“But…” His mind whirled.
“Good,” she declared, smiling, and patted his damp head before rising to her feet. “Then it is agreed. Tonight you will take her home to her hotel. Go into the city with her, Daniel. Escape from us for a while.”
“Laura!” he cried. But she was gone, back to the boat, where Xerxes now sat at the tiller, ready to depart.
34
Questions of authorship
Venice loves a mystery, and it has taken this one to its heart. Here are some of the theories bandied around the coffeehouses, though no member of the Venetian public outside the rehearsal room of La Pietà has yet heard a note of the work.
The mysterious figure is none other than Vivaldi himself, attempting to revive his flagging career with a little showmanship and a new name on the frontispiece. Or the German Handel, who has not been much heard of in the city since his Agrippina made an apparently sensational debut here more than twenty years ago. Handel now lives in London. The gossip says he smuggled the new work into Venice to test the water for his return, fearing the English taste for Italian-style opera is somewhat on the wane. The German doubts the lessons he learnt at the knees of Corelli and Scarlatti will pay his English rent much longer. There is, I am told, a satire on his style called The Beggar’s Opera, which is much in favour there.
After these two comes the real nonsense. The composer is a local gondolier who learned his talents singing for his supper while paddling the Grand Canal (find me a gondolier who knows a sharp from a flat and I’ll place a pile of ducats in front of the Basilica after breakfast and expect to see them there at supper time). The work is a lost opus of Corelli’s, recovered from his tomb when his cadaver was exhumed during building works in the Pantheon in Rome. A churchwarden in Santa Croce is telling his drinking friends he wrote the piece on the parish organ after the nightly flock went home. A man has heard from another man, whose impeccable sources must never be revealed, that a half-blind watchmaker with a tiny stall on the Rialto has painstakingly assembled the work note by note over many years, knowing he suffers from a terminal disease and impending deafness. Now this poor soul desires nothing more than to hear his creation played in La Pietà by Vivaldi’s gorgeous band before expiring, content in the knowledge that he has bequeathed to the world a musical masterpiece which will live forever.
Finally, the most ridiculous of all. That it is some nobleman in the city — perhaps even Delapole himself — who has hitherto hidden his signs of musical greatness and now plays this game to make the grandest entrance of all. Furthermore, he will, when revealed, shower upon the city both financial and musical riches that shall restore the Republic to its former glories, cure the palsy, make the Grand Canal smell sweeter than a Persian whore’s bosom, etc., etc.
I listen to these fairy tales, nod sagely, and keep my peace. Once, when Gobbo and his chums were making merry with the rumours in his local tavern, I was tempted to interject an even more outré theory: that it was written by a woman. But then they would have thought me mad. Female fingers must work at nothing save the roles we give them; ’twas always thus and always will be.
So I smile and play the ignoramus. Only Rebecca and I know the truth. She has not told Jacopo, even, for fear of worrying her brother further. While we stay mute, the industry around her artistry grows. Pages for the various parts appear from the Scacchi presses, some even set by my clumsy hand. On the frontispiece, where Leo covetously tried his name, there is nothing but blank space beneath the plain title copied from her own manuscript, Concerto Anonimo, and the year.
When I stare at this bare white lacuna, I see it filled by Rebecca’s face. In the thickets of elder bushes that cover the flat, unkempt wasteland in the northernmost part of the city, above the ghetto, where none may see a pair of ardent lovers retire of an afternoon. And in her room, where we steal when Jacopo is out, and writhe together naked beneath sheets that come to twist around us in our labours, like swaddling clothes for infants who toss and turn in the grip of deep, enrapturing dreams.
Here are Rebecca’s true mysteries. The dark glitter of an eye, the turn of her hip, the soft, full weight of her breast. These are secrets that live beyond words or the tones that even she may pluck from Delapole’s gift. It seems a lifetime now since that first night, and still I wonder she should reveal them to such as me.
35
Encounters
The sound of a string quartet drifted across the water from San Marco. It was evening now and the bands were out in the square, playing for the tourists. The Sophia had meandered back across the lagoon at a sluggish pace, fighting the tide. The moon was a bold silver disc set in velvet, tugging at the water with some mystic, invisible power.
The journey had been made mostly in silence. Daniel sat next to Amy all the way, at the urging of Laura. The farewells at the taxi jetty were muted. The men were tired, Laura busy at the tiller. Daniel and Amy walked into the piazza and drank two cups of espresso outside a café a little way on from Florian’s packed patio. They listened to a jazz quartet crucify Duke Ellington note by note and watched the tourists taking photos of each other. Then they ambled through the shopping streets, into the quiet residential quarter that sat on the lower northern edge of the canal before it made the turn for the volta.
Daniel stopped on the front steps of the Gritti Palace. It was not simply that he deemed it wise to go no further. The hotel peered down at him from another world, one of luxury and riches, one where he did not belong. He was aware of his mud-caked jeans and the taste of grimy water in his mouth. He knew, too, that his mind was confused, torn between two possibilities, each of which might be ridiculous.
Amy watched him, a little nervous. “Are you coming in?” she asked. “Just for a little while?”
He shook his head. “Looking like this?”
“Daniel! My old man’s paying close to four thousand dollars a week for a suite here. I can walk through that door naked if I feel like it.”
He hesitated. “You’re on your own?”
“This is the first year they let me come by myself. Even two years ago I had to put up with my mom. At the age of sixteen. Can you believe that?”
He could, and the thought made him feel old. Yet it would be rude to refuse. He wondered, too, what Laura would say if he arrived early at Ca’ Scacchi.
“Just for a little while,” he agreed, and then they walked into the Gritti Palace, ignoring the raised eyebrows of the staff, trailed their muddy feet across the carpet to the lift, and rose four floors to Amy’s suite. It was ten times the size of Daniel’s bedroom. There was an expensively decorated lounge, with windows overlooking the canal.
“I need to clean up,” Amy announced, and headed for the bathroom. The sound of running water came soon after. He found the second bathroom, tore open one of the hotel’s courtesy toothbrushes, and tried to scrub the taste of eels and worse from his mouth. Then he walked back to the window. The hotel stood opposite the Punta della Dogana, the very tip of Dorsoduro. The vast shadow of Salute sat a little to its right. He was just able to see the curious shape of Ca’ Dario, like a giant medieval doll’s house sitting crookedly by the water’s edge. There was a single light in the front first-floor window. Daniel thought about Laura’s daydream and the carnival, with its masks and costumes. To be anonymous in the Venetian night would be to embark upon an adventure, like biting into a writhing, struggling eel. Life required adventure from time to time, and decision too.