In the previous installment, Dr. Kerr has traveled with Burnson Allan and his family to the South of France for a brief, recuperative holiday following Burnson's heart attack, but a suggestion Kerr's made regarding tracking down an old friend in Venice leads Burnson to contact an old family friend, James Newhouse, who lives in a "small palace" just off Venice's Grand Canal, "around the corner from the Palazzo Barbaro." He invites them all to come visit him.
Shortly after they arrive, Kerr sees one of Newhouse's servants who is a more-or-less dead ringer for the weird stranger he'd seen at the Snaffingham Station who'd called himself Dionisio Ciapollo. He becomes even more worried when their gondolier also reminds him of Ciapollo, then takes them on a tour that includes the palace where Salieri had stayed in as a boy when he first arrived in Venice. What exactly is the universe up to, these days...? Meeting some of Newhouse's friends at a "little gathering," Kerr realizes he's not feeling well.
= = = = = = =
[Chapter 1, continued...]
“Being indisposed” is not one of those expressions I care to apply to myself, certainly not for any stretch of time. Nurse Downs proved helpful but she still insisted on “having the doctor in.” Inevitably, I became acquainted with the famous if overly cautious Dr. “Momento” Murray who diagnosed nothing worse than an allergic reaction. Never a big fan of seafood – in Venice, worse than confessing to “vegetarianism” – I'd forgotten my aversion to shrimp or lobster. Apparently, I unknowingly ate something at the reception with shredded shrimp in it.
After a few days of malingering discomfort, more like a “stomach bug,” certainly not the plague Cameron joked about, and having heard nothing from J.P.'s neighbor, I was now ready for some aimless meandering. It was spring, it was luminous, and, lacking momentum – aside from Nurse Downs – we all sank comfortably into the Venetian Way.
After breakfast, I received a message from Vector's encrypted Watcher's network, a top-secret alert “requiring immediate attention” written in Frieda's cryptic code which would look like gibberish if anyone (including me) should see it. Cameron, the better code-reader, was getting ready to join the family for their morning walk-about, caught my signal, and stayed behind.
It was not a long message but there were always several steps to go through before we could figure it out. After several minutes, we discovered “vague chatter” implying Toni might be in danger!
Short on specific information like timing, location, or even the source of the threat, Vector could only suggest we keep vigilant – in the meantime, he'll alert “any Italian Watchers,” then left me a password. Perhaps there was a resurgence among the remaining members of the Guidonian Hand: had they learned more about Toni's secret identity?
We immediately raced out to find the family and catch up with Toni, already on their way back to Ca' Piccolini. I immediately became suspicious of everyone around us, most especially Mario the Servant.
Nurse Woods dutifully groused about the sluggish pace everybody fell into as she marched ahead of everyone “in full quick tempo,” and frequently called back like a disgruntled chaperone for them to keep up.
“This is not conducive to Mr. Allan's recuperation: he needs more vigorous exercise,” Nurse Woods complained. “We should return to Provençe.”
“How opportune,” I whispered to Cameron, “this could be our excuse to get Toni out of harm's way without mentioning why.” Tourrettes-sur-Loup was a much smaller, self-contained environment compared to wide-open yet still claustrophobic Venice with its narrow alleyways and dark corners. The drawback was, Burnson realized, there's little to do in Provençe but exercise.
Whatever danger Toni might be in didn't mean she'd necessarily be any safer at Vexilla's bungalow if anyone should follow us. If they somehow knew she was in Venice, wouldn't they know she'd left?
Once again, Newhouse unwittingly came to the rescue: as he'd suggested our retreat to sunnier, laid-back Venice, he suggested we transfer our stay to his villa in the Berici Hills, some 50 miles away. With its hilltop view, sunny exposure, and near-perfect isolation, the neighboring vicinity was full of county roads, excellent for vigorous walks.
Within a day, arrangements were made, the villa prepared, bags packed, cars rented, everything kept relatively hush-hush for no real reason, and soon our little caravan wended its way across the Veneto toward Padua. LauraLynn, paging through her guidebook, couldn't resist the impromptu suggestion to see the Giotto frescoes and the Basilica of St. Anthony.
In “mother-mode,” LauraLynn felt it was something Toni should experience, and I agreed, if for no other reason than to look at a masterpiece over seven centuries old and feel the impact of time.
Stopping first at the Scrovegni Chapel, we waited the requisite time in the controlled-environment “modulation chamber” before being allowed to view the frescoes. Newhouse chafed over his “complete and utter boredom” with old paintings. “Everywhere you look in Italy,” he complained, “you'll see great paintings hundreds of years old and you become anesthetized to them.”
I admitted feeling the same way about music, using Great Masterpieces to fill the backgrounds of our lives with audible ambiance. “Eventually, we're so used to not listening, we've grown immune to its impact.”
LauraLynn shooshed us as they opened the door to let us into the chapel, adding a hushed motherly admonition to behave. Once inside, I tried not to focus on Giotto's technique, just enjoying it. We could've spent hours taking it all in, but we were given only a limited time: other tourists waited their turns.
Caught in the typical tourist's whirlwind, we couldn't expect to soak up everything, then grabbed a crosstown bus to the Basilica before lunch, only to rush through another huge church. Newhouse predictably waited outside. If we're spending a week at his villa, I wondered, couldn't we come back to spend another day if we wanted?
As Nurse Woods, beaming, raced us back to the Basilica's entrance, I noticed Cameron making a purchase in the gift shop. It seemed unlike him, not being religious; perhaps it was a Giotto souvenir?
 |
| Padua: the Prato della Valle |
We opted for a quick lunch of baguettes, cheese and grapes, sitting against the low wall around the Prato della Valle, this beautiful, expansive park as LauraLynn, checking her guidebook, pointed out nearby buildings. Tired from walking, Vexilla tried not to enjoy herself, but, seeing Burnson and Toni having so much fun, she almost smiled.
Milling about at the edge of the park was a striking couple I'd seen somewhere in Venice, both well-dressed in black. Were they following us? Opposite Toni, I carefully tried to get Cameron's attention.
The woman's black sheath dress had a sash of small white streaks, like she'd been strafed by pigeons at St. Mark's. When she wandered away, I sauntered over toward the gentleman, presumably her husband.
When I caught his eye and nonchalantly nodded, he nodded and smiled pleasantly.
“Lust,” he said, “was given to the worm.”
Burnson jumped up to get the attention of a nearby flower vendor but lost his balance and started to fall backward. Nurse Downs immediately jumped into action – “shortness of breath, I stood up too fast, that's all,” Burnson argued, “not to worry” – and gave him some cayenne pepper and water, then took his blood pressure. Once she determined it was a “passing spell,” not a second heart attack, she put away her various bits of equipment. Vexilla and LauraLynn looked more anxious than Burnson who, relieved, merely looked vindicated.
Sidney retrieved the cars and located Newhouse's chauffeur while the rest of us waited in a café across from the Prato. Eventually, Nurse Downs gave everyone the “all clear” and we finally set off. LauraLynn asked James if Vexilla could ride with us, separating her from Burnson “Maybe it'll help reduce the overall stress level.”
Not that it helped much: every ten miles, Vexilla called Burnson or LauraLynn for an up-date on how he was doing. The nurse told her he'd be better if she'd only leave him alone. The next time she called, all the phones were turned off, even Crooks'. Eventually she settled into an ice-cold, sulking silence.
Once past Capravecchio, the closest village, we made the final climb up a gentle hill to find yet another breathtaking view. Had it been any clearer, we might have even seen the not-that-distant Adriatic.
Substitute rolling, tree-covered hills for pine-clad Alpine crags and the impact was similar to my first impression from Tourrettes-sur-Loup – stunningly beautiful! – a far cry from an American suburb's or an English country estate's landscape. While Nurse Woods settled Burnson inside, Newhouse walked us around the grounds, showing off the view and introducing the new gardener.
Cameron and I surreptitiously examined the house's exterior, noting in nods and whispers potential safety issues, quite literally “casing the place.” The gardener, Rafano, sauntered over as if answering questions about a favorite plant.
“That one, there,” he whispered, pointing to a middle-ish set of windows, “will be the girl's room – very safe, that one.”
These eyes – ah, I realized, the same twinkle I'd briefly met in Padua.
Rafano and the gentleman in the park were one and the same. “Welcome,” he said with a bow, “to Villa Venticelli.”
I overheard Vexilla and Newhouse talking over drinks before dinner, how it wasn't that she didn't “like” her house in Provençe: “if it were up to me and I could take along the view, I'd put it somewhere more vibrant, closer to... well, to Paris. But true, I'm really too old for that lifestyle, anymore...”
She continued in mock-confidence how “my biggest challenge isn't my health, knock wood, but how to keep my great-nephew from inheriting Phlaumix: he'd only sell it, the figurative bastard, he's so far in debt.”
Beyond Burnson and her equally childless daughter Tabitha, there was this thicket of distant cousins “so far from the family tree they're sapsuckers in the next yard – I'll let their heirs deal with it...”
After a pause (I could see Newhouse's look of boredom), she continued. “So, what happens to all this – after you?”
“I don't care – I'm cursed with all these distant cousins, too, however many times removed,” James said, “but I have no idea who they are or what I could even possibly do about them. I'm not going to worry over who inherits, it means nothing to me. I live for today – as I've always lived.”
Burnson, overhearing their conversation, chided his mother's morbidity. “Is this what Old People talk about, after tallying their aches and pains?”
“Rich old people, yes,” she responded, smiling, without dropping a beat, “absolutely, darling.”
Dinner, despite the old cook's complaints about the “unfortunate” delay ruining the roast, was excellent with not a shrimp in sight: everything from the meats and vegetables to the wine originated at nearby farms. I joked with Cameron how spoiled we'll be when we'd have to return to my own kitchen and our own cooking.
I noticed there were predictably few paintings on the walls of James' villa: wherever one might hang was a window instead. I remembered how he'd complained about being “anesthetized” by an overabundance of art.
James said he preferred literature: “it's not passive like music or paintings. You absorb it on so many levels just like music or paintings, but it's an 'active art' you must read to experience.”
“Hmm, unlike the visualization of a novel as a TV show or film,” Toni agreed, “which turns it into something passive.”
I smiled, a “proud papa” after Toni's remark, and recalled meeting the strangers at the Prato earlier, Giovanna and Sebastiano Fontana, two of the “Italian Watchers” Vector told us might be in the area. The password, an unfortunate line from Schiller's Ode to Joy, identified not villains but undercover allies from our own secret society.
And “Masters of Disguise” they proved to be: from the elegant couple strolling the Prato to the maid Sandrina and Rafano the Gardener, I would never have recognized them. Their presence was indeed reassuring.
On the other hand, it was Newhouse's resident housekeeper, old Zusanna, who set my nerves on edge once we'd walked inside. Though not as pronounced as the others, she had the requisite orange-red hair, mostly white now, tied in an untidy bun. Her nose, more beak-like, could still be considered “hooked;” her lips, uncommonly thin.
Newhouse explained, hopefully out of ear-shot though he mentioned she didn't speak much English, how she'd “come with the original house. She'd been a child when the first owners moved in seventy years ago.”
That would make sense, a relatively modern house built after World War II on the burned-out ruins of some old nobleman's hillside country home initially dating back several decades before Garibaldi and the Risorgiamento.
“D'you wonder,” I quipped, “looking at her, if she didn't know Garibaldi personally.”
“Oh, no doubt – one of his camp followers.”
 |
| The view from the villa |
“So, that's Capravecchio?” Cameron asked.
“No, that's that way,” I said. “That's Caprivoglio.”
“What's the difference? Sounds confusing...”
“Well, Capravecchio's to the west at the base of the hill, and it's the only road up here from the valley.”
“But that looks closer than the other town.”
“If I read the map right, like they say in Maine, 'you can't get there from here'. Except by falling, maybe...”
That reminded me of Vexilla's story about Pym. I put my wine down.
“Well, changing the subject,” I resumed, “what do you make of the similarities between Zusanna, Mario the servant, and the gondolier?”
“You mean, with your fellow at Snaffingham Station? I see four people with similar red hair, facial features and bad complexion.”
“And don't forget the travel agent in Tourrettes-sur-Loup.”
“Well, fine, five...” He poured himself more wine. “It's okay, I'm not driving.”
“But how many other people have you seen who look anything like that?”
Cameron put his wine glass down with an impatient thud. “What is it that you're seeing this guy everywhere you look?”
“I don't know, it's one of those hunches – like they're all related, somehow.”
“Like looking at Hapsburg portraits, and seeing all those easily identifiable genetic flaws?”
“But these can't all be just a coincidence.”
“That they're all involved in pointing the way to our being here – in Venice, in the Berici Hills – that's the coincidence? So, what does that mean? Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, Terry.”
“Ever since we'd gotten Vector's warning about being on the alert, my mind's racing around these people, Ciapollo and the rest. What if they're generations of members of the Guidonian Hand – or something similar?”
“You mean they're planning to kidnap Toni right out from under our noses?”
“Yes, to put it bluntly. What about that...?”
For me, it was a sleepless night, spent mostly in a chair by the window looking out over the garden, watching, where I found myself shortly after sunrise when I heard Cameron getting dressed. My dreams were full of half-invisible people with orangey-red hair and sinister smiles lurking everywhere, climbing up walls and burning letters. Despite Cameron's sense of well-rested calm, the product of a good night's sleep, my peace had been invaded by Ciapollos everywhere. Basically, I felt miserable and I couldn't blame it all on my arthritis.
Cameron hinted maybe it was because of too much wine – granted, I wasn't used to wine or drinking anything before bed – but Zusanna, already in the kitchen, had prepared coffee smelling strongly of cinnamon. In a mix of Italian and broken English, she chattered on about day-trips, “like Legnago,” pointing proudly, “birthplace of great Salieri!”
She bustled off, taking coffee up to Burnson and LauraLynn, while Sandrina – Giovanna Fontana – came in to finish preparing the breakfast. I asked her quietly if the housekeeper was related to anyone named Ciapollo.
“No, but her sister, she'd married a Ciapollo, some handsome good-for-nothing named Gian-Cadmo.” She took the bread out of the oven.
I was stunned – again, the mention of Salieri and the Ciapollo connection – her family supplied the looks, her brother-in-law's, the name.
“Originally, it was 'Cipolla,' Italian for 'onion,' but they changed it. Such pretensions...”
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
If Fate and a whole herd of Ciapollos had pushed me toward Salieri and we're only fifty miles from his hometown, let's bite the so-called bullet and see why this is so damned important. It's not like I'd walk into some kind of elaborately orchestrated trap, right? It was only supposed to be a “day-trip.” It's not like we're different from any other music-loving tourists, paying our respects at Stravinsky's grave as well as at Monteverdi's. If Salieri's birthplace was so close by, we should really “check it out.”
“Remember me telling you about that little cantata Mozart and Salieri collaborated on? When did he discover it, that Finnish musicologist? Back in November, I think, and in some library in Prague, too. Remember?”
Cameron recalled something uncomplicated about celebrating the soprano Nancy Storace's “return to health” – “she was Mozart's first Susanna at Figaro's premiere.”
Toni nodded as if to say, “I knew that.” She thought it odd, though, if Salieri viewed Mozart as a threat and Mozart viewed Salieri as a rival, why would they collaborate on anything? “I mean, writing two one-act operas to be produced together was a competition. What was this? Just a little throw-away piece.”
Unable to hide another “proud papa” smile, I agreed: “doesn't it make you curious how they got on at other times. I wonder if there are any similar surprises awaiting somebody in overlooked Legnago?”
Buried deep in some doctoral corner of my mental card-catalog was a small, rarely mentioned fact about how the Widow Mozart told the Novellos, husband-and-wife visitors from London researching Mozart's life in the late-1820s, how Salieri started Cosí fan tutte, then gave up on it as unworthy, and Mozart's success with it annoyed him greatly. She had said this was the source of Salieri's “enmity” toward her husband – though Mozart placed those origins six years earlier. Did the Emperor take it away from Salieri, before handing it to Mozart?
“That must've stung,” Cameron winced, “no wonder he was pissed off at Mozart.”
“Well, the whole rivalry thing is overrated, anyway...”
“But Salieri wouldn't really have murdered Mozart over that,” Toni said, “would he?”
“The idea that Salieri murdered Mozart is highly overrated – how, by poisoning him? – that's a rumor that still refuses to die.
“Around twenty years ago a musicologist, John Rice, discovered the opening two trios Salieri composed for Cosí – in Vienna, wasn't it? – so we know he had, actually, started composing it, then stopped. But why?”
“Given how many operas Salieri composed we've never heard of, would we even remember a Cosí by Salieri today,” Cameron asked.
“A lot of people today object to its story, having fun at the expense of women, despite social and theatrical conventions. Maybe Salieri objected to it, too,” Toni suggested, “but Mozart didn't really care?”
“Wasn't Cosí based on some court gossip the Emperor found amusing,” Cameron asked, “which he had daPonte turn into a libretto and then told Mozart to set to music – that's not how it happened?”
“That's the story, but Salieri was Joseph's Court Composer, and you'd think he would've had first dibs on any Imperial Commission.”
That's it, I realized, that was the connection I should be looking for!
“Was there some correspondence somewhere about why Salieri didn't continue working on Cosí and why Mozart ended up composing it instead?
Could this be the starting point of a very real jealousy which eventually led Salieri to imagine he had murdered Mozart?
And where do you begin, especially if you've only got a single afternoon? “Okay,” I told them, “keep your expectations low... It's time to consult our much maligned but well-established research adviser, Dr. Google.”
Of all the links popping up first, one labeled “The Ten Best Museums in Legnago” seemed a promising place to start until I realized it informed me there were only two on the list. One was an archeological museum which didn't sound promising; and the other, larger one specialized in Renaissance weaponry and the Risorgiamento. There was a Salieri Theatre, a Salieri Hotel, a Salieri Conservatory, even a Salieri pizza shop, all within a few blocks. Unfortunately, favorite son status aside, there was nothing specifically called “The Salieri Museum.”
“Oh well, that would've been too obvious to hope for, wouldn't it,” I sighed, Cameron and Toni peering over my shoulders, “and if there'd been one, everything by now'd be pretty well picked over.” If Salieri left Legnago after his parents died, what claim to fame would there have been to preserve the family home?
I found few with biographical background bits, ignored those that started “Did Salieri Really Murder Mozart?” until I noticed most of them did, one way or another; it's still his main claim to fame. There was little information about his childhood; only one anecdote had anything to do with music; then suddenly he's an orphan.
“The younger children were farmed out to the older ones, Antonio sent to live with a brother, a monk in Padua. That's where he began to develop his talent for music. He was 13.”
Toni sat back with the mumbled grunt of an epiphany, staring straight ahead. “That's how old I was when I was orphaned and when I arrived at Phlaumix Court to live with my great-grandmother.” It was a connection she could identify with. “Who'd care about my hometown? I don't even know where I was born.”
LauraLynn bounced into the room looking for stragglers – Burnson was finishing up a 15-minute bout of cardio therapy with Nurse Woods – announcing lunch in the garden and that she's planned a day-trip to Verona.
I was about to counter with the suggestion of a day-trip to Legnago when I realized, with few tourist attractions, Legnago was “of no interest whatsoever” to anyone but a musician (and even then...).
Toni piped up she would rather go with Cameron and me to Legnago. “We're hot on the trail of Antonio Salieri!”
“Ah, well,” LauraLynn conceded, “maybe another crowded tourist trap isn't what Burnson needs.” She suggested instead maybe a leisurely scenic drive around the area with lunch in “one of these lovely hill towns nearby.” Vexilla rather enjoyed that idea, she said, and Burnson was relieved not to have deal with a bunch of Romeo-and-Juliet re-enacters.
“Oh, but Terry,” LauraLynn apologized, considering the logistics, “if we're taking Sidney and the sedan, how will you get to Legnago?”
“Not to be eavesdropping, madama,” Rafano said, “but I could drive my car?”
Rafano, whom I so wanted to call “our finto giardiniero, had been dead-heading a row of tulips near where we sat.
“Then it's settled,” LauraLynn announced, smiling at everyone. “We'll compare notes over dinner!”
“You're sure you won't care to join us instead, Toni dear?” Vexilla added.
“Absolutely. This sounds like a real musical adventure!”
The countryside wasn't terribly exciting but still pleasant to drive through; nor was Legnago the picturesque destination most tourists would expect. We had ample opportunity to talk about the story, real and fictional, around Salieri and his relationships not just with Mozart. Rafano found a place fairly central to all the Salieri-named buildings and parked.
 |
| Legnago's Teatro Salieri |
“I wait outside,” Rafano said, not wanting to admit to any potential boredom, “or maybe check that flower shop – Salieri's florist? Call me, eh? when you ready, move on.” And he crossed the street.
“Where do we begin,” Cameron asked as we looked around, getting our bearings.
 |
| Bust at Teatro Salieri in Legnago |
Once inside the lobby, we found a frazzled-looking, middle-aged matron sorting papers behind the box-office window. She didn't even look up.
“Teatro closed. No performance today,” she barked, even before I said anything. “Bye-bye.”
“But I just wanted to...”
“Teatro closed. Buh-bye!”
A cleaning lady came out into the lobby, carrying a broom, and smiled.
“You want see?” She nodded into the auditorium. Posters announced upcoming concerts for the Salieri Young Musicians Competition later that week. When we all nodded, she opened the door, signaling for us to follow.
We looked around, smiling and nodding, and I asked about any Salieri exhibit.
“Try museum, over street – cousin Carlo, he help.”
The elderly man at the museum's desk said Carlo was off today, but offered to help. “My name, he is Carlo.” When I asked about a Salieri exhibit, he shook his head. “Not here.”
Instead, he directed us to the small library next door where we should ask them for his nephew Carlo. “Ciao, bye!”
Nephew Carlo, a friendly young man more student than librarian, spoke flawless English.
“I'm wondering if you would have any letters between Salieri and, say, daPonte?” (I should be careful how much I mention.)
He said, sighing deferentially, “alas, we do not. Why, if I may ask? Anything like that would probably be in Vienna. We have some written by Salieri's future assistant, a boy also from Legnago...” Apparently the Maestro emulated his mentor's having whisked him off to Vienna, a good deed to secure a poor lad's future.
A loudly dressed American, bustling and blustering, arrogantly impatient, burst through the door, and without looking around headed for the counter. Even though he could see the attendant was busy, he began talking immediately.
“I'm looking for a play, something about Mozart – I forget what it's called.”
Sighing, Nephew Carlo apologized for his poor English.
The man growled in exasperation, so Toni offered to translate. (Later, she said it meant “His mother's a hamster; he stinks of elderberry wine.”) “He suggests the bookstore across the street? Ask for Carlo.”
Carlo, once our tourist slammed the door behind him, laughed before reverting to his excellent English, dusting off an old box. “Any sources in Legnago about Salieri's childhood were scoured over long ago and taken off to Vienna where, after all, Salieri spent his entire career: “He was only 15 when he first arrived there.” And aside from a few trips to Paris or Venice to write some operas, he stayed in Vienna till he died, a man who'd already outlived his earlier fame and most of his fortune.
“What we do have,” Carlo went on, picking out one particularly thin volume, “is this small collection of fairly disappointing letters written by a boy in his teens who had a promising musical talent. He wrote mostly about observing life at court, things which might interest his parents, frequently mentioning how kind the Maestro was.”
Carlo paged through an old hand-written ledger, an inventory of the library's archives, and found the entry he was looking for. He stabbed it with his finger and said “Here – 'six letters, Benedetto Speranzani, Salieri's apprentice, to his family, 1787 to 1791. Several damaged, partially illegible, most incomplete. Too fragile for public display,' it says.”
That means these letters were all written at the height of Salieri's rivalry with Mozart, and Cosí was written in 1789. That was amazing: could this be the Big Discovery I was hoping for?
Putting the ledger back in its box, Carlo mentioned he'd done some research on young Signor Speranzani: his family were bakers, poor, and they disappeared from the tax rolls without explanation sometime after 1791. It seems Speranzani himself died in 1817, not long after Salieri's Jubilee Year.
“So if nobody else, Benedetto might've known Schubert?”
“Right – which means this June marks the 200th Anniversary of that Jubilee Party in Vienna, celebrating the Maestro's arrival in Vienna! That makes this the 250th Anniversary of the real start of Salieri's career.”
Carlo floated the possibility, if Speranzani made any professional connections and maintained correspondence with them, “now, that's where you'd find something.” But he's never seen any indication Speranzani grew up to become a success. “It's hardly likely the boy would bore his family with details about anything artistic. After a while, these letters simply stopped.”
DaPonte! Benedetto would've known Salieri's librettist when they initially collaborated on Cosí. There was no reason to be writing letters, working in the same place; but would they have kept in touch later on? DaPonte, constantly on the move, left Vienna in disgrace, ended up in London, then New York, even Sunbury in Central Pennsylvania.
While Carlo went to find the case with Speranzani's letters, I whispered to Cameron about the possibility of a daPonte connection. I didn't want to let Carlo overhear where I hoped these could lead.
Since there was likely to be no daPonte Museum set up in the house where he once ran his grocery store in downtown Sunbury, perhaps his papers would be in the local historical society?
“Once we're home, Cameron, let's drive up to Sunbury and do some digging.”
“Okay, but why don't you just e-mail them?”
“Here's the box,” Carlo said, all smiles, holding it out before him like a precious relic. “You see how fragile, yes?”
When I asked if they could be copied, he said I could only hand-copy them in the library under security's scrutiny.
“But we don't have enough time,” I explained.
He carefully closed the case.
Toni pulled out her phone, holding it up. “May I take a photo of just one page, one that mentions Salieri?”
“Uhm,” he hesitated, glancing around.
I slipped him the largest bill I had.
Rafano had no doubt kept a casual eye on our whereabouts from somewhere as we stepped out into the brilliant sunshine. We'd forgo Carlo's suggestion of the Accademia Salieri next door momentarily for lunch as I looked around for signs of anyone in the neighborhood with orangey-red hair, relieved to find the street fairly quiet. I waved a final good-bye to Carlo as my eyes adjusted to the sunlight, and saw him making a phone call. When he noticed I was looking, he hid the phone and smiled awkwardly.
I was about to suggest we visit that bookstore near the corner, if we didn't run into our nasty American tourist. “Maybe there's a copy of Shaffer's Amadeus in Italian? Or some Salieri biography?”
“Maybe we can get him to autograph it!”
“Who's that – Carlo?” Cameron laughed.
“No, silly” Toni joked, “Salieri – look, he's everywhere!”
There were Salieri medallions in most storefronts, a banner with his most famous (if not only) portrait hung from the Accademia, even the bakery across the street was called Le Bombe Salieriana! (“Salieri's Bombs”?)
Meanwhile, I wondered about Carlo and his phone call back at the library: why look so suspicious after I'd seen him?
Toni mentioned she'd read about a local theater company in Dorking was going to present Peter Shaffer's Amadeus sometime in late-May. Inspired by today's visit, maybe she'll audition for some small role in it.
My eyes adjusted slowly to the sunshine, looking around for Rafano when my phone rang and I heard Tom Purdue's ring-tone.
“Hello,” I said cheerfully, “this is not voice-mail. How're you doing – everything okay?”
Cameron pointed to Rafano waving from the intersection.
“Well, yes, it could be.” Given Tom's health issues, this didn't sound promising.
An old friend from Faber and another former student of Henry Joyce's, Tom had been the center of a recent adventure.
“Nothing urgent,” Tom said, “it'll wait till the weekend. Can you come visit?”
“We're in Italy right now, on a rather unexpected holiday – came up suddenly. We might not be back for a month.” I was about to mention Henry Joyce but thought maybe that could wait.
A disappointed “oh” followed a long, disappointed pause.
“Tom, tell me – anything wrong?”
“I'd really rather talk to you in person.”
= = = = = = =
...and you can read the 2nd Behind-the-Scenes post, "987 Words: On Parody," here...
@2022 by Dick Strawser for Thoughts on a Train.
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