Whispers of Vivaldi

by Beverle Graves Myers

  Chapter Fourteen

  Caprioli slapped me on the back as if we were boon companions, hard enough to make my chest start throbbing again.

  “I have to thank you, Tito,” the impresario said with an evil grin. “You’ve given my Venus and Adonis an astounding advantage. If anyone even goes to see…ah, what do you call your opera? I can’t seem to recall.” He touched two fingers to his forehead. “The Pretend Prince? The Counterfeit Count? The Misbegotten Marquis?”

  “The False Duke,” Emiliano supplied. The hefty castrato was eating marzipan candy from a tin enameled with flowers and bows. He licked his fingers and held the tin out invitingly. “Tito?”

  “Grazie, no.” I could barely contain myself.

  “Yes,” a very self-satisfied Caprioli continued. “Anyone who takes a box for The False Duke will see an under-rehearsed mess sung by a second-rate prima donna and a so-called primo uomo with a slit beneath his breeches where his lonely, limp rod should hang. After the audience has a good laugh, they’ll run back to the Teatro Grimani and stay there.”

  “The False Duke is a masterly piece of work,” I stated flatly. “Venetians will recognize it for the true jewel it is.” I inhaled deeply, and added in a quiet but firm tone. “They also recognize shit when they see it.”

  My insult pricked Caprioli’s bubble of conceit. He bristled, sitting tall and tugging jacket sleeves over food-stained lace cuffs. After a moment he said, “That’s brazen talk for a man who’s one step ahead of Messer Grande’s long reach.”

  “You know I didn’t kill Maestro Torani,” I shot back loudly enough for the entire coffee house to hear. I glanced around. No man was making a pretense of reading his paper now.

  “Actually, I tend to believe you.” Caprioli paused for a slurp of coffee. “But the Savio obviously doesn’t. He’s put Niccolo Rocatti in charge of The False Duke.”

  Rocatti! “Wha—” I began, before I could stop myself. Though Rocatti was the composer of record, I was certain that Signor Passoni would call on Giuseppe Balbi to direct. The violinist was so much more in tune with Teatro San Marco’s ways.

  “You haven’t heard?” Caprioli stabbed an elbow on the table and propped his fleshy chin in his hand. “We had it from Majorano, didn’t we, my good Emiliano.”

  The castrato nodded, gobbling another marzipan.

  “No, I hadn’t heard.” I cleared my throat. “But Rocatti…he is the composer, after all.” I wouldn’t publicly deny Rocatti his laurels until I was certain that he didn’t deserve them. “He should be able to whip The False Duke into shape.”

  “Poor Rocatti is a tolerable composer, I’ll grant you that. But a man who finds it difficult to organize the giggling misses at the Pieta won’t be able to bring a rebellious opera company to heel.”

  “Rebellious?” I repeated under my breath.

  Emiliano slid his candy tin back in a deep pocket. “Majorano isn’t happy—not happy at all.” He paused to suck on his teeth. “Who would be, suddenly forced to play second fiddle to Angeletto? I don’t blame Majorano for arranging for a claque—I would do the same if I were in his place—and tell them to lay on plenty of rotten tomatoes and a few stones.”

  I was reminded how much I truly disliked Emiliano. Everything about him was false—the cosmetics that accentuated his classic profile, the pads his tailor inserted to broaden his shoulders, the corset that kept his belly firm. I wiped a hand over my damp forehead. I needed to leave Peretti’s, but the two Teatro Grimani fools had me neatly wedged in, especially now that someone else had squeezed in behind me.

  Caprioli grabbed the conversation back. “Can you imagine The False Duke suddenly bereft of its huntsman?”

  “Are you planning to steal Majorano for your company?” I asked.

  The villain laughed outright. “I don’t need that pretty boy, not when the Grimani’s subscribers worship Emiliano. No, here’s what I mean to say: If Messer Grande arrests Majorano for Torani’s murder, that would leave quite a hole in the company.”

  “Majorano wasn’t even at the Ca’Passoni last night.”

  Caprioli had dropped his air of false bonhomie. His piggy eyes glinted with malevolence. “He was. You just didn’t see him.”

  “What?” I sputtered.

  “Oh, yes.” The impresario nodded deeply. “I saw him. I came en masque. Didn’t notice me, did you?”

  “Yes, I did.” Grateful for a small triumph, I stretched a point. “I recognized you by your ill-fitting turquoise breeches.”

  “Well…” He worked his brows up and down, momentarily knocked off stride, then continued. “Majorano blundered through the front doors when most of the guests had either departed or hurried from the salon to view the late lamented Torani’s body. The boy was drunk as a sailor on his first night home, railing against Torani and Angeletto at the top of his prodigious lungs. He had a few choice words for you and Signor Balbi, too. He didn’t stop there—he’d like to see the entire Teatro San Marco sink beneath the lagoon!” Caprioli paused to pick at his teeth with a fingernail, then laughed and nodded. “With everyone else otherwise engaged, I had to help the footman get Majorano back outside and into a gondola.”

  Emiliano sighed and stared into the middle distance. “I would love to have seen that. I should have put on a mask and accompanied you.”

  “You were perfectly welcome. I told you.…”

  “But it would have been embarrassing to be thrown out if the Savio had recognized me.”

  “I told you not to worry.”

  They were talking over me now, as if I’d suddenly disappeared. I gripped the edge of the table, unable to endure one more minute. I twisted around as far as I could and thrust an elbow into a belly covered with a linen waistcoat. If this buffoon behind me would just move out of the way.…

  The buffoon turned out to be Aldo, a most unlikely rescuer.

  The San Marco’s stage manager placed a hand on my shoulder and announced loudly, “I’m glad I found you, Signor Amato. You’re wanted at the theater. We must go now.” He sent Caprioli a pointed look.

  The impresario rose, his face cloaked by a puzzled expression. Emiliano followed suit. I was puzzled, too, but resolved not to show it.

  I’d clambered over the bench and turned to follow Aldo when Caprioli spun me halfway around with a rough hand on my arm. In a caustic whisper, he said, “You won’t win, Amato. Whatever is going on here, the Grimani will end up with the Senate’s backing. I can’t fail—I hold the whip hand.”

  I shook his hand from my sleeve. “I don’t see any whip.”

  He snorted. “It wouldn’t be of much value if you could see it, now would it?”

  ***

  On the crowded pavement in front of Peretti’s, still simmering over the conversation inside, I turned to Aldo. “I’m not really wanted at the theater, am I?”

  The stage manager gave an exasperated grunt. “Oh, you’re wanted all right—by Ziani, the singers, the musicians, the dance master, the trash collector—by everyone except the Savio.”

  “Does that include yourself?” I put in quickly.

  Aldo pursed his lips like he smelled cabbage burning, but he nodded and said, “Yes. Me, too. Without you, the opera is in danger of becoming a shambles.”

  “What’s gone so wrong? Rocatti has been the director for less than a day.”

  “We need a quieter spot.” Aldo jerked his chin towards something behind me. I followed his gaze and saw Scarface, one of the bravos who carried Caprioli’s chair, leaning against the side of the building, regarding us with poorly concealed interest. An actor, he wasn’t.

  “This way.” I headed up the pavement, away from Scarface and the once comfortable coffee house now poisoned by suspicion. In silence, Aldo and I passed a line of shops, some still shuttered for the dinner hour. We turned a corner at an apothecary establishment displaying a wickedly tentacled
aloe plant in its window, and eventually stopped at a long quay where four or five untended gondolas bobbed. “Here?”

  He nodded and we rested on a low granite wall enclosing a shallow flight of steps that dropped to the water’s edge. The damp, cool smell of low tide rose from the tangled fronds of green moss that flourished in the space between the water’s highest and lowest marks. On the pavement, women passed in bright shawls or an occasional black zendale, men in rough work clothes. We had passed out of the theater quarter. I was not well known here, and no one seemed to pay us any particular attention.

  “What has happened?” I burst out. Though painfully curious, I was also uncomfortable in depending on the observations of a man who’d made it crushingly obvious that he didn’t care for me.

  Aldo still hesitated. He must have been feeling the same. After a wry grimace, he began, “The Savio gathered us all at the theater this morning. After a few words about Maestro Torani’s death—and nothing said about you, as if you’d also ceased to exist—he introduced Rocatti as our new director. The Savio had to push the man forward. Literally push him with a hand to his back. Rocatti mumbled his buongiorno and started into a pretty little speech about how we’d all soon be fast friends.”

  Aldo crossed a booted foot over his knee and threw his head back as if imploring Heaven to deliver him. With a deep sigh, he returned his gaze to me. “Can you imagine? Oriana giggled outright. And Majorano kept asking who was the fool the Savio had brought in.” Aldo’s gaze sharpened. “He looked a sheet or two to the wind, blinking and rubbing his eyes to keep himself awake…Majorano, I mean.”

  “Still drunk? At that hour?”

  The stage manager shook his head. “More likely the effects of drink the night before. I’m surprised he was able to stumble into the theater. But Tito, that wasn’t the worst of it. Angeletto and his entourage arrived while Rocatti was still trying to learn everyone’s name and connect them with the parts they sing.”

  An image leapt to mind—Angeletto being carried onstage by his troop of sisters like a plaster saint borne aloft in a feast-day procession. Apparently, I wasn’t far from wrong.

  Aldo described the scene: “The Vanini women just kept coming, the old mother in the lead and the others following like a gaggle of geese. Then the mother cackled her orders and they all scattered. She started in on me with a steady stream of demands. Carlo must have the biggest dressing room, with at least two windows, and plenty of candles—and a pitcher of fresh water to be on the table at all times lest his precious throat dry up. I’m to furnish his sisters with everything they need. There’s one to mend his costumes, one to iron them, one to fetch his dinner—” Aldo threw up his hands. “One to wipe his butt after he takes a shit, for all I know.”

  “Was Maria Luisa with them?”

  “The horse-face with the spectacles? Looks like she’s forever doing sums in her head?”

  “That’s her. Did she have her own set of stipulations?”

  Aldo puffed out his cheeks and exhaled noisily. His gaze lit on a passing water carrier, a pavement goddess with a straight back and sleeves rolled above muscular forearms bearing buckets. Thus burdened, she still managed to twitch her hips at him. Aldo grinned before switching his attention back to me. “The sister didn’t have any orders for me. She stationed herself in the wings—stood there waiting and watching for some time. Not much gets by her, I’d guess. Once Angeletto was escorted to the costume workshop, this…Maria Luisa?”

  I nodded

  “Well, Maria Luisa made a frontal assault on Signor Rocatti—a daring piece of work since he was in conversation with the Savio and Ziani. The Savio had demanded to see how his cursed shipwreck was progressing—Ziani was demonstrating how he’d rigged the deck to split in half at the finale’s crescendo. The Savio was impressed, but he wanted it even bigger and grander. ” Aldo danced his hands one around the other to signify the inflated trumpery of Signor Passoni’s orders. “Anyway, Maria Luisa strides right up, tears Rocatti away, and draws him into the corner by the stairs. She was shaking her finger, laying the law down about something. I couldn’t hear, but poor Rocatti looked even more unhappy than he had all morning.”

  Poor Rocatti. Aldo was the second person to employ that phrase within the past hour. I asked, “Has any rehearsal been accomplished today?”

  “Only because Balbi pulled himself out of his doldrums. He’s taking the old man’s death hard—I’ve never seen him so affected. He sat in the orchestra pit with his head in his hands for nearly an hour. Finally he removed his violin from its case and had his musicians strike up the overture. The singers naturally drifted onstage. Then Balbi suggested that the company run through the opera as it stands so Rocatti could form a clear picture of what needs to be done.”

  “Was Signor Rocatti pleased with The False Duke?” It must be a treat to see your music sung well in the proper setting, sheer torture to see it mangled. But then, if it wasn’t really your music, how would you feel? Embarrassed, guilt-ridden, afraid of being found out? Or perhaps Rocatti was one of those men who possessed a stone cold heart that felt nothing. No, I thought forcefully, last night Rocatti greeted Signora Passoni with true warmth. He feels something for her.

  Aldo was slowly shaking his head, fingering his lower lip. “Hard to tell what Rocatti thought. He and the Savio watched from the Doge’s box without comment or interruption. When they came down to the stage, the Savio quickly released everyone for a late dinner break, promising that Rocatti would deliver his impressions when we resume.” The stage manager consulted a watch connected to a long, hand-woven fob. “Which should be in about ten minutes.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment and massaged his lids, then he looked at me sidelong. “I loved the old maestro as much as you did.”

  “I know.” I recalled the many times that Torani had urged me to cultivate better relations with the stage manager, but Aldo had never responded to my overtures. I’d decided that he was jealous of the musical bond he could never share.

  “Did Torani ever tell you how we met?” Aldo cocked his head.

  I shook my head.

  Aldo crossed his arms. “I was born on the mainland, in Ceneda. Ever heard of it?”

  “Barely.” I knew of Ceneda only as a backward city of the hilly country to the north.

  “My four brothers and I had the misfortune to lose our mother when I was only five. Our father was a tanner, and in his grief he gave us little heed. My brothers and I grew up wild and free, like the black savages of Africa.” He paused to chuckle. “The parish priest and the few neighbors who could bear the stench of the tannery tried to contain us, but it was useless. Under my brothers’ tutelage, I learned to scrounge and pilfer what I needed. I excelled in relieving men of purses and wallets. Small hands, you see.” He held one up for my inspection, wiggling its digits. “Eventually I made my way to Venice on foot, where the better dips were.”

  A pair of sbirri passed, bathing us in their all-encompassing stares. Aldo kept silent until they had walked out of earshot. Then he continued in a wistful tone, “I thought I was brave, that I could get away with anything. Looking back, I can’t believe how rash and careless I was. I made an art of dancing my fingers into richer and richer pockets. One day, I chanced to dip into Maestro Torani’s pocket, and one of that bunch,” he said, jerking his chin toward the sbirri, “caught me red-handed. The old man was amazed—he hadn’t felt a thing. Before I was dragged away, he said, ‘You must be a clever lad. Why do you want to end your life at the end of the hangman’s noose? It’s not a pleasant death.’ I think I muttered something about starvation not being too pleasant, either. No need to gild the tale. Torani refused to testify before the avogadoro, so they let me go free. Then the old man gave me a job sweeping up at the theater. He checked on me every day to see how I got on, and he seemed to genuinely care.…” Aldo shrugged. “So, I stayed.”

  “I had no idea,” I
said quietly.

  Aldo twisted around and gazed down at the sea-green canal as if it held the answer to an age-old mystery. “In this cruel life,” he said, “I’ve noticed that most men end as they begin. If it hadn’t been for Rinaldo Torani, I’d have been hanged long ago. Or worse, locked up under the Leads until the heat and confinement drove me mad.” He looked up, raised both eyebrows. “They put you in a closet, you know, not much more than a box. Even a man my size can’t stand up in there.”

  I nodded, well aware of how the Republic treated its prisoners, but something he said bothered me. I replied, “It’s my philosophy that men can change if they embrace a new code and resolve to live by it.”

  His lips pulled in a frown. “A man may walk a new path, but those around him put more faith in his past than his present. Many times the sbirri nab an innocent man. They don’t care. An Inglesi has his purse lifted and wants someone to take the blame. As long as someone—anyone—is punished, he doesn’t care, either.”

  Aldo slapped his hands on his knees. “Maestro Torani was different. He saw beyond the obvious. Allora, if I can be useful in finding his killer, you have to tell me how. I know you well enough to think you must be on the hunt.”

  I held his gaze for a breath, then: “Haven’t you heard the talk about how I must have removed Maestro Torani to advance my career?”

  “Don’t waste my time, Tito. I have to get back to work.”

  I detected no hesitation in his reply. “All right.” I licked my lips, nodding. “Has anything been removed from Torani’s office?”

  Aldo dug in the pocket of his linen waistcoat and came up with a brass key that he displayed between thumb and forefinger. “As soon as I got in this morning, I did a sweep of the entire theater. The door to Maestro Torani’s office was locked—just as it’s been since the gondola accident. I let myself in and took a look around. Everything seemed in order.”