Willing to die

The following document is the will of a murdered man.

“My name is Ness Veingyari Third and, within the limits of these sheets, I shall determine what will be of my 27 billion dollars wealth. But first, permit me to tell the story of an old man who discovered the secret of life.

It’s the usual, I was born on a farm, black and bastard son of the land’s lord and one of the servants. Since I could use my hands, they were not used to play nor learn violin, as I always heard his true son do from within their house; it was used to milk animals, hoe the soil, and harvest coffee grains, the same ones you probably drank this morning to keep awake and be able to work more and more efficiently.

There is a natural question to this beginning: how could I get away from that life and start my empire?

“Hey, the black woman said you were my brother, is that true?”, the blond brown-eyed lord’s son asked me. It was a complicated situation since I was advised to not speak to them if not to receive orders. But, being a nine-year-old kid, I answered.

“I’ve heard something like that.”

“Cool! D’you wanna play the violin with me?”, he smiled ear to ear, just having discovered about one of his brothers. I’d tell him about the others, but I was so awed with someone asking me to do something that didn’t have to do with a cow, a hoe, or coffee that my heart raced and I didn’t think about other possibilities.

“What’s a violin?”, I asked.

“You don’t know? Mom’s right saying you people don’t know much about anything. It’s the enormousest thing in the world, and it makes a beautiful sound. I always play it, you should’ve heard it sometime”, I am sure he just repeated some cool word an adult spoke to him to describe it, but his enormous enthusiasm gained me. We went to play the violin.

For two years we kept playing on the sly. He was to go to the city to attend school in the morning, take violin classes in the afternoon and teach me when the moon was the highest in the sky. He taught me where the notes were supposed to be and how I should feel the music, as his teacher said to him. That my hands couldn’t smell coffee, otherwise his parents would suspect, and all essential techniques: vibrato, arpeggios, staccato.

I say on the sly because we tried to be discreet, but there’s no way two eleven-year-old kids can keep a secret for this long. Well, despite all that bad stuff running on there, maybe they grew to pity me, the land’s lords. Maybe, just maybe, they learned we could coexist if in a good environment.

But my happiness did not last long.

With technological progress, machines did a better and cheaper job than me, my mom, and other servants could. So we weren’t a good deal anymore. Maybe my father, or at least the father of my brother, grew fond of me. Not because it was me, but because I carried his blood. Nevertheless, his wife made him choose between the bastards and his true heir, and the choice was obvious. I won’t lie saying he cried the day we left, but for years I pretended like that was the case. That my biological father cried when I left.

Even if this wasn’t true, there was someone who did, and that was my brother, the blond brown-eyed kid who learned violin but couldn’t really match me in terms of coolness and style.

“That’s yours, Ness”, he handed me his violin. I was confused, was he crazy? Did he want his parents to kill him? Now, I see that it didn’t matter to him. He knew from that age a secret that I’d have to suffer decades to discover.

I would’ve liked to play a little harder to get, but I was so amused that my eyes brightened and my hands flew to the instrument.

“I’m gonna miss you”, I said.

“What d’you mean? We’ll meet again sometime”, he gave me the smile only he could.

And I left.

My mother, becoming ill for God knows what reason, rested on a bed since the day we arrived at the city and would not work no matter what. She, now I see, discovered another secret, a little more pessimist than that of my brother. That it doesn’t matter. If you have a son, even if it’s from a rich man, it may not work. If you strive for an entire life, it may not work. If you suffer enough to deserve to live in paradise, it may still not work. 

“Ness,” she said weak-voiced while I sat on her bed, holding her hands, “it doesn’t matter, it all doesn’t matter. If you’re rich, poor, white, black, man, woman, it doesn’t. You will suffer,” and saying this, she stared deep into my soul looking at what only a mother could look at in a son, “so let me go and go get what you dream of…”.

My mother not once until the day of her death said she loved me. But I didn’t need her to say it for me to know. When she told me to let her go, I hesitated. I’ve been with her since ever, but a deep will burned in my heart, and only by antagonizing the world itself, I could satisfy it. As in the day my brother invited me to play the violin, when my mom invited me to run after my dreams, my entire body burned and asked. No, demanded action.

And so I went.

With violin, bow, and tons of sheets in hands, I offered to play at bars, hair salons, and important people parties. They liked me, they adored me, they loved me. I was the only black guy in the city who could touch a violin and get a damn nice sound out of it. I was exclusive. And they loved me for it.

So they called me to their wedding parties, to millionaire-important dinners, to their daughter’s birthdays. I shall confess that I wasn’t dumb, I knew about real life and had the charm of who also knows about rich stuff, and their daughters loved it too.

I started cheap, zero-dollar cheap. But then they found out and called it outrageous. How could I not be paid for playing like that? For being like that? It started in the hundreds, then the thousands, and before I knew it, I dressed Armani’s suits and played hand-made Yamaha’s violins.

I thought I was living the dream, and I really was. Some people will kill their own grandfather to live it. I, more than anyone, should know it. At 25, when I played to some wealthy couple who liked violin-played Irish music, I met her. I met the mom of my children. I glanced at her chocolate-brown skin and shaved blond-haired head, I couldn’t get my eyes out of her. So I forgot about the marrying couple and played a serenade.

She chuckled.

After the husband and wife exchanged rings and kissed each other, I ran to her and stopped her at the emergency exit door.

“There’s an after-party at my room tonight. They say I’ll be playing exclusively for… someone”, I smiled at her. A closer look revealed that she was even more stunning than I thought.

“And what’s the price of the ticket?”, she slid her fingers on my neck. I shivered.

“A smile, a bra, or a moan. You can choose two of them.”

She did not smile.

We traveled the whole country and she became my agent. The idea of starting a violin school was hers, we used our contacts and dozens of millionaire kids attended our classes. We were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly and expanded our lands. We hired the geniuses of piano, cello, atabaque, and founded branches on every continent. The millions and millions that appeared in my bank account made me lost. I learned to survive on cents a day, there was no way I could manage all of that.

My wife, on the other hand, was a financial genius and multiplied our fortune until we had money to give the grandchildren of our grandchildren. No, we could give it to their grandchildren and they would still be filthy rich.

I met the most powerful men, world-class actors and actresses, the guys whose songs I heard when I was a teenager. All my idols talked to me like I was their idols, and I admit I didn’t know how to handle it. No amount of thanks or handshakes could express my gratitude for this wonderful world, so I started donating to the people who needed it more.

My wife was all-in for it, but that’s where things started to crumble.

The children of mine didn’t understand why a random person in Africa deserved it more than them, who always obeyed me and were generally good sons. I was “a dumb old man”, “a demented asshole”, and I “tried to compensate for a childhood trauma”. They cursed at me, they stopped loving me, and the worst…

My own children started hating me.

“Am I in the wrong?”, I asked my wife. She didn’t wear smooth skin anymore, it was wrinkled, ancient, but… I prefer calling it old-fashioned. I did not once stop loving her the way she was, didn’t matter how different from the youth days she was.

“I don’t consider them my children since they were 25. They do not deserve us, much less our money.”

“If not them, who will deserve it? My mother lived her entire life deserving to be happy, and I never saw a smile on her face. Is there any kind of deserving in a world like this?”

“And should I know? If I am to die before you, I heartily ask you. In your dying will, give our money to those who need it the most. To the artists who make us feel alive, to the researchers who let us live in comfort, to the lovers who know the meaning of life. They deserve it, they need it. Not the spoiled brats who came out of my womb.”

My head tilted back and I looked at the roof. It had nothing to do with my first roof, a rotten wooden plank that didn’t serve its purpose of protecting me from the rain while I slept. Well, even if it didn’t, my mother was there to do it.

A tear shed from my eye.

I lived a good life, did what I wanted, achieved what I dreamed of, but…

I was going to say that I didn’t die how I wanted, but now I realize I died exactly the way I wanted.

For the secret of life? I concur, you must be biting your nails to know it. What an old man who loved the most wonderful woman in the world and made a billionaire fortune out of his dream has to say to everyone else? What does he know that others don’t?

If you have the eyes to see and the ears to listen, you already know I told you. Well, not me, but my brother.

I, with a gun pointed at my head, being forced to write a will that will only benefit “the most loved of my grandchild”, now understand what he felt when he gave that violin to me.

Even if he was to die, there was someone who needed it more than him.

Even if he was to die, he should do what his heart told him to.

And the lesson is:

There are more important things than your life. Much more important things. Go after them. Get them and, when you do, grab them the tightest you can and never let them go.

That’s what he did with his love for me.

That’s what I will do with my love for the world.

For the children, never stop dreaming.

For the adults, never stop dreaming.

For the elderly, never stop dreaming.

Never.

Stop.

Dreaming.

My 27 billion fortune shall be donated to research, cultural and social causes, and not a penny of it will be given to anyone who has the same blood as I do.

The last words of an old man are: I wish you w”

The will stops there, stained in what the forensic pathologists reached the conclusion to be Ness Veingyari Third’s blood.

His murderer was discovered to be his grandson Ness Liners Fourth. He was tried, convicted, and is to spend his remaining days in prison, not receiving a single penny from his grandfather’s fortune.

As for Ness Veingyari Third, he remained faithful to his beliefs even in the face of death. Even with one of his own blood pointing a gun at him.

His fortune shall be, as the will determines, donated to orphan children who dream of being musicians, researchers who contribute to the progress of humanity, and the poor people who did not have the same opportunities as him.

Ness shall be remembered for his legacy.