Over my shoulder I heard, “You part of the stakeout, then?”
“I guess you figured us out, all right.”
What stakeout?
“Share some with the guys in blue, hey?”
“You got it.” I hoped the man was hallucinating.
The main lobby was half a flight above the loading dock, and almost a full flight above street level. It had no reception desk, just a tenant directory, a pair of elevators, and signs directing people to the restrooms and phones. I decided the vending machines, if any, would be near an easy source of water piping, and I followed the signs. A wide corridor had storefront windows looking into some of the tenant spaces, and as I passed one of them, I did a double-take, backed up a half step, and stopped altogether.
The sign said “G. B. Feinstein, Luthier: Fine Musical Instruments.” Did I know that name from somewhere? Inside, a man was carving a large piece of wood that was attached somehow to a pedestal. He was peeling off long, curly shavings as if he had a plane, but he used only a large chisel or gouge, pushed with one hand and guided artfully with the other. Must have been one hell of a sharp chisel, I thought. The piece he was working on was the face or back of a bass fiddle, and he bent over it with total intensity and focus, a dead cigarette hanging from his mouth and drops of sweat clinging to his forehead and eyebrows. He would be tall if he stood up, I thought. He had bony elbows and shoulder blades poking out in every direction, a nose that may have extended further than his cigarette, and wire spectacles perched on top of it. Ichabod Crane with a leather apron. And quite possibly, just the man I wanted to talk to.
I knocked on the door, but he didn’t look up from his work. A louder knock worked no better. I tried the knob, found it unlocked, and let myself in. I walked past formal glass display cases and walls lined with dark, gleaming violins. Toward the back, the space got more shop-like, with heavy wood benches cluttered with tools and strange-looking parts. I went up to the chisel-master, who still had not acknowledged my presence. As I got closer, he spoke without looking up.
“I don’t sell out of the shop,” he said. He must have belonged to the same union as the bakery-truck driver.
“You’ll have to go to a dealer, one of the better ones.” When that didn’t get rid of me, he added, “I do some commissions, but right now, I’m booked three years in advance.”
“I’m not looking for an instrument,” I said.
Finally, he put down the chisel and looked up. “Then why are you here? Feinstein is the master. Everybody who comes here is looking for an instrument.” He spoke with a slight accent that might have been German. It made him sound dignified and maybe important.
I held out a package of warm cinnamon rolls in their steamed-up plastic wrap.
“Got any coffee?” I said.
“I can make some
macht schnell
.” German, it was. “You are proposing an exchange?”
“More like share and share alike.”
“Sharing is good.” If his eyes had been heat lamps, the plastic wrap would have melted. “What is, as they say, the catcher?”
“I’m also looking for some information.”
“I got out of the spy business years ago. What kind of information?”
“Information about old violins,” I said.
“Ah, yes. Well. Now, that would be quite another matter. What I do know about old violins could fill books. How much time do you have?”
I thought about the alleged police stakeout, and the fact that wherever it was, it did not appear to be in this workshop.
“For once in my life,” I said, “time is not a problem.”
Cinnamon Rolls and Other Weighty Topics
I followed Feinstein to the back of the shop, where he cleared glue pots and strange-looking tools off a counter and fired up an industrial gas ring burner. He brewed his coffee in a way I had heard of but never seen before, boiling the grounds, all unfiltered, in an enameled metal pot and then throwing in a raw egg to collect the grits. He measured the grounds with his hand, and the water not at all. Four fistfuls to a splash or two. I didn’t want to know what he did with the egg afterwards.
“For the instruments, I have precision, instinct, and soul,” he said. “But first and always, precision. For coffee, however, one needs only instinct.”
“Was I complaining?”
“You looked skeptical.”
“Sorry. Sometimes, that’s the only look I’ve got. Probably comes from the Scottish side of my family.”
“Poor fellow. I’ll ignore it, then. Now, let us see if those rolls are still hot enough to melt butter.”
He opened a drawer in a wooden parts cabinet and took out a dish with a slab of pale yellow stuff and a small spatula. My heart threatened to rat me out to my doctor later, and I told it to shut up and enjoy itself. I can always give up doctors, but real butter, on hot rolls, is a biological imperative. The rich smell of the boiling coffee began to overcome the atmosphere of hide glue, varnish, and musty-sweet wood dust, as we ripped open a package of rolls and performed the definitive melt-test. The butter didn’t go all the way to drizzly-flowy, but it slumped down agreeably, mixing with the white frosting, and we pronounced it a success. I inhaled the first roll, I think. Never even put a tooth mark in it. Then I slowed down and savored the next one a bit. The instrument man looked me over between bites and talked around a mouthful of dough and topping.
“You will forgive the possible presumption,
mein Herr
, but I don’t see you as quite seedy enough to be a musician or wealthy enough to be a serious collector. What is your interest in old violins, exactly?”
“No apology needed. I should have introduced myself before.” I wiped off my hand on my pocket lining, gave him a business card, and told him my name. “I’m a bail bondsman, and I seem to have acquired an old violin as a security forfeit. I don’t know what it’s worth on the open market, but one person may have literally died for it, and at least two others are willing to break the law to get their hands on it. I’d like to figure out why.”
“A good story.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it was a lie. Fine violins often have an air of intrigue about them. The great ones, tragedy and perhaps even death. So a good, preferably dark, story is appropriate. It’s no guarantee of quality, mind you, but it’s a start.”
He took a rag from the bench top and used it to protect his hand while he poured boiling coffee into two battered mugs. I was surprised at how gritty it did not look, though it was certainly dark. He left about an inch of space at the top of each mug, and I was about to tell him that I didn’t take cream, when he produced a bottle of cognac from another cabinet and held it out inquiringly. I gave him my best “why not?” expression, and he topped off both mugs, adding a spoonful of sugar from a bag in another cubbyhole. Now we had all the major food groups: alcohol, sugar, caffeine, and fat. I blew on the hot liquid, took a sip, and remembered what it used to be like to believe in heaven. He bit into another roll and went on.
“You say this violin is very old?”
“All I said was ‘old,’ but it’s supposed to be four hundred years and counting.”
“Supposed to be.”
“It has an appraisal document”
“Does it also have a label?”
I shook my head. “I’m told it’s an Amati. I don’t know where to look for a label.”
“Ah,” he said. He wiped his hands on a wet rag and passed it to me to do the same. “Come over here. I show you some things.”
He selected a smallish, light-colored violin from his wall display and took it over to a bench, where he turned on an intense fluorescent drafting lamp.
“This is a Roger Baldwin,” he said. “Not a great instrument, but certainly a very good one.”
“So you’re a collector, as well as a maker?”
“All makers are also collectors and repairers. That’s how one learns the possibilities of the art. That’s also why one locates in a city like this, with a famous chamber orchestra and a symphony nearby. It means there are lots of available examples. Now look at this one.”
“Is this the same Baldwin as the pianos?”
“It is not. This violin is from a one-man shop of some obscurity. It’s about a hundred and fifty years old.”
“It’s sort of small.” That was as close as I could come to perceptive observation.
“Very good. It is what was once called a knapsack fiddle. For wandering musicians, you see. Quite possibly, it was carried by some soldier in your Civil War. This one is better than most of the type, though. Look here.” He pointed out the little stripe around the edge of the top, which he called the “purfling,” and told me what kind of wood it ought to be made of, which it was. Then he talked about the arch of the top and back. “It’s like the curve of a beautiful woman’s buttock,” he said. “Every one is slightly different, a subtle variation on a timeless theme. But even so, there is good and there is not so good. A true connoisseur learns to feel the quality of the line, even though he cannot define it. This one has a fine, if somewhat flamboyant character. Now take a look inside.” He handed me a tiny flashlight and a little mirror on a stick, like dentists use.
“What am I looking for?”
“Just tell me what you see.”
I slipped the mirror down through one of the f-shaped holes and panned it around. I really needed another set of tools and at least one more hand. If I used the mirror to direct the light, then I couldn’t get my eye anyplace where I could see what it was reflecting. I decided I was not on the threshold of a new vocation here.
“What do you see?”
“I see the dark, dusty inside of a very complicated-looking box.”
“That’s a start. What else?”
“Some kind of stick going between the top and the bottom.”
“That’s the sound post, to keep the tension on the strings from collapsing the top. Ignore that. It’s most unlikely to be the original.”
“They wear out and have to be replaced?”
“The sound box changes shape slightly, with seasoning, and it needs a different size post.”
“Good thing, since I can’t get a good look at it, anyway.”
“Tell me what you
can
get a look at.”
“There’s a piece of paper that could be a label, but I can’t make out any of the printing on it. It isn’t under the hole.”
“It shouldn’t be, it should be in the center. Symmetry is important in a thing that is made to resonate. It would have been put on before the box was assembled. But it could be a fake, anyway, or a later addition. The real maker’s mark would be a brand, literally, scorched into the wood, under the label. Paper eventually crumbles, and nothing is easier than to add a new piece. Sometimes there are several layers, just accumulated. You wouldn’t believe the inscriptions I find on some of them.”
“Like, ‘If you can read this, you’re very, very small’?”
“More often a blessing, or a curse to scare off thieves. Sometimes something about the owner. This particular one identifies the maker as one R. Baldwin, and it’s actually written backwards, meant to be read with a mirror.”
I moved my eye to the hole that didn’t have the mirror in it, shined the light in the other one, and made out the faint capitals R and B in the reflection.
“I’ll be damned.”
“It dates it, you see, but only forward. It means that we’re well into the industrial age, when specialized mirrors would have been widely available. What else do you see?”
I felt like quitting while I was ahead, but he seemed most insistent.
“There’s a lot of little ridges and grooves in the back,” I said. I wondered if the rolls were getting cold yet.
“Tool marks, from gouges and scrapers. You see? You are more observant than you think. The marks also date it, this time the right way. It means that the production predates the invention of sandpaper. You can tell that from the outside of the instrument, too, but it takes a more practiced eye. You have to learn to look for something called ‘truing lines.’”
“And those are good?”
“Not necessarily, but like your story, they are a start.”
This whole conversation was starting to drive me crazy, and I turned away to have some more laced coffee and break open another package of rolls. The last one seemed to have evaporated. Feinstein topped off our cups and started another pot brewing. For a while, we ate and drank in silence. I looked at the walls covered with violins and decided I was no closer than I had been to knowing why one was worth three grand and another one twenty times that, much less why one would be worth killing over. Feinstein might have read my mind, or at least my face.
“It’s a funny market, the market in old instruments,” he said. “It’s like the art market, only it isn’t.”
I must have been feeling the alcohol, because that made perfect sense to me. “Of course,” I said.
“A certain Van Gogh, say, or a Michelangelo is worth such and such many million because there is only one of it and there are never going to be any more and the world has been taking care of it for a very long time now.”
“And because somebody is willing to pay that much for it.”
“Just so. It has nothing whatever to do with anybody getting a million dollars’ worth of uplifting inspiration from looking at it.”
“I personally think the same argument can be applied to a Mercedes Benz.”
“That’s not as stupid as it sounds.”
That sounded stupid? How strong was that cognac, anyway?
“They are both a matter of assigned value.” he said. “But with a violin, there is such a thing as intrinsic value, as well. It is, after all, made to play music. Sadly, the people best able to judge the real quality are those least likely to be able to afford it.”
“Musicians.”
He nodded and took more coffee. “Scum of the earth. Steal from their own mothers to buy a set of strings. Cash in advance for them, always.”
It was hard for me to see Amy Cox in that light, but I nodded anyway, to encourage him. Or maybe the evening had just started to turn mellow.
“So musicians get hired to evaluate instruments they can’t afford to buy?”
“Mostly, they do not. Nobody wants to take the chance that the Stradivarius they just paid half a million dollars for sounds like a cigar-box fiddle. And it can happen. So the serious buyer settles for pedigrees and proofs of age. Nobody argues with age.”
“They just don’t make them like they used to,” I said.
“Utter rubbish,” he said, spilling coffee with a dismissive gesture. “We make them as well or better than they ever did. And there’s no secret varnish, either. No secrets of any kind, just the finest workmanship you can get out.” He calmed down, refilled his mug from the new pot, and took another sip. “But a new instrument is a new instrument, and there’s no arguing with that. It won’t find its true voice for at least twenty years, sometimes twice that long. And its soul? Well, if it’s going to have one at all, it won’t acquire that for at least a hundred.”
“Or four?”
“Four hundred years is better, sometimes.”
“Why only sometimes?”
“Sometimes it destroys itself before then. You know anything about engines, Mr. Jackson?”
“Engines? You mean like in cars?”
“Exactly like that.”
“I turn the key, and mine goes. If it doesn’t go, I call a garage.”
“How nice for you. When I was a young man in the Army, before I had a vocation, I worked on engines. I learned that diesel engines, specifically, have a peculiar trait. They are the easiest to start, smoothest, and most powerful when they are at the end of their natural life span, ready for a complete overhaul or a trip to the junkyard. The same thing is true of violins.
“It is said that the sweetest sound ever heard from a set of strings was once when Jascha Heifetz played the Tchaikovsky concerto—there is only one, you know—on his Stradivarius, at Carnegie Hall. People who don’t even like Tchaikovsky wept and cheered and gave him a fifteen-minute standing ovation.” He took a bite of Danish and a gulp of coffee and got a far-away look in his eyes, picturing the scene. “After the concert, he put the instrument in its case, the same as always, and it immediately fractured into a thousand splinters, impossible to repair. The timing of its life, you see, was exquisite.”
“This is true?”
“True? Probably not. I have heard the story many times. Sometimes it is Heifetz and the Tchaikovsky and sometimes it is Isaac Stern playing a Bach partita or Itzhak Perlman and a Paganini caprice. It is most likely a professional myth. But the heart of it is true enough. The instrument, any stringed instrument, is at its sweetest just before it dies.”
“And they all die?”
“Just like you and me, my friend.” He leaned over to clink his mug against mine in a toast to the essential sadness of the universe. It seemed like the right thing to do.
“But not just yet,” I said.
He nodded solemnly, then smiled. “But not just yet.”
“Of course,” he added, “some come to an earlier end than others. Getting put in a museum or a private collector’s case is a kind of early death, rather like being embalmed while you’re still walking around. Then there are accidents and weather and just general lack of care. And of course, there are always the Gypsies.”
“Gypsies kill violins?” I tried to picture some swarthy, mustachioed type, like Omar Sharif, with a bandana on his head and a billowing peasant shirt, plunging his dagger into the f-hole of an old fiddle, but it just didn’t work.
“They don’t kill them, exactly. Not right away, at least. A Gypsy could take that Baldwin, scrape down the inside to sweeten the tap tone, loosen the purfling, and make it sound like an Amati, for a while. But it wouldn’t last long after that.”
“A mere hundred years or so?”
“If it did, then it would be truly a fine violin, a real collector’s item, but that is most unlikely. Who knows? I, myself, do not know the exact life of the violins I build. But I know that a Gypsy would take one, make it sound like an instant masterpiece, and shorten its life dramatically. You never heard of a Gypsy violin?”