Hearts Unfold Read Online Free PDF Page B

had been taken to the orchestra room.   Too young to begin that type of instruction,
they were merely on a field trip to see what they could look forward to in
years to come.   As the teachers fought to
maintain order, protecting the instruments and music stands from their eager
charges, Stanley caught sight of a violin.   He knew its name because he’d seen a man playing one on a television
screen in the furniture shop window near their flat.   When he’d asked his mother what the man was
doing, she had explained pointedly that he was a very smart man who had studied
hard and now made a great deal of money playing his violin.
    He remembered
clearly the lightness of the instrument when he'd picked it up, the coolness of
the wood as he'd tucked it under his chin.   He had drawn the bow over the strings several times, then handed the
violin to the nearest instructor, saying in his shy, soft voice, “It's wrong.”
    “That's only
because you don't know how it works.”   The teacher had smiled, he recalled, and he'd been afraid she might
laugh at him.   Instead, she had tuned the
violin and handed it back to him.   “Try
that now.   See if you like it better.”
    He had indeed
tried again, proceeding, after a few peremptory notes, to play several measures
of a song he had heard over the radio.   When he finished, he looked up timidly to see if the teacher had been
listening.   There was an astonished look
on her face; he wondered for a moment if she'd been struck by one of the
children racing about among the music stands.   “Stanley, can you do that again?”   She was motioning to the other teachers in the room, urging them to come
over.   Always eager to please, he'd
repeated the song note for note, and was even inspired to add a little flourish
at the end.
    Suddenly, it
seemed, although it must have been at least a few minutes, for even his mother
and the Master had been called to the room, he found himself in the center of a
circle of smiling adults, all talking in hushed voices.   Never mind that the other children were
tearing about, yelling and screaming, sending music stands and chairs crashing
to the floor.   Everyone that mattered was
hovering over him and talking, if not exactly to him, at least about him.   His mother had a peculiar look on her face,
almost as if she might cry.   For the first
time in his life, he sensed he had done something to make her proud of him.
    From that day
on, his young life had centered on the violin.   He was taken from one instructor to another, never staying with one for
very long.   It seemed that after a few
months, each one admitted to his mother that he had learned all they had to teach
him.   Finally, his mother had plucked up
the courage to make an appointment with a prominent concertmaster.   When he saw that she had brought her little
boy and his violin, he seemed about to leave the room without even talking to
her.   But after some pleading, he agreed
to hear the boy play.   After that day,
Stanley began to study with a lady who had, his mother explained, taught many
of the great violinists he heard playing over the radio.   He learned quickly that she was not so easily
impressed as the others had been.   He had
to work hard for even the faintest praise.   And he did work, learning and practicing more and more music, until he
could play for hours without playing the same piece twice.
    At some point
during this time, Stanley had changed his name.   He had really done it himself, with his childish inability to pronounce
his name properly.   His mother had begun
to call him Stanny, like Danny, because that was what he called himself.   When his mother had seen a concert bill
featuring a pianist named Stanislav, she’d been inspired to change the spelling
in an uncharacteristic moment of imagination.   Little Stanley Moss from East London had become Stani Moss, a violin
prodigy who might have been from anywhere, she said.
    When he was
eight