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  DEVIL’S TRILL

  DEVIL’S TRILL

  GERALD ELIAS

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  DEVIL’S TRILL. Copyright © 2009 by Gerald Elias. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Elias, Gerald.

  Devil’s trill / Gerald Elias. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-54181-1

  ISBN-10: 0-312-54181-3

  1. Violin teachers—Fiction. 2. Music—Competitions—Fiction. 3. Musical fiction. I. Title.

  PS3605.L389D48 2009

  813’.6—dc22

  2009012722

  First Edition: August 2009

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedicated to my father, Irving Albert Elias,

  who loved to write and to listen to music

  PROLOGUE

  Other violins have been stolen. Great works of art have been plucked from their exalted perches in museums. But 1983 witnessed one sensational theft that, for its complexity and lethal repercussions, is unequaled. Some of you may have a distant recollection of a news item in your local press when a unique violin by Antonio Stradivari was stolen. The story made headlines for a short while, even reaching the desk of CNN, which reported it with great fanfare and modest accuracy. As leads in the investigation dried up, however, the story faded from front pages like last week’s weather. As a result, few ever heard the tragic consequences of the whole affair, and almost no one, not even the official investigators, fully appreciated the depth and intricacy of motives and relationships that caused such a bizarre and unfortunate series of events.

  It is worth briefly mentioning here the pivotal moment—well known within classical musical circles—in the life of violinist Daniel Jacobus, the central figure in this story, whose life, liberty, and unflinching pursuit of unhappiness were put in dire jeopardy. Like his hero, Beethoven, Jacobus was on the verge of a stellar career as a performer when he was afflicted by life-shattering illness. In Jacobus’s case it was foveomacular dystrophy, a rare genetic mutation in which blood vessels in the eye grow too fast. The result is leakage of blood and fluid into the eye, which, if not promptly treated, can cause blindness within twenty-four hours.

  Foveomacular dystrophy struck Jacobus on the eve of his audition for the concertmaster position of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. True to form, he eschewed medical attention, played his legendary audition from memory (since he couldn’t see the music), and won it hands down against some of the finest orchestral violinists of his day. When his eyesight failed to return even after intensive treatment, the BSO had no choice but to award the concertmaster position to the runner-up. Jacobus spent months in seclusion, and when he eventually emerged from his self-imposed chrysalis he was transformed, declaring his intention to be a teacher. With a remarkably unorthodox teaching style, Jacobus produced students who over the years graced countless concert stages and teaching studios with their presence, or not, but in almost all cases ended up with a far more precious gift, an abiding love of classical music. Thus, as was the case with Beethoven, an individual’s personal tragedy became the world’s gain.

  At the same time, Devil’s Trill is about the psychological and physical abuse heaped upon children by a cutthroat world of unscrupulous teachers, managers, agents, and even parents. These children happen to have the rare natural gift (or, some would say, curse) of being able to move their fingers with amazing dexterity and to make a musical instrument sound astonishingly good, even though the children themselves may not have the vaguest idea what they’re doing, or why. Thrown into grueling, merciless competitions against each other at an age when they are still emotionally vulnerable in order to satisfy some artificial standard of “perfection,” these competitions are no less cruel to these children than cockfighting is to its bloody contestants. And cockfighting is illegal.

  Finally, the book is about an often-shadowy netherworld of violin dealing, where dark currents of greed swirl quietly through the seemingly dignified white-tie-and-tail world of classical music. In the current market, where good violins are no longer affordable to the professional musicians who would play them, fragile masterpieces from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries become a currency of obsession to dealers and collectors, and scruples are as rare as the instruments themselves.

  He dreamed one night, in 1713, that he had made a compact with the Devil, who promised him to be at his service on all occasions; and during this vision everything succeeded according to his mind. In short, he imagined he gave the Devil his violin, in order to discover what kind of musician he was; when to his great astonishment, he heard him play a solo so singularly beautiful and executed with such superior taste and precision, that it surpassed all he had ever heard or conceived in his life.

  So great was his surprise and so exquisite his delight upon this occasion that it deprived him of the power of breathing. He awoke with the violence of his sensation and instantly seized his fiddle in hopes of expressing what he had just heard, but in vain; he, however, then composed a piece, which is perhaps the best of all his works (he called it the “Devil’s Sonata”), but it was so inferior to what his sleep had produced that he declared he should have broken his instrument and abandoned music forever, if he could have subsisted by any other means.

  —As told to Joseph-Jérôme Lefrançais de Lalande by

  Giuseppe Tartini in his “Voyage d’un Français en Italie,”

  and translated by Dr. Charles Burney

  The trill of the devil from the foot of the bed.

  —Giuseppe Tartini, inscribed in his Sonata in G Minor, published 1798

  INTRODUCTION

  The Life and Death of Matteo Cherubino,

  “Il Piccolino,” by Lucca Pallottelli (ca. 1785),

  translated by Jonathan Gardner (1846)

  The wintry midday light, cold and unforgiving, passed through the stained-glass image of the Madonna high above, casting the bloodred of her velvet-covered bosom onto the sleeping face of Matteo Cherubino. The unnatural ray harshly highlighted its features—deep, worried furrows etched in his brow; darkened shadows of his unshaven cheek masking faint scars of youthful smallpox; the latent insolence of his protruding chin and its resultant underbite. Indolent dust particles floating in the chamber were momentarily radiated as they strayed without purpose into the column of pale crimson.

  “Porca Madonna,” muttered Cherubino. He turned his back on the Virgin’s light and tugged the coverlet over his head. But was it this light or was it the distant sound of horses’ hooves on cobblestones that had roused him? He was gripped by an undefined sense of doom. He felt suffocated by the dense mass of a feather pillow in which he had buried his head.

  Awakening with his head on an unfamiliar pillow was not the specific cause of his anxiety or an altogether unusual circumstance for Matteo Cherubino. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely for this reason, it took him a moment to recall whose lithe form was snoring contentedly beside him, still in the shadows.

  “M—!” he said to himself in disgust.

  That grave, intangible feeling of oppression increased in proportion to Cherubino’s level of consciousness. Layers of heavy wool weighed down upon him. The Duchess’s arm, which only a few hours before had been so magically graceful, now was a heavy iron chain across his chest, strapping him down like the Inquisitor’s instrument of torture. Yet he was reluctant to move it, lest she wake.

  From the cavernous fireplac
e, he was assailed by the acrid odor of damp ash. Those same ashes were the humble remains of the great flame that had blazed along with their ardor and had so recently cast their undulating silhouettes on the chamber’s massive stone walls.

  He turned his head toward an unlikely sound. A rat brazenly gnawed at the same pigeon carcass on which they themselves had feasted and then had carelessly tossed, between bouts of familiar intimacy, in the general direction of the hearth.

  Paolina Barbino, Duchess of Padua, continued to sleep. Cherubino smelled her spittle, which had traced its way from the side of her mouth to his pillow. The scent of her quiet exhalations mingled the earthy black truffles and chestnuts with which the pigeons had been stuffed with Tuscan red wine.

  Cherubino also smelled himself. He wanted to dress and leave.

  “M—,” he repeated to himself.

  He, Matteo Cherubino, the great Piccolino, surrounded by such opulence—human and otherwise. Who would have believed it? Who would have imagined he would be repulsed by it?

  Born in a cold, leaky hut on February 29, 1656, on the outskirts of the Umbrian hamlet of San Fatucchio, Matteo was the thirteenth and last child in a family of traveling entertainers—actors, acrobats, musicians. As he grew—or, more precisely, grew older—Matteo became aware of two things: the small stature of the family circus and of himself. Having been born on the one day that occurred only every fourth year, he seemed to have been cursed with a body that was growing at the same unnaturally slow rate. After a while Matteo stopped growing altogether. Siblings began calling him Piccolino, “Little One.” With such a large family it was easier to remember this appellation than his Christian name.

  Matteo’s size disrupted the timing of the family’s acrobatics routine, and any of his efforts at dramatic acting were inevitably received with howls of laughter. Matteo was given the jobs of providing background music and of passing the hat to collect meager offerings. Year after year the family wound its way along endless trails of San Fatucchios through the Umbrian hills, by and large following the same trail Hannibal forged thousands of years before in his victorious campaign against the Romans on the shore of Lake Trasimeno. The Cherubinos, however, were less in search of glory than in having enough food to evade their own enemy, starvation.

  Thus they plodded from town to town—Castiglione del Lago, Tuoro, Passignano—on and on, day after day, through the malaria-infested swamps of the lowlands, setting up their little circus on whatever day the local market was held. And always they sought out the prime location next to the porchetta stall, where sweaty townspeople swarmed to feast on whole pig being roasted on a spit, stuffed with garlic, rosemary, fennel, the pig’s own liver, and olive oil. At every opportunity, the Cherubino family would pilfer samples, especially the outer layer of crispy skin and thick fat, darting in while the vendor was serving paying customers. If they were caught, the Cherubinos would shout, “Hey, fair is fair! You watch our act for free! This makes things even!” The porchetta vendors, blackened by greasy smoke, would usually respond lustily with a hand gesture signifying more than a difference of opinion but rarely pursued it further.

  Matteo began his musical career on plucked instruments—lutes, guitars, mandolins. They provided good accompaniment—quiet and unobtrusive. He could patter on for hours improvising lilting melodies or lively rhythms, depending on the drama at hand. However, after some time Matteo grew restless with these instruments. In his heart he heard music that was bigger, grander, and brilliant.

  These lutes are fine for a dwarf, he thought. But that’s all.

  Matteo traded some of his collection for a few of the more popular bowed instruments—gambas and viols. There were all shapes and sizes of these, so he had little trouble finding ones suitable for his diminutive stature. He quickly taught himself how to be expert in the use of the bow, whether playing gambas between the legs or viols held on the shoulder.

  These instruments opened up a whole new world of expressive possibilities. The family’s tragedies seemed to become more tragic and the comedies more comic. More coins from the audiences began to be tossed in their direction, and as they multiplied, Matteo’s newfound skill gained the appreciation of the Cherubinos, since feeding a family of fifteen was no easy task, even in the best of times.

  Matteo, though, was not content. He wanted more sound. More brilliance. More power. More passion. More! More! Morose and defiant he became. His dissatisfaction was beginning to disrupt his family’s equilibrium.

  His siblings, with gathering annoyance, constantly scolded him. “Stop moping! Stop complaining!” they shouted, and threatened to expel him from their family troupe.

  They don’t understand, thought Matteo, and he came to despise their small minds and smaller vision.

  “This song in my heart is just beginning to blossom, but now it is only a seedling. In my soul a majestic willow is growing!” he once confessed to a peasant girl who had rejected his amorous advances. He made an oath to himself that someday what he alone heard in his own heart would make another’s break.

  One day in November—a cold, cloudy day with a damp, relentless west wind at their backs—Piccolino and the family troupe reached the monumental Etruscan stone gates of the mighty Umbrian capital of Perugia. Their hearts chilled by the Pope’s monolithic fortress of the Rocca Paolina, they wound their way up and up under its oppressive shadow, through a maze of cobbled lanes—lanes so steep they often required steps—in search of the town square.

  By the time they arrived on the Corso, Piccolino’s legs were aching; it was pitch-dark but for flickering torches held fast in the stone walls of buildings surrounding the square. One of these buildings was an inn from which exuded the savory aroma of stewing cinghiale, wild boar, so the “famiglia cherubini” decided to set up their gear right there for the next day’s performance. Few people passed, and those who did scuttled by furtively, eyes downcast. Every hour or so a dark horseman cantered past. Piccolino protected his arms from the horse’s hooves, which echoed ominously on the paved stones. No one bothered them, but as they bedded down the family wondered if their theater was doomed to fail within this atmosphere of dread.

  The Cherubinos slept. From deep within Matteo’s restless dreams, the sound of music—heavenly music—woke him in the dark. He shook his head in order to dispel the dream and return to his sleep on the cold stone, but the music persisted. The music was real. Matteo rose, standing perfectly still, his head slightly raised, using his ears to ascertain the origin of the sound as a dog would use its nose to seek out the source of the scent of stewing cinghiale.

  Wandering off in the dark, he tripped along ever-narrowing alleyways turning this way and that, ancient alleyways that were already ancient when the Romans conquered this Etruscan city. Sometimes the music grew more distant as he turned in the wrong direction. He worked his way back, feeling his way with his hands on the walls of the connected stone buildings lining the way. He tripped in the stone gutters and stepped in cold effluent, but he hardly cared.

  He turned a corner into a lane barely wide enough to walk through. Then, from inside a formidable stone house, Matteo heard the sound he had been searching for, the sound of his own heart. It was of a string instrument with a voice like a winged angel, soaring and swooping, luminescent as the light of heaven.

  What was this sound? In frantic agitation, little Matteo jumped as high as he could, over and over again, in desperation to see into the window from which pale light beckoned. A lone passerby backed away, fearful that what appeared to be a demented dwarf was in the grip of some diabolical fit. She muttered, “Gesù Cristo, salvemi,” and gave him the hand sign to ward off evil contagion.

  Matteo catapulted himself against the massive wooden front door with all his might. The pitiful thud of his body silenced the music. Matteo leaned against the stone wall, panting from his exertions. From inside the house came the sound of approaching footsteps.

  A bolt slid. The door opened a crack. A shadowed face, momentarily pe
rplexed at not seeing anyone or anything, finally looked down upon Matteo’s heaving little frame.

  “Sì? E che vuoi?” the face said, with cultivated disdain.

  “You must tell me . . . You must tell me . . . That instrument . . . What is that instrument you are playing?” gasped Matteo.

  “Why,” said the face, smugly amused, “that instrument is a violin. Everyone’s playing it these days. Didn’t you know?”

  A sound came from deep within the house—a woman’s sound—and the rustling of sheets. The face turned away and then briefly back to Matteo, but without further effort at civility. The door to the house closed, but the door to Matteo’s heart opened.

  In Italy, the golden age of the violin had been blazing with blinding brilliance. Matteo sold all of his old lutes and gambas to get this new kind of instrument. He wasn’t the only one either. Within just a few generations, the violin had swept across the musical world of Europe, overwhelming the traditional string instrument families like a tidal wave. Cascading along its uncharted currents came the great Italian makers—the Amati family, the Guarneris, Stradivari; and the virtuosi-composers—Tartini, Corelli, Vivaldi, Locatelli, Albinoni, Geminiani, Torelli. It was a period of musical virtuosity never equaled before or since. But among these giants, no one was greater—or smaller—than Piccolino.

  Piccolino’s talent blossomed into genius. With unfailing memory he could play the compositions of any of the other virtuosi after a single hearing, and he never had the need to write down a note of his own music. He had the ability to improvise the most dazzling, difficult, and beautiful music imaginable. No longer did he play in the background. Now it was the rest of his family that collected the money, the gifts, the jewels. Weighted pockets brought the return of their equilibrium, as is so often the case.