The Blind Musician by Vladimir Korolenko

Joachim really did play well. He could even handle the more intricate violin, and there had been a time when on a Sunday at the inn no one had played the Cossack dance or the merry Polish Cracovienne better than himself. When seated on a cask with the violin braced against his shaven chin, and his tall sheepskin hat on the back of his head, he would draw the bow across the quivering strings, hardly a man in the inn could keep his seat. Even the old one-eyed Jew who accompanied Joachim on a bass-viol would wax enthusiastic, his awkward instrument with its heavy bass straining every nerve, as it were, to keep time with the light notes of Joachim's violin, which seemed to dance as well as sing; while old Yankel himself, with his skullcap on his head, would lift his shoulders and turn his bald head, keeping time with his body to the gay capricious tune. It would hardly be worth while to describe the effect upon others whose feet are so made that at the very first note of a dancing tune they involuntarily begin to shuffle and stamp.

Ever since Joachim had fallen in love with Màrya, a courtyard servant-maid of the neighboring Pan, he had neglected his merry violin. In truth it had not helped him to win the heart of the saucy Màrya, who preferred the smooth German face of her master's valet to the bearded visage of the musician. Since that time his violin had not been heard either in the inn or at the evening gatherings. He had hung it on a nail in the stable, nor did he seem aware that from dampness and neglect the strings of the instrument, once so dear to his heart, were constantly snapping with a sound so sharp, plaintive, and dismal that the very horses neighed in sympathy, and turned their heads to gaze in wonder at their indifferent master. In order to supply its place, Joachim had purchased from a travelling Carpathian mountaineer a wooden pipe. He probably expected to find it a more suitable medium wherewith to express the sorrow of a rejected heart, and that its sympathetic modulations would harmonize with his hard lot. But the mountain pipe disappointed Joachim's expectations. He tried nearly a dozen of them in turn, in every possible way; he cut them, soaked them in water, dried them in the sun, hung them up under the roof to dry in the wind -- but all to no avail. The mountain pipe did not commend itself to the Hohòl's42 heart. It whistled where it should have sung, wailed when he wanted a sentimental tremolo, and never in fact responded to his mood.