by David Hewson
“Do you know what this is, Lorenzo?”
“A chunk of broken Roman stone, like most of the stuff around here, I imagine.”
“Don’t be so cynical. The good lady tells me it is nothing less than the throne of Attila!”
“Hmmm. And there was me thinking the Hun never did manage to conquer Italy.”
“Perhaps it is a prize of war?”
She was so taken by the thought that some element of history might hang around the thing I didn’t have the heart to tell her the likely truth: it was just another piece of trickery to bring in the tourists. “Perhaps.”
“Hah!” She waved her hand in the air. “I can feel the very power of this rock infect my veins! Behold, slave! I rule from the Caspian to the Baltic! They call me lord from Gaul to Constantinople!”
“Actually,” I felt it relevant to point out, “they call you ‘Flagellum Dei.’ The Scourge of God.”
“Then some part of Attila’s spirit has been reincarnated in me already! Kneel to your master, villein! For do I not own your very soul?!”
Grinning like a simpleton, I got down on one knee. “Naturally, and I do you honour, great lady. Or is it lord? But if you do not accept the existence of God, how can you believe in reincarnation?”
“Insolent slime! Do you think the human spirit so flimsy it cannot disperse itself a little from generation to generation without some arrogant push from the sky? Why, we’re all a witch’s brew of everyone who’s gone before us, man and woman, mixed together like wine and flesh in a stew. We inhale the humours of our ancestors with every breath. I have the temper of Caesar, the cunning of the Hun, and the vocabulary, on occasion, of a Russian fishwife. Look to your manners, cur, or you’ll hear it!”
“And the face?”
She paused over that one. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
The words just tumbled out of my mouth. “Helen of Troy. No other possibility.”
Suddenly she wore an expression that told me I had destroyed the game. Oh, dear sister! One day I must find the strength to speak out loud the contents of my heart.
I have no idea how your own a fairs go—you scarcely mention them in those scraps of paper that are supposed to pass as letters. I don’t know whether to wish you this exquisite torture or pray for your deliverance to a saner, more even-tempered life.
“They’re coming, Lorenzo.”
The party had left the basilica and was ambling back to the ski f, Rousseau twittering away like a canary and stabbing the afternoon air with that long, thin index finger of his.
“Then we had better join them.”
There must have been some accidental tone of regret in my voice. Watching carefully, to make sure she wasn’t seen, Rebecca extended her hand and, for one short moment, touched my cheek. “Never despair, Lorenzo. Soon we venture out into the city like thieves in the night. This is no time for the faint of heart. Besides . . .”
She drew herself up to her full height, like some ancient Roman empress surveying her empire. “I have sat upon Attila’s throne. Fortune is on our side. We are invincible!”
I set this down now, sister, not knowing whether any will ever read these words after your eyes have scanned them: I doubt I shall ever see Rebecca look so magnificent again. On Torcello, with the golden tower of the basilica and the jumble of rose-tiled roofs behind her, arms folded across her chest, eyes blazing with determination, she looked like a goddess. I could have thrown myself at her feet then and begged for her hand. Instead, I cast a wary glance at the party nearing the boat, who were now becoming interested in our absence.
“We must go, Rebecca,” I said with a note of caution in my voice I wished I could remove.
She was right about the good fortune, though. They played for us most of the way back, and Rebecca threw her entire soul into the business, sawing away at that rough-hewn piece of wood to make sounds that by rights should never have issued from such a cheap and unworthy instrument. Slowly, even Delapole’s party, now well in its cups, began to realise something was up. The chatter ended, even from Rousseau, and as our ski f zigzagged, chasing the soft breeze across the lagoon with the fiery ball of the sun beginning to touch the mountains to the west, they fell into silence and listened, at last, to the music.
When we rounded the great bulwarks of the Arsenale, so close we could see the fires of the workmen behind the gates toiling on new warships for the Republic, the other players whispered to Rebecca. Modestly, she moved her chair forward in the boat, and as we sailed past La Pietà, she tore into the same exercises and études I had heard her play when she auditioned for Vivaldi.
The power and virtuosity of her performance left us all breathless. We passed Salute and I saw a priest who had come out of the church stand on the edge of the stone jetty, straining to hear the tempest of sound that enveloped those of us fortunate enough to be on the water. Even Uncle Leo seemed moved, though I could not help noticing that while the rest of us seemed entranced by Rebecca’s art, it was her face and form in which he seemed most engrossed. He had drunk more than any, and it does not make him more pleasant.
She ceased playing as we pulled into the berth at the front of Ca’ Dario. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I heard such hurrahs and applause that I thought the acclaim must come from all around us, from the gondolas on the canal, from the windows of the palaces, the streets and jetties, not just our own party. It made me both proud and nervous.
Delapole stood up in the stern of the boat, a little unsteadily, walked forward, and shook her by the hand in a formal, fatherly fashion.
“You are the very wonder of the day,” he said. “Those mosaics and that cathedral are quite gone from my head now. All I hear is your fiddle. What is your name?”
“Rebecca Guillaume. Thank you, sir.” She glanced at me, and I could see she realised the possible danger of this kind of recognition. The day was failing too. We would have to hurry to be back at the ghetto before nightfall.
Delapole picked up her fiddle. “I know enough about these things to realise this piece of firewood isn’t worthy of you. Tell me, Rebecca, in an ideal world, what instrument would you choose?”
“One that is most unfashionable these days, sir. A Guarneri, but not by Pietro of this city, though they are very fine. He has a cousin, Giuseppe del Gesù, in Cremona, who makes big, bold instruments that the crowd deem ugly. I played one once in Geneva. It has the bravest, strongest tone you will ever hear in any fiddle.”
“Then you will do a rich man a favour, Rebecca Guillaume. It’s off to Cremona in the morning, Gobbo. Speak to this Giuseppe. Tell him we have a marvel of a musician here who thinks his big, ugly fiddles are just the ticket, then haggle the fellow to the brink of death.”
“Sir!” Rebecca’s hands shot to her face. “I cannot possibly accept such a gift. It is more money than our family might make in a year.”
“Money, money.” The Englishman wafted his hand nonchalantly in the air. “What’s it for if you can’t throw a little at art and beauty once in a while?”
Leo’s eyes positively glared at that. I suspect our uncle thought the cash he’d expected by way of a printing commission was now going in the direction of Rebecca’s fiddle.
“No,” she said most firmly. “It isn’t right.”
“Then I shall merely have the thing delivered to you, dear girl, and you can place it on your mantelpiece as a parlour decoration if you wish. Come. We must celebrate inside! Drinks! Tidbits! And I shall demand a song of you, Rousseau, a pretty Parisian serenade.”
I made sure she caught my eye then. The sun was half down over San Marco. We needed to be heading swiftly back to the ghetto.
She managed to extricate herself from the party with little difficulty. They were fast on the way to becoming decidedly drunk, except for Gobbo, who was mouthing curses about his mission in the morning. Before we left, Rebecca strode over to him and issued one final instruction.
“There are fakers in the city,” she told him. “Make
sure you deal only with Giuseppe himself and buy an instrument that has his label on it. There should be the cipher IHS and the inscription ‘Joseph Guarnerius fecit Cremone, anno . . .’ and the year of manufacture.”
“Anything else you want while I’m there?” Gobbo replied with an ugly smirk. “The odd dress or two? Some nice scent? I bet you’d know how to use ’em.”
Quite rightly, she turned her back on him, and we made for the door, followed all the way by Gobbo’s beady eyes.
I used what little coin I had to find us a gondola that took us straight to San Marcuola. Then we walked hurriedly for Cannaregio, where, close to the ghetto, she took hold of the collar of my jacket and gently dragged me into the half light of a narrow alley. We stood there peering into each other’s face.
“Lorenzo,” she whispered. “I will have a Guarneri! I will have a proper instrument for the first time in my life!”
I thought of Attila’s throne and wondered if perhaps there was indeed some fairy-tale power hidden in the grey and ancient rock. “You deserve nothing less. But we shouldn’t forget there is danger here. For us, and for Jacopo too. We must be cautious.”
“Yes, and die of old age in our beds, never having tried to touch the sky! Oh, Lorenzo. There’s nothing won in this world without risk. But I promise. I shall be modest and unobtrusive from now on. A quiet, obedient girl.”
I laughed. She snorted. I stifled the urge to take her in my arms and said simply, “I think that’s wise.”
“But I wish the concerto I finished writing last week to be published and performed, Lorenzo. It is very good, I think. Leo may be just the man.”
In that dark, musty-smelling alley, the entire world turned upside down and spent a good interval that way before righting itself again.
“A concerto? What are you thinking? They will see through our game at La Pietà immediately if you make yourself more public than you are already.”
“I merely said I wished my work performed and published. Not that I should be the one whose name is attached to it. To begin with, anyway.”
With that she reached forward, held me very gently, and kissed my cheek, once. “There is much to talk about. And much to teach you. But if we do not get past my jailer soon, it won’t matter a damn anyway.”
Then Rebecca Levi, also known as Guillaume, brushed past me back into the street. Incapable of rational thought, I raced after her.
23
A balance outstanding
IT WAS TEN IN THE MORNING. THEY SAT AT A SMALL window table in Florian’s: Scacchi, Daniel, and the mute, puzzled Fabozzi, all three waiting for Massiter to arrive. The day was grey and overcast. Beyond the glass, tourists posed beneath mobs of squabbling pigeons while the souvenir stands hawked their cheap wares. The price list Daniel had picked up on the table was so ludicrously high it was difficult to take a sip without thinking of the cost.
Fabozzi seemed unwilling to speak without his paymaster. After a good five minutes of uncomfortable silence, the Englishman arrived, puffing and panting, making excuses about the lateness of his launch. Massiter’s face, in the sharp artificial light of the café, seemed somewhat older.
“The canal stinks,” he declared, having ordered a large espresso and some biscotti. “How anyone lives here year-round, sniffing an open sewer, is quite beyond me.”
A party of elderly Americans at the adjoining table rattled their cups and stared. He smiled back at them unctuously.
“Myth!” Scacchi announced. “The stench is entirely modern and artificial. It comes from those blasted factories on terra firma, pumping out their filth day and night. The Grand Canal has not been our Cloaca Maxima for many a year and you know it.”
Massiter dipped a small biscuit into his coffee. “I once sold a statuette of Cloacina to a Hollywood film producer,” he mused. “Quarter of a million bucks. I told him she was the goddess of mountain streams.”
Scacchi giggled. “Not sewers?”
“Sometimes in this trade,” Massiter mused, “it is prudent to use facts selectively.”
“And she was a deity,” Scacchi reminded him. “Do you not recall the old Roman prayer?”
He took a deep breath and began to recite in a loud voice which rang around the dainty, gilded room.
“Fair Cloacina, goddess of this place,
Look on thy suppliant with a smiling face.
Soft, yet cohesive, let my offering flow,
Not rudely swift nor insolently slow.”
Scacchi drained his coffee and grumbled, “Not that that happens much of late.” The American party downed their cups and left.
“Oh, dear,” Massiter replied. “You must look to your diet, Scacchi.”
The old man gave him a sour glance, as if they both knew this was inadequate advice.
Fabozzi, who had been listening to this exchange with open disbelief, reached into his small leather attaché case, took out a sheaf of manuscript, and placed it on the table. “Gentlemen,” he said briskly. “If we may talk business? I am now two days into the school, working under new arrangements, and still without a complete score. May someone tell me when I can expect it? And what I should do with it when it arrives?”
They all looked at Daniel. He had soon familiarised himself with the computer which Paul had borrowed, and was steadily turning the scribbled original into a set of separate parts which an orchestra could use. But it was time-consuming, tiring work. He could stand it for no more than four hours at a time each day. By that stage his head was full of notes and soaring themes. It was impossible to go on until time had extinguished some trace of them from his imagination.
“I think you’ll have it all by the end of the week, Fabozzi,” he said.
“You think?” Massiter asked.
“No. I can guarantee it. But no earlier.”
The conductor scowled. “This is an extraordinary business, if I may say so, Massiter. I am employed to run a summer school with the usual curriculum. Then, just as I begin, you change your mind and set me racing after something I’ve never before seen and which does not even seem complete!”
“Of course it’s complete,” Massiter said, and patted Daniel gently on the arm. “It’s just that most of it’s in the head of our genius here. You’re getting your parts as they come, Fabozzi. They’re good enough, I think?”
“So far they’re wonderful! But how can I judge what I have not seen? And why do you not simply send your original manuscript to the copyists to save us all time?”
Scacchi and Massiter exchanged glances. “A reasonable question,” the former acknowledged. “Yet, as I understand it, you have an entire movement now for each instrument, and a little of the second. You’re surely not worried about the rest? Daniel wishes to produce the individual parts himself. That is his prerogative. Why should he have to put his own precious work out to some jobbing copyists and then have to check every last detail later to see it is correct?”
The conductor grimaced. Daniel was grateful for Scacchi’s ingenious explanation. He would have been hard-pressed to lie so convincingly to Fabozzi himself.
“It is difficult for me to discuss these matters,” Fabozzi said. “I have here the composer, sitting, watching me from the stalls.”
“Could be worse,” Massiter observed. “He might be playing.”
Daniel had refused this option entirely. He was too busy with the score. Furthermore, he had now worked his way well into the concerto and found even the more modest parts quite beyond him.
“And look at him!” Fabozzi objected. “He says nothing. How do I know if I am doing the right thing or not?”
Daniel took a deep breath. “Fabozzi,” he said, “I have listened to what you have done so far and found it so marvellous there is nothing for me to say. All this is as much a surprise for me as it is for you. I came here thinking I was cataloguing a library. Instead, by chance, Mr. Massiter hears a little of my amateur scribblings and decides to introduce them to the school. Perhaps I should have refused.... Even
now it is not too late.”
Fabozzi’s face went white. “No! No! I don’t suggest this for a moment.”
Any plaudits that the concerto attracted would not, Daniel knew, be for him alone. Fabozzi, for all his protests, was well-placed to benefit from the piece.
Massiter shook his head. “I confess I’m bemused by your reaction, old chap. Here you have a new work of no small significance and you’ll be the first in the world to conduct it. Is the composer some prima donna screaming at you from the stalls? Does he follow each note, each phrasing, and tear your interpretation of it to shreds? No! He listens patiently and then applauds. What, may I ask, is your beef? Do you want young Daniel here to play the part to which he is, in my view, quite entitled?”
“No! No!” Fabozzi protested. Daniel felt sorry for the little man. It was not an easy situation. “I merely wish for some guidance as to the purpose and the direction of the work.”
Daniel smiled pleasantly. “Then let me say this, Fabozzi. I view it as an attempt to imagine the kind of music that might have been heard in La Pietà in, say, the 1730s, if Vivaldi had a son or some star pupil. You can, I hope, hear a little of him in there, and some Corelli too. But there’s a sense of change. A move from the baroque towards the classical. If I imagine in my head...”
He paused. He had prepared a small description of the piece in advance, knowing he would face this question at some point. But now, after hours of transcribing further parts of the concerto and hearing the notes run through his head, he was able to extemporise further. “. . . I rather see someone witnessing the close of one era and the beginning of another. This was, you will recall, the time at which the Republic began its decline. So perhaps I imagine myself as a young scholar working in the company of Vivaldi, learning his lessons, looking at the imminent decay around me, and then inserting a few comments of my own. So you’ll find love and admiration in there, and on occasion the anger, the impatience of youth too.”
Scacchi and Massiter wore near identical expressions of admiration.
