by Gerald Elias
Furthermore, I have profited financially from my dalliance with cultural king-and queen-building. While MAP is in appearance a nonprofit corporation, its members went far beyond exploiting legal loopholes in enriching themselves on public funds and private supporters, whom they have misled. To rectify this injustice, Mr. Boris Dedubian, the well-known violin dealer, and I have made a detailed presentation to the Internal Revenue Service regarding our financial situation. Mr. Anthony Strella, former president of Zenith Concert Artists, and Mr. Trevor Grimsley, president of the now-defunct Grimsley Violin Competition, have chosen to seek legal counsel, as is their legitimate right.
Mr. Daniel Jacobus, who in previous articles has been maligned and demonized, should be recognized for being an unwavering beacon of artistic and moral integrity. He has focused the glaring light of honesty upon MAP, and we have withered under it. His admirable efforts in retrieving the stolen Piccolino Stradivarius violin and in apprehending Victoria Jablonski’s alleged killer must be duly noted.
Regardless of my intent to promote great music and musicians, I have betrayed the trust of the readers and the publishers of the New York Times, and whatever credibility I may have had as a critic is now non existent. As a result, I have no option other than to immediately resign from my position at the Times.
So Lilburn does have balls, after all, Jacobus thought. He could have had the scoop of a lifetime that night at Carnegie Hall and didn’t even mention it. Jacobus carelessly tossed the newspaper article on the floor.
He tried to sleep, but the patient in the next ward decided to start watching reruns of The Brady Bunch on the wall-mounted TV. After all these years, Jacobus mused, finally an advantage to being blind. He picked up the phone and dialed the number he had memorized.
“Good evening, Father McCawley speaking.”
“Padre. Jacobus.”
“Ah! Mr. Jacobus. How are you feeling?”
“Peachy. They’re letting me out of this hellhole in two days. What’s up?”
“Well, Mr. Jacobus. It’s a little hard to say.”
“You can speak freely with me, my son.”
“Very funny. You learn quickly. Well, let me spit it out. When I came to visit you in the hospital the first time, when you were in the coma, nevertheless you were talking in your sleep. Actually, you were talking quite a bit.”
“How much is quite a bit?”
“Well, I know you have friends named Kate and Max.”
“Is that it?”
“No, Mr. Jacobus.” Father McCawley paused. “There’s more. You struggled with some ivy, I believe it was.”
Jacobus squirmed.
“Eh, so what?” he said.
“You also spoke of a second Piccolino Stradivarius.”
“Who else heard?” asked Jacobus in a sudden panic. This could undo everything.
“No one else while I was there. But I thought—”
“What is it you want?”
“Oh, Mr. Jacobus! I would never! . . . I just thought, if you wanted to tell me all about it, get it off your chest, maybe you wouldn’t talk about it by accident anymore.”
Jacobus thought. What were the risks? Could he trust the priest? What were the chances of someone hearing him reveal his secrets in his sleep? Would his “confession” really help him rest in peace, as McCawley was suggesting?
“Mr. Jacobus. Are you there?”
“It would be confidential?”
“I would never tell a soul. It would be between you, me, and God.”
“Okay, Padre. Here’s the deal. I don’t know what good it’ll do, but I’m willing to play the odds. Come here tomorrow night when it’s quiet, with a pack of Camels, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“But Mr. Jacobus, they don’t allow cigarettes there. After all, it’s a hospital.”
“Well, Padre, I guess this presents you with what you’d call a moral dilemma. Maybe you should pray for a solution.”
“All right, Mr. Jacobus. I’ll pray. But just to help my prayers along, do you smoke filtered or unfiltered?”
The next night, his last in the hospital, Jacobus tossed about in his bed. Where’s the damn priest? he asked himself as he fidgeted with the name tag on his wrist, the levers of the bed, and anything else he could get his hands on. Finally, close to midnight, the door opened.
“Sorry I’m so late,” said Father McCawley. “There was a death.”
“You got my Camels?” asked Jacobus.
“I’m disappointed in you, Mr. Jacobus. I thought you’d have some sympathy.”
“Yeah? Well, some things never change.”
“I see. Well, here are your cigarettes. I’ll see you later.”
Jacobus felt the pack land on the bed.
“Wait!” said Jacobus.
“For what, Mr. Jacobus?”
“Look, I was good as dead the first time we met and you helped me out. So maybe I owe you one. Have a seat.”
“All right, I’ll do that.”
“Now, where do I start?” said Jacobus.
“You said in your sleep that you made a deal with the devil for the second Strad. You sounded amazingly cogent.”
“For once!” Jacobus laughed. “And while I’m unconscious.”
Jacobus gave Father McCawley a concise summary of how he got to Japan and found the false Piccolino. He mentioned all the names and places, omitting only that Nathaniel had saved him from suicide.
“When I was at Padgett’s on my wild-goose chase and Nathaniel was at Furukawa’s, Nathaniel suddenly had an epiphany, as he calls it. A seemingly insignificant detail of our investigation jumped out and he knew he needed to see me before Inspector Taniguchi figured out where we were. So he called Dedubian for confirmation, which he got, but didn’t know how he would explain everything to Max. But when Max saw the look in his eye, nothing needed to be said. He immediately arranged for a driver, and Nathaniel, bowing and shaking hands extravigorously, took off.”
“That sounds like a preamble, Mr. Jacobus,” said Father McCawley. “I take it we’re getting to the epiphany.”
“Getting there,” said Jacobus, and he described the night at the Carnegie Deli when Nathaniel read Matthilda Grimsley’s diary.
“Well, it appears that Grimsley, old Holbrooke Grimsley, was a more astute businessman than Nathaniel and I gave him credit for. When he bought what turned out to be the Piccolino Strad—totally by accident—he took it to Aram Dedubian, Boris’s grandfather, in Rome. There he had Aram certify that the violin was indeed the Piccolino Strad and had the shop’s chief restorer, Valerio Bartolini, clean up the fiddle. It apparently was in remarkably good condition and required no repair to speak of. But Grimsley didn’t just have the violin cleaned up. Matthilda wrote in her diary that he left it there for several weeks. Several weeks! Now why the hell would he have left the violin in the shop for such a long time if all it needed was a damn simple polish? A day would have been enough for that. Take a guess, Padre.”
“I wouldn’t have a clue. Did he try to sell it?”
“Nah! Grimsley left the violin there for several weeks so that Bartolini could make a copy! A damned copy. That was Nathaniel’s epiphany. I should have realized it myself after Yumi gave me hell for being stupid enough to think that you could have a fake made in a few days.”
“But why make a copy?” McCawley asked.
“Because he worried about the very thing that happened,” Jacobus said. “He was worried about it being stolen.”
“So he had a copy made . . .” said McCawley.
“And left Aram Dedubian’s shop with the fake,” said Jacobus, “leaving the original Piccolino Strad in Dedubian’s vault, where it remained, ending up in the hands of grandson Boris. So you see, Padre, Mrs. Padgett was correct. The violin she saw so many years ago and the one she held in her hands in her home were one and the same. Unfortunately, neither was the real thing. That’s why Nathaniel couldn’t find it in him to claim his reward. Because the violin we found was pure
unadulterated phony baloney. It would’ve gnawed at him the rest of his life.”
Jacobus added, “So the violin I heard Kamryn Vander perform on was not the real Piccolino, and it bugged the shit out of me why it didn’t sound right when she played it.”
“That’s certainly astonishing,” said McCawley. “But how do we know this to be true? Boris Dedubian’s word? I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but after all, he is a violin dealer. It could be an old wives’ tale. And who’s to say Boris didn’t make a fake himself and has presented that as the original? He’s certainly had his hands on the real thing enough to have the time to do it.”
“Good thinking, Padre. Mrs. Padgett asked the same questions. And so did Nathaniel to Boris, and Boris had all the right answers.
“As I said, Grimsley was smarter than I would have guessed. When he had the fake made, he had Aram Dedubian write two copies of a very detailed document stating what had been done. It was signed by both of them and by Bartolini in the presence of a judge in Rome, who gave both copies the stamp of his official seal.”
“So Boris Dedubian has one copy and Trevor Grimsley the other? It sounds like a conspiracy to me.”
“Not exactly. Boris does have one of the documents. It was given to him by his father, Ashot, which was given to him by Aram himself, who had been sworn to secrecy by Holbrooke Grimsley. Boris took the same oath. But Holbrooke didn’t trust his own family, including offspring who didn’t even exist yet, to keep the same oath.”
“So exactly where is the other copy of the document?”
Jacobus pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and shook his head, still almost doubting the plausibility of it all.
“In the Vatican.”
“Well, I’ll be blessed!” said McCawley. “But that still doesn’t tell us which is the original Piccolino Strad and which is the copy, does it?”
“Well, that’s the interesting part,” said Jacobus. “When Bartolini made the copy, he made it exact in every detail. Even the grain of the wood matches up, though that wouldn’t really have mattered, anyway, since no one had seen the original for such a long time. But there was one detail that was shown to the judge he intentionally left out of the copy, so that there is no question as to which is original.”
“And that would be . . . ?”
“Would you believe a drop of blood?”
“A drop of blood!” repeated McCawley. “This is astonishing! Of course, I suppose what else would one expect with such a violin? Wear and tear? A crack? That would be way too mundane. And whose blood was this, may I ask? Was the oath of secrecy solemnized by a group bloodletting? This doesn’t seem to fit the profile of this supposedly astute businessman you’ve been talking about.”
“They’re not totally sure who the drop of blood belonged to,” Jacobus said, “but it seems possible it was the blood of Piccolino himself, assuming he actually existed. It looks like it dripped in through the left f-hole and landed next to his name on the label Stradivari had inserted into the violin. It then seeped across the label and into the wood, in a way creating its own seal of authenticity, certifying that the label and the violin truly did belong to each other. And you can tell by the way the drop of blood seeped into the grain that it happened when the wood was newly cut. According to Dedubian there’s no question. Maybe there is some truth to Pallottelli’s book about Piccolino. Maybe the horny little runt really did exist. Maybe he was stabbed by the cuckold husband.”
Jacobus was suddenly stabbed himself, not by a sword but by an intense emotion it took him a moment to define. Not so much that Piccolino might have been murdered, but rather that he might actually have truly existed! To reach across an unbroken chain of music through the centuries and rediscover a genius, a kindred spirit, perhaps. Damn, I’m getting sentimental, he thought.
“But why didn’t he say anything?” asked McCawley, interrupting Jacobus’s reverie.
“Why didn’t who say anything?” responded Jacobus.
“Mr. Dedubian. After all, you were accused of a crime you didn’t commit. If Mr. Dedubian knew Padgett’s family had taken a fake, why didn’t he tell anyone what he knew all along?”
“Good question, Padre. Holbrooke Grimsley was what we often call a man of his times. He believed in the supremacy of business, the manifest destiny of capitalism, particularly American capitalism, and of his place in it. At the same time, he also believed in a very basic, almost naive turn-of-the-century American notion of right and wrong. So in his agreement with Aram Dedubian he stipulated that if someone were to steal the fake—the fake, mind you—Dedubian or his descendants had to wait one year before presenting the original.”
“But why? The fake’s almost worthless.”
“Simple, my dear Watson,” said Jacobus. “In order to give the authorities time to catch the gonif who stole it. Even though the copy’s only worth a small fraction of the original, the thief doesn’t know it’s a copy, right? Grimsley felt that a thief should be tracked down and brought to justice on principle alone. A crook’s a crook, and chances are, if the original’s immediately returned, a thief who takes a mere copy would get off a lot easier, or even escape justice entirely. Holbrooke Grimsley didn’t envision the possibility of a good person doing the stealing.”
The two men sat in the late-night quiet of the hospital, accompanied only by the soft whirring of unfathomable medical machinery.
“Well, that’s an absolutely amazing story, Mr. Jacobus. But you’ll have to forgive me for asking yet another question.”
“I knew you’d get to it sooner or later, Padre.”
“Yes. Well, why is it, then, that you didn’t have to wait for an entire year before showing your face again?”
“Bingo. You see, that’s what I took care of when I called Boris from Japan. All I needed to do was return with the fake.”
“That sounds very simple, but there must be more to it than that.”
“Yes. Well. Since no one in memory—other than Boris Dedubian—had ever seen the real Piccolino, I figured from now on there must only be one Piccolino. And so I persuaded Boris to take a new vow. He will never mention there was ever another Piccolino. No one will know there ever was a copy. No one will ever be able to tie Kate, Keiko, or Yumi to the theft.”
“But someday, someone will no doubt discover there is a second one,” said McCawley. “Won’t they?”
“I think not,” Jacobus said with a chuckle. “From now on, there will be, in fact, only one Piccolino Stradivarius. You see, when I called Boris and made the deal with him, his end of the bargain was to send Kate a few ‘souvenirs’ from his shop. A scroll, a peg, that sort of thing. I thought it would be nice for Kate to hand them out to some of her students . . . as a reward for practicing hard, of course. I think of it as collateral, sort of.”
“Mr. Jacobus! I’m speechless. But collateral for what, may I ask?”
“Well, collateral against my pledge not to testify against Boris and Lilburn in that MAP scandal. Even better, I’m going to testify on their behalf. Boris was very appreciative. I suspect he has a good chance of retiring to his condo in Montreux very soon.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Father McCawley.
“Don’t get carried away, Padre. Now, can you give me a match for my cigarette?”
“Who said anything about matches?”
When Jacobus was ready to leave the hospital, Nathaniel, not a penny richer, nevertheless had his ’74 Rabbit waxed and ready to drive him home, where Roy Miller was waiting to greet them. Whether Jacobus saw—or only thought he saw—Nathaniel, Yumi, and the others while lying wounded, he couldn’t really remember. In any event, his sight had not come back. The violin might have saved his life, but it didn’t perform miracles.
The hesitation in his new student’s approaching footsteps, almost at the door now, amused Jacobus. He took a final drag of his half-smoked Camel and coughed up some phlegm. He tried to take a deep breath, not for fresh air but to inhale the linge
ring wafts of cigarette smoke from the butt he had just crushed into his new favorite ashtray, the actual back of an old three-quarter-size, finely formed violin, inverted and already black-hardened with the scars of innumerable cigarette burns, all recent. Late summer heat had returned and he was starting to feel crotchety again. He immediately lit another cigarette.
The doctors had ordered Nathaniel to remove the toby jug ashtray from Jacobus’s home while he was still bedridden at the hospital. They had said that if he continued to smoke, it would kill him. He had replied, “If you make me stop, I’ll kill you!” Then he almost coughed himself to death in a fit of hacking laughter.
The new student walked into the room and began to tune.
“Good morning, Kamryn,” said Jacobus. “Just one thing before we start.”
“Yeah? What?”
“Please bow when you come into my studio.”
Do I regret having had such a fine fiddle dismantled? Jacobus asked himself. Was I too rash in seeing justice done? Maybe. Maybe not. What the hell. He extinguished his Camel, pressing the butt into the wood with an extra twist, obliterating the final trace of the violin’s label so that no one could ever tell whether it may have been one that had a drop of blood on it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I first started writing Devil’s Trill more than ten years ago, it was called Violin Lessons and bore little resemblance to the finished product. I had no idea how to get a book published, and so when I read the jacket to Katharine Weber’s eminently enjoyable novel The Music Lesson and saw that she, like I, had a connection to Yale University, I figured “what the hell?” and wrote her a letter asking for guidance.