by Rita Monaldi
He began once more to scrutinise me, while I, with my eyes fixed on the ground, waited for a suitable moment to take my leave and return disconsolately to work with the same doubts as when I had entered the chapel.
"Why, my son," he added unexpectedly in a murmur, suddenly laying aside his didactic manner, "if the Apostolic Chamber enriches itself with the Holy Years beyond the power of words to describe, do not imagine that there remains one single scudo for poor parish priests."
I raised my eyes and my regard, crossing that of Don Tibaldutio, asked at last what my tongue could not express in plain language: what, in the eyes of the Most High, was the value of believers' prayers raised to heaven as a result of Jubilees which had, alas, been organised for shady lucrative ends?
"Very well," he replied, satisfied with that mute request.
I understood. Hitherto, Don Tibaldutio had answered me in the same terms as my questions, that is, without the virtue of clarity. He gestured that I was to follow him into the sacristy.
"God is merciful, my son," he began, even as we were making our way there. "He is certainly not that severe and vindictive deity of whom we read in the Old Testament and with whom the Jews still remain involved. Consider this little precept: if one is not in a state of mortal but only venial sin, Confession is not even a necessary prerequisite for obtaining the Jubilee indulgence; it is enough to make an act of contrition within one's own heart — the so-called Confession in Voto which I mentioned to you a few moments ago. Not only that: even in a state of mortal sin, it suffices to accomplish the required acts in order to obtain the Jubilee indulgence, so long as the final action was accomplished in a state of grace, or after repentance and Confession. Would all that make any sense if the Lord were not infinitely merciful?"
Indeed, I thought, 'tis as in the gospel parable of the husbandmen in the vineyard: those who come last receive full wages, as though they had worked the whole day. Does that not perhaps mean that God greatly recompenses our little deeds, our nothings with wholeness?
"The actions of visiting churches are morally good: even he who does this in a state of mortal sin moves towards reconciliation with God. And that is what counts," continued the chaplain.
We had meanwhile entered the sacristy, where Don Tibaldutio offered me a seat, taking care to close the door behind us. I imagined that he was on the point of revealing to me who knows what great and secret truth.
"The God of the Christians, my son, sacrificed his only-begotten son for the redemption of our sins," he said at last, speaking plainly. "The Holy Virgin and Mother bestowed upon Saint Dominic the sacred gift of the rosary to recite for the salvation of our souls; likewise with her own hands she made the scapular of the Carmel, of which I myself am a votary, and when we wear this, we can be certain that Our Lady Queen of the World will come with her crown of stars to fetch us from purgatory on the first Saturday after our death. Do you believe that we poor mortals deserve all that? Of course not, my boy, 'tis only the infinite grace and mercy of God that so decree, and certainly not the merits we gain from reciting a few Ave Marias or wearing an extra piece of material, gestures which in themselves are quite worthless; least of all are they worthy of obtaining eternal life. The Lord knows how petty and slothful we are, and that is why He offers us paradise on a golden platter, in exchange for vile copper coin. In His infinite love for us His children, He is satisfied by our little act of faith and goodwill: we make a small, wavering step towards Him and lo, the Merciful Father runs to us and gathers us up in His arms."
I waited for Don Tibaldutio to continue his discourse and to come to the long-awaited revelations; but he had said all that he had to say. He opened the door of the sacristy and again accompanied me to the foot of the statue of Our Lady of the Carmel, where he had first spoken to me. After bestowing a silent benison on my forehead, he left me there, moving away serenely and without a word.
Only then did the full import of the chaplain's teaching become clear to me. It was for me to draw my conclusion on my own: Divine mercy granted the Jubilee indulgence even to those in a state of mortal sin; all the more so would it lend an ear to the prayers of innocent pilgrims, even if they had been drawn to the Holy City by others' lust for lucre.
The truth which Don Tibaldutio had revealed to me was indeed great, as I had expected, but not secret; and yet, so humble and plain that it might have troubled certain august ears. It was therefore wiser to deliver it in the subtlest of whispers behind well closed doors.
I left the chapel calm and reconciled. I was about to continue on my way towards the theatre when I heard an echo of hurried martial footsteps coming towards me.
"Here Maestro, please come this way."
It was Don Paschatio, all out of breath, who was showing the way to a tall, thin individual, all dressed in black, with a forelock of pepper-and-salt hair adorning his forehead rather artistically, under which darted two flashing eyes set in a grave and irascible visage. The pair was followed by a musician (whom I recognised as such because he was attired like all the other members of the orchestra) who was carrying two violin cases and, under his arm, a capacious valise which one could imagine to be full of all manner of musical scores.
I followed them for a while until we reached the theatre. Here, the musicians had already taken their places and it was then that I had a surprise: it was no orchestra, it was a veritable tide of humanity. All in all, I estimated, they must have been over a hundred strong. They were busy tuning their instruments but they fell silent when Don Paschatio and the two individuals who were unknown to me arrived at the great amphitheatre. The man dressed in black evoked around his person an impalpable sense of devout reverence, perhaps even awe. I observed with pleasure that the stage for the players and the benches for the public, of fine polished wood, had all been completed on time. There were only two carpenters hammering a loose floorboard; they vanished in response to a severe nod from Don Paschatio, as soon as the taller of the two strangers mounted the platform in the middle of the orchestra.
It was then I realised that this was the celebrated Arcangelo Corelli, composer and violinist of great renown, whose participation at the festivities I had heard bruited abroad during the preceding days. He was to conduct music which he himself had composed.
Nothing had I heard of him until the year before, isolated as I was from the world by my daily coming and going from the Villa Spada to my little field and thence to the conjugal home. It had been a cantor at the Sistine Chapel who had come to buy grapes who had first spoken to me of "the great Corelli". And now I had been told by Don Paschatio that he was not just a great musician but the Orpheus of our times, whose glory now spread over half Europe and would one day make him immortal.
Like a military formation, the orchestral players grasped their bows in the same gesture and pointed them in identical fashion, as though 'twere an image reflected by a thousand mirrors, each at the same angle, with the same inclination and pose, at the strings of their instruments: the violins all alike, thus too the viols. For a few moments absolute silence reigned.
"Not only does he want them to play as one man but to look like one; even today, when they are but rehearsing," whispered Don Paschatio, sitting down by my side.
From his voice, I detected the triple sentiment of excited curiosity about Maestro Corelli's performance, contentment at serving as his Amphitryon, and weariness at the size of his task.
"He truly has a dreadful temper," continued Don Paschatio. "He never talks, he looks straight in front of him and thinks only of music. He deals with clients through the musician whom you saw arriving with us. He is his favourite pupil and it is said that he is also his… Well, Maestro Corelli is seen only in his company and never with a woman."At that moment, the music closed our mouths. As though moved by an invisible, ethereal force, and not only Corelli's gesture setting the music in motion, the musicians attacked in perfect, divine unison a concerto composed by their maestro. To my great astonishment, I soon recognised a folia.
Once again, that simple, almost elementary motif surprised me, showing me its agile, insinuating and subtle second nature. It was like a beautiful and opulent peasant girl, ignorant of the world but well versed in the human soul, who arouses the desire of a rich gentleman far more than his consort, with all her money and her pretences. Such was the nature of the folia, at once simple and capable of anything. Eight clear, robust measures, from D to F (or so I was to learn only later) and then again back to D; a seemingly innocent little motif, yet one capable of unleashing the most unheard of and lascivious fantasies.
At the outset, each folia, being a daughter of the people, seems to be all too simple: from D to F, from F to D. Corelli's was like this too: within the brief span of that eight-beat double modulation, the melody at first took the form of simple chords. The accompanying chords then uncoupled. In the second variation, they dissolved into triads, with a French-style rhythm. In the third, they broke down into arpeggios, in the fourth, they transformed into scales, in the fifth, into tremolos, progressively complicating the game with amusing embellishments, proud staccatos, lamenting legatos, a thousand artifices of adornment which ended up by casting the listener into a state of vertigo. Every now and then, a slow variation, in which the motif was reprised languidly, indolently, at last afforded both audience and players a chance to catch their breath.
After variation upon variation, the indistinct mist of the initial theme had by now dispersed. A whole landscape, once concealed amidst the few notes of the original motif, now emerged for the listener. It was as though the sense of the theme itself had at last become clear, the very meaning of the folia, a voyage from one tonality to another, not from D to F and back but from one world to another. And what worlds were these if not the world of sanity and of folly? One must needs journey from the one to the other because both, mutually illuminating one another, were imbued with meaning. From D to F from F to D: no melody could so conquer the heart and the mind without that perennial fluctuation from one tonality to the other. And for no one can there ever be wisdom, or so that music seemed to suggest, without that sacred pilgrimage towards folly.
Maestro Corelli played the part of first violin; to guide the whole symphonic ensemble he needed only sharp and brief movements of the head, as an experienced horseman needs only a tap of the heels or ankles to steer his well-beloved mount. It was as though he were saying: "Now, stop and listen, you'll not leave empty-handed, for I know what you're looking for."
Shining through that music, almost as if the notes wanted to comment on my thoughts (while in nature, 'tis the contrary that's common) I sensed all the bittersweet flavour of times past, of things that had happened and things yearned for, yet which had never come to pass, of the seventeen years which had separated me from Atto, of the lessons on diplomacy and government which I had received from him; teachings which, like the work of that magician of a painter whom he had invoked for me on our visit to the Vessel to immortalise the features of the Connestabilessa when young had been imprinted in me forever…
Perhaps himself enraptured by the power of his creation, Corelli had ceased to conduct. He was playing almost in meditation upon his violin, with the bow caressing the third string, then the first with a suaveness that seemed almost careless, playing for his own ears only. But this was no self-love. The orchestra was following him with eyes closed, casting sudden oblique glances at its conductor, minuscule pulls on the oars keeping the barque of the folia in exquisite and perfect balance in its passage from a calm episode to a somewhat more lively intermezzo, then once again to another slow movement. The musicians really were playing as one man, I thought. They and Corelli formed one thing, and that thing was Corelli.
And then I remembered: the first adventure I had lived through with Atto, his lessons of (theoretical) morality, the great but forgotten music of Seigneur Luigi Rossi, which he had shown me…
While the notes to which I was listening spread over my head and shoulders the warm blanket of memories, while the silvery shadows of the past rained down on me, it seemed that from Euterpe's merciful hands there slipped into my lap the ultimate and true sense of my being in that place at that hour, my face barely touched by the perfume of the nasturtiums in a nearby flower bed, and I glimpsed the end to which that sublime caravel of sound was tending: after seventeen years, a man and no longer a boy, fate was calling me to Atto's side in a new test of courage, a renewed merging of heart and intellect, a most bitter and most sweet voyage at the end of which virtue and knowledge once again awaited me. This was something which only later was I to recognise to be at once true and false, because induced by that philosophy without words and without ideas which speaks through the mouths of flutes and cymbals, mocking us all.
The notes were dying out in the sweet embrace of the final chord when a voice swept away the delusive voices to which I had been giving a home in my heart.
"For heaven's sake, where you been?"
My Cloridia had found me. She read on my face the signs of the adventurous night and questioned me with a silent, worried look.
I gestured to her that we should move away from the amphitheatre and drew her towards the cane-brake which delimited the green part of the garden to the north, just before the boundary wall. This was a useful stratagem, as by now the whole of the Villa Spada was more than ever gripped by extreme agitation, and not even our beech tree would be safe from inquisitive ears. I told her briefly all that had happened between nightfall and dawn.
"You are all insane: you, Sfasciamonti and Melani," said she in a voice halfway between tears, reproof and relief at having found me safe and sound.
She embraced me and we remained for a few minutes holding each other tight. I smelled the perfume of her skin mixing with the wild odours of the cane-brake and hoped with all my heart that I no longer smelled of manure.
"I have little time. The Princess of Forano wants me constantly by her side. She keeps on swooning, feeling unwell, being overcome by little bouts of fever. In other words, she's afraid of giving birth, despite the fact that this is the fourth child she's producing."
"But how come the husband allowed her to accompany him to the Villa Spada, knowing that she's so close to her confinement?"
"In fact, he does not know that, he thinks she's only in her sixth month…" Cloridia winked, with a vague, sly expression on her face that spoke volumes. "She, however, absolutely insists on being present at the wedding: the bride is a good friend of hers. I've been quite unable to convince her to return home. Let's stay here and listen to me carefully, I must be quick."
As promised, Cloridia had succeeded in obtaining some interesting information. A few weeks earlier she had assisted at the difficult confinement of a chambermaid at the Spanish Embassy. The young woman was very grateful to her for, thanks to her assistance, the little one, a fine little girl called Natalia who had tried to leave her mother's womb feet first, had been most skilfully extracted by Cloridia: slipping her fine fingers into the birth canal, she had succeeded in performing Siegemundin's celebrated "double-hold" at which she was so adept, and turning the baby in her mother's womb, whereupon she had pulled her out by the head without the slightest danger. The young mother who had previously twice miscarried had, out of gratitude, become Cloridia's friend.
"I mentioned to her what had befallen Abbot Melani and the bookbinder. In order to convince her to speak, I told her that this was perhaps of importance to the Spaniards and she should therefore tell me every curious thing that she had seen or heard. She said to me: "Jesu, Mother Cloridia, you must pray fervently for your husband and for your master, Cardinal Spada."
"And why is that?"
Cloridia had needed only gentle insistence to extract a confession from the young woman. Overhearing partly by accident (but also on purpose) the conversations of the Ambassador, the Duke of Uzeda, the little chambermaid had learned that political manoeuvres were taking place in Rome which would be decisive for the future of Spain and the world.
"You did well to spy out those letters. I am proud of you. In any case, Abbot Melani deserves no better. After all, he steals letters, that's how he gets by; even if they end up by costing him plenty," laughed Cloridia, alluding to the memoirs which Melani had arranged to be stolen from me and which he had then proceeded to buy at a high price.
Cloridia never spoke fondly of Atto. She did not trust him (and how could she be blamed for that?); indeed, of him she could hardly have thought worse. The Abbot, while perfectly aware that she was within calling distance of him, had never once thought to ask after her or to involve her in our business, were it only for the sake of appearances or to request a smattering of information; nor could Cloridia abide the idea that anyone could dare ignore her precious admonitions without running to certain doom.
Since his return she had never so much as been to present her respects or to offer her services and I was sure that if she had merely glimpsed Atto's silhouette in the park of Villa Spada, she would have changed direction so as not to meet him. The same was true of him, of that I was certain. In other words, the twain, my wife and Abbot Melani, repaid one another in the same coin.
"What else did you learn?" I continued.
"My little chambermaid mentioned to me, too, in truth very briefly, that the Catholic King is very ill and might soon die, but he has no heirs and it was said that the Pope had therefore been asked to help. Everyone at the Embassy at that time was terrified of being suspected of espionage. She, however, told me that she had heard this rumour which was current among the Spaniards in Rome from her other compatriots."
