Read Online The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue - Free Book Online Page B

assembled nail by nail, and once complete, they stood no better than a crude approximation of what I felt or wanted to say, a woebegone fence across a white field. Yet I persisted through that morning, writing down all I could remember in whatever words I had at my command. By midday, both blank sides of the paper contained the story of my abduction and the adventures as well as the vaguest memories of life before this place. I had already forgotten more than I remembered—my own name and the names of my sisters, my dear bed, my school, my books, any notion of what I wanted to be when I grew up. All that would be given back to me in due course, but without Luchóg’s letters, I would have been lost forever. When I had squeezed the final word in the last available space, I went to look for him. Out of paper, my mission was to find more.

•                    CHAPTER 7                    •
    A t age ten, I began to perform in front of ordinary people. In appreciation of the nuns who allowed me use of the school piano, I agreed to play as prelude to the annual Christmas show. My music would usher the parents to their seats while their children shed coats and scarves for their elf and wise-man costumes. My teacher, Mr. Martin, and I put together a program of Bach, Strauss, and Beethoven, ending with part of “Six Little Piano Pieces” in honor of Arnold Schoenberg, who had passed away the year before. We felt this last “modern” piece, while not overly familiar to our audience, displayed my range without being overly ostentatious. The day before the Christmas show, I went through the thirty-minute program for the nuns after school, and the choices brought nothing but frowns and scowls from beneath their wimples.
    “That’s wonderful, Henry, truly extraordinary,” the principal said. She was the Mother Superior of the gang of crows that ran the joint. “But that last song.”
    “Schoenberg’s?”
    “Yes, very interesting.” She stood up in front of the sisters and paced to and fro, searching the air for tact. “Do you know anything else?”
    “Else, Mother?”
    “Something more seasonal perhaps?”
    “Seasonal, Mother?”
    “Something people might know?”
    “I’m not sure I understand.”
    She turned and addressed me directly. “Do you know any
Christmas
songs? A hymn? ‘Silent Night’ perhaps? Or ‘Hark! The Herald Angels’—I think that’s Mendelssohn. If you can play Beethoven, you can play Mendelssohn.”
    “You want carols?”
    “Not only hymns.” She walked on, hitching down her habit. “You could do ‘Jingle Bells’ or ‘White Christmas.’ ”
    “That’s from
Holiday Inn
,” one of the other nuns volunteered. “Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds. Oh, but you’re too young.”
    “Did you see
Bells of St. Mary’s
?” the third-grade teacher asked her fellow sisters. “Wasn’t he good in that?”
    “I really liked that
Boys Town
—you know, the one with Mickey Rooney.”
    Rattling the beads on her rosary, Mother Superior cut them off. “Surely you know a few Christmas songs?”
    Crestfallen, I went home that night and learned the fluff, practicing on a paper-cutout keyboard fashioned by my father. At the show the next evening, I trimmed half my original program and added a few carols at the end. I kept the Schoenberg, which, needless to say, bombed. I played the Christmas stuff brilliantly and to a thunderous ovation. “Cretins,” I said under my breath as I accepted their adulation. During my repeated bows, loathing swelled over their loud clapping and whistling. But then, looking out at the sea of faces, I began to recognize my parents and neighbors, all happy and cheerful, sending me their sincere appreciation for the holiday warmth generated by the vaguely predictable strains of their old favorites. No gift as welcome as the expected gift. And I grew light-headed and dizzy the longer the applause went on. My father