by David Hewson
“It is,” he said a little testily, “a question of method.”
“Method! Method! What retentively anal English bullshit is this?”
“Logic, Laura. And that’s anally retentive, by the way.” She had, now he came to think of it, annoyed him. “Look,” he complained. “You walked in here and threw yourself all over the place. Picking up a sheet in that corner, cursing it, then wandering right across the room to do the selfsame there.”
Her eyes flared. “And why not? Look at this mess!” The cellar was huge and littered with piles of ancient documents, machinery under wraps, and empty wooden boxes. It was hard to walk in a straight line for more than a few feet. “Watch me,” she announced. “I’ll find Scacchi’s treasure.”
Then, her white housecoat getting filthier by the second, she raced around, snatching pages from each pile as she passed, leaping on heaps of documents as if they were stepping-stones, bumping into the misshapen corpses of mysterious machines, screeching nonsense as she went. Daniel watched her, feeling helpless. He had thought only of the hurt inside himself, never suspecting that some mysterious agony lived in Laura too. Finally, she bounced too hard into the large shape of the old press, yelped with pain, and fell to the floor, surrounded by her collection of pages.
He walked over, held out a hand, and persuaded her to sit on the nearest pile of ruined documents. She was covered in dust and crying. The tears made long, straight streaks through the dirt as they travelled down her cheeks. He sat next to her, placed a hand on her shoulder, and, ridiculous as he knew it to be, felt guilty that he had in some way provoked this outburst.
“It’s useless,” she said, forcing back the sobs. They both stared at the papers she had collected, all grey, mouldy pages and smeared ink. “There’s nothing here. We waste our time, Daniel.”
He offered her a clean handkerchief, which she snatched, wiped across her face, then rolled into a tight wad inside her fist.
“I’m sorry. Is it so important to him? To find something to sell?”
“So it seems.”
“But why?”
Daniel peered into her face. The anger was, he realised, directed at herself, not his sudden uncalled-for coldness. Laura was just as desperate as he to find Scacchi’s treasure.
“I don’t know. I am sorry. I should not take out my disappointment on you.” She looked at him with frank, intelligent eyes.
“Don’t apologise. It’s frustrating for both of us.”
She shook her head. “Of course I must apologise. You must not let people treat you so.”
“You may treat me how you like. I am grateful to be here, Laura. It is...the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.”
Her expression changed, from contrition to puzzlement. “Oh, Daniel. Is there so little for you at home that you find our small lives so interesting?”
“No.” He hesitated. “I mean, yes.”
“Your mother?” she asked. “You loved her very much.”
“Of course. And when she was ill, she would talk about Venice, of how happy she was when she was at college here. I believed...”
He felt surprised that this sudden, candid conversation was revealing something to him too. “I think that was why I chose Italian history as my field of study. Why I wanted so much to be here.”
Laura placed a finger on her lips, thinking. “And you studied so hard to please her, I imagine. To make her feel she would leave something worthwhile in the world.”
The accuracy of her insight took him aback. There were times, many times, when he wished to escape the dismal flat and the reek of illness. Yet he was incapable of abandoning her; that had occurred once in her life already, with the father he had never known, and the cruelty of the act never left them.
“I love my work. It is like...”
“Like another world, into which you may retreat.” She smiled. He was speechless. Laura placed her fingers softly on his cheek, the sort of gesture an elder sister might make to an errant sibling. “Poor Daniel. Trapped in daydreams, like all of us around here.”
He stared at the mess of rubbish on the cellar floor. “Is Scacchi in a daydream?”
“He is desperate,” she replied mournfully.
“But why?” Daniel wondered.
“Don’t ask me. I am just the servant around here.”
The irked, slightly peevish tone of her voice suddenly made her seem much younger. “I think you’re a lot more than that, Laura, and you know it.”
She swore, one of the odd, coarse Venetian curses he was coming to recognise. Then she wiped her face with the handkerchief again, gave it back to him, becoming the adult Laura once more. “The truth of it is, he’s old. They’re both very sick. Perhaps there is nothing more to it than that.”
“But surely he can get some help with the medicine if he has no money?”
“It’s not medicine. I don’t know what it is. He seems determined to make some final bargain, as if something were unfinished. I don’t know! ”
Daniel surveyed the cellar. The dusty room seemed to be laughing at them.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Laura announced. “There’s dinner to cook. Don’t waste your time. Give me those clothes. I’ll wash them.”
“No. I won’t give up. I owe it to him. Besides, I believe he’s right. There is something here. I can feel it.”
His sudden persistence amused her. “Daniel! Where’s your English logic now?”
For once he was the one with the scolding look. “I thought you disapproved of that?”
“Touché. But that does not alter the fact that this place is full of junk.”
“Of course it is.” Now that he considered the matter, it was obvious. “Scacchi told us so himself. He said all this was taken down here when the upper floors were used for warehousing. It was dumped on the floor because it was largely worthless even before it was damaged. They would surely know the tide would flood in here.”
Laura threw up her arms in exasperation. “There! You have it. Now may we go?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “If there is something of value, it would pre-date that time and, furthermore, be in a place where it was obvious the water could not reach.”
“Pah! Mysteries! Mysteries!”
He came to her, clasped her hands in his. “Think, Laura! You are the Venetian. If you wanted to keep something safe in this place, above the water level, where would you choose?”
Laura stared into his eyes, not trying to release herself from his grip. She was, he believed, thinking rapidly and logically about the point he was struggling to make.
“Well?” he demanded impatiently.
“These are bare brick walls!” she replied with a sudden smile. “How could one hide something of value in a room like this?”
There was an idea running around her head. He knew as much from the bright, amused glint in her eyes.
“Perhaps...”
“Perhaps nothing! Supper time approaches. I have food to cook. You must remove those filthy clothes for me to wash. Come!” An insistent hand pushed him towards the stairs. “Come!”
“Laura...” Her sudden haste disturbed him. “What about the treasure?”
“Fairy stories,” she barked. “Smoke and mirrors. Leave it to the servants, Daniel, and another day.”
16
Scacchi’s gold
THERE COULD BE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT. DANIEL HAD seen Laura take Scacchi quietly aside after breakfast, pass him a sheet of paper, then nod discreetly in his own direction. Shortly afterwards, the old man threw a feeble arm around him and read out a list of minor errands: some paperwork from the city council, some stamps from the post office, a repaired piece of cheap glass to be picked up from a workshop on Giudecca. Laura had engineered him out of the house quite brazenly. He would spend the entire morning hopping from vaporetto to vaporetto while she pursued some secret plan in the cellar.
“But, Scacchi,” he objected. “I am here to work. On your library.”
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br /> “Plenty of time for that. You will miss lunch, I’m afraid, so pick up a little snack somewhere. Not too much, mind. Don’t forget you have a dinner date tonight, either. Massiter is not a man to be ignored.”
With that he was shooed out of the house with Laura’s list of tasks, each set down in neat, intelligent handwriting, in his pocket. He returned, laden down with shopping bags, just after two and had hardly set them down in the hall when she was upon him. Her hair was matted with dust and cobwebs, her white uniform now almost completely soiled. She wore the widest smile he believed he had ever seen on a human being.
“You look like the Cheshire Cat,” he noted a touch sourly.
“Stop speaking riddles, Daniel,” she replied, bemused. “I have been hunting. Do you not want to see what I have found?”
“I am cross with you, Laura. You schemed to have me out of the house just so you could have all this to yourself.”
She batted him with her right hand, sending a cloud of murk across his clean shirt. “Oh, poppycock! You said yourself I got in your way. I have merely prepared the ground on which your brilliance may shine. Come! The ancients are listening to music upstairs. Let’s not disturb them until we must.”
She passed him a lantern and he followed her down the stairs into the cellar, which seemed at first glance to be in the selfsame dismal jumble he had seen the day before.
“So?” she asked with a grin. “Let us test your suitability to be a Venetian. Where would your chosen hiding place be?”
Daniel glowered at the infuriating room. There was not a single storage place set above ground level. If the cellar had been used for keeping items safe from the depredations of the lagoon, the necessary cupboards had long been removed.
“It’s impossible,” he murmured.
“What do you mean, ‘impossible’? You must begin to understand us. If a Venetian had something of value in here, he wouldn’t leave it in plain view. There’s a water gate there, Daniel. Any villain could steal in and take it.”
“Then where?”
She took the lantern from him and swept the room once more. “In the walls. In the walls! Come.”
He followed her to the rear of the room. “Here,” she said. “The front has no partition. The sides are solid too. But at the rear we go into that mess of houses behind, and anything might be possible.”
She placed a hand on the brickwork and worked her way along the damp surface. “Four hours I have done this, Daniel. Feeling for something.”
“And you found it?”
He saw the joy in her face and knew the answer. She walked to the last third of the wall, a good four feet above the floor, took his hand, and placed it on the masonry. Here the nature of the mortar between the ancient bricks changed, becoming paler and floury in texture. She dug at it with her finger. The material came away like dry sand. Without a word, Daniel went back into the centre of the room and picked up an old crowbar he had brought with him to open any stubborn crates.
“I saved this moment for you,” she said triumphantly.
Not caring about the grime and cobwebs, Daniel kissed her quickly on the cheek. “You are a magnificent woman, Laura. I hope Ca’ Scacchi can stand this.”
“Avanti, Daniel!”
She stood back and he set to the wall, carving away the mortar. After twenty minutes of hard work, when the hole was judged to be sufficiently large, they held the lantern close to the entrance and peered inside. The artificial light revealed a package wrapped in ancient brown paper, tied with string, and set quite deliberately on a stand of bricks to keep it above the water level.
He reached in and grasped the object, untied the string, removed the brown paper, and turned the light on the first page. It was written in a spidery, backward-leaning hand and said simply, Concerto Anonimo and, in Roman numerals, the year: 1733. Daniel flicked through the pages rapidly, setting up a cloud of dust.
“What is it?” Laura whispered.
“Patience,” he replied, and sat down on a dusty pile of papers to examine their discovery, his mind racing. Even from a cursory glance he realised there could be only one explanation, extraordinary as it was. “I
think we have found the composer’s score for a violin concerto. The original manuscript, before it went to the copyists.”
Laura shook her head. “But it is anonymous. Why hide it?”
“I don’t know.” Daniel scanned the music, written in the long-dead composer’s curious hand with an extended, sloping slant that seemed to suggest the notes had been dashed out in the heat of creation. At first glance the piece had perhaps a touch of Vivaldi to it. He had once sought out copies of the composer’s originals in the college library. The hand looked nothing like this.
“Come!” Laura ordered. “We must tell him!”
They rushed upstairs with their discovery and found Scacchi and Paul in the front room, dancing in each other’s arms to some light jazz on the stereo.
“Spritz?” Scacchi asked hopefully. His skin seemed more sallow than it had earlier in the day.
“Later,” Laura announced. “Daniel has found something.”
“We have found something,” he objected.
She waved at him like a mother ticking off a silly child. “No matter. Tell us, Scacchi. Is this what you want?”
The old man’s dark eyes came abruptly to life. The two men ceased dancing and came over to the table to examine the sheaf of pages Daniel had spread out there.
“I can’t read a note of music,” Scacchi said. “Is this valuable?”
Laura prodded the old yellowed page gently with her forefinger. “Of course it’s valuable! Why else would it be hidden?”
“That is female logic,” he complained. “It is anonymous. It says so. Do you recognise it, Daniel?”
“No. But it appears to be a full score for a concerto for solo violin. See! The date says 1733.”
“Vivaldi?” Paul wondered hopefully.
Daniel shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s similar, but why would Vivaldi write anonymously? And this is not his hand. I know it.”
“Still,” Scacchi said hopefully, “something from that time, something fresh, would have value, surely?”
Daniel had to agree, though he could not hope to guess at a price. “It must. This seems well-done from a first glance.”
“Good!” Scacchi declared. “And you have the perfect way to start a small whisper about its discovery. Tonight, with Massiter, who may well be an ideal buyer.”
Laura looked at him severely. “You cannot ask Daniel to take something as valuable as this and wave it under the Englishman’s nose. Massiter will snatch it from him straightaway and throw the poor boy over the side of his boat as fish food.”
Scacchi scowled at her. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Laura. Of course he shouldn’t take the original. You can copy out a few pages of the solo in your own hand, Daniel, surely? Massiter asked for some composition. Tell him this is it.”
Daniel demurred. “This isn’t my work, Scacchi.”
“Just a ruse, lad, to whet the appetite. Massiter’s probably smart enough to see through it anyway.”
“Pen!” Laura shouted. “Paper!”
Paul brought them to him. Daniel stared at the white sheet and the ancient pen.
“Oh, come,” Scacchi said, urging him on. “It is such a small thing. I am not Mephisto, Daniel. Nor are you Faust.”
Daniel reached for a ruler and, in thick black ink, began to draw the five lines of the stave.
17
The Red Priest
Santa Maria della Visitazione—or La Pietà, as everyone seems to call it—is a crumbling piece of stone a little way along from the Doge’s Palace. They say the place is so feebly built that one day it will be pulled down entirely and replaced with something more fitting. The Venetians must have magnificence, you see, particularly in such a prominent location.
We stood on the doorstep in silence. Until now this was a prank. Had the city militia cau
ght us, what reprimand might there have been for a Jewess who forgot to wear her red scarf and her foolish companion? A few harsh words for Rebecca and a clip round the ear for me. But to walk over the threshold of La Pietà was very different. The Hebrew would be entering Christ’s Church, and not for penitence or some instant conversion, either. Would God strike us down on the very steps? Would we be damned for eternity for some gross insult against the Lord’s house?
I cannot answer for the latter, but on the first I have to disappoint you. When we finally summoned the courage to march through the gloomy rectangle of La Pietà’s front porch, we were greeted by nothing more than the sound of stringed instruments scratching their way through a piece of middling difficulty. No claps of thunder. No roars from on high. We entered the nave of the church, and there sat a small chamber orchestra, mostly girls in dark cheap dresses, with Vivaldi waving his stick over them.
I must admit I expected rather more of the famed Red Priest. For one thing, the red hair is long gone—the poor fellow wears a dusty white wig to cover his bald head. True, there is a vivid scarlet frock coat, but his face is bloodless and pasty and his eyes forever squint crossly at the page. I peered at that high pale forehead, thinking about the miracle of creation (individual, not divine). Somehow all this wondrous music had escaped such a humble frame and ventured out to capture the world. For a while, anyway. They say Vivaldi has had scant success since he wrote The Four Seasons eight years ago and must now travel as a journeyman conductor to Vienna and beyond to pay his bills.
We stood in the shadows for a while until he rattled his little stick on the stand and waved silence over the small band of players.
“You,” he then yelled in our direction. “You’re late.”
Rebecca walked out into the light, her small violin case at her side, and I was amused to see an expression of admiration steal its way over Vivaldi’s face. Rebecca has this e fect upon people. I slid into a pew, the better to observe proceedings.
