Opium and Other Stories by Geza Csath

Author:Geza Csath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions
Published: 2022-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

MUSICIANS

They were called merely “the musicians” by the townsfolk. They even got their names mixed: Kulhanek? Manojlovič?! People laughed at them, were contemptuous—and respected them, a little. On Sundays, trumpets flourishing fanfares at high mass, patting the cheeks of a few of the more sensitive among the high-school students, the musicians were momentarily appreciated for having come from far-off Czechoslovakia so that the Lord might be worthily worshiped even here—a town in which not one soul could read a score. Beyond that? Even they didn’t care to contemplate it.

They felt themselves utter strangers here. And in the wintertime, when they were providing incidental music at the little theater and some patriotic play or other called for the Rákóczi March, they would cast suspicious and bemused glances at the audience from the pit. And the audience—we’re talking about the nineties now—always shouted and applauded wildly. It was incomprehensible.

They had, after all, played it rhythmically and without bad mistakes, not counting the trombonist’s awful battings. So why should that piece be so much better than the rest? It was then that they held the audience in contempt.

But there was something more: despite the conductor’s several requests, the town refused to buy them a new trombone. The old one was finished and Kumpert, who’d come as a horn-player, could not get it to play. Kumpert, hardly a conscientious fellow, ambition being the last attribute you’d assign him, nevertheless tried repairing the instrument several times at home; but the little red nosed balding Czech found his attempts at making it even a little more musical futile. For years the trombone emitted the same flat crackle out of the pit. Kumpert could only ask the tympanist Shushek, When you hear it, please bang your drum as hard as you can! Which is how they covered it. Any time that crummy trombone sounded, Shushek girded himself and attacked the kettledrum.

This fine booming filled the theater, drowning the little orchestra. Only a weak piping could be heard with some broken strains from the old trumpets. But that impressed them. Yet the audience seated in the pit looked at each other, and the Mayor, up in the best box with his family, thought the orchestra not really as bad as some music lovers in town wanted folks to believe.

As far as the musicians were concerned, they couldn’t care less. When the show was over, they stumbled out the trap door to the street, took their seats in the tavern at their wine-filled glasses, and forgot all about it. They were earning a living; the less said about it, the better. Beyond that, they got out of the habit of discussing music. Only gypsy music mattered in that place anyway, and they forgot there were others for whose lives music was important. They all felt that way, though they were uneducated men with the poorest of musical training, and music, good music, had meant excitement and pleasure. Stoczek the conductor had sometimes picked Beethoven’s Egmont for intermission. But rarely, because the director demanded only noisy marches and waltzes.

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