Devil's Trill

by Gerald Elias

  Yumi paused. There was silence. Jacobus thought the story was over and didn’t really see much of a connection. The shrine was the violin, the village was MAP, the Grimsley Competition, and everyone affected by it. Big deal. Piccolino’s thief would have to be a masochist to want to be Noda-sama.

  But Yumi continued. “One would think Noda-sama would have been heartbroken that he lost his shrine and that his friends turned against him in this way. But he was not sad. He was joyful because he understood that what he had done would in time return the proper balance to the village, and although the villagers would once again be poor, they would be happier, and one day they would appreciate what he had done for them. That is my theory, Mr. Dedubian.”

  “A lovely, lovely story,” said Dedubian. “Lovely and well told. And worth thinking about, certainly. However, it does not quite fit our current situation.”

  “No? How not?” asked Jacobus, interested.

  “First of all, the person who stole the violin was certainly not the creator of it, so there is not nearly as much justification, shall we say?”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. It seems this Mr. Noda sacrificed something, essentially his life, to help his village. The person who stole the violin got away scot-free, and now someone else, the insurance company, I suppose, will have to reimburse the Grimsley family eight million dollars . . . unless it’s recovered.

  “No, Miss Shinagawa,” Dedubian continued, “I believe the person who stole the Piccolino is a thief. Intelligent, well motivated perhaps, but a thief nevertheless.”

  “Bo,” asked Jacobus, “let’s say you knew it was me who stole the violin, but that I was motivated with the same altruism as this guy Noda. What would you do? Two choices—send me up the river or keep your mouth shut?”

  “Jake, that’s such a tough question. After all, we’ve known each other for—”

  “Go ahead, no hard feelings.”

  “Well, Jake, what would happen to my business if I let people steal violins from each other? It wouldn’t be right, would it?”

  “Fair enough, Bo. And how about you, Yumi? Do you protect old Mr. Noda-sama-sensei because he has a good heart, or does he go into the slammer?”

  “I would protect Noda-sama. I would protect you,” Yumi said.

  “Thanks for your hospitality, Bo,” said Jacobus, standing up. “I must admit our thief is damn remarkable. Bo, I’ve got to make a phone call. Do you think Yumi could try that Vuillaume now? Not to buy. Just to try.”

  “Certainly. Of course. Just follow me. I will find you a private room so you will be undisturbed. I also have some wonderful French bows I think you will like, Miss Shinagawa. Peccatte, Voirin—beautiful, gold-mounted, I am told it gets a lovely sound from the Vuillaume violin—Pageot, Sartory. Well, you will see.”

  Jacobus stayed in Dedubian’s office, shut the door, and called Williams, anxious to find out if he had gotten the names of Grimsley Competition second-place finishers. Williams reported he had compiled the names of all the contestants, including all the prizewinners. Jacobus eagerly asked for the names. He was not going to divulge his suspicions at this point, but his hopes were dashed when the list, which included Russians—of course—Germans, English, French, an Israeli, and one American, contained not a single Japanese entrant among any of the hundreds of Grimsley competitors over the years, let alone a prizewinner. Williams had meanwhile corroborated Lenzner’s whereabouts. He had been in Tel Aviv at the time of the murder, performing a series of Baroque music concerts on original instruments. As for the Frenchman, Robert, it turned out he now owned a small but growing chain of crêperies in Paris and Los Angeles, and it seemed unlikely he was the type to have been involved in the crime.

  Williams said he was still trying to track down entrants from the 1931 photo Jacobus had given him, but it would take time. He had made some progress, however. He reported that one of the older contestants in the back row, a thin, pale boy with serious eyes named Nikolas Kolkowski from Poland, had won first place, displaying searing technical skill and Paganini-like intensity. Kolkowski died at a tragically young age, a victim of the Nazi invasion of Poland. Williams told Jacobus about his conversation with Sir Owen and suggested that Jacobus have a conversation sometime with Mr. Giles about contemporary music. From what Sir Owen had said, and from the bits of information he gathered in the file, he concluded that the girl in the photo was a ten-year-old from England, Kate Padgett, who came in second. After being deadlocked with Kolkowski in the early rounds, she had finished her recital with a performance of a technically simple little tune, the rarely heard “Sicilienne” by the eighteenth-century composer Maria Theresia von Paradis. Padgett’s exquisite tone and poise had won over many in the audience, but the judges ultimately opted for Kolkowski’s fiery virtuosity in a close decision.

  “You sure you don’t remember any of this, Jake?” asked Nathaniel. “After all, you were there.”

  “If I remembered, why would I ask you?” Jacobus answered testily. “Hey, I was a kid. A little hurt kid who was trying his best to forget, not to remember. The only thing I wanted to do after that competition was die. Anyway, they wouldn’t let us associate with the other contestants and I was long gone before the winners were served up on a silver platter.”

  The next blow to Jacobus’s plans was Williams’s gentle warning to Jacobus that the Piccolino investigation was off-limits to his MAP prejudices. After Jacobus’s meeting with the Vanders, Cynthia Vander had called Lilburn, who in turn called not only the police but Nathaniel as well, accusing Jacobus of being more intent on harassing MAP than finding the violin, and that if Williams didn’t call off Jacobus he would file an official complaint against both of them and the insurance company that had hired him. Williams, whose bond to Jacobus was virtually unbreakable, nevertheless admonished his friend to stick to the issue of retrieving the Piccolino.

  “Don’t go on a crusade. Please, Jake,” Nathaniel pleaded.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Jacobus, preoccupied with names not on the list, and put the issue in the back of his mind.

  Who, then? thought Jacobus after hanging up. Who planned the theft? It still could be just about anyone. Second-place-finisher theory—disappointing so far. Square one? More and more Jacobus was coming to the conclusion that the theory he had developed the previous night with Salvador was just the rambling of an old man with too much time on his hands.

  SEVENTEEN

  Dedubian escorted Yumi through the alluring ambience of the showroom to one of the several small adjoining tryout rooms for prospective instrument buyers. Quiet violin playing and even quieter conversation, given a hushed mellow resonance by the wooden surroundings and the Persian rugs, created an esoteric atmosphere, conducive to making the customer feel privileged. Conducive to buying.

  Against one wall of the small room was an antique cabinet with no fewer than ten drawers, each drawer only about three inches in height. Dedubian opened the top one, which displayed a dozen beautifully cared-for violin bows arranged side by side in individual compartments laid out on a plush velvet lining.

  “Here you are,” said Dedubian, admiring one of the bows. “This is the Voirin I was telling you about. Hold on to this while I get the Vuillaume violin down for you. Don’t drop it, though. It’s worth ten thousand.”

  Yumi clutched the bow. If this one bow was worth that much, and there were a dozen in one drawer, and there were ten drawers, and in this room there were two cabinets, and there were—how many?—at least eight rooms. The value of the bows alone staggered Yumi.

  Dedubian unlocked a glass-covered display case above the other cabinet on the other side of the room that contained a row of violins arranged on hooks, like soldiers in formation. They all looked stunning. He lifted one from a hook. “Here we are,” he said, handing it to Yumi. “Take your time. Enjoy.” He smiled and exited with a diffident bow, closing the door behind him.

  Yumi played a few listless notes of Mendelssohn, Tartini, and Bach, but s
oon placed the violin and bow on a counter and sat down in an overstuffed Victorian chair. She was overwhelmed. This was a far different world from the one she had known or had even imagined. Music had always been just music. A sound. An ideal. Certainly she had seen one or two beautiful violins in her small hometown, but only one at a time, lovingly held by their owners as if they were family members. But what she was now being exposed to—music as a commodity, violins hanging on racks like so many umbrellas in a department store—was shattering her understanding and her faith. It was too much. She closed her eyes, dizzy with doubt.

  The door opened.

  “Sorry!” said the man. “I thought the room was empty.” He began to back out, then said, “Excuse me again, are you okay, young lady?”

  Yumi attempted to smile. “Thank you. I’m just very confused.”

  The man smiled. “I know just how you feel. Maybe I can help?”

  Yumi said, “All these bows. All these violins. I just don’t know where to start.”

  The man laughed. “Let’s start by introducing ourselves. My name’s Goldbloom. Sol Goldbloom.”

  Yumi introduced herself, repeating her need for guidance.

  Goldbloom gently took the Voirin from her hand and began to explain about bows, that in a way they are like any other commodities—violins, cars, or houses. A bow is worth what people pay for it. The number-one consideration is supply and demand. Older French bows from the early nineteenth century, the greatest bows, are increasingly difficult to find. They break. They can wear out and become limp as overcooked spaghetti. Number two is the way the bow looks and its condition.

  “A beautiful bow can really stand out in a case with a dozen schlocky ones,” said Goldbloom, admiring the Voirin.

  “Schlocky?” asked Yumi.

  “Schlocky means shitty,” explained Goldbloom.

  “Thank you,” said Yumi.

  Third is the way it handles—strength, balance, control, and weight. What a professional musician, as opposed to a collector, would look for.

  “On the other hand,” said Goldbloom, “I once had this gorgeous gold-mounted bow made by the German maker Ludwig Bausch that played as well as any French bow, but because it was a German bow it was ‘worth’ only fifteen hundred bucks. But listen to this, if that bow had been stamped ‘Kittel,’ who was a famous dealer and maker who Bausch worked for for a while, and whose bows are extremely rare, the bow would have been ‘worth’ fifteen thousand. Don’t tell anyone,” he said, in a softer voice, “but I was tempted to have Bausch’s stamp sanded off the bow. It was almost worn off anyway from having been held for so many years.

  “Now, a Dominique Peccatte bow is ‘worth’ twenty or thirty thousand these days because they’re rare, beautiful, old, and play marvelously. But why should a bow that isn’t quite as good, but almost as good, be ‘worth’ only two thousand, simply because it was made last year in . . . Utah?”

  Goldbloom answered his own question. “Because that’s what people will pay for it. You take a house and move it from Scarsdale to Yonkers and it’s worth half as much. Same house. Or gold! You have an ounce of gold. Today it’s worth three hundred bucks, tomorrow it’s two fifty. The same identical piece of yellow metal. You can’t even play it! It’s just what people will pay for it.”

  Yumi asked how someone decides what he’s willing to pay for a bow.

  Goldbloom explained that many bows are clearly the work of a given maker, with distinct identifying characteristics, particularly in the way the frog—the end of the bow gripped by the violinist—and tip of the bow are crafted. If the maker stamps his name at the base of the stick, so much the better. If the bow looks like a Simon and is stamped Simon it’s probably a Simon. Once that is known, it is also known where a Simon fits within the cosmology of the universe of makers.

  “But,” continued Goldbloom, “Simon also worked in the shop of Vuillaume for a while, as did a lot of the other great nineteenth-century French makers: Peccatte, Pageot, Henry. And when they worked for Vuillaume, who also made bows, by the way, they were all stamped ‘Vuillaume à Paris.’

  “Generally an expert can spot the differences. But the fact is, when makers work in the same shop, they also trade ideas with each other, like how much to grade the curve of the stick, how big to make the screws or pins inside the frog. Hundreds of minute details like that. The result is that there are a lot of bows whose maker can’t be definitively authenticated. That’s why, when an unstamped bow is presented to a reputable dealer, he might say, ‘This is French’ or ‘This is German,’ but will rarely name a specific maker. If the same bow is taken to five different dealers, one of them might know or guess something that the others won’t and the owner might get lucky.”

  About twenty years before, Goldbloom had tried a seemingly nondescript, unstamped bow from Dedubian, but the price was low so Goldbloom bought it. There was just something about it, he said. The next time the Symphony went on a concert tour to Europe, Goldbloom took the bow to some of the big shops in Paris and London and ended up with papers for the bow certifying it as a rare example of Adam, the Elder, made in Paris in the early nineteenth century. Simply having established provenance by obtaining a reputable certificate for a few hundred dollars, the bow was converted from a worthless piece of junk to a collector’s item valued at thousands of dollars.

  “How was it,” asked Yumi, “that all the other dealers knew it was an Adam but not Mr. Dedubian?”

  “I took that bow to five different shops—reputable shops—and got five different opinions, four of which were noncommittal. But the guy in London said it was an Adam. So I had him write up the papers. Now, if I decide to sell it, it’s an Adam.

  “My God! You should have seen Dedubian. He pretended not to be, but was he furious. He claimed he knew it was an Adam all along and that he was just being nice to me. He also offered to buy it back from me at any time. Gonif!”

  Yumi thanked Goldbloom for his seminar on bows, and asked whether the same was true for violins as well. She still had the Vuillaume in her hands. Goldbloom handed her back the Voirin bow and said, “Play something. And listen.”

  Yumi began to play the Siciliene from the “Devil’s Trill” Sonata by Tartini that she had played for Jacobus at her lesson. As Goldbloom had asked, she listened, closing her eyes to help her concentrate, but was not sure what she should be listening for. All she knew was that this instrument was so much easier to play and so much more resonant than her own. After less than a minute, Goldbloom stopped her. He was holding another violin in his hands.

  “Here.” He handed her the violin. “Now try this one. Play the same thing.”

  The beauty of the sound of this violin put the Vuillaume to shame. It exceeded by far her own degree of effort, as if the violin had been waiting for someone to play it in order to sing. In just a few moments she felt her being had been transformed.

  “Ah! You like the Amati!” said Goldbloom.

  Looking inside this magical instrument, she saw a label indicating the maker to be Nicolo Amati, from Cremona, Italy, and the year 1664.

  “A fine, fine violin,” said Goldbloom. “One of the great original Cremonese makers. Just before Stradivari. I almost bought this one once. I should have, but I also needed a house at the time. Now it goes for almost a million.”

  Yumi sat down, cradling the violin in her lap.

  “If only I had a million dollars!” she said. “I would buy this violin.”

  “Yeah. Well, listen to this one,” Goldbloom said as he removed another violin from its perch.

  He started to play the same thing Yumi had just been playing. To her ear, the sound was only slightly different from the Amati. Not better, not necessarily worse. Just different. Beautiful in its own way.

  “Is that another Amati?” she asked.

  “No. In fact, it’s probably not even Italian. It looks like it was made about the same time, but probably in Tyrolea, not too far from Cremona as the crow flies. So, no pedigree, no definit
e date, not Italian. Pretty good condition, nice looking. What would you give me for it?”

  “Five hundred thousand dollars, perhaps?” Yumi guessed.

  “How about thirty thousand?” said Goldbloom.

  Yumi was taken aback. She had thought she was beginning to understand the violin business.

  “But they both sound so beautiful! Shouldn’t they be worth approximately the same?”

  “Yeah, well, unfortunately in this business, a rose by any other name isn’t as good an investment. On one hand, you could spend a million for a beat-up Strad that sounds crummy; on the other hand you can get a perfectly beautiful-sounding, affordable instrument for a hundredth of the price, but it won’t add much to your retirement portfolio. If you put blindfolds on these so-called violin experts who say they can tell one violin from another and played both of these fiddles, I’ll bet you they’d be in for a real shock.”

  Yumi thought about all the different kinds of people associated with violins. Musicians, of course, but also the dealers, the repairers, the insurers, the collectors, the makers, each with a different definition of value, but all stemming from one source.

  “Mr. Goldbloom, what is it about violins that makes people want them so much?”

  “Well, there’s the value, which is always going up, the sound quality, the—”

  “No. I’m sorry to interrupt. I think I understand all of that now. But there’s more. It’s almost as if people lose their minds about violins.”

  “If I told you what I think, you’d think I was meshuga. Crazy.”