The Recompense by Christie Cochrell

Ginny was raised on violin lessons and minimal parental supervision.  The combination very nearly landed her in a windowless room in the detention center in Brooklyn, and if Callum hadn’t gotten away with the dogs just when he did, even his street smarts might not have saved her.

The dogs, Wolfgang and Ludwig, were Madame Leitner’s, rare Barbets, and Ginny and Callum were Madame’s too—her favorite pupil and the young delinquent dogwalker she’d taken in.

Born in Vienna during the Allied Occupation, Irmgard Leitner had been first a prodigy, and then an internationally acclaimed violinist (statuesque, with flaxen hair) based in Paris.  And then the widow of some twice-removed Belgian royal, a grande dame in music circles, holder of an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Julliard, and resident since the early 2000s of Manhattan’s Upper East Side.  Irmgard, Ginny would learn, was also the name of a minor planet, an abbess, a minor saint.  Their Irmgard was an exacting teacher, but believed firmly in die belohnung—”the recompense,” for doing well and applying oneself diligently.

Ginny’s upwardly mobile parents, in a rare moment of attention when the guidance counselor at her prep school let them know their daughter was displaying an unusual aptitude for music, had learned about Madame’s young nephew, Jakob, who’d just sung at The Met (one of the three child-spirits in The Magic Flute), and signed her up for lessons right away.  Ginny found Jakob unbearably pompous—as did Madame, she’d find.

She was immediately charmed, though, by Madame’s live-in dogwalker, Callum, who took her Barbets twice daily to Central Park (Wolfgang burnt umber, Ludwig brown sugar), and washed them biweekly, and cooked them meals with fresh ingredients weighed exactly on a special scale—among them turkey gizzards, grated organic sweet potatoes and carrots (blanched), sunflower seeds, pumpkin puree, wild Alaskan salmon oil, burdock root.  Callum and the housekeeper/cook, Samantha, an enormous Trinbagonian, vied mulishly and cunningly for kitchen space and utensils, though Callum tried to squirrel away whatever he needed in a locked cabinet and not let the excitable woman threaten him with her voodoo—“Orisha comin’ at you, boy!” she’d declare darkly.

Ginny started spending the best part of Saturdays at the luxurious townhouse with five stories—the upper three comprising the bedrooms of Madame, her brother Leopold and his male guest du jour, and then Callum (like a closet, he claimed), and Samantha (“a lot bigger—lucky for her, since she is so gargantuan”) way at the top.  She felt unworthy to play in the lovely music room up on the second floor, let alone touch the Stradivarius she was allowed to use during their sessions after her first month of lessons.  They’d always have a lesson first, and then Madame would leave her to practice while she “just nipped up” for a little nap.  She’d come back down, refreshed, sometimes her hair rucked up in back from her pillow, and hear the piece again, and then have Samantha serve them lunch.

If Ginny had played very well indeed, like the exquisite Meditation from Thaïs she was currently working on, Madame would “for the recompense” take her to Café Sabarsky in the Neue Galerie, a few blocks away, where they’d pay a visit to Klimt’s Woman in Gold and then have Viennese hot chocolate, sausages, and linzertorte, in random order, or sometimes warm crêpes with apricot jam.

If her pupil hadn’t done so well, or Madame was having a bad day, she’d wave goodbye, grandly, after the last note of the Strad had faded to nothing, and settle with the dogs in the downstairs library, reading Rilke, Remarque, or Thomas Mann, while Ginny joined Callum in the garden—where Samantha was trying to grow orange trees, basil, chives, and mint, as well as Trinidadian chadon beni for sauces and for tea.  Ginny was never in a hurry to head back up to Hamilton Heights.

Either way, she’d end up hearing lots about Madame’s horrible children—Dominik and Elisa.  Jakob the boy soprano was Elisa’s spoiled son; Dominik had four daughters divided between two ex-wives, who all lived “on the other side of a great divide.”  Variously in Riyad and Apalachicola, as best as Ginny could determine.

“I don’t see them,” Madame explained.  “I’ve never even met the youngest.”

“How lucky can you get?” Callum opined, outside.  “It’s bad enough having the Singing Wonder here, every few weeks.”  He couldn’t stand Jakob, either.

“I count my blessings,” Madame echoed him unknowingly.  “I’m sure they’re dreadful creatures.”

“They all take after Uncle Florian,” her brother Leopold put in, often wandering absently into the music room when he was home and not off doing whatever it was he did for the costume shop at the New York City Ballet, or out on the front stoop smoking Sobranies while he waited for a boyfriend to be dropped off by a cab.  “Their little mouths gaping open like crocodiles, all teeth and phony smile.  And what’s the bird that picks their teeth?”

“The Egyptian Plover, isn’t it?  But I don’t really see . . . ”

“Oh yes you do, darling.  What do any of them want from you?  Money.  Filthy lucre.  Gold fillings if they could.  My niece and nephew are insatiable vultures.”

“Elisa had my Degas race horses already, as a wedding present, and she’s long since spent them all.”

“And didn’t Dominik lose the Picasso autograph letter on that other race horse at Belmont Park?”

“Of course he did.  They’re both just counting the days until I am gone.  Hoping against hope for the recompense.  For what, I ask you?  Just for being born?  That was almost entirely my doing, not theirs.”

___

To Ginny’s great distress, it seemed the days to be counted were all too few.  Madame Leitner turned out to have some incurable illness which involved a lot of visits to Mount Sinai for transfusions, and to her doctor—“the spitting image of Mahler”—on Park Avenue.  She played less and less, then not at all; talked more—talked endlessly.  She wasn’t interested in hearing her pupil’s progress, and hardly ever let her get through a passage without interruption.

“She sleeps an awful lot, most of the week,” Callum reported glumly, out in the garden brushing Wolfgang’s cinnamon curls.

Ominous too, Elisa and Jakob were around a lot more often than before—skulking, eyeing rare paintings and books, fondling the ornate footed silver Georgian cream pitcher, surreptitiously checking items on Google Lens to get a rough appraisal.  One Saturday in late May, Dominik barged into the music room, glowering when he found it occupied, and making some jumbled excuse.  The next week he had “a friend” with him, who Leopold outed as a real estate valuer.

___

Timing is everything, musicians know.  Madame Leitner owned a lovely antique Maelzel metronome, walnut and brass, but could well have done without, her innate timekeeping was so exact.  And even in the end her timing was just right. 

Ginny was at the townhouse for a lesson on the 13th of June, but found Madame unwell, so played no more than a few measures of the Paganini Caprice she was working on, then at her insistence went off with Callum and Wolfgang and Ludwig to The Barking Dog for brunch (Eggs Florentine, Challah French Toast, Himalayan Dog Chews).  Not “the recompense,” but a treat nonetheless.  Madame was still nowhere in evidence when they got back, mid-afternoon, so Ginny picked up her violin case from the bottom of the stairs and went home, most unwillingly, to study for exams.  Economics and Chemistry were going to do her in, and she was in for a bad week of it.  Though she was terribly worried and sad, she hardly had a chance to fret about her failing violin teacher, who she was genuinely fond of, and no time at all to practice.

When the weekend finally approached, and exams were behind her, she guessed she’d just squeaked through the two subjects that she liked least.  But she was done, and she’d be off to Vienna for Music School the coming fall, no matter what.

Or not..

When she got to the townhouse that Saturday, feeling anxious again about Madame and about not having practiced, she found not the oasis she had so looked forward to, but chaos and absurdity—shock after shock.  She was met at the door by Samantha, who shot a look of pure evil at her, then Dominick—exclaiming to a policewoman at his shoulder, “Here she is!”

Two other officers had been on their way out the door, apparently, but all moved back into the library, motioning Ginny in.  Leonard was sitting in his silky velvet dressing gown on the green sofa with his latest boyfriend, whose name (she thought) was Pierre—the sommalier at Le Coucou.  The two were eating some country terrine with foie gras and prunes Pierre had brought, and despite the general chaos calmly finishing a Corsican extra-Brut sparkling wine (“a mere $210 a bouteille”), with Leonard quoting Noël Coward at Elisa, her hair practically standing on end from irritation.

“‘It is difficult for me to wag my finger at you from so very far away, particularly as my heart aches for you but really, darling, you must pack up this nonsensical situation once and for all.  It is really beneath your dignity, not your dignity as a famous artist and a glamorous star, but your dignity as a human, only too human being.’”

“Let’s take a look at that.”  One of the officers took Ginny’s violin case out of her arms.  She had been hugging it, unknowingly, out of growing panic.

“Where’s Madame?” she asked Samantha, who had come into the room again, with a plate of egg-salad sandwiches for Elise.

“She’s dead, eh?—as the both of you knew when you robbed her.”

Ginny cried out with dismay and disbelief, backing away from the big, wrathful woman, while the scruffed case (her only friend, it seemed) was set on the reading table.

“The human race is a letdown, Ernest—a bad, bad letdown,” Leonard tried to comfort her with another Noël Coward quote, seeing her devastated face.  And then, more sympathetically, “I’m so sorry nobody let you know.  It’s been rather a dog and pony show, all week.”

“More to the point,” Dominik sneered, “Where is the Stradivarius?  Right there, I’ll wager anything you like.  For whatever reason, she’s saved you a prolonged chase, officer.”

“You are accused of having stolen a valuable violin belonging to the children of Irmgard Leitner, deceased.”

“I what?”  Ginny couldn’t believe it.  “That’s not the Strad, for pity’s sake—it’s just my wretched old Lazzaro Zucchi.”

“You’re saying you didn’t take Mrs. Leitner’s violin, which has been reported missing?”

“Of course I didn’t!  She lets me play it here, on Saturdays during my lessons.  That’s all.”

“And yet it’s missing.”

“I know this girl took it,” Samantha insisted, her lip curling.  “It’s just exactly what she’d do!  She and that boy, between them.”

Ginny gaped around the room.  “Callum?  Where is Callum?”

“Good question, no?  He and those dogs were gone when we got here,” Elise growled through a mouthful of egg salad.

“If it’s any comfort, darling,” Leopold drawled to Ginny, “they accused me first.  And pauvre Pierre.”

“Then me!” Samantha cried melodramatically.  “Of course I have nothing to do with it.  I love Madame.  I hate that screechy music that you play.”  She looked daggers around the room, and veritable scimitars at jeering Dominick.

“They thought of Callum next, who’s vanished with the dogs and has the felonies to his credit.  Then, when the police were called, Samantha mentioned his being friends with ‘that hussy that plays . . . that Madame was so thick with.’”  (Jealous, Ginny had already guessed, because she never got invited to the gallery and café, for “the recompense.”  She’d more than once complained, “I like whipping cream as much as the next person.  More, even.”)

“And that’s where we are now,” Leopold said.  “They concluded ‘Of course!  It has to be the two of them’—and called New York City’s Finest, who were just on their way to hunt you down, when you arrived, naively, of your own accord.”

“But I don’t have the Strad!” Ginny insisted.  “See for yourselves.”  She gestured at the case on the table.  “And I know Callum doesn’t either, wherever he’s gone.”  She guessed he must be trying to keep the dogs safe from Madame’s despicable children.  They’d get rid of them in a flash, and he couldn’t bear that.

The woman officer had taken the initiative already, and took the violin out, to hold up and examine.

Ginny stared, aghast, turned suddenly icy.  Leonard reached quickly for her arm, to steady her.  There was no doubt—the violin she had been carrying around unknowingly, all week, was the inestimable Stradivarius, from the maestro’s golden period.  The policewoman had come to the same conclusion, having scrutinized the label and its inscription, the Latin off-putting but not entirely incomprehensible:  Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno 1712.

“You’ll have to come with us.”  One of the two po-faced male officers.

Samantha was looking like a cat lapping up cream.  Leonard was surprised, appraising, but reserving judgment.  (“You go girl!” she thought she heard him muttering.)

But once again the officers were interrupted in their exodus.  A flurry ensued, with Callum, Wolfgang, Ludwig, and a tall stranger in Clark Kent glasses suddenly among them—and Pierre just barely rescuing the remains of the terrine from the dogs.

“Hold on,” Callum shouted.  “It’s cool—just let her go.”

“Not so fast.  These folks have lodged a complaint.”

“Where have you been, my boy?  These gentlemen—and ladies—seemed to want you rather badly.”

“Yes—where were you?” Ginny cried, suddenly unable to stop the tears.

“I went to find you, Ginny, to warn you—since you never ever answer your phone.  But traffic was a mess, and I must have missed you.  And I needed to go find Mr. Lilley then.”  He angled his curly head at Clark Kent beside him.  Then, seeing the perilously fragile violin in the mitts of the beefiest policeman, he hollered again.

“She didn’t take it.  Madame Leitner wanted her to have it, and gave it to her last week.”

Ginny was speechless, while Elisa swore loudly and made a savage lunge at him.  But Callum dodged.

“Madame asked me to substitute the Strad for Ginny’s ordinary one, when she was in the bathroom.  You know—just before we left for brunch,” he added for Ginny’s information.  “She wanted above everything to save it from those two, and said it was ‘the recompense for Miss Ginny’s great gift that must be noticed by the world.’”

“Yeh, right,” Dominick scoffed, then growled.  “Like we’re going to believe a known felon.”  New York’s Finest didn’t look convinced, either.

“There wasn’t any will,” Elisa said coldly.  “We’ve looked.  So we’re her next of kin, and everything is ours.”

“Not even a letter,” Dominick crowed.  “It’s theft, all right.”

Ginny was terrified, knowing they’d make sure she was arrested.  They were so full of spite.  They’d had it in for her since the first time they’d seen her in the house.  It didn’t help that Samantha was egging them on too.

“Just wait,” Callum said sternly, planting himself right in front of the policewoman in charge.

“I recorded the whole thing on my phone, when Madame Leitner was telling me what she’d decided.  I was convinced that she, there”—pointing at Samantha—“would do all she could to do me out of my share of some savings bonds Madame had promised us.”

“And that’s where I come in,” Clark Kent said pleasantly, pulling out papers from his leather bag.  “There is a will, in fact, and a new codicil, naming ‘the recompense,’ as she called it, for Miss Virginia Franconi.  I know she kept a copy—so someone must have destroyed it.”  He carefully avoided looking at Dominick and Elisa, who were red-faced, almost apoplectic.  “Callum Rogers, who set off bravely across town to find me before things got too far out of hand, is to be given the dogs and a sizeable bequest.  Samantha Ramnarine has been treated with generosity as well.  I’ll talk to you both separately, to give you the details.”  He smiled at both of them.  Samantha’s frown had lightened drastically in response to his words.

  “Her brother Leopold gets the bulk of her estate, townhouse included.  A grandson, Jakob Paulding, has been left a silver cream pitcher—which she believes he’ll find without problem.”

“And us?” Dominick demanded with hostile bewilderment.  “Me and Elisa?”  He was still on the offensive, not seeing what was coming, what had come.

“She’s left nothing to either of you,” James Lilley informed them with professional civility, putting the papers back into his goat leather messenger bag and fastening the buckle.  “She specifies that, in all caps, in a beautifully old-fashioned hand.  ‘NOTHING.’”

“‘So many illusions shattered—so many dreams trodden in the dust,’” Noël Coward murmured in Leonard’s sardonic tones, toasting Pierre with the last hundred dollar drops of the champagne as the three police officers filed out for good this time, without another word.

Christie Cochrell’s work has been published by The Saturday Evening Post, Tin House, The Plentitudes, Catamaran, and a variety of others, receiving several awards and Pushcart nominations.  Chosen as New Mexico Young Poet of the Year while growing up in Santa Fe, she now lives on the northern California coast in Santa Cruz, and has recently published a volume of collected poems, Contagious Magic.  She’s

traveled extensively, and is immensely grateful for the sensory riches and toothsome words she has collected everywhere along the way.

Christie Cochrell

Image: Violin and Bow side by side on a wooden background from Pixabay.com