THE VIOLIN CASE

A musical misunderstanding leads to a change of heart for a Chicago gangster

My name is Scarface Silvani, and I’d like to tell you about Hilda Meadowsweet and how the planets – not that I believe they have the slightest effect on us down here – brought us together on that spring day in 1928 when Mishigami was sparkling blue in the sunshine and the air was like champagne – every breath of it. Mishigami, by the way, is what the Ojibwa called Lake Michigan. I call it that because when I was in the boy scouts it was explained to us that was where the name Michigan came from, and the information stuck. Some information sticks. Ask me to name every state capital in the United States and I reel them off; still, even today, when I’ve just had my forty-fifth birthday and celebrated my seventeenth year with my love, my bride, my own Hilda Meadowsweet.

You may be wondering about my name. Silvani needs no explanation: the Silvanis were from Puglia – from an obscure town somewhere down there, where nothing ever happened from one century to the next. They never liked Mussolini, by the way – he had nothing to do with us. My grandfather, who stayed in Italy, used to spit every time he heard the name of that bully. He had a dry mouth for years, my grandmother said, but he never gave in, and when they suspended il Duce upside down he and his friends had the biggest, most prolonged party anybody had ever seen in their town. It went on for days.

Of course, I was not baptised Scarface. My real name is Ernesto, but in those days nobody ever called me that and for a long time even my signature read S. Silvani. I can’t remember who gave me the name Scarface – it must have been when I was fifteen or sixteen, when my father had just started work in the meat-packing company two blocks away from our house in Chicago. I was running with a group of tough kids in those days, and one of them must have decided that Scarface suited me, although I don’t have a single scar on my face or anywhere else. After that, everybody called me Scarface – apart from my mother, who called me Ernesto. Mothers are like that. Piggy Wilson’s mother never called him Piggy, and I remember Spotty Kristensen’s mother shouting down the phone, at somebody who had called and asked to speak to Spotty. ‘There ain’t nobody of that name round here, but you can speak to Arnold if that’s who you mean.’

I’m not saying I’m an angel. In fact, if the truth be told, I spent the earlier part of my life being a gangster. My career in crime started when I was twenty, when I went to work in a protection racket run from Elmwood Park. This was a well-run business, and it was as good an apprenticeship as any. I learned quickly, kept my nose clean, and was soon a trusted member of the collection team. My job was to go round to premises on our books and collect the monthly payments that kept property safe.

For the most part, this was not a demanding job. I have never been in favour of violence, but there were occasions when one had to threaten reluctant payers. For that, and also to protect myself against unwelcome attention from the competition – low-rent hoodlums who aspired to muscle in on our racket – I had a small machine gun. I carried this in a violin case, which is a tradition amongst Chicago’s more conservative gangsters. I found this very effective. When they saw me coming into a shop with my hat on and carrying my violin case, they usually paid up pretty smartly. I rarely had to open the case and show them the contents: they knew well enough what was inside.

I had been doing this for about eight years when I had the experience I am about to relate. I was by then a well-established gangster, with a good reputation – well, a good bad reputation – and there was every chance of promotion over the next year or so. But then one evening after I had been doing my rounds, I dropped in to a place I liked to frequent, Big Harry’s. This was a bar with restaurant attached and there was a hat and coat check at the entrance. I gave the young woman my violin case and she put it on a shelf in the back. They never gave out tickets, but this was not a ticket sort of place.

I had a drink with friends and left for home shortly after eight. I was still staying with my mother at that stage, as I was not yet

married, although I was getting to the stage where I would have liked to meet somebody and settle down.

When I got home, I went into my room and put the violin case down beside my bed. There was something unusual about it, although it looked the same as it usually did. It was the weight, I decided: it was a good deal lighter than normal, although I had not noticed that on my way back from the bar.

I put it upon the bed and opened it. The violin case contained a violin.

I knew immediately what had happened. There had been two violin cases handed in at the hat and coat check, and one of them, the one I had mistakenly been given, contained a violin.

I picked up the instrument and put it under my chin. I touched the strings, picking at them with a fingernail. Then I lifted the bow out of the case and drew it across the strings. It made a lovely sound.

The next morning, I made my way back to the restaurant to collect my own case. On the way, though, I walked past a house in the window of which was a sign saying, ‘Violin lessons: why not start today?’

On impulse I knocked on the door. A young woman answered. That was Miss Hilda Meadowsweet and I knew then that something was about to change in my life. She invited me in and asked me to sit down.

‘You saw the sign?’ she asked.

I nodded. I was staring at her, I suppose. I had never seen anybody more beautiful in my life.

She waited for me to say something, and I had to struggle to speak. Eventually, I said, ‘I have a violin, and I’d like to learn.’

‘Can you read music?’

I was afraid to confess that I could not. ‘Read music?’ I asked. ‘Yes, read music. You know – read the notes on the page.’ I waved a hand airily. ‘Oh that.’ And then I said, ‘Actually, I can’t. Not read it as such. Not entirely.’

She looked at me for what seemed like a good long minute. Then she smiled and said, ‘Well, that doesn’t matter. Lots of folks can’t read music and still have plenty of music inside them.’

‘That’s me,’ I said quickly. ‘I have music inside me. Plenty of it.’ She laughed. I loved her laugh. I loved everything about her – immediately, completely and unconditionally.

‘It’s easier to learn the violin than the piano,’ she said. ‘Especially when you’re…’ She stared at me. ‘How old are you, by the way?’

I told her that I was twenty-eight. Her eyes widened at the information. ‘But so am I,’ she said. ‘Just think – we’re both twentyeight together.’

‘1900 was a great year,’ I said.

She laughed at that, and I felt proud at having said something that this wonderful person thought funny.

Then she said, ‘I imagine you have a job.’

I stared at the ground.

She noticed my hesitation. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know a lot of people don’t these days. It’s not your fault.’

‘No,’ I blurted out. ‘I do have a job.’

She looked relieved. ‘What is it?’ And then, added quickly, ‘No, let me guess. You work in a bank? Am I right? No? A hotel then? Are you a clerk? Almost everybody’s a clerk these days.’

‘I’m an agent,’ I said quickly. ‘I work in administration – as an agent.’ ‘Doing what?’

‘Oh, this and that. Payments department, I suppose. I receive payments.’

She smiled sweetly once more. ‘That sounds like a good, secure job,’ she said.

‘Well, it’s secure,’ I said. I could not say it was good. It was bad, but I could not bring myself to lie to Miss Hilda Meadowsweet. Who could?

We arranged for me to have my first lesson the following day. At the second lesson, the week after that, I asked her out on a date. She hesitated. ‘I’m not sure I should be dating a pupil,’ she said.

‘But we’re not kids,’ I protested. ‘We’re both twenty-eight.’

She relented. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

We saw a lot of each other. She lived with an aunt of hers, who made silk flowers. The aunt was kind to me and insisted that I have meals at her place several times a week, as she felt I needed building up. ‘You young men don’t eat the right things,’ she said. ‘You need to watch your diet.’

She fed me roast pork and apple strudel. I put on a bit of weight and bought a slightly larger overcoat.

I loved the music lessons and we were soon playing duets together. ‘Music can change your life,’ Hilda said to me. ‘Congreve says “Music hath charms to change the savage breast.” Have you heard of Congreve, Ernesto?’

‘Yes, I’ve heard of him,’ I lied. ‘And I guess he’s right on that.’ He was. Music – and Miss Hilda Meadowsweet – were changing my life. I went to see my boss and told him I could no longer work for him.

‘Are you mad?’ he said. ‘Business is great – we’re taking in more and more. And you say you want to get out just as we’re beginning to make record profits?’

‘My mind is made up,’ I said.

He looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘It’s a woman, isn’t it? I’ve seen this before. A guy starts to do well, and then some dame comes along and that’s it. Old story, Scarface – old, old story.’

I took a job in a deli – an honest job, slicing ham and making pasta. I took the money from my savings account – every last cent of it – and gave it to the local children’s home. They looked at me in surprise and said, ‘You sure about this?’ I replied, ‘Never surer about anything.’

I proposed to Hilda Meadowsweet, and she accepted me. ‘I always dreamed I’d meet somebody like you,’ she said. ‘Now I have.’

We went to celebrate our engagement in the restaurant where I had picked up the wrong violin case. I had forgotten about that, and only remembered when we went in and I saw Harry, the proprietor. He came over to our table and I introduced him to Hilda. ‘This is my bride,’ I said proudly.

He was half-Italian, and he kissed her hand in a very gallant way. Then he turned to me and said, ‘We’ve still got your violin case, by the way. And the machine gun, too – under lock and key. Do you want it back?’

Hilda stared at him. Then she looked at me.

I said, ‘What did Congreve say? You told me once.’

She bit her lip.

‘We can all change,’ I said. ‘Every one of us. If we couldn’t…’

She stopped me. ‘You’re right,’ she said. Then she said, ‘And I knew all along, Ernesto. I knew that music would do its work.’ I started to say something but she stopped me with her sweet smile. I have often thought of how lucky I was to have picked up the wrong violin case. And then my luck had continued and I had seen the violin-lesson sign. And that made me think: we’re lucky to be who we are – whoever we may be. That’s true, I think. I only just thought of it then, but it’s as true as anything else you’ll read in Congreve or anywhere else, for that matter. Think about it – just think about it. ‘How to Raise an Elephant’, the latest in ‘The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ series, and ‘A Promise of Ankles’, the latest in the ‘44 Scotland Street’ series, both by Alexander McCall Smith, are out now.