The Jewels of Paradise

Twenty-two

“THE TROUBLES OF THIS CENTURY NO LONGER CAUSE ME MUCH pain because they are making you again turn your hand to music. Throw yourself in headlong, I implore you. Music is a friend who will not abandon or betray you, nor will she be cruel to you. You have drawn from her all the delight and beauties of the heavens, whereas friends are tepid and cunning and mistresses are without gratitude.” This was the answer Steffani received from the queen in response to his own troubled letter. Her words rose above the usual courtly language and revealed her heart. Caterina felt her own heart warm to learn that he should have had this gracious, generous support from a woman he admired so fully.

Nevertheless, within months, the correspondence was dead. Steffani, in response to a request from a Medici cardinal, implored the queen to change her decision not to allow her favorite court musician to return to his monastery in Italy. And she, in queenly fashion, was not amused. The correspondence ended, but not before Leibniz, that most savvy of philosophers, remarked to a friend that he understood Her Majesty’s anger. “After all, if a Duke had only one hunting horse, and someone requested him to give it up, how else would he expect the Duke to respond than with anger?”

Well, Caterina thought, old Leibniz certainly had no illusions about describing the pecking order in a royal court, did he? And he’d certainly hung around enough of them to have learned a thing or two about the positions of musicians, and let’s forget all the flowery praise. Steffani’s bishopric hadn’t protected him one whit, not when he stepped over that invisible line. You’re a genius and I am enthralled by the beauty of your music, but just remember to stay in your proper place, and don’t think for an instant that you can question the decisions of the Queen of Prussia.

She looked at her watch and saw that it was after six, which gave her just barely enough time to get back to the Foundation and write a report to Dottor Moretti. Because she knew that she was going to be out to dinner that evening, she did not bother to take any of the books with her and left them where they were, planning to return the next day to continue reading the background material.

She got to the office before seven but found no sign of Roseanna. She went up to what had become her office, but she did not open the storeroom. Instead, she turned on the computer and gave her name and password to the server. There were three emails, but before so much as glancing at the names of the senders, she opened a blank mail, headed it to Andrea, but, addressing the cousins by their surnames, gave a hurried account of the results of her research that day. Without bothering to read it over, she sent it off and returned to her inbox.

The first mail arrived from a bank she had never heard of and inquired if she wanted to take out a loan. Delete.

The second came from a young Russian woman, twenty-four, with a doctorate in electrical engineering, hoping to begin a meaningful correspondence with a well-educated and well-bred Italian man. Resisting the temptation to forward it to Avvocato Moretti, she deleted it.

The last was from Cristina, sent early that afternoon. “You studied law, Cati, and it wasn’t so very long ago, so surely you remember what those legal people call a statute of limitations on wills. Any unclaimed bequest Steffani might have made lapsed centuries ago. If there turns out to be something of value among those papers, it in no way belongs to the egregious cousins but, alas, to our even more egregious State.

“I don’t have any idea of what sort of people you’re mixed up with. The non-heirs sound unpleasant, at least to someone who has been out of the city for as long as I have and thus isn’t exposed to the daily discourse of men like them. Surely their lawyer must know this common legal fact, which makes me wonder what he’s up to. I don’t want to say anything unpleasant about him in case he’s the lawyer you’re going out to dinner with, but, if it is he, he should have known a fact as basic as this.

“If you have no luck with him, and if you can tell me exactly where the trunks were in Rome—that is, what bureau or office had them—I might be able to do a bit of trekking through the muck for you and find out how they were released. I still have a number of friends there who believe that the discovery of truth begins with an accurate account of verifiable events and is not an elaborate progress toward some predetermined truth. Besides, I’m curious.

“Thanks for your offer of hospitality. If I decide to bolt, it’s the first place I’d go, believe me. Love, Tina-Lina.”

The clock on the computer desktop told her it was 7:15 and so, without planning what to say, Caterina hit “respond.”

“Dear Tina. The trunks were in the care/possession of the Propaganda Fide, as sinister a name as your lot could come up with short of KGB or CIA. I was told that someone who was doing an inventory found the trunks. His research probably found the names of the original cousins and he looked for people with the same surnames in the area about Castelfranco and got in touch with them. That’s certainly what I or any other researcher would do, but this is only a guess, not a certainty.

“When I opened them, it looked as though no one had done so since the time they were first sealed, but I’m sure breaking and entering and leaving no traces is the least of the Black Arts practiced by the PF.

“Yes, tonight’s lawyer is the cousins’ lawyer. I’ll ply him with wine and grappa and try to get him to explain how they got their hands on the trunks. That failing, I might be forced to tempt him with the possibility of my charms, and where the grown man who could prove resistant to those?

“Thanks for the information about the statute of limitations, and I’m ashamed I never thought of it. Of course I knew it, but I’m afraid Avvocato Moretti quite drove all memory of the study of the law, to make no mention of good sense, out of my head. Or maybe I simply wanted to keep this job because it’s interesting and lets me be at home. Love, Cati.”

Ten minutes after she sent the mail, her telefonino rang. Her first thought was her parents, calling to see if she was free for dinner, they as ever ready to feed their last born and save her from a night of solitude.

She answered with her name.

“Ciao, Caterina,” Andrea said. “I’m out in the street. Come down when you’re finished.”

“Don’t you have a key?” she blurted.

“Yes, but I’m off duty tonight,” he said with a laugh. “Listen, there’s a bar out on Via Garibaldi, first on the left. I’ll be in there, all right?”

For a moment, she could find nothing to say, caught between surprise and embarrassment. “I’ll be two minutes. Order me a spritz, all right? With Aperol.”

“Sarà fatto,” he said and was gone.

The tactic of playing hard to get had never appealed to Caterina, not because it was not effective—her friends had used it with great success—but because it was so obvious. Above all things, she hated being kept waiting, and few things could embarrass her as much as keeping another person waiting unnecessarily. She turned off the computer, put her telefonino in her bag, went to check that the door to the storeroom was locked, locked the office, and went downstairs.

He was there, standing at the bar, that day’s Gazzettino spread open beside him as he sipped a glass of white wine. A spritz of the proper orange stood on the counter to the left of the newspaper.

He heard her come in, looked up, and smiled. He closed the paper and set it to the side of the counter. “I didn’t take you away from anything, did I?” he asked. For a moment, Caterina was puzzled by the change in him. Face and height the same, wire-rimmed glasses and carefully shined shoes. But he was wearing a light tweed jacket. A tie, of course, and a white shirt, but he was not wearing a suit. Was this an honor or an insult?

“No, not at all. I was sending an email.” She nodded toward the paper. “Anything there? I haven’t read the papers for days.”

“Same old things. Jealous husband kills wife, North Korea threatens the South, politician caught taking a bribe from a builder, woman gives birth at sixty-two.”

Andrea, obviously judging this the wrong way to begin their evening, handed her the spritz, tapped his glass against hers, and said, “Cin cin.”

“Sounds like I’m wiser to stay in the eighteenth century, then,” she said and took a sip. It was perfect, sharp and sweet at the same time, and today one of the first days of the year when a person might want to drink something cold.

“Still digging?” he asked, but idly, as if he were only being polite.

“I’ve stopped digging,” she said. His expression of more than mild surprise led her to add, “That is, digging into things that don’t concern me.”

He gave her a long, appraising glance, as if he were weighing her answer, and then said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a woman say that.” His smile and the glance that preceded it took any sting out of the remark.

“Ha, ha,” she said in the manner of a cartoon character and then allowed herself to laugh, managing thus both to disapprove of the remark while still being amused by it.

“What is it you’re not digging into?” he asked and took another sip of his drink. Before she could answer, he signaled the barman and asked for some peanuts. “I didn’t have lunch today,” he said by way of explanation.

Caterina started to ask why, but he took another sip and said only, “Meeting,” then, “Tell me about your not digging.”

He sounded curious, so she told him the background to the Königsmarck Affair. His lawyer’s mind, accustomed to hearing many names dragged into a story, seemed to keep them all straight. When she moved on to the account contained in Countess von Platen’s memoirs, he stopped her to ask if this were Königsmarck’s ex-mistress, impressing Caterina with both his memory and his concentration.

Then, before she could continue, he said, “She’s an unreliable witness.” He watched her expression, then added, “I mean in legal terms, theoretical terms.”

“Why?” she asked, though it was evident. She wanted to know if he had some other, lawyerly reason so to judge her.

“The obvious one is that she had reason to dislike him, especially if he ended the affair. That means she’d be unlikely to speak in his favor.”

“To say the minimum,” she agreed. “Why else?”

“It means, as well, that she might attempt to hide the real killer.”

“For ending a love affair?” Caterina asked, unable to stifle her astonishment.

“Your surprise does you credit, Dottoressa,” he said, raising his glass to her and finishing his wine. He set it on the counter and went on, “And, yes, for ending the affair.” Before she could protest, he said, “I don’t practice criminal law, but I have colleagues who do, and they tell me things that would make your hair stand on end.”

He saw that he had her complete attention. “You’ve probably read the phrase in the paper motivi futili. My friends have told me about a lot of the trivial things that cost people their lives: a car parked in someone else’s space, the refusal to give a cigarette, a radio too loud or a television, a minor car accident.” He raised his hand toward the barman, signaling for the bill.

“So keeping quiet about the murder of someone who said he wasn’t in love with you anymore, especially if he wasn’t graceful about it . . . it makes complete sense to me. So does saying something that might protect the murderer.”

“Then you doubt her account? That she saw Steffani kill him?”

“Is that what she says? That she saw him do it?”

Caterina had to pause and think back over the precise wording in Tina’s friend’s email. “Something about his having received blood money,” she said.

“I’m not sure that’s the same thing as saying she saw him commit the murder,” Andrea said, and then, just as she was about to make the same suggestion, added, “Maybe we could talk about something else?”

What a relief his suggestion was. He paid the bill and moved over to the door to hold it open for her.

He led them to a small trattoria behind the Pietà, a place that held no more than half a dozen tables, the stout-legged sort she remembered from her youth, with surfaces scarred and carved and edges hollowed out by countless forgotten cigarettes. Bottles stood on mirrored shelves behind the zinc-covered bar; a rectangular space with a sliding door opened into the kitchen.

Two of the tables were already taken. The waiter recognized Moretti and showed them to a table in the far corner. He handed them menus and disappeared through a pair of swinging doors.

“I hope you don’t mind eating in a simple place,” he said.

“I’d rather,” she said. “My parents keep telling me how hard it’s become to find a place where the food’s good and you don’t have to take out a mortgage to pay the bill.”

“That’s not the case here,” he said, then laughed and said, “I mean, the food’s good, not that it’s cheap.” And, hearing that, he added, “That’s the reason I come, that is, because the food’s good.” Hearing what a pass he had talked himself into, he shrugged and opened his menu.

Conversation was general: families, school, travel, reading, music. Much of his life was completely at one with the persona he presented: father a lawyer, mother a housewife; two brothers, the surgeon he had already mentioned and the other a notary; school, university, first job, partnership. But then came the odd bits: a case of encephalitis seven years ago that had left him in bed for six months, during which he had read the Fathers of the Church, in Latin. When these facts were painted into the picture she was attempting to form of the man, everything went out of focus for a moment. A brush with death; she knew little about encephalitis save that it was bad, quite often fatal, and just as often left people gaga. Perhaps that last explained six months reading the Fathers of the Church, her cynical self remarked, but her better self limited her to asking, “Encephalitis?”

He bit into a shrimp and said, “I went for a hike in the mountains above Belluno. Two days later I found a tick on the back of my knee, and a week later I was in the hospital with a temperature of forty.”

“Near Belluno?” It was only two hours from Venice, a beautiful city where nothing happened.

“It’s common. There are more and more cases every year,” he said, then smiled and added, “More evidence of the wisdom of living in cities.”

She decided not to ask about the Fathers of the Church. The evening continued, and conversation remained general and friendly. The absence of reference to Steffani or Königsmarck came as a great relief to Caterina. How pleasant to spend a few hours in this century, in this city, and, she added to herself, in this company.

They shared a branzino baked in salt, drank most of a bottle of Ribolla Gialla, and both turned down dessert. When the coffee came, Andrea grew suddenly serious and said, with no preparation at all, “I’m afraid I have to confess I haven’t told you the complete truth.”

There being nothing she could think of to say, Caterina remained silent.

“About the cousins.”

Better than about himself, she thought, but she said nothing to him, certainly not this. If he was confessing he lied, she had no obligation to make it easy for him, so she remained silent; in order to appear to be doing something, she poured sugar into her coffee and stirred it round.

“The story of how the trunks got here,” he said, then drew one hand into a fist and placed it on the table.

“Ah,” she permitted herself to say.

“They didn’t track them down. The trunks turned up during an inventory, and the researcher did find Steffani’s name on them, and he did do the research and locate the descendants.”

He paused and gave her a quizzical glance, but Caterina kept her face impassive. “Descendants,” he had said. Not “heirs.”

She stifled her curiosity and drank her coffee. He must have realized she was not going to be cooperatively inquisitive, so he said, his voice a mixture of the pedantic and the apologetic, “They have no claim to ownership. You studied law, so you probably know that it reverts to the State.”

Caterina kept her eyes on her coffee cup, even lifted the spoon and ran it around the empty bottom a few times. Then she carefully spooned up the mixture of melted sugar and froth from the bottom and licked the spoon before replacing it on the saucer.

She raised her eyes and looked across the table at him, with his lovely, expensive jacket and his moderate tie. He met her eyes with his own steady glance and said, “I apologize.”

“Why did you tell me a different story?” she asked, consciously avoiding the use of the word lie.

“They asked me to.”

“Why?”

He looked down at his own empty coffee cup but did not busy himself with his spoon. Eyes still lowered, he said, “They said they didn’t want to have to explain how the trunks got here. The real way, I mean. Or I presume.” Even in his explanation, she noticed, he still strove for clarity.

Making herself sound the very voice of moderation, she asked, “Why wouldn’t they want anyone to know?”

He tried to shrug but abandoned the gesture halfway, with one shoulder higher than the other. “My guess is that they bribed someone to have the trunks sent here.” When her gaze remained level on his, he actually blushed and said, “In fact, it’s the only way it could have happened.”

“The researcher?” she asked, knowing this was impossible. He would have no power over where the trunks went.

Andrea smiled at her question and said, “Not likely.”

“Then who?” she asked, doing her best to look very confused.

“It would have to be someone at the Propaganda Fide, I’d guess. Or someone at the warehouse.”

“Then why me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why me? Why spend money on a researcher when they could just get the trunks here, open them up, and have a look themselves?”

“They needed a researcher,” he said, holding up his thumb to count the first reason. “He was a cleric and worked in Germany, so they needed someone who could read different languages.” He held up a second finger. “And that person would also have to be able to have some understanding of the historical, perhaps even the musical, background.” His third finger shot up.

“That’s absurd,” she snapped, finally out of patience with the role she had decided to play. “I just told you, all they had to do was open them, take out any musical scores that might be inside, do a minimum of research on what Steffani’s autograph scores are worth, and sell them. Split the money and hire someone at the university to read through the other papers. Sooner or later, they’d know whether there was a treasure hidden somewhere or not.”

Andrea tried to smile, reached a hand halfway across the table, as if to place it on her arm, but then pulled it back when he saw her expression.

He picked up his coffee cup, but it was still empty, so he set it back in the saucer. “There was a . . . a falling out, I suppose you could say.”

“Of thieves?”

Her directness obviously distressed him. He had to think about a response before he said, “Yes, you might describe it that way. Once they had the trunks here, they both realized how little they trusted the other one.”

“And I suppose they began to add up the sums,” she said angrily.

“I don’t understand,” though she thought perhaps he did.

“They’d have to pay by the page or by the hour if they hired a freelance translator, and they didn’t know what was in the trunks or what the papers—if there were papers—would say. Or what they would be worth.” As she spoke, Caterina remembered an old folk tale about three thieves who discover some sort of treasure. One went off to town to get enough food and drink to keep them going while the three of them decided what it was worth and how to divide it up. While he was gone, the two who remained behind planned his murder, and when he came back, they killed him. They ate and drank to celebrate their victory, but the dead man had poisoned the wine he brought back, so they, too, paid the price of the Jewels of Paradise.

She looked across at him, her face neutral, waiting for him to speak.

“Neither of them trusted the other not to cheat,” he finally said. “Even though they had no idea what was in the trunks, they still believed the other would be clever enough to cheat him out of his share. Or to see that the division wasn’t equal.” He saw that he had her interest and went on. “Nothing can shake them loose from their belief in a treasure.”

“Have you tried?”

“Yes.” He shook his head to show the hopelessness of that endeavor.

“So they agreed to pay my salary?”

This question made him visibly uncomfortable.

“What is it?” she asked.

“For the first month, yes,” he said.

“What?”

“It was in the contract.” She thought it embarrassed him to say this, and that surprised her. She suppressed her own embarrassment at not having bothered to read the contract.

“You told me my position was good until I’d read through all of the papers,” she said in a cool, firm voice. “I left my job to come here.”

“I know,” he said, his eyes on his plate. Could it be that he was ashamed of the part he had played? She had no doubt that he had played it.

She said nothing.

Forced to continue, Moretti finally said, “I thought at the beginning that they’d continue to pay you until you had a definite answer to give them—yes there is a treasure or no there is not.” He made that half move with his hand across the table, but again he stopped. “I thought they were serious. That’s why I worked to convince them you could do the research in the library.” She thought it best not to tell him she’d realized the futility of that research.

“They’ve changed their minds, I assume?”

“Stievani called me this afternoon. One month. That’s all. If they don’t have an answer by the end of one month, they’ll figure out a way to do it by themselves.”

“Good luck to them, the fools,” she couldn’t stop herself from saying.

“I agree.” Then, in a calmer tone, he said, “If you want, I can try to persuade them.”

She smiled. “That’s kind of you, Andrea. I’d appreciate it if you could try.” Suddenly, she opened her mouth in an enormous yawn. “Sorry,” she said, looking at her watch.

He imitated her gesture and said, “It’s after eleven.”

From the way he said it, she wondered if he had to be home before midnight. He signaled the waiter with a writing gesture. In a very short time, he was there, with the sort of receipt that indicates the owner would have to pay taxes. “You always do that?” she asked, pointing to the bill as he set a few notes on top of it.

“Pay the bill when I invite a woman to dinner?” he asked, but with a grin.

“No. Ask for a ricevuta fiscale in a restaurant where you come often.”

“You mean because of the taxes they’ll have to pay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“We all have to pay taxes.”

“Does that mean you pay yours? All of them?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

She believed him.

They got to their feet. He opened the door for her and they walked together, talking of things other than Agostino Steffani and the cousins, toward the apartment where she was staying. At her door, he kissed her on both cheeks, said good night, and turned away.

Caterina went up the stairs to her apartment, unlocked the door, and let herself in.

She looked at her watch and saw that it was almost midnight. Cristina did not have a telefonino, which meant she could not leave her an SMS and ask her to call if she was awake. There was a phone in the apartment, with a meter that counted the elapsed units for calls. It would be much cheaper to call Germany on that.

She took her telefonino from her pocket and dialed Cristina’s number. It rang six times before a groggy voice answered with “Ja?”

“Ciao, Tina,” she said. “Sorry to wake you up.”

After a long pause, Tina said, “It’s okay, I was reading.”

“Lying’s still a sin, dear.”

“Not really, if it’s in a good cause.”

“You rewriting the commandments now?”

“I’m awake, so tell me what’s wrong—I can hear it in your voice—and I’ll leave the rewriting of the others till tomorrow morning.”

“You know that lawyer I told you about?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a coldhearted bastard like the others.”

“Why do you say that?” Tina said, sounding sad.

“Because he’s been reading my emails.”