Read Online Fiddle Game by Richard A. Thompson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Richard A. Thompson
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printing on it. It isn’t under the hole.”
“It shouldn’t be, it should be in the center. Symmetry is important in a thing that is made to resonate. It would have been put on before the box was assembled. But it could be a fake, anyway, or a later addition. The real maker’s mark would be a brand, literally, scorched into the wood, under the label. Paper eventually crumbles, and nothing is easier than to add a new piece. Sometimes there are several layers, just accumulated. You wouldn’t believe the inscriptions I find on some of them.”
“Like, ‘If you can read this, you’re very, very small’?”
“More often a blessing, or a curse to scare off thieves. Sometimes something about the owner. This particular one identifies the maker as one R. Baldwin, and it’s actually written backwards, meant to be read with a mirror.”
I moved my eye to the hole that didn’t have the mirror in it, shined the light in the other one, and made out the faint capitals R and B in the reflection.
“I’ll be damned.”
“It dates it, you see, but only forward. It means that we’re well into the industrial age, when specialized mirrors would have been widely available. What else do you see?”
I felt like quitting while I was ahead, but he seemed most insistent.
“There’s a lot of little ridges and grooves in the back,” I said. I wondered if the rolls were getting cold yet.
“Tool marks, from gouges and scrapers. You see? You are more observant than you think. The marks also date it, this time the right way. It means that the production predates the invention of sandpaper. You can tell that from the outside of the instrument, too, but it takes a more practiced eye. You have to learn to look for something called ‘truing lines.’”
“And those are good?”
“Not necessarily, but like your story, they are a start.”
This whole conversation was starting to drive me crazy, and I turned away to have some more laced coffee and break open another package of rolls. The last one seemed to have evaporated. Feinstein topped off our cups and started another pot brewing. For a while, we ate and drank in silence. I looked at the walls covered with violins and decided I was no closer than I had been to knowing why one was worth three grand and another one twenty times that, much less why one would be worth killing over. Feinstein might have read my mind, or at least my face.
“It’s a funny market, the market in old instruments,” he said. “It’s like the art market, only it isn’t.”
I must have been feeling the alcohol, because that made perfect sense to me. “Of course,” I said.
“A certain Van Gogh, say, or a Michelangelo is worth such and such many million because there is only one of it and there are never going to be any more and the world has been taking care of it for a very long time now.”
“And because somebody is willing to pay that much for it.”
“Just so. It has nothing whatever to do with anybody getting a million dollars’ worth of uplifting inspiration from looking at it.”
“I personally think the same argument can be applied to a Mercedes Benz.”
“That’s not as stupid as it sounds.”
That sounded stupid? How strong was that cognac, anyway?
“They are both a matter of assigned value.” he said. “But with a violin, there is such a thing as intrinsic value, as well. It is, after all, made to play music. Sadly, the people best able to judge the real quality are those least likely to be able to afford it.”
“Musicians.”
He nodded and took more coffee. “Scum of the earth. Steal from their own mothers to buy a set of strings. Cash in advance for them, always.”
It was hard for me to see Amy Cox in that light, but I nodded anyway, to encourage him. Or maybe the evening had just started to turn mellow.
“So musicians get hired to evaluate instruments they can’t afford to buy?”
“Mostly, they do not. Nobody wants to take the chance that the Stradivarius
“It shouldn’t be, it should be in the center. Symmetry is important in a thing that is made to resonate. It would have been put on before the box was assembled. But it could be a fake, anyway, or a later addition. The real maker’s mark would be a brand, literally, scorched into the wood, under the label. Paper eventually crumbles, and nothing is easier than to add a new piece. Sometimes there are several layers, just accumulated. You wouldn’t believe the inscriptions I find on some of them.”
“Like, ‘If you can read this, you’re very, very small’?”
“More often a blessing, or a curse to scare off thieves. Sometimes something about the owner. This particular one identifies the maker as one R. Baldwin, and it’s actually written backwards, meant to be read with a mirror.”
I moved my eye to the hole that didn’t have the mirror in it, shined the light in the other one, and made out the faint capitals R and B in the reflection.
“I’ll be damned.”
“It dates it, you see, but only forward. It means that we’re well into the industrial age, when specialized mirrors would have been widely available. What else do you see?”
I felt like quitting while I was ahead, but he seemed most insistent.
“There’s a lot of little ridges and grooves in the back,” I said. I wondered if the rolls were getting cold yet.
“Tool marks, from gouges and scrapers. You see? You are more observant than you think. The marks also date it, this time the right way. It means that the production predates the invention of sandpaper. You can tell that from the outside of the instrument, too, but it takes a more practiced eye. You have to learn to look for something called ‘truing lines.’”
“And those are good?”
“Not necessarily, but like your story, they are a start.”
This whole conversation was starting to drive me crazy, and I turned away to have some more laced coffee and break open another package of rolls. The last one seemed to have evaporated. Feinstein topped off our cups and started another pot brewing. For a while, we ate and drank in silence. I looked at the walls covered with violins and decided I was no closer than I had been to knowing why one was worth three grand and another one twenty times that, much less why one would be worth killing over. Feinstein might have read my mind, or at least my face.
“It’s a funny market, the market in old instruments,” he said. “It’s like the art market, only it isn’t.”
I must have been feeling the alcohol, because that made perfect sense to me. “Of course,” I said.
“A certain Van Gogh, say, or a Michelangelo is worth such and such many million because there is only one of it and there are never going to be any more and the world has been taking care of it for a very long time now.”
“And because somebody is willing to pay that much for it.”
“Just so. It has nothing whatever to do with anybody getting a million dollars’ worth of uplifting inspiration from looking at it.”
“I personally think the same argument can be applied to a Mercedes Benz.”
“That’s not as stupid as it sounds.”
That sounded stupid? How strong was that cognac, anyway?
“They are both a matter of assigned value.” he said. “But with a violin, there is such a thing as intrinsic value, as well. It is, after all, made to play music. Sadly, the people best able to judge the real quality are those least likely to be able to afford it.”
“Musicians.”
He nodded and took more coffee. “Scum of the earth. Steal from their own mothers to buy a set of strings. Cash in advance for them, always.”
It was hard for me to see Amy Cox in that light, but I nodded anyway, to encourage him. Or maybe the evening had just started to turn mellow.
“So musicians get hired to evaluate instruments they can’t afford to buy?”
“Mostly, they do not. Nobody wants to take the chance that the Stradivarius
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