Catastrophe

by Dino Buzzati

  A pox on him! thought the maestro to himself. The impudence of the demonstration had put him out of temper, he did not know why. Just before he got to San Babilà, he was even more put out by a brief meeting with Bombassei, an excellent young man who had been his pupil at the Conservatorio, and was now a music critic. “You are Scala-bound, maestro?” he asked, noticing the white tie under the open label of Cottes’ overcoat.

  “Do you wish to imply, insolent young man, that I’ve reached the age . . . ?” said he, ingenuously fishing for a compliment.

  “You know quite well,” said the other, “the Scala would not be the same without Maestro Cottes. But Arduino? How come he’s not with you?”

  “Arduino has already been to the dress rehearsal. He had an appointment this evening.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Bombassei with a shrewd smile of understanding, “he will have wanted to stay home . . . this evening.”

  “Whatever for?” asked Cottes, noticing the emphasis.

  “He has too many friends about,” and the young man indicated the passersby with a nod of the head. “I’d have done the same too if I’d been in his shoes . . . but please excuse me, maestro, here’s my tram . . . I hope you enjoy yourself!”

  The older man was left in the air, uneasy and puzzled. He looked at the people on the street, and could see nothing strange: except that perhaps there were fewer about than usual, and those there looked distracted and slightly anxious. Although Bombassei’s talk was still an enigma to him, there suddenly came to his mind, in an unrelated and confused way, some of his son’s half phrases, the new companions who had recently appeared, the evening commitments which Arduino had never explained, eluding his questions with vague explanations. What if his son had got himself into some mess? And what was there so special about this evening? Who were the “too many friends” who were around?

  Turning these problems over in his mind, he came into Piazza della Scala. His anxiety vanished as he looked at the comforting ferment at the entrance to the opera house. Watched by an admiring crowd, women were hurriedly streaming in, in a flurry of trains and veils; through the windows of the sumptuous cars as they queued up in long lines, one could catch glimpses of jewels, white shirtfronts and bare shoulders. A threatening and possibly tragic night was about to begin, but the Scala in its impassive way was displaying the splendor of bygone times. Never in recent seasons had there been such a harmonious union of material and spiritual wealth. The very restlessness which had begun to spread through the city was probably increasing the feeling of animation. To an informed observer it seemed as if a whole privileged and exclusive world were taking refuge in its beloved citadel, like Nibelungs in the royal palace at the coming of Attila, to enjoy one last supreme night of glory. But in reality very few people knew. The softness of the evening made most of them feel that a dark period had ended with the last traces of winter, and a wonderful, calm summer was about to begin.

  Carried forward on the sea of people, Claudio Cottes soon found himself in the stalls almost without noticing it, under the full brilliance of the lights. It was ten minutes to nine, and the opera house was already full. Cottes gazed around in ecstasy, like a small boy. The passing years could not alter the feeling he received every time he entered the auditorium; it remained pure and untarnished, like the sight of great natural beauties. He knew that many others, whose presence he greeted with a small gesture of acknowledgment, felt the same. This created a special link, a sort of masonry which to an outsider might seem perhaps slightly ridiculous.

  Was anyone missing? Cottes’s expert glance examined the audience block by block, and found everything in order. On his left sat Ferro, a pediatrician, who would have let thousands of young patients die of croup sooner than miss a prima. (This suggested to Cottes an amusing play on words about Herod and the children of Galilee, which he decided to use later on.) On his right were the couple he had christened “the poor relations,” an elderly man and wife who always wore the same shabby evening dress. They never missed a prima, and applauded everything with the same enthusiasm; they spoke to nobody, not even to each other, so that everyone considered them to be claqueurs de luxe, who had been given seats in the most aristocratic part of the stalls to lead the applause. Beyond them sat Professor Schiassi, a first-class economist, who was famous for having followed Toscanini for many years on all his conducting tours; as he was then short of money, he went about on a bicycle, slept in the public gardens and ate sandwiches from a haversack. Relations and friends considered him slightly mad, but were nonetheless devoted to him. And then there was Beccian, a hydraulic engineer, who was probably a multimillionaire, but a most humble and unhappy music lover; a month earlier he had been elected “Consigliere” of the Società del Quartetto* (an honor for which he had hankered like a lover, for decades, performing indescribable diplomatic feats to get elected). Pride had made him insufferably overbearing, both at home and at his business: he sat in judgment on Purcell and d’Indy, although previously he would not have dared address the last desk of double basses. And there with her tiny husband was the lovely Maddi Canestrini, ex-shopgirl, who had an afternoon session with a music-history professor every time there was a new opera, so as not to show her ignorance: never before had it been possible to admire her celebrated bosom in such measure of completeness. It stood out among the crowd, someone said, like the lighthouse at the Cape of Good Hope. And then there was Princess Wurz-Montague with her birdlike nose, who had come on purpose from Egypt with her four daughters. In the lowest stage box one could catch the glint of the lascivious eyes of bearded Count Noce; he could be relied on to attend all operas which promised the presence of ballerinas, and had always been known to express his satisfaction on such occasions with the unchanging formula, “Ah, what a figure! Ah, what legs!” In a first-row box sat the entire tribe of the old Milanese family Salcetti, who boasted of never having missed a prima at the Scala since 1837. And in the fourth row, almost on top of the stage, were the poor Marchesas Marizzoni—mother, aunt and unmarried daughter. They were busily taking bitter side-glances at a magnificent box (no. 14) on the second row, their feudal benefice, which they had been forced to quit this year from economic necessity. For an eighth of the cost they had resigned themselves to listening up in the gods, and were holding themselves as stiff as hoopoes, trying not to be noticed. In another, watched over by a uniformed aide-de-camp, slept a fat Indian prince of unestablished identity; the aigrette of his turban could be seen over the top of the box, waving up and down with his breathing. Not far off stood a striking woman of about thirty, intent on attracting attention; her astounding scarlet dress was open in front to the waist, and a black ribbon curled like an adder around her bare arm: a Hollywood actress, they said, but opinions differed as to her name. Motionless beside her sat a most beautiful child, so frighteningly pale it seemed as if he might die at any moment. The rival groups of the nobility and the wealthy merchant class had both discarded the elegant custom of leaving the barcacce* half-empty. In boiled shirts and fashionable tailcoats from the best houses, the well-provided sons of Lombardy were packed in serried, sunburned bunches. An extra proof of the unusual success of the evening was the exceptional number of beautiful women with extremely daring décolletés. During one of the intervals, Cottes promised himself a game he had enjoyed in his youth—studying the depth of such perspectives from above. He secretly selected as vantage point the fourth-row box where he caught sight of the glitter of Flavia Sol’s diamonds: she was a fine contralto and his good friend.

  Like a dark eye in the midst of a quivering mass of flowers, a single box stood out in contrast to such gay magnificence. It was in the third row, and was occupied by three men, aged between thirty and forty, two sitting at the sides, and the third standing. They wore double-breasted black suits, dark ties, and their faces were thin and overcast. They were immobile and nondescript, foreign to everything happening around them. They gazed fixedly at the curtain, as if it were the only object worthy of thei
r regard. They did not seem to be spectators who had come to enjoy themselves, but judges of a sinister tribunal who were waiting for the execution, now that sentence had been passed; and who preferred not to look at the victims while they were waiting, not from pity but because it repelled them to do so. Several people stared at them, and felt uneasy. Who were they? How did they dare darken the Scala with their funereal looks? Was it a challenge? And for what? Maestro Cottes too was puzzled as he saw them there. They disturbed the atmosphere with an evil presage. And he had a hidden sense of fear, and dared not watch them through his opera glasses. At that moment the lights went out. A white reflection stood out in the darkness, and out of the orchestra pit rose the lean figure of Max Nieberl, conductor and specialist in contemporary music.

  Frightened or nervous people in the audience that night would certainly not have found anything in the evening’s entertainment to put them at ease: there was nothing peaceful about Grossgemuth’s music, or the Tetrarch’s frenzies, the violent and almost uninterrupted comments from the chorus and the hallucinating effect of the sets. The chorus were perched like a flock of ravens on a sort of conical cliff, and their invective poured down on the audience like a cataract, often making people jump. Each individual element, instruments, players, chorus, singers, corps de ballet, conductor and even the audience itself was strained to the uttermost. (The dancers were on stage almost the whole time, interpreting the slightest action in mime, though the singers moved very little.) At the end of the first act, applause broke out not so much in approval as from a shared physical need to relieve the tension. The marvelous opera house vibrated with the sound. At the third curtain call Grossgemuth’s towering figure appeared among the interpreters, and acknowledged the applause with quick, perfunctory smiles, bowing his head in rhythm. Claudio Cottes remembered the three lugubrious gentlemen, and looked up at them as he clapped: they were still there, as motionless and lifeless as before. They had not stirred by so much as a millimeter, and were neither applauding nor talking: they did not even seem to be alive. Could it be that they were mannequins? They stayed in the same positions even after most of the audience had streamed into the foyer.

  During this first intermission, rumors about some kind of revolution began to circulate among the audience, just as they had in the town. Here too, owing to people’s instinctive reticence, they began unobtrusively. Nor could they overwhelm the heated arguments about Grossgemuth’s opera; Cottes took part in these discussions without expressing his opinions, and made joking comments in Milanese dialect. Finally, the bell sounded to mark the end of the intermission. As he came down the stairs by the Opera Museum, Cottes found himself side by side with an acquaintance whose name he did not remember, but who smiled slyly as soon as he saw him.

  “I’m glad to see you, maestro,” he said, “I wanted to say something to you . . .” He talked slowly with a very affected accent. They went on down the stairs. There was a knot of people, and for a moment they were separated. “Ah, here we are,” he went on as they came together again, “where did you disappear to? Do you know, for a moment I thought you’d disappeared underground . . . like Don Giovanni!” And he seemed to think it a striking comparison because he began laughing heartily; and never stopped. He was a pallid and nondescript man, an impoverished intellectual of good family, judging from the old-fashioned cut of his dinner jacket, the soft and slightly grubby shirt and the gray-rimmed nails. Cottes waited with embarrassment. They had nearly reached the bottom.

  “Well,” said the acquaintance cautiously, met who-knows-where, “you must promise to consider what I say as confidential information . . . confidential, I say. . . . Don’t get the wrong ideas. . . . Don’t think of me as, how shall I say, . . . an official representative . . . an authority, that is the term used nowadays, isn’t it?”

  “Of course, of course,” said Cottes, feeling once again the same discomfort he had felt after meeting Bombassei, but still more acutely, “of course. . . . But I assure you I don’t understand what you are driving at. . . .” The second warning bell rang. They were in the left-hand corridor which runs along by the stalls, and were about to go down the steps leading to the platea.

  Here the strange man stopped. “I must leave you now,” he said, “I am not sitting down here . . . well . . . it’s sufficient to tell you this: your son, the musician . . . wouldn’t it perhaps be better . . . a little more prudence, there . . . he’s no longer a small boy, is he, maestro? But oh, dear, oh, dear, the lights have gone out already. . . . And I’ve said too much, haven’t I!” He laughed, bowed his head slightly, without giving his hand, and slipped away, almost at a run, on the red carpet of the deserted corridor.

  Mechanically old Cottes found his way into the already darkened auditorium, apologized to his neighbors and reached his seat. Tumult raged in his brain. Whatever was he doing, that madcap Arduino? It seemed as if the whole of Milan knew the answer, although his father could not even imagine what it was. And who was that mysterious man? Where had he been introduced to him? Unsuccessfully he tried to recall the circumstances of their first meeting. He thought it unlikely to have been during a musical gathering. Then where? Abroad perhaps? In some hotel during the summer vacation? No, most definitely he could not remember. Meanwhile, on stage, the provocative Martha Witt was advancing with sinuous movements, a naked barbarian, to impersonate Fear, or something of the sort, as it entered the Palace of the Tetrarch.

  Somehow or other, the second intermission arrived. As soon as the lights went up, Cottes looked anxiously around for the man who had talked to him previously. He wanted to question him and make him explain himself; he could not fail to furnish Cottes with a reason. But he was not to be seen. When it was over, he was strongly drawn to look at the box of the three mysterious men. They were three no longer, there was a fourth who kept slightly in the background, and who was dressed in a dinner jacket, but was as dreary as the others. A dinner jacket of old-fashioned cut (now Cottes did not hesitate to look through his opera glasses) and a soft shirt which was slightly grubby. Unlike the other three, the new arrival laughed in a sly way. A quiver ran down Maestro Cottes’ spine.

  He turned to Professor Ferro, as a drowning man seizes the first object that offers. “Excuse me, professor,” he said hurriedly, “but can you tell me who are those dreadful-looking men there in that box, in the third row, immediately to the left of the lady in purple?”

  “Those necromancers?” answered the doctor with a laugh, “but that’s the G.H.Q.! And almost complete too!”

  “G.H.Q.! What G.H.Q.?”

  Ferro seemed amused: “You, at any rate, maestro, live all your days in the clouds. What a lucky man you are.”

  “What G.H.Q.?” asked Cottes again, impatiently.

  “The Morzi’s, for Heaven’s sake!”

  “The Morzi’s?” echoed the old man, struck by the most terrible thoughts. The Morzi, a name of terror. Cottes had never been for them or against them, he knew nothing about them, he had never wanted to concern himself, all he knew was that they were dangerous, that it was better not to provoke them. And poor wretched Arduino had come up against them, made himself their enemy. There was no other explanation. So that foolish son of his was busy with political intrigues instead of putting a little common sense into his music! Nobody could wish for a more indulgent, reasonable and understanding father: but, by Jove, Arduino would hear about this tomorrow! Risking his entire career for a madness of this sort! Cottes gave up the idea of asking any more questions of his previous informer. He realized it would be useless, if not harmful. One did not fool about with the Morzi. It was generous of them to have thought of putting him on his guard. He looked over his shoulder. He had the feeling that the entire theater was looking at him disapprovingly. Ugly characters, the Morzi. And powerful. Difficult to get hold of. Why try and provoke them?

  He roused himself with difficulty. “Maestro, don’t you feel well?” asked Professor Ferro.

  “What? Why? . . .” he answered, ra
pidly recovering himself.

  “I saw you turning pale . . . it happens sometimes in this heat. . . . Forgive me . . .”

  He said, “Oh, how very kind of you . . . I did feel very tired for a moment . . . I’m getting old, that’s the trouble!” He drew himself up, and went toward the exit. The sight of all that rich, healthy humanity, elegantly dressed and full of life among the marble walls and pillars of the foyer brought him back from the darkness into which this revelation had flung him; just as the first rays of the morning sun blot out the memory of the nightmares which can obsess a man all night long. He felt he needed to relax, and came up to a group of critics who were deep in argument. “In any case,” said one, “the choral writing’s good, one can’t deny that.”

  “Choruses are to music,” said a second, “what old men’s heads are to painting. It’s easy to get an effect with them, but we oughtn’t ever to be taken in by it.”

  “Granted,” said a colleague, noted for his plain speaking. “But where does that get us? . . . Music today doesn’t look for effect, it isn’t superficial, or moving, or tuneful, or instinctive, or easy, it doesn’t appeal to the gallery, so far so good. But can you tell me what is left?” Cottes thought of his son’s music.