The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  He never saw her in Venice again.

  Nor in any other town he searched.

  From that Tuesday in that February until today—yesterday—

  No matter how he turned on the day-bed, or mashed his pillows, he was still left staring into the darkness, open-eyed.

  All that surprised him about that was that he did not particularly feel it the following morning.

  He made his way through the maze of Palace rooms early enough that the footmen and guards were still yawning. He put his key into the door of the secret museum, opened it, and stepped through.

  The lemon-coloured light from the eastern windows outlined the solid shape of the Conte di Argente, standing gazing across the Bay. One possessive hand rested on the upright piano. Conrad hesitated, and the bearded man turned to face him.

  The numerous man-beasts, fornications, and phalluses blurred in Conrad’s sight.

  He couldn’t help but tell over the other man’s name and titles, like rosary beads. Roberto Capiraso. Conte di Argente. And—Leonora, Contessa di Argente?

  Conrad saw the Count inhale, his fists clenching, nails evidently digging into his palms. He turned.

  “Scalese—just what is your interest in my wife?”

  The possessive tone raked claws of irritation up Conrad’s back. Anger freed his tongue when, Conrad realised, it probably shouldn’t have done. “She must have told you what I—You owe me an explanation!”

  “I owe you nothing, you little upstart!”

  “I think you do.” Conrad took several paces forward, between cupboards and desk, until he reached the piano and the window, letting his inch or two of greater height intimidate the heavier man in that crowded space.

  Il Conte did not look intimidated.

  Roberto Capiraso shot a look from pitch-dark eyes. “Yes, you met her in Venice. She remembers you. Whatever fantasy you may have woven around a woman you clearly never knew at all—is irrelevant. Leonora D’Arienzo became betrothed to me in Venice, married me, and has been my wife since that day to this!”

  The avalanche of his words threatened to leave Conrad speechless. Half-blind with anger, he forced out, “She was my wife in all but name for over one whole year—”

  “And she is my wife by the blessed sacrament of marriage!”

  It cut off his breath—cut off, Conrad discovered, anything more he could say.

  “We have work, here,” Roberto Capiraso emphasised. “This is the last discussion I will entertain on my personal life, is that clear, Scalese? You will show my wife the respect owed to the Contessa di Argente by one who is—” The man’s gaze swept up and took in Conrad in one glance. “—clearly her social inferior, and inferior in all the ways that matter.”

  It silenced Conrad for sufficient time that Roberto Capiraso sat down at one of the green-topped desks, unlocked the drawers, and eventually brought out both a steel-nib pen and sheets of paper ruled with staves.

  Leaving me standing here as if I were some farm-hand confronted with his Master.

  Conrad ignored the locked cupboards and his own manuscript. He opened the shutters to the balcony, looking out over the bright sea, and breathed in the live air.

  Was he in Venice, back then? I never saw him! I never heard his name, or anything like it!

  There were rumours said she’d gone away with a well-dressed young man. But whatever happened, there would have been a rumour something like that; it’s what people like to think.

  I don’t know, now, which of the moments I saw her in Venice was the last. Because I had not ever expected her to walk away from me.

  But then she was not in his bed when he woke, not in their lodgings, and her name—in the smallest possible type and at the very bottom—had been removed from the bill at La Fenice.

  Il Conte di Argente would have been, what, in his late twenties then? A rich young nobleman doing the Grand Tour after the Emperor’s wars ended? And I had taken on my father’s debts. We wouldn’t have moved in the same circles, that’s for sure.

  He could have been any one of the hundreds of young men who frequented the backstage at the opera. No names. No idea when their boat had left, or which road they might have taken away from the city of canals.

  I had only the acid knowledge that Nora was gone. Alone, or with another man, or… How could I imagine? When I had no idea there was anyone other than the two of us in the world.

  With his back to the other man, Conrad thought himself isolated—until he caught sight of the composer’s reflection in the window-glass.

  The Count was not looking at Conrad.

  In fact, Conrad saw, he appeared to be gazing at one of the archaeological rescues on the shelves—a statue of a Pan-figure, no more than a foot tall; the satyr depicted as amiably fucking a nanny-goat.

  Roberto Capiraso was not seeing what he looked at, Conrad realised. The statuette was one of those difficult to look on without reaction—not for its unabashed pornographic clarity, but because one usually couldn’t regard the female goat’s blissful expression without laughing.

  The Conte di Argente might have been in another world. And it might have been a different man sitting there. Roberto Capiraso had the top of his pen resting against his lip, evidently taken up with his own thoughts to a degree that he was conscious of nothing around him. The lines of arrogance were gone from his features; he looked—Conrad searched for the appropriate word—as if he contemplated one of those things that have men awake at three in the morning, turning in their beds and unable to sleep.

  Roberto Capiraso’s distanced gaze met Conrad’s, in the reflection in the glass. The Count’s expression changed to complete immobility, only a slight sneer lifting his nostrils. He made a small production of returning to his paper, and scrawling an opening phrase of music.

  Everything was gone, suddenly, in Conrad’s mind, except the burning sole fact: this man is now married to Leonora.

  Whenever and wherever he met her, whether it was when she and I were together or not, she’s his by law now.

  Her memory was enough to wipe out any momentary sympathy for Capiraso. Conrad stared out across waves towards the green coasts of Sorrento and the Isola di Capri.

  Why did she leave me? Why is she with this man?

  Ignoring Capiraso as much as possible, he seated himself at his desk and unlocked his notes. And found himself staring, unseeing, as his pen dripped ink on the page.

  I need to see her. And I can’t. Not without messing up what chance remains of completing an opera with this man.

  He forced himself to write.

  Work on the libretto—without a word to Roberto Capiraso—was liberating. It took him away from the uncomfortable shared room, away from Naples, away from everything except the creation (that almost felt like discovery) of situations that would wrench the heart and gut with sympathy. He wrestled with his draft lines for Xochitl, one of the Aztec Princess’s many slave-girls.

  Two interlocking triangles, here. The slave-girl and Princess Tayanna both love Cortez. Cortez and the Jaguar General both love the Aztec Princess.

  Around noon, gazing absently out at the bright day, Conrad found himself staring again past the bowed head of Roberto Capiraso. He immediately looked away.

  This is an opera. How the hell am I going to work with this man on scenes of love, passion, rivalry… adultery?

  With some mumbled excuse about needing air, Conrad scrambled papers into the drawer, locked it, and left almost at a run.

  I’ll have to work on the Principessa and the Slave-girl, first; two women being rivals for one man. Because there’s no way I can write two men who are rivals for one woman.

  The swift afternoon plated gold over Naples’ buildings and streets, and made a glittering dazzle out of the foreshore. Conrad let his feet choose, walking west on the sandy track past Egg Castle, under the trees. Lazzaroni on the narrow beach watched fishermen up to their waists, dragging nets through the water.

  Conrad halted eventually, not sure why. Th
e sunset dazzled his eyes full of glowing dark spots.

  I walked the afternoon away.

  He let his feet lead him back north of east to his lodgings, under the hanging branches of new-leafed trees. Twilight came and went. The sea-wind whipped his hair full of salt. He walked tiredly upstairs in the dusk.

  “Padrone. Someone called.” Tullio indicated the silver tray by the door for calling cards. “Said he’d be back later.”

  Conrad removed his coat and gloves and let Tullio take them. “Were there any other appointments for today? Is it one of Paolo’s? Maybe it’s a tenor who can sing… Did he look like a singer?”

  Having hung up the coat, Tullio went back to filling and trimming his two prized Carcel oil lamps (undoubtedly looted from somewhere north of the Alps; now proudly fitted with new glass mantles). Their light swelled as he lit first one, then the other; making the room much brighter than candles. He shook his head.

  “Well-dressed as a banker. Talked like a nobleman. If he’s a tenor, I’ll eat my boots.”

  Before Conrad could read the card, the sound of footsteps at street-level gave him time enough to step onto the landing and take a look down the stairs, dark as it was. He pulled the door to and stepped back into the lodgings. “I don’t think your boots are in any danger.” Could the King have started finding additional patrons?

  At the knock, Tullio let in a tall, slender, white-haired man, who handed over gloves, hat, and cane. Entering the area of the lamps’ light, he stood revealed as a man in his early seventies, with a hawk-nose that had evidently been broken at least once, but did not detract from the man’s aristocratic demeanour.

  “Cavaliere Adalrico Silvestri,” Tullio announced, reading off the card after the usual murmur, “Conte di Galdi.”

  “Cavaliere,” Conrad echoed, offering his hand. “Excuse me, I don’t believe we’ve met?”

  The impeccable old man regarded Conrad’s hand in the way women in the market regard stale fish.

  “I haven’t come to be sociable, Signore Scalese. This is purely business.” The man clasped his own hands at his back. “You are Conrad Arturo Scalese, sometimes known as Corrado or Corradino, is this correct? And your father was Alfredo Scalese, born Alfred Amsel?”

  “I—yes—” Conrad could do nothing but stare. To find himself surprised by his father’s name, so soon after the coincidence of being surprised by his ghost—

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” Conrad blurted. “My father is one of those who doesn’t rest easily in his grave. I was visited by him not long ago.” Before I met another ghost from the past. “Signore, if your business isn’t urgent, may I request that we put it off until tomorrow?”

  Surprisingly, given the man’s harsh demeanour, he appeared for a moment to consider this.

  “No,” he said finally, “it can’t wait, Signore Scalese.”

  “Very well.”

  Conrad offered the elderly man a seat, and wine, but Silvestri turned down such amenities, increasingly brusquely.

  “I need hardly ask,” he interjected, “whether you’re familiar with your father’s debts?”

  Conrad decided on brusqueness of his own. “No, you needn’t ask; I’m perfectly familiar with each amount, and each creditor. I will ask, signore, what business it is of yours?”

  The knife-faced old man put one hand inside the breast of his frock coat, and brought out a slim envelope, closed with red wax into which a signet ring had been pressed.

  “It’s my business,” the Conte di Galdi said, “because I am now the owner of each. I have bought up all of your father’s debts, Signore Scalese.”

  Conrad couldn’t make sense of the words. “Bought up…”

  Some intimation of what this might mean made him sit down, rather unsteadily, on the couch.

  The old man shot him an impatient look. “Do you not understand? I approached each one of your creditors; I have bought them out. What you owed to them, you now owe to me.”

  It’s…possible. Conrad’s bemused mind admitted that much.

  “Why would you do that?”

  The Count di Galdi ignored the question.

  “Your father owed five thousand scudi, at his death. There is the amount you have paid off in the past. Then the interest on the various loans… You may wish to look over the figures, but the total still owed is in the order of three thousand scudi.”

  Conrad’s fingers felt cold. Shock. I remember shock from innumerable men on battlefields.

  “If you have all the details,” Conrad said, a little hoarsely, “you’ll see that I have arrangements with each of my father’s creditors, as to how much I pay off every month—”

  “Yes, yes.” The old man waved an impatient hand. “Not good enough, signore! A scudo here, a soldi there… simply not good enough. I own these debts, and whatever ‘arrangements’ you may have had with your previous creditors are irrelevant.”

  Conrad found himself on his feet again. “Signore Conte, I have no idea why you’ve decided to interest yourself in my affairs, but I’ve spent a decade in paying the debts my father owed, and if I need to spend decades more, then that’s what I will do! It’s a debt of honour.”

  “It’s a debt which you’ve got away without paying!”

  Adalrico Silvestri, Conte di Galdi, snapped his fingers, and when Tullio reentered (still holding the Count’s hat and gloves), he took both, and gave Conrad a final scathing look.

  “That’s the trouble with you young men—you think you can avoid your responsibilities. Very nice lodgings you have here, while your creditors are waiting for their rightfully-owed money! But now you only have one creditor to deal with, Signore Scalese. Me.”

  The Count di Galdi looked back from the open door.

  “And I—I am calling in your debt. All of it. Now.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “Wait!”

  Being forty years the old man’s junior, Conrad found, meant he could spring into the doorway and block it. Adalrico Silvestri startled back a pace.

  Conrad searched desperately for words to stop the man walking away and making good on his threat. So many sleepless worries about the subject of finance left him feeling now as if the pit of his stomach were ice.

  “Why have I never heard of the Conte di Galdi before this, if you know my family well enough to buy up our debts!”

  With the elderly nobleman’s back to the oil lamps it was less easy to see his face, but it was distinguishable that he sneered. “You may not have heard of me, boy, but that means nothing. I knew Alfredo; that was enough.”

  Something reptilian in the handsome ancient features made Conrad suddenly certain.

  He may sound like a crusty old man, but he’s not.

  This might be an accidental personal feud with my father, from long ago—but I don’t believe it for a minute.

  Conrad let his gaze fall, as if he were both ashamed and abashed; it allowed him to hide his expression.

  If I ever trusted my instincts… This is one of the Prince’s Men.

  Ferdinand warned me there would be attempts at obstruction. And di Galdi will have me arrested in a heartbeat if I don’t pay up… I wonder if I’d ever reach the jail?

  “Signore Conte—” Conrad managed to speak as if he were only shocked, and not alert in every sense. “I realise my father must have done you some great wrong. As his son, there’s nothing I can say of my father, do you understand, signore?”

  Silvestri prodded at the floorboards with his stick, as if that were likely to make Conrad move out of the way. “I understand this—you owe me, Scalese.”

  Conrad swallowed back every word he wanted to speak.

  What can I do, what will the Prince’s Men not expect? Hell and damnation, I don’t know!

  “Sir, I ask you to grant me a few hours grace. At the moment I have nothing. Once I’ve seen my employers—” Conrad made it plural at the last second, to give an impression that he had minor jobs every here and where. “—Then, I may be able to give you a qui
te different answer.”

  The ancient aristocrat met Conrad’s gaze, his expression unreadable. “A few hours will make little difference. Expect my banker to call first thing tomorrow—and he’ll bring bailiffs!”

  Conrad stood back. The old man humphed, strode past with surprising vigour, and slammed the door behind him. The front window allowed Conrad to see only a departing coach, with gas-lamps dimly showing the heraldic device on it—presumably that of the di Galdi family.

  “It would have been easier if they’d jumped me in a dark alley, like I expected. My damned father! Leaving the family like this? What was he thinking?”

  “From what you’ve said about him, padrone, he was probably thinking ‘the next one’ll make me really rich!’ Isn’t that what every gambler thinks?”

  Conrad clenched his fists and forced himself not to smash everything breakable within reach.

  “I should be used to this by now! If I have to eat shit sandwich served up to me by some doddering conspirator, it’s because of my father! If I have to pay three-quarters of everything I earn to other people, it’s because of—And if—Damn it—Alfredo Scalese, answer for your sins!”

  The ancient formula belonged to the Church. Conrad hated using it. Particularly so soon after the ghost had visited him voluntarily.

  His one satisfaction, he thought grimly, as he watched a spectre manifest, was that Alfredo plainly believed it compelled him.

  The temperature in the lodgings dropped more than could be accounted for by the deepening dark. Alfredo Scalese, or Alfred Amsel, as he had been born, manifested by Conrad’s desk, one hip hitched up so that he sat on the desk’s edge, and every part of his attitude speaking of the easy-going man-about-town. The light from the oil lamps shone through him.

  “So soon, Corradino? How pleasant to see you again—”

  “I’ve been quiet for nine years!” Conrad stepped as close to the ghost as he could without intersecting it, glaring into the translucent eyes. “You’re my father, I’ve been paying off your debt all my life, and here it is bollocking everything up again. Is there no way to be rid of these debts?”