The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom Read Free Book Online

years later, to Valencia, where he made music in the street with gypsies. Again, someone returned him to Villareal.
    A few years later, he ran away once more.
    His wandering would affect his music. Tárrega—who eventually became famous and in demand all over Europe—found himself in London once, alone and depressed. He missed the sunshine of his country. Someone encouraged him to capture his sadness in music, so he wrote a composition that embodied his yearning.
    That composition was “Lágrima”—“Teardrop”—the beautiful melody hummed in Frankie’s ear in the church chamber, the one that kept him from crying, the one that, in truth, saved his life. It was a favorite of Frankie’s real mother, Carmencita, because, like others raised in Villareal, she knew the music of her city’s most famous son.
    So did El Maestro, the blind teacher in the sleeveless undershirt, who played Frankie many Tárrega compositions. This is how talents weave from generation to generation, how the shadow stretches, and how an artist born nearly a hundred years earlier begins to fill the soul of a child who shares his name.

    For the longest time, by the way, that was all El Maestro did during their lessons. Play. Frankie sat in a kitchen chair, mesmerized, absorbing every note, watching the man’s fingers and wondering if his eyes were open or closed behind those dark glasses. After every song the man would smoke or drink from a bottle of red wine or the cheap but higher-alcohol aguardiente (“burning water”). When at last he’d drop his head back and lower his arms, Frankie would rise from the chair.
    “Good-bye, Maestro.”
    “Yes, yes, good-bye.”
    Frankie would walk downstairs to find Baffa and the hairless dog and they would go home together, no sheet music, no assignments.
    No guitar.
    “Señor,” Baffa asked El Maestro one day, “why is the boy not playing the instrument?”
    “Go sit in the laundry,” El Maestro growled.
    Two weeks later, Baffa asked again.
    “Señor, shouldn’t the child be playing by now?”
    “Go away. Your dog smells.”
    Baffa dared not get angry, for he had great respect for an artist’s talent, something that always endeared the fat sardine maker to me. But he was persistent. Two weeks later, he brought Frankie to the door and raised the issue again.
    “Señor, I must insist—”
    “No, you mustn’t.”
    “But I am paying for lessons.”
    “Do you want an artist or a monkey?”
    Frankie felt himself smiling. A monkey .
    “Of course, señor, I want an artist, but—”
    “Then stop talking. I am getting a headache.” He scratched under his armpit. “Do you have my money?”
    Baffa sighed. “Yes.”
    Frankie watched Baffa hand him some bills, which El Maestro stuffed into his pants pocket with his cigarettes.
    “You cannot write if you do not read,” the blind man said. “You cannot eat if you do not chew. And you cannot play if you do not”—he grabbed for the boy’s hand—“listen.”
    He yanked Frankie inside and slammed the door.

 
    8

    ALL TOLD, IT TOOK ONE FULL YEAR BEFORE EL MAESTRO LET THE BOY TOUCH A STRING. “First your ears, then your hands,” he insisted. Meanwhile, he explained music. He explained it in Spanish—and in English, which, having learned himself when he was younger, he deemed vital for Frankie’s progression, believing the rhythm, syntax, and pitch of languages helped the understanding of such things in music. Week after week, jumping between tongues, he demonstrated my chords, my scales, my voicings, laying them out like fine silverware until Frankie could identify them by sound. He made Frankie memorize the names of each composer and composition. Sometimes they listened to music on the small kitchen radio, and El Maestro squeezed Frankie’s hands at certain parts. “Do you hear? Right there! That is a minor key . . . that is a triplet . . .”
    As far as Frankie could tell, El Maestro had no other students. He was often sleeping on