by Paul Adam
‘You should call a doctor,’ Guastafeste said. ‘He could give her a sedative, something to help her.’
Giulia nodded. ‘I think I may have to do that.’
‘And you?’ I said.
‘I’m all right. I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet. It’s Mama that worries me. She doesn’t even want to talk. She’s withdrawn into herself. Won’t go to bed, won’t have any breakfast.’ She looked at Guastafeste. ‘Do you have any idea who did it?’
‘Not yet,’ Guastafeste replied. ‘I was hoping to ask your mother some questions, but perhaps she’s not up to it at the moment.’
‘No, talking might help her. She’s just sitting in an armchair, staring into space. Why don’t you go through? I’ll bring you all some coffee.’
‘We don’t want to put you to any trouble,’ I said.
‘It’s no trouble.’
Giulia went to the cupboard, took out a steel espresso pot and busied herself with making coffee. I sensed it was a comfort to her, focusing on the minutiae of life to help erase the magnitude of death.
Guastafeste and I went back down the hall and into the sitting room. Clara was in the armchair in the corner behind the door, the gloomiest part of the room where even the brightest sunshine rarely penetrated. I was shocked by her appearance. It was only a few hours since I had last seen her, yet she seemed to have shrunk. Hunched in her chair, her head tilted to one side as if she lacked the strength to hold it up, she seemed a decade older than when I had been here last night. The skin of her face had tightened, the lines become more pronounced. Her eyes were hollow, the sockets so dark they looked as if they had been rimmed with coal dust.
‘Clara,’ I said gently. ‘Clara, it’s me, Gianni.’
She glanced up and her eyes seemed to brighten for an instant, then she looked away, relapsing back into her own dark solitude.
I took her hands. ‘Clara, Antonio wants to talk to you. About Tomaso.’
She didn’t meet my gaze. ‘What does it matter?’ she said listlessly. ‘He’s dead.’
I remembered my own grief when my wife died, the overwhelming feeling of desolation, of utter hopelessness so intense it was hard to motivate myself to do anything. I knew it was important to maintain a semblance of normality, to find something with which to distract Clara – to keep the demons at bay.
‘It’s important,’ I said. ‘You may be able to help.’
‘Help?’ Clara said vaguely.
‘We need you, Clara. Antonio’s working on the case. You know you can trust him.’
‘Do you feel able to answer some questions?’ Guastafeste said.
She turned her head, blinking at him as if she had only just become aware of his presence.
‘Questions?’
‘Just say if it gets too much,’ Guastafeste said. ‘Do you know why Tomaso went back to his workshop last night, after we’d played quartets?’
Clara gazed at him in silence for such a long time that I wondered whether she had taken in the question. But then she shook her head.
‘No, I don’t know,’ she said.
‘He didn’t say he was meeting anyone?’
‘No.’
‘Did he often work late?’
‘Not that late,’ Clara said. ‘And never after he played quartets.’
‘Can you think of any reason why he might have done so last night?’
‘No.’
‘He didn’t say anything when he came home for dinner?’
‘He didn’t come home for dinner. He had a pupil.’
‘I can confirm that,’ I said to Guastafeste. ‘He’d been teaching. He told me that when he arrived.’
‘What about his state of mind?’ Guastafeste asked Clara. ‘Had anything been troubling him? Worries, other people?’
Before Clara could reply, the door opened and Giulia came in carrying a tray of coffee with some cups and saucers. She put the tray down on a table and poured the coffee.
‘Mama, you’ll have some coffee?’
Clara shook her head.
‘It will do you good.’
‘No.’
‘What about something to eat then? A roll with jam.’
‘No.’
‘Clara, you should eat something,’ I said.
‘I don’t feel like food.’
I glanced at Giulia and she gave a helpless shrug, as if to say, ‘What do I do?’ She handed cups of coffee to Guastafeste and me, then sat down on the edge of the settee, gazing anxiously at her mother.
‘Yes,’ Clara said suddenly. She was looking at Guastafeste, who seemed perplexed by the remark until Clara went on, ‘Not worried exactly. More … what’s the word? Distracted.’
‘Distracted about what?’ Guastafeste asked.
‘He was looking for something,’ Clara said. ‘It was on his mind all the time. Like an obsession, I suppose.’
I thought back to the previous evening, to Rainaldi saying he’d been to England on a ‘quest’.
‘Looking for what?’ Guastafeste said.
‘A violin,’ Clara said. ‘The Messiah’s Sister, he called it.’
I started so violently I spilt some of my coffee on my knee. It was one of those moments you remember for the rest of your life. A turning-point, the beginning of something that changes you for ever – like the moment you first set eyes on the woman who will be your wife, or when your first child is born. Afterwards nothing is ever the same again.
I dabbed at my trousers with my handkerchief. When I looked up, Guastafeste was watching me with his soft, perceptive eyes. He turned to Clara.
‘Looking where?’ he said.
‘All over. He didn’t talk about it much. It was his secret. He went to England in search of it.’
‘And did he find it?’
‘No.’
‘What sort of violin?’
‘Just a violin. That’s all I know. He never found it. And now he’s dead.’
Clara was staring across the room, her eyes bleak and empty. Then the tears came, trickling slowly down her wrinkled cheeks.
‘And now he’s dead,’ she repeated. She closed her eyes, but the tears kept coming, forcing their way out under her eyelids.
Giulia went across to her mother and sat down on the arm of the chair. She put her arm around Clara’s shoulders. I looked at Guastafeste. He gave a nod and stood up.
‘We’ll go now.’
I looked at Clara, feeling for her, feeling frustrated by my own impotence. She was my friend. I’d known her even longer than Tomaso. We’d grown up together in the same district of Cremona, we’d started primary school together on the same day. Once, a long time ago, when we were both teenagers, I’d kissed her under the arcade in the Piazza Roma. Yet now, in her hour of greatest need, I could do nothing to help her.
* * *
‘So tell me, Gianni,’ Guastafeste said.
We were at a bar around the corner from Rainaldi’s house, sitting out on the pavement under an awning. Guastafeste spooned sugar into his cup of coffee and stirred it for far longer than was necessary to dissolve it.
‘You should go home and get some sleep,’ I said.
‘This violin, this Messiah’s Sister, it means something to you, doesn’t it? I didn’t like to ask you at Clara’s.’
Guastafeste has two attributes that make him a particularly good policeman – and friend: he’s observant, and he knows when to hold his peace. As a child he was always watching. He used to come to my workshop after school and sit quietly in a corner watching me at my bench; not saying much, just following my hands, absorbing the atmosphere, the smell of glue and pine. I thought at first that he came because he was interested in violin-making. Later I realised it was because he had no one at home.
‘There’s a violin called the Messiah,’ I replied. ‘It’s usually known by its French name, Le Messie.’
‘It’s a famous violin?’ Guastafeste asked.
‘The most famous – and the most valuable – on earth.’
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Every profession has its myths, its folklore, tales from the past which somehow encapsulate the mystique of the calling, casting an aura of romance over a job which for the most part may be rather dull and monotonous. We all need these myths, to entertain, to embroider the labours we have chosen to fill our working days, for without them life would be intolerable.
The fine arts world is particularly prone, and particularly conducive, to myth-making. A cynic would say it helps keep prices high. Art dealers will talk of a missing Raphael, a Van Gogh that turns up gathering dust in the attic of some eccentric old lady. Musicologists will talk of an undiscovered Schubert symphony, a long-lost Mozart score that is spectacularly unearthed in the library of some obscure collector. And violin-makers tell the story of ‘Le Messie’, the perfect, unplayed, priceless Stradivari.
‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Guastafeste said.
‘You should have,’ I said. ‘It’s a work of art to rank alongside the Mona Lisa, the Divine Comedy, the operas of Verdi. It’s a masterpiece as great as anything Michelangelo produced, as profound as a Beethoven symphony, as sublime and universal as a Shakespeare tragedy. To me, it is one of the most beautiful objects ever created by man. Think of jewels, think of a thousand glittering cut diamonds. Think of paintings, a Van Dyck portrait, a Monet landscape. They are nothing. This violin is more beautiful than any of them. Because it is not just for looking at. It is aesthetically beautiful, but it also has a purpose. It creates a sound, a music more heavenly, more inspiring than every jewel, every painting, every poem in history put together.’
Guastafeste stared at me. He is accustomed to my emotional outbursts, but even so my passion seemed to take him by surprise.
‘This is some violin,’ he said.
‘Oh, it is.’
‘You’ve seen it?’
‘Yes, I’ve seen it.’
‘Heard it played?’
‘No. No man alive has heard it.’
Guastafeste kept his eyes fixed on me. ‘I’m waiting,’ he said.
I paused a moment, to let the throbbing in my head subside, to bring my emotions back under control.
‘You want the story from the beginning?’ I said. ‘We have to go back to the year 1716. Antonio Stradivari was at the height of his powers, three-quarters of the way through what we now call his “Golden Period”. In that year he made a violin which, even by his demanding standards, was superb. It was as close to perfection as he ever got. It was so perfect, in fact, that he could not bring himself to part with it. And he never did. On his death, in 1737, it remained in his workshop. Neither Francesco nor Omobono, the sons by his first wife who continued the violin-making business, parted with it and after their deaths the violin passed to Paolo Stradivari, Antonio’s youngest son by his second wife. Paolo wasn’t an instrument maker, he was a cloth merchant. He inherited a number of violins, either made entirely by his father or finished by his two half brothers, among them the violin we now know as “Le Messie”.’
‘It wasn’t called that then?’ Guastafeste said.
‘No, the name came later. Paolo gradually sold off the violins and in 1775 he disposed of the final dozen or so, including Le Messie. The buyer was a nobleman from Casale Monferrato named Count Ignazio Alessandro Cozio di Salabue. Count Cozio, a passionate, almost fanatical, collector of violins, is the first of the three key historical figures in this story. He had a huge collection which he built up over many years and catalogued assiduously – Stradivaris, Guarneris, Amatis, Bergonzis, Ruggeris, Guadagninis, instruments by every leading violin-maker of the time. But towards the end of his life Cozio ran into financial difficulties and was forced to sell off his collection. A large part of it was bought by an itinerant violin dealer named Luigi Tarisio, the second key figure in the story. You are with me so far?’
Guastafeste nodded. He stirred his coffee again, but didn’t drink any of it. He was watching me intently.
‘Tarisio was a fascinating character,’ I continued. ‘He was a carpenter by trade but he also played the fiddle – for country dances, weddings, that sort of thing. Like Count Cozio, he had a passion for Cremonese violins. Without Tarisio a good number of the Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati violins we know today would have been lost. This was the 1820s. The old Cremonese makers had fallen out of favour, at least in Italy. Few people wanted their violins.’
‘Really?’ Guastafeste was astonished.
‘It’s hard to believe now, but no one regarded them as valuable. Stradivari had been a highly respected, wealthy luthier in his lifetime, but after his death his reputation declined and he faded into relative obscurity. Who knows why? Fashion, taste, the fickle nature of humanity. Today we live in an age of mass-produced shoddy goods. We look back to earlier times and see the craftsmanship, the quality of what was made, and we pay a fortune to own it. But back then people wanted the new, they didn’t want some old violin by a dead maker.’
Guastafeste sucked in his cheeks. ‘What I wouldn’t give to have been around then. To have picked up a few Stradivaris for next to nothing.’
I chuckled. ‘That’s exactly what Tarisio thought. The Italians may not have wanted old Cremonese violins, but Tarisio knew there was a market for them elsewhere, in France and England. So he scoured northern Italy, travelling around dressed as a pedlar, playing his fiddle and keeping his eyes open for old violins – and it’s surprising how many Cremonese instruments were owned by poor farmers or peasants. Or he’d go to the monasteries and churches where there were instruments for the chapel orchestras which were often neglected and in a poor state of repair. He’d offer to buy them for a song, or he’d do carpentry work for the church and ask for the violins in lieu of payment. Then he’d fix up the violins and take them to Paris where he sold them to the great violin dealers Chanot, Aldric and – our third important figure – Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume.’
‘Vuillaume?’ Guastafeste said. ‘I think I may have heard of him.’
‘Quite probably. Vuillaume is one of those towering figures of the nineteenth-century musical world. Connoisseur, dealer, a man of the salons and concert halls who somehow also managed to make three thousand rather fine violins himself.’
‘Three thousand!’ Guastafeste exclaimed.
‘You wonder when he found time to sleep. Tarisio did business with Vuillaume for years, selling him innumerable Cremonese violins. Throughout that time Tarisio used to boast about a Stradivari violin he owned that was so magnificent, so perfect he could not bear to sell it. He talked about the instrument so much that Vuillaume’s son-in-law, the virtuoso violinist Delphin Alard, said it was like the Messiah: ‘One always waits for him, but he never appears.’ And that’s where the name came from. When Tarisio died, in 1854, Vuillaume went straight to Italy. On the Tarisio family farm and in an attic in Milan he found close on 150 instruments, including Le Messie. He bought the lot from Tarisio’s relatives and took them back to Paris.’
‘And where is it now?’ Guastafeste asked.
‘In the Ashmolean Museum, in Oxford.’
‘Oxford? In England, you mean?’
‘Yes. It was acquired by the English dealers, Hills, who donated it to the museum.’
‘Has it ever been played?’
‘Just twice, and never in public. Delphin Alard played it at a private gathering of friends and family in 1855. Vuillaume said he heard the angels singing. And Joseph Joachim played it briefly in 1891.’
‘Never since?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Hills stipulated that it should never be played.’
Guastafeste leaned back in his chair, his coffee still untouched on the table.
Then with a studied casualness, he said: ‘If there were another violin – a sister to this “Messiah”, what would it be worth?’
I kept my voice equally off-hand. ‘Another perfect, untouched Stradivari coming on the open market. That would be an opportunity that comes once in a lifetime, maybe once in several lifetimes, if ever. A lot of people would be interested.’
‘How interested?’
‘Well, Le Messie has been valued at ten million US dollars.’
Guastafeste’s eyes opened wide and I nodded in agreement.
‘I know. It’s amazing what some people will pay for a few pieces of wood and varnish.’
Guastafeste rubbed his jawline pensively, running his fingertips over the dark stubble. Then he voiced the question I’d been expecting him to ask.
‘Would they kill for it?’
I looked away across the pavement, watching the traffic go by, a delivery van pulling in outside a shop, a mother pushing a pram down the street. It seemed odd that life elsewhere was functioning normally when my own felt so disrupted. Guastafeste was waiting for my reply.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Human nature being what it is, I think they would.’
3
When I was a boy, I had a violin teacher named Dr Martinelli who was a great believer in the purifying properties of Bach. He said it cleansed the mind, stimulated the production of beneficial hormones, enhancing the body’s sense of well-being and lifting the spirits. He was a teacher of the old school, a reserved, very proper man who always taught in frock-coat, waistcoat and dark tie no matter how hot the weather. He could be sharp and critical, but for the most part he was a benevolent tutor who regarded our lessons not simply as instruction in music but as the foundations of a philosophy for life.
To him, music was not something that you tacked on to your life, a secondary consideration or a frivolous distraction. It was an integral part of your very existence, as vital as breathing or eating. To live a day without music was an unthinkable omission, to live a day without Bach a transgression that bordered on blasphemy. ‘Giovanni,’ he would say to me in his soft, mellifluous voice, ‘whatever you are doing, no matter how busy you are, you must always find time in your day for Bach.’ And he would exhort me to play an unaccompanied partita every morning before breakfast, much as people today go jogging or to the gym to set themselves up for the day.
I never did, of course. I found it difficult enough getting out of bed in time to go to school, never mind practise my violin. But now I am older, the master of my own timetable, I have finally taken Dr Martinelli’s advice. I do not do it before breakfast, nor every day, but as often as I can I go through into the back room after my coffee and roll and I play my violin.
