Paganini's Ghost

by Paul Adam

  Little is known about Paganini’s activities immediately after that. The period from 1801 to 1804 is often referred to as his “missing years.” Much later, when Paganini was established as a soloist of international renown, stories circulated about what he had actually been doing during that time. One had him falling in love with a wealthy widow and retreating with her to her country estate, where he taught himself the guitar and whiled away the hours eating lotus and serenading his lady love. Another story claimed that he had been in prison for murder, having killed his mistress or—in a slightly different version—a rival for a woman’s affections. While in prison, the story went, his jailer’s daughter—that essential ingredient of all these kinds of tales—had taken pity on him and smuggled in his violin. Confined to a cell for several years—the period expanding depending on who was telling the story—Paganini had used the time to perfect his technique.

  Interestingly enough, an almost identical story once circulated about Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, the maker of Paganini’s Cannon. Guarneri was also said to have spent a few years in prison for killing a man. The obliging jailer’s daughter in that case supposedly smuggled in wood and tools, giving Guarneri the opportunity to hone his craft as a luthier. Disappointingly for lovers of romantic fiction, the Cremona annual censuses show Guarneri to have been living at home throughout the period in question.

  The rather dull, prosaic truth is that Paganini was indeed perfecting his violin technique during those missing years, but not on a country estate or in prison, but as the leader of the city orchestra in Lucca. He was still there in 1805, when Elisa Baciocchi, née Bonaparte, came into his life.

  Elisa was the eldest of Napoléon’s three sisters, and the one most like him in both appearance and temperament. She was not a beautiful woman, but she had a good figure, small feet and hands, and seductive dark eyes, which did much to compensate for her rather plain looks. She was intelligent and cultivated, with a sharp mind and strong character, which did not always endear her to those round her.

  Elisa and her brother didn’t really get on. Napoléon liked his siblings to be passive and malleable—two characteristics that were entirely alien to Elisa—and he handed out titles and kingdoms to them like birthday presents. Joseph became king of Spain, Louis was made king of Holland, Jérôme king of Westphalia, and Lucien prince of Canino. The husband of Napoléon’s youngest sister, Caroline, whose name was Joachim Murat, was given the kingdom of Naples, and Bonaparte’s other sister, Pauline, became a princess by marrying into the Borghese family, though her greatest claim to fame was posing topless for a statue by Canova.

  Elisa had long wanted a title and a principality to rule over, so to placate her, Napoléon gave her Piombino and Lucca, an insignificant little corner of Tuscany. The title wasn’t just symbolic. Elisa had a penchant for government and her effect on the sleepy province was dramatic.

  Lucca, a quiet, dreary backwater, was transformed into a brilliant capital, full of life and culture. Two theatres were opened, a casino and bathing centre were built, schools, libraries, and other educational institutions were set up, and wealthy visitors poured in from all over Italy to enjoy the diversions on offer.

  Elisa had artistic and literary pretensions, once shocking Napoléon by appearing onstage in a Voltaire play in pink silk tights, and she quickly established a salon at which writers and artists could meet and show off to one another. Music was also high on her list of interests. Her dim-witted husband, Felice, whose main role in life was to do what Elisa told him, was a keen amateur violinist, and it was not long before Elisa began to take an interest in the leader of what, by now, had become the court orchestra.

  Paganini was then twenty-three years old. Portraits of the time show him as a handsome young man with a shock of curly dark hair. His face had none of the ravaged, unhealthy look that we have come to associate with him, though the seeds of that physical deterioration had already been sown. Paganini had almost certainly contracted syphilis by this stage—but then, who hadn’t? Practically every young man of the day would have been exposed to the disease if he were sexually active. You were either chaste or you had VD. There wasn’t much in between.

  Elisa was five years older than Paganini and a woman accustomed to getting what she wanted. Within a short space of time, the two of them were lovers. Paganini was given the job of violin teacher to Felice and, because Elisa wanted him to appear at court functions in splendid uniform, the additional roles of captain of the royal gendarmerie and a member of her personal bodyguard—this last post providing a convenient cover for their assignations, which frequently took place when Felice had been sent away to do his violin practice.

  This much about Paganini and Elisa I remembered from the books and articles I’d read. I gave Guastafeste the general picture, but the details of their time together in Lucca were hazier. For those, I would need to jog my memory a little.

  Going through into my back room, I removed a biography of Paganini from one of the shelves and returned to the kitchen. Guastafeste saw the author’s name on the front of the book and gave a start of surprise.

  “Vittorio Castellani? He’s written a book?”

  “Several,” I said. “He was really quite a serious academic before he became a television poodle.”

  I looked through the index at the back of the book, then turned to the chapter dealing with Paganini’s relationship with Elisa. Guastafeste watched me scanning the pages.

  “Does it say anything about gifts Elisa made?” he said.

  “Nothing specific,” I replied. “But she was a generous woman—and she had a very powerful, wealthy brother behind her.”

  “She didn’t give Paganini a tiny violin?”

  “I can’t see any mention of it here, though that doesn’t mean she didn’t, of course. There are quite a few grey areas in Paganini’s life.”

  “ ‘Grey areas’?”

  “Well, there are the ‘missing years’ I told you about just now. Then his time in Lucca is something of a puzzle. He had just escaped from his father’s clutches and was building a reputation for himself as a soloist, so why did he go to Lucca and accept the relatively lowly post of leader of a court orchestra?”

  “Security?” Guastafeste suggested. “Maybe he was scared of going it alone.”

  “There could have been an element of that,” I said. “He wasn’t known for his lack of confidence—at least not later in his career. But maybe at the beginning he had his insecurities. Breaking with his father must have aroused mixed feelings. He was glad to get away, but it must also have been a worrying time. His father had organised his life for him, taken care of all the peripheral details. All Paganini had to do was play his violin. Establishing a career entirely on his own must have been a daunting prospect.”

  “A woman?” Guastafeste said. “The wealthy widow you mentioned. Maybe that story was true.”

  “Maybe. There’s so much nonsense surrounding Paganini that it’s hard to separate the truth from the myth.”

  “Then perhaps he fell in love with Elisa and that kept him in Lucca?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You sound doubtful. Wasn’t he in love with Elisa?”

  “Who knows,” I said. “He was certainly her lover, but that doesn’t mean he was in love with her. He was in a difficult position. Elisa was his employer—and a princess. No doubt he was flattered by her attentions, but he was hardly going to turn her down, was he? That wouldn’t have been wise.”

  “You make it sound very dispassionate. That isn’t like you, Gianni.”

  “I’m being realistic. Paganini was a womaniser. He would have had affairs with other women during that period. Elisa, too, probably had other lovers. Adultery was a pastime among the ruling classes of the day—still is today. They would no more have thought of being faithful to their spouses than they would have considered dining out at only one restaurant.”

  “That’s quite a warm letter she wrote him,” Guastafeste said. He checked the da
te on the notepaper. “September 1819. She obviously still had feelings for him, though their affair must have been long over.”

  “Yes, they were lovers for only a couple of years,” I said.

  I consulted Castellani’s biography again to check the facts. Elisa arrived in Lucca in July 1805. By early 1808, Paganini was obviously growing restless, for he asked for, and was granted, permission to go on a concert tour of northern Italy. The tour took him to Turin and the court of Elisa’s sister, Pauline Borghese, who had a fondness for jewels and rich living, famously receiving visitors in baths of milk, to which she was carried by a huge black manservant. Pauline’s husband, Prince Camillo Borghese, was an ineffectual lover with transvestite tendencies, so Pauline satisfied her considerable sexual appetite by bedding almost any man who happened her way, Paganini included. It was while he was in Turin that Paganini came down with some unspecified illness, which was misdiagnosed by an incompetent doctor. The treatment made the illness worse and Paganini’s health—always poor—became even more precarious thereafter.

  Summoned back to Lucca by Elisa, Paganini resumed his duties with the court orchestra, but relations between the two of them were clearly beginning to cool. In the spring of 1809, Elisa was made grand duchess of Tuscany by her brother and moved her court to Florence. Paganini accompanied her, but there were rumours of a rift, which finally came to a head later in the year at a court gala concert.

  Paganini conducted the concert dressed in his uniform as captain of the royal gendarmerie, when Elisa had expected him to wear plain black court dress. She sent instructions for him to change, but he ignored her, appearing at the ball that followed the concert still dressed in his captain’s uniform. Elisa again instructed him to change. Paganini refused and was dismissed on the spot. He packed his bags, ordered a coach, and was gone from the palace by dawn.

  Elisa, it seems, relented immediately and pleaded with him to stay, but Paganini was having none of it. Given his unscrupulous character, it was more than likely that he engineered this confrontation so as to ensure his dismissal. He was tired of being an orchestral player and a servant of a demanding princess. His tour the previous year had brought back his taste for the life of a wandering soloist. From then on, he was his own master, setting out on the long, arduous path that would take him to international acclaim.

  “Did he see Elisa again?” Guastafeste asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “He was evidently still in touch with her in 1819. And he dedicated the ‘Moses Fantasy’ to her. That shows he was still thinking of her. What was Elisa doing in Trieste?”

  “Very little, I should think. Napoléon had fallen from power by then, exiled to St. Helena by the British. Elisa had lost the duchy of Tuscany and her palaces and was presumably living a quiet life of provincial obscurity.”

  “And Paganini?”

  “He was maintaining his exhausting round of concerts all over Italy, always on the move, never settling anywhere. A bit like a modern-day concert soloist, in fact.”

  Guastafeste read through the letter again.

  “So Elisa sent him the gold box as a thank-you for the ‘Moses Fantasy,’ ” he said. “ ‘To go with the other gift I gave you in Lucca,’ she says. That has to be a violin. That’s what the box is made for. But what happened to it? What happened to that violin?”

  I was spared the need to answer by the sudden ring of the telephone. It was Ludmilla Ivanova again, sounding even more worried than earlier.

  “Yevgeny hasn’t come back,” she said. “I’ve waited in all evening. Something has definitely happened to him.”

  I glanced at my wristwatch.

  “It’s not even nine o’clock, signora. It isn’t late.”

  “He should be back by now. Or he should have rung me.”

  “Does he have a mobile phone?”

  “Yes. I’ve tried calling him, but all I get is his voice mail. I’m going to go to the police.”

  “Signora, perhaps you’re—”

  “No, I must go to the police. That friend of yours, Antonio, he will help me. What’s his number?”

  “He’s here with me now.”

  “Let me speak to him.”

  “One moment.”

  I put my hand over the receiver and explained the situation to Guastafeste. He pulled a face.

  “Why me? I’ve better things to do than hold Ludmilla Ivanova’s hand. Yevgeny has probably gone to some bar to get drunk. If you had a mother like her, wouldn’t you?”

  “Sssh,” I said. “She might hear you.”

  “What does she expect me to do?”

  “Reassure her. Have a word with her, Antonio. Tell her she has nothing to worry about.”

  Guastafeste sighed and held out his hand. I passed him the phone. He put it to his ear and started to say something, but Ludmilla interrupted before he’d finished his sentence. I could hear her voice gabbling faintly, but insistently, at the other end of the line. Guastafeste looked at me and rolled his eyes.

  “Yes, signora, but . . . yes . . . if you’d just . . .” he said. “Signora . . . I’m sure that . . . yes, I understand . . . but, if you’d let me . . .”

  He gave up and listened until Ludmilla had run out of steam.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Okay.”

  He hung up.

  “I said we’d go over and see her,” he said.

  “We?”

  “I need backup, Gianni. She sounds hysterical. You’re better with distraught women than I am.”

  Guastafeste picked up Elisa’s letter by the corners and put it back in the gold box. Then he returned the box to the plastic evidence bag and tucked it under his arm. We went out to his car and drove to the Hotel Emanuele.

  Ludmilla Ivanova was clearly in a state. She whipped open the door to her suite before we’d even knocked, as if she’d been listening out for our footsteps in the corridor, then launched into an incoherent tirade, pacing up and down across the sitting room. She seemed angry rather than distressed.

  “How could he do this to me? It’s not like him. It’s so selfish, so inconsiderate. You know what I think has happened? He’s kidnapped him; he’s taken him away somewhere and is brainwashing him, turning him against me. That’s what it is; it’s the only explanation.”

  “Signora—” I began.

  “No, I’m sure of it. He’s kidnapped him. That’s an offence, isn’t it? You must find him, arrest him, lock him away. Yevgeny is very weak. He will give in; I know he will.”

  “Signora . . . signora,” I said.

  Ludmilla turned and gazed at me. Her eyes were moist, her jaw trembling with emotion.

  “You’re not making sense,” I said. “Who are you talking about? Are you saying Yevgeny has been kidnapped?”

  “What else could have happened? Where is he? He’s been away for hours. He’s never gone off and left me like this before.”

  “Kidnapped by whom?” Guastafeste said.

  “By Kousnetzoff, of course. Who did you think I meant?”

  “Kousnetzoff? Who is Kousnetzoff?”

  Ludmilla didn’t reply. She had resumed her pacing, tearing at her long black hair with her fingers.

  “Signora,” I said. “Who is this Kousnetzoff?”

  She stopped walking and frowned at me.

  “What?”

  “Kousnetzoff. We don’t know who he is.”

  “Vladimir Kousnetzoff. I knew he was up to no good when I saw him in the cathedral, then caught him sneaking round the place afterwards. The man is a despicable rogue.”

  “Signora Ivanova,” Guastafeste said impatiently. “We cannot help you unless you tell us who this man is.”

  Ludmilla seemed surprised by our ignorance.

  “He is an agent,” she said. “A lying, dishonest villain, like all of them.”

  “An agent? A secret agent? A spy, you mean?” Guastafeste said.

  Ludmilla stared at him incredulously.

  “A spy? Well, yes, he is a
spy, I suppose. He’s been following us round for months, waiting for the opportunity to snatch Yevgeny away from me.”

  “I think she means a classical-music agent,” I said. “Who represents artists. That’s right, isn’t it, signora?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said.”

  “Is he a stocky man with a bald head?”

  “So you do know him. How do you know him?” Her eyes narrowed, suspicious now. “How? You have seen him? Where?”

  “At the town hall, after the reception on Saturday night,” I said. “You were talking to him outside the state room.”

  “Ah, yes, that. You see what he was up to? He had no business being there except to come between me and Yevgeny.”

  “You are accusing this man of kidnapping your son?” Guastafeste said. “Do you have any evidence to back that up?”

  “Evidence?” Ludmilla said. “Isn’t it obvious? He’s been after him for a long time. That’s what they do, these agents. They do nothing when you might need them, when you’re an unknown, struggling musician trying to get a break. But the minute you make it, they’re all round you like vultures round a carcass, all fighting to get a piece of meat. They’re parasites. They take twenty-five percent of your earnings, and for what? For nothing, that’s what. That’s why he wants Yevgeny. Yevgeny is a star. He’s going to be one of the great violinists. Kousnetzoff will lure him away; I know it. He’ll tempt him with promises of recording contracts, world tours, riches, glory, and Yevgeny will give in. He’s young, soft. Kousnetzoff will brainwash him. All these years I’ve supported Yevgeny, been there when he needed me. I have given up everything for him. I gave up my career—and I could have had a glittering career as a singer. And now he’s going to walk out on me.”

  Her face crumpled and she burst into tears. It took me unawares. She had seemed so strong. I had never imagined her breaking down like that. Guastafeste and I looked at each other. I could see the horror in his eyes. He’d been a police officer for twenty-five years, seen all manner of crimes and victims, but a woman crying could still unsettle him. I knew he was relying on me to sort this out. I was better with distraught women, he’d said. That wasn’t true. I had had no more experience of emotional breakdown than he had. But I’d been married for more than three decades, so I had more personal experience of female moods. I knew that soothing words would do nothing right now. Exasperation or irritation—the common male response that I could sense in Guastafeste’s demeanour—would be even worse. Physical contact was what Ludmilla needed. Guastafeste was too young for the task. There would have been something inappropriate about his involvement. But I am an old man, a grandfather. Ludmilla would not take offence if I comforted her. I went across and put my arms round her. I didn’t say anything. She buried her head in my shoulder and I held her until she stopped crying.