The Ghost of Paganini

My father was propped up in his bed, the ivory coverlet pulled up to his chest. Even after the weeks of chemo had ended, I was always shocked by his appearance, his bald head and missing eyebrows making him almost unrecognizable. He looked at the ragged man that I led into the room through puffy eyes, the sides of his mouth turned downwards in disappointment at the man’s appearance.

“What would you like me to play, Signore?”

Father coughed weakly and gestured to me. When I bent over him, he whispered “Allegro con fouco … with fire.”

“But Papà, surely not the Mendelssohn? He is a busker, not a concert hall violinist.”

He simply gave me the stubborn gaze that I knew only too well.

I ride the DC Metro daily to my job downtown and had heard the busker playing when I arrived on the platform yesterday after a long and frustrating day. Uncharacteristically, I paused for a listen and was surprised at his virtuosity.

He looked like a gypsy from an earlier age, a crumpled top hat perched jauntily atop his large head, his body almost wispily thin, his great coat hanging from him as it might have if draped around a cadaver. The unusual length of his fingers was almost as striking as his long and ape-like arms. I listened to him play a couple different pieces before dropping some change into his open violin case and hopping onto my train.

As I rode home, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to coax him to perform for my father. Papà had played first violin for a small symphony orchestra for almost forty years and I thought it might be a way to cheer him up.

We had enrolled him in hospice a few weeks prior and his health had steadily weakened since. He’s no longer strong enough to play his beloved violin.

When I was about ten years old, Papà played Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto when a prominent guest violinist had to cancel his appearance at the last minute. Any violinist who dreams of greatness masters that piece, and that was certainly true of my father.

My mother brought me to that concert, and I still remember Papà’s standing ovation as the tears streamed from Mamma’s eyes. Years later he shared that when he played that night, he felt the ghost of Paganini at his side spurring him to virtuosic heights never experienced again. His greatest regret in life was the anonymity that followed his performance. He imagined receiving invites to perform with the National or Baltimore Symphonies or other great orchestras, but they never came.

After Papà’s request, I turned to the busker and simply said, “Mendelssohn’s Allegro con fouco,” and he nodded, placing his long index finger on the side of his nose with a wink.

As he began, Papà gasped in recognition, the busker’s fingers dancing lightly across the strings as his bow coaxed the heartbreaking notes from the violin’s bell, the fire of his arpeggios filling my father’s eyes with tears. Papà drew his weak and skinny arms from the coverlet and began to mime along with the busker as he played, closing his eyes as he reexperienced the lost passion of his youth.

Tears filled my own as I watched him reliving his great triumph, the melody as heartbreaking as if Joshua Bell was in the room rather than a ragged and disheveled busker.

After the Mendelssohn, Papà begged him to play Tchaikovsky and then Mozart. No matter what he played, the music transported us to an elevated and almost mystical plane. At the end Papà wept like a baby, and I wept with him. The busker bowed as elegantly in response as if he had played for an emperor rather than an old man dying in his bed.

My father gestured to me, and I bent once again to hear his whisper “My Stradivari,” as he pointed his trembling hand at the busker. I assumed that he wanted him to play it before realizing in horror he wanted to give it to him. In spite of my alarm, Papà insisted and a few minutes later, my father was the proud owner of a busker's old and worn violin and a million-dollar inheritance had flown out his front door.

Later that evening I had the misfortune of remembering that I had scheduled an appraisal of the violin for the following day. Sick at heart I picked up the busker’s violin and put it away in the Stradivari’s case and absently locked it in the safe.

When the appraiser arrived, I was too discombobulated to apologize or explain as I handed him the worthless violin. But examining it, he was quiet at first, then confused, turning the violin over and over again in his hands. Finally, he looked at me piercingly, and said, “I don’t understand … I thought you said on the phone that your father owned a Stradivarius?”

I sighed deeply, and began, “Well you see….” before the appraiser interrupted me.

“Do you know what this is?” he continued with sufficient awe that it rendered me speechless a second time. I shook my head numbly.

“It’s a Guarneri. The great Paganini owned a Guarneri – the Il Cannone Guarnerius, one of the most famous violins in the world.

“Do you know how much this is worth?”