by Gerald Elias
“Sorry, state law.”
“Okay, bring me a damn patty melt! Nothing like a patty melt and scotch. I assume you have a patty melt.”
“One patty melt coming right up, sir! And one scotch and soda!”
Yumi ordered a Stella Artois, Nathaniel a Maker’s Mark on the rocks, and Lavender the specialty of the house, the Joan of Arc, which was a margarita with a twist of jalapeño “for the fire,” the menu said. And, of course, food to go with their drinks.
The conversation got back to music. Lavender confessed that one of the few people he had a hard time playing with had been BTower.
“He was still Shelby Freeman Jr. when he was studying with René. Unbelievable talent, but I’m telling you . . . technique and pizzazz is one thing, but that kid was over the top! You know, when René put the kibosh on him as a student because BTower wouldn’t learn the ‘old-fashioned way,’ I actually think he was a little jealous of BTower, talentwise. And BTower didn’t like it one bit.”
Jacobus agreed with the overall assessment. When it came to sheer bravura, BTower could play rings around the elderly Allard. Gradually BTower got the groupies and the PR, the nonstop career and recording contracts, but somehow age seemed to have bestowed upon Allard’s playing a degree of poetry and sublime simplicity such that he became an even greater musical legend the older he got.
“So no matter how hard BTower tried, it seemed he was destined never to be numero uno,” he said.
Maurice Chevalier was now singing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” Jacobus called the waiter over and asked if they could play some Marcel Marceau. The waiter said he would ask.
“It’s just a shame the two factions couldn’t recognize each other’s greatness,” said Nathaniel. “Things really got bitter.”
“You’re not kidding,” said Lavender. “One time, when BTower had finished a concert, Allard publicly commented, ‘The boy gives nuance a bad name.’ It looked like BTower could’ve killed him then . . . I guess he did, after all. Oh, Jesus! This is giving me the creeps.”
Lavender’s last comment had been spurred by the new background music, a Muzaked rendition of “Danse Macabre,” not Allard’s recording certainly, but disconcerting nevertheless. Fortunately, their order arrived and they all quickly toasted one another and took a deep gulp of comforting alcohol.
“You know,” Lavender continued after raising a questioning eyebrow at his Joan of Arc, “when René first performed that piece in Carnegie Hall back in ’42, he had a special reason for playing it. I wasn’t with him then—I only did his last four Carnegie concerts, since ’62—but he told me about it after. That first Carnegie recital was right after he got off the boat—literally—having just escaped from Vichy France. That’s why it was an all-French program. He wanted to show solidarity with his confreres in the Resistance. Then, after the formal part of the program, he did those little improvisations he was famous for, and finished with the ‘Danse.’
“You know the piece. It’s really a grotesque perversion of the waltz, which of course originated in Austria. Amazingly enough, Saint-Saëns heard Allard play it shortly before he died in 1921—René was just ten but was a real wunderkind—and autographed René’s music. ‘Les mains d’un petit ange—le grand diable.’ Imagine what that’s worth! Anyway, the piece starts out with the chiming of midnight—the witching hour—and then those diminished fifths on the scordatura violin. Nowadays the piece doesn’t feel scary, but I gather from the history books that for the first audiences in 1874 it was very unsettling.”
“Scordatura?” asked Yumi. “That’s a term I haven’t learned.”
“Now you will,” Jacobus said through a dripping mouthful of patty melt prepared with the bistro’s special flair, melted Roquefort and a sickeningly sweet French dressing. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“Scordatura’s when a violin is tuned abnormally. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time the strings are tuned in perfect fifths—G–D–A–E—but in ‘Danse Macabre,’ instead of E, it’s tuned a half step lower to E-flat. The resulting interval, the diminished fifth, was called the devil’s interval in the Middle Ages because it has the aural connotation of evil. It’s in all the B horror movies when the guy’s throat is about to be slashed. ‘Danse Macabre’ begins with the chiming of midnight in the accompaniment, and then the first thing you hear from the soloist, before the actual waltz starts, is the devil tuning his fiddle. Hocus-pocus kind of stuff.”
“And that’s why René played the piece,” said Lavender. “It was his secret statement against the Nazis. His friends back home knew this, and even though the audience didn’t get the message, it always brought the house down. Of course, the rest of the recital was incredible too, and that’s why, when he played the same program every ten years at Carnegie, there wasn’t a dry seat in the house.”
“What was the deal with the improvisations?” asked Nathaniel. “He’s the only one I know who did that kind of thing.”
“Well, maybe these days,” said Lavender. “But don’t forget, René studied with Ysaÿe, and like a lot of the virtuosos in Ysaÿe’s day—Joachim, Sarasate, Kreisler, Huberman, Ole Bull—improvising was a centuries-old tradition. It was something they learned to do, like jazz musicians today. It was René’s little gimmick, though I must say it was very engaging. He would ask for someone’s name or initials from out in the audience and make up a piece based on that name right there on the spot. Oh, it was only two or three minutes, but it was always charming and the audience ate it up. At first he did it unaccompanied, but after a while I could pretty well predict what he would do, and I could make up a simple little accompaniment to go with it. To the uninitiated it seemed like magic, the cynics thought we were cheating, but it was neither, I can assure you.”
“Give us an example,” asked Yumi. “Please.”
“Well, one night there was a particularly buxom young lady in the front row—they always seemed to buy the front-row seats for René. Of course, René chose her from all the volunteers. She said her name was Deborah. A slam dunk! René took the first three letters of her name and made a syrupy Brahmsian love song out of it. What else would you expect? That was enchanting enough as it was, but when he got to the climax he started playing the retrograde—”
“Retrograde?” asked Yumi.
“Retrograde means backwards,” said Jacobus. “Didn’t I teach you anything?”
“Which of course is B–E–D. Anyone at Carnegie who knew anything about music—and that was just about everyone—knew immediately what was up. The young lady turned a bright red, but I’ll give you one guess where Deborah spent the night! What a scalawag, that René!
“So it was kind of a trick. A lot of composers did the same kind of thing with their own names—Bach, Schoenberg, Shostakovich—”
“How could they have done that,” asked Yumi, “with all those H’s and S’s?”
“You haven’t learned anything from me, have you?” asked Jacobus.
“But you never mentioned that, Jake,” Yumi protested.
“That’s neither here nor there. Just don’t tell anyone I’ve been your teacher, okay? In Europe, our note B-flat they call B. Our B-natural they call H, and our E-flat they call S. So Bach is B-flat–A–C–B-natural. You can figure out the others on your own time. That’ll be fifty dollars for the lesson, please.”
Their waiter arrived and asked if everything was excellent.
“I want another scotch and soda,” said Jacobus.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to finish your first one before I can bring you another. I’ll come back later.”
“Like hell you will,” Jacobus said and drained his glass. “Do I have to finish my patty melt too?”
“That’s optional,” said the waiter, who then left.
“You certainly had a long and rich history with Allard,” Nathaniel said to Lavender.
“Yeah, but it was almost a very short one. Very few people know how close to death he came a couple years aft
er that ’62 recital. His lifestyle. Moderation was anathema to him. He was only a little over fifty at the time, but physically he was more like eighty. He had a weak heart, emphysema, cirrhosis of the liver, high blood pressure. You name it, he had it.”
“Isn’t that about when he disposed of the ex Hawkins del Gesù?” asked Nathaniel. One of reasons Williams was the darling consultant of insurance companies was that he did his homework. He maintained up-to-date files on the transaction of every major violin, including the names of seller and buyer, the auction house or dealer, the price, the provenance of the instrument—basically everything that would have to be known in the event of a claim.
Like the ex Ysaÿe Guadagnini that Jacobus and Williams had recently encountered at Dedubian’s shop, the ex Hawkins del Gesù was a violin named after a famous owner. The name ex Hawkins was the sobriquet given to a violin made by Giuseppe Guarneri, the only luthier whose instruments rival his contemporary Antonio Stradivari, and who remarkably lived in the same town of Cremona, Italy. The ex Hawkins had been owned by an Englishman—Clarence, Earl of Hawkins—a competent amateur violinist, in the late eighteenth century. Guarneri himself had the nickname del Gesù because he always inscribed the labels inside his instruments with the Greek abbreviation for Jesus, I.H.S. (iota-eta-sigma), and a Roman cross.
The interesting thing to Jacobus, however, was that Allard had disposed of the ex Hawkins del Gesù in an unorthodox fashion, selling it to a private party whose name he never divulged shortly after that first heart attack. Even for someone as revered as Allard, the transaction raised eyebrows. He had defended himself by saying that it was important for him, a Frenchman, to play on a French violin, and indeed from that time on he performed on a very serviceable J. B. Vuillaume, whose violins were the pinnacle of the French school. It was admitted Allard did play as beautifully as ever, but the questions persisted and no one ever found out to whom he had sold the del Gesù.
“Yeah, it was shortly after the heart attack,” Lavender continued. “Can you imagine what his medical bills were? I think that’s why he sold it. When he had that attack, I thought it was the end. He was in such bad shape we thought it might even be better for him to die, then and there. Hennie and I went to see him in the hospital whenever we could, because we never knew which time would be the last. He had more tubes connected to him than my high school chem lab. But that little guy you were with at the concert . . . what’s his name?”
“Ziggy,” said Jacobus.
“Yeah, Ziggy, that fellow. He was there every time I went to visit René, sitting by his side.”
“A devoted man. He must have lost wages taking time off,” said Nathaniel.
“A little creepy if you ask me, but what do I know?”
Another waiter arrived with a tray of four cognacs during a pounding Les Mis medley.
“On the house,” he said. “And congratulations on your special concert tonight.”
“Hey, you’re a different waiter,” Jacobus said, noting the lower voice.
The waiter laughed. “I try to be,” he said. “Maybe you scared off the first one.”
“Do we have to leave you a tip too?” asked Jacobus.
“Thanks, I’d appreciate it,” he said, laughed again, and retreated into the swirl.
“Let’s make this a quick one,” Jacobus said to his friends. “I can’t take much more of this music.”
Yumi excused herself to go to Les Dames before the group left the bistro. While she was gone, Jacobus said to Lavender, “What else?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s nothing creepy about a guy going to visit someone he worships who’s in the hospital.”
“Well, you’re right,” said Lavender. “There’s a little story that goes with it, but I didn’t want to tell you in polite society. It’s a tad lurid. Some years before René’s heart attack, he and Hennie were having one of their soirées, and let me tell you, if there was one thing René was not, it was a skinflint when he threw a bash. There was more caviar than at the Romanovs’ coronation, and the Bordeaux flowed like the Seine. Hennie was still only about twenty at the time and was as wild as she was beautiful. René and I hadn’t played together yet, but I was one of the privileged invitees because we were on the panel of a competition together. I tell you, I was still pretty Midwest milquetoast then, and it was the wildest shindig I’d ever been to. At one point René told me that he and Hennie were ‘going for a ride.’ She grabbed a bottle of Dom Perignon on the way out. I thought they were going to go and take a taxi somewhere. When they got back about twenty minutes later, the bottle was empty and they both had coy little smirks, were half unbuttoned, and their clothes smelled like champagne and her hair was a mop. I said, ‘Well, you’ve certainly been through the ringer,’ and Hennie whispered in my ear, ‘We’ve just had sex in the elevator.’ I expressed my astonishment somehow—I’m sure I was speechless, so I don’t know how—and René said, ‘It was the big mirror, you see. We just couldn’t resist. We told Krinkelmeier, take the elevator up and down as fast as you can, for the excitement.’ ”
“Krinkelmeier?” asked Jacobus.
“That’s what René and Hennie used to call Ziggy. It was all in fun.”
“Yeah. So anyway . . .”
“So anyway, Hennie gave this silly conspiratorial titter. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and we made Krinkelmeier watch. He didn’t want to, but with the mirror, he couldn’t help it, could he? That made it even better.’ Uh-oh, here comes Yumi. But that’s the upchuck.”
As Yumi sat, Lavender raised his snifter. “To the endearing René Allard, greatest virtuoso of his time, who didn’t understand all the fuss. He would but shrug and say, ‘I am just me.’ ”
“And here’s to Yumi and Virgil, for an amazing concert,” said Nathaniel.
They all downed their drinks and paid the bill. On the way out, Jacobus bumped into a chair, something he had always prided himself on not doing. The others, mildly tipsy like Jacobus, laughed. Perhaps they had all celebrated a little too much. Jacobus tried to steady himself, latching on to a coatrack for support. The background music became blurred, now unbearably loud, now inaudible, giving him a suddenly intense headache. For a moment he had a delusional image of himself as Beethoven in the throes of impending deafness. “What the hell?” he said, and they laughed some more. By the time they got to the curb his head was spinning and he was having trouble breathing. He grabbed on to a parking meter, threw up, then, having lost his sense of direction, plunged headlong into State Street and oncoming Saturday night traffic. His friends were now shouting something at him, but they seemed so far away. What was that? Running footsteps? Before he passed out, he felt himself being dragged and manhandled, but that was all.
THIRTEEN
DAY 4: SUNDAY
BTower sat slumped on the edge of his bed, forearms on his thighs, head on his chest, a position in which he could be found most of the time now. There was nothing to look at or to hear, anyway, that he hadn’t seen or heard for his months in solitary.
Through the adjustable-volume mikes on the surveillance cameras, Haskell and Gundacker could hear the sounds in each cell. But the sounds infiltrating from outside the cells were distant and amorphous, as if underwater. Unintelligible, disembodied voices, metal doors sliding open and closed.
“Hmm,” observed Haskell. He nibbled around the core of his tart Granny Smith apple. He pointed at BTower’s image in the monitor, the apple easily corralled in his massive hand, and said to Gundacker, “Sound was this boy’s life. His meal ticket. Got him out of the slum and made him famous. And now, what’s he got . . . white noise. White noise. Well, only a few more days.”
“That’s deep,” said Gundacker. He polished off his peanut butter sandwich, getting ready to do his rounds.
“Go to hell,” said Haskell, but not meaning it.
“Hey, looky there.” Gundacker pointed to the monitor. BTower had just arisen from the mattress. “Ten bucks he starts pacing again.”
<
br /> But BTower didn’t start pacing. Instead he walked back to the center of his cell stage and resumed his violin-holding position. Unlike yesterday’s manic episode, this time he was controlled, if not calm.
“Damn,” said Gundacker. “Gotta go feed the swine. I’ll miss the show.”
“Hey, Gruber,” said Haskell, “don’t you worry. I’ll keep an eye on him. If he paces, we’ll take the ten off your account. Promise.”
Gundacker departed and Haskell returned to watch BTower. The wife had her soaps, he had his monitors. He had the better deal, he concluded. No commercials.
Relaxed but attentive, he took the first bite of his turkey and cranberry relish on homemade white. He watched, intrigued, as BTower held his imaginary violin steady, moving only his right arm—the bow arm. That much was obvious even to the musical illiterate that Haskell readily acknowledged himself to be.
Haskell, though, was a good observer. Days before the penal experts, he could tell when inmates needed to be placed on suicide watch by noticing little things: how a guy rubbed his face, or how often he washed his hands or stared at the ceiling. He also knew when trouble was brewing; when an inmate’s neck muscles hardened or his breathing got shallow, indicating that violence was imminent. More than his great strength, Haskell believed, it was his awareness of the inconsequential that had enabled him to keep the upper hand on this island of damaged souls.
BTower seemed to be experimenting with different aspects of his right hand. First, he moved his hand from right to left in a line parallel to the ground. Then, deliberate little vertical counterclockwise circular movements with a momentary stop as BTower felt for the balance of the weight of his arm. This went on for minutes—first the motion from right to left, then the circles. Over and over again. Haskell tipped back on his chair, devouring his sandwich at the same patient rate as BTower’s practice. Haskell surmised BTower was deciding where to put the bow on the string. Haskell had never been to a concert, but he had seen the violinists on the old TV shows, like Lawrence Welk.