His niece, the duchess of … errm, well it’s on the tip of my tongue… inherited part of his wealth but she gave almost everything, including these coins, to charity.
Now you know that, in addition to the one that has now left for the United States, only four of the original eleven coins remain, we know nothing of the fate of the others. They were probably melted down.
Through the history of the four survivors I have managed to track down their previous owners and you, who are a sceptic and do not belief in these things, can call it a coincidence but I tell you that there is something very… odd, perhaps our Polish-Neapolitan friend is right: they bring bad luck to anyone who owns them!”
Siro got up from his armchair, served himself some more sherry, relit his cigar and, checking that Carlo had not fallen asleep, continued with his story. Carlo on the contrary seemed to have returned to childhood, when his father, in the evening before he went to bed, told him fantastic stories. He glanced at him with a complicit smile and said,
“Come on Father, you are teasing me, aren’t you?”
“Me? Teasing you? Listen to this, we will begin with the coin that is held in St. Petersburg in Russia, or if you prefer in Leningrad as those damned Bolsheviks now call it. It was taken to the Tsar Nikolai II by an official who had found it on the corpse of Rasputin. It certainly did not bring Rasputin any good, but neither did it benefit the Tsar.
After he was captured, everything that had belonged to the Tsar became the property of the Russian people: although it seems that the coins only harm people and not the institutions, not even the Russians can say that they were particularly lucky.
The second coin, the one in the Vatican, belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte to whom it was apparently donated by an officer who had ‘liberated it’, a court nowadays would say he had stolen it, from the Kremlin during the Russian campaign.
Napoleon kept it as a lucky charm since after the siege of the Kremlin he was convinced that he had conquered Russia. From that moment onwards, however, there followed the retreat, the defeat at the Battle of Leipzig, exile on Elba, Waterloo and later St. Helena.
Before leaving for exile, he asked a diplomat to take a gift to Pope Pius VII, who he had greatly angered. I do not know if he thought that it could bring him ill luck, but when the Pope received the coin he did not want to keep it and it was sent to the Numismatic Cabinet, where it is still kept, at the Holy See without having caused any more harm.
There is a coin, the third, which is now held at the Numismatic Cabinet in Brera, in Milano. You know that the king, apart from being a formidable expert in numismatics is also a keen collector. He purchased it, although we do not know who the previous owner was, when he was still Prince Vittorio Emanuele, as a gift for his father Umberto I. It was the beginning of 1900 and a few months later the king was assassinated at Monza.
Vittorio Emanuele, perhaps to free himself of a bad memory, or of an object that brought bad luck, don’t forget that he was born in Napoli, donated it to the Brera museum: a significant gesture, considering that the coin is lacking in his collection.
The last known coin belongs to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. No one knows precisely how it came to be there, but we do know who its last owner was: Louis XVI. That is right! Now tell me that you don’t believe it!”
Carlo gave guffawed, sipped at his sherry and lit another cigarette, since the first had turned to ask, forgotten as he listened attentively to the story.
“I’m not having it, Father, if these coins really had such evil power we would have at least four ruined museums, without mentioning the coin that was sold last week!”
“Ha! Well done! I wanted to mention that. Do you remember that last year there was a bank robbery in Berlin? It was a massacre, do you remember? One of the men who died was a certain Wilhelm von Niemberg.”
“Wilhelm von Niemberg? That Wilhelm von Niemberg?”
“Yes, precisely him, the last owner of the coin in Paris. Come, don’t look so dejected, it’s lunchtime, let’s go and see if Peppino has brought something good. Yesterday he grilled some perch fillets that…”
Locarno – 15th April 1929
“Mi spiace sciur Fantone ma el persich me l’han minga portà. Tii, però se ghe piass ghe fu sagià un quai coss che l’ha mai pruà in vita sua: incö m’han menà scià un lusc che… l’è un spetacul”
(I’m sorry Mr Fantone but they didn’t bring me any perch this morning. If you like, I’ll prepare something special: today they brought me a magnificent pike.)
“But, Luigi! A pike, with all those little bones?”
“Trust me, trust me, sciur Fantone, I prepared it alla mantovana. I will bring it to the table without a single bone. If you find one, even just one, your meal is on me. It is just warm with a sauce that… well, you will tell me.”
“All right then, we’ll have the pike and we’ll drink a bottle of that white wine you gave me yesterday with it.”
“Ah good! The Blanc de Glaciers! It comes from Vallese, you know? Ti, l’è minga facil de truvàa: (it’s not easy to find) above all a good vintage.”
Carlo listened in religious silence to this conversation between his father and the owner of the Restaurant au Bord du Lac.
He knew well his father’s passion for good food and wine and he never dared to interfere with his choices, on the other hand, he had never regretted them, quite the opposite.
“Well Carlo, that’s enough talk about coins and dead people. What about that Madame Thérèse Milaud you spoke of, you told me what she said and what she did, but not what she looks like.”
Carlo recognised his father’s expression, apart from good food and wine and Cuban cigars, he also had an evident passion for the graces of the fair sex. Even before his wife died he had not precisely been a good example for catechists, but at least he did his best to save appearances, now that the dear lady had left him a widow, he did not feel the need to hide his adventures and spoke openly to his son, who having overcome his initial embarrassment, now played along.
“Ah yes, she is quite stunning! It’s a pity she is in America! She is tall, obviously not as tall as me and you, a brunette, with green eyes. I think she must be in her late twenties and…”
“…and?”
“She looks younger and has a wonderful… a wonderful bearing. I don’t think she is married.”
“Well, that’s no problem anyway!”
“Father!”
“Oh come on!”
“I don’t think she’s married, or she could be divorced.”
“So, did you invite her out to dinner, at least? Ha! Do I have to teach you everything?” groused Siro, laughing.
They were interrupted by the waiters bringing the pike alla mantovana, which completely occupied their thoughts for the next quarter of an hour.
Locarno – 15th April 1929
Carlo was sitting in the usual café in Piazza Grande, with his friend Eugenio.
After the morning and lunch in the company of his father, discussing matters that seemed to him surreal and incredible, he needed the comfort of a person who was both a friend and one he deeply admired for his pragmatic nature. He told Eugenio about his adventures in Paris and what both the “Polish-Neapolitan” and his father had told him about the coins.
“Eugenio, do you think I am stupid to doubt this story? After all, I am beginning to believe it, too. I am beginning to think there may be some truth in it somewhere. Did anything like that ever happen to you?”
Eugenio stared at him silently for some time, then he stubbed his cigarette and sighed.
“You know that I find it difficult to believe in God, above all in the one proposed by the priests, but I must admit that at times I think back to something that happened many years ago and I am not so certain. I never spoke to you about it, perhaps because we have never had the opportunity and not because I was ashamed or because I thought you would make fun of me.
I was fifteen
years old and we had returned, as we always did in summer, to Casapinta in Italy, the village where my parents were born, near Masserano. In the evening, we were sitting in the courtyard with some other people, enjoying the cool evening air and telling stories to pass the time. I and some other kids decided to play at calling up the spirits with a drinking glass. Do you know how it works? You take a piece of paper and you write the letters of the alphabet on it, then everyone puts a finger on the glass… it moves around and it writes words or phrases.
It always ends up with silly sentences and lots of laughs. That evening we asked about a person with a bad reputation who had recently died. The flame of the candle we were using for light left the wick and hovered for a moment, it seemed eternal to me, before returning to its rightful place.
We threw everything aside in fright and rushed back to the adults, who made fun of us for the rest of the evening.
Every so often I think about it, and I can’t explain it. Then, one morning I was in Zurich at the Polytechnikum, giving an example that would not raise any suspicions, I asked my chemistry lecturer, a luminary from French Switzerland, whether this could happen, in theory. Initially he looked at me as though he thought I was making fun of him, then seeing that I was serious, he asked, speaking in German, perhaps to make his question sound more scornful, ‘Herr Fantone, haben Sie zufaellig Frühstück mit Schnaps heute gehabt…oder was?” (Mr Fantone, did you by chance breakfast on grappa, or what?).
I only know that I had to retake that examination a number of times. I’m not trying to avoid answering your question. I don’t want to seem presumptuous but a quotation from Shakespeare seems to fit the case, do you remember Hamlet?
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
All in all, I don’t believe so, but… I can’t say that what you have told me is not true.”
Locarno – 16th April 1929
Following this meeting with his friend Eugenio, whom he had hoped would transmit some of his usual pragmatism, Carlo returned to the office to deal with some correspondence that he had neglected during his stay in Paris. That was his intention, at least, but his father Siro stuck his head round the door and, without saying a word, beckoned him into his office.
“This morning I, so to speak, forgot to show you something. You know that I love theatrical gestures and I like a coup de theatre. Well, you must know that when Meralli, the bookbinder, began working on the binding of the book, he found an object hidden in a space that had been cut into the inside of the cover. Without wasting time, he called me and together we extracted what had been crammed into that space. See for yourself.”
Siro opened the drawer of his desk and took out a package, a folded cloth; to Carlo it looked like a handkerchief.
Then, with a theatrical gesture, Siro slowly began to unfold the cloth until he had revealed the object it wrapped.
“Bloody… blooming heck!” Carlo corrected himself immediately, knowing that his father, despite his libertine character, hated swearing.
“Yes, it is exactly what you are thinking. It is the eleventh coin, the one that he minted for the family and which was handed down from generation to generation, until all trace of it was lost. I don’t think it was Jacopo, the author of the manuscript who put it there. I think it was done later, perhaps by someone who feared they would not be able to look after it properly.”
“But if it has been in our family for so long without doing harm or causing catastrophes that means that…”
“…that the entire story of bad luck is a hoax?” asked Siro.
“Well, It would seem so, unless...”
“…unless?” asked Siro in a tone that is asking for an answer they already know.
“Unless we, I mean our family, are immune in some way.”
Siro picked up the coin, turning it in his fingers, then he flicked it towards Carlo who, surprised caught it and looked questioningly at his father.
Guffawing, Siro told him that if they did not meet the next morning, he would know that, unfortunately, the evil spell was confirmed and that his son was not immune.
Carlo shook his head, but just to be sure, he put his left hand behind his back and making a fist he repeated the superstitious gesture he had seen the very Neapolitan Monsieur Janowski make the week before at Drouot in Paris. Then he placed the coin on the cloth from which his father had taken it and told him to put it in the office safe.
Locarno – early autumn 1929
The summer had passed quietly; Carlo had almost forgotten the question of the coin and the misfortunes it was said to cause and he had finally managed to dedicate himself to his favourite activity, buying and selling pictures and furnishings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
He had visited Paris and Hôtel Drouot repeatedly and was even thinking of opening an office in the French capital, employing someone who could take on all those boring bureaucratic activities linked to the organisation of shipping to the warehouse in Locarno of the goods he had purchased at the auctions.
He had also had the opportunity to see Mr Janowski again, with whom he had discussed topics that interested him regarding the numismatic market, of which he knew little but where he could see opportunities for good profits. Mr Janowski had shown himself to be both willing and competent and he had given him valuable advice on bids to make during the coming auctions, on coins that in his opinion would give considerable satisfaction.
The months of July and August, thanks to the conspicuous presence of wealthy tourists from northern Europe and the States, had kept him very busy on the home front and the sales that he and his father had made during that period had brought profits that would allow them to live quietly until the next summer and beyond.
Now that the tourists had left, their traditional local clientele began to reappear, and was welcomed by Siro. Carlo, on the other hand, was beginning his new campaign at the auctions in Paris, where he would be able to build up the stock in the warehouse they had almost emptied during that extraordinary summer season.
At the end of October, after his return from Lyon, where he had successfully taken part in an exceptional auction of the furnishings from an eighteenth-century palace, Carlo received a telegram from the United States of America.
Locarno – 31st October 1929
The news that Siro and Carlo were reading in the newspapers was worrying. The daily newspaper La Stampa, published in Torino, of 30th October carried the headline ‘New York Stock Exchange in ruins’, while the New York Herald, printed in Paris, said, ‘16,419,000 Shares Turned Over And Billions In Values Lost’.
The American stock exchange had collapsed but no one had yet understood the full extent of the catastrophe that was to follow.
Carlo had just returned from Lyon and he had read the report from the Zürcher Zeitung on the train, thinking above all that the following summer they would see few of the American tourists who had contributed to their successful sales this year.
It was then that he noticed the telegram. It had arrived the previous day and Siro, as he usually did when anything was addressed to Carlo, had left it unopened on his desk. It came from America and, although he did not know what it said, merely the fact that it came from New York sent a shiver down his spine. He tore open the seal and read it. A telegram is by its very nature syncopated and tends to generate anxiety, but this time the words used amplified and transmitted the anguish of the person who had sent it. It was dated 29/10/29 and it was written in English.
VANBUREN BROKE STOP _ URGENTLY NEED TO SELL COIN STOP _ CAN MEET YOU IN PARIS NOV 9? STOP _ T MILAUD
“Who is it from? What does it say?” asked Siro casually as Carlo continued to stare at the strips of paper glued to the greyish form from the federal postal service.
“Well? Have you fallen asleep?” snapped Siro.
“It’s from Madame Milaud. She says that van Buren, the American who paid
so much for the famous coin is bankrupt and wonders whether we are interested in buying it.”
“Who is asking?”
“Well, it is signed Milaud, that’s Thérèse.”
“Do you think she’s doing it on her own initiative? Let’s think about it and then we’ll answer,” said Siro.
“There’s not much time to think about it: she wrote on the twenty-ninth and says she will be in Paris on the ninth. Therefore…” Carlo got up and rummaged through the newspapers from the past few days until he found the one he was looking for, with the dates of the ships sailing from New York to Le Havre.
“…now, if she takes the Île-de-France which leaves tomorrow, she will be in Le Havre on November sixth. There’s no time to answer, I will go and meet her in Paris.”
He got up to go to the post office, but Siro called him back.
“Think carefully before you buy… and if you decide it is worth it, try to bring home more than just the coin.”
Carlo glared at him and left the office huffing.
He sent a telegram to be delivered to Thérèse Milaud when she disembarked at Le Havre, in which he asked her to get in touch with him at the Hôtel Millennium as soon as she arrived in Paris.
Nantes – 25th October 1929
The gendarmerie prison van was transferring a group of high-security prisoners from the prison in Ports de Nantes to a navy ship, which would dump them at the penal colony of Île-de-Ré, a small island off the Atlantic coast in front of La Rochelle. The colony was the staging post for prisoners condemned to hard labour and destined for French Guyana: it was known by the locals as the guillotine sèche since it frequently led to the same conclusion as the instrument that became so sadly famous during the revolution of 1782, though without shedding any blood.
The van had a large wooden cabin with a small door on one side. Four padlocks secured the door. It was preceded by other military vehicles packed with soldiers carrying rifles ready to fire if necessary.
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