The Devil and the Violin

         
(Note: The character's father is a washed up martial artist who now teaches at a small league.)

Chapter 6

        Upon returning home, his father's mood seemed much better, at least for the time being. Marten and his sister were allowed to watch some TV, and after that he quietly finished his homework in his room.
        Finally, by 8:30, Marten had a little time to practice his violin.  He closed his bedroom door so not to wake his sister, and removed the bow from its case.  After tightened the hair with the small brass nob on the end of his bow, he applied a bit of rosin to it in a couple quick motions.  Marten then removed his precious instrument from its case and tuned each string to the pitch indicated on his electronic tuner.  This was very unnecessary, since it seemed Marten had developed perfect pitch in the year he had been playing, a rare talent among musicians, and an indication of great promise.
         After the instrument was tuned, he opened the music book on the stand in front of him to page 13. Humoresque, Op. 101 by Antonín Dvořák.  He didn’t really need this either.  He knew the piece by heart.  However, straightening his back and raising his bow, he played.  The sound that came from within his violin was not that of a child or a beginner.  It was not the cat-like scraping that most are familiar with in those who haven’t mastered the instrument.  No, he played the notes with such sweetness that it seemed to flush away every trouble he had- or would ever have.
         For hours Marten practiced scales, familiar pieces his teacher taught him, and even a few simple melodies of his own.  It was nearly 11:30, and he hadn’t even realize how long he had been playing, but the crashing of glass from the kitchen below made him cut his playing short.  Following the crash he heard the word “Shit!” in the familiar Bosnian accent.
      Apprehensive, Marten placed his bow and violin back in its case and made his way down toward the kitchen.  There he saw his father, standing barefoot, wobbling slighting from one foot to the other.  At his feet was some liquid, broken glass and ice, and on the counter was a bottle of gin, half empty.
         Mr. Serensova looked at Marten with an irritated, almost furious expression on his face. “What the fuck you are looking at?” he said, slurring his words only slightly.  In Marten’s experience, he found that his father had developed an impressive ability to control his speech, no matter how drunk he was.           
         Marten turned slightly as if to walk away.
         “Wait!” His father said in a tone that was more pathetic than angry. “Come help me clean this up.”
         Marten did has he said.  He got on his hands and knees to clean up the mess.  The strong fumes from the gin invaded his nostrils.  He couldn’t understand his father’s liking for such a foul smelling drink. 
         He picked up the bits of glass and ice and threw them in the near by trash can, while his father stood by uselessly, holding a towel, with which he seemed determined to clean up the mess himself.  Instead, he dropped the towel on the floor, and Marten grabbed it himself to clean up the gin. 
        When Marten looked up, his father had simply taken the bottle of gin itself off the counter and walked into the living room with it.  He also appeared to have his cellphone in his right hand.  He found this unusual, but he had long since accepted that his father was a very unpredictable man.  He listened as he strove to clean up the mess, and heard the barely audible sounds of buttons on his father’s cell phone. A moment of silence, and then his father spoke into it.
         “Hello! Rachel!” He said excitedly.
Who’s Rachel?
         Marten listened carefully and almost stopped what he was doing.
         “This is Nicholas, we met the other day.  You were with that ass hole.”  His father laughed.
         Marten had a feeling this phone call wasn’t going to end well. 
        As the obviously doomed conversation progressed, Marten could tell by the irritation in his father’s voice that the woman on the other end of the phone was not please with a drunk man calling her at such a late hour, and was trying to hang up on him.
         “Wait! You stupid bitch!...”  He paused, listening to what the woman was saying. “Well fuck you!” He shouted, hanging up and throwing the phone across the room.
         Marten quickly finished mopping up the mess with his towel, then stood up and made his way past his father to the bathroom so he could throw it in the hamper.  His father stood in the living room, looking furious and mumbling something in Bosnian to himself.
         “Kurvo! Jebi se!”
         Marten tried to inconspicuously make his way past his father and toward the stairs to his bedroom, but his father stopped him.
         “You’d better not go play that fucking violin!” He shouted, “I don’t want people to think my son's a fag!”
         Marten paused with is back toward his father, not sure what to do or say.
         “Come here.” Mr. Serensova said, taking Marten by the arm with unnecessary force, and making him stand about a foot and half away from the wall, facing the blue, faded paint.
         “Hit it!” He said.
         Marten hesitated.
         “You heard me. Hit it.”
         Marten feebly recoiled his right arm as if to strike the wall.
         “You’re left arm!”  He shouted, grabbing Marten’s left arm and positioning it in a strike position.
         Shaking violently, Marten felt the hatred for his father rise up inside him, and with what seemed like super-human force, he struck the wall in front of him with all his might.  His knees buckled slightly, and he instantly brought his left hand back to his chest and clutched it with his right.  It throbbed with more pain than he had ever felt in his life, but he tried desperately to resist the tears that were swelling in his eyes.
         “When it heals, it will heal stronger.”  His father said in a sinister, amused voice. “It always does.”
         Marten stood in front of him shaking.  A tear escaped his eye and ran down his cheek.
         “No more of this violin bullshit. I want my son to be a real man.”
         This statement was even more painful to Marten than the wall he had just punched. He looked up into his fathers eyes with an expression that was both furious and pleading, then turned around and ran toward the stairs to his bedroom.
         “Lets see you try to play that violin now.”