Beethoven's Tenth Page 21

  In short, Veritas had found no writing in the verbal texts in the Zurich manuscripts to be patently un-Beethovenlike. And the same authentic appearance applied, Rodewald said, to the letter purportedly from Archduke Rudolph, found alongside the Tell manuscript, when compared with dozens of other surviving letters from him to Beethoven. Likewise, the pair of letters uncovered in the Hassler attic box that were signed Hans Georg Nägeli, the maestro’s ardent Swiss music publisher, whose handwriting the Veritas experts had measured against previously known letters to the composer from Nägeli that they had tracked down in German and Austrian archives.

  As Rodewald paused for breath, Mitch asked almost offhandedly, “Should we be just a bit suspicious that so far, nothing at all seems suspicious?”

  The Austrian drew a handkerchief from a trouser pocket and tidily patted his moist brow—a gesture that surprised Clara, who had thought him incapable of perspiring. “No two cases are ever alike, my friends at Veritas tell me,” Rodewald replied, “but you’re surely entitled—indeed, well-advised, I should say—to be skeptical. Nevertheless, the findings are the findings—for you to interpret as you choose.”

  For the most difficult task of all, an examination of the musical portion of the Zurich manuscripts on the C&W premises, Rodewald had engaged his most experienced assistant curators to join him beforehand in a stringent review of Beethoven sketchbooks and autograph scores preserved in Berlin and Bonn as well as in his own archives in Vienna. “And it is only fair to tell you, gentlemen and madam,” he confided, “that I approached this project with towering incredulity. The very idea of this Tell manuscript seemed a contrived and defiant act of effrontery to lifetimes of dedicated study by scores of musicologists, some of them friends of mine. Still, like some of you perhaps, I was bewitched by the exhilarating possibility, however remote, of a newfound priceless treasure.” He panned slowly around the table, appreciative of the hushed attention. “And, based on all our efforts for the past six weeks, I remain so. Let me tell you why.”

  Beethoven’s preliminary sketches typically took the form of a single-line synopsis that would rough out a long stretch of the work—an entire section or even a whole movement. At the beginning of these statements projecting the principal melodic lines, the composer would specify the clefs, key, and tempo to guide himself in all that followed. “After that, he rarely bothered to repeat these vital road markers,” Rodewald observed, “thus making the bulk of his sketchbooks nearly impenetrable for anyone but himself.” Having framed out a new work, Beethoven would turn to the developmental phase, consisting of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic elaborations of his core theme—“or themes, plural, in this case,” said Rodewald. “It was here, in these detailed studies, that the real struggle of his creative agony was played out—a tortuous evolutionary process of refinement.” On paper it was a seething labyrinth of lines and dots and circles, a swirl of stemless notes and cryptic signs, and, at irregular intervals, a scribbled word or letter or number or abbreviation above the notation, all floating upon clef-less staves without a key or time signature in sight. Nor did this pulsating mass advance in a clean linear progression; it was more a series of starts and stops, of disruptions and resumptions, of second thoughts and strikeouts and partial restorations.

  “So he had, you might say, his own Ludwigish language,” Rodewald quipped, “a most confounding puzzle that we’ve been solving bit by bit over the past century and a half—and this Tell manuscript, rescued, we are told, from a Zurich attic, shows all of the very same complex habits and idiosyncrasies—the same seemingly chaotic battle with himself that we have found elsewhere.” Rodewald looked around a final time before taking his seat. In conclusion, “while we cannot tell you for certain that this work was composed by Beethoven in 1814—or any other time—what we can tell you is that it jolly well might have been.”

  “Three cheers!” Sedge boomed from across the pond. “Well, two and a half, anyway.”

  Back in their apartment, the Emerys aired their clashing inclinations. “I just can’t believe,” Clara began, “that anybody smart enough to fabricate all of this with such fidelity to every detail would really go to so much bother. I mean to achieve what, exactly?”

  “Harry agrees with you—he told me as much afterward,” Mitch said, mixing them vodka-and-tonics. “But here’s Ansel Erpf, right in our faces—a four-star smart-ass with a screw loose—who conceivably could have forged the thing—and for wholly irrational motives.”

  He squeezed the juice from a wedge of lime into the tall glasses and handed her one. “Unless, of course, we’re missing something more obvious—that Ansel, or someone, did it for the money. My sense is that his family had been doling Ansel a tight allowance so he’ll keep away from drugs, and maybe this was his perverse way to break free and become financially independent.”

  Clara studied her drink, stress level rising over Mitch’s reflexively negative approach to the mystery. “But the way it’s unfolding, who stands to make any money out of all this except Jake Hassler?” she asked. “And by your own readout, Jake isn’t savvy or loony enough to become mixed up in a fraud this elaborate.”

  “Maybe Ansel really is the mastermind, the one with the musical and historical expertise, who made all the counterfeiting arrangements, and Jake is his seemingly innocent front man—and they’re in this thing together—and putting us all on beautifully.”

  “You can’t believe that—”

  “I could be persuaded to believe almost anything at this point,” Mitch said, eyes narrowing. “I’m pretty well persuaded that Jake was never supposed to find the manuscript—no one figured he’d come to his grandfather’s funeral and search through the attic. Maybe it was planted there to be found by the Erpfs’ staff when they took title to the house, and they’d—they’d—maybe Ansel thought he could cash in on a counterfeit Beethoven symphony of his own creation—or maybe he sold his sister on it as a way to keep the family business from going bust—though Johnny Winks says it isn’t—or maybe a way for them to become national heroes and restore their social standing—”

  “Nice try, pal,” Clara said, dropping onto one of the love seats and ruminating on his flights of fancy. “But the thing you’re ignoring, sweetie, is that a team of world-class investigators just examined the manuscript under a microscope, literally, and told us there’s little reason to doubt its authenticity. Why isn’t that good enough for you? Why shouldn’t we proceed with Mac Quarles’s panel of Beethoven scholars to try to evaluate the music itself—whether it’s good Beethoven or putrid Beethoven that deserved to be junked? But you seem so damn negative, Mitch—I know it’s your job to be super-suspicious, but it’s almost as if you can’t bear the thought that seemingly out of nowhere, here comes a providential addition to the world’s highly limited supply of sublime beauty—if that’s what it proves to be.”

  Mitch weighed her passionate concern. “Listen, I’ll be every bit as thrilled as you if it turns out to be legitimate—”

  “I don’t believe that, Mitch—I think we’re coming at this thing from two very different perspectives—and isn’t that why you practically dragooned me into working with you on it?” Clara felt beaten down by his icy objectivity while she kept looking for the rainbow. “Maybe I’m just in your way here,” she said.

  “Au contraire. Look, I love your—what did Wordsworth or Coleridge or somebody call it?—‘willing suspension of disbelief.’ I just can’t afford to suspend mine.”

  “Sounds as if you’re saying I’m off in fantasyland.”

  Mitch gave an emphatic shake of his head. “Not on your tintype.”

  “Well, maybe I am,” she said, waving off his demurrer. “But I’m worried about you—you’re letting your imagination dry up. You need to leave some space for miracles to happen.”

  .

  the speed with which the German government was informed of the forensics findings in the Tell matter startled
and troubled Mitch and his senior colleagues. “The Jerries are coming,” Gordy told him, “as our illustrious London partner would put it. Tomorrow afternoon—a big schnauzer from their embassy. Fall in at fifteen-hundred hours.”

  The news was not entirely unanticipated. Two days after the Veritas team had packed up, Johnny Winks called Mitch to advise that his sources in Berlin had heard that the Federal Republic’s Ministry of Culture had been fully debriefed on C&W’s Tell forensic findings. “Your mole,” Johnny reported, “was an assistant to Herr Rodewald—the fellow claimed he hadn’t been paid enough to keep mum. I suspect you’ll soon have a visitor from Deutschland packing heat.”

  The gunsel was flawlessly groomed, exquisitely mannered, fresh off the plane from Washington, and, as his remarks soon evidenced, had lately returned from the fatherland with a full rundown on the status of the William Tell Symphony. Chief cultural attaché for the German Embassy, Maximillian Neugebaur arrived in Harry Cubbage’s office right on time, his abundant, light brown hair combed straight back with dramatic flair and his pale blue eyes alert with probing intelligence. After clasping hands heartily all around the table and accepting an offer of coffee—“Black, please, if you don’t mind”—Herr Neugebaur said his government was appreciative of the opportunity to state its position regarding the newly found manuscript attributed to Beethoven, “who is, as you are all surely aware, very greatly venerated by our people.”

  “By ours no less so,” Harry assured their German visitor. “An immense genius—for all ages—and all humanity.”

  “Just so,” said Neugebaur, taking the seat offered to him directly opposite Harry. “Perhaps, then, I need not belabor the great excitement and deep concern which the announcement from your office stirred throughout our nation after it was reported by the media.”

  “Excitement and no doubt keen curiosity,” Harry jousted, “but why deep concern? Our firm is an exceedingly conscientious one. Your government can rest assured that we are treating the manuscript with the greatest care and reverence.”

  “The course of its fate, however, is evidently proceeding without the least communication with German officials or scholars.” He was aware, Neugebaur disclosed, of the expression of concern registered earlier with C&W by a representative of the Swiss government. “But as a ranking officer in our diplomatic delegation to your country, I have been sent to express a perhaps more serious objection to your activities in this matter, because Beethoven was a German—a citizen of a German state—and as such, we feel a—”

  “Excuse me, Herr Neugebaur,” said Harry, “but I’ve been led to understand that he had become a citizen of the Austrian empire.”

  “An honorary citizen of Vienna, I believe,” Neugebaur corrected him. “I think it safe to say that he was always German in his soul. Our point is simply that this is not a private matter, as your firm seems to view it. It pertains to the property of a deceased German composer.”

  Harry turned to Gordy to frame a legally immaculate response.

  “Our understanding, sir, is that there are no plausible Beethoven heirs to claim title to this property,” C&W’s counsel said, striving to cleanse his words of abrasiveness. “Nor is anyone else qualified to do so, including the Swiss neighbors of our client’s late grandfather, who seem suddenly to require a substantial reward for their years of unsolicited kindness to him.”

  His coffee cup sat unattended in front of the attaché. “I think the basic point, Mr. Roth, is that your Mr. Jacob Hassler has no substantive claim to the property—certainly none allowing him to exploit or profit from it—or to ask your company to judge its authenticity. Our view is that this work should be examined in the most careful and responsible manner, in view of the paramount importance its alleged composer occupies in the history of world culture.”

  “Which is precisely what we’re doing, sir—”

  “But there is only your word for that, Mr. Roth. We have nothing at all to judge by beyond what you’ve chosen to reveal about this potentially momentous discovery.”

  Mitch sensed Gordy’s rising gorge and his extra effort to keep it from spilling. “In order to prevent wild rumors and unjustified speculation from spreading,” Mitch spoke up as head of the firm’s authentication program, “we’ve apprised the world, as a courtesy, of the existence of this document and stated that we’re in the process of trying to determine if it’s genuine—and that we’ll be making full disclosure of our findings at the appropriate time. Please, sir, advise your government to that effect.”

  “My government has read your announcement,” said Neugebaur, trying to remove any sharpness from his tone, “but it believes this is the appropriate time for you to reveal everything and to consult those more qualified than yourselves to judge whether the work is authentic or fraudulent. Your own investigation is necessarily tainted by your vested commercial interest in its outcome.”

  “Frankly,” Harry interceded now, “I take issue with that, Herr Neugebaur. Our company has been around about as long as the German nation—and Cubbage & Wakeham’s vested interest is as a vendor of meritorious items of artistic and historic interest. Do you think we’ve stayed in business this long by purveying fraudulent goods?”

  The German saw he had invited the reproach. “I meant no disrespect, Mr. Cubbage. But we’re not talking about trust here, sir—it’s a matter of competence, and you seem unwilling to defer in the least to German expertise in this area. In Beethoven, we’re speaking of one of the most revered figures in a cultural movement spanning two centuries and without parallel in human history—I refer to the German achievement in creating classical music as such. It’s one of the glories that our people can point to with the purest pride—and so we are entitled to be deeply involved in the authentication process of this work.”

  Mindful of Clara’s more-than-once-expressed insight that art and patriotism are suspect companions, Mitch was moved to challenge the attaché’s remarks.

  “Some people, sir,” he said in a modulated tone, “don’t believe that genius, any more than virtue or evil, has a nationality. Genius is a rare quality of the human species, wherever it arises, and the creative spirit rarely thrives under state auspices. In fact, I’d venture, along with many of my countrymen, that governments are inclined, if anything, to suppress creativity and originality as subversive—and your own government, I suspect, is no more enlightened in this regard than any other.”

  His polite rebuke won scarcely five seconds of respectful silence before Mitch’s haughty adversary lashed back undeterred. “The state, all states, may cater to the lowest common denominator, Mr. Emery, but I don’t see the free-enterprise sector, especially in populist America, doing any better when it comes to promoting civilized taste. We have a track record in that area, Mr. Emery.”

  “You have a track record in many areas,” Mitch replied.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Gordy separated them verbally. “The point we want to stress to the German government, I think, is that we’re going to enlist a panel of the very best experts in the world in order to decide—”

  “But you’re not the ones who should be making that selection,” Neugebaur insisted, “especially judging by your choice to oversee the project—this Dr. Macrae Quarles. He is not taken seriously as a musicologist in Germany.”

  “Is any American musicologist up to your country’s standards?” Mitch asked bluntly. “Dr. Quarles is one of our most highly regarded and versatile music scholars.”

  “Yes—for an American, his works may be competent of their sort, but they don’t really approach the rigorous standard met by our scholars. We simply don’t think Dr. Quarles is up to the very demanding task you’ve assigned him.”

  Precisely what Clara had predicted the Germans would say, Mitch remembered, if anyone other than a German was put in charge of the vetting process. Confronted in person now by the claim, he would not buy it. “What is it, exactly,” he
asked Neugebaur, “that your government would like us to do?”

  The German diplomat sat back and surveyed the room coolly. “Let me try to reverse the question, gentlemen, and ask you for an honest answer. Let us suppose a Bavarian bratwurst salesman were to turn up suddenly with what he claimed was the long lost autobiography of Thomas Jefferson—and then said he would consult the local librarian to verify its authenticity. How would that strike America? I daresay that your whole country would be up in arms, demanding—and with very good reason—that your own peerless Jefferson scholars be brought into the validation process and seeking assurances that fraud was not about to be committed in the name of one of your national icons. Think of Beethoven up on Mount Rushmore…”

  Harry turned up his palms toward Mitch, as if to say they were in a no-win dilemma, then glanced at their visitor. “Let me reassure you, my friend,” he said quietly to the visitor, “that we’re going to be enlisting a panel of international experts, with the German cultural community prominently represented. We’ll report their findings in full, exercise our legal and commercial rights accordingly, and the world will be free to make its own judgment about the results.”

  Neugebaur shook his head. “That’s not good enough, Mr. Cubbage. This is not a question of merely legal or commercial rights—this is a moral issue with us. The manuscript should be accessible for inspection by all interested parties and its authenticity determined after objective examination by the most able scholars. That’s what we believe the world owes to Beethoven.”

  “Were we to do what you ask,” Gordy replied, “we’d be surrendering all proprietary interest in and rights to the work—anyone could copy it and do what they wished with it. Instead of letting it be torn to shreds and profaned, our firm is making a considerable investment to learn everything knowable about the work, after which we’ll—”