by Gerald Elias
Cherubino’s fame spread, particularly among the ladies. This surprised him at first. He knew that in part it was due to his playing. Another part was due to his enlarged male anatomy, the only physical asset Nature had endowed upon him. However, he knew that for the most part he was regarded as a plaything. He became their prize. It depressed him.
Piccolino, pierced by the chill of the bedchamber, gazed with sad affection at the sleeping Duchess. Distant footsteps from within the palace barely disturbed the surrounding silence.
If only I were a foot or two taller, he thought. If only I had been born to a family other than one of roving entertainers. If only! I would exchange all these secret trysts for one woman who truly loved me.
Would I exchange my musical genius for love?
A much more difficult question, he thought, as he tried to slip away undetected from the arm under whose weight he was still pinned. But as he did so the body beside him stirred, responding to his movement, perhaps even his thoughts. Her deep brown eyes fluttered open.
“Porca Madonna,” Piccolino muttered again. He hadn’t even made it out of the bed.
“Ah, my little man.” She smiled. With long white fingers she combed back her disheveled mane of black hair, which had settled over her eyes and thin delicate nose during her sleep.
Her movements, her sleepy wildness, stirred him against his better judgment.
“At your service, my Lady,” replied Piccolino softly.
“Again? And so soon?” she cooed.
“Your wish is my command, my Lady.”
“Ah! Then my command is”—she stifled a yawn—“Rise, gran signor, and prick my heartstrings with your divine instrument.”
“That might be a bit impractical, at least for the moment, my Lady.”
“You miss my point, Piccolino,” said the Duchess, turning on her side to face him. As she propped herself upon her elbow, her cheek resting on her hand, the wool blanket slipped off her torso, exposing the curving line of her long neck, her exquisite collarbone, and her small, soft bosom, the deep crimson of the blanket emphasizing the pale whiteness of her skin.
Piccolino tried not to look at her.
Her tongue lightly traced the line of her upper lip. “I do miss your point dearly, but it is your violin I wish you to play for me.”
“Ah. I see,” said Piccolino, as his eyes followed the rising line of her hip under the blanket. “But even so, my Lady, the Duke . . . he may arrive any moment.”
“Oh, yes, the Duke. He’s probably still in Siena or Firenze plotting something revolting against Pisa. Don’t worry, dear Piccolino. It needn’t be long. This time.”
“But my Lady,” persisted Piccolino, increasingly anxious, “I haven’t a stitch of clothing on. The fire is out—I could catch a cold from the draft.”
“But Piccolino,” said the Duchess, seductively batting her long eyelashes, “I will keep you warm. Besides, I have a very special present for your birthday today. Your thirteenth, isn’t it?”
“Actually, my fifty-second, though I was born on leap day.”
“Well, young man nevertheless, it’s a very special present, one that you will hold very close to you.”
“My Lady, you have already given me such a present.”
“This one, I promise, you will love even more than me, until your last moment on earth,” said the Duchess.
First the poverty of youth. Now the poverty of riches, thought Piccolino.
“Very well, my Lady.”
Piccolino lowered himself from the bed until his feet touched the ground. Still feeling the effects of last night’s wine, he stumbled across the cold stone tiles to the heavy wooden table along the side of the room. Only a few hours before he had put his violin down next to the remains of their stuffed pigeon, now being shared by a pair of flies luxuriating in the musty pungency of stale truffle. The flies ignored the empty bottles of wine, more bottles than Piccolino had remembered.
Piccolino picked up the cold violin and casually strummed its strings, gauging the acoustics of the chamber, trying to forget he was naked and shivering. The stone, brick, plaster, wood, and high ceilings alone would give the room a harsh echoey resonance. He squinted his eyes and gazed at the light coming through the figure of the Madonna in the stained-glass window, her loving gaze eternally fixed not upon him but upon the Infant at her teat. He looked approvingly at the immense tapestry hanging on one wall. Fortunately, the violin’s sound would be dampened by it, eliminating the echo but not the luster. The subject of the huge tapestry, woven in rich greens, blues, reds, and golds, was the gruesome biblical tale of the Slaughter of the Innocents. Piccolino had never understood the popularity of the subject. To him, the portrayal of heavily armed soldiers massacring children still clinging desperately to their mothers’ breasts was sickening and disconcerting.
“So here is my audience.” He sighed. “My lover, the Virgin, dying babies, and,” detecting movement at the hearth, “a rat. Well, I’ve had worse.”
Consistent with his mood and his audience, Piccolino began to improvise a sad but sweet sarabanda.
Ah, the ladies always like a sarabanda, he mused, a dance the Roman Church, in its benevolent wisdom, had banned. Too sensual for public consumption. If only the Church heard this performance—let them see it too!—no doubt they’d ban it for eternity.
The seductive melody resonated softly off the frescoed walls and vaulted ceiling. The Duchess, enthralled, unconsciously twirled a strand of her hair around her forefinger, chewing on it with small white teeth.
Piccolino watched her as he played, watched her gaze with longing at his diminutive but stocky muscular physique.
Maybe I’m shorter and hairier than your past lovers, he thought, but I haven’t heard you complain. He noted with approval and self-approval the deepening movement of her torso as she inhaled, her warm, moist breath condensing in the chamber’s cold air.
“Caro Piccolino,” the Duchess whispered throatily after the final, plaintive note died away. Only some distant commotion from within the palace walls disturbed the room’s silence.
“And now you shall have my gift, Piccolino.” With a graceful flourish, the Duchess reached under the bed. In her hand she held a violin.
But it was not just another violin, Piccolino immediately saw with widening eyes. It was a violin unlike any he had ever seen. The grain of the wood appeared to be in flame. The varnish was ablaze—now red, now orange, now golden.
As the Duchess placed the violin in his hands, he could see that the purfling—the fine inlay bordering the edge of the violin that was usually made of wood, straw, or even paper—was here made with pure gold. The pegs were gargoyles of engraved ivory. Breathing all this fire was a scroll in the shape of a dragon’s head whose glowing ruby eyes stared defiantly into his.
“What man could create something such as this?” said Piccolino, staring. He could not move.
“Oh, I commissioned it from a handsome young man in Cremona. Antonio Stradivari,” replied the Duchess. “Did he get the size right? I told him it must be built to your . . . dimensions.”
“This is perfection. Perfection!” Piccolino suddenly shook himself from his reverie. “But, my Lady, the cost?”
“No, no. Antonio was very reasonable. He said, ‘Someday I will be as famous as Signor Amati!’ so he was very willing to make this one in order to enhance his reputation. Plus, he did owe me a little favor.”
Without speculating on why he owed her a little favor, Piccolino raised the violin to his shoulder, shuddering with greater desire than he had ever felt. So overcome with emotion was he that for a moment he was physically unable to put the bow on the string. Then he was ready, ready to hear the ultimate song of his heart.
“Oh, one more thing,” said the Duchess. “Look inside.”
There inside the violin was a label bearing the statement: “To the great Piccolino on his 13th birthday, the only small violin I will ever make.” It was signed “Antonio Stradivari, Cremo
na,” and dated February 29, 1708.
“My Lady, I am forever in your debt.”
As he said this, the heavy wooden door to the room was viciously kicked open, rebounding repeatedly against the stone wall, sounding in the cavernous room like the drumbeat of Death. It frightened even the rat, which skittered away from its bony breakfast. Enrico Barbino, Duke of Padua, brandished a long, glistening sword in his gloved hand.
“You!” he shouted, black of eye.
“Ah, Dio! Ah, Dio!” cried the Duchess. She pulled the blanket up to her neck to cover her nakedness.
“Addio! Addio!” bellowed the Duke.
“My Lord!” she wailed. “Caro mio! Forgive me! Forgive me for having lost my head.”
“Thus you lose it twice!” he said, swinging the sword with deadly accuracy.
Piccolino gaped in horror as the Duchess’s life ended with dazzling swiftness. Her brown eyes, more bewildered than pained, gazed vacantly from the floor only to see the rest of her supple body at some distance, still lying languorously upon the bed.
Piccolino, wearing no more than on the day he was born, stood frozen in terror.
“Madonna,” he whispered.
Then, gathering as much dignity as he could, he choked out an inaudible, “My Lord.” Clearing his throat, he repeated in full voice, echoing through the chamber, “My Lord, I must apologize completely to you for losing my heart to the Duchess. It will never happen again.”
He immediately realized the inflammatory truth of his remark, but it was too late in any case.
“Fool! Court jester!” shouted the Duke, as his sword thrust forward.
Piccolino raised his violin bow to parry the Duke’s attack, but to no avail. With a single deft maneuver the Duke sliced the bow in half and pierced Piccolino’s heart. Piccolino felt himself being lifted off the ground.
Piccolino’s eyes widened with surprise. His life ebbing, Piccolino clutched at his violin. The Duke shook the skewered Piccolino to force him to drop the violin, to shatter it on the cold stone floor. Piccolino would not satisfy the Duke’s revenge.
Finally, the Duke lowered Piccolino with grudging respect, but mainly so that Piccolino’s weight wouldn’t break his sword. As his knees buckled, Piccolino’s final act was to place his beloved Stradivarius, yet unplayed, gently upon the table. As his body crumpled just a small distance to the now red-puddled floor, a transient cloud passed between the sun and the stained-glass image of the impassive Madonna, blocking its light.
And thus ended the life of Matteo Cherubino, and began the life of the Piccolino Stradivarius, born in the blood of debauchery, lust, and death.
EXPOSITION
ONE
The third movement of Mozart’s Symphony Number 39 in E-flat Major, with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, spun on the Victrola. The clarinetist was playing the solo in the minuet with simple if somewhat maudlin elegance. In midphrase, Jacobus wrenched the LP off the turntable, the stylus ripping nastily into the disc with a horrible screech, like car brakes before a fatal collision. He flung the record against the wall, shattering it. Jacobus collapsed back exhausted into his secondhand swivel chair, his frayed green plaid flannel shirt sticking to the torn brown Naugahyde seat back.
“Damn Krauts,” he muttered, panting. “Think they own the sole rights to Mozart.”
Jacobus had awoken that morning of July 8, 1983, drenched in sweat. Night had brought no relief to the relentless heat wave that had wilted New England, browning the leaves two months before their time, and though it was only dawn it was already searingly hot, hazy, and humid. But more than the heat, it was Jacobus’s recurring ivy-and-eyes dream that had wrenched him from his uneasy sleep.
It wasn’t that Jacobus enjoyed gardening. Actually, he hated it. He had planted the ivy—years ago, when he could still see—because Don at the garden center had told him how easy it was to grow, how little care it needed, how, trellised to the walls, it would make his house look so quaint, and, the clincher, how it would choke out all the weeds so he wouldn’t have to do any yard work.
At first, everything Don had told him was true, and Jacobus was very pleased with his slyness. What he hadn’t been told, though, was that once the ivy’s roots started spreading, it would choke out not just the weeds but every other living thing, that its tenacious grip on the side of the house would loosen the mortar and rot the siding, that unless you cut it back, year after year after year, it would overwhelm the entire house in a deadly embrace. After Jacobus became blind, sitting in his personal darkness, he could feel—he swore he could even hear—the ivy making its slow, inexorable ascent around him, mocking him, consuming him. It was when the ivy had wrapped itself around him in the dream, pinning him down, suffocating him, that the eye appeared above him. A blazing ruby-red eye, it seared its gaze into Jacobus, immobilized by the ivy, burning his flesh. It was the same bejeweled eye that Stradivari had embedded in the dragon head of the violin he had made for Matteo Cherubino hundreds of years ago, the violin that had eluded Jacobus decades before and now taunted him without surcease. An eye that mocked him for his blindness and for his weakness.
Jacobus lay in his sweat. It was an understatement to say he didn’t feel like teaching the violin on that July eighth. Nor had he felt like teaching on July sixth or seventh. The truth was he hadn’t felt like teaching the violin for a long time. He was hot. He was tired. The prospect of having to communicate with another human—he hesitated to use that term in reference to a mere student—depressed him. In fact, it revolted him. Rummaging with fumbling fingers through the ashtray for a half-smoked Camel cigarette butt, he finally found one long enough and relit it. Why can’t they leave me in peace? he thought. Peace. What’s that? If being blind, friendless, and put out to pasture is peace, then I guess I’ve found it.
He dragged his way to his studio and collapsed into his chair. Would he go to Carnegie Hall that night for the coronation of the young girl he often referred to as the “Infanta,” the child prodigy Kamryn Vander (formerly Vanderblick), student of Victoria Jablonski? The Victoria Jablonski. Jacobus felt the bile rise in his throat. His belief that great music was great enough to be played without conceit, without hype, without the dog and pony show was now considered old-fashioned, out of touch with modern lifestyle tastes. Why indeed should he go to this concert and witness the triumph of everything he had striven against his entire life? To torture himself? Was there another reason?
The silence surrounding Jacobus oppressed him. The sporadic gurgling of his antiquated refrigerator and an occasional car passing up the hill on Route 41, engines muffled by ever-encroaching woods, were the only white noises intruding upon his black, bleak solitude. Yet when somewhere out there a crow’s shrill caw interjected itself, Jacobus cursed that too. He removed his violin from the case that he never bothered to close. The violin, like everything else, had been neglected. The fingerboard was caked with accumulated rosin, and the strings, unchanged for years, were blackened and frayed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had his bow rehaired.
The next familiar sound was the knocking at the door—the student. Jacobus sat motionless in the silence, holding his violin on his knee. He sat long after the cigarette butt was cold, long after the knocking on the door had ceased, long after the student’s footsteps had receded into the silence. Only gradually did he allow the sound of his own panting wheeze to resume.
That was how his day had begun. Now, nine hours later, the cab he was in lurched to a halt, propelling his forehead into the Plexiglas shield, knocking his dark glasses to the floor. “Coggy-ool,” said the driver in an almost incomprehensible foreign accent.
“It’s pronounced ‘Carnegie Hall,’ asshole,” Jacobus croaked, groping to retrieve his glasses.
Jacobus got out of the car grudgingly, licking his dry lips, a condemned prisoner staggering to the guillotine. Stumbling from the cab into the sweltering July heat, he cursed the driver and slammed the door. He again asked himself why he ha
d made this trip, but unaccustomed to introspection he received no clear answer. Was it only to hear this dexterous preadolescent pretend to be an artist? Was it to flagellate himself with cynical self-righteousness while everyone else rose to a standing ovation? After all, hadn’t she just won the prestigious Grimsley Competition? What would he do when the smug New York intelligentsia fawned over this baby as if it knew the difference between show and artistry?
Dressed in his tattered gray tweed jacket, sleeves too short, which he had thrown over his flannel shirt, and stained wool pants with frayed cuffs, Jacobus was ignored by the tuxedos swirling around him. Just another street person—and a blind one at that—in a city of street people, as unseen to the gathering concert crowd as they were to him, he trudged toward the imposing brown brick walls of Carnegie Hall, his personal Bastille, awash in the evening’s growing shadows. The vision of the ivy-and-eye dream returned. The vision of his own demise. He spat on the sidewalk.
TWO
The recital at Carnegie Hall had been one of Kamryn Vander’s rewards for winning the Holbrooke Grimsley International Violin Competition. This competition, commonly referred to simply as the Grimsley, was unique in several ways. Held only once every thirteen years for violin prodigies no older than thirteen, the Grimsley not only guaranteed the winner a brilliant start to a concert career but also allowed the winner the cherished opportunity to perform on the legendary three-quarter-size “Piccolino” Strad. Considered by many to be the most perfect violin ever made, it was loaned to the winner of the Grimsley for his or her debut recital and concerto performance with a professional orchestra hired especially for the event. After that concert, the Piccolino was returned to the velvet-lined, climate-controlled vault of violin dealer Boris Dedubian for safekeeping, where it would sit for thirteen more years, waiting to bestow its largesse upon the next wunderkind.
