The Jewels of Paradise (29 page)

After that, she wrote to Dottor Moretti, saying that she was following the trail of land transfers near Castelfranco that involved both Steffani and his two cousins. These papers, she told him, might display some preference toward one side or the other of the family and thus be useful in her research.

She pushed the “send” key, thinking that a person could get to enjoy this James Bond stuff, locked up everything, and went home.

Her search for records of the land transfers took her two days. She worked in the Foundation office because she did not want to turn herself into a recluse in the apartment. She did not so much as open the door to the storage place where the trunks were kept. First she accessed the records of the Ufficio Catasto of Castelfranco, the city closest to the village where both parcels of land were located and where the titles were registered; then she searched in Treviso, the provincial capital. The online information from the first office stated that what records it had from the eighteenth century had been put online, though when she phoned to state the impossibility of finding these records, no one she spoke to seemed able to tell her just where online they had been put. When she was forced to call the office in Treviso to ask for the same explanation of its files, the woman she spoke to gave her the appropriate file numbers but could not tell her to which general file the numbers referred.

At last, doing what she should have done in the first place, she entered the three names into the records of land transfers currently online in the province of Treviso. When a flood of documents from the past few years began to arrive, she moderated her search to the last twenty years of Steffani’s life, which reduced it to a trickle.

She waded through these for the rest of the first day and most of the second and learned that some years had not been entered into the online records but that, during the years for which there were records, the two families inherited, sold, bought, borrowed money again, and lost countless lots of property. She extrapolated some familial relationships when inheritances were left to “my beloved son Leonardo” or “the husband of my much loved sister Maria Grazia’s second daughter.” Steffani inherited three pieces of land during this time, then two of them were sold, but from none of the documents could she infer any preference on his part toward either side of his family; pieces of earth passed into and out of his ownership and that was that.

Caterina was diligent and sent a daily email to Dottor Moretti to report on her findings and was careful to list every reference to either cousin’s ancestors. His responses were always pleasant, although he explained that he was sending them from Brescia, where he was working on a complicated case, and looked forward to seeing her when he got back to the city. The first day she went to lunch with Roseanna, but the second day the other woman did not appear in the offices.

On the morning of the third day—aware that she did it because she wanted to enjoy the long morning walk along the Riva—Caterina returned to the Marciana and entered by means of her by now standard invisibility. Her carrel was just as she had left it—even the wrappers from her chocolate and power bars were still in her wastepaper basket.

Following a suggestion from Cristina, she decided to take a look at the two outsized volumes of manuscripts the librarian had delivered to her days before and which had remained there untouched. To open them on the small space, she first had to file the other books on the shelf above.

She slid the two large volumes to the center of the desk and opened the first. She read quickly through the opening pages and discovered just what Tina had said, that this was the sock drawer and there was little matching that could be done. There was a marriage contract between a “Marco Scarpa,
musicista
” and “Elisabetta Pianon,
serva
.” She found a bill from a “supplier of wood” to the “Scuola della Pietà,” though in the absence of anything other than price, Caterina had no idea if the wood was for burning or for making musical instruments.

There was a contract between someone listed as “Giovanni of Castello,
tiorbista
” and “Sor Lorenzo Loredan,” setting a price to be paid for the playing of a series of three concerts during the wedding ceremonies of “
mia figlia
, Bianca Loredan.” The next document was a letter addressed to Abbé Nicolò Montalbano. Caterina’s hands tightened into fists and she sat up straight, her chest pushing the volume against the back of the carrel. The jabbing pain caused by this sent a second shock through her system. She looked at the name: “Abbé Nicolò Montalbano.”

In the references she had found to Montalbano, the title of abbé had never been attributed to him. Though known chiefly as a librettist, Montalbano had remained, for the researchers she had read, a figure of shades and shadows. The Countess von Platen had referred to the abbé as the person “who gained from the fatal blow and who had made it possible”; it was Montalbano who had received the 150,000 thalers soon after Königsmarck’s disappearance.

The letter, the letter, the letter, she told herself, read the letter that is lying here under your eyes. It was dated January 1678 and was a list of criticisms of Montalbano’s adaptation of the libretto for
Orontea,
the first opera to be presented in Hanover. She knew the music had been written by Cesti, the composer of
il Pomo d’Oro
. The writer, whose name was indecipherable, was harsh in his criticism of Montalbano’s text and said that he much preferred the original libretto of Giacinto Cicognini.

The next page in the collection was a list of the singers in the first Venice performance of Cesti’s
Il Tito
. She continued reading through the documents but found no further reference to Montalbano, though she did find many more cast lists and letters from men who seemed to be impresarios and musicians trying to organize performances of operas in different cities and countries. They wrote to ask if a harpsichord would be provided by the theater or, if not, could one be rented from some local family and, in that case, who would guarantee the quality of the instrument? Was it true that Signora Laura, the current mistress of Signor Marcello and said to be with child by him, was still going to sing the role of Alceste?

She read through to the end of the first volume, filled with a sense that the real life of music and opera was contained in these papers and not in the dry things her colleagues spent their lives writing and reading.

The second volume interested, and then disappointed, her by containing the entire libretto of an opera entitled
Il Coraggio di Temistocle,
which, from what she could make out from the prologue and the list of characters, extolled the virtues of the leaders of the Greek forces at the Battle of Marathon but was not the libretto of Metastasio. Caterina held out against the thumping and thudding of the verse for eleven pages before giving in and giving up.

The libretto took up the entire volume. She closed it and set it on top of the other, then took them both over and stacked them where they would be taken off to be refiled. She resisted the impulse to take another look at the libretto for fear it would become worse. If this was an example of what had eventually led to the death of opera seria, Caterina had no uncertainty about the justice of its demise.

Now, standing at the window and looking across at the windows on the opposite side of the Piazzeta, she throbbed with uncertainties about the demise of Count Philip von Königsmarck and the identity of the abbé whose fatal blow had sent him to his maker.

Her mind wandered from this and turned to the fate of the woman involved in the search, and then it passed involuntarily to the strange loneliness of her life. She was in her hometown, with relatives and friends all over the city, yet she was living the life of a recluse, going from work to home to bed to work to home to work. Most of her school friends were married, with children, and no longer had time for their single friends or their single pursuits. She blamed her failure to contact old friends on the urgency with which she had invested her research. She might as well have been one of those miners British novelists were always writing about, who never saw the light of day save on Sunday, when they had to go to church in the rain and dark and cold, and who were probably happier in the mine, where at least they could spit on the floor. She was in the work pit, her link to the outer world her cyber contact with Tina, a few apparently friendly conversations with a man who was betraying her, occasional phone calls with her parents, and precious little else.

Her link to the outer world rang and she answered it gladly.

Twenty-six

“
C
ATI,” SAID A VOICE SHE RECOGNIZED AS
S
ERGIO’S. “
I
HAVE
to talk to you.”

“News?” she asked brightly before the sound of his voice registered. A second too late, she asked, “What’s wrong?”

Instead of answering her, he said, “Tell me where you are.”

“I’m in the Marciana.”

“I’m down at the Museo Navale. I can be there in ten minutes. Where can we meet?”

“Florian’s. In the back.”

“Good,” he said and broke the connection.

Sergio had sounded tense and worried, something she had never heard before, and she began to castigate herself; her rash request that giant Sergio go and menace the man in the shop had refused to factor in Sergio’s sweetness of character. What was to stop the man who had been so successful in terrifying her from turning his attentions, and his menaces, on Sergio? As she walked toward Florian’s, she thought about the possible consequences. It would be easy enough for this unknown man, whom she assumed was Venetian, to use the same spiderweb of connection and information to identify Sergio, and from there it would be simplicity itself to find his factory, his home, his wife, his children. His sister-in-law.

She had set it all in motion, had hidden behind a man and his muscles and his size in hopes of intimidating another man who had used the same weapons against her. And all she’d managed to do was put at risk the people she most loved. So preoccupied was she with these thoughts that she failed to notice the elaborate gilded mirrors or the silk-covered chairs and sofas in the café, nor did she respond to the smiles and greetings of the waiters. She went to the bar at the back of the café, distracted by bitter regret and self-castigation. “Fight your own battles,” she whispered to herself as she sat on the tall stool at the bar.

“
Scusi
, Signorina?” the waiter said with a smile. “
Non ho capito.”
She gave him
a startled glance. No, no one would understand what she had done and what it might lead to.

“
Un caffè
,” she said. She didn’t want coffee but the thought of adding alcohol of any sort to her fear repelled her. The coffee came quickly, one of the advantages of sitting back here. She tore open an envelope of sugar and spilled it slowly into the cup, stirred it around, set the spoon on the edge of the saucer, and turned to one side, more to avoid her reflection in the mirror than to be able to see Sergio arrive.

Waiters came to the bar and spoke their orders, carried trays out to the people sitting at the tables in the cafè. She had noticed some courageous souls sitting at tables in the Piazza, shivering in their jackets and scarves in the thin spring sun as part of the full price of the Venetian experience.

She looked back at the coffee, realizing it would be cold by now and even less appealing. When she looked up again, Sergio was there: tall, thick-bodied, safe. She slid from the stool and wrapped her arms around him, put her face into his neck, and said, “I’m sorry, Sergio. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

When she pulled away from him, she saw surprise spread across his face, and when she glanced at the waiter, she saw it mirrored on his, though mixed with open curiosity.

“What’s wrong?” Sergio asked. “What’s happened?”

“That man. What did he do?”

Sergio held her by the arm and moved her back to the stool and didn’t release her until she was back on it. “What happened?” she asked, needing to know the worst.

“That man?” Sergio asked.

She felt a sudden flash of irritation. What other man could she mean? “What did he do?” she asked.

Sergio turned to the waiter and asked for a glass of white wine, anything he had. He looked at her untouched coffee, placed the back of his fingers against the side of the cup, then picked up the cup and saucer and reached over the counter and set them on the other side. “Two glasses,” he said to the waiter and turned to Caterina.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, then added, “Please.”

Sergio tried to smile, finally managed it, though she suspected it was to soothe her anxiety more than at the story he had to tell. “I couldn’t go until yesterday evening. I had to talk to some people in a hotel about metal reinforcements.” Involuntarily, Caterina clenched her teeth at the mention of this useless detail.

The waiter set the glasses down in front of them. Sergio handed her one but did not bother to tap his glass against hers, nor did he say “
Cin cin
.” He took a long drink and set the glass on the counter. He scooped up a handful of peanuts and began to put them into his mouth, one by one, with his other hand. How long would she have to wait before he told her what had happened?