The Fiddle
Translated from the Yiddish by M. S. Mandell
HE stood in a corner and played. His face was pale, his eyes were half closed, his black hair, wet with perspiration, stuck to his forehead, his small round beard was disheveled.
He played a somber, melancholy air; an andante movement. With his right hand he drew the bow slowly across the strings, while with the fingers of his left hand he clearly modulated from a prayerful minor to a triumphant major, and back again. With his right foot he beat time, and he listened to the music with his whole soul. The varied, mournful tones of the violin were at once touching and sweet, as though its player was telling a story of intense suffering, of lost opportunities, and buried hopes.
The room was faintly lighted by a small, smoky lamp, that stood on a table in that corner of the room where two little children lay asleep on a well-worn lounge, and a baby was restlessly tossing in its crib. Near by, a sickly-looking woman was busying herself with cleaning kitchen utensils.
Suddenly the baby in the cradle awoke with a cry.
The woman turned her head in the direction of the crying child, then threw an angry glance at her husband, who stood in the opposite corner, murmured something and went on with her work.
The child cried louder. The mother looked at her pitifully, and then indirectly addressed her husband:
"Look at him! The child is bursting her lungs, and he doesn't even move." Then with a direct appeal: "Dadje, stop your noise, and take the child" (he did not move). "O God, would that you were deaf!"
He had just begun to play a new movement, and was so absorbed in it that he had heard neither the wailings of the child nor his wife's request.
The woman grew more vexed. "O God," she said, "how can I get rid of that fiddle; it will be the ruin of us! Dadje, will you stop it? Oh, that your heart would ache as mine does." She ran up to him and in her anger seized his right arm. The violin groaned as if from a sudden pain. Dadje stopped playing; he turned in surprise, and stared at his wife, not comprehending what she wanted of him.
"I asked you to stop," she said, trying to wrench the violin out of his hands, "and you went on. I must get rid of the instrument, I must make an end of it— I must break it. It is enough, more than enough, I cannot stand it any longer."
"Chaje," he said, in a soft, almost childish voice, looking at her in surprise, "tell me what you want. Why do you look so angry?"
“Why do I look so angry!” she said sarcastically. “How good you are to me! Oh, how you concern yourself about me. You wish me to be happy, don’t