A violin.

Yes.

How expensive a violin are we talking about?

I paid a little over two hundred thousand dollars for it.

That’s impressive. How much money had you inherited?

My share was something over a half million dollars. I thought the violin was a good idea. Even if I did worry about leaving it in my room. I used to keep it under the pillow. For a while I actually kept the money in a shoebox in the closet.

You had the money in cash?

Yes. When my brother found out he made me rent a safe deposit box.

You didnt consider investing it?

We’d inherited the money and we didnt owe any taxes on it. But we couldnt prove that. It was buried in my grandmother’s basement. She told us where it was and that we were to have it. But of course there wasnt any documentation for it.

She’d buried the money in her basement.

Our grandfather had. It was in twenty dollar goldpieces. Stacked in lengths of lead pipe.

This is turning into a fairly curious tale.

People do curious things.

Christie’s. You bought the violin at auction?

Yes. I bought it through Bein & Fushi. In Chicago. They werent really even in business yet. But they acted as my agents.

They wouldnt have had an instrument like that in stock.

No. They didnt have any stock. They were a brand-new company.

I can see how you would be concerned about it.

When a Cremona is stolen it can be stolen forever. One more of a handful that might never be found. I’d thought about painting it. Some sort of water soluble paint that would be easy to get off without damaging the finish. Paint it gold, maybe. Put it in a cheap case. But I thought about the quotation that Quine cites. Save the surface and you save all. Anyway I knew I couldnt bring myself to do it.

Who’s Quine?

He’s a philosopher. Some say the greatest living.

Do you?

Maybe. Of course he thinks he understands mathematics. Cant seem to leave it alone.

But that’s a quote, you said.

Yes. It’s in the frontispiece of one of his books.

Does he give an attribution?

Yes. Sherwin-Williams.

The paint company.

Yes.

You’re joking.

No. I’m not. Neither was Quine. Well. Maybe a little. Maybe quite a bit now that I think about it.

Bein & Fushi. Do I have that right?

Yes. The day I picked it up I took it home on the bus. I climbed the stairs to my room and went in and sat on the bed with it in my lap. Just looking at the case. The case was German. Probably late eighteenth century. It looked almost new. Black calf with German-silver latches. I flipped the latches up with my thumb one by one and raised the lid. I can remember every breath.

But you’d seen it before. You saw it at the dealer’s.

No. I hadnt. They put it on the counter and started to unsnap the latches but I stopped them. I’d seen photos of course. The photos in Christie’s catalog were probably the best. The maple was really close grained and curly. The back was two-piece and almost bookmatched. Very unusual. The finish was pretty much gone from the neck, down to the wood actually, and I thought it could even be original although the catalog didnt say that. I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen.