Singing for Mrs Pettigrew: A Story Maker's Journey

  “After it was all over, he and his customers did talk, and all the banter amongst them was about football, Inter Milan in particular, or sometimes the machinations of politicians and women. What they said I cannot exactly remember, probably because I couldn’t understand most of it, but I do know they laughed a lot. I do remember that. Then the next customer would take his seat and a new silence would descend before the performance started and the music of the scissors began. I am sure I first learnt about rhythm in that barber’s shop, and about concentration. I learnt to listen too.

  “Papa wasn’t just the best barber in all of Venice – everyone said that – he was a musician too, a violinist. But strangely he was a violinist who never played the violin. I never heard him play, not once. I only knew he was a violinist because Mama had told me so. She had tears in her eyes whenever she told me about it. That surprised me because she was not a crying woman. He had been so brilliant as a violinist, the best in the whole orchestra, she said. When I asked why he didn’t play any more, she turned away from me, went very quiet and told me I’d have to ask Papa myself. So I did. I asked him time and again, and each time he would simply shrug, and say something meaningless like: ‘People change, Paolo. Times change.’ And that would be that.

  “Papa was never a great talker at the best of times, even at home, but I could tell that in this case he was hiding something, that he found my questions both irksome and intrusive. That didn’t stop me. I kept on at him. Every time he refused to talk about it I became more suspicious, more sure he had something to hide. It was a child’s intuition, I suppose. I sensed a deep secret, but I also sensed after a while that Papa was quite unmovable, that if I was ever going to unlock the secret it would be Mama who would tell me.

  “As it turned out, my instinct was right. In the end my almost perpetual pestering proved fruitful, and Mama capitulated – but not in a way I had expected. ‘All right, Paolo,’ she said after I’d been nagging her about it unmercifully one morning. ‘If I show you the violin will you promise me you’ll stop asking your wretched questions? And you’re never ever to tell Papa I showed you. He’d be very angry. Promise me now.’

  “So I promised, promised faithfully, and then stood in their bedroom and watched as she climbed up on a chair to get it down from where it had been hidden on top of the cupboard. It was wrapped up in an old grey blanket. I knelt on the bed beside her as she pulled away the blanket and opened the violin case. I remember it smelt musty. The maroon lining inside was faded and worn to tatters. Mama picked up the violin with infinite care, reverently almost. Then she handed it to me.

  “I stroked the polished grain of the wood, which was the colour of honey, dark honey on the front, and golden honey underneath. I ran my fingers along the black pegs, the mottled bridge, the exquisitely carved scroll. It was so light to hold, I remember. I wondered at its fragile beauty. I knew at once that all the music in the world was hidden away inside this violin, yearning to come out. I longed to be the one to let it out, to rest it under my chin, to play the strings, to try the bow. I wanted there and then to bring it to life, to have it sing for me, to hear all the music we could make together. But when I asked if I could play it, Mama took sudden fright and said Papa might hear down below in the barber’s shop, and he’d be furious with her for showing it to me; that he never wanted it to be played again. He hadn’t so much as looked at it in years. When I asked why, she reminded me of my promise not to ask any more questions. She almost snatched the violin off me, laid it back in its case, wrapped it again in the blanket and put it back up on top of the cupboard.

  “‘You don’t know it exists, Paolo. You never saw it, understand? And from now on I don’t want to hear another word about it, all right? You promised me, Paolo.’

  “I suppose seeing Papa’s old violin, holding it as I had, marvelling at it, must have satisfied my curiosity for a while, because I kept my promise. Then late one summer’s evening I was lying half awake in my bed when I heard the sound of a violin. I thought Papa must have changed his mind and was playing again at last. But then I heard him and Mama talking in the kitchen below, and realized anyway that the music was coming from much further away.

  “I listened at the window. I could hear it only intermittently over the sound of people talking and walking, over the throbbing engines of passing water buses, but I was quite sure now that it was coming from somewhere beyond the bridge. I had to find out. In my pyjamas I stole past the kitchen door, down the stairs and out into the street. It was a warm night, and quite dark. I ran up over the bridge and there, all on his own, standing by the wall in the square, was an old man playing the violin, his violin case open at his feet.

  “No one else was there. No one had stopped to listen. I squatted down as close as I dared. He was so wrapped up in his playing that he did not notice me at first. I could see now that he was much older even than Papa. Then he saw me crouching there watching him. He stopped playing. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You’re out late. What’s your name?’ He had kind eyes; I noticed that at once.

  “‘Paolo,’ I told him. ‘Paolo Levi. My papa plays the violin. He played in an orchestra once.’

  He did not notice me at first.

  “‘So did I,’ said the old man, ‘all my life. But now I am what I always wanted to be, a soloist. I shall play you some Mozart. Do you like Mozart?’

  “‘I don’t know,’ I replied. I knew Mozart’s name, of course, but I don’t think I had ever listened to any of his music.

  “‘He wrote this piece when he was even younger than you. I should guess that you’re about seven.’

  “‘Nine,’ I said.

  “‘Well, Mozart wrote this when he was just six years old. He wrote it for the piano, but I can play it on the violin.’

  “So he played Mozart, and I listened. As he played, others came and gathered round for a while before dropping a coin or two in his violin case and moving on. I didn’t move on. I stayed. The music he played to me that night touched my soul. It was the night that changed my life for ever.

  “Whenever I crossed the Accademia Bridge after that I always looked out for him. Whenever I heard him playing I went to listen. I never told Mama or Papa. I think it was the first secret I kept from them. But I did not feel guilty about it, not one bit. After all, hadn’t they kept a secret from me? Then one evening the old man – I had found out by now that his name was Benjamin Horowitz and he was sixty-two years old – one evening he let me hold his violin, showed me how to hold it properly, how to draw the bow across the strings, how to make it sing. The moment I did that, I knew I had to be a violinist. I have never wanted to do or be anything else since.

  “So Benjamin – Signor Horowitz I always called him then – became my first teacher. Now every time I ran over the bridge to see him he would show me a little more, how to tighten the bow just right, how to use the resin, how to hold the violin under my chin using no hands at all and what each string was called. That was when I told him about Papa’s violin at home, and about how he didn’t play it any more. ‘He couldn’t anyway,’ I said, ‘because it’s a bit broken. I think it needs mending a bit. Two of the strings are missing, the A and the E, and there’s hardly a hair left on the bow at all. But I could practise on it if it was mended, couldn’t I?’

  “‘Bring it to my house sometime,’ Benjamin said, ‘and leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.’

  “It wasn’t difficult to escape unnoticed. I just waited till after school. Mama was still at the laundry round the corner in Rio de le Romite where she worked. Papa was downstairs with his customers. To reach the violin on top of the cupboard I had to put a suitcase on the chair and then climb up. It wasn’t easy but I managed. I ran through the streets hugging it to me. From the Dorsoduro to the Arsenale where Benjamin lived is not that far if you know the way – nowhere is that far in Venice – and I knew the way quite well because my Aunt Sophia lived there and we visited her often. All I had to do was find Benjamin’s street. I had t
o ask about a bit, but I found it.

  “Benjamin lived up a narrow flight of stairs in one small room with a bed in one corner and a basin in the other. On the wall were lots of concert posters. ‘Some of the concerts I played,’ he said. ‘Milan, London, New York. Wonderful places, wonderful people, wonderful music. It is a wonderful world out there. There are times when it can be hard to go on believing that. But always believe it, Paolo, because it is true. And music helps to make it so. Now, show me that violin of yours.’

  “He studied it closely, holding it up to the light, tapping it. ‘A very fine instrument,’ he said. ‘You say this belongs to your father?’

  “‘And now I want to play it myself,’ I told him.

  “‘It’s a bit on the large side for a young lad like you,’ he said, tucking the violin under my chin and stretching my arm to see how far I could reach. ‘But a big violin is better than no violin at all. You’ll manage. You’ll grow into it.’

  “‘And when it’s mended, will you teach me?’ I asked him. ‘I’ve got lots of money saved up from my sweeping; so many notes they cover all my bed when I spread them out, from the end of the bed right up to my pillow.’

  “He laughed at that and told me he would teach me for nothing because I was his best listener, his lucky mascot. ‘When you’re not there,’ he said, ‘everyone walks by and my violin case stays empty. Then you come along and sit there. That’s when they always stop to listen and that’s when they leave their money. So a lesson or two will just be paying you back, Paolo. I’ll have the violin ready as soon as I can and then we can start your lessons.’

  “It was a week or two before the violin was mended. I dreaded that Mama or Papa might discover it was missing. But my luck held, and they didn’t, and my lessons began. Whenever I wasn’t having my lessons with Benjamin, Papa’s violin, now restrung and restored, lay in its case wrapped in the grey blanket and hidden away on top of their bedroom cupboard. My secret was safe, I thought. But secrets are never safe, however well hidden. Sooner or later truth will out, and in this case it was to be sooner rather than later.

  “I took to the violin as if it had been a limb I had been missing all my life. I seemed to be able to pick up everything Benjamin taught me, effortlessly and instinctively. Under his kind tutelage my confidence simply burgeoned, my playing blossomed. I found I could make my violin – Papa’s violin rather – sing with the voice of an angel. Benjamin and I felt the excitement and pleasure of my progress as keenly as each other. ‘I think this instrument was invented just for you, Paolo,’ he told me one day. ‘Or maybe you were made for it. Either way it is a perfect match.’ I loved every precious moment of my lessons and always dreaded their ending. We would finish every lesson with a cup of mint tea made with fresh mint. I loved it. Ever since, I have always treated myself to a cup of mint tea after practice. It’s something I always look forward to.

  “I remember one day with the lesson over, we were drinking tea at his table when he looked across at me, suddenly very serious. ‘It is strange, Paolo,’ he said, ‘but as I was watching you playing a moment ago, I felt I had known you before, a long, long time ago. And then just now I thought about your name, Levi. It is a common enough name, I know, but his name was Levi too. It is him you remind me of. I am sure of it. He was the youngest player in our orchestra, no more than a boy really. Gino, he was called.’

  “‘But my father is called Gino,’ I told him. ‘Maybe it was him. Maybe you played with my father. Maybe you know him.’

  “‘It can’t be possible,’ Benjamin breathed. He was staring at me now as if I were a ghost. ‘No, it can’t be. The Gino Levi I knew must be dead, I am sure of it. I have not heard of him in a long while, a very long while. But you never know, I suppose. Maybe I should meet your papa, and your mama too. It’s about time anyway. You’ve been coming for lessons for over six months now. They need to know they have a wonderful violinist for a son.’

  “‘No, you can’t!’ I cried. ‘He’d find out! You can’t tell him. You mustn’t!’ Then I told him, through my tears, all my secret, about how Mama had shown me Papa’s violin and made me promise never to say anything, never to tell Papa, and how I’d kept it a secret all this while, mending the violin, the lessons, everything.

  “‘Secrets, Paolo,’ said Benjamin, ‘are lies by another name. You do not lie to those you love. A son should not hide things from his papa and his mama. You must tell them your secret, Paolo. If you want to go on playing the violin, you will have to tell them. If you want me to go on teaching you, you will have to tell them. And now is usually a good time to do what must be done, particularly when you don’t want to do it.’

  “‘Will you come with me?’ I begged him. ‘I can only do it if you come with me.’

  “‘If you like,’ he said, smiling.

  “Benjamin carried Papa’s violin for me that day, and held my hand all the way back to the Dorsoduro. I dreaded having to make my confession. I knew how hurt they would be. All the way I rehearsed what I was going to say over and over again. Mama and Papa were upstairs in the kitchen when we came in. I introduced Benjamin and then, before anyone had a chance to say anything, before I lost my courage entirely, I launched at once into my prepared confession, how I hadn’t really stolen Papa’s violin, just borrowed it to get it mended, and to practise on. But that’s as far as I got. To my surprise they were not looking angry. In fact, they weren’t looking at me at all. They were just staring up at Benjamin as if quite unable to speak. Benjamin spoke before they did. ‘Your mama and papa and me, I think perhaps we do know one another,’ he said. ‘We played together once, did we not? Don’t you remember me, Gino?’

  “‘Benjamin?’ As Papa started to his feet, the chair went over behind him.

  “‘And if I am not much mistaken, Signora,’ Benjamin went on, looking now at Mama, ‘you must be little Laura Adler – all of us violins, all of us there, and all of us still here. It is like a miracle. It is a miracle.’

  “What happened next I can see as if it were yesterday. It was suddenly as if I was not in the room at all. The three of them seemed to fill the kitchen, arms around each other, and crying openly, crying through their laughter. I stood there mystified, trying to piece together all I had heard, all that was going on before my eyes. Mama played the violin too! She had never told me that!

  “‘You see, Paolo,’ said Benjamin, smiling down at me, ‘didn’t I tell you once it was a wonderful world? Twenty years. It’s been twenty years or more since I last saw your mama and papa. I had no idea they were still alive. I always hoped they survived, hoped they were together, these two young lovebirds, but I never believed it, not really.’

  “Mama was drying her eyes on her apron. Papa was so overcome, he couldn’t speak. They sat down then, hands joined around the table as if unwilling to let each other go for fear this reunion might turn out to be no more than a dream.

  “Benjamin was the first to recover. ‘Paolo was about to tell you something, I think,’ he said. ‘Weren’t you, Paolo?’ I told them everything then: how I’d gone for my lessons, how Benjamin had been the best teacher in all the world. I dared to look up only when I’d finished. Instead of the disapproval and disappointment I had expected, both Mama and Papa were simply glowing with joy and pride.

  “‘Didn’t I say Paolo would tell us, Papa?’ she said. ‘Didn’t I tell you we should trust him? You see, Paolo, I often take down my violin, just to touch it, to look at it. Papa doesn’t like me to, but I do it all the same, because this violin is my oldest friend. Papa forgives me, because he knows I love this violin, that it is a part of me. You remember I showed it to you that day, Paolo? It wasn’t long after that it went missing, was it? I knew it had to be you. Then it came back, mended miraculously. And after school you were never home, and when you weren’t home the violin was always gone too. I told Papa, didn’t I, Papa? I told him you’d tell us when you were ready. We put two and two together; we thought you might be practising somewhere, but it never o
ccurred to us that you were having lessons, nor that you had a teacher – and certainly not that your teacher was Benjamin Horowitz, who taught us and looked after us like a father all those years ago.’ She cried again then, her head on Papa’s shoulder.

  “‘But you told me it was Papa’s violin, that he’d put it away and never wanted to play it again, ever,’ I said.

  “At this the three of them looked at one another. I knew then they all shared the same secret, and that without a word passing between them they were deciding whether they should reveal it, if this was the right moment to tell me. I often wondered later whether, if Benjamin had not come that day, they would ever have told me. As it was they looked to Papa for the final decision, and it was he who invited me to the table to join them. I think I knew then, even before Papa began, that I was in some way part of their secret.

  “‘Mama and me,’ Papa began, ‘we try never to speak of this, because the memories we have are like nightmares, and we want to forget. But you told us your secret. There is a time for truth, it seems, and it has come. Truth for truth, maybe.’

  “So began the saddest, yet the happiest story I ever heard. When the story became too painful, as it often did, they passed it from one to the other, so that all three shared it. I listened horrified, at the same time honoured that they trusted me enough with their story, the story of their lives. Each told their part with great care, explaining as they went along so that I would understand, because I was a boy of nine who knew very little then of the wickedness of the world. I wish I could remember their exact words, but I can’t, so I won’t even try. I’ll just tell you their story my own way, about how they lived together, how they nearly died together and how they were saved by music.