Humoresque | Page 9

Here, shake hands with him. Leon, they say a voice
like a fountain. Gina Berg--eh, Ginsberg--is how you stage-named her?
You hear, mamma, how fancy--Gina Berg? We go hear her, eh?"
There was about Miss Gina Berg, whose voice could soar to the
tirra-lirra of a lark and then deepen to mezzo, something of the actual
slimness of the poor, maligned Elsa so long buried beneath the
buxomness of divas. She was like a little flower that in its crannied
nook keeps dewy longest.
"How do you do, Leon Kantor?"
There was a whir through her English of three acquired languages.
"How do you do?"
"We--father and I--traveled once all the way from Brussels to Dresden
to hear you. It was worth it. I shall never forget how you played the
'Humoresque.' It made me laugh and cry."
"You like Brussels?"
She laid her little hand to her heart, half closing her eyes.
"I will never be so happy again as with the sweet little people of
Brussels."
"I, too, love Brussels. I studied there four years with Ahrenfest."
"I know you did. My teacher, Lyndahl, in Berlin, was his
brother-in-law."
"You have studied with Lyndahl?"
"He is my master."
"I--Will I some time hear you sing?"
"I am not yet great. When I am foremost like you, yes."

"Gina--Gina Berg; that is a beautiful name to make famous."
"You see how it is done? Gins--berg. Gina Berg."
"Clev--er!"
They stood then smiling across a chasm of the diffidence of youth, she
fumbling at the great fur pelt out of which her face flowered so dewily.
"I--Well--we--we--are in the fourth box--I guess we had better be
going--Fourth box, left."
He wanted to find words, but for consciousness of self, could not.
"It's a wonderful house out there waiting for you, Leon Kantor, and
you--you're wonderful, too!"
"The--flowers--thanks!"
"My father, he sent them. Come, father--quick!"
Suddenly there was a tight tensity seemed to crowd up the little room.
"Abrahm--quick--get Hancock. That first row of chairs--has got to be
moved. There he is, in the wings. See that the piano ain't dragged down
too far! Leon, got your mute in your pocket? Please, Mr. Ginsberg--you
must excuse--Here, Leon, is your glass of water; drink it, I say. Shut
that door out there, boy, so there ain't a draught in the wings. Here,
Leon, your violin. Got your neckerchief? Listen how they're shouting!
It's for you--Leon--darlink--Go!"
The center of that vast human bowl which had shouted itself out, slim,
boylike, and in his supreme isolation, Leon Kantor drew bow and a first
thin, pellucid, and perfect note into a silence breathless to receive it.
Throughout the arduous flexuosities of the Mendelssohn E minor
concerto, singing, winding from tonal to tonal climax, and out of the
slow movement which is like a tourniquet twisting the heart into the
spirited allegro molto vivace, it was as if beneath Leon Kantor's fingers

the strings were living vein-cords, youth, vitality, and the very foam of
exuberance racing through them.
That was the power of him. The vichy and the sparkle of youth, so that,
playing, the melody poured round him like wine and went down
seething and singing into the hearts of his hearers.
Later, and because these were his people and because they were dark
and Slavic with his Slavic darkness, he played, as if his very blood
were weeping, the "Kol Nidre," which is the prayer of his race for
atonement.
And then the super-amphitheater, filled with those whose emotions lie
next to the surface and whose pores have not been closed over with a
water-tight veneer, burst into its cheers and its tears.
There were fifteen recalls from the wings, Abrahm Kantor standing
counting them off on his fingers and trembling to receive the
Stradivarius. Then, finally, and against the frantic negative pantomime
of his manager, a scherzo, played so lacily that it swept the house in
lightest laughter.
When Leon Kantor finally completed his program they were loath to let
him go, crowding down the aisles upon him, applauding up, down,
around him until the great disheveled house was like the roaring of a
sea, and he would laugh and throw out his arm in widespread
helplessness, and always his manager in the background gesticulating
against too much of his precious product for the money, ushers already
slamming up chairs, his father's arms out for the Stradivarius, and,
deepest in the gloom of the wings, Sarah Kantor, in a rocker especially
dragged out for her, and from the depths of the black-silk reticule,
darning his socks.
"Bravo--bravo! Give us the 'Humoresque'--Chopin Nocturne--Polonaise
--'Humoresque.' Bravo--bravo!"
And even as they stood, hatted and coated, importuning and pressing in
upon him, and with a wisp of a smile to the fourth left box, Leon

Kantor played them the "Humoresque"