A Boy at the Piano
ピアノの前の少年
In a narrow street of old Vienna, there lived a whose only son was named Elias.
Although the family owned almost nothing, the boy possessed an ear that no fortune could ever buy.
While his father was measuring cloth downstairs, Elias would press his fingers against the trembling windowpane.
He was listening to the cathedral bells while the other children were shouting games in the square.
One grey morning, the old organist left the church door open, and Elias slipped quietly inside.
The boy climbed onto the wooden bench, and his small hands found the cold ivory keys.
When he pressed the first , the whole church seemed to breathe around him.
He was trembling, yet he could not stop, for the sound was pulling something out of his chest.
At that very moment, while the great pipes were still ringing, he understood his .
Music was not something he had chosen; rather, it was something that had chosen him.
The organist, who had been watching silently from the shadows, said nothing at first.
"You have the gift," the old man whispered, although he knew where such a gift could lead.
From that day on, Elias returned to the church whenever the heavy door was left unlocked.
Even though his fingers were often stiff with cold, he practised until the daylight faded.
His father, however, regarded music as the dream of men who would always stay poor.
"A tailor's son becomes a ," he said , folding a length of dark wool.
While his father was speaking of needles and thread, Elias was hearing symphonies in his head.
Night after night, the boy copied borrowed scores by candlelight, hiding them beneath the floorboards.
Although he feared his father's anger, he feared a silent, musicless life far more.
One evening the discovered the hidden pages and threw them into the fire.
As the paper curled and blackened, Elias stood frozen, unable to save a single note.
"You will thank me one day," his father said, though the boy never would.
That night, while the whole house was sleeping, Elias made a silent promise to himself.
He would become a composer, no matter how long the road or how cruel the cost.
He did not yet know that the cruellest price would one day be paid by his own ears.
But that still lay years away, hidden somewhere in the music yet to come.