Fatal Inheritance (4 page)

Sebastian was still a mystery to me. His feet had probably trod the very same bridge; his smile had lit up the very same parlour in which I had just now been offered some overly sugary tea, his music had blended with that of my darling Rose whom I had known since her childhood. But human beings are mysterious enough to one another even face-to-face. And those who had known Sebastian best had not understood why he had done what he had done. How could I hope to penetrate his secret?

What was most important to Sebastian? His violin and his music, on the one hand, and on the other hand the people he loved: his mother, presumably, and Claire. Was there anything else? For the time being, I should proceed on the assumption that there was not; otherwise, surely Claire would have known. So, the terrible thing that he had found out must have concerned these things, or been triggered by one of them. The violin – the music – the mother – Claire. In asking Frau Bochsler’s guests to recall their conversations with Sebastian, I would concentrate on these four points. Something, somewhere, had triggered a terrible realisation in him. Surely it could not be impossible to find out what it was.

If only I had met him. It was so hard, feeling my way blindly, trying to understand the innermost thoughts of a young man I had never met. If only I had seen him but once. But I shook my head briskly, and scolded myself. I must stop thinking this way: as though I had missed my chance. Frau Bochsler had met him and Herr Hegar had met him, and they understood as little as I. Having met him was not the point. Trying to understand the secrets of his mind was not the point. The point was simply factual, I reassured myself. Sebastian had been to Frau Bochsler’s; I had been to Frau Bochsler’s. He had walked to the Pension Limmat; I was walking the same way. He had met some people whom I would meet tomorrow.
Somewhere
along that path that he had trod, and that I would tread after him:
somewhere
, his secret must be hidden. If, after having followed it, it still seemed to me that everyone I spoke to said nothing more than platitudes and banalities – my greatest fear at that very moment – why then, somewhere, I would have missed the single pebble that was actually a pearl. I might do so. Yet that did not mean that the pearl was not there. Its existence was a matter of plain fact: of that much I was certain.

I left the bridge and wandered on up the street in the direction of the pension. Doubt was not an option.

I sat in a comfortable armchair in front of a small table decorously laid with small pastries. It was already the fifth of my morning calls in the company of Frau Bochsler, and each host had offered us something to eat. I was beginning to feel foolish, frustrated and exhausted. It had been obvious to me in the first five minutes of each call that no information was to be had, and yet we had been obliged to spend another ten minutes each time in polite conversation, most of which took place between Frau Bochsler and the host or hostess, and escaped me entirely, held as it was in singsong Swiss German.

My enquiries had begun on the previous evening when I interviewed Frau Dossenbach, the proprietress of the low-ceilinged, medieval Pension Limmat, but from her I had learnt nothing but the barest of facts. Frau Dossenbach’s English was rudimentary: she appeared to possess an exactly equal and minimal knowledge of English, French, Italian and high German; precisely those words and phrases necessary to attend to the immediate wants of her numerous foreign guests, such as ‘Do you wish for hot water now?’ and ‘The evening meal is at seven o’clock precisely’. My attempt to pose a few modest questions about Sebastian Cavendish had met with blank incomprehension until I was rescued by a gentleman passing through the hall. He took the trouble to interpret my questions and Frau Dossenbach’s answers, but as might be expected from one so entirely devoted to the necessities of her daily work, she had only facts of this nature to tell (and some reluctance, due no doubt to the natural discretion of one in her profession, to mention even those). I could learn absolutely nothing about Sebastian’s state of mind, and gleaned only the simple confirmation of the fact that he had departed early on the morning of the 29th of December, whether to Paris, London or elsewhere she could not say.

Giving up on this source of information, I turned to thank the gentleman who had helped me, but he had already disappeared up the narrow, crooked staircase that led to the chambers above. I was left to my imaginings as I went up to my room and proceeded to freshen myself with a pitcher of hot water carried in by an obliging maid not two minutes later. In entirely incomprehensible words proffered in the local dialect, but using the most unmistakeable gestures, she was able to communicate to me the fact that dinner would be served when I should hear the sound of a bell or gong belowstairs, and leaving me with this welcome piece of information, she removed herself and I removed my shoes and reclined upon the bed.

I felt anxious and troubled, and was worried that I would have difficulty finding sleep in such unfamiliar surroundings. However, after consuming the extremely heavy meal of a bowl of cabbage-and-rice soup followed by breaded veal, together with potatoes cut to tiny ribbons and fried to a crisp golden brown, I felt overcome by exhaustion, and dragged myself up the stairs to my room again, feeling as laden as though I were carrying a weighty suitcase. I went to bed at once, in order to be at Frau Bochsler’s at as early an hour as was reasonable to begin our round of visits.

Some two hours after we had started forth, bored to tears by endless repetition of banalities, I began to wonder if Frau Bochsler was not becoming as impatient and sceptical of the whole procedure as myself, and was on the very point of calling it all off from sheer enervation, when her carriage stopped in front of an elegant town house, and she rang at the doorbell, saying,

‘Now you shall meet a very dear friend.’

The door was opened by a sempiternal aproned maid, who ushered us into a sempiternal velvet-upholstered parlour. After a young lady, an elderly lady, a middle-aged couple and an elderly couple, it was now a single gentleman who entered the room: a gentleman of a certain age, small, wiry and friendly.

‘I am so pleased to meet you,’ he said in excellent English, once Frau Bochsler had explained something of the nature of our call. ‘My name is Leopold Ratner. Please, do sit down and by all means let us discuss this strange story.’ For the fifth time that morning, we sat down and the maid was sent for something to offer the unexpected guests.

‘I was greatly interested in Sebastian Cavendish, and terribly shocked to hear of his sudden death,’ Herr Ratner told me with sincere feeling. ‘You see, I follow the careers of as many of the rising young violinists of Europe as I reasonably can. Luckily for me, my dear Tonhalle is one of the very best of all the European orchestras, so that some of the most extraordinary players come to perform right here where I live. I attended Cavendish’s phenomenal concert in December, and afterwards, of course, the charming evening party at Frau Bochsler’s home.’

I noticed then that half-hidden underneath his grey beard, Herr Ratner had an old, well-rubbed mark on the left side of his neck.

‘You are a violinist also?’ I asked.

‘I was one, not so long ago,’ he replied with a smile. ‘I was an orchestral musician for several decades. When I was young, I had some talent and I thought I might go far, but such a career is not given to many. Ah, then, when I was still young and energetic and filled with dreams of ambition, I travelled far and wide to hear the greatest violinists of my day, and that is how I came to hear Josef Krieger – or Joseph Krieger, as he called himself after moving to England – and to be inspired to become his pupil. You wish to know what I discussed with young Cavendish during the evening: we talked about my teacher, Joseph Krieger. Alas, what I learnt above all from Krieger was that I would never be a great violinist. He used to shout at me during the lessons, which I believe he gave only because he was in need of money at certain times; his career knew some dramatic ups and downs because of the terrible disputes he had with some of his patrons and protectors. He was, to be straightforward about it, a cruel and violent man. I remember one time when an eminent professor from the Royal Academy of Music had come to visit. He arrived early and I was still having a lesson, on the Saint-Saëns concerto. Start from the beginning, my teacher told me. Eagerly I lifted my violin to my chin, fired up to give my best on this splendid work in front of the stranger. After the first two notes of the superb initial theme, Herr Krieger stopped me with a cry of “Too high!” Undaunted, I began again, only to be stopped after the same two notes by “Too low!” He continued in this manner for a full quarter of an hour. I never played more than those first two notes, after which he declared my lesson over and turned to talk with his colleague as though I no longer existed. I cannot even remember my thoughts as I packed my instrument and left his house, so black were they. He destroyed my ambitions, and if he had lived longer, he would probably have succeeded in destroying my love of playing and even my love of music.’

‘How horrid he sounds,’ said Frau Bochsler consolingly. ‘Why ever did you stay on?’

‘You don’t know how things were then,’ he said. ‘They have perhaps changed a little nowadays, although I am not so certain about it. For the young and aspiring musician, his teacher was like a god. One did not shop for a teacher as for a pair of shoes. One selected a teacher, and humbly requested that he deign give lessons, and accepted that his rebukes were merely the thorns along the path to greatness. I did not realise the harm that Joseph Krieger was doing me until long after his death. I was too used to habits of respect.’

I thought of Rose’s tone, on divers occasions when I had heard her speak of her cello teacher, and recognised the same phenomenon of infinite and unquestioning respect. Yet in Rose’s experience, that respect and admiration went hand in hand with an attachment as deep as love, that contained no trace of pain or humiliation. Perhaps she was one of the lucky ones, and there were still students who suffered as poor Herr Ratner had done at a time when young whippersnappers were not expected to protest ill-treatment at the hands of their masters, but to profit from it, and improve.

‘However,’ the elderly violinist was continuing, ‘he died when I had been with him for less than two years, and I found myself suddenly obliged to make my own way as best I could. In that same year, Sir Charles Hallé formed a new symphony orchestra in Manchester, and to my great good fortune, I was able to become a member. Thus I had the infinite joy of making the splendid music in a group that I did not feel able to make by myself. Then, ten years later, when the Tonhalle Orchester was formed here in Zürich, I chose to join it, and thus to return to my native country. I retired only a few years ago, and since then, it continues to be my greatest pleasure to attend the concerts.’

Something in his tone and manner indicated that he was not merely indulging in a flow of memory, but that all this had some connection with Sebastian Cavendish. I encouraged him to continue with a nod and a murmur.

‘Now, Joseph Krieger possessed a very remarkable violin,’ he went on. ‘I had occasion to see and even to hold and play his violin very frequently, over the two years I spent attempting to learn something from him, while he fulminated against my playing and told me that my accent in music compared to the composer’s intentions was no better than my Swiss compared to his own pure and elegant High German. However, all of that is past and finished, and Joseph Krieger has been dead for nearly half a century. I meant to speak of his violin, because when young Cavendish showed us his instrument that evening at Frau Bochsler’s, I felt absolutely certain that I recognised it. It was not just the astonishing lion’s head, although this caused me to identify the violin at once as a Jacob Stainer. Stainer made more than one violin of that type, although they are rare, but here there was something more: I felt quite certain, seeing and running my hands over the violin, that it was none other than the very instrument that had belonged to my former teacher. A certain stain and discoloration on the back, certain worn marks, and then, the very sound of the instrument itself, as I had heard it during Cavendish’s concert – fiery and infinitely subtle – I was quite certain that this was the same instrument!’

‘Did you tell Sebastian about it?’

‘Not at once. I have always felt a nearly insurmountable repugnance at mentioning the name of Joseph Krieger, such was the burden of resentment that remained within me even after his death. I cannot speak of it without bitterness even today; even now that the ice has been broken, you cannot but sense something of my feelings. Cavendish was far too young to have ever known Krieger, of course, and I thought it quite possible that he had bought the violin from a dealer, or that it had been lent to him by an anonymous foundation, and that I might be able to indulge my curiosity about the instrument without mentioning the name of Krieger at all. But before I had time to put the question, I heard him telling others that Joseph Krieger was his own grandfather, and that the violin was a family heirloom.’

‘Quite,’ I assented. ‘Sebastian certainly knew that his grandfather was a famous virtuoso, although I do not know whether he knew much about his character. But the violin was certainly a treasured inheritance.’

‘I should say not just the violin, but the extraordinary, flamboyant talent as well! As soon as I heard it, I realised how much his playing resembled his grandfather’s in style. Yet the boy must have been born a good quarter of a century after his grandfather’s death, and cannot have had any more idea of his playing than what reputation and family tradition may have communicated to him. Is it not strange that something as intangible as the manner of playing the violin can be inherited in just the same way as a material object like the violin? Yet the evidence of it was there before me!’

‘It is extraordinary,’ I agreed. ‘And so, once you knew that he was Joseph Krieger’s grandson, did you tell him anything about his grandfather?’

‘What do you think?’ he smiled sadly. ‘Politeness dictated that I tell him only the facts; that his grandfather was my teacher, and that he was one of the greatest of violinists. Nothing more.’

‘Did you tell him what you just told us about his playing being in the same style as his grandfather’s?’

‘Yes, that I certainly did.’

‘And what did he answer?’

‘He laughed it off and denied the possibility; said he did not believe such a thing could be inherited, and at any rate in his case he knew it to be impossible.’

‘What could he have meant by that?’

‘I have no idea. I suppose he was merely enjoying feeling original.’

‘Did you tell him anything else about his grandfather?’

‘Nothing; certainly not a word of all I have just told you. Indeed, I have never spoken of those feelings to a living soul until this very moment. It is strange, but when I realised that this blithe young man with the ready smile was Krieger’s grandson, I felt a wave of pleasure; it seemed to me as though a chance had been offered me, to undo the twisted knot that Krieger had left in my heart. I intended to continue to see the young man, to be his friend, and to follow the development of his career, without ever telling him why. It would have been a kind of redemption! And then – I heard about his sudden death. I cannot tell you the effect the news had on me. I had just begun to feel that my hidden shame was finally to be dissolved in friendship, that my anger against the grandfather could finally dissolve in the form of kindness to the grandson. And then the process was suddenly cut short! I will not deny that at first I was literally in despair. But after some days, I came to realise that something had changed within me after all. It was as though the brief contact with the young man’s vibrant personality had somehow broken the hold that Krieger has exercised over me through all these years. His playing and his personality provoked in me the old feelings of passion for the violin that I had lost long ago, without the despair and frustration caused by my teacher’s attitude. In that short evening, he gave back to me what his grandfather took from me. And although I spoke of this to no one, I realise now, with you, that I am able to speak of it after all, and that this signifies that indeed, everything has changed.’