Mozart’s Blood

by Louise Marley

  An utter fool. But it was not the first time someone had miscalculated the lupo mannaro.

  The man in the front passenger seat turned sideways to look over his shoulder at Ugo. He was pitifully young, Ugo thought. His burnt-ginger hair was clipped to his scalp. He had the burly shoulders and thick neck of a bodybuilder, a type of narcissism Ugo particularly detested. There was no intelligence in his pale-lashed eyes, only that old, familiar hunger. Seeing it filled Ugo with ennui.

  He put his head back against the cracked vinyl of the seat and sighed theatrically. “Tell me, my new and unexpected friends,” he said in a silky tone. “What is it you want of me? It can’t be my little purchase there. There must be some service you think I can perform for you.”

  He rolled his head to face Domenico and let his eyelashes drop suggestively. He let his Italian accent thicken. “Perhaps you have a taste for la bestia.”

  Domenico shook his head. “I prefer not to speak Italian.”

  “Truly? And yet your name…”

  Domenico laughed, and his strong voice echoed in the cramped confines of the little car. “I’m not stupid, Ugo. My real name is a private matter.”

  Ugo chuckled. “I will not argue the question of your intelligence, signore. La bestia—the beast—I thought perhaps your appetites inclined in that direction.”

  Domenico ignored this. The driver of the Fiat was nearly as youthful as the ginger-haired man, but bald as an egg. He wore a tasteless array of earrings that made him look, Ugo thought, like an advertisement for an American cleaning product. Ugo remembered, now, where he had first seen this man, and the memory filled him with fury.

  The driver swung the little car into a shadowed entryway and braked abruptly just in time to avoid crashing into a scrolled-iron gate. Beyond the gate was a small courtyard, one of the surprising hidden spaces one found sometimes in Milan, with shrubs and a lovely old cedar growing in the center.

  Domenico glanced ahead, through the windshield, and said, “We’re here. Marks, you get out and lock the gate behind us. Benson, park over there, behind the tree.”

  “Benson,” Ugo murmured. “We’ve met before, haven’t we? New York, I believe. Battery Park, wasn’t it? How nice to see you again.”

  Benson grinned. “The pleasure’s all mine,” he said.

  “I was a little disappointed, though,” Ugo said as Domenico opened the door and waited for him to climb out. “Your product turned out to be inferior. I intended to let you know. I had no doubt you would make good on my loss.”

  “Gonna make real good,” Benson said. Ugo shuddered at the grammar but kept a smile on his face.

  Domenico put his hand under Ugo’s arm and directed him toward a basement entrance. “We’re going to have a little fun, Ugo.”

  “Veramente,” Ugo murmured. “I am sure we will.”

  He shook off Domenico’s restraining hand as they went through a narrow door. He thrust his hands in his pockets and affected a casual air as they waited for the elevator, a grim affair of steel and linoleum. Domenico punched a button, and the elevator descended, depositing them in a subterranean corridor that was even grimmer, with a cement floor and walls that might once have been white but were now a sort of hopeless dun shade. At the end of the corridor was a locked door, which Domenico opened with a skeleton key. He locked it again when they were inside, evidently shutting the redoubtable Marks and Benson out.

  “Such charming accommodations,” Ugo said.

  The room was little more than a shoebox, with a steel-spring cot in one corner that held the thinnest of ticking mattresses, a toilet and sink that looked as if they might fall off their fixtures at any moment, and a fly-specked light fixture depending from the cracked ceiling. The room smelled of moldy cement, with a whiff of something that might have been urine, or might have been the wine that had apparently been spilled in one corner and left to desiccate.

  Domenico laughed. “You don’t need to stay long, Ugo. Simply tell me what I want to know, and you can be off to whatever odd little activity you had planned tonight.”

  Ugo stepped into the middle of the narrow room and turned to face his captor. He shrugged and held his hands out, palms up. “Since you brought me to this cozy camerino to ask your questions, rather than simply inviting me out for a cappuccino, I assume that what you want to know will be something I won’t want to tell you.”

  Domenico nodded. “It’s true, I’m afraid.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small coil of gray nylon cord. “I prefer not to hurt you, if I can avoid it.” He held up the cord, and though his face was solemn, his eyes glittered with something like anticipation.

  Ugo allowed himself a visible shiver. “I simply loathe pain, mio amico. Like you, I would prefer you not to hurt me.”

  Domenico began to pay out the cord, nodding toward the cot. “Just move over there, if you would, please,” he said.

  “Oh,” Ugo said lightly. “I don’t think so, thanks.”

  “Have it your way. I’ll get Marks and Benson in here to help, if I need to.”

  “Well, yes,” Ugo said. “I think you do need to, actually. I hate being tied down nearly as much as I hate pain.”

  Domenico took a step toward the door, but before he could reach it, Ugo had leaped to block his path. “Truly, my friend,” he said, “I hate being tied down.” He put out his hand and gripped Domenico’s wrist. His accent flattened, and the focus of his voice fell back in his throat, the voice of an American born and bred. “And I hate being toyed with. What do you want, man? Tell me what it is, and maybe neither one of us will have to get hurt.”

  Domenico pulled back. Ugo held on, his fingers biting into the other man’s skin. He knew it must hurt, but Domenico gave no sign.

  Ugo smiled up at him. “Very good. You tolerate pain. How much, I wonder?”

  Domenico’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me how to find them,” he said in a low tone.

  Ugo widened his eyes in his most innocent manner. “Find who?”

  His adversary was having none of it. “You know who. The elders. La Società.”

  Ugo released Domenico’s wrist with a flare of his fingers. He pressed his hand to his chest. “Gran Dio, Domenico! You can’t be serious. They would destroy you in a heartbeat! I can’t have that happen to my new friend.”

  Domenico leaned toward him, his lip curling. “I’m completely serious, of course. You must know that by now.” His breath was sour, and Ugo knew he was hiding nerves. “I’ve risked everything to get this information,” Domenico said. “And I mean to have it.”

  Ugo closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “My friend, my friend,” he said. “You have no idea what you’re asking. I wouldn’t want you to—”

  Domenico kept his eyes fixed on Ugo’s face as he shouted, “Benson! Now!” His voice was deafening in the tiny room with its cement walls and uncarpeted floor.

  Ugo heard the rattle of the lock, and the door swung open. Marks stood outside, a witless grin on his face. Benson, bald head shining with sweat, sidled in, a small, flat case under his arm. Ugo gritted his teeth. He could guess the wicked instruments it would hold: pliers, possibly syringes, if this Domenico was truly inventive. Certainly it would hold knives.

  He was haunted by things that cut, he thought. He had been bedeviled from the start by fools who thought they could bend his will to theirs by applying a sharpened blade.

  He would much have preferred not to spend another moment in this room, with these particular tormentors. But until the strega’s herb wore off—or until the pain was intense enough to defeat it—he was stuck with them.

  He sighed, shrugged, and sauntered across the room to the cot.

  Benson, evidently disappointed at the ease of his submission, followed, and struck him between his shoulder blades with a hamlike fist. Ugo sprawled in ignominious fashion to the floor, catching his cheekbone on the edge of the metal frame. Benson laughed, and Domenico snapped at him, “Just get the answers, Benson. And be quick about it
.”

  10

  …un altra sorte vi procuran…

  …another fate awaits you…

  —Don Giovanni, Act One, Scene Two, Don Giovanni

  He found it a relief to leave Benson with his victim in the basement room. He had no problem with violence, of course. It was the indignity of having to stoop to such tactics that offended him. It was distasteful. And messy. He hated getting his hands dirty.

  In a perfect world, it would all be done for him, out of respect.

  Ugo was right, of course, about Benson and Marks. They were cretins. Idiots. They were unsuitable in every way. They would never be allowed into the society.

  But he—surely he, when the elders understood what it was he really wanted—he would win their acceptance. His special gifts should be considered an asset. And when he had found the one—the one who had shared the tooth with Mozart—his gifts would be prodigious.

  He disdained riding in the Fiat again. He walked a couple of blocks on the narrow, uneven sidewalk until he reached one of the boulevards, where traffic moved no matter what the hour. He flagged a taxi and gave the address of his hotel, then sat back, watching the early morning lights of Milan flicker on as the taxi rocketed up the Corso Venezia, swung left, and ground to a stop in front of the Westin Palace Hotel. The night doorman hurried out, yawning, to open the door for him. “Buona sera, signore.”

  “Indeed,” he answered. He stripped off his jacket as he walked through the lobby, thinking he might just throw it away. It seemed to have soaked up the smell of that basement room, and he didn’t want to think about what was happening there right now.

  In his room, he stripped and stepped into the shower to stand under a stinging stream of hot water for several minutes. He needed to sleep, of course. There were still a few hours left for him to rest. But the book called him, even now.

  He wrapped himself in the thick white hotel bathrobe and went to the desk drawer where he had hidden it. He made sure his hands were completely dry before he pulled it out and began to fold back the moleskin wrappings.

  The old witch had written it in Latin, and he had retained no more than a few words of that language from his public school classes, despite the relentless drilling by his Latin master. But it hadn’t been hard to find people who could not only read Latin, but decipher her spidery handwriting.

  He congratulated himself on the care he had taken in asking for translations. He had photocopied the fragile old pages and presented them in unrelated segments to his scholarly contacts, so that none of them could put the greater picture together. When they asked about the context, about the source material, he had had vague answers ready, mentions of research, of a possible book deal, even of a long-forgotten family connection.

  But the book itself, even though it was illegible to him, had mystical power. It represented his deepest desire. It had ignited a longing in him that overwhelmed all his conditioning. He had learned of the society inadvertently, a secret whispered in underground circles where deviants gathered to intoxicate themselves, to medicate themselves with drugs and sex. He had followed the rumors, found the group of hopefuls, men of the likes of Benson and Marks, who thought they could win immortality. The book itself had been a surprise, a serendipitous discovery.

  The ancient was furious, of course. One of his contacts, a limp little man with thinning hair and round, anxious eyes, had died of her rage. But it had been too late. He had the book in his possession, and he would have died himself rather than give it up.

  He let it fall open, taking care with its brittle parchment. He had pored over the translations until he had committed them to memory. It was a journal of sorts. A diary of atrocities. And when Mozart appeared in its pages, he knew what he had to do.

  He forced himself to close the book, stroking its cover with fingers reluctant to leave it. He wrapped it again in the moleskin and bound it with ribbon. He put it back in the drawer, hiding it under a stack of shirts. He shrugged out of the bathrobe and made sure the drapes were closed against the rising sun and the alarm set before he lay down. He pulled the blankets up to his chin and closed his eyes.

  Sleep didn’t come at once, but as he had for years now, he recited the words of the book silently to himself. He resolutely refused to think of the basement room, of the hapless Ugo in the hands of that brainless Benson. Thinking about it only inflamed him with impatience.

  Instead, he repeated the mantra of the Countess’s journal until, at length, he slept.

  11

  Vorrei, e non vorrei; mi trema un poco il cor.

  I want to, and yet I don’t; my heart trembles a little within me.

  —Zerlina, Act One, Scene Two, Don Giovanni

  Ughetto mourned for Mauro, but he carried on with his daily lessons with Brescha, with the harpsichord master, with the dancing master and the language tutor. Praise was hard to come by at the scuola, but Ughetto knew, by the knowing nods his teachers gave each other, that he was doing well. They began to allow him to go with them and the older boys into the city for private concerts in the villas and palazzi of Roman noblemen. Ughetto heard the music of Jacopo Peri, and of Monteverdi. He marveled at the daring new form, dramma per musica. A performance of L’Orfeo brought him to tears, and left him speechless with admiration when he was presented to the composer after the concert.

  Ughetto excelled in his diction classes. His turns in the galliard pleased the dancing master. The scales and harmonizations on the harpsichord came easily to him. And he sang with increasing joy, this boy who had known no music but Sicilian folk songs. He waited through three solid years of vocalizes before Brescha allowed him real music. Then, with the other students, he sang madrigals and motets, and before long he was given three short da capo arias to sing by himself.

  The experience was a revelation. The thrill of hearing his own voice carrying the melody, imparting the emotion of the text through his own artistry, finding the affect and the phrasing and the intent of the music with his own skill, was like nothing he had ever experienced.

  When the scuola held a private recital for a few invited guests at the end of the summer, he was allowed to sing one of his arias, “Se tu m’ami,” with Brescha accompanying him on the harpsichord. He had arranged a little surprise for his teacher, a cadenza at the end which he had worked out all on his own. Brescha’s heavy cheeks reddened with pleasure when he heard it, and Ughetto felt a surge of pride.

  He found himself wishing his mamma and his nonna could hear him, but he repressed the thought the moment he recognized it. Every boy at the scuola had been similarly sacrificed. They were the lucky ones, because they could sing. Poor Mauro had lost everything.

  The day of Ughetto’s twelfth birthday arrived and passed unremarked. He didn’t mention it to anyone, but he was fairly certain he knew the day. Between lessons he wandered out behind the villa and scrambled up the slope beyond it, ducking under the low-hanging branches of the pine trees that grew there. A medieval ruin of tumbled stone and brick crowned the hill. Ughetto climbed to the highest point, a bit of broken wall that had no doubt once been a tower, with a commanding view of the city below and the harbor to the west.

  Ughetto sniffed, trying to detect the salt air of the sea beneath the pungent scent of pine forest but having no success. Closing his eyes, he attempted to recall the smells that had colored his childhood: the seaweed-strewn beaches; the sour wine smell of the tavern when he and his sisters went to clean it in the mornings; the rich scent of his mamma’s fava bean soup, thick with wild fennel and spiced with red pepper. For one moment only he had the memory, and held it. When it dissipated he sighed and opened his eyes.

  For a long time the pain of Mauro’s absence had been sharp, nearly unbearable. After a year or so the pain had begun to dull, though it left a bruise on Ughetto’s youthful soul. The ache of missing his home and his family was almost gone, buried under layers of experience, of music, of new acquaintances, new knowledge about clothes and comportment and the intricacies of
society.

  And now, he was twelve. His loneliness was a hard, constant knot, deep in his belly, that never loosened. Music was his consolation. It was ubiquitous, a constant element in his daily life. Harmonies filled the modest courtyard of the villa, runs and roulades twined through the drooping grapevines, and the old olive tree in the courtyard seemed as redolent with melodies as it was with the firm black olives that dropped into the boys’ hands at harvest time.

  On a September day, when the Mediterranean sun blazed on the white stucco of the scuola, making the courtyard too hot to sit in, Brescha called for Ughetto to come into the little salotto where he taught his voice lessons.

  Brescha drew himself up, stroking his great belly with a veined hand, posing beside the harpsichord. “Ughetto,” he said. “I have had a letter from the Capella.” He paused, letting his eyes stray to the window and the distant silhouette of the dome of St. Peter’s.

  Ughetto suppressed a groan. Brescha had a weakness for dramatic pauses.

  He waited, giving Brescha his moment, before he prompted, “Yes, Maestro?”

  Still staring down at the symbol of his lost career, the old castrato said, “How old are you now, Ughetto? Twelve, I believe.”

  “Yes.”

  Brescha turned slowly to face him, looking down the slope of his great nose as if he were Pope Gregory himself peering from his ambo. “You’re a very lucky boy,” Brescha said.

  Ughetto blinked. “Am I, Maestro?”

  Brescha breathed through his nose, swelling his chest and his belly. “You are,” he said. “My old friend, who is now the choir-master at St. Peter’s, came to our little recital last week. And now, you—you, Ughetto, at only twelve—have been invited to sing with the Capella Sistina. A piece by a new composer named Allegri. A great honor.”

  Ughetto tipped his head to one side and peered up at the singing master. “A solo?”

  Brescha tossed his head. He put his hands on his hips and snapped, “Already such ego, and you have not even sung in public! Does it matter whether you sing a solo or simply as part of the coro?”