The Keeper of Secrets (24 page)

Chapter 44

Vermont

October 2008

R
afael left Daniel and David in a London hotel, flew to New York, hired a car, and drove straight to Simon and Levi’s home in Woodsville. He felt humbled by their delight in seeing him.

“Could I have another look at your shoe box?” he asked as they sat at the table and drank coffee.

“Certainly.”

As Simon fetched the box, Rafael drew an envelope out of his jacket pocket.

“But first, I have something to show you.”

He handed two five-by-seven-inch photos to Simon.

“Oh, my!”

The old man almost dropped them, then grasped them tight and brought them closer to his eyes.

“Daniel.”

“Yes, Daniel, and the Guarneri; he did very well.”

Simon caressed the picture with his finger, then handed the bottom one to Levi.

“Look at it, Levi,” he said without taking his eyes from the image.

“It is yours, yes? Do you think?” asked Rafael anxiously.

Simon didn’t answer immediately, and when he looked up, his eyes glistened with unshed tears.

“Yes, Maestro, it’s her. I haven’t seen her for sixty-nine years and she hasn’t changed at all.”

Levi opened the shoe box, picked up the photo of the two boys, and passed it to Rafael.

“Nearly eighty years separate these two photographs,” he said softly, “and it is the same instrument.”

Simon spread the contents on the table.

“Most of this came in the pouch with Levi to London, so he should explain it.”

Levi shifted, and Rafael was reminded of the discomfort he’d seen when the old man spoke about himself on their previous meeting.

“This is a letter of introduction my papa wrote to a man who ran a bank in London, but when I visited, he refused to see me. These two sheets are a list of our possessions, written in my papa’s handwriting; the ink is faded, but you can still read them. These are two portraits, of Mama and Papa. This drawing was done for me by my sister, Rachel. It’s me playing the piano, and there’s a poem she wrote about me on the back. These were my identity cards when I first came to England. And this little pouch contained some precious family jewelry. Most of it was used to buy my freedom, and what was left has been given to Simon’s wife, Ruth, or his daughter-in-law, Cindy. I never married.”

Rafael picked up the list.

“Thank you. Are the violins on this list?”

“Yes, halfway down page one, under musical instruments.”

Rafael read the list silently, shaking his head in amazement as he came to the end.

“A Flemish double virginal. An Italian lute, an ivory serpent; you know, I’ve heard about the serpent but never seen one. Good Lord, what a room that must have been!”

Simon touched his arm. “Oh, it was, Maestro. The walls had music notes in gold leaf all over the wallpaper, I used to try and make them into a tune. There was a huge Steinway grand and such a chandelier. It was Austrian, of the finest crystal, and my, how it sparkled. The instruments were in gold-bound glass cases—”

“He doesn’t want to hear all that!”

Levi’s voice was a harsh mix of impatience, guilt, and the pain of loss. Simon removed his hand, and his shoulders slumped, his eyes downcast. It was a reflex reaction to disapproval, and the poignancy of it pulled hard at Rafael’s heart.

“These are beautiful,” he said as he picked up the miniatures. “You know, I can see why Daniel is such a good-looking boy.”

Elizabeth Horowitz’s proud beauty was perfectly captured in the small likeness. She was turned slightly sideways and her smile was enigmatic, her skin translucent. Benjamin had sparkling eyes, a round face, and an enormous mustache.

“That is how I remember them,” Levi said.

“That is how I like to remember them,” Simon added softly.

“And this is all you have left?”

“Not quite, Maestro.”

Simon retrieved a bundle of faded yellow envelopes tied together with blue ribbon from the sideboard.

“After you left last time, Ruth reminded me that my aunt had given me these. They’re letters written by my mother to her sister-in-law in New York before the war. My aunt had kept them all. Avrum left Berlin in 1925 and settled in New York. He married a wonderful American woman, Esther, and my parents never met her. But my mother loved to tell her about life in Germany, what we did and where she shopped and the parties she had. I think she was showing off a bit, but the letters mention the violins a lot, especially the Guarneri. When Levi and I settled in New York, Avrum and Esther were very good to us both; we were family. When Avrum died, Esther gave me the letters; they are written in German and without her husband to translate, she couldn’t read them.”

Rafael turned the bundle over in his hands.

“That’s wonderful. What a thing to have. Simon, can you have translations made for me? Of the list and the parts of the letters that mention the violin, and a copy of that photograph?”

“Of course, Maestro.”

“Good. I want you to come to London. There are some people I want you to meet. Will you come?”

“We’d be only too happy to.”

He smiled at the two men. “You know there will be many people looking over your grandson’s shoulder when he plays these pieces. Important people from years ago. And he will feel their presence. You will need to help him with that.”

T
housands of miles away Daniel was in the music room of Sergei’s London home, holding the Guarneri in his playing stance. Two feet away a small, middle-aged man sat on a high bar stool and examined him from head to toe. Daniel tried not to look as if he was scrutinizing back. The man was Italian, bald, with a small gray goatee beard and round steel-rimmed glasses. His movements were quick and precise as he darted forward and made a minute change to the angle of the violin relative to Daniel’s body and then moved his fingers on the bow slightly. Then he sat back down on the stool.

“You begin now,” he said solemnly.

Daniel started to play a scale. Halfway through, the man held his hand up, palm facing Daniel.

“
Va bene,
now we address the technique.”

A
s he drove back to New York, Rafael played a game of moral Ping-Pong with himself. At one end of the table was an angry-looking Jeremy, and behind him all the employees of the opera company and the soloists on contract and the audiences who attended performances. At the other end were Simon, Levi, Daniel, Cindy, David, and Roberto. Rafael was the ball, and he flung himself from one end to the other listening to all the arguments.

The most important thing to remember, Maestro, is that surviving the camp doesn’t make you better than all those who died. On one level it was about a strange kind of fate, an arbitrary and completely unpredictable sort of . . . karma.

And what about the people you work with, the orchestra, the singers, the backstage crew, the symposium—don’t you owe something to them, too?

Sergei supports them because of you, he doesn’t live here, he believes in you! If you destroy that, he’ll walk away and Jeremy won’t care a jot for some kid and his talent.

If I can help, I’d be only too glad. I might narrow down the haystacks a little, but it’s still a bloody small needle in a continent of hay, and while you’re thinking about it, consider this. If Valentino’s little masterpiece isn’t a 1729, what is it? When was it made? Is it the priceless missing 1742?

What was he doing? What had he started? There was no doubt in his mind that Sergei’s instrument had belonged to the Horowitz family prior to the war. His conscience told him that it’d been stolen, twice, and they’d never willingly relinquished ownership of it. But Sergei was his friend and they’d shared some long late-night sessions over a vodka bottle. He knew that Sergei’s beloved aunt had been given the violin by her father and she’d played first violin in the Moscow Philharmonic, been a favorite of Shostakovich, and a decorated war heroine, a pilot, but most important the closest thing he’d known to a mother. For all his bravado and bluster, Sergei was a human being and he’d had people ripped away from him, too.

Rafael knew what that was like, how the grief slowly sank into your bones and seemed to settle there; just because you got used to it didn’t mean you ever got over it. Speaking of grief, how much of this dedication to Daniel seeped from behind the door permanently shut in his heart? Miguel, his son, could have been a concert pianist—his future had been tantalizingly close—but Rafael grieved for the child, not the musician. He sighed deeply and frowned. However unpalatable it was, the decision was made and the ball had decided on which side of the table it wanted to be; there was no going back.

Chapter 45

Covent Garden, London

October 2008

F
ive men sat in comfortable armchairs drawn up to the table in a meeting room at the Covent Garden Hotel. Above them hung three red light shades; between them sat water glasses and bowls of sweets. Rafael was at the head of the table, Simon on his left, and Levi on his right. Beside Simon was an excited Roberto di Longi, and beside Levi was a cautious Maestro Carlo Montenagro, the violin tutor. An enlargement of the image of Daniel playing the Guarneri lay in the center of the table. They were all listening to Maestro Montenagro, who spoke slowly and precisely, giving his words due consideration and translating his thoughts from Italian in his head as he went.

“Several years ago I was invited to play, by the mayor of Genoa, both Il Cannone and the Vuillaume replica of it. I have also played once the Lord Wilton, a 1742 Guarneri. They share some, how do you say it? . . . common manners. And this one, she is same. The sound box is short, and the box and belly are thick, remarkably thick—that is because he put so much wood in the resonator. She has the 1742 flame grain in the maple and that very deep orange-red on old-gold ground luster, in the varnish. The 1729 was more a honey color.”

Roberto was nodding, and Rafael could see the joy on his face. It was the first expert confirmation of his theory he’d ever had.

“Most important, she has temper,” Montenagro continued. “Did you know Paganini called the Cannon ‘terribly angry’? He named her for sound she sometimes made, the explosive power, like cannon shot. The boy, he had terrible time with her at the beginning, she not like him at all. He was very nervous of course and so she had a wolf note on the top C on the fourth stri—”

“For me as well!” Simon cried excitedly and then raised his hand to his mouth. “Oh my, I’m sorry, gentlemen; you must forgive me. I battled that wolf note so many times.”

Rafael touched his arm. “Don’t apologize, Simon. You know that note; that’s a good thing.”

Montenagro waited a moment and then resumed.

“But when he relax, she tunes herself. Such a thing is what a 1742 Guarneri does. So I agree with you, Roberto. I did not look at her label, but she sounds and looks like a 1742. I have thought this for some time.”

Roberto cleared his throat. “Thank you, Maestro. I can’t tell you what it means to hear you say that. I would like to add a couple of other points, if I may. The
f
holes are longer, so obviously a Guarneri trait, but these are so much more elegant than his usual ones. He took such care. And look at the scroll; it’s rugged and it has his tool marks, but it was clearly made after Giuseppe Giovanni Battista Guarneri, his father and mentor, died and we know that was either 1739 or 1740. His scrolls changed dramatically after his father died, and this is obviously a later one.”

Montenagro took a photograph from his pocket and laid it on the table next to the other one. The two violins looked identical.

“This also is most interesting. This violin, it also has one-piece maple back and an orange varnish on old-gold ground. It’s a famous 1742, known as the Wieniawski, after Henryk Wieniawski, one of the greatest virtuosos of the nineteenth century, and owned by Mary Galvin since 1998. There are two things about it you should know.”

Everyone was staring at the picture of the second violin.

“Guarneri del Gesú, he used to make his violins in pairs, sometimes, not always. There are violins that look almost identical, but this one, it has no pair. I believe very much that this, the Wieniawski, is companion violin to the Guarneri that Sergei Valentino owns.”

“Have you told him this?” Rafael asked sharply.

Montenagro hesitated.

“No. And second, it has interesting history. Richard Talbot bought it in 1932, at Anderson galleries in New York for the princely sum of sixteen thousand dollars. Some French and American soldiers stay at his mansion in Aachen in 1944 and they say a French solider, he finds violin in a hidden vault. He begins to play. An American hears him and offers to buy the violin. So the French solider, he sells it for some packets of cigarettes. Then in 1948, the American GI, he takes it to Rembert Wurtlitzer at the Wurtlitzer office in New York to see if it is worth anything. Rembert recognizes it, of course, and wires London, to Hills, and asks if they know what happened to the Wieniawski Guarneri. They wire back and say it has been stolen from the Talbot house in 1944 and is still missing.”

“What happened next?” It was Simon, and his voice was raw with suppressed hope.

“Many negotiations, but eventually it was returned to Richard Talbot in Aachen, the rightful owner.”

Rafael saw Simon’s fist clench and then relax.

“That’s promising, I think,” he said firmly. “In law, they call it precedent. Roberto, tell us about the label.”

Roberto nodded enthusiastically.

“I believe the label has been altered to read 1729, to obscure the true value. Like the Sloan that was repaired by Bein and Fushi in the 1990s, it read 1734, but they believed it was a 1742 so they changed it back and repaired it. We would need another expert to authenticate that. Comparative acoustic tests and dendrochronology tests to establish the exact age of the wood; those sorts of procedures are easy and reliable.”

Rafael turned to Simon.

“Simon?”

The old man looked across the table at his brother, who gave him a little nod, then sighed deeply.

“If it is our violin—and it is—then the label will read 1729. But the true age is 1742. My papa had it changed by an expert luthier in Berlin in 1935. To make it seem an inferior instrument. He was going to hide it, but I couldn’t bear to stop playing it . . .”

His voice trailed off. Roberto thumped the table with his fist.

“I knew it!”

Rafael smiled at him.

“I know you did. Now, if we all agree that it is a 1742 and that it belongs to Simon and Levi, yes? The question next is, what are we going to do to get it back?”

“Rafael’s right,” Roberto said. “There are two separate issues, proving that it is a 1742 and therefore it is the instrument that these gentlemen lost, and then persuading Sergei to give it back. I have to say, and I know that this is not what you’ll want to hear, I’m certain that there’s nothing any of us could say to him, to persuade him—”

“But it’s ours,” Simon interrupted him, and Rafael could see the intensity in his eyes.

“I know, but he has a family provenance as well, from his grandfather.”

Rafael moved uncomfortably and picked up the photo of Daniel playing. Roberto continued on, seemingly unaware of the emotional hornet’s nest he was entering.

“I suspect the best way will be an official claim. My research has taken me in several directions. The Holocaust Claims Processing Office in New York is one. Also the American Association of Museums has been very active in this area; they have guideline—”

“May I ask something?” Levi spoke for the first time.

“Of course.” Rafael nodded. “You don’t need our permission.”

“How would a claim prove to anyone that the violin is ours? Surely it will come down to our word against his? And we are old men; time is not our most abundant resource, gentlemen.”

He spoke with a quiet dignity and frankness. Simon watched him and nodded sadly.

“To know for sure that it still exists and not to have it, play it, own it, is harder than when we thought it had gone forever,” Simon said suddenly. “It’s more than just an instrument, it’s a symbol . . . a symbol of what we had, what we lost, the people we lost. Nothing reminds me more of my papa than his pride and joy, that violin. It was not just our physical possessions they took; it was the whole fabric of our lives. They robbed us of our family.”

He paused and Rafael could see he was collecting his thoughts, finding the words to make them understand. “Many years ago I watched a German, like me—a music lover, like me—lift it out of its case and play it. Then he told me that I shouldn’t own such a thing and my papa was probably dead. Do you know what I did? I punched him, broke his nose! The wonder is he didn’t shoot me, but it was only 1939. Instead he called me a dirty Jew bastard and hit me with his truncheon, broke my left hand. For five and a half years I survived the worst hell humankind has ever known and I did it by keeping alive my memories, by willpower and by my ability to play the violin. I swore to myself I
would
find my violin, and you think I’m going to give up now, just because I’m an old man?”