by Gerald Elias
He and Yumi entered the lobby of the new East Side high-rise. Echoing from its marble walls rang the overtly sentimental refrain of “Zigeunerweisen,” or “Gypsy Airs,” the nineteenth-century composer-violinist Pablo Sarasate’s universal crowd pleaser.
“Help you, bud?” asked the security guard.
“Appointment. Vanderblick,” said Jacobus.
“Vanderblick? Oh! You mean Mrs. Vander? Hey, you’re one lucky guy.”
“Really.”
“You don’t know her? What a lady! I mean, a real . . . lady.” The guard grinned.
“Right.”
“You said it, she got real class. That’s the only word for it. Class. Always smilin’. Always saying, ‘Hi, Mike, how’re you doing?’
“You hear that music, bud? That’s her kid playing. Sweet kid. Mrs. Vander, she gave me the CD. She gave me the CD. Free. Just like that. Said I should play it in the lobby every day and share it with all the people that come in and out. Real thoughtful. I don’t know nothin’ about classical music, but Mrs. Vander tells me the kid is a ‘prodigy.’ You know anything about classical music, bud?”
“A little.”
“Well, here, take a look at the CD. It says right here on the back she’s a prodigy. Oh, you can’t see. Sorry. How ’bout you, young lady, want to see the CD?”
“Thank you,” said Yumi.
The title of the CD was Roller Coasters: The Virtuosity of Kamryn Vander. The cover had a picture of a little girl on a roller coaster, head back, smiling with excitement. Her hair was blowing in the wind, and she had one arm around a large stuffed koala. The recording, the first of three similar ones that Vander would make in the following five years, contained a dozen or so flashy warhorses to go with “Zigeunerweisen.”
“Very nice,” said Jacobus to Mike. “I’ll be sure to add it to my collection.”
“Yeah,” said Mike. “I know where you can buy ’em too. You wanna know?”
“Maybe you can tell us after our appointment,” said Jacobus.
“Oh, yeah, good idea. Let me ring Mrs. Vander. I’ll tell her you’re on your way up. She expecting you?”
“I’m afraid so.”
They arrived at the top-floor apartment, rang the bell, and waited. Jacobus heard the sound of wrestling with the locks for a considerable time. Finally, the door opened but was almost immediately slammed shut. Jacobus heard a child’s footsteps running away from the door and then a little girl yelping, “Mommy, it’s a blind man and a Chinese lady.” A few minutes later the door was yanked open.
So, we’re not hiding our hostility today, are we? thought Jacobus. A sudden waft of perfume made his useless eyes immediately begin to tear.
“Of all the nerve!” Cynthia Vander said. “Why can’t you just let the police do their job and go away? Don’t you think she’s been traumatized enough? How is she going to play at the gala next week without that violin? If she blows it, she could lose half her bookings for next year. I don’t know why Anthony said I should talk to you.”
“Mrs. Vanderblick, if we could just come in,” Jacobus said quietly.
“Suit yourself.” She turned her back on her guests and stomped back into the apartment. “And the name is Vander.”
Yumi led Jacobus to a couch. He sank into an overstuffed cushion with a protective plastic cover.
Yumi sat next to him. Mrs. Vander disappeared, but Jacobus soon heard her voice in another room.
“Three more hours, Princess,” she shouted.
“But Mommy, I’m tired,” came the whiny reply.
“It doesn’t matter. Miss J said eight hours a day, and you still have ‘Poème,’ ‘Meditation,’ and ‘Perpetual Motion.’ So get going.”
She reentered the living room. “What do you want?”
“I want to find the Piccolino. For your daughter.”
“Give me a break. You’re the one who stole it!”
“Ha!” said Jacobus. “And tell me why I did that?”
“Don’t give me ‘Ha.’ Victoria said you’ve been jealous of all her students who’ve made it big, and who is it that’s been ranting for years about the Grimsley Competition? She said only someone like you would be devious enough to steal it right from under their noses.”
“And who threw the rock through the window? Yumi?” asked Jacobus.
“No!” shouted Yumi.
“Who cares?” Mrs. Vander said. “I ought to call the police right now to pick you up.”
“So the cops would put me away, but Kamryn still wouldn’t have her violin back. Is that what you want? What’s she playing on now, anyway?”
“Some piece of crap Dedubian is trying to sell us,” Mrs. Vander said. “He keeps whining that there aren’t any good three-quarter violins around.”
Jacobus saw an opportunity to divide and conquer and plunged in, saying truthfully that in his experience, Dedubian, though sporting a highly gentlemanly exterior, was nevertheless a shrewd if not ruthless trader, and that if anyone could find what she was looking for it was Dedubian. By saying something positive about Dedubian he hoped that Vander would subscribe to a variation of the old axiom “The friend of my enemy is my enemy.”
Mrs. Vander dismissed Jacobus’s assessment. “I told him to just do his job and find one, because if he doesn’t, we’re screwed,” she said.
“I’m sure your approach will produce results,” said Jacobus.
“Look, Mr. Jacobus, you’re wasting my time,” said Mrs. Vander. “You have some questions for me. Ask them, then go.”
“You want the violin back in time for your daughter’s performance? We think it’s conceivable that someone you know might have been involved with the theft. That with your cooperation we can find that person. Right, Yumi?”
Before Yumi could reply, Cynthia interrupted.
“You’re saying that you, a blind man, that friend of yours, and this girl, whoever she is, the three of you are going to find a stolen violin that the police can’t even get a clue on? You’re a very funny little man, you know that?”
“Well, if I stole it as you suggest, it shouldn’t be too hard for me to find it, should it, Mrs. Vander?”
“I think this has gone on long enough. You can just let yourselves out.”
“M-o-m-m-y!” hollered Kamryn from another room. “My hand hurts.”
“Keep practicing,” Mrs. Vander hollered back.
“But it hurts worse!”
“Princess, Miss J said you’ll just have to play through the pain. How many times do I have to tell you? It’ll go away.”
“But it’s not! It hurts!”
“What the hell am I going to do with her?” Mrs. Vander asked. “Ever since she got that damned new violin her hand’s been hurting.”
“No surprise,” Jacobus volunteered, spotting an opening. “You want some help?”
“You? What could you do? She already has a good teacher.”
“Does her hand hurt or doesn’t it?”
Mrs. Vander was silent.
“Okay, Mrs. Vander, I know what you’re thinking. On one hand you’ve got your loyalty to Victoria, on the other are the engagements Kamryn’ll lose if she isn’t able to perform in just a few days. It’s up to you. Makes no difference to me.”
Mrs. Vander thought for a moment.
“Kamryn,” she hollered, “get in here.”
Jacobus heard Kamryn, sniffling, enter the room.
“Mr. Jacobus is going to try to help you. I’ll be here. I won’t let him hurt you.”
“Kamryn,” Jacobus said gently, “I’d like you to play something for me, and maybe I can hear what the problem is.”
“What should I play?”
“How about ‘Meditation’?”
“ ‘Meditation’? That’s the easy one.”
“Maybe for notes, but not so easy to play beautifully.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, you know,” said Jacobus, “that ‘Meditation’ is an interlude from a beautiful opera called
Thaïs by the nineteenth-century composer Jules Massenet, about an ancient Egyptian courtesan who became a saint. Even though Massenet was a fine composer, ‘Meditation’ is the one piece he’s still remembered for, because it has such a lovingly evocative melody. Does that help?”
“What’s an opera?” asked Kamryn.
“Never mind. Let’s just give it a try, okay?”
Kamryn started to play. As she had said, the notes were easy, almost perfectly in tune and in time. But the sound was very forced and harsh. After a few moments she stopped.
“It hurts! It hurts! I can’t play anymore!”
“There, you see?” said Mrs. Vander. “She can’t even play ‘Meditation.’ I think she’s just spoiled.”
Jacobus said, “Well, I can’t help you with that one, Mrs. Vander, but I can suggest some things that will help her playing. Since I’m not Kamryn’s teacher, she can take them or leave them. I don’t particularly care one way or the other.”
“At least you’re honest about that,” said Mrs. Vander.
“First of all, Kamryn,” said Jacobus, “as much as you want it to, this violin will never sound like the Piccolino. No matter how hard you try it’s almost impossible to change the basic character of a violin . . . like with some people. So you just have to accept it for what it is until we get the Piccolino back. Don’t try to force the sound out of it. Just let it be itself, okay?”
She mumbled something unintelligible. At least she didn’t run away.
“I assume it’s your left hand that’s the one that hurts. Am I right?” Another mumble. “Good. So, once you stop squeezing the bow and pressing with your right hand, your left hand should already start to feel more relaxed.”
“How did you know it was her left hand that was hurting? How can you tell if you can’t see?” asked Mrs. Vander accusingly.
“That’s easy. There were two ways, and I’ll give her a little exercise for each.”
Jacobus then explained a few things about mechanics fundamental to good violin playing that he explained to all his students, consistent with his philosophy of trying to make the very unnatural motions of playing the violin feel as comfortable and relaxed as possible. He used images like “seaweed at the bottom of the ocean with an easy current swaying it back and forth” for the motion of the left arm; or “like skating on ice” for shifting, which is the sliding motion of the left hand from one position to another. To help her visualize why it was so important to keep all the joints of one’s fingers, hand, and arm flexible when playing with vibrato, Jacobus jumped up and started to walk around like Frankenstein’s monster until he bumped into the glass table by the couch, almost knocking over the interior design magazines on it. Kamryn’s attempt to suppress a giggle was not totally successful and did not go unnoticed by Jacobus. He described a certain simple exercise to loosen her vibrato and asked her to try it.
“It feels weird,” Kamryn said
“I’m sure it does. But, tell me, does it hurt?”
Shrug.
“Well, assuming your silence means it doesn’t, let me suggest that you practice your vibrato just like that. Once you’re comfortable with that, try connecting the vibrato from one finger to the next. It all should take about five minutes a day and give you plenty of time left over for Sesame Street.”
This time it was Yumi’s unsuccessful attempt to totally suppress her giggle that did not go unnoticed. Jacobus heard Kamryn march out of the room.
“Okay, how much do I owe you, Mr. Jacobus?” asked Mrs. Vander. He heard the click of her wallet as impatience returned to her voice. She no doubt would be dialing Lilburn’s number the minute they left.
“Owe me?” asked Jacobus. “I offered to help. You owe me nothing.”
“Miss J says the amount a teacher is paid is a sign of how much she’s respected. That’s why she charges two hundred dollars an hour.”
“In that case, Mrs. Vander, you can pay me three hundred . . . but let’s wait until I return the Piccolino, shall we?”
FIFTEEN
Nathaniel thought Jacobus’s theory that the thief might be a second-place finisher in the Grimsley Competition was far-fetched, but Jake’s hunches—based upon a logic that defied normal analysis—had been correct in the past, so he decided that he would at least use it as a starting point for his research.
The first and easiest part of his strategy had been to eliminate the dead runners-up. He had begun his legwork with the archives—or so the pair of oak file cabinets was called—in the basement of the Grimsley Competition offices. An indifferent part-time employee whose mumbled name he didn’t understand handed him a key and told him to help himself. Rummaging didn’t take long, and soon he had a complete list of all the contestants and how they had placed, assembled from programs and rosters elegantly handwritten in fountain-pen ink on yellowed paper in the Competition’s inaugural year of 1905, moving up to distinct Underwood type in 1944, and finally on an IBM printout from the previous Competition in 1970. What disappointed him was that the Grimsley people seemed uninterested in what happened to the contestants—including the winners—after the Competition. There were a few random manila files about individual contestants, but other than uninformative yellowed press clippings, many of which were undated, there was little of value to be gleaned.
List in hand, along with a thermos of black coffee and bag of Hole-In-The-Middle frosted chocolate cake doughnuts, Nathaniel visited the New York Times, where he researched the obituary files. When those proved inconclusive, he followed up with a computer search of the records of the genealogy library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormons, in their desire to give all of humanity—current and past—a free pass to heaven, had assembled heaven on earth for genealogy researchers, with the most extensive birth and death records in the world.
When Nathaniel was finished, the runners-up list had shrunk considerably: 1905 was dead, as were 1918 and ’44; 1931 was still alive. So were 1957 and 1970.
Nathaniel started with the most recent, 1970, an Israeli, Daniel Lenzner. Nathaniel vaguely remembered the name. He thought he recalled that Lenzner had studied in New York, so he dialed the most likely place, the Juilliard School of Music. They put him on hold long enough for him to hear a recording of almost the entire Beethoven opus 59#3 String Quartet, interrupting his listening just as the last-movement fugue was reaching its climax. They told him Lenzner had studied with the famed pedagogue Ivan Galamian. Word had been that Lenzner would be the next Perlman or Zuckerman, but after taking second in the Grimsley his career petered out. Juilliard had a phone number for him in Tel Aviv but it was several years old.
Nathaniel checked his watch, hoping it wouldn’t be too late in Israel, dialed the number, and waited while the connection was made. The phone rang several times.
“Nu? Don’t you know what time it is?” said a gruff voice.
“Is this Daniel Lenzner?” asked Williams.
“Who is asking?”
Nathaniel introduced himself and explained that he was compiling updates on Grimsley Competition finalists for a future publication.
“You can tell them two things,” said Lezner.
“Yes?”
“Number one. You can tell them I am a professor of violin at the Tel Aviv Conservatory of Music. And number two, you can tell them to go to hell.”
Nathaniel thought that maybe he had hit the jackpot on the first try—here was an angry runner-up—and that Jacobus had been correct in his theory.
“Have you been in New York City recently, Mr. Lenzner?”
“Why should I? The bagels are better here.” Lenzner hung up.
Nathaniel wrote a note to himself to double-check Lenzner’s contention that he wasn’t in New York; that would be easy enough—he could just call the Tel Aviv Conservatory and find out if Lenzner had been fulfilling his teaching schedule and other commitments. Nathaniel then went on to 1957, a French violinist named Jean-Marc Robert. According to the scant Grimsley file, Rober
t was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1945. There was a home address and phone number. He tried the phone number but was informed by the international operator that no such number existed. In fact, current phone numbers for Strasbourg had two additional digits. No, there is no current number for a Jean-Marc Robert at that address. Nathaniel asked the operator for any number for anyone with the name of Jean-Marc Robert in Strasbourg. The operator said she wasn’t paid to be a detective. Nathaniel thanked her, hung up, and put 1957 on hold.
He had similar luck with 1931, an English girl named Kate Padgett, and was about to call it a day when he had a thought. Of the three judges at the 1931 Grimsley, he knew that two were dead. The great and infamous Malinkovsky had returned to Russia and survived World War II, but one day vanished into thin air during one of Stalin’s purges of the 1950s. Silvio Signorelli, the flamboyant Italian virtuoso, had perished in 1948 in a plane crash over the Atlantic with his beloved Stradivarius on his way home to Milan after a concert tour.
Only Sir Owen Davis, now ninety-one, was still alive. His ninetieth birthday the year before had been cause for great international celebration. Though he was too frail to attend any of the galas held in his honor, it did not take Nathaniel long to find the story that the New York Times had written. Martin Lilburn had been sent to interview Davis at the Alden Grove Convalescent Home in Bournemouth.
“Hello, Alden Grove, Rebecca speaking.”
Nathaniel explained that he was compiling a history of the Grimsley Competition and asked if it would be possible to have a minute with Maestro Davis.
“Marvelous!” said Rebecca. Did Nathaniel perceive a giggle? “He has such little company these days compared to all the hoopla last year, aside from Mr. Giles.”
“Mr. Giles?”
“Yes, Sir Owen shares his room with Mr. Giles. Mr. Giles is his constant companion.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to disturb anyone at this hour.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Williams. Sir Owen and Mr. Giles always love company. Let me put you through.”
Nathaniel spent the next hour listening to an encyclopedic firsthand oral history of classical music of the twentieth century from Sir Owen. His voice raspy and high-pitched by age, Owens waxed nostalgic over the waning of the Victorian Elgar era but offered an uncensored opinion of the new music of Philip Glass—“I wouldn’t wipe my arse with it, would I, Mr. Giles?” Nathaniel heard high-pitched “yip yip” barking in the background. “You see, Mr. Williams? Mr. Giles is in agreement.”