Paganini's Ghost Read online

  Was I the only person in the room who could see it, who could truly appreciate the greatness that was manifest in every line and curve of the instrument? I didn’t care. I was besotted with it. With her, I should say, for a violin is always female. There were a dozen other people in the room, but I no longer noticed them. I had eyes only for this voluptuous little lady in the box before me—a new love in my life, albeit a fleeting one.

  Enrico Golinelli cleared his throat.

  “Dottor Castiglione, if I might press you.” he said anxiously. “Signor Ivanov’s recital is at eight o’clock, and it is already nearing five.”

  I looked up.

  “Yes, yes, of course. We must get on. Let’s have a look at her, shall we?”

  I reached into the case and grasped the Cannon by the neck. My fingers closed round the wood and I felt a shiver run up my arm, a strange, unsettling tingle. I knew it was ridiculous, but it seemed to me as if I could detect the imprint of Paganini’s fingers on the instrument. I released my grip, my pulse suddenly throbbing.

  “Dottor Castiglione?” Golinelli said. “Is everything all right?”

  He was peering at me with concern, his eyes very large behind his thick spectacles.

  “Yes,” I reassured him. “Everything is fine. It’s just that . . . there are too many people in here. I cannot work with everyone watching.”

  “Yes, I should have thought. We must clear the room.”

  Golinelli looked round and raised his voice.

  “May I ask you all to leave, please. . . .”

  Ludmilla Ivanova opened her mouth to protest, but Golinelli broke in before she could speak.

  “Signora Ivanova and Signor Ivanov excepted, of course. You must stay.”

  “We need to stay, too,” one of the insurance company men said. “We have orders not to let the violin out of our sight.”

  I saw Golinelli hesitate, so I stepped in. This was my workshop, after all. The last thing I wanted was a couple of intimidating security guards standing over me while I tried to do my job.

  “What could possibly happen?” I said. “The violin is safe with me; I can assure you of that. I have worked on many important instruments—Guarneris, Stradivaris—and I have never yet had anything go wrong. The best protection you can give this violin is to wait outside and give me the space to find out what’s the matter with it.”

  The insurance men looked at each other. Then they shrugged and turned towards the door. They ushered everyone else out, then followed, closing the door firmly behind them. Looking through the window, I saw them take up positions on the terrace, from where they could prevent anyone approaching the workshop.

  Only Golinelli, the Ivanovs, and I now remained round my workbench. I lifted the del Gesù out of its case. There was no shiver this time, I was glad to see, just the warm solidity of the maple. I gave it a perfunctory inspection, plucking the strings to check that they were in tune. Then I looked at Yevgeny Ivanov. He was half-hidden by his mother’s formidable bulk.

  “Describe to me the problem,” I said. “What exactly did you hear?”

  Yevgeny stepped to one side, giving me a clear view of his slender face, but before he could say anything, Ludmilla answered my question.

  “It is a slight vibration,” she said. “Like a buzzing noise.”

  “A buzzing noise?” I repeated.

  “Not loud, but Yevgeny can hear it. He can feel it. It disturbs him. He cannot play with that kind of noise in his ear.”

  “And you noticed this when?” I asked, looking at Yevgeny.

  Again, it was Ludmilla who replied.

  “This afternoon. During the rehearsal in the cathedral.”

  “You didn’t hear it before, in Genoa?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Ludmilla said. “Just this afternoon.”

  Golinelli turned to me, rubbing his hands together nervously.

  “As I said earlier, the violin was checked before Signor Ivanov’s concert in Genoa, then again before it was put on the van to be brought to Cremona. Perhaps something has been disturbed by the journey. It really is very important that we diagnose the fault and correct it. Very important. The Cannon is a national treasure.”

  I reached out and stilled his fidgeting hands.

  “Stop worrying,” I said soothingly. “We will find the fault; have no fear of that. And we will put it right.”

  “But time is not on our side, Dottore. We have only a few hours.”

  “We have time enough,” I said.

  I held out the violin to Yevgeny Ivanov.

  “Let me hear it.”

  Yevgeny took his shoulder rest from the case and attached it to the instrument. Then he removed his bow and tightened it. He slid the violin under his chin. That one small act seemed to transform him. The quiet, shy young man suddenly changed and became a different, more confident person. I have noticed this before in great soloists. They often have a humility about them, a self-effacing modesty that seems surprising in a person whose job it is to perform—literally to show off on a stage. But you put them with their instrument and it is as if a missing part of their body has been restored to them. They have become a whole person again.

  He played a sarabande from one of the Bach unaccompanied partitas. I could see, and hear, at once why this unassuming young man had won first prize in the Premio Paganini competition. There was a quality to his playing that was immediately arresting, that made you sit up and listen. His tone was rich and powerful—and that wasn’t solely because of the Cannon—but it also had a haunting sweetness that lingered in the ear. He could draw out a melody, could make his violin sing, perform that magic trick that I always think of as nothing short of miraculous: taking horsehair and gut and a wooden box and making such rapturous music with them.

  “Give me the full dynamic range,” I said. “From pianissimo to fortissimo and back again, on each string in turn.”

  “There . . .” Ludmilla said. “Did you hear it?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “You must have. What is it?”

  “One moment, signora.”

  “But did you hear it?”

  “Yes, I heard it.”

  It was very faint—like the intermittent buzzing of a drowsy wasp outside a closed window—but I could detect it nonetheless. My heart sank. A faint buzzing noise is a luthier’s worst nightmare. The whole raison d’être of a violin depends on vibrations. That is how the sound is produced—from the strings, through the bridge, to the sound post, to the front and back plates and the very air inside the instrument. But a flawed vibration like a buzz could have any number of causes, some minor, some very serious. The problem is identifying which cause, or combination of causes, is responsible for that flaw, and that is never simple. A violin, like the human body, is much more than the sum of its parts. Everything is interconnected; even the tiniest component is important and, when malfunctioning, can have an effect that far outweighs its size.

  “Let me see it,” I said, holding out my hand.

  Yevgeny passed the violin back to me. I held the instrument up and studied it carefully from all sides. My fingers were trembling slightly, my heart fluttering. Il Cannone had been Paganini’s violin for nearly forty years. It was with him throughout his entire mature career, through all the triumphs as he set Italy, and then Europe, ablaze with his dazzling virtuosity. There was history in this violin. What tales it could tell, I thought, if it had a human voice, instead of just a musical one.

  It must have had its share of knocks during those four decades of relentless travelling, jolting round in the back of innumerable stagecoaches and wagons on rough, unmetalled roads as Paganini moved from city to city. But it was still in remarkably good condition for a violin its age. It had been in a museum for the past 150-plus years, of course, although that kind of stifling inactivity is not necessarily good for a string instrument. Without regular playing, they can dry out and shrivel, just like people who are shut away and forgotten.

  Guarneri m
ade it in 1743, during the last two years of his life, when he was at the height of his powers as a luthier. Its dimensions are not excessive, but it feels like a large violin. The ribs and arching are higher than on most of his instruments and the plates are extremely thick—much thicker than Stradivari’s, or the plates of violins we make today. This massive construction is undoubtedly one of the reasons for the Cannon’s impressive tone, but it cannot be the only reason, or we could all copy the measurements and produce an instrument with a comparable sound. Paganini spent years searching for another del Gesù to match il Cannone, but he never found one. It is unique. Its unforgettable voice is due not just to its dimensions but also to those unquantifiable ingredients a luthier adds to his creations—a mixture of love and craft and, in Guarneri’s case, a flamboyant, monstrous genius.

  I checked the strings to make sure they weren’t beginning to fray, then the nut and pegs. The peg box is astounding—cut out with a gouge rather than a chisel, the rough bare wood left unvarnished. The scroll, too, is asymmetrical and somewhat crude in its carving, as if Guarneri couldn’t have been bothered to take much care with it. On the back of the scroll is an ugly red wax seal that was originally on the back plate of the violin—stuck on, in an incredible act of vandalism, by some overzealous Genoan official when the violin was first bequeathed to the city, then moved some years later, equally incredibly, to the scroll, where it has remained like a vivid scab on the face of a beautiful woman.

  “What do you think?” I said to Yevgeny Ivanov. “Can you detect where the buzz is coming from when you play?”

  “Of course he can’t,” Ludmilla said testily. “That’s why we’ve come to you.”

  “Signora,” I said politely. “I was asking for your son’s view.”

  “Yevgeny does not speak much Italian,” Ludmilla said, adding, a little acidly, I thought, “and I’m sure you don’t speak much Russian.”

  “Perhaps there is another language we can use, then?” I said. “Do you speak English, Signor Ivanov?”

  “He can speak Russian, and I will translate,” his mother said. “We are wasting time. Are you going to fix the violin, or not?”

  “Yes, I speak English,” Yevgeny said.

  He spoke quietly, tentatively. His voice was light, but pleasantly warm.

  “What is your feeling?” I said in English. “You are closer to the violin than anyone.”

  “It seems to be low down, when I play on the G string,” Yevgeny replied.

  I examined the left-hand side of the violin, tapping the plates and ribs to see if anything was coming unstuck. Then I took a small torch and a dentist’s mirror and looked through the f-hole at the underside of the front plate where the bass bar is attached. I prayed that there wasn’t a problem with the bass bar, for dealing with it would require the opening up of the violin—not something I had any intention of doing, even if Signor Golinelli were to allow it, and I knew he wouldn’t. The Cannon has a team of very distinguished luthiers looking after it in Genoa. Any work of a serious nature would have to be carried out by them.

  “You have found something?” Golinelli said, his hands beginning to fidget again. “Is it bad? Dottore, you must tell me.”

  “The bass bar looks fine,” I said. “It must be something else. I’ll check the sound post.”

  “Dottore . . .”

  I lifted my head. Yevgeny was gazing at me earnestly, pleadingly, as if he were trying to send me a silent message.

  “Perhaps if you and I . . .” His voice petered out and his eyes flickered from Golinelli to his mother.

  I sensed instinctively—almost telepathically—what he wanted but was too afraid to articulate.

  “Signor Golinelli,” I said. “Signor Ivanov and I need to put our heads together and really get to the bottom of this. And we need to be alone to do it. Would you be so kind as to take Signora Ivanova into my house for a short while? I have tea and coffee and wine in the kitchen. Make yourselves at home.”

  Ludmilla started to protest, but I cut her short.

  “It is the only way, signora. Your son and I can sort this out.”

  “Well, really, this is ridiculous!” Ludmilla exclaimed indignantly. “This surely isn’t necessary.”

  “I believe it is,” I said firmly. “We need peace and quiet, the workshop to ourselves, to resolve this.”

  “If you really think so . . .” Golinelli said uncertainly.

  “I do,” I said. “I will call you back as soon as we have anything concrete to tell you.”

  Ludmilla didn’t move. Her mouth was set tight and she was glaring at me resentfully.

  “Time is running out,” I said, putting the Cannon down on the bench so that it was clear I wouldn’t continue work until they had gone.

  Ludmilla muttered something in her native tongue that I was glad not to be able to understand, then turned on her heel and stalked out of the workshop. Golinelli went after her, pausing on the threshold to say, “The minute you have something, I must be informed. At once, you understand? I am responsible for the violin.”

  “You will be the first to know,” I said. “You have my word.”

  I waited for the door to close, then turned to Yevgeny.

  “Well?” I said in English.

  He wandered over to the window, obviously checking that his mother and the assistant curator weren’t listening at the keyhole. Then he came back to my bench. He seemed more at ease than before, but I could still detect a tension in his body language. He was fragile, brittle, like a twig that might snap if the slightest pressure were applied.

  “That was brave,” he said. “My mother does not like to be told what to do.”

  “So I gathered,” I said dryly.

  “I can trust you, no?”

  “You can trust me.”

  “I have confession to make. But you must not tell my mother, or Signor Golinelli.”

  “What kind of a confession?” I asked.

  “I believe I may have damaged the violin myself.”

  “Go on.”

  He hesitated, then began to pace up and down in an agitated manner.

  “At the cathedral, in Cremona, they give me a room,” he said. “A dressing room. To leave my things in, to get changed. I have the violin with me. I take it out of the case. I am careless; I don’t look. There is this thing—a tall metal candlestick—next to me. As I turn, I hit the candlestick with the violin.”

  “Which bit of the violin?”

  “I am not sure. I think maybe the bridge.” A note of panic crept into his voice. “If I have harmed it . . . it would be very bad. A violin like that. You must help me, Dottor Castiglione. You must put right what I do.”

  “Easy now,” I said. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”

  “My mother, she must never know. She would be very angry with me. Signor Golinelli, too. He would take the violin away from me, maybe the Premio prize, as well. My reputation, my career would be finish. Promise me you don’t tell. Please.”

  I warmed to him. He must have been twenty-two or twenty-three years old, but he seemed like a small boy, terrified that he would be punished severely for this mishap.

  “No one can take the Premio away from you,” I said. “It’s yours. You won it on merit. No one will blame you for what you did. It was an accident.”

  “But you won’t tell?”

  “No, your secret is safe with me. Now, pull up a stool and sit down.”

  I held the Cannon up to the light and peered closely at the bridge. I could detect nothing with my naked eye, so I took my jeweller’s loupe and had a look through that, squeezing the soft wood of the bridge with my fingers to see if it was damaged.

  “Ah, here we are,” I said.

  Yevgeny leaned forward, squinting at the bridge.

  “You find something?”

  “A hairline crack. Just here.” I touched the edge of the bridge beneath the G string.

  “That would make buzzing noise?” Yevgeny said.

&nb
sp; “Yes.”

  “But violin itself is all right?”

  “As far as I can tell, yes.”

  He sat back and exhaled with relief.

  “Thank God. It is not original, the bridge?”

  “No, it’s not Guarneri’s. This is a modern one, put on relatively recently.”

  “You can fit new one?”

  “Easily. But I must consult with Signor Golinelli first.”

  The assistant curator was as relieved as Yevgeny had been.

  “Just the bridge, nothing more serious?” he said when he and Ludmilla had returned to the workshop and I’d given them my diagnosis. “It will need a new one, no? You have time to do it?”

  “Plenty,” I said.

  “You’ll have to hurry,” Ludmilla said. “We have to get back to the cathedral. Yevgeny will need to warm up, to prepare himself for the recital.”

  “Let me check with Genoa first,” Golinelli said. “I can’t authorise any work without their say-so.”

  He pulled out his mobile and phoned the city’s chief violin conservator. He explained what had happened, then passed the phone to me. The conservator and I had a brief discussion before I handed the phone back to Golinelli.

  “He says go ahead,” I said.

  Golinelli eyed me uneasily.

  “A crack? How did a crack suddenly appear?”

  I gave a casual shrug, careful not to look at Yevgeny.

  “These things happen. Wood is a temperamental substance. It can react in unexpected ways. Temperature changes, a different humidity, the journey in the van—any of them could have caused it. Now, if you’d leave me alone for a while, I’ll get the job done.”

  I was conscious of the time ticking by as I worked on the violin, but I tried not to let it disturb me. I also tried not to think of the status of the instrument. I had to regard it as an ordinary violin, not the violin that had belonged to the most celebrated virtuoso in history. But it wasn’t easy. Every time I touched it, I was aware that Paganini’s hands had been there before mine. His fingers had held it; his chin had rested on the front plate; his breath had drifted over the varnish. Somewhere deep in the soul of the instrument was the indelible memory of that one great man.