shoulders and turn his bald head, keeping time with his body to the gay capricious tune. It would hardly be worth while to describe the effect upon others whose feet are so made that at the very first note of a dancing tune they involuntarily begin to shuffle and stamp.

Ever since Joachim had fallen in love with Màrya, a courtyard servant-maid of the neighboring Pan, he had neglected his merry violin. In truth it had not helped him to win the heart of the saucy Màrya, who preferred the smooth German face of her master’s valet to the bearded visage of the musician. Since that time his violin had not been heard either in the inn or at the evening gatherings. He had hung it on a nail in the stable, nor did he seem aware that from dampness and neglect the strings of the instrument, once so dear to his heart, were constantly snapping with a sound so sharp, plaintive, and dismal that the very horses neighed in sympathy, and turned their heads to gaze in wonder at their indifferent master. In order to supply its place, Joachim had purchased from a travelling Carpathian mountaineer a wooden pipe. He probably expected to find it a more suitable medium wherewith to express the sorrow of a rejected heart, and that its sympathetic modulations would harmonize with his hard lot. But the mountain pipe disappointed Joachim’s expectations. He tried nearly a dozen of them in turn, in every possible way; he cut them, soaked them in water, dried them in the sun, hung them up under the roof to dry in the wind,—but all to no avail. The mountain pipe did not commend itself to the Hohòl’s[7] heart. It whistled where it should have sung, wailed when he wanted a sentimental tremolo, and never in fact responded to his mood.

At last Joachim grew disgusted with all the wandering mountaineers, having made up his mind that not one of them understood the art of producing a good pipe, and decided to manufacture one with his own hands. For several days he roamed with frowning brow through swamp and field; went up to every willow bush, examined its branches, occasionally cut off one of them; but he failed to find just what he needed. With sternly frowning brow he still pursued his search, and came at last to a spot above the slowly running river, where the placid waters barely stirred the lilies’ snow-white heads. This nook was sheltered from the wind by a dense growth of spreading willows that hung their pensive heads over the dusky and peaceful depths below. Parting the bushes, Joachim made his way down to the river, where he paused for a moment; and the idea suddenly came to him that this was the very spot where he was to find the object of his search. The wrinkles vanished from his brow. From his boot-leg he drew out a knife with a string attached to it, and after carefully examining a faintly whispering young willow, he unhesitatingly selected a straight and slender stalk that bent over the steep, crumbling shore. Tapping it with his finger for some purpose of his own, a look of self-satisfaction came upon his face, as he watched it sway to and fro in the air, and listened to the gentle murmur of its leaves.

“That is the very thing,” he muttered, nodding with delight, as he threw into the river the twigs he had previously cut.

It proved to be a glorious pipe. Having dried the willow, Joachim burned out the pith with a red-hot wire; and boring six round holes, he cut the seventh crosswise and tightly closed one end with a wooden plug, across which he cut a narrow slit. Then for a week he hung the pipe up by a slender string, that it might be warmed by the sun and dried by the wind; after which he carefully cleaned it with his knife, scraped it with glass, and rubbed it hard with a piece of cloth. The upper part of the pipe was round; on its smoothly polished surface he burned with a twisted bit of iron all sorts of curious designs. When he at last tested his instrument by playing upon it several tones of the scale, he nodded his head excitedly, emitted a grunt of satisfaction, and hastily hid it in a safe place near his bed. He did not like to make the first musical trial amid the turmoil of the day; but that very evening, trills delicately modulated, tender, pensive, and vibrating, might have been heard from the direction of the stable. Joachim was perfectly satisfied with his pipe. It seemed a part of himself; its utterances came, as it were, from his own enthusiastic and sentimental bosom; and every change of feeling, every shade of sorrow, was forthwith transmitted to his wonderful pipe, which in its turn repeated it in gentle echoes to the listening evening.

V.

Now, Joachim in love with his pipe was celebrating his honey-moon. In the daytime he conscientiously fulfilled his duties as a stable-boy,—watered the horses, harnessed them, and drove with the Pani or with Maxim. Sometimes, when he looked over toward the neighboring village where the cruel Màrya lived, his heart was conscious of a pang. But as evening drew on, all his woes were forgotten; even the image of the dark-browed maiden lost distinctness, as it stood before him enveloped in mist, faintly outlined against a pale background, serving but to lend a certain pensive melancholy to his melodious pipe.

As he lay in the stable that evening, Joachim’s musical ecstasy found vent in tremulous melodies. The musician had not only forgotten the cruel beauty, but had even lost all consciousness of his own existence, when suddenly he started and sprang up in bed, leaning on his elbow. Just when his notes were growing most pathetic, he felt a tiny hand pass swiftly and lightly over his face and hands, and then with equal swiftness over the pipe. At the same time he heard by his side the rapid panting of one whose breathing is quickened by agitation. “Begone, away with you!” he uttered the usual exhortation, and immediately added the question: “Are you the good or the evil spirit?” that he might know if it were the Evil with whom he had to deal. But a moonbeam that had just crept into the stable showed him his mistake. Beside him stood the small Pan, wistfully stretching forth his little hands.

An hour later, the mother on going to take a look at her sleeping Petrùsya did not find him in bed. For a moment she was startled, but the maternal instinct directly told her where to look for the lost boy. Joachim, pausing for a moment, was quite abashed at the unexpected sight of the “gracious Pani” standing in the doorway of the stable. It appeared that she had been there for several moments before he ceased playing, watching her boy, who sat on the cot wrapped in Joachim’s sheepskin coat, listening intently for the interrupted melody.