by Donna Leon
If she had expected surprise or disagreement from Dottor Moretti about this, she was mistaken. “Of course,” he muttered and then gestured toward the paper in her hand, as if to suggest she finish reading it.
“And this,” she said, tapping at the paper with her finger, “that I will not write anything, neither article nor book, about any personal information contained in the trunks and that I will not speak of it in public or private. Not until I am given permission by both of the heirs, as well as by you.” She paused a moment and then asked, feeling a flutter of anger at what she saw as petty, ignorant obstructionism, “I assume this does not apply to my reports?” Her smile was falsity itself.
Dottor Moretti used the universal gesture of surrender and held up both hands in front of his chest. “I don’t make the rules, Dottoressa. I only transmit them.” Then, with a small smile, he added, “If you’ll continue reading, Dottoressa, you’ll see that this prohibition does not extend to any musicological information that might be contained in the documents.”
“Meaning?” she asked.
“Meaning that you have the exclusive rights to edit any scores that might be found, whether of orchestral or of vocal music, that you judge to be of artistic importance.” He pointed to his copy, and she found the sentence on hers.
She kept her face impassive as she read, though this hope had at least partially animated her willingness to toss over the job in Manchester. He was giving her a possibility for which most musicologists would have traded their firstborn. Two chests possibly filled with the papers of a once famous composer of the Baroque period. They could contain operas, many of his famous chamber duets, unpublished arias. And she would be the one to write the articles and edit the scores. Boosey & Hawkes, she also knew, had begun to publish Baroque music: she knew she could not find a better company. If anything could launch her career, this was it.
She nodded, quite as if this were a normal part of any job she’d ever had. Then she asked, “And if I were to publish any of the other papers?”
He lowered his hands and said, “I do civil law, Dottoressa. Breach of contract is something my office deals with every day.”
“What does that mean, Dottore?” Caterina asked, conscious that her tone had changed.
He considered her question and her tone and answered, “To do so would be a breach of contract, Dottoressa, in which event a case surely would be brought against you. It would be a very long and a very expensive case.” He left it to her to assume that, though the length would concern them both equally, perhaps the cost would be more of a burden to her.
“How long would a case like this take to pass through the courts?” she asked, then explained, “If I might ask for the sake of curiosity.”
He leaned farther back against Roseanna’s desk and let the hand that still held the paper fall to his side. “I’d imagine the least it could take is eight or nine years. That is, if the verdict were appealed.”
“I see,” Caterina said, preferring not to ask how much it might cost. “I’m perfectly willing to agree to the conditions.”
His whole body seemed to relax when she said that, and she wondered if perhaps he had had some personal interest in controlling the information in the trunks. What could he and the cousins fear would be hidden in those documents? What scandal might have survived all these generations, quietly ticking away inside two locked chests? Caterina gave herself a mental shake and dismissed the idea. To think like this was to enter into the same world of paranoia in which the cousins seemed to live.
Before Dottor Moretti could thank her for agreeing, she held up a hand and said, “I want to make something clear.” He leaned forward, the very picture of attention. “I want to repeat that I am not a historian, so it might be necessary for me to spend time reading about the historical background in the Marciana to get some sense of what was going on when these documents were written. Is that understood?”
Dottor Moretti smiled. “Your letters of recommendation said you were an eager student and researcher, Dottoressa. I’m happy to see signs of it now.” His smile broadened. “Of course you can read. It will be of invaluable use, I hope, in helping you to put any events mentioned into their correct historical context.”
Roseanna broke in to say, “I doubt that they’ll like paying for historical context.” In response to Caterina’s glance, she said, “You’ve met them, they have blunt minds. They think in numbers and yes and no.” She looked across at Dottor Moretti.
“I think you’re right, Signora, that they won’t grasp the need to understand the background,” he said. Then to Caterina, “You’re a scholar. Of course you have to do the background reading, otherwise it makes no sense for you to read anything. They won’t like it, but I think I have sufficient influence with them to encourage them to allow it.” Then, after a pause, “I think it’s both essential and prudent that you do it.”
Caterina was struck by his use of that word, for Dottor Moretti, more than any other thing, seemed a prudent man. For Caterina, however, the term was only descriptive and could as easily be a vice as a virtue. She hoped that it was a virtue in the lawyer.
Her reflections were interrupted by a loud knocking at the front door.
Dottor Moretti looked at his watch and said, looking at Roseanna, “You were right, Signora, it’s just noon. Indeed, our two guests do think in numbers.”
Seven
Roseanna got to her feet, saying, “Dottore, might I ask you to open the door for our guests?” It was Monday, Caterina recalled, the day the library was closed to visitors, so they would have it to themselves. It was the only room she had so far seen with more than two chairs and thus was the only place where all of them could meet. She had not seen the cousins since the interviews in that same room, when she had met with them to present her qualifications.
She and Roseanna went down the corridor to the library. The room was warmer than either her office or Roseanna’s had been; the heat, unfortunately, brought out the scent of the bodies and clothing that had been present in the room during the last weeks. Roseanna went immediately to the windows and threw them wide, then went back to the door and opened it. Caterina could feel the draught sweeping past her and out the door. “Keep them open as long as you can,” Roseanna said and went to receive the visitors.
Caterina, in the accidental role of majordomo, went over to the windows and stood in the draft cutting into the room. When the footsteps approached, she shut the windows and moved back to stand on the other side of the table. In less than a minute, Roseanna came through the door, followed by Dottor Moretti, carrying his briefcase. Caterina wondered whether the cousins would force themselves through the door side by side or stand outside to fight about who went first.
Her fantasy was wasted. Signor Stievani came in first, closely followed by his cousin, the usurer. Or would it have been better to say that the tax evader came in first, closely followed by his cousin, Signor Scapinelli? Caterina smiled with every indication of pleasure and shook hands with both men, then turned to the table and pulled out a chair for one, just as Roseanna pulled out the one opposite for his cousin. None of the men seemed to notice the smell in the room, and neither of the cousins seemed surprised by Roseanna’s presence.
With casual authority, Dottor Moretti moved to the head of the table, waited for everyone else to sit, and then took his place. He nodded to both men and began in medias res. “I’ve already explained the conditions of her employment to Dottoressa Pellegrini. You are both already familiar with what they are. She has no objections to any of the requirements. In fact, she was just about to sign the agreement as you arrived.” So saying, he nodded to Caterina, who took the pen he handed her and signed the agreement, then passed it back to him.
Dottor Moretti opened his briefcase and pulled out a blue folder. He slipped the agreement into it and replaced it in his briefcase, which he set back on the f
loor, where it made a surprisingly heavy thump. “If either of you, Signor Scapinelli or Signor Stievani, has anything to say to the Dottoressa, or to either Signora Salvi or to me, then perhaps you could do so now?”
While Dottor Moretti spoke Caterina studied the two men, trying to judge whether her first opinion—negative in both cases—would find confirmation in this second encounter with them. So far, however, all they had done was sit, carefully avoiding the sight of the other by giving their attention to Dottor Moretti.
Seeing the two men together, Caterina realized that Stievani must be older than his cousin, perhaps by as much as a decade. He had the rough skin of a man who worked outside and had never thought to protect himself from the sun, skin that reminded her of the leather of Dottor Moretti’s briefcase, though the lawyer had taken better care of the briefcase than Signor Stievani had of his face. Or his hands, for that matter. The knuckles of both hands were swollen, the fingers twisted at odd angles, perhaps from arthritis, perhaps from decades of work on boats in cold weather. She was surprised to see that his nails were neatly trimmed and filed, surely the work of a manicurist.
His nose was long and straight, his eyes clear blue under sharply arched brows. But the face was bloated and puffed up, perhaps from alcohol, perhaps from disease, and the swelling had pushed out the possibility of beauty, leaving the wreckage of a man.
When she glanced at his cousin, Signor Scapinelli, her attention was drawn, as it had been the first time, to his eyes. Her memory flashed, not to anything he had said when they met, but to the vision Dante had given of the usurers. She forgot what circle he had consigned them to—the seventh? The eighth? They sat, for all eternity, on the burning sands of hell, flapping at falling flames the way dogs swat at flies to rid themselves of them. Around their necks hung bags, small purses that held their meaningless wealth, and Dante described the way their eyes still, even in that place, feasted on the sight of those bags. Their eyes, she decided, must have been eyes like Signor Scapinelli’s: deep set, never still, with dark half moons below them.
She had watched him notice Dottor Moretti’s briefcase and the gold frames of his glasses, had seen him tote up the cost of his suit, and she felt a shiver of embarrassment that she had done much the same. To save herself from her own harsh accusations, she offered the excuse that she had done it in a complimentary way, in admiration of his taste and not in envy that he had the available wealth to permit himself that casual elegance.
Scapinelli’s clothing disguised his wealth, had perhaps been chosen to achieve that end. His jacket was faintly threadbare at the cuffs; a button had been replaced by another that could do nothing better than resemble the others, and not very closely. His hands were as large as his cousin’s, though much better cared for, as were, strangely enough, his teeth, where she saw evidence of a great deal of work and expense.
He was round-faced and balding and walked with the ponderous splay-footed tread of the obese, though he was not a fat man. Caterina had no clear idea how closely related the two sides of the family might once have been, but all resemblance had been worn away by the passing of time, and now the only way these men looked alike was in the possession of two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
Scapinelli, she was reminded when he caught her glance and moved his mouth in a quick rictus, had the distracting habit of smiling at inappropriate times, as if his face were on a timer or programmed to respond to certain expressions. Strangely, the smile never came in reaction to anything funny or witty or ironic. The last time, she had attempted to figure out what the key was, but she had abandoned the task as hopeless and let him smile at will, which he did when he said even the most innocuous things, or when he heard them.
One might dismiss him as a happy fool because of those smiles, but that would be a mistake, for above the vacuous smile rested those reptilian eyes.
He spoke first, in the rough voice she remembered and speaking in Veneziano. “Good. If she’s accepted all the terms, then she can go to work.” What was next, Caterina wondered? They put a time clock by the front door and she stamped in and out every day?
Before she could ask that, Dottor Moretti spoke again. “Before she does, Signor Scapinelli, there are a few things that remain to be settled.”
“Like what?” Scapinelli asked with a pugnacity Caterina thought unnecessary.
“You gentlemen have agreed, I think very wisely, that Dottoressa Pellegrini is to have complete freedom to expand her research.”
Signor Scapinelli opened his mouth to speak, but Dottor Moretti ignored him and continued. “She is to send me written reports of what she reads and is to pay special attention to anything that might be regarded as your ancestor’s testamentary dispositions,” Dottor Moretti said. “Which reports I will forward to both of you with great dispatch.”
There he went again, using those wonderful phrases, she thought. If only Italians could be taught to think of “testamentary dispositions” instead of “making a will,” they’d all have one drawn up by the end of the week.
“Yes. That’s right. That’s what’s in the paper you gave us.” Signor Stievani broke in to say. Then the clincher, “And she signed it.”
“We want copies,” his cousin concluded.
“And on what, if I might ask, is the Dottoressa supposed to write these reports?” Dottor Moretti asked, as if neither man had spoken.
Scapinelli turned to her and said, “We’re not buying you one.”
Rather than answer, Caterina turned to Dottor Moretti, leaving it to him to fight her corner for her.
“Most places of employment provide their employees with a computer.”
“She’s hired as una libera professionista,” Stievani broke in to say. “She should have her own.” He spoke of her, Caterina thought, as though she were a blacksmith who should show up with his own bag of pliers, hammers, and horseshoes. They’d provide the fire—perhaps—but the tools were up to her.
In a voice that had become softer, Dottor Moretti said, “I think I can take care of that.” Four faces turned to him. “A few months ago, our office upgraded the computers we give our younger associates. The laptops they were using are still in a closet in my secretary’s office. I can have someone who knows how to do it take out whatever refers to our office. I think access to the Internet is built into these things.” He waited for comment, and when none was forthcoming, added, speaking directly to Caterina, “It’s only a few years old, but it should certainly be adequate for what you have to do here.”
“That’s very kind of you, Dottore,” Roseanna said, apparently delighted that a man could so casually confess to imperfect familiarity with computers. “On behalf of the Foundation I thank you for this largesse.” Ah, yes, Caterina thought, ‘largesse,’ charmed to hear Roseanna rise to the level of Dottor Moretti’s speech. She was also impressed with the way her graciousness was likely to prevent any embarrassing questions as to why the Foundation had no computer.
“What were you going to do with them?” Signor Scapinelli broke in to ask.
Dottor Moretti was momentarily confused by the question but then answered, “We usually give them to the children of our employees.”
“You give them away?” Scapinelli asked with a mixture of astonishment and disapproval.
“That way, we can deduct them from our taxes,” Dottor Moretti said, an answer that seemed to calm Signor Scapinelli’s troubled spirit, at least to the degree that a usurer’s spirit can ever be calm at the revelation of an unmade profit.
“You mentioned a few things that needed to be settled,” Caterina reminded him.
“Ah, yes. Thank you, Dottoressa,” Dottor Moretti said. “We’d like to establish some parameters for the handling of the actual papers.”
“Parameters,” she repeated, for the first time unimpressed by his use of language.
“Yes. We have to settle how we
will go about the actual opening of the chests and decide who will be there when you remove the contents and begin to work.”
“Let me say one thing,” Caterina declared. “I don’t care who’s there when the chests are opened, but I can’t have anyone present while I’m working.”
“Can’t?” Dottor Moretti inquired.
“Can’t because having someone there, looking over my shoulder —even sitting at the other side of the room—would slow me down terribly. It would double the time it will take me to do the research.”
“Simply having someone in the room with you?” Dottor Moretti asked.
Before she could answer, Signor Stievani said, sounding angry or impatient, “All right, all right. If we’re there when they’re opened, and we’re sure there’s only papers in there, then there’s nothing to worry about.” Caterina wondered if a life spent on boats led a man to believe that papers could have no value.
“We don’t want her spending the rest of her life doing this, you know,” Signor Stievani went on, this time addressing Dottor Moretti directly, who ignored the sarcasm and heard the statement.
“Quite right,” he agreed. “Once the trunks have been opened, we’re agreed that Dottoressa Pellegrini can stay alone in the room.”
“Then I work upstairs?”
“Yes, that’s the room where the work will be done,” Dottor Moretti said. “It’s got the storeroom, and there’s a wireless connection.”
“Why is that?” Caterina asked Roseanna, remembering that the stolen computer had been on this floor.
Looking not unembarrassed, Roseanna said, “Well, it doesn’t exactly belong to the Foundation.”
“Exactly?” Caterina asked. “Then whose is it?”
Her embarrassment grew stronger. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t tell me it’s someone else’s Wi-Fi you’re piggybacking on?” Caterina demanded.
“Yes.”