Hearts Unfold (5 page)

Stani knew he
had inherited this love of whisky from his father.
 
It was probably the only thing they had in
common.
 
He seemed to recall his father
also having been some sort of musician, but that might just be something he'd
made up as a child.
 
He'd at various
times invented stories about his father and mother, which he kept mostly to
himself.
 
Since he had so few memories of
his early life, he had to fill in the details as best he could.
 
His parents had been real at some point he
knew, but he suspected the people he invented were much more interesting than
they had ever been.
 
A schoolmaster's
secretary and an absent drunkard hardly measured up to the fantasy parents he
had given himself.

Again, Stani
made a conscious effort to relax.
 
He
should feel right at home sleeping in the back of a car.
 
He did it often enough.
 
His life was one long line of endless cars,
trains and airplanes, all going to or from equally endless concert halls.
 
But somehow he never felt at home anywhere
anymore.
 
Only when he was standing
before the lights, sensing if not seeing the faces turned up in anticipation,
did he feel anything like his old self, that shy little boy who could make
people like him just by playing his violin.

It was legend
now, the discovery of that little boy's talent.
 
He suspected that just as he had made up stories about his first few
years of life, some of the details now printed in liner notes had been
embellished over time.
 
But he
remembered, or thought he remembered, that day very clearly.
 
It had, after all, been a day of many firsts
for him.
 
The first time he held a
violin, the first time his teachers seemed to take notice of him, and most of
all the first time his mother seemed pleased with something he had done.

When he was
five years old, his mother had enrolled him at the school where she worked as
secretary to the headmaster.
 
It was one
of those elite schools popping up all over England, designed to attract
upwardly mobile young parents in search of a more modern sort of education for
their children.
 
Eileen Moss could never
have hoped to enroll little Stanley in such a school, had her position not
allowed for a sizable break in the tuition.

A quiet,
obedient child, Stanley received little attention or encouragement from his
various teachers.
 
In such an unstructured
environment, it was the more lively students who commanded the most
attention.
 
Naturally shy, and well aware
that he was only there because his mother was just down the hall working,
Stanley felt much of the time as if he were invisible.
 
And he preferred it that way.
 
He knew very well how to avoid drawing
attention to himself.
 
He had learned
that trick early on, literally at his mother's feet.

Then one
morning his class 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 years old, his mother took him to meet a man recommended by his
teacher.
 
An agent, his mother said,
would help him learn how to make money playing his violin.
 
Milo Scheider, by that time, had already
built a modest reputation in London.
 
He
had assembled a small stable of artists, including his wife Jana, an
accomplished pianist.
 
Several of his
flock had achieved notice with a recording of chamber music and toured the
British Isles.
 
Milo was in search of a
soloist, someone young, who might attract the attention of a wider
audience.
 
What he found was Stani
Moss.
 
The pale, solemn boy, small for
his age, with the perpetual curl of red hair falling over his eyes, was hardly
what he had envisioned, but after hearing him play, Milo had known this child
was precisely what he needed to ensure a comfortable future.
 
Not that he would ever exploit the boy
strictly for his own gain.
 
Milo was not
without ethics.
 
He talked gently with
Stani about what would be expected if he chose to come to work with him.
 
He explained that he wanted only what would
be best for Stani and his mother.
 
And
Stani seemed to understand that Milo would be easily pleased if he just did as
instructed.
 
He had never had a male
figure in his life, and he was especially eager to win over this man, with his
elegant clothes and his strange accent.
 
They shook hands, the little boy and the man, and agreed to form a
partnership.
 
Each would work hard for
the other, and together they would be able to make many people happy, just by
letting them listen to Stani play his violin.
 

Before many
months had passed, Milo and Jana sat down with Stani's mother and persuaded her
that it would be more convenient if Stani were living with them.
 
He could be tutored at home; his life would
be more easily structured, rather than having to be rushed from school to
lessons and back each day.
 
It hadn't
been difficult to convince her.
 
After working
all this time for what she hoped might turn out to be a good thing for them
both, she was tired and ready to have a little less structure in her own
life.
 
She was proud of Stani’s talent,
but he was still someone she was required to feed and care for.
 
While she wanted what was best for her son, she
understood that she was not the person to get it for him.
 
With only a little regret, she signed the
documents that gave Milo Scheider legal guardianship of her son.

She never
really explained to Stani why she was letting him go to live with someone
else.
 
She assumed he would be happy
anywhere, as long as he had his music.
 
It never occurred to her to think he might miss her, or wonder why he
had been abandoned by his only parent.
 
She had promised to visit him, to have him come to the flat on Sundays,
but before long his schedule allowed for less and less free time.
 
Milo was planning to take him to Europe,
maybe even New York, to meet some of the great conductors who had heard
recordings of Stani playing and wanted to see him for themselves.
 

Milo was
marketing Stani very carefully, just enough to arouse the curiosity of the
classical music community.
 
There would
be plenty of time in the next few years for wider exposure.
 
Meanwhile, he and Jana were enjoying having a
child in the house; a child who responded to his new-found stability by
emerging as a bright, sweet-tempered and very loving member of the family.

Stani was
secure for the first time in his life, sure of what to do to be loved.
 
He missed his mother, but did not miss the
feeling of always falling short, of never being quite what she wanted.
 
Now with Milo and Jana, he felt an important
part of something.
 
He would never have
asked to go back to live with his mother.
 
He liked it when people mistook him for Milo's son, and he would gladly
have lied and said that he was indeed Stani Scheider.

Stani woke as
the car began to merge into the heavy DC traffic.
 
He tapped Robert on the shoulder, giving him
the OK sign in the rear view mirror, which he would understand to mean that he
was ready to go straight to the rehearsal hall.
 
Spotting the hairbrush, he attacked his hair, trying to bring the
tangled waves under control.
 
He was
hungry, but knew there would be fruit and juice backstage for the
musicians.
 
He felt stronger, his head
clearer now.
 
He could still prove to
Milo that he was capable of doing something on his own.
 
He wasn't a child anymore.
 
At some point he would need to learn to fend
for himself, without Milo always there to point him in the right direction.

As soon as
Robert wheeled the car up to the stage door, Stani jumped out and bounded up
the steps.
 
As if by magic, the door
opened, he was ushered inside and relieved of his overcoat.
 
He gulped down the requested glass of orange
juice and unpacked his violin.
 
He knew
they had been waiting for him, he was over an hour late; but he was greeted
with applause when he strode onto the stage.
 
He saluted the assembled musicians with a flourish of his bow, flashing
a smile, and firmly shook the extended hand of the conductor, who fondly
clapped him on the back.
 
It was all part
of the ritual, the acknowledgment, the greeting and finally the tap of the
baton.
 
Shaking his hair from his eyes,
he tucked the violin, took a deep breath and waited.