The composer
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 26: Stories for Today
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Patrick Holland
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The mother of my daughter's best friend called him ‘the composer'. She said she bought ironbark honey from him, and that he had a violin for sale. I told her it had to be a good one; Mei was entering Brisbane's Young Conservatorium Orchestra, and I felt it was time she had an instrument befitting the music she would be playing.
‘It'll be a good one if he owns it,' she said. ‘He's a real composer, you know.'
I asked his name.
‘Milo something. Jaarvi. That's it! Milo Jaarvi.'
The name rang a bell, though I did not recall his music. I asked if she knew how much he wanted for the violin. She didn't, but she was sure he would give me a good price.
‘He's strange like that,' she said. ‘He's honest. He once walked three kilometres to my house after he short-changed me on a tub of honey.'
She gave me an address in the Blackall Range, north of Brisbane.
My daughter was sick that weekend, so I drove out of the city alone. The composer's house was a Queenslander set high in the wooded hills. Peach, olive and citrus trees stood in the front yard. Walking up the stairs I noticed paint peeling from the wallboards. A man of middling height came to the door. His prematurely greying beard and hair made his green eyes startling.
After a brief exchange I was inside with the violin. I have only ever been a mediocre violinist, and the demands of work and family have meant that I can give less and less time to playing. Yet even I could tell the instrument in my hands was exceptional. It was perfectly weighted, and it resonated with such clarity and intensity that I was embarrassed and barely let the bow touch the strings.
‘It's a fine fiddle,' I said.
The composer nodded. ‘A friend sent it to me from Berlin. It's a hundred and thirty years old. It was almost dead when I got it. I played it back to life over the course of a year. It was made by a Lithuanian out of hundred-year-old Bosnian maple. Biednas was the maker's name. He's barely known, but a true craftsman.'
‘I need an instrument for my daughter,' I said. ‘But I doubt I can afford this one.'
I told the composer that Mei was going into the youth orchestra. Second violin.
‘Has she any Jewish blood?'
‘My parents are Irish and my wife is Taiwanese. Why do you ask?'
‘All the great violinists are Jewish. It's the instrument of the wanderer, the exiled.'
I told him that but for a trip a year to Taiwan to visit Mei's grandparents, our family was very much settled.
The composer smiled. He looked out the window at my car on the gravel drive. He asked what work my wife did. I think he was trying to judge my means in order to arrive at a price.
‘Twelve thousand,' he said at last.
It was more than I could comfortably afford. But I had long dreamt that my daughter would become a concert violinist, and she seemed to have aptitude. I sighed and took out my chequebook.
‘No,' said the composer when he saw the cheque. ‘Seven thousand five hundred. It's worth much more, but that's what it cost me. Seven thousand five hundred, on the condition that it's for your daughter - that you won't sell it - she must own it for good.'
I thought it was a strange, sentimental request.
‘Very well. I promise. Thank you.'
I asked him if he played.
‘Not really. Not the violin. I bought it for my own daughter.'
I guessed by the arrangement of the house, its utilitarian furniture and lack of decoration, that the composer lived alone. There was no sign of a woman or child. I did not want to rub the wounds of a broken marriage.
‘Daughters.' I smiled consolingly. ‘I must have thrown a hundred thousand dollars on Mei's various fads by now. And she's only sixteen.'
The composer nodded and smiled.