Beethoven's Tenth

by Richard Kluger

  The second composition book, Ansel advised Jake, was the one he used for transcribing the rough draft into more finished shape, with the parts for the various instruments added page by page. This portion of the manuscript, far cleaner and thus easier to follow, was the one Ansel had concentrated on. “He said that, at a guess, Beethoven had finished the whole first—whaddayacallit?—the first movement—and a good part of the second one,” Jake related, “which meant he was still fussing with the last half of the whole thing, but it looked as if the raw stuff was mostly all there, back in the first book. So I asked—I mean, I know diddly from classical music, but everybody knows Beethoven was the greatest golden oldie—so I asked Ansel whether he could tell if it was any good, since the Nina letter made a point about the big guy’s chucking it all out because he thought it sucked. Ansel was really beat by then—I mean you can just imagine, he’s the first one ever to play this thing because it was stuck away in that attic right next to where he’d lived a lot of his life.” Jake shook his head sympathetically. “Anyhoo, Ansel said he really couldn’t tell for sure, not using that old piano—he said there actually wasn’t any part of the music written for the piano ’cause they don’t have pianos in orchestras, which I never knew—but Ansel said from what he could make out, some of it was very—um—he said powerful and—well—I forget just what he called it, but it was definitely a winner.” Still, much work remained to be done, Ansel told him, to edit the whole composition into shape before a sound critical judgment of it could be ventured.

  All of which left Jake and Otto’s local lawyer facing a very large dilemma. “What was I supposed to do with this unbefuckinglievable thing?” He glanced around at the C&W trio, all nodding at the enormity of the problem he had to confront. “So I sat down with Schacht and asked him what he thought, starting with whether, under Grandpa’s will, the thing now really belonged to me—and if so, then what?” The old lawyer tried gamely to focus and finally counseled that there was no easy answer. The will and the lien that the Erpfs held on the house said Jake was entitled to keep only family papers and personal items of no real value to anyone else. But a symphony by Beethoven, if it really were one, would obviously have considerable commercial value—perhaps amounting to a small fortune or even a large one—so it might not qualify as Jake’s to inherit. On the other hand, the entire contents of the trunk could arguably be considered family papers, since that was essentially what they were—papers the family had kept up in that attic for one helluva long time. It was a question that the courts would ultimately have to settle if the Erpfs chose to contest Jake’s claim—“and Schacht guessed that they would, which you had to figure, since Ansel knew all about the thing and was working up a real hard-on over it. You could tell how hot and bothered he was, acting like he was the one who had discovered the music all by himself and this was gonna be his great big thing—on account of he’d rescued it from—you know—oblivion.”

  Jake drummed his fingers on the side of the cedar box. At any rate, he went on, Herr Schacht said that even if the manuscript was judged to be his, Jake might have Otto’s creditors and substantial estate taxes to deal with, so maybe he’d be better off voluntarily bringing the whole kit-and-caboodle to the Swiss government and asking them to protect it and figure out what to do with it, maybe even buy it from him—since the symphony was about William Tell, the nation’s superhero—as a reward for his coming forward and offering it to the Swiss people.

  “In other words, you might want to give it away to avoid big trouble,” Gordy suggested, “and hope for a gesture of gratitude from Switzerland.”

  “Yeah, exactly. Since I didn’t have any better idea, I ran that one past Ansel, just to see how he’d react. And right off he says screw that—here this thing falls into our laps—get that, our laps!—and maybe it’s worth a fortune and maybe it’s worth peanuts, but why not find out which? And, anyway, once the government got its claws on it, he said, that would be the end of it so far as we were concerned. They’d turn it over to the bureaucrats, and those jokers would set up umpteen committees to study the thing down to the last G-string, and then probably take it hat in hand to the German and Austrian governments, since Beethoven was German but lived in Austria, and they’d all get into the act, and we’d wind up never getting a blessed thing out of it.”

  “Not to mention,” Gordy put in, “that the Swiss police might charge your family with unlawful possession of the thing for a couple of hundred years, so your claim to ownership might go up in smoke, anyway.”

  “No way!” Jake shot back. “My dear Auntie Nina didn’t steal anything, the way I look at it—she just didn’t toss out the stuff like loony ol’ Ludwig asked her to. Where’s the crime in that? I mean, she was just saving a very valuable thing for—for—all mankind, if ya see what I mean. She should get a medal on her grave, wherever that is.”

  “Maybe so,” Gordy said, “but her stashing the manuscript away in the family attic didn’t really establish the Hassler family’s ownership rights to it, even if what she did wasn’t criminal. Could be that there are some Beethoven relatives kicking around who’d have a lot better claim to the symphony than you do.”

  “Hoo-boy!” Jake expelled, eyes rolling upward, and turned to his attorney. “I thought you said these people would be on our side?”

  Whittaker put a calming hand on Jake’s sleeve. “They’re just trying to help you be realistic about the problems the manuscript presents. And it would be their problem, too, if you want them to try to auction it.”

  What had been realistic for Jake was to tell Ansel and Schacht to go home and let him sleep on the situation. Once they had left, he put everything back inside the cedar box, secured it with rope, and headed for the airport and the first flight out of country in the morning. He also left a phone message for Herr Schacht to have the attic trunk air-freighted to his home in New Jersey with the cost charged to his AmEx card. “’Course, I nearly shit a brick at the airport check-in,” Jake added, “what with all the souped-up security since Nine Eleven. Naturally I took the box as carry-on—no way was I gonna risk stowing it with the regular baggage. They made me open it and explain what it was, so I said just some old family papers from my late Grandpa—which was pretty much the truth. Listen, I honest-to-God feel this box here rightfully belongs to me, and I didn’t want anybody grabbing it away—no neighbors, no creditors, no Mickey Mouse Swiss officials. I didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did old Nina—and if you guys can help me figure out whether this thing’s for real, maybe we can all make a little something off the deal.”

  “Assuming,” said Gordy, “the Erpfs don’t come after you. Didn’t you tell us earlier that Ansel—and his sister, probably—is unhappy with you for taking off with the manuscript?”

  Jake deferred to his lawyer. Whittaker reported that Schacht had heard from the Erpfs’ family counsel, expressing dismay over Jake’s actions and urging him to return the box and its contents so that the title question could be properly settled by the parties or, if they couldn’t agree, by the Swiss courts. Whittaker asked for a translation of Otto Hassler’s will, which he had received and examined—“I’ll give a copy to Mr. Roth here”—and left him satisfied that Jake was well within his rights to claim unencumbered ownership of the box and its contents. The Erpfs had their pound of flesh now in the form of the Hassler house and all its furnishings, which was what had been intended by the lien arrangement—nothing more. “This discovery, as Jake says, was among the Hassler family’s private papers. I very much doubt that these Swiss folks will pursue Jake in the courts over here.”

  “Fair enough,” said Harry, applying his lean posterior to the nearest corner of the conference table and turning to address his visitors. “I think my colleagues will agree that this item isn’t the sort of thing we deal with on a daily basis. If authentic, it could constitute a find of monumental artistic importance.” But if C&W were to become publicly associated with the Tell sympho
ny as its auctioneer, Harry added not quite sternly, and it proved a fraud, the damage to the firm’s reputation could be ruinous.

  He dismounted from the table edge and began to circle the room. “So, gentlemen, there are some hard realities here for all of us to consider, starting with what it might cost to determine if this manuscript is marketable.” To arrive at that figure, as Harry saw it, would require an affirmative answer to at least four questions, number one being whether Jake really had the right to sell the property, with C&W or anybody else acting as his designated agent. Number two, was the manuscript authentic Beethoven? Number three, was it good Beethoven, not just a historic curio that the august composer correctly wanted destroyed? And number four, if the work proved both authentic and meritorious, could the material be protected and commercially exploited under existing copyright laws?

  The sheer rock wall presented by these obstacles sucked all the oxygen out of the room and reduced it to stony silence. Their astute recitation reminded Mitch why Harry was the boss.

  “I guess Mr. Hassler wants to know,” his attorney finally asked, “whether Cubbage & Wakeham would be willing, based on what you’ve seen and heard, to undertake whatever investigations need to be made—and, assuming you’re satisfied with the results, what price—at a ballpark guess—you think a new Beethoven symphony, along with whatever rights its ownership may convey, could command at an open auction.”

  “The situation,” Harry said acidly, “doesn’t exactly lend itself to ballpark guesses.” He looked to Gordy Roth. “What do you think, sport?”

  “I think,” said Gordy, not one to show his cards before they were called, “that it would be absolutely marvelous if the work proves to be (a) the genuine article and (b) a masterpiece in the bargain, despite having been abandoned by its distraught creator. But the odds are that it’s neither the real thing nor much good—and it could cost us more than we’d ever earn to find out.”

  “Mmmm,” said Harry. “But suppose, in order to protect ourselves, we consider offering Mr. Hassler a somewhat different commission arrangement from our usual one.”

  He turned to Jake. Normally, the auction house was entitled to a 10-percent commission from both the buyer and the seller on items that it sold for more than $100,000, he explained—and this property, if saleable at all, might command ten or a hundred times that, maybe even more if deemed a masterpiece. “But in this case,” Harry proposed, “given the staggering difficulties and price of the authentication process, we might ask the client to split the cost with us to determine whether the manuscript is genuine. Jake’s half of this expense would be deducted from the realized sale price—“which would mean that all the out-of-pocket expenses and the rest of the upfront risk would be ours alone if the project doesn’t fly—that is, if the manuscript doesn’t check out and never goes to auction.”

  Whittaker gave a tentative nod. “That sounds like a proposition Jake might consider—provided we had approval rights of your budget for the investigation. Otherwise, Jake could come away with next to nothing if the manuscript sold for a disappointing figure.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Harry conceded. “We wouldn’t make very much in that event, either, of course. That wouldn’t concern Jake, I suspect, but it does me.”

  “Suppose,” Whittaker countered, “Jake got charged with only twenty-five percent of the authentication costs, assuming the manuscript checks out—and provided he winds up netting at least half a million. Otherwise he gets charged just your usual commission.”

  “We’ll consider that,” said Harry, turning now to his chief investigator. “And where do you come out on all of this, Mitchell?”

  The scope of the challenge had set his competitive juices flowing. Tempted as he might be, though, to align himself with the underdog’s cause in this battle—Mitch liked Jake Hassler, who struck him as a salt-of-the-earth guy and not into playing games—he knew he had to resist being swept away by the sentimental current. Even if he were reflexively inclined to take this Tell tale at face value, it would not lessen the very real possibility that Jake was being used by highly sophisticated schemers in a manner no one in the room could fathom.

  “I think it’s possible,” Mitch said to Harry, “that a relatively short investigation—of perhaps one or two weeks—might disprove the authenticity of the manuscript on its face, so we wouldn’t have to invest heavily in sustained scrutiny of the documents by an army of experts that would otherwise be necessary before we could bring the property before the public in good conscience.”

  He looked over at Jake and his lawyer. “If it were my call, I’d try to persuade Mr. Hassler to entrust the manuscript and the supporting documents to our care and protection for that preliminary study—it would be in his interest at least as much as ours to nip this thing in the bud if it’s a transparent hoax—and we would give him every assurance, of course, that his property would remain on these premises and that one of us three would know at all times exactly where it is in this building and who’s examining it. Also, Mr. Hassler’s discovery would reside here on a strictly confidential basis until he and we can reach an agreement on how to proceed—or not to.”

  “What about fire or theft?” Whittaker asked.

  “We’ve got a fireproof vault in the basement, a twenty-four-hour security guard, and multimillion-dollar insurance coverage,” Gordy told him. “If it would help, we could guarantee you the payment of a fair price in the event the manuscript were destroyed through our carelessness, but that would have to be the extent of it.”

  “What kind of fair price?” Whittaker asked.

  Gordy deferred to the proprietor. Harry studied the bronze ceiling fixtures for ten whole seconds. “Half a million seems fair to me.”

  “A million would make Mr. Hassler more comfortable,” his counsel said. “And, as Mr. Roth says, you have insurance to recover what you’d pay Jake.”

  “Seven-fifty, final offer,” said Harry, “and we’ll be back to you inside thirty days with a preliminary opinion as to whether this alleged symphony may actually have been composed by Beethoven or is, in our studied opinion, a worthless counterfeit. Meanwhile, Mr. Roth here will be looking into the legal issues of ownership and copyright, and Mr. Emery will want to visit Mr. Hassler at home, so we have a little better sense of how solid a citizen he is.” He turned to Jake. “It’s nothing personal, my friend—the laws and the professional ethics of our business require us to exercise what’s called ‘due diligence.’”

  “I getcha,” said Jake. “Bottom line, you guys gotta scope out if I’m a sleazebag.”

  “Bottom line,” said Harry and extended his hand to seal phase one of the deal.

  {3}

  The eight-block walk back to her apartment allowed Clara to stave off hyperventilation after holding all her internal systems in check throughout the luncheon ordeal. Had Lolly not been such a trial, Clara’s ulterior purposes in cultivating their relationship would scarcely have triggered a guilt seizure after every time they met.

  By the time she turned onto Riverside Drive, she was nevertheless wondering if Lolly had been right about her and Mitch’s joint financial resources immunizing him from any need to toady to Harry Cubbage. Aside from the distastefulness of the charge, it struck her as wrong on the merits. Mitch’s easy confidence and self-containment had been there before the two of them had ever met; attributing them to so coarse an influence as a substantial investment portfolio—especially as it was hers, not his, and he had insisted that it remain that way despite her stated wish—was a groundless, indeed vile, suspicion on Lolly’s part. Mitch Emery had character.

  Not that he was perfect, mind you. Was anyone? But unlike Lolly, who needed to tell her all about Harry’s shortcomings ad infinitum, Clara would never have disclosed Mitch’s intermittent outbursts of petulance over life’s endless little indignities. He was not good about queuing up for anything, for example. Toward clerks on po
wer trips he was detectably resentful—and practically abusive in dealing with mulish bureaucrats, who survived, he would grumble, only because of a severe shortage of quality people willing to devote themselves to public service. His sporadic pouts paled, though, when measured against his virtues, including his good sense, directness, and appreciation of her playful nature. This last tendency, so vital to the instant chemistry between them, was evident when they met six years earlier at a summer weekend party in Amagansett, held by one of Mitch’s old Princeton roommates, while he was still an assistant prosecutor in suburban Washington and she was working in the music recording business in New York.

  “Why,” he asked Clara on their walk together along the beach an hour after they had been introduced, “are Dutch girls so unnecessarily tall? Not that it’s unflattering on you, of course, but I’m just curious. The few times I’ve been to Holland I couldn’t help noticing—”

  Her gene pool was of mixed nationality, but she had always thought of herself as more Dutch than English, probably because her father, Piet Hoitsma from Delft, had been a more directive force in her life than the former Gladys Tuttle of East Anglia. “You sound intimidated,” she said to Mitch, beside whom she stood nearly eye-to-eye. “I could stoop a bit if you’d like.”