【The legend of 1900】To America.
To America. That was all I thought about at that time.
With my packed suitcase and the finest clothes I could find, here I stood, on Virginia, the best ship voyaging from Europe to America. I never saw such a thing before -- huge like a house, no, much larger than that. She was splendid, that was the only thing I could say.
So many people were on this ship. It was far more than I could count. I saw a woman with pitch black hair with a face looked to be over 60 years old, almost the same age as my grandma. And there was a man carrying a violin, a boy with a trumpet and other people with their instruments which I couldn't even name.
But only one, I swear, only one person on this ship ever sit on that bench in front of the piano in the third class cabin, the cabin where I was.
I knew nothing about him more than anyone else in this cabin. I knew not his name, where he came from nor where he was going. We were total strangers. And he wore those shirts and shoes just like I did. He even looked a little bit like me. The only difference between us was that he could play that piano while I could not even sing a song well.
And his piano was the only tiny amusement we had on Virginia.
I heard him playing all the time. At early morning, lunchtime and sometimes midnight. He played the piano whenever he liked, so, he never stopped. Not at least when I saw him. Every time I saw him, he was playing his song. And he never played the same song twice.
There were near two hundred people in the third class cabin, most of whom were poor guys from some remote Europe countryside, just like me. All of us were peasants or carpenters or some nobody, expect him, the guy who played the piano. I never talked to him, and actually, I never saw him talking to anybody on the ship. But I could see it on his face, and also in his blue eyes probably. They were not a face or eyes of a peasant or a carpenter or a nobody, but of someone, someone from a country I could never learn from the map or an explorer even who had already traveled to every corner of the world.
He did not belong here. And when I said here, I meant the third class cabin. But maybe what I really meant was the ship or the world. I didn't know, I was just a son of an old peasant after all.
They said what he was playing was Jazz. I knew nothing about that neither. What I knew was his songs were the only things that helped me go through the long five days on board. Had not for them, I would have drowned in that boring, salty air.
I even forgot about America when I listened to them.
That was the truth, man. There was magic in his music.
And even when the final day came, when we were so close to America, still, he played his songs. That was the time when I understood the songs, his music, were not played for us, nor anyone else in the cabin or the ship or the world.
For on other people.
They were for him. For all this long, he only played for himself.
And I did not know a thing about what that meant.
Maybe he himself was the only person who he could play for.
Maybe he was lonely, I thought to myself.
But who knew it? He never spoke to anyone.
Then I heard some man on the deck shouting"America". He shouted it so loud that we people in the cabin could hear it clearly, and it was like we could already see her -- America, I meant. All the streets and buildings and rich people in fancy clothes sitting in their cars all around New York City. It made my heart beat so fast to just think about it.
“We are in America now.”
I put up my hat along with the suitcase and got out of the cabin up to the deck. And then I saw her. I saw her giant body standing right in front of my eyes with a book and a fire torch in each of her huge hands. She was so beautiful, and I could not take my eyes off her.
Far as we went with the other people to get off the ship, no one noticed that the music had gone.
I never heard of him after that, the man who played the piano on Virginia. Nor did I ever think of him.
Not even in dreams.