It was, in a conventional sense, ugly, yet it sat in the grip with a lithe, easy grace. This was, he felt, a fiddle to be played, not admired. There was not the slightest doubt in his mind it was genuine.
“Well?” the coarse Venetian voice demanded from the darkness.
“There are many fakes around.”
The man snorted. “That’s not a fake.”
“Are you sure? Do you really know what you have here, my friend?”
The man came out to the door and, briefly, appeared to contemplate snatching the fiddle, only to reject the idea the instant it occurred. Daniel puzzled over this.
“Two questions, Englishman. Do you want it? And if you do, where’s the money?”
Daniel had been prepared to dislike this crook, but the depth of his antipathy surprised him. There was something almost insane about the man. The policewoman’s warning was perhaps well-meant. Yet it was impossible to escape the conviction that the man was scared, too, anxious to be done with the deal.
“One more test,” Daniel told him. Inside the lid of the case there was a bow. He reached down and slipped it out of the holder. The hair was loose and curiously dry. He turned the nut to tighten it, then placed the Guarneri beneath his chin.
The man’s eyes flared wildly. “Hey! I didn’t say you could play the damned thing.”
“It’s an instrument. Do you expect that kind of money without me hearing a note?”
The man backed down, sat on a low, dusty bench behind the door. Daniel lifted the bow and played, gingerly, a fragment of a simple Handel sonata.
Long afterwards, when there was time and some much-needed distance from the event, he tried to analyse what had occurred. The primary cause must, he believed, have been the unusual acoustics of the medieval warehouse, with its echoing corners and centuries of damp. The tone of the fiddle was richer and more luxuriant than any he had ever touched. Yet there was something else to the sound it made with those first few notes. The power and strength of its voice rose out of that fat, ugly body like a genie escaping from the bottle. Even with his weak skills, it roared like an angry lion. Played by a true violinist such as Amy, it would surely be astonishing.
He ran through a few bars of the Handel, paused, then brought the bow down hard to crash out a single line from the concerto which now bore his name. A black veil of deep concentration fell upon him. For a second, he imagined himself in a large open room, with strange windows at the front, feeling he was in the presence of the true composer. Yet the mysterious figure was out of sight behind him. He was dazzled by the strange light coming through the glass. Somewhere, past the music, was the sound of screaming. Then his skill and his memory failed him and the queer daydream went with them. The notes died away. He lifted the bow from the strings.
The thief stood in front of him, shaking — with fury, he judged, and with fear also. In his hand, the sharp metal glinting upwards in the sunlight, was a slim blade.
“No more!” the man hissed. “Not another damn thing.”
Daniel stared at him briefly, then placed the fiddle back in its home and tucked the bow into its fastening in the lid. He picked up the dusty case and thrust it out in front of him.
“It’s a fake,” he said confidently. “A very good one, I have to say, and one which may provide the basis for some arrangement between us. But it is a fake nevertheless. Surely you can hear as much?”
The knife slashed through the air a few inches away from his face. “Don’t lie to me!”
Daniel waited a moment and then said simply, “You can take it back if you like.”
After a while, after every last, faint whisper of the ringing tones of the fiddle had disappeared from the miasmic air of the warehouse, the thief nodded, a small act of obeisance, then wound the knife back on itself and placed the weapon in his pocket.
“Good,” Daniel said, and found it hard not to smile. “Shall we talk now?”
28
The saddest loss
Is it in my small room, the third to the right on the third floor, and stare mournfully out of the window at the square of San Cassian, listening to the distant whores and drunks winding their way through the streets. And I can do nothing but weep and damn creation. There was a brief letter from Seville this afternoon. My beloved sister, Lucia, is dead. They speak of some sickness of the stomach. What would the Spanish know of such things? If she had fallen ill here in Venice, Jacopo would have set her right with a single penetrating look and a potion. Now she lies cold in a foreign grave. I shall never hear her laughter again, nor feel the warmth of her soft hand.
Why is she dead? Is this God’s revenge for the way I have played hide-and-seek with Rebecca through His houses these past few weeks? Are these God’s rules? Or those of the men, all wealthy, all worldly, who are His self-appointed ambassadors in this place? What kind of deity would wreak His vengeance on two such as us, young, stupid, happy, and overflowing with the life they would have us believe was His gift in the first place?
And yet… my sister is gone. Some Spanish infection has stolen her precious life. My mind races with possibilities, decisions, actions I might have undertaken which would have meant Lucia would be alive today, smiling as ever, waiting for the world to entertain her. It is all quite futile. Time bears down on us, without mercy, without pause. We have no way of knowing when the jaws of the lion will shut tight around us, and must therefore accept a duty to embrace each hour to the full and let the priests take care of the hereafter. Why should I agonise over whether I have abandoned God? Is it not more relevant to ask whether He has abandoned me, left me alone with my own dark thoughts?
When I was sufficiently composed, I broke the news to Leo. He looked at me queerly. He has had his own losses, I think. Something in his expression seemed to indicate Lucia’s death made me his peer, a co-conspirator in some secret whispering about the true nature of our lives. He came over to the table where I was slumped in misery and placed a hand on my back.
“Lorenzo. I am genuinely sorry to hear this.” There were no tears in his eyes. Since I gave him Rebecca’s music, he has seemed quite preoccupied. “But you must not be surprised.”
I felt some mindless, angry heat rise inside me. “Surprised, Uncle? My sister was twenty-one and as strong as an ox when she left here for Spain. Of course I am surprised.”
“Yes, boy. Yes, boy.” I tire of being addressed as a juvenile. I was about to tell him as much when he said something that quite took my breath away. “But you must know, Lorenzo, it always comes to this. When you love someone, they will leave you, one way or another. Be a solitary man and circumvent the heartache. That’s my advice.”
There is a point in everyone’s upbringing where one realises that adulthood is not synonymous with wisdom. I think I was a late developer in this field. Leo is a fool, a sour, narrow-minded fool to boot. He inhabits a monochromatic universe where the only warmth and joy are those that come from his own introverted thoughts. He gives nothing and, consequently, receives nothing in return.
And he steals too. I looked at the papers on the table which seemed to interest him much more than my loss. One was the frontispiece to a part for Rebecca’s concerto, back from the outside copyists we had been compelled to employ in order to meet Delapole’s deadline. In the place where the composer’s title would normally have been printed — which I assumed would be left blank in the circumstances — I was astonished to see the name “Leonardo Scacchi.”
“Uncle! You cannot do this.”
“Of course not,” he replied with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Not immediately, anyhow.”
“Not at all! This is not your work.”