The Turk and My Mother by Mary Helen Stefaniak

Author:Mary Helen Stefaniak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

ISTVAN PLAYED AT the funeral. Watching him, I remembered something Staramajka said to me one time when she was listening to a violin solo and I was waiting to change the station. She said, “It’s not so easy as it looks to play the violin. You have to hold it just so and keep the bones in your back, all those little bones, you have to keep them straight.” She was gazing so intently at the radio as she said this that I looked, too, expecting to see a tiny person standing very straight inside among the tubes.

Istvan brought along the string quartet with vocals that he’d told us about, three middle-aged nieces and two nephews. It was nice of them to come, although I could have done without the singing by his niece. “The Waiter’s Song” he saved for the graveside service at St. Adalbert’s. Everyone’s eyes were on the blind Gypsy while he played “Hungarian Dance #5,” very slowly, in that minor key, and nobody’s eyes were dry. He swayed slightly, bowing and dipping toward the grave from time to time, but mostly he kept the bones in his back very straight. You couldn’t help but imagine Staramajka up there somewhere with Marko, listening to the Brahms, the two of them together at last and probably grateful, both of them, that Marko would never have to play it again.

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