by Donna Leon
Steffani, she reminded herself—if simply to justify to herself continuing to read this lurid stuff, like something straight out of a scandal magazine—was involved inasmuch as the two lovers, Sophie Dorothea and Count Philip, who sent each other hundreds of love letters, many attempting to disguise their passion by quoting the lyrics from Steffani’s operas. In one letter, to show his eagerness, Königsmarck mentions the swift duet, “Volate momenti,” where the lover begs both time and the sun to quicken their pace to thus shorten the time of the lovers’ separation. If the things she had read in the Marciana were to be believed, these letters were being intercepted and read by Countess von Platen, believed to be the former lover of Königsmarck and certainly the former mistress of Ernst August, who was the father-in-law of Sophie Dorothea.
Caterina stared into space. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” she told herself aloud. “These two fools wrote love letters back and forth in opera lyrics, but a mistress Königsmarck had dumped, who just happened also to have been the mistress of the father-in-law of her ex-lover’s current mistress, was reading them, and she blew the whistle on the lovers.” She resisted the urge to go over to the mirror again and check to see if she had grown a second head.
She smelled the rice and went into the kitchen to turn off the flame. She took off the top and spooned some of it into a bowl, added more salt, and took it back into the living room with her.
Things became even more interesting. Almost immediately after Königsmarck’s disappearance, a certain Nicolò Montalbano, a Venetian who had been hanging around the court of Hanover for almost twenty years writing the occasional opera libretto, was reported to have been paid the astonishing sum of 150,000 thalers by persons unknown, whereupon he too promptly disappeared.
Poor Sophie Dorothea was divorced by her creep of a husband, Georg Ludwig, on a trumped-up charge that she had abandoned the marriage bed, and then old Georgie sent her off to rot away in a castle for thirty years and wouldn’t let her see her kids. The author quoted a lovely but unreliable legend that she delivered a deathbed curse on Georg, and sure enough, he dropped dead in less than a year. Even so, she was to have no satisfaction from her curse, for she died before Georg did and so never saw her son become King George II of England although, as Caterina remembered, he was little better than his father. Makes a person better understand the current royal family, she thought.
She sat back in her chair, then got up and went over and stretched out on the sofa, the bowl on her stomach. She stirred the rice, letting it cool. Ernst August had spent a fortune and worked diplomatic miracles to be chosen as an elector, some sort of big deal title that only a dozen or so aristocrats got to have, and they in turn elected the Holy Roman Emperor. Yes, a big deal. But he had to wait a couple of years before he could be crowned or anointed or whatever it was that happened to turn him into an elector. While he was waiting for this to happen, he’d have had to keep his nose clean, and he’d have had to see that his family didn’t disgrace him in any way and thus scotch his chance to become an elector in his full rights.
“So there you are, Monsieur Poirot,” she said out loud, waving her fork at the stout figure who did not stand by the door, “you have your first suspect.” Instantly she added, “And his son Georg Ludwig is the second.” And Steffani, she wondered, how much would he have known? He was court musician, diplomat; his libretti served as the language of love. The affair was an open secret. Surely he would have known of it.
She ate some rice, chewing each mouthful a long time. At one point, she remembered the face of the man who had followed her, and her throat closed up for a moment. Again, out loud, she said, “I will not allow this to happen to me.” She did not define what this was, and after a time she finished the rice and went to bed and slept.
Seventeen
The next day dawned cloudless and bright, and the night’s sleep had restored Caterina’s usual energy and good spirits. She didn’t think about the man who had followed her until she left the house and went into a bar for a coffee. The barman recognized her and offered her a brioche with her coffee even before she asked for it, and she recalled thinking, last night, that one possibility for safety would be to ask one of the men in this bar to walk her home. In the bright light of an April morning, the very idea seemed ludicrous.
She had slept late and had not bothered to read her emails before she left the apartment. When she got to the Foundation, she said good morning to Roseanna, who said that she hoped the sign would keep people out as long as Caterina was working on the documents.
She went upstairs and turned on the computer. When she had lived in other countries, she had read the Italian press online every morning, but she had abandoned the habit in recent years. It was all time wasted, she feared. The frequency with which certain faces appeared on the front pages changed, but none of them ever disappeared. Only death swept away the men who had devoted themselves to politics. Theft, involvement with the Mafia, payments to transsexual prostitutes, corruption, missing millions—none of this removed them. Convict them of anything, and they were still there. Turn your back and they changed political party or reinvented themselves, changed their hairline, found Jesus, or wept on television while begging their wives for forgiveness, but still they were there. Only death removed them from the scene, though sometimes not even then, for many of them came back as newly renamed streets or piazzas.
Better to read her emails. There were three, but the first one she opened was from Cristina.
“Dear Cati, Destroyer of My Work Routine, for you’ve gone and done just that, and not for the first time. There I was, happily busy with my chapter on Pope Pius XII (what the likes of you would call a Nasty Bit of Goods, I fear) (an opinion I am coming to share) (which I ought not admit) (but do) and his various evasions and prevarications, when your request, like a dog that has found a very interesting bone, drags in Clement VIII and drops him at my feet, to make no mention of the question of castrati, the title of abbé, and the various deceptions to which men in power are prone. Just as a bit of history, you might be interested to learn that Pius X banned castrati from the Sistine Chapel. In 1903. You want deception, I give you deception, my dear.
“As you can see, I’ve been busy in your interests. I’ve found—not without difficulty—a breve from Clement VIII, declaring that castration was sanctioned for singing in ‘the honor of God.’ And I ask you here, Cati—and I’m not joking—please not to comment on this or try to provoke me about it: its existence is sufficient provocation.
“There is also the dispensation, which a pope can give for pretty much anything he chooses. So, as that American songwriter told us, ‘Anything goes.’
“Yes, my tone is an indication of how tired I am of my current research; not of the research itself, which is fascinating, but of what it makes me think and feel. So I welcome the chance to jump back in time and read about these long-dead people. You’ve sent me into the archives and created a curiosity that has put me in touch with colleagues I’ve not contacted for years. To my surprise, they seem as lit up by this subject as I am and have been raining down information upon me. Or perhaps we are all tired of our own research?
“One old classmate of mine, a man who is now teaching at the University of Constance, suggested I tell you to take a closer look at the Königsmarck Affair. He says he has seen a manuscript that claims your musician was involved in it. He said he would send further information if you want, although my guess is that he’ll send it to me, anyway, even if you don’t want it, since there doesn’t exist the scholar who doesn’t love gossip, even if it’s a couple hundred years old. I know of the affair only in the most superficial manner but would love to read what he says and will do so if it’s addressed to me. If it’s to you and he asks me to forward it, then I’ll do that and stay out of it. Ah, how proud Mamma would be to learn that the taboo about privacy she put into us with her milk is alive and well in Tübinge
n. From which city I send you my love, dear Cati, as well as my offer to continue to look into all of this for you. It keeps me from my own work, and I want that. For now. Love, Tina-Lina.”
Oh my, oh my, oh my, Caterina thought, it sounds as if Tina is coming to the end of the line. It had always puzzled her that it was Cristina who had been bitten by the Religion Bug, not Cinzia or Clara or Claudia, who had never studied anything and were not given to asking questions about the world they found themselves in. But all of them were lukewarm where religion was concerned. Cinzia and Clara had their kids baptized and confirmed, even went to church once in a while, and told the kids that God loved them and it was wrong to lie or hurt people. Cristina excepted, her sisters had little respect for priests, hated the Vatican as only Italians could hate it, and thought the Church should not be allowed to comment on politics.
“Stop it,” she told herself out loud and read the other emails. One was from a classmate from Liceo, saying he’d just learned she was back in town and would she like to go to dinner? “Not unless you bring your wife and kids, Renato,” she said and erased the mail.
The last was from Dottor Moretti, informing her that he had received phone calls from both cousins the day before, asking why she had not informed them of the progress of her researches. Nothing more.
She wrote back to him immediately, saying she was still reading through the documents in the first trunk and had not yet found anything worth reporting about the testamentary dispositions of Abbé Steffani. She thus found it necessary to expand the focus of her research—if he could be formal in his mail, then she could be, and would be, too—and would be obliged to consult other sources. She would, therefore, be absent from the office of the Foundation for the rest of the day while she pursued these researches.
“Take that, Dottor Moretti,” she said, as she punched at the “send” key, and off it went. Mention of the aria she had found could wait.
She flipped open her phone and saw that there was one message. She recognized the Romanian’s voice instantly, the easy Italian, the occasionally fumbled word. She saw that it had come in at three-thirty in the morning, making her grateful that she had turned it off before she’d gone to bed.
The Romanian, she was surprised—and then not, when she thought about what a brilliant teacher and researcher he was—had been offered the chairmanship of a department of musicology—he did not bother to say where—and was considering the offer, both depressed and inspired by her having had the courage to leave Manchester and abandon him to the “misery of boredom.” His voice trailed off and ended in the middle of a sentence. She closed the phone and placed it on the desk.
Caterina was suddenly overcome by an attack of conscience. The cousins were paying her to find something in these papers, and the least she could do was have a look through them to see if anything referred to this Königsmarck thing. She opened the storeroom and removed the thick packet she had been reading the day before. Back at the table, she untied the string, again pausing to marvel at its survival all these centuries, and started to read the top sheet. Realizing it was a letter she had read, she chastised herself for not having followed her usual scholarly routine by placing the already-read documents facedown on top of the pile before tying it closed.
Or had she? She tried to remember, but the events of the previous evening had wiped out any memory she had of her routine actions before leaving the office. Caterina was unsettled by this lapse of memory. She paged down until she found a document she had not read and started there. She speeded the process of reading by limiting herself to date, salutation, first two paragraphs, and signature. This way, she moved quickly through the remaining documents, finding nothing that appeared to be related to Steffani’s family, his feelings for them, or his possessions and will.
She closed the packet and took it back to the storeroom, set it upside down on the top of the taller trunk, and pulled out another packet, almost as thick as the other. Underneath there was nothing except the wooden bottom of the trunk.
She opened the next packet and left the strings on the table beside it. As quickly as she could, she went through the papers, touching them with the care that comes to anyone who has spent time reading documents that are hundreds of years old. She always held them at the center of the page on both sides and lifted them gently from the page below. At the first sign of resistance, she moved the sheet lightly on its axis. So far every page had quickly come free.
She looked through the first ten sheets before she accepted the fact that she was wasting time. The only way to guarantee that she understood everything was to read each document carefully from beginning to end.
That decided, she put the papers back in order, closed the packet, and took it back to the storeroom. The pile would have been too high had she put it on top of the others, so she slipped them all back inside the trunk, then closed and locked the metal doors.
She connected to the Internet, then put in Cristina’s address and wrote: “Dear Tina-Lina. Of course, it’s all right for you to read whatever goes between me and this man in Constance, and of course I’m curious about anything he has to tell me about Steffani. I’ve read a bit about it myself, and it seems that they—the two lovers—used lines from his operas in their letters. You believe in the Holy Ghost, so you should have no trouble in adding that to the list of things to believe. At any rate, dear one, I have so far seen no other mention that Abbé Steffani was involved in the matter in any other way, and it’s already risking exaggeration to consider this ‘involvement.’
“Listen to me, Tina-Lina. We all love you and respect you and will love you and respect you whatever you do or whomever you do it with. I’m back to doing research, so I’m reading between the lines of texts, and that includes yours. Stay well, know that you are loved, eat your spinach and say your prayers. Love, Cati.”
She clicked “send.”
She left the room, locked the door and pulled twice on the handle to be sure it was closed, did the same thing with the door at the bottom of the steps, then went down to Roseanna’s office, hoping that she would have heard all the noise of her industry and caution. But she had left.
She stopped in a bar for a macchiatone, ate a tuna tramezzino, and had a glass of water. Her reader’s card got her into the Marciana without trouble and with no search, and she found her way—telling herself she must be using the same system that passenger pigeons used, feeling the electromagnetic waves from the various places she passed near—to the second-floor reading room with its view to the Palazzo Ducale. She set her bag down and took her notebook over to the card catalogue. Before pulling open the drawer marked “K,” she patted the cabinet on the top, quite as though it were the dog or cat of an old friend. Not only did the catalogue have eleven books, in three different languages, for the Königsmarck Affair, but it contained a number of handwritten cards in a series of hands best described as “spidery” that directed her to other books and collections in which further information was contained; in two cases these were held in the manuscript collection.
She jotted down the names, authors, and call numbers of these last two and took them down to the main desk. She spoke to the librarian, who gave her the forms that would summon them from their store-cupboard. When she gave the completed forms to the librarian, the woman took them with an almost total lack of interest or enthusiasm, leaving Caterina to suspect that her grandchildren might someday see the tomes from the manuscript collection, whereupon she slipped into Veneziano and said she was a friend of Ezio’s.
“Ah,” the librarian said with a smile, “in that case I’ll go get them and bring them to you at your carrel.” She looked at the paper, studying the numbers on it. “Take about half an hour,” she said and smiled again.
Caterina thanked her and went back to her carrel, stopping to collect the books about Königsmarck. One, she was surprised to see, was a nineteenth-century French novel. She
shrugged and placed it unopened on the shelf in front of her.
A half hour later, the librarian found her hunched over her desk, notebook open at her side, pages covered in pencil-written notes. Caterina was as incapable of using a pen in a library as she was of punching a hole in a lifeboat. When the librarian set the two large manuscripts on the table, Caterina jumped, as if the woman had poked her with a stick. The librarian ignored her reaction and said that she had logged the books out to Ezio, so Caterina could keep them there as long as she needed to.
When the woman was gone, Caterina lowered her face into her hands and rubbed at it, ran her fingers through her hair to pull it back from her face. She was suddenly hungry, ravenously, desperately hungry. She opened her bag and dug to the bottom and found half of a dusty Toblerone, which she’d been eating on a train to—how long ago it seemed—Manchester. She looked around guiltily and saw the backs of two men seated at carrels at the other end of the room. She got to her feet and took two steps away from her carrel, and from the books and manuscripts. Holding the wrapper close in her hands to muffle the sound, she tore free a dusty triangle. She leaned forward and slipped it into her mouth and let it melt, then chewed at the nougat, enjoying the way it clung to her teeth to prolong the sensation of eating.
Seeing how close, still, she was to the desk and the volumes on them, she moved over to the window, where she stayed until the chocolate was gone. She folded up the wrapper, put it back in her bag, brushed at the front of her clothing, and wiped her hands on a cotton handkerchief before going back to sit at the carrel.
