![\"\"](\"https:\/\/astrowin.org\/rffriends\/wpx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/einstein-2.jpg\" "\\"einstein")
<\/a>\u00a0I had been asked a casual question. All I had to do was be equally casual in my reply. But I could see from the look in my neighbor\u2019s extraordinary eyes that their owner was not merely going through the perfunctory duties of elementary politeness. Regardless of what value I placed on my part in the verbal exchange, to this man his part in it mattered very much. Above all, I could feel that this was a man to whom you did not tell a lie, however small.<\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t know anything about Bach,\u201d I said awkwardly. \u201cI\u2019ve never heard any of his music.\u201d<\/p>\n
A look of perplexed astonishment washed across Einstein\u2019s mobile face.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have never heard Bach?\u201d<\/p>\n
He made it sound as though I had said I\u2019d never taken a bath.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt isn\u2019t that I don\u2019t want to like Bach,\u201d I replied hastily. \u201cIt\u2019s just that I\u2019m tone deaf, or almost tone deaf, and I\u2019ve never really heard anybody\u2019s music.\u201d<\/p>\n
A look of concern came into the old man\u2019s face. \u201cPlease,\u201d he said abruptly, \u201cYou will come with me?\u201d<\/p>\n
He stood up and took my arm. I stood up. As he led me across that crowded room I kept my embarrassed glance fixed on the carpet. A rising murmur of puzzled speculation followed us out into the hall. Einstein paid no attention to it.<\/p>\n
Resolutely he led me upstairs. He obviously knew the house well. On the floor above he opened the door into a book-lined study, drew me in and shut the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow,\u201d he said with a small, troubled smile. \u201cYou will tell me, please, how long you have felt this way about music?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll my life,\u201d I said, feeling awful. \u201cI wish you would go back downstairs and listen, Dr. Einstein. The fact that I don\u2019t enjoy it doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
He shook his head and scowled, as though I had introduced an irrelevance.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me, please,\u201d he said. \u201cIs there any kind of music that you do like?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d I answered, \u201cI like songs that have words, and the kind of music where I can follow the tune.\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled and nodded, obviously pleased. \u201cYou can give me an example, perhaps?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d I ventured, \u201calmost anything by Bing Crosby.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded again, briskly. \u201cGood!\u201d<\/p>\n
He went to a corner of the room, opened a phonograph and started pulling out records. I watched him uneasily. At last he beamed. \u201cAh!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He put the record on and in a moment the study was filled with the relaxed, lilting strains of Bing Crosby\u2019s \u201cWhen the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.\u201d Einstein beamed at me and kept time with the stem of his pipe. After three or four phrases he stopped the phonograph<\/p>\n
\u201cNow,\u201d he said. \u201cWill you tell me, please, what you have just heard?\u201d
\nThe simplest answer seemed to be to sing the lines. I did just that, trying desperately to stay on tune and keep my voice from cracking. The expression on Einstein\u2019s face was like the sunrise.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see!\u201d he cried with delight when I finished. \u201cYou do have an ear!\u201d<\/p>\n
I mumbled something about this being one of my favorite songs, something I had heard hundreds of times, so that it didn\u2019t really prove anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cNonsense!\u201d said Einstein. \u201cIt proves everything! Do you remember your first arithmetic lesson in school? Suppose, at your very first contact with numbers, your teacher had ordered you to work out a problem in, say, long division or fractions. Could you have done so?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, of course not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPrecisely!\u201d Einstein made a triumphant wave with his pipestem. \u201cIt would have been impossible and you would have reacted in panic. you would have closed your mind to long division and fractions. As a result, because of that one small mistake by your teacher, it is possible your whole life you would be denied the beauty of long division and fractions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pipestem went up and out in another wave.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut on your first day no teacher would be so foolish. He would start you with elementary things — then, when you had acquired skill with the simplest problems, he would lead you up to long division and to fractions.<\/p>\n
So it is with music.\u201d Einstein picked up the Bing Crosby record. \u201cThis simple, charming little song is like simple addition or subtraction. You have mastered it. Now we go on to something more complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n
He found another record and set it going. The golden voice of John McCormack singing \u201cThe Trumpeter\u201d filled the room. After a few lines Einstein stopped the record.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo!\u201d he said. \u201cYou will sing that back to me, please?\u201d<\/p>\n
I did—with a good deal of selfconsciousness but with, for me, a surprising degree of accuracy. Einstein stared at me with a look on his face that I had seen only once before in my life: on the face of my father as he listened to me deliver the valedictory address at my high school graduation.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcellent!\u201d Einstein remarked when I finished. \u201cWonderful! Now this!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis\u201d\u00a0turned out\u00a0to be Caruso in what was to me a completely unrecognizable fragment from \u201cCavalleria Rusticana.\u201d Nevertheless, I managed to reproduce an approximation of the sounds the famous tenor had made. Einstein beamed his approval.<\/p>\n
Caruso was followed by at least a dozen others. I could not shake my feeling of awe over the way this great man, into whose company I had been thrown by chance, was completely preoccupied by what we were doing, as though I were his sole concern.<\/p>\n
We came at last to recordings of music without words, which I was instructed to reproduce by humming. When I reached for a high note, Einstein\u2019s mouth opened and his head went back as if to help me attain what seemed unattainable. Evidently I came close enough, for he suddenly turned off the phonograph.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, young man,\u201d he said, putting his arm through mine. \u201cWe are ready for Bach!\u201d<\/p>\n
As we returned to our seats in the drawing room, the players were tuning up for a new selection. Einstein smiled and gave me a reassuring pat on the knee.
\n\u201cJust allow yourself to listen,\u201d he whispered. \u201cThat is all.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t really all, of course. Without the effort he had just poured out for a total stranger I would never have heard, as I did that night for the first time in my life, Bach\u2019s \u201cSheep May Safely Graze.\u201d I have heard it many times since. I don\u2019t think I shall ever tire of it. Because I never listen to it alone. I am sitting beside a small, round man with a shock of untidy white hair, a dead pipe clamped between his teeth, and eyes that contain in their extraordinary warmth all the wonder of the world.<\/p>\n
When the concert was finished I added my genuine applause to that of the others.
\nSuddenly our hostess confronted us. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry, Dr. Einstein,\u201d she said with an icy glare at me, \u201cthat you missed so much of the performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Einstein and I came hastily to our feet. \u201cI am sorry, too,\u201d he said. \u201cMy young friend here and I, however, were engaged in the greatest activity of which man is capable.\u201d
\nShe looked puzzled. \u201cReally?\u201d she said. \u201cAnd what is that?\u201d<\/p>\n
Einstein smiled and put his arm across my shoulders. And he uttered ten words that — for at least one person who is in his endless debt — are his epitaph:
\n\u201cOpening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n