Joachim really did play well. He could even handle the more intricate
violin, and there had been a time when on a Sunday at the inn no one had
played the Cossack dance or the merry Polish Cracovienne better than
himself. When seated on a cask with the violin braced against his shaven
chin, and his tall sheepskin hat on the back of his head, he would draw
the bow across the quivering strings, hardly a man in the inn could
keep his seat. Even the old one-eyed Jew who accompanied Joachim on a
bass-viol would wax enthusiastic, his awkward instrument with its heavy
bass straining every nerve, as it were, to keep time with the light notes
of Joachim’s violin, which seemed to dance as well as sing; while old
Yankel himself, with his skull-cap on his head, would lift his shoulders
and turn his bald head, keeping time with his body to the gay capricious
tune. It would hardly be worth while to describe the effect upon others
whose feet are so made that at the very first note of a dancing tune they
involuntarily begin to shuffle and stamp.
Ever since Joachim had fallen in love with Màrya, a courtyard
servant-maid of the neighboring Pan, he had neglected his merry violin.
In truth it had not helped him to win the heart of the saucy Màrya, who
preferred the smooth German face of her master’s valet to the bearded
visage of the musician. Since that time his violin had not been heard
either in the inn or at the evening gatherings. He had hung it on a nail
in the stable, nor did he seem aware that from dampness and neglect the
strings of the instrument, once so dear to his heart, were constantly
snapping with a sound so sharp, plaintive, and dismal that the very
horses neighed in sympathy, and turned their heads to gaze in wonder
at their indifferent master. In order to supply its place, Joachim had
purchased from a travelling Carpathian mountaineer a wooden pipe. He
probably expected to find it a more suitable medium wherewith to express
the sorrow of a rejected heart, and that its sympathetic modulations
would harmonize with his hard lot. But the mountain pipe disappointed
Joachim’s expectations. He tried nearly a dozen of them in turn, in every
possible way; he cut them, soaked them in water, dried them in the sun,
hung them up under the roof to dry in the wind,—but all to no avail. The
mountain pipe did not commend itself to the Hohòl’s[7] heart. It whistled
where it should have sung, wailed when he wanted a sentimental tremolo,
and never in fact responded to his mood.
At last Joachim grew disgusted with all the wandering mountaineers,
having made up his mind that not one of them understood the art of
producing a good pipe, and decided to manufacture one with his own hands.
For several days he roamed with frowning brow through swamp and field;
went up to every willow bush, examined its branches, occasionally cut
off one of them; but he failed to find just what he needed. With sternly
frowning brow he still pursued his search, and came at last to a spot
above the slowly running river, where the placid waters barely stirred
the lilies’ snow-white heads. This nook was sheltered from the wind by
a dense growth of spreading willows that hung their pensive heads over
the dusky and peaceful depths below. Parting the bushes, Joachim made
his way down to the river, where he paused for a moment; and the idea
suddenly came to him that this was the very spot where he was to find
the object of his search. The wrinkles vanished from his brow. From his
boot-leg he drew out a knife with a string attached to it, and after
carefully examining a faintly whispering young willow, he unhesitatingly
selected a straight and slender stalk that bent over the steep, crumbling
shore. Tapping it with his finger for some purpose of his own, a look of
self-satisfaction came upon his face, as he watched it sway to and fro
in the air, and listened to the gentle murmur of its leaves.
“That is the very thing,” he muttered, nodding with delight, as he threw
into the river the twigs he had previously cut.
It proved to be a glorious pipe. Having dried the willow, Joachim burned
out the pith with a red-hot wire; and boring six round holes, he cut
the seventh crosswise and tightly closed one end with a wooden plug,
across which he cut a narrow slit. Then for a week he hung the pipe up
by a slender string, that it might be warmed by the sun and dried by the
wind; after which he carefully cleaned it with his knife, scraped it with
glass, and rubbed it hard with a piece of cloth. The upper part of the
pipe was round; on its smoothly polished surface he burned with a twisted
bit of iron all sorts of curious designs. When he at last tested his
instrument by playing upon it several tones of the scale, he nodded his
head excitedly, emitted a grunt of satisfaction, and hastily hid it in a
safe place near his bed. He did not like to make the first musical trial
amid the turmoil of the day; but that very evening, trills delicately
modulated, tender, pensive, and vibrating, might have been heard from
the direction of the stable. Joachim was perfectly satisfied with his
pipe. It seemed a part of himself; its utterances came, as it were, from
his own enthusiastic and sentimental bosom; and every change of feeling,
every shade of sorrow, was forthwith transmitted to his wonderful pipe,
which in its turn repeated it in gentle echoes to the listening evening.