Mozart's Violin

by W E Monroe

  As time passed, Mrs. Mock became more than a music teacher. She was my mentor. Eager to show off her star pupil, she encouraged me to enter local talent contests. Word spread, and soon I was receiving invitations to play once or twice a month.

  “Those rich-lady tea-parties," my father scoffed.

  Chapter Six: Symphony Solo – Almost

  The lessons continued through 1949 and into 1950. My music blossomed in spite of the distance to my lessons. I was twelve and growing tall. The violin no longer seemed so large and I had begun to handle and play it with the dexterity and grace born of years of practice. I was proud of my achievements with my violin. With my ‘Mozart’ violin!”

  Then, one February night in 1950 at supper, the first tremors shuddered through the love I'd gathered around my violin and my music.

  "Pass the pork chops, Ruthie." Daddy tiredly demanded. He'd reluctantly worked all week at a carpenter job, and then, hours more in the store.

  "Yes sir," my sister replied and handed the plate to him.

  He scraped another pork chop onto his plate, paused, and looked at the leathery meat with disgust. Mama had fried the meat too long again.

  "Elmer, . . ." Mama noticed the look on his face after she had begun, had second thoughts about continuing, then went ahead. "You ain't forgot tomorrow afternoon have you?"

  "Forgot what?" He grumbled as he laboriously tried to chew the hard, dry meat into pieces small enough to swallow.

  "Billy's solo tomorrow, Sunday afternoon. Remember? Young Artists With the Symphony? Billy was picked as the best young violin player for this part of Florida. Him and Mrs. Mock worked hard to get him a chance." Mama glanced encouragingly toward me.

  Daddy looked up and glared at Mama, then picked up his iced tea and washed the mouthful of porkchop down. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.

  "Dammit Dorothy, when do I get to rest? Cain't you take him and just leave me alone?"

  Mama hesitated a long moment, but I could tell she would not let the matter rest. "Mrs. Mock says it’s important a player as young as Billy has the support of his family. Please? Just once. Try to like his music."

  "It ain't just the music! I'm tired! I'm worn out!"

  "You can dress up--like you're going to church."

  "Violin music! . . . Church! . . . The store!" Daddy's voice rose a little more after each pause. "I work all day at one job and then come home and work till I drop in that store! I do it six days a week! What else do you expect from me?" Shaking in rage and frustration, he clattered his fork onto his plate. His chair scraped on the bare wood floor as he abruptly pushed away and left the table. The screen door slammed.

  Mama and I sat silently staring at our plates for a long moment.

  The car started and we heard it back out the driveway to the street. There was a little squeak of the tires when Daddy shifted into first gear and drove away.

  "Come on Ruthie," Mama murmured, "let's clear this table. Your Daddy ain't gonna eat no more." Looking at me she commanded, "Billy! You stop that moping and go practice for your solo. Don't you worry none about your daddy. I know how to handle him. You play real good at the symphony, and I'm gonna get you that violin case with the velvet lining."

  At ten o'clock Ruthie and I went to bed. Mama was sitting, half angry, half worried, in the living room. She silently hugged us goodnight. Sunday morning she was asleep in that chair. Daddy had not come home.

  "Billy go start getting ready." We had just finished lunch. "Your Daddy's going to be here any time and we'd better be ready to go when he brings the car back."

  "Mama, couldn't Grandpa take us."

  "No Billy. He had to leave for Atlanta yesterday."

  By one o'clock, Mama, Ruthie and I, dressed in our Sunday-best clothes, waited in the living room. My violin, bow and music book were in a new brown paper bag, waiting on the table by the door. Mrs. Mock had told me to be at the auditorium by 2:00 p.m.

  One o'clock came and the clock ticked loudly in the quiet house. Then, after an eternity, it was 1:30. I watched the hands creep at a snail's pace around the face of the clock. Tick...tick...tick. It was one forty-five. Then it was 2:00 p.m.

  Daddy didn't come home. I knew it was too late. Another kid, not as good as me, would get to solo with the symphony. Mrs. Mock said there would be at least five hundred people in the audience. Five hundred! There would be no applause for me today. There would be no violin case.

  Finally at dusk, Daddy came home--drunk.

  When I arrived for my lesson the next Saturday Mrs. Mock gathered my gangly body into her arms and gave me a long hug. She had called Mama and knew what happened. She shared my disappointment. "Billy, I'm so sorry you couldn't get to play your solo with the symphony. Now get your instrument tuned, we've got work to do."

  We both knew that our time to work together was more precious than ever before.

  When we took a break, I asked, "Mrs. Mock, do you think my violin might really have been the one that Mozart played?"

  A knowing smile softened her face, "No Billy, the label inside yours says it was made in 1848. Mozart lived in the 1700's. But it's still a wonderful instrument. Mozart would have been proud to play it."

  "You know, for years, to me it has been Mozart's violin," I confessed.

  "Then it shall also be 'Mozart's violin to me. Now, pick up your 'Mozart', and let's get back to the lesson.

  Chapter Seven: The Music Dies

  One night, a few weeks later, through my thin bedroom wall I heard Daddy and Mama talking. Their voices were low, but I could tell they were arguing.

  "Dorothy, we ain't got no choice. Saturdays are busy. I cain't be there and we got to have Billy in the store all day."

  "Elmer, please? His lessons are on Saturdays. Don't make him quit. He loves that violin. He loves his music. It'll break his heart. It'll break his grandpa's heart too. Mrs. Mock still thinks he can get in the symphony."

  "You know things are bad in the store. They're gonna take away this house any day. Even with me goin' back to carpenter work, money's still tight. It ain't enough to pay bills. I got me a chance to build houses on Saturdays and make overtime and we've got to have the money. All these years of lessons and he ain't never played good fiddle music. I don't think he's able."

  "Maybe we could pay the bills if you didn't spend so much drinking, . . . " my mother stated sharply, her voice wavering.

  There was a loud smack. Mama sobbed now. The bedroom door opened, and then crashed closed. Her loud sobs were quickly muffled as though she had buried her face in a pillow. Daddy's heavy footsteps slapped the floor as he walked through the house. The front door slammed shut. The engine of our car started, gears grinding loudly before slamming into place. Tires spun as Daddy angrily backed down the dirt driveway.

  "Please . . . don't make me quit my lessons." I quietly pleaded. That night I cried, although at twelve I thought I was much too old for tears.

  The next morning I would find our mailbox flattened, lying in the ditch with its post broken off at the ground.

  And, Mama wore extra heavy makeup on one side of her face.

  There were no lessons after that. I wanted to practice, but Daddy always had more work for me. He kept me busy so I wouldn't have time for music.

  My sister and I didn't understand, but we did lose our house to the bank and had to move. We were now living at the store where we cooked and ate in the small, crowded stockroom. We all slept in a tiny room above the store.

  Months later, one late afternoon in the summer of 1950, Daddy tiredly came up to the room where we all slept, looking for me. I had sneaked away from my work in the store, to practice. Concentrating hard, I didn't hear the door open.

  "What are you doing?" he roared. I knew the look on his face. He had been drinking and was in a dangerous mood. "I told you an hour ago to get the new stock on the shelves in the store."r />
  Face contorted, he unbuckled his thick leather belt and quickly drew it from the loops of his dirty work pants. The belt slashed across my thighs as I desperately held the bow and my violin above my head. The pain was intense. I scrambled onto the bed to escape and stood on the far side, my back against the wall. As the second blow from the belt came, I protectively brought my right arm down. The belt cracked like a whip across my arm, snatching the bow from my hand, snapped it in two and sent the pieces skittering across the room and under the other bed. The belt rained lashes down in a frenzy. Still I defiantly held the violin above my head.

  "Gimme that sissy thing!" He snatched for the violin and missed, then grabbed my forearm and flung me down on the bed. Taking it from me, he held it by the neck and fingerboard and drew it back as though to hit me.

  "Daddy, no. Please no." I screamed in terror. He paused and slowly lowered the violin. The tension in his arm and his face relaxed only a little.

  He turned, took two steps to the open door, raised his arm and swung the violin as hard as he could, smashing it against the door frame.

  What remained of the instrument's splintered body dangled sickeningly by the four strings, still attached to the piece he held in his hand. My own splintered life twisted slowly as though hanging from the strings of a broken violin.

  I screamed . . . From somewhere deep inside me, my anguish erupted and I screamed and screamed and screamed. I couldn't stop screaming.

  "Shut up! . . . Shut up, dammit!" Daddy snarled as he swung the thick belt . . . again . . . and again.

  Mama and Ruthie, alarmed at my wails, raced upstairs from the store. They fought Daddy for the belt and dragged him from over me.

  By then I had retreated to a place where there was no pain. For a little while, there was nothing.

  Mama said Daddy felt bad about what he'd done, but he just couldn't say he was sorry. He was gone a lot and when he came home, he came home drunk. One night he didn't come home. A car wreck, and he was dead. He would never get to say he was sorry! And I never got to forgive!

  The pain of remembering was too much.

  And then, I forgot! Violins and lessons! My music was totally erased from my memories….forgotten for more than forty years.

  Epilogue

  Like many works of fiction, much of this story is based on actual events in my life. In my real life, I had indeed, totally forgotten that I had played a violin for years, when I was a child. The memories suddenly returned, pretty much as described in the first paragraphs.

  The rest of the story is about eighty or ninety percent factual. As for which is fiction and which is not, I think I should allow you to reach you own conclusions.

  While I was writing this story, I realized just how important that old violin of my childhood was to me. I asked around and discovered that the violin was still in the family. But, it was not available. Disappointed, I began to think of finding an old violin to buy. Within about six months, I had bought three old violins. The total spent was about $75.

  I had absolutely no memory of how to play a violin, but I did manage to run a bow across the strings of each instrument a few times. Two of them sounded awful. But, the third violin, to my amazement, had a beautiful, strong and mellow tone. I had bought it from an estate sale for $25. Learning more about this violin became an obsession.

  My $25 violin was more than 220 years old. Master violinmaker, Johan C. Hopf made it in Klingenthal, Germany between 1747 and 1776 -- during the Mozart’s lifetime. Klingenthal is less than three hundred miles from Mozart’s home in Vienna, Austria. Something had guided me to buy an old violin that could have been Mozart’s Violin. Truth, sometimes, really is stranger than fiction.