The Mozart Question Read online

  “Papa, I could see, was struggling with himself. ‘So long as it’s not Mozart,’ he said finally. So I played the Winter movement from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Benjamin’s favourite piece. Papa sat listening with closed eyes throughout.

  “When I had finished, Benjamin said, ‘Well, Gino, what do you think? He has a great and wonderful talent, your son, a rare gift you have both given him.’

  “‘Then it must not be wasted,’ said Papa quietly.

  “So every day without fail after that I went for my violin lessons with Benjamin in his little apartment in the Arsenale. Papa could not bring himself to listen to me playing, but sometimes Mama came along with me and sat and listened, and afterwards she always hugged me so tight it hurt; but I did not mind, not one bit. I began to play in the streets alongside Benjamin, and whenever I did the crowds became bigger and bigger each time. One day Papa was there amongst them watching, listening. He walked me home afterwards, saying not a word until we were walking over the Accademia Bridge. ‘So, Paolo,’ he said, ‘you prefer playing the violin to sweeping up in my barber’s shop, do you?’

  “‘Yes, Papa,’ I replied. ‘I’m afraid I do.’

  “‘Well then, I can see I shall just have to do my sweeping up myself.’ He stopped then and put his hands on my shoulders. ‘I shall tell you something, Paolo, and I want you never to forget it. When you play I can listen to music again. You have made music joyful for me once more, and that is a wonderful gift you have given me. You go and be the great violinist you should be. I shall help you all I can. You will play heavenly music and people will love you. Mama and I shall come to all your concerts, or as many as we can. But you have to promise me one thing: that until the day I die you will never play Mozart in public, not in my hearing. It was Mozart we played so often in the camp. Never Mozart. Promise me.’

  “So I promised. I have kept my promise to Papa all these years. He died two weeks ago, the last of the three of them to go. At my fiftieth birthday concert in London I shall be playing Mozart, and I shall be playing it on Mama’s violin, and I shall play it so well that he will love it, they will all love it, wherever they are.”

  I was still finishing my shorthand when I looked up and saw him coming towards me. He was offering me his violin.

  “Here you are,” he said. “Mama’s violin. My violin. You can hold it if you like while we have some more mint tea. You’ll have another cup, won’t you? I make the best mint tea in Venice.”

  So I held Paolo Levi’s violin for several precious minutes as we sat talking quietly over a last cup of tea. I asked him no more questions. There were none to ask. He talked of his love of Venice, and how wherever he was in the world he longed to be back home. It was the sounds he always missed: the church bells, the walking and talking, the chuntering of boats, and the music in the streets. “Music belongs in the streets, where Benjamin played it,” he said, “not in concert halls.”

  As I left, he looked me in the eye and said, still grasping my hand, “I am glad it was you I told.”

  “Why did you?” I asked. “Why did you tell me?”

  “Because it was time to tell the truth. Because secrets are lies, and because you have eyes that are kind, like Benjamin’s. But mostly because you didn’t ask the Mozart question.”

  Author’s Note

  It is difficult for us to imagine how dreadful was the suffering that went on in the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. The enormity of the crime that the Nazis committed is just too overwhelming for us to comprehend. In their attempt to wipe out an entire race they caused the deaths of six million people, most of them Jews. It is when you hear the stories of the individuals who lived through it – Anne Frank, Primo Levi – that you can begin to understand the horror just a little better, and to understand the evil that caused it.

  For me, the most haunting image does not come from literature or film, but from music. I learned some time ago that in many of the camps the Nazis selected Jewish prisoners and forced them to play in orchestras; for the musicians it was simply a way to survive. In order to calm the new arrivals at the camps they were made to serenade them as they were lined up and marched off, many to the gas chambers. Often they played Mozart.

  I wondered how it must have been for a musician who played in such hellish circumstances, who adored Mozart as I do – what thoughts came when playing Mozart later in life. This was the genesis of my story, this and the sight of a small boy in a square by the Accademia Bridge in Venice, sitting one night, in his pyjamas on his tricycle, listening to a busker. He sat totally enthralled by the music that seemed to him, and to me, to be heavenly.

  Michael Morpurgo

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  First published 2006 in Singing for Mrs Pettigrew: A Storymaker’s Journey by Walker Books Ltd, 87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  This edition published 2014

  Text © 2006 Michael Morpurgo Illustrations © 2007 Michael Foreman

  The right of Michael Morpurgo and Michael Foreman to be identified as author and illustrator respectively of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-4063-6257-2

  www.walker.co.uk