I wasn’t convinced. “And to top it off, I return from Rome with an injured manservant who requires a servant to wait on him.”
“Time will smooth the rough edges, Tito. Benito will heal. Annetta will find a way out of her doldrums, and she and Liya will find a way to get along. I predict that by the time we return to Venice, Annetta will be in a fit state to receive bad news.”
“How will we ever find the right words?”
He shook his head, rubbing his jaw. “She will want to read the letter for herself, of course. But we must prepare her carefully. Here…” he extended his hand. “Let me see it again.”
I removed a calfskin wallet from an inside pocket, opened the clasp, and handed over the folded sheets that had arrived a few days ago. Their edges were already crinkled from repeated reading.
The letter was from Alessandro, our seafaring brother who had embraced Islam and now called Constantinople home. His defection to such an alien land still perturbed us. We had become accustomed to his long absences; Alessandro was a merchant trader, after all. But we always knew he would return. With no warning, he would appear at the door shipworn and weary, his duffle cloak slung across his shoulders, his tanned face split by a huge grin. He always insisted on distributing presents before he even cleaned up. From his travel bag would come a gold chain or bright length of silk that he had spotted at an eastern bazaar, a paisley shawl bought straight off a camel caravan, or some such exotic trinket for each of us.
Our older brother might travel half a world away, but he never forgot his family. That is until Zuhal, the Turkish woman who became his wife, stole his heart away from us.
Alessandro’s new loyalty to Constantinople provided only one benefit as far as Annetta and I were concerned. It put him in a convenient spot to search for Grisella, the sister who had sailed out of our lives so many years ago. The Turkish capital had been her last known port of call. In the dappled sunlight of the country lane, Gussie perused the letter that recounted Alessandro’s efforts. I had learned the words by heart:
Constantinople, 21st August 1740
My dear family,
As you see, I have kept my word and pushed balance sheets and ledgers aside. My darling Zuhal accused me of setting her on the shelf as well, so assiduous I have been in executing the mission I was charged with. I only wish I had better news to impart. But more of that later. So you will learn the fate of our sister as I did, in small steps, I will begin at the beginning.
Grisella left us as a naïve young girl enticed away by the attentions of a rogue. In consequence of the local strictures which tend to keep the lives of women hidden, I thought it best to start searching for, and it pains me to even write his name, Domenico Viviani. My father-in-law was most helpful in this regard. As a merchant, Yusuf Ali has many ties to the foreign communities that make up a good part of Constantinople. He put me in touch with a certain Halim Talat, an apostate like myself, but with one difference. Halim turned Turk out of fear, intent on escaping disgrace in his homeland, while I embraced Islam to honor the people I have come to love. Before assuming his current name and manner of living, Halim had been a nobleman of Rovigo, but since his personal history has no bearing on my search, I will not test your patience by recounting it.
Halim took a keen interest in the train of events which put Grisella in Constantinople with Viviani, and I was overjoyed when he claimed knowledge of the vile libertine. On advance of a small sum, he took me to a likely tavern in Pera, a hilltop quarter known as a veritable stewpot of Armenians, Italians, Frenchmen, and Russians. Since the Turks avoid alcohol as a strict sin, a Greek tended the drinking establishment. I was disappointed to see that my companion failed to take the Koran’s proscription to heart. Halim downed three glasses of Montepulciano while we waited for Viviani to make his appearance.
I was losing patience when a gaunt man with spectacles entered the tavern and threaded a timid path through the tables. Halim astonished me by pointing in his direction. “There’s Viviani,” he said.
I’d been hoodwinked. The newcomer’s elbows had rubbed through his silk coat and the fraying tail of a cheap wig ran down his bowed back. He looked like a bookworm who had acquired a gentleman’s suit from the rag man, hardly a terror to women and surely not the audacious scoundrel that I had been warned to approach warily.
I bunched the front of Halim’s loose robe in my fist.
“No, no. You will see,” said he, beckoning the ramshackle figure with two fingers. He shook me off and continued in a shout, “Signor Viviani, join us. I have someone who wishes to buy you a drink.”
I will dispense with lengthy explanation. It wasn’t Domenico Viviani who sat down to abuse my generosity in the matter of Montepulciano, but his elder brother Carlo. At close range, he cut an even sorrier figure. Snuff encrusted the rim of one nostril, his wet blue eyes seemed to have lost the will to focus, and his odor told me he did not avail himself of the public baths. Since he seemed willing to talk as long as I was willing to fill his glass, I sent Halim away and proceeded to learn much.
Domenico Viviani is dead. After the Doge ran the three Viviani brothers out of Venice, they arrived in Constantinople with chests of gold coins and all the riches they had managed to strip from their palazzo. As usual, Domenico was at the helm. He set them up in a house on the water, a splendid yali that served as both residence and center of their business dealings. Yes, Grisella was with them. Without shame, Carlo recounted how Domenico had forced her to serve as wife to all three brothers. You can imagine my difficulty in controlling my outrage.
Once Domenico had pledged his service to Sultan Mahmud and furnished the Turkish navy with his expertise in the latest Venetian shipbuilding techniques, the fortunes of the renegade brothers seemed limitless. They acquired a flotilla of trading vessels, and for several years they lived in a luxury few European men can imagine. More women joined Grisella on the haremlik side of the yali.
There was, however, one favor that the sultan could not bestow: protection from the dreaded plague that languishes and revives but never totally disappears from our shores. Claudio was stricken first, then Domenico. They suffered many days of fever and swelling before succumbing. May Allah strike me down, I wish their agonies had been tenfold. It still wouldn’t have been as much as they deserved. Carlo was spared, possibly because his role as keeper of accounts did not take him to the docks where the pest seems particularly virulent.
“How have you come to your current sorry pass?” I asked, hoping to goad Carlo’s story along.
“I am not the man of business that my brothers were,” he replied dolefully. “I lost the yali sometime ago, and now I exist on the small wages I earn by tending the books of a Turkish gentleman who desires a European library.”
“And where have you stashed my sister?” My tone would have sent most men running, but Carlo had indulged in too much wine to take that precaution.
“Ah, our pretty Grisella,” he replied with his chin lolling on his chest. “A Russian took the house. Took her, too. Shame to lose her like that.”
“Where is your former yali?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Closing his eyes, he yawned and murmured, “The Russian is gone. A Dutchman lives there now.”
Since my informant was nearly unconscious from drink, I feared the rest of the story would remain a mystery. (Family, I know you hold my new beliefs in slight regard, but truly the Prophet was wise in commanding us to abstain from a substance that can so addle the senses.) I unsheathed my dagger and dug it into the filthy damask of Carlo’s waistcoat. When I saw his eyes widen, I asked the Russian’s name.
“Oh, do stop poking me,” he answered in a fussy, old woman’s voice. “It’s one of those odd mouthfuls that shouldn’t be a name at all. Pan-something-vich.”
I extended my knife a bit farther and felt the point pop through the fabric.
“P
aninovich. Yes, that’s it. Count Vladimir Paninovich.”
That was all the man knew. With great relish, I slammed his face into the table and left the tavern.
The day after my interview with the surviving Viviani, we received a caravan of cured tobacco which necessitated many days of picking and sorting. It was a full week before our weed had been rebaled, but you may be sure that the moment our cargo was loaded onto the outgoing lighters, I went to find this Count Paninovich.
A few questions in the right ears started me out. Though not attached to the Russian Embassy, Paninovich had been received by the Grand Vizier and was a staple at the concerts and balls where Turks mixed with the foreign ambassadors and their courts. When I pressed, several recalled that the Russian often spent his evenings in the company of military men. Apparently, he was generous in standing new stakes for young officers who bet too rashly at the faro table.
For several days, that remained the sum total of my investigation. Then a customer who keeps his snuffbox filled with our blend stopped in with one more remembered detail. Paninovich sometimes escorted a young woman admired on two counts: her stunning red hair and her talented rendition of Italian arias. Ah, Grisella! And where could Count Paninovich be found? Alas, my customer hadn’t seen him for a year or more. Perhaps he had been recalled to the court of Empress Anna Ivanova at St. Petersburg.
The trail quickly grew cold. Count Paninovich seemed to be a topic that most people wished to avoid. Try as I might, I managed to discover nothing more about the circumstances or business dealings which had brought him to Constantinople, still less about his women. It was time for my sweet Zuhal to take the reins.
My new city has vast marble temples that are unlike any Venice knows. I speak of the hamam, the baths, the temples of personal cleanliness. Well-born women visit the hamam every few days and spend hours in grooming and visiting with each other. Behind their veils, Turkish women are no different from Italian. The air is heavy with gossip whenever they get together. In the hamam, no news or scandal can exist without being picked over as thoroughly as my bales of tobacco.
And that, dear family, is how I came to learn our sister’s fate. Zuhal discovered that Grisella and her count both died just over a year ago, in a fire at a new yali he had purchased farther up the Bosphorus. Some say that he jumped from a window but went back in a vain attempt to rescue Grisella. Others say the roof collapsed before either of them could escape. I hope the former is true, only because it would mean that our little sister was loved, at least at the end.
We located her burial place just yesterday, in a Christian cemetery near a beautiful Greek church dedicated to St. Anthony. Without benefit of gossip from the hamam, we would never have found it. Grisella was buried under the name Viviani, you see, not Amato. The sexton had no record of who made the arrangements. Perhaps it was one of the count’s countrymen from the embassy. I am sorry to report that her stone was spattered with mud and surrounded by brambles. Zuhal helped me clear it, and we laid a sheaf of lilies on the marble slab. It will go untended no longer.
Continue in good health, my dear ones, and don’t let grief overtake you. With great sorrow we must admit that our sister bears some blame for the path she chose. I will always remember her as a laughing, willful child, her beautiful red gold hair flying in the breeze as she chased a ball across our campo, not as the hardened woman she must have become. Pray for her soul, as I do in my own way, and light a candle every Sunday.
As always your loving,
Alessandro
“Tito?” Gussie repeated insistently, “Tito?”
I blinked my eyes, trying to rid myself of the image of a weedy grave overshadowed by the onion-shaped domes and minarets of a distant, pestilential city. I drew in a lungful of good Italian air as my brother-in-law pressed the letter into my hand.
“Tito, Ernesto says the wheel is ready. We must go.”
Chapter Two
We caught our first glimpse of the Villa Dolfini as our carriage rattled through the iron gates at the bottom of the curving drive. The main house stood on a slight rise. Its central mass, clad in cream-colored stucco, rose to a perfectly proportioned dome topped by a spire that glinted in the rays of the lowering sun. From each side of the house, identical wings swept out to open colonnades, which in turn led to structures I took to have an agricultural function. Fields of standing grain, separated by low stone walls, stretched toward the olive orchard beyond. A lovely scene, though I was surprised to see the walls between the fields collapsing in several places.
After the carriage had come to a halt, Gussie jumped out without bothering to unfold the stairs. He claimed his paintbox while I followed more slowly, still caught up in the melancholy produced by recalling Alessandro’s letter. I gave my head a vehement shake. Time to put family matters aside and go to work. I had a new opera to learn.
Wide stone steps conducted us to a covered portico encircled by pots of red geraniums. Before us loomed an ancient wooden door with a most unusual knocker, a gauntleted hand clenched in a fist. The door swung inward before I had a chance to knock.
A bulky, not-so-young maid greeted us. “I’m Nita,” she said in a flat tone. “This way if you please. The boys will bring your bags.”
Our footsteps resonated on terra-cotta tiles as we followed Nita across the shadowy foyer. To our right and left stretched long corridors walled with frescos and mirrors. Ahead, through an entrance framed by two fluted columns, was the grand salon. I listened for sounds of a rehearsal in progress. Hearing none, I applied my attention to the layout of the house.
In much the way of the grander palazzi in town, the level that we traversed contained the villa’s public rooms. The ground floor below would be given over to working rooms: kitchen, wine cellar, larders, and other storerooms. Bed chambers and the family’s private suites would fill the second level, and the servants would make do with attic quarters.
Nita huffed and puffed as she led us up a staircase that looped upwards from the right-hand corridor. “The mistress has put you together,” she called over her shoulder. “It’s not the best room, but the only one left. If anyone else shows up, he’ll have to bed down on a sack of potatoes in a larder.”
“Are other guests still expected?” I asked as we reached the long, nearly empty second-floor hall that spanned the villa from front to back. Here the tiled floor was hyphenated by a narrow scrap of Persian carpet, and the only furniture was a mammoth armoire on the rear wall and a tall clock standing between two windows at the front. “I thought the rest of the opera company would have already arrived.”
“Ah, si. By God’s grace, Signore, I pray you are correct.” After a barely concealed sigh, she pointed to the various doors. “The Frenchwoman and her husband are there, with the little Italian soprano just across. Then we have the two gentlemen—the one who sings so high and the one who sings so low. Here is your room, right across from them. The others are farther along, opposite the back stairs.”
“The others?” Gussie asked.
“Those brothers that play the fiddles and such.” She shook her head, then continued in prolonged syllables, “The musical accompanists, I’m supposed to say.”
I gave the maid a closer look. A kerchief of unbleached linen contained her silver-streaked hair, and her freckled cheeks were brown as a biscuit. A thumbprint of flour decorated her jaw. The exotic performers who had been thrust into her midst must be causing her a great deal of extra work. The resentful set to her well-padded shoulders told me exactly what Nita thought of that.
“Where is Maestro Weber’s room?” I asked.
“Oh, him.” She pressed her lips in a thin line, then jerked her chin toward the narrower corridor that crossed along the front of the house. “He’s around there, in the first room of the west wing. The German was the first to arrive, so he got the pick of the lot. The rooms overlooking the drive are
bigger by half than these here.”
“I suppose our hosts have rooms on that corridor then.”
She nodded.
“And the others in the family?”
“There are no others.”
“No children?”
“None. And not likely to be, with the master and mistress married almost twenty years.” As if disposing of the topic of the Dolfini family, Nita briskly dusted her palms and opened the nearest door.
Our room was certainly nothing to complain about. Several lamps lent a welcoming glow to the plastered walls which had been washed the color of a pale lettuce leaf. Simple iron bedsteads and armchairs with tapestry cushions stood ready to welcome road-weary bodies. Gussie chose the bed nearest the door by depositing his paintbox on its faded crimson coverlet. I plopped down on the other and sank into feather-filled heaven.
After a pointed reminder that the household’s dinner had been put off until our arrival, Nita withdrew. A footman in plum-blue livery, probably imported from the Dolfini house in town, appeared with warm water for the wash bowls. Another brought our trunks and cases. After the footmen had unpacked, Gussie and I made hasty work of dressing. The ministrations of my manservant Benito were sorely missed, as well as his steady stream of irreverent banter, but I trusted that Gussie and I made ourselves presentable.
We were descending the front stairs under the blank gazes of classical busts set in wall niches when a furious string of Italian obscenities emanated from somewhere above. The feminine screech continued: “You bastard! I won’t take any more of your orders, do you hear? You’re the cause of all our troubles.”
A man’s guttural rumble followed, difficult to fathom as it bounced off the turns of the stairwell.
We halted, listening, questioning each other with our eyes.
“You’ve been warned. I won’t go on like this,” the woman’s voice replied, even shriller than before.
“Harpy!” We understood that readily enough, as well as the smack of palm on flesh that followed.
4 - The Iron Tongue of Midnight Page 2
