The Jewels of Paradise

Nine

WHEN THEY WERE GONE, CATERINA SAT DOWN. HER JOB WAS beginning now, she told herself, conscious that, even as the trunks were being opened and the first papers removed, none of the people there had seen fit to mention Steffani’s name, though all of them knew it. The idea that either of the cousins could have an interest in Baroque music was absurd, and she knew nothing about Dottor Moretti beyond the elegance of his speech and dress. By her own admission, Roseanna was interested in a general sense in the music and the musicians of the period, but wisdom had kept her almost entirely silent during the meeting and the opening of the trunks. Thus, in all of this, she was the only person who took an interest in Steffani, at least as he was represented by his music. And what else mattered, really, after all this time?

He had been a priest. She recalled that he had also been mixed up in politics at the courts where he worked as a musician, but when were priests not mixed up in politics? He might well, then, have left the whole lot to the Church. Maybe the documents would tell, but why then would Propaganda Fide have sent them back?

She tipped her chair back and latched her hands behind her head, feeling no urge to look at the papers just yet. She wanted to think about the Big Things at work here. If she did find some sort of “testamentary disposition,” it would have little legal weight, not after three hundred years. Dottor Moretti must know this. “Tanto fumo. Poco arrosto,” she whispered aloud. There had indeed been a great deal of smoke: the suggestion that there had been other applicants for the job, the employment of a lawyer of Dottor Moretti’s apparent caliber, the many restrictions surrounding the work. What, then, would the roast be? Or what did they expect it to be?

Caterina looked around the room and wondered why Roseanna had not appropriated it. After all, it was unlikely that the Foundation would ever have another director.

“Pity you couldn’t be a singer,” she told herself aloud, as if having had the courage to choose that career would have led to something more exciting than this room and the weeks of reading that no doubt lay ahead of her. Rigorous honesty intervened here and warned her that her vocal talent would have taken her, with luck, as far as the chorus of the opera house of Treviso.

She let the front legs of the chair hit the floor and pulled the packet toward her, worked at the knot in the string that held it together until it came free, wrapped it into a neat oval around her fingers, and set it at a corner of the desk. Almost three hundred years and it was still unbroken and strong enough to be reused. The paper on the top was a letter written in Italian in a strongly Italianate hand. It bore the date 4 January 1710 and was addressed to “Il mio fratello in Cristo Agostino.” She lifted the paper by the top corners and held it to the light. She didn’t recognize the watermark, but the paper felt and looked right to justify the date.

Caterina had some trouble with the script, though none with the language or meaning. The letter made opening reference to the opera Tassilone, which the sender had had the immeasurable pleasure of seeing the previous year in Düsseldorf. Only now did the writer break in upon the creative genius of the composer, whose time he dared not waste, by sending his humble praise of a work in which were displayed both the highest moral principles and the most sublime manifestation of musical creativity.

She glanced up from the letter and tried to dig into the musical memories lodged in her scholar’s skull to get some sense of whether this was lickspittle flattery or honest praise. Steffani, she had once read, had introduced French fashions into Italian opera, a novelty imitated by that great borrower—to avoid using a different word—Handel.

The writer continued in this vein for another three paragraphs, detailing the “countless excellencies” of the work, the “sublime perfection” in the musical phrasing, and the “convincing moral principles” maintained by the text.

Below this paragraph, a few bars of music were quoted. She read the first line: “Deh, non far colle tue lagrime,” hearing the exceptionally beautiful largo as she mouthed the words. Suddenly there appeared the voice of a solo oboe, and Caterina’s voice was stilled by the enduring spell of its sound.

The page ended, and when she turned to the second, she was disappointed to see that prose had replaced beauty. Two more paragraphs carried her to the last, in which the writer, proclaiming his own unworthiness, asked the “Most Worthy Abbé” to intercede with the Bishop of Celle in aid of the appointment of his nephew, Marco, to the post of choirmaster at the Church of Saint Ludwig. The signature was illegible, as in the manner of signatures of those times.

Below this, in a different, backward-slanting hand, was written, “Good man. See if this can happen.” Nothing more.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a notebook and pen. “1. Letter of request for position as choirmaster. Favorable comment in different hand on bottom. 4/1/1710.” Perhaps Marco would show up again; perhaps another letter would thank the “Most Worthy Abbé” for his help in winning the position for the young man.

She turned the two pages facedown beside the remaining papers and picked up the next paper. This was a letter dated 21 June 1700, addressed to Mio caro Agostino, the familiarity of which salutation brought the scholar in her to the equivalent of a hunting dog’s freezing at point. There was general talk of work and travel, mutual friends, the problem with servants. Then things turned to gossip, and the writer told his friend Agostino about Duke N. H.’s public behavior with his brother’s wife at the last ball of Carnevale. The third son of G. R. had died of bronchial trouble, to his parents’ utmost grief, in which the writer joined them, for he was a good boy and barely eight years old. And then the writer told his friend that he had overheard Baron (it looked like “Bastlar” but might just as easily have been “Botslar”) speaking slightingly of Steffani and making fun of him for singing along with his operas while attending them in the audience. The writer thought his friend should know of this, should he receive compliments or promises from the Baron. Then, with affectionate wishes for Agostino’s continued good health, the writer placed his illegible signature at the bottom.

She made notes of the contents and no other comment, though she felt something close to outrage that a mere Baron would make fun of a musician. She set the letter aside and picked up the next document. Her heart stopped. It was entirely involuntary; the shock of seeing it grabbed her heart and tightened her throat. On top of the pile now lay a sheet of music, the notes doing their visual dance across the lines from left to right. Making no sound that could be heard by anyone, she began to sing the music line by line, heard the bass line and the violins. When she turned to the second page, she saw the words and knew she was no longer giving voice to the instruments but was singing an aria.

She turned back to the first page and let her mind play through the music again. Oh, how perfect it was, that figure in the introduction, only to be repeated in the high register, right from the start of the aria. She looked at the words and saw the predictable “Morirò tra strazi e scempi.” And who had churned out that sentiment, she wondered? “I’ll die between pain and havoc.” If she could find a time machine, she’d go back and pick up most of the men who wrote libretti and bring them back to the present, though she’d set down and drop them off in Brazil, where they could all get jobs writing the scripts for telenovelas.

A glance at the opening words for the second line, “E dirassi ingiusti dei,” confirmed her temporal and geographical desires. She read through to the end of the aria, concentrating on the music, not the words. “Well, well, well,” she said out loud and then turned off the music by looking away from the paper. “Wasn’t he a clever devil?”

She wished now that she had paid more attention to his music while at university and had seen more than the single performance of the wonderful Niobe in London. The genius manifest in this aria proved him to be a composer with a far greater gift than she had before thought him to possess. She paused. Could it be that it had been sent to him by a colleague or a musician or possibly a student? She reexamined the manuscript, but there was no attribution and no signature, only the same back-slanting handwriting she had seen in the note on the bottom of the first letter.

Identification could be made in the archives of the Marciana. All she had to do was go there and have a look at one of his autograph scores, even find a book with a reproduction of a few pages of a score in his hand. She had a good visual memory and could take a clear image of the aria with her. But how much easier to stay here and read on; sooner or later, she was bound to come upon a signed score. She cheated by paging ahead to the bottom of the packet: no more music.

The beauty of the music drew her eyes back to the aria. She made a note of the probable title of the aria, then turned it facedown to uncover yet another document in ecclesiastical Latin, this a letter from 1719, addressed to him as Bishop and attempting to explain the delay in forwarding him his benefice from the dioceses of Spiga, wherever that might be.

After making a note of the contents of this letter, Caterina looked at her watch and saw that it was after two. Almost as if the sight of the time had released her from the spell of her own curiosity, she realized how hungry she was. She opened her bag and pulled out her wallet. She opened flaps and slots until she found her reader’s card for the Biblioteca Marciana. It had expired two years before. In a normal country, in a normal city, one would go and renew the card, but that was to be certain that a clear, prompt process for doing so existed or functioned. Though Caterina had not lived in Italy for a number of years, she had no reason to believe that things had changed, and so her first thought was to find a way to get what she wanted without having to waste time with a system that, if memory served and if things had remained the same, exulted in creating ways to block people from having what they deserved or desired.

She ran her memory through the gossip and news of the previous decade: who worked where, who had married, who had inserted themselves into the mechanism that kept the city going. And she recalled Ezio, dear Ezio, who had gone to school with her sister Clara and who had been in love with her for three years, from the time they were twelve until they were fifteen, and who had then fallen in love with someone else and subsequently married her, retaining Clara as best friend.

Ezio, by common agreement, was as clever as he was lazy and had never wanted success or a career but only to marry and have lots of children. He had them now, four, she thought, but he also had—and this is why Ezio came to mind—a job as a librarian at the Biblioteca Marciana.

Caterina replaced the papers in the packet, though she did not bother to tie it closed. She went to the storeroom and put it into the smaller trunk, then closed the door and locked it, using all three keys.

Only then did she go back to her bag and pull out her telefonino. The number, not used for a long time, was still in the memory. She dialed it and, after he answered, said, “Ciao, Ezio, sono la Caterina. Volevo chiederti un favore.”