by Paul Adam
“Professor, it was good of you to see me at such short notice.”
I held out my hand. Castellani gave it a perfunctory shake.
“What is it you want?” he asked brusquely. “I haven’t got long.”
He looked at me, and I was relieved to see no flicker of recognition in his eyes. Marco was right: Castellani didn’t remember me.
I sat down in a chair that was positioned to one side of the desk and placed the light raincoat I’d brought with me on the carpet underneath the chair. There was a limited amount of legroom because the floor was taken up with cardboard boxes of books for which, presumably, there was no space on the shelves.
I told him I was looking for information about Paganini and Elisa Baciocchi, remaining vague about my reasons for seeking it.
“I’ve read your biography of Paganini,” I said. “A most enjoyable book, by the way,” I added, judging that a little flattery would do me no harm.
Castellani ran a hand through his long hair, sweeping it back behind his ears. He was wearing an open-necked black shirt—doubtless of designer origin, though I was too out of touch with fashion even to hazard a guess at the label—faded blue jeans and hand-sewn black leather shoes, which I knew were Gucci, but only because there was a discreet logo on them advertising that fact.
“Yes, the reviewers thought so, too,” he said. “ ‘Undoubtedly the most complete biography of Paganini that has ever been written,’ was what La Stampa said about it. And I don’t even write for them. Well, I didn’t then anyway.”
“You were very good on the relationship between Paganini and Elisa. But I imagine there was a lot of material you left out of the book.”
“Of course, there always is. One is limited by space, by the requirements of the publisher. One has to make a judgement about what is important and what is not. Those years in Lucca were only a small part of Paganini’s career.”
“But very significant years,” I said.
He gave me a sharp stare, seeming to question my credentials for making such a statement.
“Not in the context of his whole life,” he said. “Lucca was something of a distraction, a sideshow. He was really only marking time there. All his major achievements came later.”
“I meant significant in his personal life. His affair with Elisa.”
Castellani laughed scornfully.
“Don’t be taken in by all the romantic bullshit that surrounds Paganini. He used Elisa, and she used him. That’s pretty much the norm in relations between men and women.”
“Not in my experience,” I said.
Castellani’s gaze was pitying now.
“You seem very naïve. What did you say you were on the phone? Your occupation?”
“I am a violin maker.”
“Ah, yes, a craftsman. Well, I imagine your experience of the world—and women—is probably fairly narrow. Paganini, when he was in Lucca, was young, handsome, charismatic. It was only natural that Elisa would want to sleep with him. Talent is a wonderful aphrodisiac to a woman. It’s no different today.”
Castellani smoothed back his hair again, a man speaking from experience—or trying to give the impression of it.
“Don’t think for a moment that Paganini cared a damn about Elisa,” he went on. “She was just a passing conquest to him, one of many.”
“But he dedicated compositions to her,” I said.
“That means nothing. Elisa was his patroness. Composing works dedicated to her was expected of him.”
“Do you know exactly what he wrote while he was in Lucca?”
“You say you’ve read my book. I give a full list in an appendix at the back.”
“You are sure it is a full list?”
Castellani didn’t like that. His mouth tightened.
“You are implying that I might have missed something?”
“No, no, professor. But it’s not unknown for new works to be discovered. Did Paganini, for example, ever write a Serenata Appassionata for Elisa?”
“A Serenata Appassionata?” Castellani frowned. “It’s a long time since I wrote that biography. I can’t remember every detail. Let me find a copy.”
He pushed back his chair, stood up, and scanned the shelves behind his desk. I looked down at the cardboard boxes beside my feet, wondering if I could help locate the book. The boxes had open lids. The books spilling out from them were different shapes and sizes, all about music. I saw Beethoven’s name on the spine of one, a dog-eared dust jacket bearing the face of Richard Wagner on another. Then I glanced in a second box and noticed something else. I reached down.
“Here we are,” Castellani said.
He turned, his biography of Paganini in his hand. I straightened up and gave him my attention.
“He wrote the twenty-four caprices in Lucca, of course,” he said, leafing through to the end of the book. “Undoubtedly his greatest, and most lasting, contribution to the violin repertoire.”
“But he didn’t write them for Elisa,” I said.
“No, the caprices are dedicated ‘To the Artists.’ They were his Opus One. His Opus Two, six sonatas for violin and guitar, were dedicated to Signor Delle Piane, and his Opus Three, another six sonatas for violin and guitar, were for Eleonora Quilici, a childhood friend. He left her money in his will, too. His Opus Four, three quartets for violin, viola, guitar, and cello, were dedicated ‘To the Amateurs, from Nicolò Paganini,’ and so was his Opus Five, another set of three quartets for the same instruments.
“Of his published works, that’s about it as far as Lucca goes. We know he wrote an unpublished “Scène Amoreuse” for the G and E strings—a sort of duet between a lady and her lover, the E representing the lady’s voice, the G the lover’s. And he wrote a sonata entitled Napoleone for the G string only, but that was dedicated to Elisa’s brother, and has never been published, either.”
“No Serenata Appassionata?”
“I have never heard of such a piece. What makes you think it exists?”
“A reference I read somewhere,” I said vaguely.
“You must be mistaken. I did a huge amount of research for this book and never came across a Serenata Appassionata.”
“Perhaps I’m wrong,” I said. “What about presents? Did Elisa give many gifts to Paganini?”
“She was famously extravagant, yes. She gave him jewels, money.”
“What about violins? Did she ever give him a violin?”
“Quite possibly. Paganini accumulated violins throughout his life, though he played almost exclusively on il Cannone.”
“You don’t know for certain?”
“It was two hundred years ago. I have seen no mention of a violin in the papers I’ve read. Like any biographer, I had to work with the records that were available to me. Where there were gaps, I had to do my best to fill them in, but it could only have been educated guesswork.”
Castellani replaced his biography on the shelves and sat down again at the desk, tilting back his padded leather chair and watching me attentively.
“This reference to a Serenata Appassionata you mentioned,” he said. “Where did you see it?”
“I’m not sure,” I said evasively.
“In a book?”
“I don’t know. I’m interested in Paganini, that’s all. Perhaps I’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick.”
“Paganini did write a Sonata Appassionata,” Castellani said. “You could be thinking of that.”
“Yes, that must be it.”
“But that was much later than Lucca. Perhaps as late as 1829. He parted from Elisa nearly twenty years before that.”
“And never saw her again?”
“I wouldn’t like to say with any certainty.”
“He dedicated his ‘Moses Fantasy’ to her. And that was written in 1819.”
Castellani nodded slowly.
“You’ve read—and remembered—my book well.”
“Not just your book. I’ve read others, too.”
“Pah,�
� Castellani said contemptuously. “They are all inferior works. None of them has the depth or ambition of my biography.”
I didn’t contradict him. I needed to keep him sweet for my next question.
“If Paganini had written something for Elisa, a piece of music that later disappeared, what do you think might have happened to it?”
“That’s a ludicrous question, impossible to answer. Anything could have happened to it.”
“What if Elisa kept it until her death?”
“She died in 1820. That’s a very long time ago.”
“Do you know what became of her possessions, her estate?”
“I have no idea. I wrote a book about Paganini, not Elisa Baciocchi. She had no interest to me beyond her relationship with Paganini. And she still has no interest to me.”
Castellani looked at his watch.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot to do.”
“Of course, professor. Thank you for your time. You have been most helpful.”
I reached down and picked up my raincoat. It slipped from my fingers on to one of the boxes of books and I had to fumble to retrieve it. Castellani, meanwhile, had lifted up the telephone and was talking to Marco.
“Signor, Signor”—he couldn’t remember my name—“my visitor is ready to leave. Show him out, will you?”
I went back downstairs with Marco. The young man was quiet, seemingly preoccupied with his own thoughts.
“Professor Castellani can’t be an easy man to work for,” I said.
“What? Oh, no, he isn’t easy,” Marco replied. “But if I’m to get a tenured post, having him on my side is essential. He carries a lot of weight in the department.”
In the foyer, I shook hands with Marco and thanked him. Then I went out onto the street. The spots of rain had turned into a light drizzle. I unfolded my raincoat, carefully extracting the book that I’d concealed inside it, then slipped the coat over my shoulders, put the book in a side pocket, and walked away along the pavement.
It was only a short distance to the university’s department of economics, but by the time I got there, my hair was gleaming wet and the rain was dripping off the hem of my coat onto my shoes. I found Margherita in her office, reading through a large pile of papers.
“I’m a little early,” I said. “Shall I go away for half an hour, then come back?”
Margherita gave me a look of incredulity.
“Are you kidding? It’s raining out there. You’re drenched.”
“It’s only a shower. It’ll blow over soon.”
“Take off your coat. Put it on the radiator.”
“But I’m disturbing you.”
“You’re rescuing me, Gianni. You haven’t come a moment too soon. I’ve had just about enough of this rubbish.”
She pushed the pile of papers to one side and sighed with relief.
“Final-year students’ assignments,” she said. “If this is the future of Italian economics, then God help us all.”
I shook the water off my coat and hung it over the radiator.
“Bad?” I said.
“Bad is an understatement. These are supposed to be the cream of our young people, yet half of them can’t even spell properly. One or two don’t seem able to use a calculator, either. I don’t dare to think about it, but in ten years’ time, they’ll be running the country.”
“They can hardly be worse than the bunch we’ve got in at the moment. Or the ones before that.”
“Yes, that’s reassuring, I suppose. But the worrying thing is, I taught some of them economics, too. Is it all my fault?”
I smiled.
“I expect so. After all, politicians never take responsibility for anything, do they? They can’t possibly be to blame, so it must be you.”
Margherita pushed back her chair and looked round the floor underneath her desk.
“Can you see my shoes anywhere?”
“They’re over here.”
“How did they get there? I’m sure they move round the room of their own accord.”
I picked up the shoes and passed them over the desk. Margherita put them on and started to pack away her student assignments in a briefcase.
“You’re taking those home?” I said.
“I know, it’s masochistic, but someone has to mark them.”
“I thought we were going for dinner.”
“We are.”
“And you’re going to work afterwards?”
She paused.
“Yes, it’s a bit silly, isn’t it? Am I realistically going to start marking at eleven o’clock?”
“Leave them here. They’ll wait another day.”
Margherita nodded. She pulled the papers from the briefcase and dumped them on a corner of her desk.
“You’re so good for me, Gianni,” she said.
She was good for me, too, I reflected as we left her office and walked through the drizzle to a nearby trattoria. We have not known each other long. We met just over a year ago in traumatic circumstances—when her uncle, an eccentric collector of violins, was murdered in Venice. The death, and its aftermath, brought us together, and we have continued seeing each other since. It was strange, at first, to have her in my life. When my wife died, seven years ago now, I did not think I would ever form another close bond with a woman. I had seen other men recover quickly from bereavement, even marry again within a short space of time, but I couldn’t understand them. I couldn’t understand how they could shake off their grief so easily, how their first wives could so swiftly be supplanted.
There is a pattern to our sexual lives that is almost universal. We all have those intense adolescent infatuations that end in tears; then most of us fall prey to that temporary chemical imbalance in the brain that we call “falling in love”—nature’s way of pairing us off. We marry, we have children—an exhaustingly absorbing outlet for our love—and we find an equilibrium, a harmony that, if we are lucky, will last until the pair bond is severed by death. That, at any rate, has been my experience. Caterina and I were together for thirty-five years. I married her when I was twenty-two and I was fifty-seven when she was taken from me. I did not expect to lose her so soon. She was truly the light of my life, and when she died, the whole world went dark. For a long time it remained in blackness; then gradually the night began to pass and a new light crept over the horizon. At first it was just a flicker, like a candle in the wilderness, but slowly it became brighter, until there was enough for me to see my way, to light the path through my remaining years. It will never be a dazzling summer day again, but I have found much to comfort me in the glow of an autumn afternoon, to keep me warm until my own inevitable darkness comes to claim me.
I have my work. I have my friends. I have my children and grandchildren. And now I have Margherita. I didn’t think anything like this would happen. I didn’t go looking for it. It just came about. I felt guilty in the early months, wondering whether I was betraying my dead wife. Then I realised that in questioning this new relationship I was inadvertently insulting Caterina, ascribing to her a jealousy, an ill nature that was not part of her makeup. She was a generous, good-hearted woman. She loved me as I loved her. She is gone, but she would not begrudge me a little happiness in the years I have left.
Margherita has not taken her place—no one could do that. I have not fallen in love with her. I am too old and experienced for infatuation. This is not a hormonal relationship; it is a meeting of minds, an attachment that is still young, still relatively unformed, but which may, in time, become something deeper.
“Would you like a drink?” I said after we were settled at our table.
“Please. Just a glass of wine will do me fine.”
I ordered a bottle of red and glanced round the restaurant. It was still early in the evening. People were drifting in—couples, a few business executives in suits—but several tables were unoccupied.
“How was your meeting with the professor?” Margherita said, the last word subtly emphasised.
I’d told her earlier on the phone that I was going to see Castellani, told her also about the gold box and the letter inside it.
“He was very civil to me,” I said.
“Really?”
“Which is more than he is to his staff. He has this assistant—Marco something—whom he treats like a servant.”
“An associate lecturer?”
“How did you know?”
“It’s very common. The university is full of them. Able young postgraduates doing the most menial tasks for people like Castellani in the hope of preferment.”
“That’s what Marco said. He needs Castellani’s support if he’s to get a tenured post.”
“That’s how the system works. In theory, all lectureships are decided by competitive examination, open to anyone from anywhere in the country. In practice, the jobs are all stitched up beforehand by the departmental power brokers—people like Castellani. If this young man crosses Castellani, his academic career will be over before it’s started.”
“Nasty.”
“Oh yes, very. Universities are like the Papal court—cabals of ruthless schemers plotting against one another. If you want a job, you play the game. Spend a few years on the periphery, kissing the backsides of your superiors, swallowing your pride. It’s unavoidable.”
“Did you have to do it?”
Margherita smiled dryly.
“I’m a woman in a man’s world. I used my feminine wiles, of course, and slept my way to the middle. Isn’t that what we all do? No, I’m joking. But I did my share of dogsbody work before I got a secure post. Fortunately, the head of department at the time was a decent, enlightened man. He loathed the system of patronage and had the revolutionary idea that posts should be allocated according to ability. He was clearly insane. He wouldn’t last two minutes in today’s world.”
We paused while the waiter brought the wine and filled our glasses. Then we looked at the menu and ordered our food. Margherita drank some of her wine.
“So, was Castellani helpful?” she asked.
“Not very,” I replied.
I gave her a brief summary of my conversation with the professor.