Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/279

Rh have a love of music and went away to bring his violin, very patently desirous of exhibiting his skill before foreigners. The violin was a rather good one but had only two strings, tuned very low, and a bow that showed hard usage and was so curved that it did not promise much artistic delight. The African musician plays with the violin resting vertically on the knee in the same upright position that we play the 'cello, which changes the character of the sound and creates very definite difficulties of technique. At our request for some of his music the boy sat down on a low cushion and began to play, often out of key, a protracted, mournful melody, greatly overcharged with fioriture and very long.

"Madame Ducore, knowing my fondness for the violin, asked me in turn to play something for them. Consequently, when the young man had finished, I begged of him his instrument, much to the astonishment of the whole assembly, tuned it a quint higher and with great? difficulty at first, as the bow was curved and the instrument very strange with its limited equipment of strings, began to improvise some Eastern melodies, knowing that our European music would probably not appeal to them. The result was quite unexpected and astonishing, and they looked at me as though I were a specter from some other world or a mysterious djinn.

"One of the women came close to me and touched my hands and feet, but the most astonished of them all was my fellow-musician, who was surprised by everything he had seen and heard, by the unusual pose, the quick movements of the fingers and the purity of the tone. When I repeated the melody he had just played, harmonizing it