The Jewels of Paradise Read online

  Dottor Moretti’s explanation contained elements of myth, family saga, soap opera, and farce, though it contained no names. The deceased cleric, he told her, was a Baroque composer who easily would be within her competence; he had died almost three centuries before, leaving no will. His possessions had been disbursed. Two chests believed to contain ­papers and, perhaps, valuables had been found and brought to Venice. One undisputed element in all of this was the claimants’ descent from the relatives of the childless musician: both had produced copies of baptismal and marriage certificates going back more than two hundred years.

  Here Caterina had interrupted to ask the name of the musician, a question that obviously surprised Dottor Moretti in its rash impropriety. That would be revealed only to a successful candidate, and she was not yet to be considered that, was she? It was a small snap of the whip, but it was nevertheless a snap.

  Would the candidate, she asked, be told the name of the musician before beginning to examine whatever papers might be found?

  That, Dottor Moretti had explained, would depend upon the nature of what was found in the trunks. Another snap. The two heirs, he surprised her by saying, would interview all likely candidates. Separately. No longer able to contain herself, Caterina had interrupted again to ask Dottor Moretti if he were making this up. With a look as sober as his tie, the arbitrator had assured her that he was not.

  Her task, he had gone on to explain, would be to read through the documents that were believed to be in the trunks and that were likely to be in Italian, German, and Latin, though others might well be in French and Dutch, perhaps even English. Any passages referring to the deceased musician’s testamentary wishes or to his affection for or involvement with various members of his family were to be translated in full: those papers relating to music or other areas of his life did not have to be translated. The cousins would expect frequent reports on her progress. It seemed that Dottor Moretti experienced a certain embarrassment in having to say this. “If you send these reports to me, I will forward them.”

  When Caterina expressed a certain difficulty in understanding why no one knew the contents of these trunks, Dottor Moretti told her that the seals appeared to be intact. Assuming this to be true, then the chests had not been opened for centuries.

  Caterina had the good sense to say that all of this sounded interesting, adding that, to a researcher, it sounded fascinating. As she spoke, she ran through the names of composers in search of whom it might be, but since she didn’t know either his nationality or where he had died—or lived, for that matter—there was little chance of identifying him.

  She must have impressed Moretti, for he told her he would like her to speak that afternoon to two men he suggested she treat as gentlemen. He asked only one thing of her, he added: once she learned their family names, she could easily trace them back to the composer. He trusted she would not do so until the decision about the position had been made, then explained, before she could ask, that this was a request from the two presumptive heirs, “men with a certain fondness for secrecy.”

  Caterina said she would begin research only if granted the job and would not pursue it in any way were she not chosen.

  That same afternoon, she had met the contesting heirs, introduced to them, separately, by name. They met in the “library,” which turned out to be a room holding photocopies of the libretti and the scores of the operas and orchestral works of the dozen or so composers who had most delighted Signor Dardago. The library had a large table and bookshelves on which the photocopies no longer made the attempt to stand upright. There were just three or four books on the shelves, lying flat as though placed there in haste. She looked more closely and saw that one of them was a historical novel about a castrato.

  Nothing either of the two men said or did suggested that they were anything but gentlemen. The evidence that such an attribution was mistaken had come that evening from her parents, with whom she was staying, and who, in the best Venetian way, told her what was common knowledge about each of them.

  Franco Scapinelli was the owner of four shops selling glass in the area around San Marco. He was also—though nothing that happened during the interview would have suggested this—a convicted usurer who was forbidden from owning any business in the city. But who to forbid a man from giving his sons a hand in their shops? What sort of law would that be?

  The other contender, Umberto Stievani, owned water taxis, seven of them, and declared, according to a friend of Caterina’s father—a friend who happened to work in the Guardia di ­Finanza—a yearly income of just over eleven thousand euros. The combined income of his two sons who worked for him as pilots did not reach that of their father.

  During the interviews, both men claimed great interest in the manuscripts and documents and whatever else might be contained in the chests, but as Caterina listened to each of them, she realized their interest was not in any historical or musicological importance the purported documents might have. Both had asked if any manuscripts would have value, meaning would anyone want to buy them. Stievani, no doubt because of his time spent among taxi drivers, had used the elegance of their language to ask, “Valgono schei?” Caterina wondered if money was real to him only if named in Veneziano.

  They must have approved of her, for here she was less than a month later, both her position and her apartment in Manchester abandoned, standing in an office at the Fondazione Italo-­Tedesca, eager to begin work. And she was home again, her spirit salved by the sounds and smells of the city, by the enveloping familiarity.

  She took a closer look around the room. Three small prints hung to the left of the window behind the desk. She moved across the room, not a difficult thing to do, and took a closer look at these bewigged men in their plastic Ikea frames. She recognized Apostolo Zeno by the length of his wig and the long white scarf popping out from his robes. Familiarity with prints of the bewigged Handel made it easy to recognize him. And farthest to the left was Porpora, looking as though he’d stolen his wig from Bach and his jacket from a naval commander. Poor old Porpora, to have been such a high flier and then to have died in penury.

  Caterina examined the window behind her. About the size of one of the prints, 15 × 20 centimeters, it had to be the smallest window she had ever seen. It might even be the smallest window in the city.

  She put her face close to the glass and saw the shutters of the apartment on the other side of the calle: green, weather-stained, shut, as if the inhabitants were still asleep. It was ten in the morning, surely time that respectable people—hearing herself think it, gente per bene, she felt as though she were channeling her grandmother’s voice—would be up and about, off to the office, off to school, busy, doing, working.

  Caterina, a victim of the work ethic, had always thought she must be a throwback to some northern European invader, a blond-haired Goth whose genetically fueled lust for industry had lain dormant for generations, centuries, only to burst into bloom with the birth of the last child of Marco Pellegrini and Margherita Rossi. How else explain the atavistic desire for serious work that had driven her even when she was a child? How else explain her response when once offered a job as a city counselor for music education by the mayor, an old friend of her father? She saw no sense in diverting money from one school to another, nor in overseeing music instruction in schools that had no books, no musical instruments, and teachers of music who, though unable to read musical notation, found perfectly legible the intentions of the politicians who offered them the jobs. She had refused.

  Thus her flight to Vienna and years of study, more digging through the archives in Saint Petersburg, and then her galley years in Matera after the desire to return to Italy had become too strong to resist. Then the renewed flight to Manchester and now this, whatever this was.

  A light knock at the door pulled her from these reflections. “Avanti,” she called. Thinking it would be a friendly gesture to be seen app
roaching whoever was there, Caterina started toward the door just as it opened and a woman the age of her mother entered the room. Like her mother, this woman was short and tended to roundness, as did her soft-skinned face, above which rose a structure of intertwined braids and tresses that sent Caterina’s memory to a production of Cherubini’s Medea she had seen many years ago at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, in which the costume designer had clearly confused Medea with Medusa and had topped the head of the soprano with a loose-fitting helmet of snakes, whose twining and twisting had done a great deal to aid her performance by distracting the attention of the audience from her singing. Unlike those of the singer, this woman’s serpents were motionless.

  “Dottoressa Pellegrini?” the woman asked, and Caterina wondered if she had perhaps expected to find someone else in the room. The woman gave a very small smile and extended her hand. “I’m Roseanna Salvi, acting director of the foundation.” Caterina had been told that Dottor Asnaldi, the former director, had left a year before, and his assistant was now in charge until a permanent replacement could be found.

  “How very kind of you to come and find me, Dottoressa Salvi,” Caterina said, taking her hand. She addressed her both with her title and in the formal lei.

  The contact was fleeting, quite as if Dottoressa Salvi were fearful to entrust her right hand to this other woman for more than a second. She whipped her hand behind her back, embracing it safely with the other.

  “Would you care to take a seat?” Caterina asked, deciding to act as though this had always been her own office. She waved toward her desk and only then realized that there was just the one chair in the room.

  Caterina smiled at the situation, hoping for a mirror smile on the other woman’s face. Nothing, only attentive politeness. “Dottoressa,” she said, “perhaps you could take the chair.”

  Her hands still hidden, the other woman said, “I’m afraid I have to correct you, Dottoressa.”

  Here it came, Caterina thought. Territoriality, competition, beat down the newcomer, get the pecking order established. So much for female solidarity. Saying nothing, she smiled.

  “There’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not a doctor. Not of anything.” As she spoke, Not-Dottoressa Salvi’s face relaxed, and her hands came out from behind her back.

  “Ah,” Caterina said, impulsively placing a hand on the other woman’s arm, as if to provide comfort. “No one told me. In fact, no one’s told me anything, really.” Then, because they were women and because the situation needed to be eased, Caterina said, “Call me Caterina, please. And no dottoressa.”

  Signora Salvi smiled, and the snakes surrounding her head turned into mere curls. “And I’m Roseanna,” she said, avoiding the informal tu, no doubt leaving it to the dottoressa, however much younger she might be.

  “Can we call each other tu?” Caterina asked. “Since we’re working together.” Caterina didn’t know if that was precisely true, but at least they did work in the same place and that was close enough for collegiality.

  As usually happens when one person suggests grammatical informality, the mood of the conversation eased with the establishment of equality. Signora Salvi turned away toward the door and said, “Let’s go to my office.” Then, with a smile, she added, “At least it has two chairs.”

  When she followed Signora Salvi into her office, two doors away from her own, Caterina noticed that the second chair was almost the only difference, that and a larger window looking out to the courtyard behind the building. There was a table just as small as Caterina’s. There was no telephone here either, but on the table stood something Caterina had not seen for more than a decade: a typewriter. Electric, assuredly, but still a typewriter. Caterina would have been no more astonished had she seen a woman on the street in a crinoline and bloomers. She drew closer and looked at the keyboard. Yes, the letters were all there.

  Signora Salvi saw where her attention rested and said, her shoulders raised in a shrug of resignation or apology, “We don’t have a computer anymore, so I’ve been using that.” Then, remembering her role as hostess, she smiled and pulled the chair away from the desk and offered it to Caterina. She pulled her own to the side of her desk, so that the typewriter was not between them, and sat down.

  Neither spoke for some time, each waiting for the other to break the silence and set the mood. Finally Caterina gave in to her simple curiosity—elementary school children did their homework on computers, people used them on trains. “How is it that an institution like this doesn’t have a computer?”

  Signora Salvi looked at the typewriter and, when that seemed not to supply the answer, at Caterina. “It was stolen.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone broke in one night—it was about three months ago—and took the computer and the printer and some money that was in the drawer,” she said, pointing toward the back of the desk.

  “How did they get in?” Caterina asked, thinking of her own tiny window.

  “Through there,” Signora Salvi said, pointing to the considerably larger window at the back. “It must have been easy. All they had to do was get into the courtyard and pry open the shutter and break the glass. They didn’t take anything else, so far as I could tell. But that’s because they couldn’t get into the other offices. All of the doors were locked.”

  “Were the police here?” Caterina asked.

  “Of course. I called them as soon as I saw what had happened.”

  “And?”

  “Oh, the usual,” Signora Salvi said, as if dealing with the police were part of an annoying daily routine. “First they acted as though they thought I’d done it, and then they said it was kids stealing things to pay for drugs.”

  “Is that all?”

  “They told me to get the window fixed,” Signora Salvi said with some evidence of disgust. “They didn’t bother to ask what kind of computer it was or to take fingerprints. Or to ask anything at all, for that matter.” Then, sounding even more disgruntled, she added, “And they didn’t talk to anyone else in the building or to the others that share the courtyard.” She shrugged to dismiss the police, then smiled again.

  “How do you get on without it?” Caterina asked, nodding toward the typewriter, as if it were a votive statue of the missing computer.

  In a confessional tone, Roseanna said, “There was really very little in it. I keep the records of any new documents that are added to the collection and answer the letters that we receive.” She gave Caterina a very small smile and added, “The Foundation doesn’t really do very much, you know. And I’m here only three hours a day. I have to be here in case anyone comes to ask for information.” Her next smile showed signs of embarrassment as she said, “But no one ever does. Well, once in a while, but not to ask questions, just to use the library.” She gave Caterina, who was busy trying to think of how anyone could possibly use such a library, a long, appraising look and then added in a softer voice, “They’re very peculiar.”

  “In what way?”

  Signora Salvi shifted around in her seat, and Caterina wondered if she had been made nervous by her own impulsive confidence or perhaps she didn’t want to speak badly of the people who, in a sense, helped keep the Foundation running. Caterina smiled and nodded to encourage her.

  “They look like the people who go and sit in the Marciana all day. I think some of them come here only to keep warm. In the winter, that is, because we’re closer to wherever they live than the Marciana is.”

  “Do they ask about the music?”

  “Almost never. Most of them don’t know what the Foundation’s for. I don’t know how they hear about it, or what they hear. I suppose they tell one another that it’s warm and no one will bother them for three hours. But they come and they sit there. Sometimes they bring a newspaper or they find one that’s been left. Or they sleep.” She gave Caterina a long look, as if assessing her
trustworthiness, and then she said, “Sometimes, when it’s very cold, I keep it open longer.”

  “What are you supposed to be doing?” Caterina asked, curious to learn anything about this place where she was to be doing her research.

  “I think, at the beginning—I’ve worked here only three years—the Fondazione really did what Dottor Dardago wanted and made contributions to support performances of operas, and it gave money to people who worked on scores and research.” Here she gave a smile Caterina found quite engaging. “It’s all in the files: how much they gave and who they gave it to.” She stopped. “Then things changed.”

  “What happened?”

  “The first director made some bad investments, and the endowment shrank. So the people who are interested in grants stopped asking us for help because we had none to give. Dottor Asnaldi came twelve years ago, and things just kept getting worse. Then, two years ago, they had another big loss and Dottor Asnaldi left.”

  “Leaving what behind?” Caterina asked, though she had no right to do so. Roseanna raised a hand and scratched beneath one of her curls, then said, “There’s an accountant who looks at the books every six months, and he says the endowment’s almost gone. He thinks there might be enough to keep the office open for another year, at best.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we close it, I suppose,” Roseanna said and gave a small, disappointed shrug. “If there’s no more money . . .” she began, but she did not finish the sentence.

  “Who decided this? Dottor Moretti?”

  “Oh, no. Another lawyer, Fanno, the one who’s in charge of the endowment.” Caterina did not recognize the name and did not think it important enough to ask who he was. From the little she had learned and seen, it was evident that the Foundation was not long for this world, not with no computer and no telephone and with that castrato novel on the shelf. Though she didn’t work for the Foundation, curiosity urged her to ask, “Are there records of the correspondence going back to the beginning?”