The Violin Thief
    by Joseph Auslander and Audrey Wurdemann

It was a day or two before Christmas.  Like all courtrooms, this one
smelled of disinfectant and too much steam heat.  A few scant rays
of pale winter sunshine, struggling in a watery rise through the high
dirty windows, dulled the unshed electric lights to whitish blurs.
Spectators were few.  The docket didn't look exciting.

The accused little man stood before the golden oak bar of justice.
He was an old man; they had allowed him the dignity of keeping his hat,
but the big blue-coated policeman stood close behind him as his accuser
spoke.

"All kinds of people come to my place," the plaintiff was saying.
"You'd be surprised, Your Honor...  Bums, actors out of work, women
from over on Park Avenue, too, sometimes.  When this little guy comes
in he looks respectable, see?  So when he asks to see the violin I take
it out of the window and hand it to him to look at.  If he'd asked to
see a watch or a ring, no matter how respectable he looked I'd keep
my eye on him like an eagle.  But a fiddle! I turn my back for a second,
and he's run halfway down the block.  You wouldn't think he had the
nerve!"

The violin lay on a table before the bench; the pale winter night
tangled with its amber lacquer.

"Seventy-five dollars, Your Honor," said the pawn broker.  "I wouldn't
have let it go for a cent less.  And this old goof, he thinks he can
run out with it for nothing."

The judge, a fat, tired man, nodded wearily.  "Did you tell him
the price?"

"Sure, I told him.  And he said he didn't have it, but maybe he could
buy it on time.  And I told him five dollars down and a dollar a week,
but he said he didn't have the five."

The judge glanced at the waiting cop, "Suppose we hear from you now."

"It's like he said, your Honor," the blue coat stated flatly.  "I was
just rounding the corner when this little character ran into me.  I
hear a lot of hooting and hollering where he came from, so I hang onto
him.  Then up comes Sol, here, who's had his shop on that same block
for twenty years.  And up come five or six other people who see the guy
running out of Sol's place with the fiddle."

The big cop looked down at the little man.  "One thing I'll say about
it, he don't make any trouble coming to the station.  Only I have a real
job getting him to let loose of the fiddle."

"Well," said the judge, "and what have you got to say about all this?"

The little old man lifted his head; the judge saw that his eyes were
a cloudy blue, soft as a child's.

"Sir Magistrate, I don't speak English so much.  So maybe I can't
explain.  I pay, sure I pay, some day, but I can't pay now.  This
all I got."  He held up two fingers.  "Two dollars I pay, not five.
But here I am lonesome for the violin, and her."

He put his hand over his heart and then at his neck, cocking his head
as though his chin rested on a fiddle.  "And here."  He held out his
hands, and though they were gnarled and twisted, you could see that
they might once have been the supple hands of an artist.

"I understand, Sir Magistrate.  I pay, I want to pay.  I don't know
what came over me.  I went crazy for a minute when I had the violin
in my hands.  I pay, little by little I pay up.  But I need the violin
now.  Before I die, I die soon, without the music."

"Suppose you tell the court why you need the music so badly," said
the judge, his eyes on the lozenges of light hovering over the violin
on the table.

"Because I am a musician!"  The old man drew himself up proudly.

"Year in, year out, in Prague and then in Vienna, I am a musician in
the orchestra.  First, I am a third violin, then second, then first.
I play in the Theatre twenty years, in the summer for people who sit
under trees, in winter for the skaters.  Oh, how they waltzed on their
skates to our music.  But the enemy came, and they broke our violins
over our heads because we would not play the propaganda... and they
took us away."  He shivered, "I was away five years."

"You mean you were in a concentration camp?" asked the judge.

"Camp...salt mines...mills...camp again, after I get too sick to work."
The little man looked at his hands.  "I don't know if can play any
more...so good.  But here...in my heart...it will still sing."

"And what do you do now?"

"I have job.  I sweep out, sometimes I wash dishes.  Busboy, they call
me.  In cafeteria... After I come back...from being away, nobody was left.
My wife, my son, my friends, all gone.  So my brother in America send
for me.  But he's poor, big family, so I don't ask him to buy me violin.
I buy myself, only little by little.  But I die, without."

"Let me see that fiddle." The judge reached across the bench; the cop
handed it up to him.  Carefully he turned it in his hands, unfastened
the bow which was attached to one of the pegs by a rubber band.  After
a moment he tucked the instrument under his chin, curved his hand around
the finger board and twanged the strings gently.  But he did not lift
the bow.

"Sir Magistrate," said the little man, "do you know what it means to
be without music?  It is as if they take away my soul."

The judge picked up the bow, held it for a moment on the strings and
then laid it down.  "Oh, please," said the little man.  "I must have
the music.  If I had the violin I can breathe again."

"What do you want for this instrument?"  His fingers were softly
plucking the strings.  "Seventy-five dollars, Your Honor."

"Seventy-five dollars...to, breathe again."

Then silence fell in the courtroom and resounded through the fading
light; the handful of people in the back of the room stared first at
the judge and then at each other.

"Case dismissed," said the judge.  He reached into his trousers pocket.
"I think we can fix up a way for you to have the violin.  Five dollars
down?  Here's five."

He reached toward the pawn broker with the money and said, "I will
stand behind this man's guarantee to pay you the balance."

The cop fished in his own pocket and came up with a five-dollar bill.
"It must be the Irish in me," he said, shaking his head.

From the back of the room two men came up the aisle to the bench.
"We're witnesses on another case," one of them said, "How about
letting us in on the deal?"

Others struggled down the aisles.  The little man tried to speak;
choked; he could not be heard above the clamor.  The judge rapped
for order.  And then above the clamor the little man found his voice.
He turned his hat around as he spoke.

"No, Sir Magistrate," he said.  "I hope you will understand.  It is
hard to talk now.  I am filled up; here, it hurts."  He pointed to his
throat.  "How can I take so much...take the violin this way?  I know
what you try to do for me here.  Judge, Sir Magistrate, how can I
fix with him?"  He pointed to the pawn broker.  "So he knows I do
not steal... Please, Sir Judge...I...What happens today squeezes...
in my heart."

The judge coughed and blinked and blew his nose, and so did the cop.
At the back of the room a couple of women and an old man were crying
openly.  Somehow word of this little drama had sifted into the hall,
and now other people began to drift in.

The judge looked at the pawn broker.  "How much have you got there?"

The pawn broker regarded the grimy bills in his hands.  He counted
them slowly.  "Twenty-nine dollars and thirty-five cents, Your Honor,
but that's okay by me," he said.  "Seeing he's a musician, I'll make
it my professional rate, thirty dollars...with the bow thrown in."

The little man bowed.  "A professional rate, yeah, that I understand.
Always in Europe the shops made rates for the artists.  But these
people who have paid for me..."

AND, there, in that court, on a pale winter afternoon a day or two
before Christmas, the little man with twisted, gnarled hands took the
fiddle lovingly and reverently, as though he took up the pillow upon
which rests the Holy Grail.  And after a moment he tucked it under his
chin, and twanged the strings into tune, and the room was filled with
the simple heart searching magic of "Silent Night, Holy Night."...

After he finished, the judge glanced around the room.  "Anybody who
thinks he's guilty enough to spend Christmas in jail can stay and be
sentenced," he said gruffly,  "Otherwise, you all clear out.  I'm
remanding every arrest in this room till after New Year's and then
I want you back here, and if you don't come in and the police have to
go hunting for you, I'll crack down twice as hard."

"And you...," he pointed to the little man.  "You're coming home
to dinner with me and afterwards, maybe you'll play for me.  I could
use a little music."

 - - -

When she was 21 years old, Audrey Wurdemann (b. 1911) wrote "Bright
Ambush", winner of the 1935 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

Joseph Auslander (1897-1970) was the first Poet Laureate of the USA
(1937-1941), and Consultant in English Poetry at Library of Congress.
His translation of Goethe's original poem, "Der Zauberlehrling",
appears on the piano roll of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, QRS XP-163,
played by Rudy Martin.

I don't know when "The Violin Thief" was first published; I found
it in 1998 at http://cyou.com/~christmas/Story/cs10.htm

Robbie Rhodes