Aaron is a prepubescent boy whose father hosts a dinner party and concert with his old violin teacher, Radelescu. Aaron has been gifted with a supernatural intuition, which grants him the ability to see ghosts and understand complex histories. Aaron's father is gifted with immense luck, a luck which came to save him when he escaped Romania during the pogroms that took place there at the hands of Nazis and the Iron Guard. As Aaron observes Radelescu playing, he intuits the history of his father and sees three ghosts flying above the violinist. In Romania, Radelescu had run a music school with his partner Morgenstern, and they were romantically involved as well as musical partners. The partners and their handful of students, including Aaron's father, had locked themselves in their music school when the pogroms began, as they heard bullets in the streets. Without food and with hardly any water, the students began to die off, with three dead before the violence in the street ended. When the violence ended, Aaron's father was able to escape, and left all the way to America, where he later heard that his entire family head been killed back in Romania. Soon, Communists took over Romania, and though they held Radelescu in high regard initially, he was soon jailed for reasons unknown to Aaron. As punishment, the prison guards attempted to rob Radelescu of his musical talent, and cut one of his fingers off. Despite this, Radelescu was able to adjust himself and made violins out of the wooden posts of his bed frame. He persevered in music, and etched Morgernstern's name in the back of every violin he made. Following Radelescu's performance, Aaron and his father join him to fill the spaces made vacant by the deaths and loss that permeate Radelescu's life. When their performance comes to an end, Aaron breaks down, and his father consoles him, and wishes that it be the worst pain he ever knows.