by Donna Leon
By the time Ezio came back, more than an hour later, Caterina was sitting in the carrel with about forty centimeters of books lined up on the shelf in front of her. She turned when she heard him come in, keeping her finger in the book she was reading. He placed the card on the open page, bent down to give her a kiss on the cheek, and, saying nothing, left the room. Caterina put the card in the pocket of her jacket and went back to reading.
The habits of the scholar had dominated Caterina’s selection. First check the publisher to see how serious the book was likely to be, and then a quick check for footnotes and bibliography. Anything that appeared to be self-published or that lacked notes or bibliography, she left on the shelves. What scholars were thanked in the acknowledgments? The culling process had taken some time, leaving her delighted that so much had been written about him.
She started to take notes. Same information about the family: humble but not poor. Early gift for music. At twelve, so beautiful was his voice that, while still a choir student in Padova, he had been sent to sing some opera performances in Venice. Was it success that had made him outstay his leave by several weeks? Despite his curt letter of apology, no punishment was given when he returned to Padova.
The Elector of Bavaria heard him singing in Venice and invited him to Munich, where Steffani was appointed musician to the court. To perfect his art, he was sent to Rome for a time and no doubt began his ecclesiastical training while there. His upward rise continued, all fairly normal for an ambitious young man of his era.
His career took wing with his move to Germany. Soon he was an abbé, though Caterina could find no reference to his ever having said a Mass or administered any of the sacraments. Was abbé merely a title or did it entail clerical obligation as well as status?
She pulled her thoughts from speculation and returned to Munich and to Steffani’s growing fame as a composer. He was in the employ of a Catholic elector and much in his favor, but in 1688 he chose to leave when the position of Kapellmeister, which he believed he deserved, was bestowed on Giuseppe Antonio Bernabei, the son of the composer who had been his teacher in Rome.
Luckily, he had been seen and heard in Munich by Ernst August, the Protestant Duke of Hanover, who headed a court thought by some to rival that of France. Invited there as a musician, he accepted and was soon moving in the highest intellectual circles, a friend of philosophers—Leibniz, for one—musicians, and aristocrats.
His talent apparently flourished, his reputation grew, and he turned out yearly operas to ever greater success. But then, in the early 1690s, when it seemed he could become no more famous than he was, he suspended it all to go on a delicate ambassadorial mission, which two writers attributed to the need to “convince other German states to look with favor on the accession of Ernst August to the title of Elector of Hanover.”
After the death of Ernst August, Steffani moved for a few years to the court of the Catholic Elector Palatine at Düsseldorf, where he worked as a privy councillor to the Elector and at the same time as President of the Spiritual Council—another mystery to Caterina. His social stature must have risen because he used a pseudonym for the operas he still continued to write, no doubt to avoid popular suspicion that a high-ranking clergyman would engage in behavior as morally and socially compromising as the writing of operas. As for writing under his own name, there were only the chamber duets and the Stabat Mater, which he wrote toward the end of his life.
Grateful for all his services, the Elector Palatine interceded on Steffani’s behalf with the Vatican. The pope finally gave in and made him a bishop. When she read that this was, unfortunately, only titulary and produced almost no income, Caterina muttered, “The wily bastards.” Then, unexplained, Steffani abandoned the Catholic duchy and returned to Protestant Hanover, where he remained until his death.
The books contained two pictures of him, the most common a lithograph made a century after his death and said to be a copy of an original, though in the ensuing century someone had added a goatee to his chin, as unflattering and unconvincing as those added to the photos of unpopular politicians. The other was the contemporary portrait of him that she recalled, wearing his bishop’s cap. In the first, he looked earnest and busy, with his bishop’s miter and crosier visible behind him. In the second, he was dressed in his ecclesiastical best. He looked reserved, but chiefly he looked well fed.
If there was no mention that he had ever said Mass or performed a marriage ceremony or buried the dead or heard a confession, then why was he pictured both times in the regalia of his clerical position? He had spent the bulk of his life as a singer, composer, and diplomat, yet neither author could find a visual record of any of these, and one claimed that such images did not exist.
More important, for her immediate purposes, how could such a man accumulate “treasure,” and what form would it take? And, if he did have it, why then did most accounts state that he had died in debt and poverty after first selling off most of his possessions? Why would he sacrifice a passion for a duty and then die poor as a result?
Caterina glanced at her watch and saw that it was after seven. She felt the sudden, irrational fear of being locked inside overnight and snapped the book closed. She took out her telefonino and dialed Ezio’s number. It rang five times before he answered, saying, “I’m on my way to get you, Caterina. Be there in three minutes.”
Pretending, even to herself, that she had known he was there and would come to get her, she put the book back on the shelf, put her pencil and notebook in her bag, and had a more careful look around the room. She went to stand in front of the card catalogue, filled with the names of the people who had given music to the world, and she was filled with a pride that surprised her: we have done so much; we have made so much beauty. Subtract Italy, wipe it from history, perhaps even cancel the peninsula from the continent, and what would Western culture be? Who would have painted their portraits, or built their churches, designed their clothing, given them the concept of law? Or taught them how to sing?
Ezio’s entrance broke into these reflections, which she decided to keep to herself. “Did you find what you wanted?” he asked.
“Too much,” she said. “I found four biographies, endless histories of the music of the period, of the politics of the times.”
“Will it be enough to answer your questions?” He sounded very interested. She remembered that Ezio had a degree in history and had more or less learned about libraries as he worked in one.
“That depends on what I find in the documents,” she said. Then, on an impulse, she asked, “Am I allowed to take books with me?”
“Which ones?” he asked.
Turning back to the shelf, she pulled out one book, then another, then replaced that with a different one. “These,” she said, showing him the two books.
He studied them, studied the bindings and not the titles, as if there were some sort of secret library code hidden in their call numbers, then said, “No.”
“Oh, sorry,” she said, realizing she had asked too much and reaching toward the books.
“But I can,” Ezio said, slipping them under his arm.
Caterina laughed but then the scholar in her said, “But you have to log them out.”
Still smiling at his own joke, Ezio said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ve known you for so many years, I know you’re not going to disappear with the books. Believe me, it’s easier this way.” He took her arm.
“What happens when I try to bring them back?”
“You just carry them in and put them back on that table down there,” he said, turning to point toward the restacking table.
“But how can I bring them in if they haven’t been checked out?”
His confusion was written across his face. “Just keep them in your bag and show them your card.”
“Won’t they register when I go through the metal detector?”
&n
bsp; “Of course not,” he said. “It registers only metal.”
“Ah,” she said. “Of course, a metal detector.”
Then, perhaps to keep her from getting ideas she shouldn’t, he said, “The machines at the public exit register chips in the bindings, so you can’t take books out.” Of course, she thought, who’d sneak a book into a library?
She stopped. They had somehow come again to the front of the building, and there, ahead of them and off to the left, was the facade of the Basilica. “What an absurd building that is,” she said. “Look at it, all those domes and the arcs and the pillars all different from one another. Who’d build a thing like that?” she asked.
“We’re in Italy, cara mia. Anything is possible.” He handed her the books.
Eleven
They went into Florian’s, to the bar at the back, and each ordered a spritz. The barman recognized Ezio and, smiling at Caterina, put a dish of cashews in front of them.
Taking one, she asked, “Is this your reward for being an habitué? The most I ever get is peanuts.”
He laughed and took a drink. “No. He’s an old friend. We went to school together, so he always gives them to me.”
“It doesn’t end, does it?” she asked, a remark that confused him.
“What doesn’t end?”
“The advantages of having been born here,” she explained. Then, more soberly, “I saw in the paper this morning that there are now fewer than fifty-nine thousand of us.”
Ezio shrugged. “I don’t see what we can do. Old people die. Young people get jobs in other places. There’s no work here.” Then, tilting his glass in her direction, he said, “You’re the lucky exception. You got called home to take a job.” Then, before she could say anything, he asked, “Are you staying with your family?”
“No,” she said. “An apartment came with the job.”
“What?”
“An apartment. It’s not much, and it’s down in Castello, but it has three rooms and it’s on the top floor.”
“Are you making this up?” he asked.
“No, not at all. It’s just on the other side of Via Garibaldi, so it’s easy enough to get to work.”
“How’d that happen?”
Here Caterina gave him an edited version of the facts, saying that the Foundation had an apartment it offered to visiting scholars. This was not true, and the apartment belonged to Scapinelli, who had agreed that she could stay in it while she did the research. It was usually rented out to tourists and was decorated—though Caterina thought that word an exaggeration—in the style Venetians thought tasteful.
“Lucky you,” he said, “job and apartment.”
“Both temporary,” she reminded him.
He ate a few cashews and asked, “You have any idea how long it might last?”
She shook her head. “God knows.” She reached toward the books he had set on the counter. “May I?”
“Oh, sure, sure,” he said, handing them to her.
“The more I read, the sooner it will be done.”
“And then?”
She shrugged, then slipped the books into her bag. “No idea. I’ve got job applications out all over the place, in four countries.”
“Where?” he asked, interested enough to set his glass down.
She counted them out on her fingers. “Here, though I might as well forget about that. It’s only teaching. No time for research.” Then, seeing how real his curiosity was, she went on, “Germany, Austria, and the United States.”
“You’d go?” he asked, astonished.
This time, she waved the question away with her hand. “If the job is interesting, yes. I’d go.”
“Well, good for you,” he said, meaning it. “You’ve got the advantage of the language, haven’t you?”
If the remark had come from another person, Caterina might have heard it as a criticism of the advantage she had, but from Ezio it was only admiration.
It came to her to say that she had the advantage of more than one language, but it would have sounded like boasting, and she didn’t want to do that, so she contented herself with nodding in agreement.
He finished his drink. Half of the cashews were still in the glass bowl but neither had any further interest in them. Caterina finished her drink and pulled out a ten-euro bill. She placed it on the bar and caught the waiter’s eye.
The waiter shook his head and made no move to approach them.
To Ezio, she said, “Please let me pay. It’s the least I can do.”
“No,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “That would be to come close to taking a bribe, and you know how unthinkable such a thing is in our society.” He went on, and she remembered the clowning that had so charmed them all for years. “I could not live with myself were I to believe, even for an instant, that I had somehow profited from my professional situation or shown favoritism in any way to someone who is a member of my family or a friend.” He pulled out a note and placed it on the counter, then looked at her, raised his hands as if to push away the approach of the devil himself, and said, “It would shame my ancestors.”
She gave him a soft punch in the arm and said, “I’d forgotten that about you.”
“What?”
“How ridiculous you are.”
He heard the praise in her voice and laughed.
It was almost nine when Caterina got back to the apartment. After the cashews, she wasn’t very hungry, so she decided to read for a while before eating anything.
She pulled the two books out of her bag and walked to the sofa, a pale thing covered in rough, oatmeal-colored cloth that silently screamed Ikea, as did the tables, bookcases, light fixtures, curtains, and chairs. It had the single grace of being comfortable, so long as a person put herself lengthwise, propped against the equally drab cushions.
She looked at the cover of the first book for a long time, studied the portrait of Steffani in the robes of Suffragan Bishop of Münster, whatever a suffragan bishop was. Plump of face and probably of body—the robes made that hard to distinguish—Steffani had a look of almost unbearable sadness. Thick-nosed and double-chinned, this man who was no longer composing music stared directly at the viewer, his long-fingered hand suspending the bejeweled cross he wore on a thick chain. His bald pate disappeared under his cap, leaving only puffs of hair on either side. It was a badly painted thing. Were she to see it in a museum, she’d walk past it without bothering to learn the name of the subject or the painter; were she to see it in a gallery or shop, she wouldn’t give it a second glance. It was interesting only because she knew the subject and hoped to decipher something from the painting.
She opened the book and started to read. Family background nothing special, a repetition of what she’d already read about his musical beginnings in Padova and Venice. Same story about overstaying his leave in Venice, although this time she learned that he claimed the delay resulted from an invitation to sing for a very important person, perhaps in private.
Not only was Caterina considered to be the intelligent daughter, she was also deemed the hard-nosed cynic of the family, though this was not a difficult title to earn in a family of decent, optimistic people. Thus the fact that an adolescent boy had chosen to remain behind in Venice to sing at the expressed desire of an older man who might have been an aristocrat and who was, at least, “un soggetto riguardevole” opened to her a possibility that the average person perhaps might not have contemplated at the combination of a young boy and an important man. She turned back to the cover. Almost fifty years had passed between the time of Steffani’s prolonged stay in Venice and the painting of the portrait. It was hard to imagine this puffy-faced cleric ever having been a young boy with a beautiful voice.
She read on. Transferred to Munich at the invitation of the Elector of Bavaria, Ferdinand Maria, who had he
ard him sing, the young Steffani joined the court at the age of thirteen. Caterina began to nod as she read the names and titles of the people he met there, the musicians with whom he worked. Maybe it was time for dinner, for a coffee, for a glass of wine? The list of names and places continued, and then she found a passage from a letter Steffani had written late in life, describing his meeting with the Elector, who, according to Steffani, “was attracted by something he must have seen in me—to what end I do not know—and, having taken me immediately to Munich with him, placed me in the care of Count Tattenbach, his master of horse.”
“I beg your pardon,” Caterina heard herself say aloud in English, repeating the language of the book. She went back and read the passage again. “. . . was attracted to something he must have seen in me—to what end I do not know.”
She set the book down and got to her feet, went into the small kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She pulled out a bottle of white wine and poured herself a glass. She raised it in a toast, either to the air or to Steffani, or perhaps to her own perfervid imagination, and took a sip.
The kitchen had one small window that looked across the calle to the house on the other side, directly into the kitchen of the family that lived there. She leaned back into the living room and switched off the light, leaving herself in the darkness, glass in hand, looking out and now invisible from beyond the window.
There they were: Mama Bear and Papa Bear and the two Baby Bears, a boy about eight and a younger sister. They sat around the table, still eating; they all looked relaxed and happy. Occasionally, one of them would say something, and one or two of the others would react with a change of expression or a smile, often a gesture. The boy finished whatever it was he was eating, and the mother cut him another piece of what Caterina now saw was a cake—tall, light in color, with darker-colored chunks that, this time of year, were likely to be apples or pears, perhaps both. It looked good enough to remind her of how hungry she was. But, while they were still there and still eating, she did not want to turn on the light and become as visible to them as they were to her. The boy suddenly reached his fork across the table and speared a piece of cake from his sister’s portion. He held it up on the end of his fork and waved it in front of her, then brought it, in narrowing circles, toward his mouth.
