CHAPTER ONE

As the lone passenger in a tiny gondola grinding its way to the top of a ski-slope deep in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, I had nothing but time to reflect on one plaguing question. If I could re-live the previous week, what could I have done to avoid the precipitous drop from heaven-on-earth into a raging version of hell?

The week had been launched in the cock-fighting pit of Judge Abramowitz’ courtroom. The goal was to convince his honor that the “borrowing” of a car by my teen-age client was not the equivalent of hijacking an airliner. Judge Abramowitz, who had had a somewhat checkered boyhood himself, had always considered teen-age car swiping to be a “boys will be boys” rite of passage. That attitude suffered a wrenching reversal the morning Judge A. left his home to find his Lexus missing. From that day on, car theft became a capital offense in his court.

It took three days of hostile witnesses, interspersed with sarcastic asides to the jury from the bench, to get the fact across to those “twelve good men and women and true” that my teen-age Chinese defendant had been under life-threatening compulsion by the youth gang of the local Tong.

The jury foreman’s words, “Not guilty”, brought an audible “Thank God for juries” from my lips, and one more withering glare from the bench.

The case had another surprise turn – an invitation from Mr. Han Liu, the father of my defendant and head of the Chinese Merchants’ Association, to a celebratory feast at the China Pearl Restaurant on Tyler Street in Boston’s Chinatown.

What I expected to be a cozy dinner with Danny and Mr. Liu turned out to be an extraordinary feast, at which, I’m beginning to realize, I was ultimately to be served up as the main course.

I should have caught on. My mind had been too numbed by the ordeal of a week under Judge A.’s raining sarcasm to catch the significance. I found myself seated center-stage in the China Pearl’s private dining room. I was ringed by Mr. Liu, no light-weight himself, Mr. Chang, president of the Central Bank of Chinatown, and Mr. Lee Tang, no less than the Concert Master of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The fifth member of this eclectic cast was a tall, athletically built Chinese enigma who sat in silence, beaming cold inhumanity from his unblinking eyes.

The banquet of at least a dozen courses, each served with a taste of some form of Chinese wine, had settled me into a state of unsuspecting nirvana. The fatted calf was ready for the roasting.

I was vaguely aware that all eight eyes were fixed on me, when, after the final course, Mr. Liu began to effuse gratitude for his son’s “liberating verdict”. By way of further reward for my “hard-fought victory”, Mr. Liu offered with some insistence a week’s retreat, fully paid, in his personal idea of Shangri-La, a resort hotel in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains of southern Romania.

My instinctive response, and would to God I had used it, was, “Thank you, but no thank you.”

Before I could speak, Mr. Liu held up a hand. “You were married last year, Mr. Knight. A lovely lady. Terry, yes?”

I felt on safe ground saying, “Yes.”

“She of course would be included. If you thought of refusing for yourself, could you deny this gift to her?”

In a haze of temptation, I recalled the previous year’s unrelenting trial schedule that left us little but ten p.m. dinners and a few hours together on Sundays ever since our honeymoon. I was well primed for a negative answer to the almost rhetorical question, “Would the world end if someone else pulled my oar on the ship of justice for a week?”

And the mouse bit the cheese. The trap sprung, and I found myself expressing grateful acceptance of the offer. Mr. Liu was ecstatic. The others were smiling like Cheshire cats, with the exception of the chisel-faced member of the cast. And I, God help me, was oblivious to the second shoe about to drop. In fact, I naively initiated the drop by asking if there was perhaps something I could do for Mr. Liu.

Mr. Liu leaned close. He was smiling, but his tone of voice had a bit more steel behind it.

“Perhaps a small service, Mr. Knight. No more than an hour or two out of your week. There’s a small violin shop in the town of Tesila. It’s in the mountains, less than an hour from your hotel. It’s owned by an elderly violin maker, Mr. Oresciu. You’ll find him delightful. He has a special violin for our Mr. Tang here. If you would simply pick it up and bring it home with you.”

“Harmless”. That was the word that ran through my mind, and the very least I could do. My mind was so into overload at the prospect of a second honeymoon that I’m surprised that I even thought to ask, “Wouldn’t it be safer just to have it shipped and insured?”

That brought smiles, again except for Mr. Cast-in-Stone.

“I might have been guilty of understatement when I said this violin is ‘special’. I’ve seen the care you took when my son’s life was in your hands. Mr. Tang’s concert schedule prevents him from making the trip. Mr. Chang’s bank is financing the purchase, but his time too is limited. We three agree that the violin would be safest in your hands.”

Again, the alarm bells in my mind were muted by my raging desire to get home to tell Terry what had fallen into our laps. Especially muted was the bell that suggested asking what stake the man with soulless eyes had in this venture, and why his name was never mentioned by Mr. Liu.

I asked, jokingly, “What is this violin – a Stradivarius?”

Mr. Liu simply said in a whisper, “Yes.”

According to the plan, Mr. Liu would send an introductory message to Mr. Oresciu and make arrangements through the banker, Mr. Chang, to transfer full payment for the violin once I had met with Mr. Oresciu at his shop. Mr. Oresciu would then entrust the violin to me for delivery to Mr. Liu when Terry and I returned home a week from Sunday. The very heart of simplicity. What could possibly go wrong?

The Carpathian Mountains, like the Alps and the Rockies, wrap around you in such spiritual majesty that you scarcely want to blink to lose sight of them for an instant. You sense that God is enfolding you in his protective arms.

For the first two days, Terry and I were bathed in that serene beauty. The hectic year between the time of our marriage and those moments vanished. We were newly-weds again in paradise, and no other world existed. Until Wednesday.

Terry relaxed by the pool of our Hotel Regal in the mountain village of Sinaia for the morning. I drove a rental car about ten miles through winding mountain passes to the town of Tesila in the valley of the Doftana River. At the end of the short Strada Carierei, I found a small, neat building only slightly less aged than the mountains. The model of a violin suspended above the door made it clear that the plan was dead on course.

One of those old tinkley bells announced that I had entered the main room of the shop. The aroma of freshly chiseled wood matched the sounds coming from the second room behind a cloth curtain. I scanned the variety of violins hanging from each of the four walls, while labored sounds of feet stirring and the words, “Indata, Indata.” came from the next room.

An elderly figure under a shock of white hair limped through the curtain. He could have been the model for a garden gnome. His soft blue eyes peered over wire-rimmed glasses while he said something in Romanian.

I crossed the floor with my hand out and said, “Michael Knight, Mr. Oresciu. I’m here from the United States”. Every wrinkle in that old face blended into a welcoming smile.

“Ah! You found me in my little kingdom. Sit. Sit. I have coffee. Could you refuse a bit of Romanian pastry?”

His smile made me smile. “How could I, at the hands of such a gracious host?”

He laughed and took my hand in two of the strongest hands I’ve touched since I last shook hands with a jockey.

He motioned to a chair by a small table. “Please sit. My wife just brought strudel, and Romanian coffee is always strong and hot.”

“Thank you, Mr. Oresciu. May I look around?” I nodded to the surrounding violins.

“Certainly. An old man’s toils. Do you play?”

“Not the violin. But I appreciate a fine creation.”

He nodded. The warm smile never left his lips. “You are kind, Mr. Knight. Take down any one you like. They’re more to be touched than seen.”

“And best to be played. I’m sure you know why I’m here. Have you ever met the Concert Master, Mr. Lee Tang?”

“Ah!” His eyes went to the ceiling. “It was two weeks ago.”

He took my arm in one hand while he pointed to one of the violins on the wall. I could see moisture in those eyes of ninety some years. “He came into this very room. We talked. He put that violin to his chin. It was . . . Mr. Knight, it was as if an angel was filling the room with the sounds of Heaven. Out of this instrument.”

“That your hands created.”

The words seemed to catch as he just nodded his head.

Within minutes we were sharing an apple strudel that would have been worth the flight over. Mr. Oresciu seemed to delight in every sigh of ecstasy I couldn’t repress with each bite.

We chatted about many things, and the longer I was in his presence, the more I wanted to take him, shop and all, back to Boston with us.

At some point I asked, “This instrument that I’m to deliver to Mr. Tang. Mr. Liu said that it was a Stradivarius. Am I right?”

The smile lingered, but a seriousness seemed to set in. “Yes. . . Do you know what that word means, Mr. Knight?”

“My research says that it must have been made by Antonio Stradiveri in Cremona, Italy, somewhere around seventeen hundred. It’s still apparently the Cadillac of violins, to use an Americanism.”

He shook his head. “No, Mr. Knight. those are just facts. Do you know what it means? In these few minutes I sense that music is . . .” He touched his chest. “deep in your heart. Then you’ll understand when I say that no one before or since, has created an instrument with the tone, the resonance, the power to lift music to such heights. Do you understand?”

“I think so. May I ask?” I looked around at his hand-made violins. “Not even you?”

He shook his head firmly. “Never.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “Some say that between 1645 and 1750 there was a minor ice age. It stunted and slowed the growth of trees in Europe. The wood grew much more dense then, especially the spruce, which is the heart of every violin. We will never have that material again.” Once more he gave a shrug.

“You don’t accept that?”

“I accept it the way I accept that things fall because of gravity.” He leaned closer to lower his voice. “I believe, Mr. Knight, that God put something into the soul and the hands of Antonio Stradiveri, a gift that has never been given before or since.”

The smile was back. “Just the musings of an old man.”

“I’ll carry those musings with me for a long time, Mr. Oresciu.”

He gently touched my arm. “Good. Then I feel happy to show you something. Come.”

He led me through the curtain to the room where he had been at work on three wooden forms for violins. He drew the curtain fully across the door before he moved his workbench away from a floorboard in the center. He lifted the floorboard and took out of the recess an ordinary violin case.

He opened the lid and gently lifted a violin out of the case. He put it to his chin and took the bow. I stood there in the grip of the sound he brought out of that instrument. He closed his eyes and played a section of the Violin Sonata in D by the Romanian violinist and composer, George Enescu.

When he finished, he laid the violin back in its case. I could find no words. He saw it in my face, and the light in his eyes expressed more than words that the same thoughts were passing between us.

He said quietly, “And that music. . . from these rough old fingers. Do you see now what the word, “Stradivarius”, means?”

I nodded. “Mr. Oresciu, someone once asked a great American musician, Louis Armstrong, what jazz is. He said, ‘If you have to ask, you’ll probably never know.’ I know what he meant.”

He nodded. “I feel sure you do. Now to the business. You and I are apparently just the conduits here. I’m instructed to see that the money is transferred to the real owner before I hand you the instrument. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll contact your Mr. Liu and tell him that I have had the most delightful morning with his emissary. We are ready to do the business. It should all be done and ready for delivery by, shall we say, two o’clock this afternoon. You might enjoy the shops of our town to pass the time.”

“I will. And thank you for a morning I shall probably never forget.”

I enjoyed wandering through the small shops of the town until two o’clock. I actually found myself looking forward to spending a few more precious minutes with Mr. Oresciu.

I reached the door to his shop with his name on my lips to let him know I was back. Perhaps that was one of those forks in the road that could have changed the outcome. Though at that point, the die was cast. From that moment until I found myself alone on that ski gondola, I can think of no other path I could have taken.