Lucifer's Shadow

23 A balance outstanding

It was ten in the morning. They sat at a small window table in Florian’s: Scacchi, Daniel, and the mute, puzzled Fabozzi, all three waiting for Massiter to arrive. The day was grey and overcast. Beyond the glass, tourists posed beneath mobs of squabbling pigeons while the souvenir stands hawked their cheap wares. The price list Daniel had picked up on the table was so ludicrously high it was difficult to take a sip without thinking of the cost.

Fabozzi seemed unwilling to speak without his paymaster. After a good five minutes of uncomfortable silence, the Englishman arrived, puffing and panting, making excuses about the lateness of his launch. Massiter’s face, in the sharp artificial light of the café, seemed somewhat older.

“The canal stinks,” he declared, having ordered a large espresso and some biscotti. “How anyone lives here year-round, sniffing an open sewer, is quite beyond me.”

A party of elderly Americans at the adjoining table rattled their cups and stared. He smiled back at them unctuously.

“Myth!” Scacchi announced. “The stench is entirely modern and artificial. It comes from those blasted factories on terra firma, pumping out their filth day and night. The Grand Canal has not been our Cloaca Maxima for many a year and you know it.”

Massiter dipped a small biscuit into his coffee. “I once sold a statuette of Cloacina to a Hollywood film producer,” he mused. “Quarter of a million bucks. I told him she was the goddess of mountain streams.”

Scacchi giggled. “Not sewers?”

“Sometimes in this trade,” Massiter mused, “it is prudent to use facts selectively.”

“And she was a deity,” Scacchi reminded him. “Do you not recall the old Roman prayer?”

He took a deep breath and began to recite in a loud voice which rang around the dainty, gilded room.

Scacchi drained his coffee and grumbled, “Not that that happens much of late.” The American party downed their cups and left.

“Oh, dear,” Massiter replied. “You must look to your diet, Scacchi.”

The old man gave him a sour glance, as if they both knew this was inadequate advice.

Fabozzi, who had been listening to this exchange with open disbelief, reached into his small leather attaché case, took out a sheaf of manuscript, and placed it on the table. “Gentlemen,” he said briskly. “If we may talk business? I am now two days into the school, working under new arrangements, and still without a complete score. May someone tell me when I can expect it? And what I should do with it when it arrives?”

They all looked at Daniel. He had soon familiarised himself with the computer which Paul had borrowed, and was steadily turning the scribbled original into a set of separate parts which an orchestra could use. But it was time-consuming, tiring work. He could stand it for no more than four hours at a time each day. By that stage his head was full of notes and soaring themes. It was impossible to go on until time had extinguished some trace of them from his imagination.

“I think you’ll have it all by the end of the week, Fabozzi,” he said.

“You think?” Massiter asked.

“No. I can guarantee it. But no earlier.”

The conductor scowled. “This is an extraordinary business, if I may say so, Massiter. I am employed to run a summer school with the usual curriculum. Then, just as I begin, you change your mind and set me racing after something I’ve never before seen and which does not even seem complete!”

“Of course it’s complete,” Massiter said, and patted Daniel gently on the arm. “It’s just that most of it’s in the head of our genius here. You’re getting your parts as they come, Fabozzi. They’re good enough, I think?”

“So far they’re wonderful! But how can I judge what I have not seen? And why do you not simply send your original manuscript to the copyists to save us all time?”

Scacchi and Massiter exchanged glances. “A reasonable question,” the former acknowledged. “Yet, as I understand it, you have an entire movement now for each instrument, and a little of the second. You’re surely not worried about the rest? Daniel wishes to produce the individual parts himself. That is his prerogative. Why should he have to put his own precious work out to some jobbing copyists and then have to check every last detail later to see it is correct?”

The conductor grimaced. Daniel was grateful for Scacchi’s ingenious explanation. He would have been hard-pressed to lie so convincingly to Fabozzi himself.

“It is difficult for me to discuss these matters,” Fabozzi said. “I have here the composer, sitting, watching me from the stalls.”

“Could be worse,” Massiter observed. “He might be playing.”

Daniel had refused this option entirely. He was too busy with the score. Furthermore, he had now worked his way well into the concerto and found even the more modest parts quite beyond him.

“And look at him!” Fabozzi objected. “He says nothing. How do I know if I am doing the right thing or not?”

Daniel took a deep breath. “Fabozzi,” he said, “I have listened to what you have done so far and found it so marvellous there is nothing for me to say. All this is as much a surprise for me as it is for you. I came here thinking I was cataloguing a library. Instead, by chance, Mr. Massiter hears a little of my amateur scribblings and decides to introduce them to the school. Perhaps I should have refused…. Even now it is not too late.”

Fabozzi’s face went white. “No! No! I don’t suggest this for a moment.”

Any plaudits that the concerto attracted would not, Daniel knew, be for him alone. Fabozzi, for all his protests, was well-placed to benefit from the piece.

Massiter shook his head. “I confess I’m bemused by your reaction, old chap. Here you have a new work of no small significance and you’ll be the first in the world to conduct it. Is the composer some prima donna screaming at you from the stalls? Does he follow each note, each phrasing, and tear your interpretation of it to shreds? No! He listens patiently and then applauds. What, may I ask, is your beef? Do you want young Daniel here to play the part to which he is, in my view, quite entitled?”

“No! No!” Fabozzi protested. Daniel felt sorry for the little man. It was not an easy situation. “I merely wish for some guidance as to the purpose and the direction of the work.”

Daniel smiled pleasantly. “Then let me say this, Fabozzi. I view it as an attempt to imagine the kind of music that might have been heard in La Pietà in, say, the 1730s, if Vivaldi had a son or some star pupil. You can, I hope, hear a little of him in there, and some Corelli too. But there’s a sense of change. A move from the baroque towards the classical. If I imagine in my head…”

He paused. He had prepared a small description of the piece in advance, knowing he would face this question at some point. But now, after hours of transcribing further parts of the concerto and hearing the notes run through his head, he was able to extemporise further. “… I rather see someone witnessing the close of one era and the beginning of another. This was, you will recall, the time at which the Republic began its decline. So perhaps I imagine myself as a young scholar working in the company of Vivaldi, learning his lessons, looking at the imminent decay around me, and then inserting a few comments of my own. So you’ll find love and admiration in there, and on occasion the anger, the impatience of youth too.”

Scacchi and Massiter wore near identical expressions of admiration.

“There,” Massiter said. “You can’t ask better than that, surely?”

“No,” Fabozzi replied honestly. “It’s a little to go on. I’m pleased to be associated with your music, you know, Daniel. It’s just that I find this method of working somewhat unusual.”

“I’m not a great talker,” Daniel replied with just as much conviction. “That doesn’t mean I disapprove of what you’re doing. The very opposite, in fact. You make it sound better than I could ever have imagined.”

The conductor beamed.

“So run along, dear chap,” Massiter urged. “The meter’s running and I’m picking up the bill. You’ve plenty to work on, and I’d like that final concert to be a sellout.”

“Sì,” Fabozzi replied. It was not much to go on, but more than he seemed to expect. He rose from the table, edged his way through the tourists in the café, and was gone, out into the piazza, heading back to the waterfront for the short walk to La Pietà.

Massiter beamed at Daniel. “I say. You’re rather good at this. Remember all that stuff when the press start to turn up. I’m pulling a few strings already. Good story for a slow news season. I rather thought we might label you the new Vivaldi. The New York Times will want a word before long. And The Times of London, and Corriere della Sera too. But not until next week. No point in jumping the gun before anyone can buy tickets now, is there?”

Daniel felt queasy at the prospect. “Surely they wouldn’t be interested?”

“If we wind them up enough, they will,” Massiter replied. “A touch of hype, a little exaggeration. Some free flights and a night or two in the right hotel. They thrive on it. Just say what you just said, but at greater length and rather less directly, if you please. Plain speaking will get you nowhere with the arts press. They’ll think you’re a philistine.”

“I agree. You do this well,” Scacchi added. “You sounded so plausible.”

Daniel gave the old man a sharp look. “I was plausible.” The work had grown inside him as he transferred it from the ancient pages to the screen of the computer, note by note. Parts of it refused to leave his mind. “What I just said is what I believe to be true. I think that’s where it came from. It must be. Yet… there’s something else there too. Some foreignness, perhaps. I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

“You will!” Massiter insisted. “You will!”

“And I don’t recall offering to make a public spectacle of myself by talking to the press, either. I want a quiet life when this is over.”

Massiter’s face became suddenly stern. “It was implicit in our arrangement, Daniel. I made it quite clear that for all our sakes, we must try to milk this thing for all we can. I’ll be out of pocket for years in any case, probably forever.”

Daniel was abruptly full of distaste for Hugo Massiter, with his odd clothes and his presumptuous attitude. “This ‘thing,’ as you describe it, is a work of art,” he said. “Not some commodity to be bought and sold like a trinket on the Rialto.”

Massiter stared at him in silence for the best part of a minute with an expression which was, Daniel believed, designed to inspire some terror. Then he turned to the old man. “You’re enjoying your money, I imagine, Scacchi?”

“One always enjoys money, Massiter,” the old man said carefully.

“Then have words with your boy.” Massiter’s grey eyes swept over them both. “There’s a balance still outstanding. I’ll have what I pay for. I always do.”