by David Hewson
“Please,” he said. “Don’t think me rude. I have to go to La Pietà. I must discuss some complex business to do with the concert. And I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
Giulia Morelli said nothing. It was time to board the boat.
“Are you joining me?”
“Me?” she replied, amused. “I have no reason to catch the boat, Daniel. I merely saw you leave the house, daydreaming, and walked ahead here in order to talk with you. I’ve no desire to go anywhere.”
“Then what do you want?”
“The truth, naturally. And to warn you. Whatever you think, this is not some game. A man has died. The reason for it, I still fail to understand, but I know this.”
He started to walk along the gangplank. Her thin arm held him back with a surprising strength.
“It’s dangerous to be innocent, Daniel. Remember as much. Please.”
He shook himself free from her grip and marched on the boat, not looking back. Sure enough, Giulia Morelli did not follow him. The plans he had made, which now ran madly around his head, could still hold. He had time to visit La Pietà on the way. The invitation had yet to be delivered to Amy. He was also, though he was reluctant to admit as much, beginning to feel a small degree of proprietorial care towards the work which now, as far as most of the world knew, bore his name.
They had just finished rehearsing one of the slow passages from the opening of the second movement when he entered the church. All heads turned, and he was alarmed to hear a light ripple of applause come from the floor.
“Daniel! Daniel!” Fabozzi yelled from the rostrum. “A word! A word!”
The little man, still dressed all in black, this time with high Chelsea boots on his feet, dashed from the podium to greet him. He seemed elated.
“We’re getting the hang of it, dear chap!” Fabozzi cried. “We start to see your meaning!”
“Good,” Daniel replied with as much conviction as he could muster. “I listened a little from the door,” he lied. “It sounds wonderful.”
“You sound wonderful!” He had never seen the conductor look so pleased with himself and his players. For a moment Daniel regretted declining the opportunity to join the orchestra. From the look on their eager young faces, Fabozzi was good at his job. “Oh, please, Daniel. Spend some time with us.”
“I will. I will. But not until I’ve given you a complete score, Fabozzi. Which will, at the present rate, be by this weekend. Next week, I promise.”
“And we’ll hold you to it. Eh, Amy?”
She had walked out of the mass of musicians to join them. Amy Hartston wore a pale-blue silk shirt and jeans. Her blonde hair was tucked back behind her head for playing. Her face was bright and full of life.
“Of course we will. You do want to hear us, don’t you, Daniel? I sometimes think you’d like to run away from this masterpiece of yours.”
“I’ll sit here all day and watch you play,” he insisted. “Provided you don’t complain when you run out of notes.”
“Ah,” she laughed. “You have us there!”
Fabozzi looked uncomfortable, seeming to recognise something pass between them. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to look at that passage more closely before we resume. Ciao!”
When the conductor was gone, Daniel found himself standing in front of Amy, awkwardly trying to raise the subject of the boat trip. “I was,” he said, “wondering...”
“Yes?”
“There is, um . . . an outing. Some friends of mine. On a boat. This Sunday. Out to one of the islands. Not a very interesting one, I think. You probably wouldn’t want to go.”
“OK.”
“They’re not like Massiter. The boat certainly isn’t like Massiter’s. Local people. I doubt you’d find it amusing.”
“I said OK.”
He felt sure he was blushing. “Um. Fine, then.”
“When? And where?”
“You mean you do want to go?”
She folded her arms and peered at him. “You are asking me out, aren’t you, Daniel?”
“Y-yes!”
“Then I’d love to come. Now, when? And where?”
His cheeks felt as if they were on fire. “I’ll find that out. I’ll come back tomorrow and tell you.”
“That would be useful. Here.” She pulled a notepad out of her back pocket, scribbled a number on a page, then tore it off and handed it to him. “Alternatively, you could always phone. These friends of yours. They do let you use a phone, I guess?”
“Of course!”
Amy Hartston smiled. “Well!” Her self-confidence in these situations was, Daniel thought, unshakable and clearly the result of greater experience. “Here’s to Sunday, then. Now, either sit down and listen or run along, Daniel. These notes of yours are on occasion such pigs to play I sometimes think you’re Paganini’s ghost. For both our sakes, I would like them to sound as convincing as possible.”
With that she turned and walked back to the orchestra, who were now busily tuning for the resumption of the rehearsal, flicking the pages of the scores, mumbling, staring intently at the pages. For a moment, Daniel Forster felt a sickening twinge of guilt. The admiration which these people felt for him was entirely undeserved. Yet, he told himself, without his diligent searching and his dealing with Massiter, they would never be a part of the marvel taking shape on the floor of La Pietà. They owed him a debt, even if it was not the one they assumed.
They were so swiftly engrossed in the music that no one saw him leave. Outside, Daniel walked east along the Riva degli Schiavoni. The Campari sign that marked the Lido vaporetto stop shimmered in the heat haze across the water. Somewhere beyond the jetty, on the opposite side of the narrow spit of land, hordes of holidaymakers would be lying on the beach, staring at the flat blue Adriatic. The lagoon seemed to contain an entire universe within its borders, most of it, from his point of view, unexplored.
By the time he had reached San Biagio, where his directions told him to leave the waterfront, the only other figures on the street were clearly local: women carrying shopping, men sitting on benches, watching the boats go by, smoking.
He turned left, along the Canale dell’ Arsenale. The alley lay after a small bridge. He walked down the cobbled lane and found himself staring at the vast, empty quarters of the Arsenale. The empty warehouse was down a narrow passage which stank of cats. He pushed open the half-shattered door and walked in. There was the smell of strong cigarette smoke and the aroma of aftershave.
Daniel stood patiently in the light of the doorway and, after a suitable interval, called, “Hello?”
A figure came out of the shadow, shared the sun with him, then offered a cigarette. They were about the same size, Daniel guessed, both tall and far from muscular, though the man was older. He had a sallow face, lightly pockmarked, and he wore plastic-framed sunglasses that seemed too big for him.
“No, thank you. I’m Daniel.”
The man snorted. “You’re giving me a name?”
Daniel ran a hand over his chin, thinking about what Scacchi had said, and about the policewoman too. There was no easy way to recognise a thief, let alone a murderer. “You have the item?”
“That’s what you asked for, isn’t it? You got the money?”
Daniel shrugged. “I’m just the intermediary. I have to see it’s what he wants.”
The man threw his dying cigarette into the corner of the warehouse. It spat and sizzled in a damp pool somewhere in the dark. “It’s what he wants. Here.”
A cheap nylon bag flew through the air. Daniel just managed to catch it. “If this is what you claim, my friend, you should treat it more carefully.”
He was back in the dark, lighting another cigarette. “Hey, kid. Don’t tell me what to do with my property. If you buy it, you treat it as you like. Till then, shut up.”
Daniel said nothing. He opened the nylon bag and took out an ancient fiddle case covered with queer-smelling dust. It was decidedly heavy. He knelt down in the doo
rway, placed the case on the floor, and opened it. Inside was the most extraordinary violin he had ever seen. It was massive in form, as Scacchi had told him to expect. The sap stains were there, too, running parallel with the fingerboard on both sides of the belly. He held the instrument in the shaft of light and peered through the left f-hole. Inside, black lettering against brown parchment, was the label “Joseph Guarnerius fecit Cremone, anno 1733,” then a small cross above the letters IHS.
It was, in a conventional sense, ugly, yet it sat in the grip with a lithe, easy grace. This was, he felt, a fiddle to be played, not admired. There was not the slightest doubt in his mind it was genuine.
“Well?” the coarse Venetian voice demanded from the darkness.
“There are many fakes around.”
The man snorted. “That’s not a fake.”
“Are you sure? Do you really know what you have here, my friend?”
The man came out to the door and, briefly, appeared to contemplate snatching the fiddle, only to reject the idea the instant it occurred. Daniel puzzled over this.
“Two questions, Englishman. Do you want it? And if you do, where’s the money?”
Daniel had been prepared to dislike this crook, but the depth of his antipathy surprised him. There was something almost insane about the man. The policewoman’s warning was perhaps well-meant. Yet it was impossible to escape the conviction that the man was scared, too, anxious to be done with the deal.
“One more test,” Daniel told him. Inside the lid of the case there was a bow. He reached down and slipped it out of the holder. The hair was loose and curiously dry. He turned the nut to tighten it, then placed the Guarneri beneath his chin.
The man’s eyes flared wildly. “Hey! I didn’t say you could play the damned thing.”
“It’s an instrument. Do you expect that kind of money without me hearing a note?”
The man backed down, sat on a low, dusty bench behind the door. Daniel lifted the bow and played, gingerly, a fragment of a simple Handel sonata.
Long afterwards, when there was time and some much-needed distance from the event, he tried to analyse what had occurred. The primary cause must, he believed, have been the unusual acoustics of the medieval warehouse, with its echoing corners and centuries of damp. The tone of the fiddle was richer and more luxuriant than any he had ever touched. Yet there was something else to the sound it made with those first few notes. The power and strength of its voice rose out of that fat, ugly body like a genie escaping from the bottle. Even with his weak skills, it roared like an angry lion. Played by a true violinist such as Amy, it would surely be astonishing.
He ran through a few bars of the Handel, paused, then brought the bow down hard to crash out a single line from the concerto which now bore his name. A black veil of deep concentration fell upon him. For a second, he imagined himself in a large open room, with strange windows at the front, feeling he was in the presence of the true composer. Yet the mysterious figure was out of sight behind him. He was dazzled by the strange light coming through the glass. Somewhere, past the music, was the sound of screaming. Then his skill and his memory failed him and the queer daydream went with them. The notes died away. He lifted the bow from the strings.
The thief stood in front of him, shaking—with fury, he judged, and with fear also. In his hand, the sharp metal glinting upwards in the sunlight, was a slim blade.
“No more!” the man hissed. “Not another damn thing.”
Daniel stared at him briefly, then placed the fiddle back in its home and tucked the bow into its fastening in the lid. He picked up the dusty case and thrust it out in front of him.
“It’s a fake,” he said confidently. “A very good one, I have to say, and one which may provide the basis for some arrangement between us. But it is a fake nevertheless. Surely you can hear as much?”
The knife slashed through the air a few inches away from his face. “Don’t lie to me!”
Daniel waited a moment and then said simply, “You can take it back if you like.”
After a while, after every last, faint whisper of the ringing tones of the fiddle had disappeared from the miasmic air of the warehouse, the thief nodded, a small act of obeisance, then wound the knife back on itself and placed the weapon in his pocket.
“Good,” Daniel said, and found it hard not to smile. “Shall we talk now?”
28
The saddest loss
ISIT IN MY SMALL ROOM, THE THIRD TO THE RIGHT ON the third floor, and stare mournfully out of the window at the square of San Cassian, listening to the distant whores and drunks winding their way through the streets. And I can do nothing but weep and damn creation. There was a brief letter from Seville this afternoon. My beloved sister, Lucia, is dead. They speak of some sickness of the stomach. What would the Spanish know of such things? If she had fallen ill here in Venice, Jacopo would have set her right with a single penetrating look and a potion. Now she lies cold in a foreign grave. I shall never hear her laughter again, nor feel the warmth of her soft hand.
Why is she dead? Is this God’s revenge for the way I have played hide-and-seek with Rebecca through His houses these past few weeks? Are these God’s rules? Or those of the men, all wealthy, all worldly, who are His self-appointed ambassadors in this place? What kind of deity would wreak His vengeance on two such as us, young, stupid, happy, and overflowing with the life they would have us believe was His gift in the first place?
And yet... my sister is gone. Some Spanish infection has stolen her precious life. My mind races with possibilities, decisions, actions I might have undertaken which would have meant Lucia would be alive today, smiling as ever, waiting for the world to entertain her. It is all quite futile. Time bears down on us, without mercy, without pause. We have no way of knowing when the jaws of the lion will shut tight around us, and must therefore accept a duty to embrace each hour to the full and let the priests take care of the hereafter. Why should I agonise over whether I have abandoned God? Is it not more relevant to ask whether He has abandoned me, left me alone with my own dark thoughts?
When I was sufficiently composed, I broke the news to Leo. He looked at me queerly. He has had his own losses, I think. Something in his expression seemed to indicate Lucia’s death made me his peer, a co-conspirator in some secret whispering about the true nature of our lives. He came over to the table where I was slumped in misery and placed a hand on my back.
“Lorenzo. I am genuinely sorry to hear this.” There were no tears in his eyes. Since I gave him Rebecca’s music, he has seemed quite preoccupied. “But you must not be surprised.”
I felt some mindless, angry heat rise inside me. “Surprised, Uncle? My sister was twenty-one and as strong as an ox when she left here for Spain. Of course I am surprised.”
“Yes, boy. Yes, boy.” I tire of being addressed as a juvenile. I was about to tell him as much when he said something that quite took my breath away. “But you must know, Lorenzo, it always comes to this. When you love someone, they will leave you, one way or another. Be a solitary man and circumvent the heartache. That’s my advice.”
There is a point in everyone’s upbringing where one realises that adulthood is not synonymous with wisdom. I think I was a late developer in this field. Leo is a fool, a sour, narrow-minded fool to boot. He inhabits a monochromatic universe where the only warmth and joy are those that come from his own introverted thoughts. He gives nothing and, consequently, receives nothing in return.
And he steals too. I looked at the papers on the table which seemed to interest him much more than my loss. One was the frontispiece to a part for Rebecca’s concerto, back from the outside copyists we had been compelled to employ in order to meet Delapole’s deadline. In the place where the composer’s title would normally have been printed—which I assumed would be left blank in the circumstances—I was astonished to see the name “Leonardo Scacchi.”
“Uncle! You cannot do this.”
“Of course not,” he replied with more than
a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Not immediately, anyhow.”
“Not at all! This is not your work.”
“No? And who knows that? When someone steps forward and claims title to this, how do we know he’s telling the truth? Why this charade in the first place? There’s some funny business going on here, I’ll bet. Don’t assume it’ll pan out the way our anonymous joker hopes. Why shouldn’t I see what it looks like with my name on the cover? I could have been a musician, too, if it wasn’t for this damn claw. There were plenty of corrections needed to that scrappy script that came through the door. Do I get no credit for that?”
Speechless, I left the house abruptly and sat for a while in the parish church, refusing to tell the priest my news for fear of how my temper might receive his predictable show of sympathy.
Instead I crouched silent on a pew for an hour or more, as if in meditation. These ramblings have lost their purpose. There is no pretty hand in Seville to receive them. I am no longer the amiable, fraternal chronicler, sanitising the truth for my distant sister. Instead these thoughts may work their way inwards to my soul with all their truth, as harsh and bitter as it may be.
So let me admit this to myself now. My sister was not uppermost in my thoughts for long. My head rebelled at the injustice, the impossibility of her death. So I sat in the church of San Cassian and stared at that ancient painting which I once described to Lucia: the schoolmaster being martyred by his pupils. In the darkness I allowed my imagination to rise up, like Lucifer ascending from damnation. Leo was the master, I was the pupil. In my right hand the adze, in my left a sharp pen, the nib cut as sharp as the finest dagger.
How many men are murdered daily in the mind’s eye? Millions, I believe, and the next morning they rise and go about their business, oblivious to the agonising fate their midnight selves suffered in another’s mind a few hours before. The penknife and the adze. The sword and the scalpel. If Leo could peer into my head and see what wonders I worked upon his scrawny frame that night, he would faint away dead in horror. But no man knows what thoughts run through another’s brain. The following day, over breakfast, Leo bestowed upon me quite a fetching smile, then said, “It’s off to Ca’ Dario and a word with that Gobbo chum of yours. I must keep Delapole in my power, boy. I must have him tight within my grasp.”