“Anyway, yesterday at the church social Miss Borg gave a talk about people finding fortunes in their attics — in old stamps and books and things; so afterwards I asked her — just as a joke — about old violins, and she came by today, and — come in and see it.”
Miss Borg was still there, standing by the big round dining-room table. She’s a little old lady with white hair, and she looks nothing like the terror she is teaching history at Borgville High School. The violin was on the table, and she was gazing at it as if it were the Holy Grail in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, which is one of the numerous epics the students at Borgville High have stuffed into them.
The violin looked like something that might possibly raise nine cents at a rummage sale. The case was a battered old thing of wood. The hinges were missing, and it had been held together with a couple pieces of rope. The one string left on it had snapped, and the whole contraption was falling apart. There were loose pieces in the bottom of the case, and on the violin there was a big crack along one side, which meant that whatever else it might do, it would never hold water. There was loose hair all over the place, except on the bow where it belonged.
Miss Borg said when she was a little girl she heard the Peterson family legend about Old Eric’s valuable violin, but she doubted that anyone, including Old Eric, ever realized just how valuable it was. She shined a flashlight down into the violin, and said, “Look!”
Grandfather looked, and then I looked. Pasted inside the violin was a piece of paper, brown with age, and on the paper were some letters. The ink had faded, and some of it was illegible, but with Miss Borg’s help I was able to make out: ...adivarius Cremon...
“That’s the label,” Miss Borg whispered. “See — it says so right here.” She had a thick book called Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, and under “Stradivari, Antonio,” it said, “His label reads: ‘Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis. Fecit Anno...’ ”
Grandfather scratched away at his head. “I guess it might say that. The only way to tell whether or not it’s genuine is to take it to an expert. I suppose if it’s a valuable instrument it could be fixed up.”
“A violin maker could take it all apart and put it together again,” Miss Borg said. “It would be as good as new. Better. An old instrument is always better than a new one.”
“Maybe,” Grandfather said. “My advice would be not to get excited about it until you hear what an expert has to say.”
Mrs. Peterson wasn’t listening. “What do you think it’s worth?”
“I’ve heard that Stradivarius violins bring as much as fifty thousand dollars,” Miss Borg said. “Or more. Of course some are worth more than others. Even if it isn’t one of the best ones it should bring quite a lot. Five or ten thousand dollars, at least.”
“Five or ten thousand!” Mrs. Peterson said.
“Since it’s Saturday, you won’t be able to do anything with it before the first of the week,” Grandfather said. “First thing Monday morning.”
“Five or ten thousand!” Mrs. Peterson said again. Most likely she’d just moved the wedding reception from the church basement to the big room above the Star Restaurant.
“Maybe there’s someone in Jackson who’d know about it,” Grandfather said. “On Monday...”
Mrs. Peterson still wasn’t listening. She looked again at the violin — looked at it as if she was seeing it for the first time — and then she sat down and started to cry. Grandfather dragged me out of there, and on the front porch we met Hazel Morgan, Dorothy Ashley, and Ruth Wood, all coming to see the violin. Half a dozen others were on their way, from various directions. It was then I noticed that Mrs. Beyers hadn’t come in with us. She was out spreading the Good Word...
Grandfather hadn’t anything to say on the way home, or even after we got there.
As soon as it stopped raining he went over to Main Street to borrow the Detroit paper from Mr. Snubbs, who runs the Snubbs Hardware Store; and the rest of the day, whenever I mentioned the violin, he hushed me up.
“Whether or not a violin was made by Stradivarius is just not the kind of question I can settle,” he said. “I refuse to waste any energy even thinking about it.”
“Miss Borg shouldn’t have spouted off about all those dollars before they find out for sure,” I said.
“Miss Borg should be shot.”
On Saturday night all the stores in Borgville stay open late so the farmers can spend the money they were too busy to spend all week, and almost everyone comes to town. That night the talk up and down Main Street was about Elizabeth Peterson’s violin. Suddenly everyone in town remembered hearing a grandfather, or an uncle, or some elderly person down the street tell about what a remarkable fiddler Old Eric Peterson was, and what a valuable violin he had.
The queer thing was that my Grandfather Rastin, who usually remembers such things better than anyone else, was acting skeptical about the whole business.
He and some other old-timers were sitting on the benches in front of Jake Palmer’s Barber Shop, and when Grandfather suggested that it might be better to get an expert’s opinion before sticking a price tag on the violin, Nat Barlow got pretty hot about it.
“Everyone knows it’s valuable,” he said. “My father heard Old Eric say so himself. Anyway, Old Eric played dances all over this part of the state, even some in Detroit, and everyone said he was the best fiddler they’d ever heard. Why wouldn’t he have a valuable violin?”
“Is Sam Cowell in town tonight?” Grandfather asked.
“Haven’t seen him,” Nat said.
“How much would you say his car is worth?”
Everyone laughed.
“That pile of junk?” Nat said.
“There isn’t a better driver in Borg County than Sam Cowell,” Grandfather said. “Seeing as he’s such a good driver, why wouldn’t he have a valuable car?”
That shut Nat up for the next hour or so.
“I’ve been trying to remember a few things about Old Eric,” Grandfather said. “He loved to talk about the time he played for Ole Bull, and Ole Bull...”
“Who — or what — is Ole Bull?” someone asked.
“He was a famous Norwegian violinist. One of the greatest.” Grandfather said. “He was touring the country giving concerts, and Old Eric went way off to Cincinnati, or Chicago, or somewhere to hear him. He took his fiddle along, on the chance of picking up some money along the way, and after the concert he got to meet Ole Bull. He introduced himself as another Norwegian fiddler, and Ole Bull asked him to play. Old Eric...”
The crowd wasn’t much interested in Ole Bull.
“They tell me a Wiston reporter was over to see Elizabeth this evening,” Bob Ashley said. “There’ll be a piece about the violin in the Wiston newspaper.”
“Got your oats in yet, Bob?” Grandfather asked.
“I don’t suppose a Stradivarius violin turns up every day,” Bob said.
That was when Grandfather headed for home, looking mighty disgusted. I caught up with him and asked for his version of the Peterson family legend.
“I never heard of any legend,” he said. “Old Eric may have told his family something about that violin, and whatever he told them was so, because Old Eric was no fool. If it was a Stradivarius violin he’d have known it, and so would everyone else in Borgville, which makes it seem odd that I never heard anything about it. On the other hand, I do remember something about Old Eric’s fiddle, but I haven’t been able to recollect what it is.”
After Sunday dinner the next day, we sat on our front porch and watched the procession to Elizabeth Peterson’s house. Those who hadn’t seen the violin yet wanted to see it, and a lot of those who’d seen it wanted to see it again, and traffic on our street was heavy.