by Gerald Elias
“Mr. Jacobus!”
Ah! Finally. A spontaneous response. A little shock? Confusion? Something more?
“Yes, my sinister Iris, there’s left-handed deviltry in the music. And of course, you know the story of this piece.”
Silence.
“Don’t you?” Jacobus pursued.
“I’m sorry. No.”
“You don’t know!” His temper ignited like hot charcoals doused with lighter fluid. Jacobus bellowed, “Aren’t you even curious? How many other pieces do you know are named ‘Devil’s Trill’? How do you expect to be a musician and not ask the most fundamental questions about the music you’re playing? Do you think Tartini woke up in the middle of a cold night in his warm featherbed in eighteenth-century Italy and exclaimed, ‘Hey, I think I’ll call this sonata ‘Devil’s Trill’?”
“No.”
“Yes!! Yes yes yes yes!!! He did wake up in the middle of the night! Probably in a cold sweat in the dark”—I’ve had enough of those cold sweats myself, Jacobus noted—“because the Devil himself was sitting at the foot of the bed. And he tells us that Mr. Devil commanded him to write down the music, including those infernal trills.”
“Excuse me. I don’t wish to sound impudent,” said Yumi, sounding impudent, “but how do we know this?”
“We know this because Tartini wrote it in the music!” Jacobus jabbed his finger in the air in the direction of Yumi’s music stand. “He wrote it there! There! There! In the last movement, right where it gets crazy, right in the music. Look! There at the bottom of the page, he wrote, ‘Trillo del diavolo al pie del letto!’ ‘The trill of the devil from the foot of the bed!’ Don’t you see it?”
“Yes, I see it now. It’s in Italian. I didn’t know what it meant. But surely it was just a story. Or a dream.”
“You want the audience to think it was just a dream? Or real? Or that it doesn’t matter? Or that you don’t know? You want to tell a story, or just go through the motions?”
Silence ensued, except for Jacobus’s panting as he tried to extinguish his temper.
“I’m sorry it wasn’t perfect, Mr. Jacobus. I will work harder next time.”
“Well, you know, at some point we’ll have a nice long discussion of what ‘perfection’ means—if it means anything at all. For now I’ll take you up on the issue of working hard.”
“I will work harder next time,” Yumi repeated.
“Hey, Yumi, you ever think maybe you’re already working too hard? That tension and intensity are two different animals? That if you hold the bow, the violin, too tight, it makes it more difficult to play, and that, believe it or not, you can hear the difference?”
Jacobus thought, Number one, she’s trying to figure out what the hell I’m talking about. Second, she’s probably never felt so humiliated, being spoken to like this. She thinks I’m impolite and crude—tough shit—it’ll make standing on a stage in front of a crowd a piece of cake.
A phone rang, a loud, brittle ring, breaking the silence. Jacobus let it ring. He had never bothered with an answering machine, so it rang for a long time before it stopped. Neither spoke in the ensuing silence.
Finally Jacobus said, “So why are you crying?”
“But I am not crying, Mr. Jacobus.”
All the others would have been jelly by now, he thought to himself. Tough kid, this Yumi Shinagawa.
“Why should I be crying?”
How can I answer that?
More silence.
Jacobus cleared his throat. “Okay, okay. Let me put this in a way you may understand. My little Flower Blossom, even though playing the violin is one of the most unnatural acts ever devised in the history of the world, if we play the violin as relaxed and natural as possible, maybe we can have an outside shot at being successful. Now, I can show you how to solve this tension business in one minute.”
“What is it you would like me to do?” she said with an edge to her voice.
“Hey, are you getting impatient with me already, Iris Eyes? Impatiens is not my strongest virtue. We can get you on the next flight back to Kagoshima if that’s what you want,” Jacobus said, standing up. “For now, just watch.”
He put both arms out in front of him, somewhat bent at the elbow, wrists dangling limply. He looked, with his dark glasses slightly askew, more like the moribund praying mantis than a revered pedagogue.
“Try it,” he ordered. After a moment of not hearing a response, he said, “Come on, be the obedient student.”
“All right. I am trying,” said Yumi.
“Now, I want you just to flip over your left wrist. One . . . two . . . three . . . flip. Still loose?”
“Yes, still loose.”
“Good. That’s exactly how it should be when you’re playing. Even someone who doesn’t play the violin can do that. Now, the beginning of the ‘Devil’s Trill.’ Again.”
She began again. This time the flow, the resonance, the ease that had been missing the first time around were there. Jacobus could hear the steel bend a little, and he smiled to himself.
“So?” asked Jacobus.
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Jacobus,” replied Yumi.
“Don’t get too excited. Now, ask Teacher a question.”
“But Mr. Jacobus, would that not be rude?”
“What a fine, fine question that is, Yumi dearest! Let’s see,” he continued, as if rummaging mentally for the appropriate encyclopedia heading. “ ‘Would that not be rude?’ ‘Would that not be rude?’ Ah, yes, here we are. It would be rude if I’m waxing poetic about Mozart and your question has to do with pepperoni pizza, but generally, no, it wouldn’t be rude in the least. Never be afraid to ask questions. Never! Never! Never! In fact, I would hope that if you ever feel so moved, you will not only question me but argue with me!”
“Argue with you?” Yumi sounded genuinely astonished.
“Hey, there you go! Disagreeing with me already! Let me share a little-known secret with you, honey.” Jacobus theatrically cupped his hand around his mouth and whispered with a theatrical rasp, “I don’t know everything, and chances are I will learn something from you by the end of the year.”
A wheeze whistled from his throat in appreciation of his own humor.
The phone rang again.
“Goddammit,” hollered Jacobus, his face turning red. “Why can’t they goddam leave me alone when I’m teaching?”
He banged his hand repeatedly on the music table next to him, rattling the toby jug, spilling coffee and wet cigarette butts onto the music. Sweat streamed down his forehead from his matted gray hair.
“Mr. Jacobus?” Yumi asked after what she surmised was an appropriately long silence.
“Yeah? You’ve got a question?” Jacobus mumbled.
“When I first entered the room and bowed, how did you know I bowed?”
“You mean, how did I know because I’m blind?”
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Jacobus! I didn’t mean . . . You said to ask questions and I only asked because you . . .”
“Don’t be sorry, Miss Shinagawa. I’m not offended. Blindness is the least of my faults. Anyway, it’s a very easy question to answer.
“I knew for two reasons. The first is, I heard you walk without hesitation all the way down the hall and into the room. Right? The sound was especially clear since you’re obviously wearing those uncomfortable shoes with high heels, which, by the way, I don’t recommend for the balance you need to play the violin, but I assume you do so because, judging from your short stride, you are not as tall as you would like to be. Right? No matter.
“At the door entrance your steps came to a halt—not with any sense of urgency or surprise, and only momentarily, as if by habit. You then resumed walking at your previous steady pace directly to the middle of the room where the music stand has stood for more years than I care to remember.
“So, what reason could there have been for you to stop in such a manner other than to bow in the time-honored Japanese tradition with which I am all too
familiar?”
“And there is a second reason?” asked Yumi.
“Because you’re Furukawa’s student, of course!”
Yumi laughed. “Mr. Jacobus, Furukawa-sensei warned me that in some ways you see better than people with sight. I am beginning to understand what he meant.”
“Miss Shinagawa, I don’t intend to sit here in order to be flattered. But considering this is our first lesson on the ‘Devil’s Trill,’ I’ll forgive you. This time.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jacobus.”
Jacobus was beginning to be aware he was no longer the only one doing the manipulating. He cleared his throat, coughing up phlegm, spitting it into a yellowed handkerchief that he returned to his back pocket.
“Speaking of the devil,” he said, feeling for the pack of Camels in his shirt pocket, “did you read Lilburn’s story in the Times this morning? Seems the curse of the Piccolino Strad has struck again. Stolen from Carnegie Hall last night, right after Kamryn Vanderblick’s so-called triumphant recital at the Grimsley Competition.” He made an ugly giggle. “And not a clue who took it.”
“Oh?” said Yumi.
Jacobus lit up the cigarette, inhaling deeply. Remarkable, he thought.
FIVE
The agenda alone would have been sufficient to raise the room temperature at the hastily assembled meeting, but with a power outage in the sweltering city triggered by record overnight air-conditioning use, the heat in the MAP conference room pushed toward the boiling point.
Rachel Lewison, who had spent half the night organizing the meeting, calling and recalling the parties involved, mediating between the early risers and late nighters in setting up the meeting time, neatly flattened out that morning’s Times and began to read aloud Lilburn’s article about the theft, her usual monotone even more pronounced in deference to the formal nature of the meeting.
“New York Times, July 9. ‘Diminutive Violinist Makes Big Impression. Valuable Violin Is Missing. Even the apparent theft of a violin did not overshadow—’ ”
“I want him fired. Now!”
“And who is it you want fired, Victoria darling?” Strella asked.
“That schmuck Pizzi. For incompetence!”
“But Victoria, he was just doing his job,” said Trevor Grimsley.
“Doing his job? Doing his job? You have your precious little eight-million-dollar Strad stolen right from under his nose because the idiot left the door unlocked, and you say ‘he was just doing his job,’ you overage queer?”
Grimsley averted his eyes, looking up at the ceiling.
Lilburn interceded. “Look, it was only a few seconds that the door was unlocked and unguarded. Who could have predicted it would be stolen in the blink of an eye? But in any event, Victoria, there’s no need for this to become personal.”
“You’re defending Grimsley?” asked Jablonski. “What’s the world coming to?”
“There’s no need for us to fight each other, Victoria,” said Boris Dedubian, a soothing voice of reason.
“Thank you, Boris,” said Lilburn.
“Of course. We can certainly lodge a complaint with the proper authorities about Mr. Pizzi—”
“Mister Pizzi? Mister Pizzi? Now you’re calling him Mister effing Pizzi?” cried Jablonski, unsoothed. “You know damn well his union is going to take your ‘lodged complaint’ and lodge it right up your—”
“Let’s let Rachel just finish reading the article,” Strella cajoled, “then we’ll take it from there. Okay, Victoria?”
Jablonski simmered in silence, which Strella took for accession.
“Great. Go ahead, hon.”
And so began the first-ever emergency meeting of the Musical Arts Project Group. Duly called to order by Anthony Strella, chairman of the board, the meeting convened at ten in the morning at their impressive third-floor conference room of the newly renovated brownstone on Fifty-fifth Street, one block south of Carnegie Hall’s stage entrance. Rachel Lewison had already taken ‘notes’ for the meeting—which had nothing to do with the subject at hand—in case anyone were to ask. Chewing her pencil, she sat in nervous idleness.
Rachel returned to the article, reading Lilburn’s account of the recital and ensuing theft.
“Thanks, hon,” said Strella when she finished. Rachel carefully folded the paper shut.
“But the fact is,” said Dedubian, “as distressing as it is, especially to me, we have a much bigger problem than the loss of a violin, however valuable.”
“We could have a problem, Bo. It has the potential to be a problem . . . but it isn’t a problem yet,” said Lilburn. “Is it?” He sat with his hands folded on the table, looking at them as he spoke.
“Must you always split hairs?” asked Jablonski.
“I’m not. Not really. In fact, if we play our cards right perhaps we could get some good press out of this. Potentially.”
Trevor Grimsley interrupted. “Pardon me for sounding stupid, but could someone please fill me in? What precisely is a bigger problem than the loss of an eight-million-dollar violin?”
Strella said, “I’d be happy to, Trevor. Rachel, sweetheart, could you go down to the deli and see if you can find us some cold drinks? It’s boiling in here. Just have them put it on the account. Thanks, babe.”
Victoria Jablonski glared at Strella. Lilburn gazed out the window. Rachel Lewison quietly placed her pencil on the table, perpendicular to its edge, and left without a word.
“Okay,” continued Strella as soon as the door closed, “now I can talk a little more freely, since all of us are in the same boat. Having a violin stolen is bad news, yeah, and of course we hope it’ll be recovered and the authorities are doing everything they can and blah, blah, blah. But even if it’s never seen again, we—all of us in this room—are none the worse for wear because it really has nothing to do with us.”
“I still don’t see your point,” said Grimsley.
“Trevor,” responded Dedubian, “the point is the police are asking us questions. We’re all suspects. They think one of us might be the thief.”
“They’re schmucks!” said Jablonski. “If anyone stole it, it’s that loser Jacobus. Didn’t you see him there? Gave me an earful about ‘integrity,’ lecturing me about integrity. I told him where to go.”
Lilburn related that he had seen Jacobus too and how unsettling his presence had been. Jacobus had been there when Robison had opened the case. Lilburn mused aloud whether the authorities had yet sought out Jacobus for further questioning. That thought was perhaps the single unifying one of the coterie’s gathering. They agreed to promote Jacobus’s name to the top of the list of people who had attended the reception when they were next confronted by the police.
“After all, why would any of us have stolen that violin?” Victoria continued, leering at her compatriots around the mahogany table. “It makes no sense at all. We’ve all got a good thing going. Why would any one of us ruin it?”
“They don’t understand that yet, so they’re looking,” continued Dedubian. He pulled out a monogrammed handkerchief and wiped his glistening brow. “They don’t know where to look; they don’t even know how to look—”
“And that’s precisely the problem,” Strella continued. “That one officer—what was his name? Malachi—seemed something of a pit bull. If cops like him start turning over enough stones, even randomly—especially randomly—they might begin to ask questions about what we’ve been doing with MAP for lo these many years.”
“As they sometimes say in the violin world,” said Lilburn with a small puckered smile, “they’ll ‘leave no tone un-Sterned.’ ”
The hot silence that ensued strongly suggested his stale joke, and old spoonerism on the name of famed violinist Isaac Stern, was unsuccessful in relieving the tension. Lilburn resumed looking at his hands, immaculately clean and manicured but becoming moist with perspiration.
Dedubian resumed the discussion. “It is conceivable the authorities, the police, the insurance company—”
&nb
sp; “The IRS,” interjected Jablonski.
“Yes, even the IRS,” acknowledged Dedubian, “could perhaps take exception to the way we’ve conducted some of our volunteer work. I would suggest that for now we cooperate with the authorities as much as possible to demonstrate our goodwill. Let us meet again, soon. Let us hope the violin will show up in the meantime. But remember, business-people can interpret numbers in different ways, and it is possible that if they get their hands on our numbers, they may have some concerns.”
“And though we’ve done nothing wrong, that perception,” said Lilburn, “could get us into much hotter water than this distressing heat.”
Strella put both hands on the table, pushing himself to a standing position.
“Well, lady and gentlemen, it is now ten twenty-seven and Martin has provided us with two bad jokes in a row. We now all seem to be on the same page. We’re all aware of the need to continue to live our lives and ply our trades, though, for the time being, we may wish to do so even more discreetly. I further suggest we adjourn if we’re going to hit the greens by noon.”
Lilburn adjourned to the men’s room at the end of the hall. He washed his hands, with a wet comb arranged his egregiously thinning hair, and, as was his habit, wiped the sink dry with a paper towel. Returning to the corridor, he spied Rachel Lewison emerge from the stairwell next to the elevator carrying a cardboard tray of cold drinks. Outside the conference room door, she placed the tray on the floor, stood up, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to open the locked door.
She began to bend down to pick up the tray, and he began to pick up his pace to help her but, surprisingly, the door opened. Lilburn couldn’t tell whose arm it was that emerged, wrapped itself around Rachel’s waist, and pulled her—neither willingly nor unwillingly—into the room. The door clicked shut.
Lilburn walked to the door and briefly considered knocking. Instead he picked up the tray of drinks. The ice had already melted. After some searching he found a garbage can in the stairwell and disposed of the drinks before continuing on his way.
