A memory of my youth.

When I was in the tenth grade, my friend once invited me to a group of medical students, freshmen. I remember talking about various topics and someone mentioned a Chopin etude that I knew well. I couldn’t resist blurting out, “expressed my opinion.” After all, I wanted to show the “students” that we, the tenth graders, are also well-made! Well, this sketch is a “Small emotion”..

My remark caused a chorus of laughter from the students, who looked at us as if we were “rookies,” even though the difference was only one year. And one tall and handsome young man, whom everyone called “Lazik”, although his name was Ladislav, ironically said:

“Well, I’ve identified myself exactly!”

And since then, when we met, he never called me nothing but “Little emotion.”

Such a sarcastic nickname was not the most pleasant for me…

One day, this whole group of students decided to have a kind of picnic in a forester’s hut by the river. And a friend was invited along with me as an exception. Of course, he was friends with this Lazik, and I probably had to make a non monetary contribution to this “event” as a free (not at all free – it was necessary to make a certain monetary contribution to this “event”) application, for a laugh, probably. In order to laugh at the next stupidity of the “Little emotion”

We arrived there, having walked a fairly solid path with backpacks full of provisions. We settled down for the evening and overnight (we had been walking since early morning). The booze-eating sessions began.

I lay down on some wooden tents and, listening with annoyance to the chatter on the one hand with such “casually familiar” Latin, singing while slightly drunk on the other, I cursed myself for taking part in this idiocy.

I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t understand the meaning of these meaningful Latin names, and I was bored among these students -students – “merry men and merry women.”

I noticed that in this booth, it was unclear why and for whom, there was a piano!

I closed my eyes, thinking that perhaps sleep was the only thing left for me “among completely alien feasts and too unreliable truths.”

Suddenly, a THUNDEROUS THUMP on the keys. It turns out that this mockery Lazik was an excellent pianist. Amidst the half-drunken hubbub and mutter, he imperceptibly sat down at the piano with the lid open and began playing Chopin’s “Revolutionary Etude”! It was like a massive blow from a defibrillator to my nerves and heart. I have heard this etude performed by the best famous pianists many, many times before and after. But he has never made such an amazing, soul-turning impression on me as that time.

This powerful music, which suddenly sounded in the midst of not quite intelligible conversations and the half-drunk singing of vocal lovers, contrasted so strikingly with the general atmosphere of the “booze-snack” that it simply could not help but pour a strong refreshing rain on the heart! AMAZING! The tsunami that washed away all this petty and squalid “entertainment”…

A year later, I found out that Lazik had some kind of very transient and aggressive form of leukemia.

My friend and I came to his apartment to express our condolences to his grief-stricken parents who lost such a wonderful and talented son. Lazik was lying in an open coffin on a table in the living room. His once handsome face was covered in some kind of bluish pimples, obviously the result of an illness, and I thought that his parents should not have left his coffin open. It would be better for everyone who knew and loved him to remain the way he was remembered: Young, tall, handsome, ironic with the thin long fingers of a pianist.

And again I remembered the “Revolutionary etude”

THEN...

At that moment, it was no longer an etude by Frédéric Chopin for me.

It was HIS ETUDE!

12 X 2020