by Donna Leon
“Do you think that’s safe?” She did not bother to ask what would happen if the line were to disappear or be secured by its legal owner.
The smile was not present in Roseanna’s shrug. “I have no idea. But it’s the only line we have. Dottor Asnaldi used it and there was no trouble at all.”
Trouble came from Signor Scapinelli, who broke in to say, “We’re not paying for any of those things. You give her a computer, you figure out how she can use it.” Then, with undisguised contempt, “This place doesn’t even have a telephone.”
“And the computer doesn’t leave that room, either,” Signor Stievani broke in to add.
Caterina turned toward the sound of their voices and, after allowing her anger a few seconds to dissipate, said quite pleasantly, “I’m perfectly content to use that connection. And the computer can stay here all the time. After all, what sort of secrets can be in papers that are hundreds of years old?”
Eight
Soon after this decision was made, Caterina noticed that both cousins grew restless. First Stievani looked at his watch, and then Scapinelli did. It took her but a moment to understand. They were afraid that if this went on much longer they might be expected to go to lunch with these people or, worse, be expected to take them to lunch. Dottor Moretti must have read the signs at the same time, for he looked at his watch and said, speaking in general to everyone at the table, “I hope we’ve made all of the major decisions that concern us.”
He looked around and saw four nodding heads. Addressing them all, he said, “Then perhaps we can remove ourselves to the upper floor and see to opening the chests.” There was no reason for Caterina to be surprised by this, but she was. Though everything she had done since coming back to Venice had been aimed at this goal, she was still unprepared to hear it announced. The chests would be opened, she would see the papers—the putative papers—she would hold them in her hands, and she would be surprised, of course she would be surprised, to learn that they were the papers of Agostino Steffani, composer and bishop, musician and diplomat.
They got to their feet. At the door, the two cousins were careful to see that Dottor Moretti stood between them. Stievani went first, the lawyer next, and then Signor Scapinelli. Women and children last.
Dottor Moretti led them only as far as the door to the stairway that led to the upper floor, where he waited for Roseanna to come and unlock the door. This done, she stepped aside to allow the men to pass in front of her in the same order, after which she and Caterina followed them upstairs. The procedure was repeated at the door to the director’s office.
Inside, Roseanna went to the metal doors of the storeroom and dealt with the three separate locks—Caterina had failed to notice the third lock set almost at floor level. With no ceremony whatsoever, Roseanna pulled open the two metal doors and stepped back to allow the others to see the chests that stood, one behind the other, the back one about twenty centimeters taller than the one in front, in the closet-sized storeroom. Caterina had seen scores of similar trunks like them in antiques shops and museums: unadorned dark wood, metal strips rimming the top and bottom and thus creating a border into which a secure locking mechanism could be anchored. The keys were missing from both keyholes.
Signor Stievani, by far the more robust of the cousins, took Dottor Moretti’s arm, saying, “Let’s pull them out. You grab the other handle.” He bent over the smaller trunk and took hold of one of the handles.
Dottor Moretti was unable to hide his surprise, either at being so addressed by the other man or at the idea of being asked to help move the chest. He reacted quickly and well, however, and set his briefcase down, reaching to the right to grab the second handle. From the ease with which they moved it, Caterina got an idea of the probable weight of the chest. They carried it from the storeroom and set it to the side of the desk. Then they went back and did the same with the second chest, which seemed to Caterina to be much heavier and which they set down a meter from the side of the first.
There they were, then, the two chests containing the contested patrimony of the musician whose name she was not supposed to know. Both of them had what looked to be wax-covered ropes tied around them, the first spanning front and back and the other going across the top from side to side. The first one ended in elaborate knots from which hung fragments of what must once have been a large medallion of red wax. The surface was pitted and scarred, and it was impossible to distinguish what might once have been impressed into it. Four nails held a faded rectangle of paper to the front of the smaller chest. The bottom left corner had been torn loose from the nail, taking with it a corner of the paper. Barely legible, in faded brown ink, Caterina read, in the spidery handwriting of the times, “—fani 1728.”
Before Caterina could ask how they were going to proceed, Signor Scapinelli demanded, “And who’s going to open them?”
Dottor Moretti surprised them all by taking his briefcase and pulling out both a folding knife and a large ring of what looked like antique keys. Some were rusted, some polished bright, but all of them ended in serrated teeth and had obviously been made by hand.
Before anyone could ask, Dottor Moretti said, “I showed a photo of the two locks to an antiquarian friend of mine, and he sent me these. He thinks some of these keys will fit.” Caterina was surprised, then pleased, at this very unlawyerly behavior on Dottor Moretti’s part. Could it be that he was enjoying their trip into the past?
“Both locks?” Scapinelli asked.
“He thinks so, and I hope so,” Dottor Moretti answered.
Caterina and Roseanna exchanged approving glances, but Signor Scapinelli made a noise. Caterina wondered if he expected Dottor Moretti to have arrived certain about which were the proper keys.
Dottor Moretti hiked up the right leg of his trousers and half knelt in front of the first, smaller, trunk. Methodically, holding each by the seal, he cut the ropes and left them where they lay. He cut the seal free and handed it to Caterina, who placed it carefully on the desk. Then he went through the keys one by one, inserting them and trying to turn them. A few seemed to move in the lock, but none was successful until a key quite close to the end of the ring moved to the right two times with a grinding double creak. Dottor Moretti withdrew the key and pushed at the top; after a few seconds and some shifting side to side, he managed to raise it a few centimeters but immediately set it back in place and moved to the larger trunk.
Nailed to the front was a similar piece of paper, though this one was intact and read, “Steffani 1728”; there was no wax wafer attached to the ropes. Again, Dottor Moretti cut through the rope and let the pieces fall to the floor. This time the key was the third or fourth he tried, though it took considerably more effort to lift this lid. When he had it raised free of the metal band, Dottor Moretti settled it back into place and got to his feet. He opened his briefcase and dropped the keys and knife inside.
“They’re ours, aren’t they?” Signor Scapinelli asked, pointing to the keys. It was a statement and not a question.
“I’m expecting a judgment,” Dottor Moretti said in an English only Caterina understood, but then he reverted to Italian and added, “The keys belong to my friend, who has asked for them back.” He gave Signor Scapinelli a friendly smile and added, quite affably, “If you and your cousin prefer, I can ask him how much he’d charge if you’d like to keep them.” When neither man said anything, Dottor Moretti turned to Signor Stievani and said, “Have you a preference?”
“Don’t provoke me, avvocato,” he said. “Leave them open and send the keys back.” With a wave toward the metal doors, he added, “Anyone who could get through those wouldn’t have much trouble with these locks.” He might be a tax-evading fraud, Caterina told herself, but the man was no fool.
She looked at her watch and saw that it was almost one. “Signori,” she began, a term in which Roseanna was included, “I think we should make some logistical decisions. You’r
e agreed that the trunks will stay open. But as you saw, I can hardly move them back into the storeroom myself.”
She let them consider that for a moment. She was not going to make a suggestion, knowing the greater wisdom of letting herself accede to one of theirs, so long as it was what she wanted.
She watched their reactions. Roseanna followed her same tactic by shaking her head to show she opted out of the decision and left it to the men to decide. Dottor Moretti was there in his legal capacity and so refused to express an opinion; neither cousin wanted to make a suggestion, probably fearful—or certain—that the other would block it.
Finally, Stievani said, “The chests have to be locked in the storeroom at night.” He looked at all of them, not only at his cousin. When he saw consensus, he went on. “So why don’t we let her look through them to see if there’s only papers? Then we put the chests back in the cupboard, and when she’s done every day she puts the papers back in the trunk and locks the cupboard, then locks the room.”
“And the keys?” Signor Scapinelli asked.
“She keeps them. Otherwise we’ve got to figure out someone for her to give them to every day.” Just as it looked as if his cousin was going to protest, he added, “And we’d have to pay him.” Whatever his cousin had been planning was left unsaid.
Dottor Moretti looked around at them all. “It sounds sensible to me. Does anyone object?” Then, at their silence, directly to Caterina, “Do you, Dottoressa?”
“No.”
Roseanna held up the keys and looked in turn at the three men. Seeing no objection, she walked to the desk and placed the three keys to the storeroom, the single key to the stairs, and the key to the director’s office on the reading table. Caterina nodded polite thanks.
Dottor Moretti took the opportunity of the ensuing silence to say, “Since we have no idea what is inside these trunks, whether papers or objects and of what kind, and since I suppose we are all curious, to one degree or another, to have a look, I propose we ask Dottoressa Pellegrini to open them so that we can see, and then we leave her to her work.” So saying, he made a gesture toward the chests.
This time, Caterina did not wait for them to answer. “That sounds eminently sensible,” she said and approached the smaller trunk. She went down on one knee, grabbed the lid on both sides, and pulled it up until it was suspended by her left hand. Holding it upright, she looked inside and saw the reason for its lightness: it was only half full. The string-tied packets of papers on the top layer looked as though they had been shifting about for centuries, as no doubt they had. But because they were tied in the same manner as the trunks, with separate pieces of waxed string running perpendicularly and horizontally, the piles had remained intact.
She lowered the lid and heard noises of protest from the people behind her. “Un momento,” she said and went back to her bag. From it, she took a pair of white cotton gloves, slipped them on, and returned to open the trunk again.
Caterina reached in and pulled out the top packet on the left side. She carried it to the desk and placed it upside down, then returned to the trunk to take a more careful look at the remaining papers. She had heard the others move closer and now she felt their presence around her. With them still there, she began methodically removing the papers from the left-hand stack and moving them to the table, where she turned each packet upside down on top of the others. That done, she started on the other pile and repeated the process. When the trunk was empty, the cousins leaned over and peered into it to assure themselves that it was.
Signor Scapinelli gave her a sideways glance, as if intending to check her sleeves, but then glanced away when she looked at him and took another look inside the empty trunk.
When the cousins appeared to have seen enough, Caterina methodically replaced the papers in the same order in which she had found them, leaving only the first packet she had removed, which she placed beside the keys.
Scapinelli looked at his watch, and Caterina could all but hear him thinking that it would soon be time to invite them to lunch. Hurriedly, she repeated the process of removing all of the papers in the second trunk. When it was evident that there was nothing but papers in this trunk, either, she replaced them and stepped back from the trunk. Dottor Moretti helped Stievani replace it at the back of the closet. Then they shifted the first one back into place in front of it.
Leaving the doors open, Caterina returned to the desk. She picked up the packet of papers and placed it on the other side of the desk, directly in front of the ex-director’s chair. Thus prepared for work, she turned her attention to the three men in the room. She moved the three keys together on the table. “Thank you for your help, gentlemen,” she said to Dottor Moretti and Signor Stievani.
“And now?” asked Signor Scapinelli, looking again at his watch, no doubt driven to it once more by the thought of the prices on the menus of nearby restaurants.
“I’m going home to have lunch,” Roseanna said.
“I have to meet a client,” Dottor Moretti said.
Signor Scapinelli said, “My son is waiting for me in his shop.”
And his cousin added, “I have to get a train.”
So strong was the temptation to sing, “Io men vado in un ritiro a finir la vita mia” that Caterina had to press her fingernails into her palms to stop herself from doing it. When she recovered some semblance of calm, she pulled out the chair and said, “Then I think I’ll go to work.”
Nine
When they were gone, Caterina sat down. Her job was beginning now, she told herself, conscious that, even as the trunks were being opened and the first papers removed, none of the people there had seen fit to mention Steffani’s name, though all of them knew it. The idea that either of the cousins could have an interest in Baroque music was absurd, and she knew nothing about Dottor Moretti beyond the elegance of his speech and dress. By her own admission, Roseanna was interested in a general sense in the music and the musicians of the period, but wisdom had kept her almost entirely silent during the meeting and the opening of the trunks. Thus, in all of this, she was the only person who took an interest in Steffani, at least as he was represented by his music. And what else mattered, really, after all this time?
He had been a priest. She recalled that he had also been mixed up in politics at the courts where he worked as a musician, but when were priests not mixed up in politics? He might well, then, have left the whole lot to the Church. Maybe the documents would tell, but why then would Propaganda Fide have sent them back?
She tipped her chair back and latched her hands behind her head, feeling no urge to look at the papers just yet. She wanted to think about the Big Things at work here. If she did find some sort of “testamentary disposition,” it would have little legal weight, not after three hundred years. Dottor Moretti must know this. “Tanto fumo. Poco arrosto,” she whispered aloud. There had indeed been a great deal of smoke: the suggestion that there had been other applicants for the job, the employment of a lawyer of Dottor Moretti’s apparent caliber, the many restrictions surrounding the work. What, then, would the roast be? Or what did they expect it to be?
Caterina looked around the room and wondered why Roseanna had not appropriated it. After all, it was unlikely that the Foundation would ever have another director.
“Pity you couldn’t be a singer,” she told herself aloud, as if having had the courage to choose that career would have led to something more exciting than this room and the weeks of reading that no doubt lay ahead of her. Rigorous honesty intervened here and warned her that her vocal talent would have taken her, with luck, as far as the chorus of the opera house of Treviso.
She let the front legs of the chair hit the floor and pulled the packet toward her, worked at the knot in the string that held it together until it came free, wrapped it into a neat oval around her fingers, and set it at a corner of the desk. Almost three hundred years and it w
as still unbroken and strong enough to be reused. The paper on the top was a letter written in Italian in a strongly Italianate hand. It bore the date 4 January 1710 and was addressed to “Il mio fratello in Cristo Agostino.” She lifted the paper by the top corners and held it to the light. She didn’t recognize the watermark, but the paper felt and looked right to justify the date.
Caterina had some trouble with the script, though none with the language or meaning. The letter made opening reference to the opera Tassilone, which the sender had had the immeasurable pleasure of seeing the previous year in Düsseldorf. Only now did the writer break in upon the creative genius of the composer, whose time he dared not waste, by sending his humble praise of a work in which were displayed both the highest moral principles and the most sublime manifestation of musical creativity.
She glanced up from the letter and tried to dig into the musical memories lodged in her scholar’s skull to get some sense of whether this was lickspittle flattery or honest praise. Steffani, she had once read, had introduced French fashions into Italian opera, a novelty imitated by that great borrower—to avoid using a different word—Handel.
The writer continued in this vein for another three paragraphs, detailing the “countless excellencies” of the work, the “sublime perfection” in the musical phrasing, and the “convincing moral principles” maintained by the text.
Below this paragraph, a few bars of music were quoted. She read the first line: “Deh, non far colle tue lagrime,” hearing the exceptionally beautiful largo as she mouthed the words. Suddenly there appeared the voice of a solo oboe, and Caterina’s voice was stilled by the enduring spell of its sound.
The page ended, and when she turned to the second, she was disappointed to see that prose had replaced beauty. Two more paragraphs carried her to the last, in which the writer, proclaiming his own unworthiness, asked the “Most Worthy Abbé” to intercede with the Bishop of Celle in aid of the appointment of his nephew, Marco, to the post of choirmaster at the Church of Saint Ludwig. The signature was illegible, as in the manner of signatures of those times.