The Lebanese Child Prodigy Armin Aramian

.. There, at one of the bends of Bishop Street in Tripoli, stands a modest building from whose shuttered windows plaintive melodies drift, rising violent at one moment and sinking soft at another. You hear them when you rise in the morning, and you hear them when evening comes; they lull the strings of your heart when you take to your bed late; and on certain stormy nights they pierce the walls to wake you from your sleep in the last watch of the night, as though, say, to disguise the pitch-black night for you, so that you listen to them without vexation or complaint; and before long they carry you, willing or not, on their soaring wings to distant worlds of thought — thought of love, of goodness, and of peace — until, when they bring you back from your roving, you are other than the one you were, and you hold views and theories of life which, but for these melodies, you would never have held in your wearied world.

In this building, where classical music lives its free, unfettered life, there also lives a child not yet past his fourth year, whose whole concern in life is to listen to it, absorbed and pensive, until, when the artist's tremor seizes him, he rushes to his baton, snatches it up, and begins raising it and bringing it down — now deliberate and tender, his gaze reverent, now stormy and violent, sparks all but flying from his blazing eyes — and he remains so for long hours, coming to himself afterward only when he lies sprawled on his bed, overtaken by a doze of slumber after effort and toil.

His parents never knew how or when he came to love music. What they did know is that on one scorching summer day, when he was then a year and a few months old, he began to cry for no reason — as they first believed; but the insistent fit of crying showed her that this child of a year and a few months was asking her to replay the "Beethoven" record, and no sooner had they replayed the clamorous melody than the child's face brightened and he stopped crying. Each time the record ended he pressed for it to be played again, and so on until listening exhausted him and he sank into a deep sleep, from which he awoke to a new stage of his artistic life. His father, an amateur with a keen ear, began to run his experiments on him — and behold, he was a musician, and what a musician! He has an ear of delicate sensitivity that never errs in understanding melodies, whatever their kind. He hates dance tunes such as the "samba" and the "rumba," and likewise hates Eastern music and will not consent to listen to it under any circumstances; and he loves classical music to a strange degree that lets him listen to it for long hours without wearying or tiring, no shadow of children's boredom veiling his eyes. He has his own expressions about music: if he wants a particular record — "Nitcher," for example — he says: put on for me the one that begins strong, like this — and he points his baton high; or for "Bach" he says: no, the one that begins as though it were a drizzle of rain falling slowly upon the earth. As for "Beethoven," he holds the loftiest place with him: he loves him more than his own parents. He has hung his picture in the family's small salon above the radio, and as he gazes at it you feel as though all the powers of the earth had gathered to burst from between his lips and say to him: I love you!

If you saw him for the first time you would realize that he is a genuine maestro wrapped in the mantle of a singular child, and you would know that he is so self-assured that he fairly extracts from you the address "Maestro."

What ordinarily tempts children — caresses, or calls, or sweets — does not tempt him; what tempts him is something else: that you tell him you admire the way he distributes his signals to his imaginary orchestra!! As for how he learned that in the world of music there is a "maestro": his father — the child was then two and a half — took him along to a concert conducted by Benjamin Antoun. Scarcely had he returned home afterward when his mother — worn out with some housework — found that he had lined up the chairs around him in a strange arrangement, mounted one of them, the one in the middle, and begun signaling with both hands and his small, gifted head to the chairs around him with the gestures of an accomplished orchestra conductor, as though some strange spirit had possessed him and turned him away from everything around him, so that his mother could not restore his awareness or bring him back to himself until he had concluded his violent piece and recovered his former calm.

And here began a second stage in the musical child's life: from that time on he has never ceased to accompany his beloved records with the beat-keeping motions of music according to the established rules, in which he has never once erred, although he has never learned a single note of them; in all this he is guided by that singular genius which guided his genius forebears without training or toil, as many masters of classical music have testified for him — such as Alexis Boutros and the professors of the Beaux-Arts Academy, and others besides.

It happened at Christmas this year that the prodigy child was invited, among the invited guests, to a concert in the hall of Cinema Dunia under the patronage of the President of the Lebanese Republic, Mr. Camille Chamoun, conducted by Alexis Boutros. The orchestra numbered a hundred and fifty pieces or more, together with the singers. Hardly had the music rung out with its majestic classical strains when the guests saw a child not yet three and a half years old drawn up on his chair with the erect bearing of a self-confident conductor: behold, he was directing the orchestra from behind Alexis; behold, the eyes of the entire orchestra turned to him, to take the beat and the inspiration from him; behold, he passed into a kind of intoxicated trance, as though people had been effaced from his world, as though he were alone, face to face with his astonished orchestra, understanding it and being understood by it — until, when the melody ended and he recovered his awareness, there he was greeting the applauding audience with nods of thanks and gratitude from his head with its curly, tumbling hair, as though a breath from on high had touched him: the features of his handsome face relaxed and his eyes shone with wondrous radiance — in this like men of art, poets and writers and painters and musicians, who, when they feel the public's appreciation of their gifts, are delighted and do not conceal their delight, however great their persons.

And a few days ago some music teachers presented him with a conductor's baton of beautiful workmanship in appreciation of his artistic gifts. He loved it madly and grew so attached to it that he would not sleep without laying it at his side and tucking it under his quilt. It chanced that he was once listening to a new melody and giving it a new conducting; he was carried away by it as he is carried away by every melody that pleases him, and stormed along with the storming melody — and behold, his clenched hands pressed upon the baton, broke it, and flung it aside, and his sensitive, contracted fingers took its place. But scarcely had he finished, scarcely had the music fallen silent, when he came to himself, snatched the broken baton from the floor, clasped it to his sorrowful breast, and was seized by a fit of weeping in which his parents' every effort went for nothing, and he refused to go to his bed. But the father, who understands things and things again about his only son, replaced his baton with another, which he sawed with his own hands and polished on the spot — and how quickly the little artist's fury subsided, and how quickly his lips parted in a smile of gratitude..

And that night the new baton slept in the place of the first — where the warmth was, and where, for the first time, it listened to the beating of a big heart..

*

I said to his father: Are there musicians in your family? Or amateurs? He said: On the contrary — in my family, on his mother's side and his father's, there is no one who loves music or cares for it. He was silent a little, then said: But I myself loved music as I have loved nothing else in existence, and I was denied the chance to study under any musician, because I entered the flood of life young, with a broken wing.

He fell silent again, then resumed: But I never wished anything of God except that He grant me a genius son with a musical gift, in whom I might take pride, and in whom his homeland Lebanon might take pride.

I said: And do your means allow you scope to have him taught by specialist teachers?..
He said: Alas, no!

I remembered at that moment Italy's child maestro "Roberto Benzi," whose care the government undertook and whose training the Ministry of Fine Arts took in charge, so that he grew into one of the eminent figures of music in Italy; and to this day he still receives his artistic lessons from the greatest masters in the world.

And I remembered something else.. but I choked when I wished to say it — for how often has the writer's mouth been filled with water... and how often, at times, has it been filled with blood...