Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/152

140 “Now get your violin—and play something!”

“I don't want to hear any more of that noise of his now! He can play at night all he wants to—up on the roof,” grumbled his mother. Jona sat where he was and kept looking up at his sister. He watched her slightest movement.

The mother and the brothers did not love him. He had only his sister, and to her he clung with all the emotion of his weak mind. But in the neighborhood it was said that he was inspired by the Holy Ghost. No one taught him to play upon the violin. And no one could imitate him. He had never had a teacher and he played only his own pieces. And they were strange and sad and foolish, like himself.

Jona lived in the same house where I lived as a child. He knew me. Whenever he met me he nodded his head and smiled. I can truthfully say, that although I was a child myself, too, I never injured or annoyed him. There was some thing about his wax-like face that was sacred for me. My childish imagination saw in it a resemblance to the dead, waxen faces which I had seen under glass behind the altars in the churches.