by Laura Lebow
I lowered my voice. “You can trust me, my friend.”
“Well—a few days ago, I was about to go into the library when I overheard voices,” he said.
I nodded encouragingly.
“It was Bohm and Florian. They were arguing. I don’t know what about exactly. But I think I heard—mind you, I wasn’t eavesdropping; they were yelling at one another; I couldn’t help but hear—”
I sighed inwardly and nodded again.
“I heard Bohm tell Florian that if he didn’t stop, he, Bohm, would kill him.”
“Stop what?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear that part, just the end. I heard Bohm’s footsteps near the door, so I turned and hurried down the hall. I didn’t hear anything else.”
“Did you tell the police?” I asked.
He shook his head vehemently. “No, no, I don’t want to become involved. I’m not a citizen here. Besides, I may have just imagined that they were arguing. I only heard that small part.” He looked at me. “Please, Lorenzo, don’t tell anyone.”
“All right,” I said.
Piatti signaled to the waiter for the check. “But enough of all these people,” he said. “I invited you to dinner because I wanted to hear about your opera. What are you writing now?”
“I’m finishing the finale—the long ensemble piece—for the second act,” I said.
“That must be difficult to write, no? Finales are so long, and so important to an opera.”
“Yes, it is a challenge,” I said. “You know, my words have to show off Mozart’s genius, and that of each singer. I must use every speed of singing: slow, moderate, fast, superfast, extra superfast.”
He laughed.
“Every singer must be included. Solos, duets, trios, quartets, quintets. If there are a hundred singers, I am required to have them all sing together at some point. And my carefully crafted plot is thrown to the wind while all this virtuosity is on display!”
The waiter brought the check.
“Of course, if the finale turns out to be a muddle, if the soprano’s voice cracks, if the tenor cannot reach his note, it will all be my fault!” I winked at him.
“I’m sure it will be brilliant,” Piatti said. “No, no, this is my treat.” He threw some coins on the table. “I’d love to look at your writing sometime, if you wouldn’t mind. I enjoyed your last opera immensely. I’d like to see how you put things together.”
“Of course. Come by my room and I’ll give you something.”
We gathered our belongings and went out into the Am Hof. A trapezoidal area that had been the jousting grounds of the Dukes of Austria in the thirteenth century, the plaza was not a fashionable gathering place like the Graben or the Michaelerplatz. It was used for more-practical pursuits. Market stalls dotted its expanse. Its east side was dominated by the snowy white façade of the baroque Carmelite church, while the west side contained a series of buildings that had at one time housed the city’s arsenal but now stored equipment for fighting fires. At the center of the plaza stood a tall monument dedicated to the Virgin Mary, who, legend has it, helped the Viennese repel the Swedes during the wars of the last century. The good lady stood on top of a column of black marble, its plinth defended by cherubs clad in battle armor.
“Which way are you headed?” Piatti asked.
“To the Stephansdom,” I said. Ahead of us, a motley group of about twenty men and women, all dressed in coarse jackets and wearing paper dunce caps on their heads, were sweeping the stones. These were the city’s felons, chained together and forced to suffer public humiliation.
Piatti elbowed me in the side. “Look, there’s that ass Count Harzy.” He laughed, pointing at a tall, elderly man in the middle of the chain. “He’s come down in the world, eh? No fancy palace for him anymore!” As part of his criminal law reforms, the emperor had insisted that all criminals serve on the chain gang, no matter into which class of society they had been born. I felt a twinge of sympathy for the count, who stumbled as he tried to keep pace with the chain as it moved along the periphery of the plaza. I wondered what crime he had committed.
Piatti had stopped laughing. “Do you know the musician Klein?” he asked quietly.
I nodded. Klein was a violinist in the court orchestra.
“There he is.”
I looked at the man who brought up the rear of the chain. It was indeed Klein. I had heard that he had been arrested for forging a bill of sale for several valuable musical instruments. As I stared at him, his eyes lifted from the ground and met mine. I gave him a small, encouraging smile, but he quickly looked away, his face full of shame.
“Well, my friend, I go this way,” Piatti said as we reached the Bognergasse. I shook his hand, thanked him for the dinner, and promised to come to his room for a glass of wine one evening. He headed in the direction of the Palais Gabler, and I turned the opposite way. I quickly looked back over my shoulder. The chain gang had begun another miserable peregrination around the plaza.
I shivered as I watched Klein shuffling along. If I could not solve Florian Auerstein’s murder, my fate would be much worse than Klein’s. Despite the emperor’s liberal philosophies and love of reform, the punishment for murder was still death.
Ten
I turned left onto the Tuchlauben and cut across to the Stephansplatz. The great church loomed above the plaza. I tucked my head into my chest and hurried into a building across from the north tower. I trudged up four flights of stairs, turned down a small corridor, and knocked on the door at its end.
“Come,” a voice called.
I pushed open the door. “Alois?”
“Lorenzo!” A gray-haired priest stood and slowly came from behind a large desk to greet me. He felt insubstantial in my embrace, as if age were reducing him to mere bones; his skin felt like parchment, easily torn.
“How good to see you. To what do I owe the pleasure? Do you have a new book for me?”
“No, not today, my friend,” I said. “I need a favor, something with which I think only you can help me.” I pulled the medallion out of my cloak pocket and handed it to him. “Could you possibly identify this for me?”
“Let me see, let me see,” he said, waving me to a seat near the desk. He returned to his chair and pushed aside the large volume he had been reading. His hands trembled slightly as he put on a pair of spectacles. As he examined the medallion, I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of the place—the must of the hundreds of old books piled everywhere in the small room accented with the sharp scent of the peppermint drops Alois loved.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
I told him about Vogel and the box, how I had just about given up tracing Vogel’s birth mother when I had found the medallion hidden in the lining of the muff.
“Well, I don’t think this will lead you to his mother,” Alois said, his lined face crinkling into a smile.
“What do you mean? Do you recognize it?”
“Yes, it’s the medal that was given to the nuns at the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin convent.”
“It belonged to a nun?”
“Yes, it was their custom to give each novice one when she began her residency at the convent. These initials on the back, they are probably those of one of the nuns.”
“Is the convent here? In Vienna?” I asked, scratching my cheek.
“It was, but no longer.” Alois turned the medallion in his hand and sighed. “It was just a few blocks from here, over near the Jesuit church and the university. It was closed a few years ago, under the emperor’s reforms, when he cut the number of religious by two-thirds. I believe the building is apartments now. I’m sorry, Lorenzo, that doesn’t really help you, does it?” he asked, leaning over the desk to pat my hand.
“I was hoping that the medallion belonged to Vogel’s mother, that we would be able to trace her somehow. But now I don’t see how that is possible.”
“Well, the sisters did take in unwed pregnant girls, I believe,” Alois said. “T
hey ran a small hospital. Perhaps one of the nuns gave it to your friend’s mother. Although I think that highly unlikely. A sister would have treasured it, kept it near her heart all the time.”
I sat for a moment, my head in a muddle. The medallion had belonged to a nun? How did it get into Vogel’s birth mother’s muff? Alois had grown quiet. I looked over at him. His eyes were closed, his breathing steady.
“So many sisters and brothers cast out,” he murmured.
I gave a small cough.
He opened his eyes. “Forgive me, Lorenzo, an old man’s mind starts to wander.” He handed the medallion back to me. “You may want to talk to Rupert Maulbertsch. He’s in the Treasury Ministry now, but he was involved in the dissolution of the religious houses. He might still have information about what happened to the nuns from the convent.” He leaned back in his chair. “Now tell me, how are you?” he asked. “Are you teaching?”
I shook my head. “No, I am writing another libretto.”
“I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you. There’s an opening for a priest out in Gumpendorf. The church is small, but the salary is decent. We need modern thinkers like you in these churches.”
I shook my head. “You know I no longer practice as a priest,” I said.
“I know, but I have to keep trying. The archbishop is opposed to reform from within the church. Our only hope is to place young priests such as yourself in the smaller churches, to educate the people, to get them used to liberal ideas.”
I remembered Rosa Hahn’s complaint that the emperor had banned bell-ringing as a precaution against lightning strikes. “I am not suited for the priesthood,” I said gently. “I only took orders to be able to get an education, to study poetry.” When I was fifteen, my father had remarried, and our family had come under the protection of the local monsignor. He enrolled me in the local seminary, where I found a young teacher who showed me the beauty of Italian poetry. I had spent many happy hours studying the words of Dante, Ariosto, and Tasso, copying their verses, memorizing their stanzas, dissecting their most graceful phrases in order to comprehend the genius behind them. I had even been inspired to write poetry myself, at first haltingly, worrying over each word, then later with more confidence.
All that changed a year later, however, when our patron died suddenly. My family fell back into poverty, and the seminary informed my father that if I were to continue with my studies there, I must train for the priesthood. I was appalled. Even at such a young age as sixteen, I knew myself well enough to recognize that I was ill-suited for that profession. But by that time, my stepmother had embarked upon a lifetime of pregnancy, and I was no longer welcome in my father’s household.
“But to waste yourself on writing for the theater!” Alois said. “At least think about teaching again, at one of the seminaries here.”
I shook my head again, but said nothing. We sat quietly for a few moments.
“You know,” Alois said, “I believe the abbess of that convent is still here in the city. What was her name? Elsa—no, Elisabeth. I met her once. A lovely woman.”
“How would I find her?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I will ask around for you.” His eyes wandered to the book he had been reading when I arrived, and I sensed that he wanted to return to it. I stood to leave.
“Aha, wait, I think I remember something that could help you! There is a man, a cobbler who repairs the shoes for all of us here at the cathedral. I remember him saying a few years ago that his wife’s aunt was moving in with them, that she had been the abbess of a small convent that had been closed. She had nowhere else to go, he said. That might be the Abbess Elisabeth. You might go over there, Lorenzo, and talk to her. She is old, like me, but she might remember something. Who knows?”
“I don’t have any other leads,” I said. “Where is this cobbler’s shop?”
“On the Schultergasse, over near the Hoher Market,” Alois said. “His name is Bernhard. Gunter Bernhard, I think. I don’t know his wife’s name.”
I thanked him, and tucked the medallion back into my cloak pocket. He rose and took my hand in his. “It was good to see you, my friend. Come again soon. It’s been a while since we spent the day drinking and discussing poetry. I have a nice bottle of Tokay tucked away in my cabinet.”
A twinge of guilt played in my chest. Alois must be lonely, spending most of his time in this small room with his books, his time come and gone, while the young, ambitious priests ran the cathedral.
“I will,” I promised. “Thank you for your help, Alois.”
“I’ll save that bottle for you, Lorenzo,” he said. “Good luck with your search.”
I walked out into the corridor. As I pulled the door shut, I looked back with fondness at his gray head, already bent over his volume.
Eleven
The next morning I rose early and walked over to the theater. This was our first rehearsal with full cast and orchestra in the performance hall, and when I arrived, the singers were on the stage, standing in clumps. The two married couples, the Bussanis and the Mandinis, chatted animatedly, while the prima donna, Nancy Storace, held court at the other end of the stage, attended by the handsome young bass Benucci (whom it was rumored she had taken as her latest lover), and the pubescent soprano, Anna Gottlieb. The second soprano, Luisa Laschi, stood in the wings, nervously testing her scales. Members of the orchestra chatted as they tuned their instruments, while Thorwart, the fretful assistant theater manager, supervised the lighting of the candelabras closest to the stage.
“Ah, good, Lorenzo, you’re here,” Mozart said. “I want to start with the pantomime scene. Would you mind explaining it to the singers while I speak to the orchestra?” I pulled my copy of the libretto out of my satchel and climbed to the stage. “Everyone, gather round, please,” I shouted. “We have a new scene to rehearse.” Nancy Storace led her acolytes over to where I stood. Luisa Laschi joined us after a moment, followed by the young, wild-haired Irish tenor, Michael Kelly.
I looked over to the corner, where the two married couples still stood chatting. “Signor and Signora Bussani? Signor and Signora Mandini? Your attention, please?” Dorotea Bussani, the soprano who sang the role of the love-struck boy in the opera, glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. She said something I could not hear, and the others laughed. I strode over to them. “Ladies, gentlemen,” I said. “We are about to begin. If you please?”
Stefano and Maria Mandini walked over to the other singers, but the Bussanis lingered. I turned back to them. “Everyone is in this scene, signore and signora. Would you please join us?” Dorotea tittered and her husband gave me a dark scowl, but they finally followed me.
“We’ve changed the wedding scene,” I explained. “Instead of a brief dance followed by two arias, we’ve decided to make the entire scene a pantomime. Two peasant girls will sing a song in praise of the count; then the orchestra will play while you go through the wedding ceremony; and then you, Miss Storace, will silently hand Signor Mandini the note that invites him to a tryst in the garden later. Everyone will dance—”
“What? I do not sing? There is no aria?” Nancy Storace asked.
Stefano Mandini began to grumble. “I thought I was to have an aria here, Signor Da Ponte,” he objected. “Or at least a duet with Miss Storace.”
“You expect me to dance?” his stout wife asked. “I am not a dancer.” Luisa Laschi nodded in agreement.
“Please let me finish,” I said.
“Are you telling me that two girls from the chorus will sing in this scene and I will not?” Storace stepped toward me, her hands on her hips.
“An opera scene with no singing?” Dorotea Bussani shook her head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Her husband nodded grimly.
“The nine of us will dance around the stage?” Michael Kelly chimed in. “That will look ridiculous, Da Ponte.”
“We will get some ballet dancers to do the complicated choreography. You all just have to move around a bit. Everyone, ple
ase, please—let us just run through it, see how it comes out.” They grumbled as I arranged them on their marks. Mozart sat at the pianoforte, lifted his hand to the orchestra, and the rehearsal began.
* * *
We worked on the scene for about an hour, and when Mozart was finally satisfied with it, we took a short break. I ran down to my office to organize some work to bring back to the palais later. As I was shoving the pages into my satchel, there was a knock at the door. My eyes lit up when I saw my visitor.
“Vicente, how are you?” I asked Martín.
“Good, good,” he said. “Do you have a moment?”
“What can I do for you, my friend?” I asked, even though I already knew what he wanted.
He hesitated. “Lorenzo, I know you are still busy with Mozart,” he said. “But I am wondering—have you made any progress on A Rare Thing?” I flushed with guilt. I had promised him last week to sketch an outline, but then I had been dragged to Pergen’s office.
“I’m sorry, Vicente,” I said. “I’ve done a little bit, but I haven’t had a lot of time this week. I’ll get you the outline and the first few scenes by the end of next week, all right?” He nodded. We exchanged a few pleasantries and he left.
When I returned to the theater hall, Mozart approached. “I’m trying to get everyone together for the sextet. These singers! No one will sit still.” He sat down at the pianoforte and called to the baritone Mandini. “Signor Mandini, where has your wife gone? And where are my two Francescos? Signor Benucci, Signor Bussani? Ah, good. We are waiting for the prima donna, but where is Kelly?”
The young man appeared from behind us. “H-h-here I am, m-m-maestro,” he said. He looked over at me and winked.
“I see you are already in character, Mr. Kelly,” Mozart said. The sextet was part of a trial scene, and Kelly had the role of the judge. In his play, Beaumarchais had added a comic note by making the judge a stutterer, and I, knowing that Kelly had a gift for mimicry, had borrowed the device for my libretto.
I took a seat a few rows back in the parterre and watched as Mozart, playing the accompaniment on the pianoforte, led the six singers through the recited portion of the scene. Everyone laughed when Kelly began to stutter. Nancy Storace slipped onto the stage and stood a few feet away from the rest of the group. Mozart raised his hand and the orchestra began to play. First a verse from Maria Mandini, then one from the young bass, Francesco Benucci. The other Francesco, Bussani, followed, and then Kelly joined in, weaving his phrases with those of the baritone, Mandini.