Meanwhile, outside a small town in southwest Iowa, two boys are late for school and, in the process of imagining a desolate post-Zombie landscape, discover a boot sticking out of the mud which, as the old song goes ("the foot bone's connected to the... leg bone"), leads to a gruesome discovery. Local sheriff Betty Diddon is soon on the scene.
CHAPTER 7
Monday was the busiest day of her week and the older she got, the more, like everyone else, she dreaded Mondays. On other days, she'd have two or three students after school, and two in the evenings (except on Wednesday, her night off), giving herself a little time to fit in a bit of supper. She'd make her main meal at noon which left a couple hours to digest everything in peace after a short walk. In the evenings, if there were no leftovers, she'd just make a sandwich. But on Mondays she had to accommodate four after school, all beginners, a half-hour each, and three in the evenings, her older students, each given an hour – well, fifty minutes – between 7:00 and 10:00. She always looked forward to her more advanced pupils, of course, but even by mid-afternoon, it seemed 10:00 would never come.
In another six weeks, she would switch everyone over to her summer schedule, since most of her students were less interested in continuing their lessons whether their families would go on vacations or not. She tried to keep July and August “empty” so she could enjoy her own vacation, whether she went anywhere or not. It's not that she didn't like her students, but sometimes you needed a rest. And frankly, the older she got, the more she wondered whether she was doing anything worthwhile in the long run.
Unfortunately, this year's crop of “Monday Beginners” was not a very inspiring lot. The harder they struggled to get through their first year lesson book, her weeks became interminable and summer slipped farther away. Even past sparrows – how she identified her underachieving students, compared to the bluebirds of success – made faster progress than these four. She had never turned down continuing a student if they wanted to sign up for summer lessons or for next fall. Admittedly, she found herself hoping maybe they'll decide to quit on their own.
While Elizabeth Grundy attacked “The Farmer and the Frog” for a third week and still had trouble with simple scale patterns, as a small town piano teacher she also had to think about reality. Before, there'd never been a finite number of potential students, but now they were fast disappearing and with it her income.
Plus, it annoyed her how often she found herself saying “the older I get,” still five years away from Social Security. She'd thought about reducing her schedule, getting a part-time job at the library. The problem there was, given the times, the library was reducing its staff. And would it pay to make ends meet? She couldn't afford to turn down students, unlike her first few years here in Sanza when she had turned many away. Now a local icon, she was teaching the children of those first students.
She'd taken stock of herself in the mirror before the doorbell rang, more than checking her hair and straightening her blouse. Her hair was almost entirely gray, now, and becoming more difficult to manage. Even when it was new in January, this blouse made her look frumpy. Since Christmas, she'd put on too much weight.
But she tried to stand straighter, look taller, look above all less matronly. Her jawline had become less firm from the earlier photos she fondly remembered, her figure even less so over the years. She tried to smile but couldn't and forcing it made her look older, like an old maid trying to look happy.
It's not that she necessarily missed her Old Self – everybody longed for what they looked like when young (well, almost everybody). But she was conscious – “too late” – of not having taken care of herself.
Rose Philips stood up and stalked around the piano so Elizabeth could see her, waving her arms to the beat as if conducting the poor child, unable to hold her to a steady tempo. Elizabeth stopped in mid-phrase, looking up confused, wondering what her teacher was doing. Rose kept tapping her fingers, keeping the pulse.
“Elizabeth,” she said, trying not sound tired, “you need to learn to multi-task. One thing is getting the fingers in the right place; it's another thing to get them there at the right time.”
The girl sighed and her shoulders drooped more out of annoyance than defeat, though Rose wasn't sure who had defeated whom. Her lips pursed in frustration, Elizabeth avoided Rose, glancing out toward the window.
“It's not that I'm trying to screw things up on purpose, Ms. Rose. I just can't get the hang of it.”
Elizabeth had recently turned eleven, still a child but already showing signs of the girl she would grow up to be. Rose doubted whether “being a pianist” would be part of that growing up.
“You know, it's a beautiful spring day, Elizabeth, isn't it” Rose said. “Why don't we come back to this next week?”
Her expression changed almost instantly, a sudden smile at being released from torment.
“Thanks,” she nodded, picking up her lesson book.
“Let's find you something new to work on – for that multi-tasking,” Rose said.
When Rose walked Elizabeth into the living room, the well-dressed, self-confident woman sitting there holding a magazine looked at her watch, then looked up at her daughter, her head cocked inquisitively to the right.
“That's okay, Mrs. Grundy,” Rose began, patting her student's shoulder, “next week, if she's better prepared, I'll give her more time.”
The woman sat up like a student in a finishing school's class on decorum and posture, back ramrod straight, chin up.
“I distinctly heard Elizabeth practicing last night,” she said in her daughter's defense.
“Oh, I'm quite sure you did” – which didn't explain how much she might not have practiced the rest of the week – “but this afternoon her concentration wasn't there. I suspect it's called Spring Fever.”
Rose recommended they take the long way home, spending the missing fifteen minutes in the park tossing pebbles into the stream.
Every Monday afternoon, Amy-Louise Grundy, devoted mother and erstwhile chaperone, sat in this self-same chair in Ms. Philips' living room and shuddered at the thought how much time she'd spent there since last September. The room was, admittedly, spotlessly clean – perhaps she could afford a maid – but it still felt like a fusty museum exhibit. If she hadn't known better, she imagined Ms. Philips had inherited her grandmother's house and hadn't changed a thing because this was where she'd grown up and this was what she was used to.
But she remembered being a girl herself when Rose Philips arrived in town. Even if she'd lived here in their community for the past thirty years, the community still regarded her as a newcomer. She was deemed a decent pianist, not that anyone in Sanza would know, and Amy-Louise found her Mozart and Schumann agréable.
But as Elizabeth struggled with this horrid little song for over three weeks, she'd become incensed. “After seven months, you think she'd be playing Beethoven by now. And certainly, my time is valuable, too.” She wondered if maybe she shouldn't deduct the cost of her having to endure this room every week from Elizabeth's tuition.
If Rose Philips lived in a house like this, given this old-fashioned parlor with its coffee table full of out-dated magazines, how could she possibly teach anyone to become a musician of respectable talent?
The couch and its matching arm-chair could've appeared on an early episode of “Antiques Roadshow,” doilies gracing the arms and headrests, the upholstery slightly worn and faded with what she imagined was considerable age. The color as it now stood was at odds with the cream and deep mauve paint on the walls and trim. The heavy oak front door aside, which should creak when opened, large windows across the front of the house should've let in considerable light if not for the heavy foliage and thick, maroon drapes. The fireplace had a generously wide hearth which no doubt would make the room feel quite comfortable on a winter's night. The walls were festooned with portraits of ancient ancestors and gloomy German landscapes. But the overall effect implied, in its previous existence, the room had been a funeral parlor and gave Amy-Louise the creeps.
Among the many knick-knacks on the mantlepiece – Mrs. Grundy would call them bibelots to show she was more sophisticated than that – was a simple, pale blue bud vase with a single tattered silk rose. Beside it was a small, framed photograph of a handsome teenaged boy standing by a bush full of small white flowers. There was also a collection of small stones of various colors, polished and ready perhaps for a jeweler to work on. Elizabeth especially liked the turquoise one in the center, by the pink quartz.
There were other, more or less nondescript group photos on the opposite side, along with a porcelain figure of a violinist, a hand-carved statuette of some primitive saint, and two ceramic dogs, possibly terriers. An elaborately decorated china plate on an ornate stand featured a young Mozart seated at the keyboard, a souvenir of Salzburg.
Mrs. Grundy had once asked Miss Rose (as she always called her) about the teenager in the one photograph, if in fact the bush with white flowers he had stood beside wasn't a hawthorn.
“Why, yes,” Rose said, looking closely to check her memory, “I believe so. My friend's family home was surrounded by them.”
Unfortunately, for Amy-Louise's curiosity – Rose would call it nosiness to show she was more honest than that – nothing more was said. But this silence convinced Amy-Louise the boy had perhaps been an early amour.
Elizabeth, stood hugging her lesson book, impatient to leave. She had not been listening to her mother's conversation with Ms. Rose (as Elizabeth always called her) and took the opportunity to scan the mantlepiece. “It must be so boring,” the child thought, “for an old woman to live in a place where nothing ever changes.” So she asked Ms. Rose, interrupting them, “why do you have such a tattered old thing like that?” and pointed to the forlorn artificial rose as she walked cautiously toward the pale blue vase.
Of course, it occurred to her any woman who was named Rose could explain why the rose was her favorite flower. But why a silk one instead of a fresh-cut one every few days? And why such an old and dilapidated one unless maybe it's the equivalent of pressing a real one in a book.
Elizabeth never thought about having a favorite flower, just like she didn't know enough about music to have a favorite composer, the way her friends always talked about their favorite bands or TV shows. She could just imagine if someone asked her who her favorite musician was and she'd said “Mozart,” how they'd all laugh.
She supposed, taking in the photograph beside it, Mother's favorite flower would be marigolds because her mother had planted them everywhere. The only problem: Elizabeth thought marigolds were terribly common and didn't smell pretty.
Despite her own interests in what other people generally considered “not her business,” Mrs. Grundy tutted at her daughter with a mixture of embarrassment and amusement, ignoring she'd thought the same thing earlier herself.
“Hush, now, Elizabeth, don't be so wildly impertinent” she said, clucking her tongue. “Wherever did you learn such rudely insensitive behavior?”
From Rose's viewpoint, Amy-Louise's tone didn't strike the piano teacher as an apology, admonishing her daughter to mind her own business. Instead, Rose interpreted that look as an expression of the “Do Tell” variety.
“That's okay, Elizabeth,” Rose began, completely by-passing the girl's mother, “it doesn't matter. True, practically everything in this room is something I've collected, bought in antique shops because I liked them. But that's different.” She walked over to the fireplace and picked up the vase as if it were delicate crystal that could shatter easily.
“I have no idea whose ancestors these people were in the paintings, or who sat on this furniture a century ago” – something Amy-Louise hesitated to question without considerable reservation – “it's all stuff I bought.”
The vase, she explained, was immaterial; she only liked it for its color. “I think it cost me maybe a quarter?”
The rose, however – this inexpensive silk flower with no pretense to being a substitute for the real thing – was given to her by someone very special to her memory which made it very precious.
“So you see, Elizabeth, I could never replace it, because then it wouldn't have all the associations it has for me. All that would be lost. And the connection's with a very distant past.”
She carefully replaced the vase, turning the flower to find its best advantage, her glance lingering over the photo beside it.
Once Amy-Louise lowered her eyebrow, she had all she needed to prove her theory: the young man in the photo was a childhood sweetheart who plainly if tragically disappeared from her life years ago.
Elizabeth, for all her adolescent perceptions, and on the verge of becoming aware of boys herself, arrived at a similar conclusion.
Each nodded a knowing farewell to the piano teacher and Mrs. Grundy and her daughter Elizabeth stepped out onto the porch. Rose, checking her watch, saw with satisfaction a short respite from her schedule.
It gave her a few extra minutes to straighten up her coffee table periodicals before the next student arrived, removing whatever political campaign or religious brochures Mrs. Grundy had casually inserted into the pile. Beyond the occasional news and lifestyle magazines like “Time” and “Good Housekeeping,” she preferred to keep things limited to classical music. While her students often had little chance for contact with the world of the classics, their parents usually had even less. They needed a little understanding of what it was their children were studying.
Unfortunately, noticing the general wear-and-tear as she checked through the different magazines, “Time” seemed barely touched, unlike the well-thumbed “Good Housekeeping.” All four music magazines had not moved from the bottom of the pile. She removed Amy-Louise's brochures from “Good Housekeeping” and placed the “BBC Music” magazine with a cover story about Mozart on top.
As she crumpled the brochures into a ball, ready for the trash, she heard footsteps on the porch, anticipating the doorbell. “They're a bit early, Frankie and his mother,” and then the bell rang.
“Coming,” she called out, making a quick detour into the studio to toss the brochures into the wastebasket by her desk.
Another quick check to certify her hair was still presentable – and what, at this point, could she do if it weren't? – reminded her to wear her cheery face when she opened the front door.
Mrs. Wright, a formidable mass of calico and lace trim, stood in the entrance way, a Bible clutched to her copious bosom as if she's just returned from an all-day revival at her church, her youngest son, Frankie, the fourth of her six children brought forward for piano lessons, nearly concealed behind her left leg.
Casually dressed in a hand-me-down baseball uniform, he clutched a catcher's mitt in one hand, his lesson book in the other, making his way timidly toward the studio as his mother made her entrance.
“I notice,” Mrs. Wright began, while settling her ample self into the armchair, “you have no copy of the Good Book here amongst your well-intentioned magazines; an oversight, I'm sure, since you're so busy.”
After sweeping said magazines onto the floor, she placed her black faux-leather-bound edition on the table.
“So I brought you one.”
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
The afternoon had turned quiet after Mrs. Danvers' brief visit, just, she apologized, to see how we were “getting on” and drop off some items to tide us over for a few more meals. We soon found ourselves perfectly comfortable after lunch, not necessarily involved in any conversation but just being in each other's company. Gradually, the day became increasingly dismal and cloudy despite no rain in the forecast, enough to keep us inside after breakfast. Once the temperature started dropping, a walk through the woods seemed less inviting.
Mrs. Danvers, after looking about, said, with a barely hidden sniff, she'd be in tomorrow or the next day to clean. When she left, it was like she'd sucked up any sunlight that remained. Later, we retired to our separate spaces for a little room so Tom didn't always feel the need to play host.
In the parlor, Cameron was engrossed in his book on Gahirō brahmānda, a Nepalese meditation technique which apparently meant “Deep Universe,” and combined elements of Tibetan Buddhism with the ancient Memory Palace of Simonides. He was sitting still enough, barely breathing, I wasn't sure whether he was awake or concentrating deeply on his meditation again. Sometime soon, I should probably ask him what benefits he's figured out from it, now that he's a few chapters in. He seems a lot calmer, these days, since he'd started working on it.
Tom, who'd always struck me as the gregarious type in school, one who loved to spend time hanging out with friends, admitted surprise over the years at finding himself increasingly more of an introvert. While he enjoyed the idea of having company over, I could tell wondering what to do with us was worrying him. Besides, it wasn't like we were here to “see the sights,” were we? Part of it was to see the cabin he'd so unexpectedly acquired; but another part was something we've avoided talking about.
This gave him the opportunity to retreat to his study and work on his bills, a monthly chore he had not entirely re-adjusted to after his recent convalescence despite years of being a home-owner. Balancing the checkbook was one aspect of reality I never enjoyed, so I gave him whatever peace and distance he needed.
Coincidence and the unexpected had played considerable parts in both our lives, lately, not just his inheriting the cabin or getting that call about the disappearance of Trazmo – or my sudden trip to Venice. The existence of these letters I'd stumbled upon were enough to test anyone's doubts about some guiding force behind the universe. How much of a coincidence was finding letters in Legnago from Salieri's apprentice, then discovering a letter to daPonte from that very boy, now grown up, and only a few blocks from my house?
There was, of course, the whole scholarly process of verification to go through, beginning with getting them translated to find out how their content relates – or doesn't relate – to what I hoped to discover: why had Salieri given up on Cosí fan tutte, what were the immediate implications for any feud between him and Mozart?
My vague familiarity with Italian aside, especially since Speranzani was writing in the Venetian dialect, I really needed to run them by someone well acquainted with the language of the Veneto to be sure. Quite frankly, given its informal nature and the at times illegible handwriting, I needed to verify what exactly had been written. Plus there were several other things that needed to be considered: the age of the paper, the authenticity of the ink. One thing to be proven was whether this was or wasn't a fake.
But even a quick glance proved there was likely something important, here, when you could scan a couple pages and see names like Salieri and Mozart's friend Puchberg peering at you through the ages; not to mention it was addressed in familiar style to “Caro Lorenzo” who'd been a librettist for both Salieri and Mozart. Even the two pages Cameron photographed of the Doylestown letter were more than enough enticement to pursue authentication. What kind of sensation could it make when its existence was revealed to the musicological world?
The Legnago letters were by themselves of little import without the context of the writer's identity, chatty observations by a complete unknown about Court Life in Imperial Vienna who was one of Salieri's assistants. Its purpose was to establish the identity – who was Fedele Destromano? – of daPonte's correspondent and what his connection was with Salieri.
Michael Puchberg, a wealthy Viennese merchant, was a well-documented patron of Mozart's and a fellow brother in the same Masonic lodge, not least a good friend and confidant of Mozart's during his final years. There were also nineteen letters Mozart sent to Puchberg begging for loans amounting to some 1400 gulden over a three-year period. There's also that tantalizing letter where Mozart had invited Puchberg, along with Haydn, to a New Year's Eve rehearsal of Cosí where he would tell him “about Salieri's plots which have completely failed already.”
The name Fedele Destromano would need careful verification and for that the Legnago letters of the teenaged Benedetto Speranzani would prove the authorship of the daPonte letter found in the Trappe Bequest in Doylestown. If daPonte gave Speranzani that nickname in the late-1780s, it was logical Speranzani would mention it in his letter of 1816.
Unfortunately, I hadn't been able to see the signature on daPonte's letter before Anton Vole took the file away from me. If only Cameron had gotten to photograph more pages, especially the last one.
Though it was only Monday, I was increasingly concerned I'd heard nothing from Vole in Doylestown and still nothing from the museum in Legnago: how long does it take to scan a few photos? Inexperienced with this kind of scholarly research, no doubt I'm naïve how museum protocols regarding old documents might slow everything down.
Of all the vague memories being sucked through some wormhole into the past – did I really rescue a child named Mozart from Klavdia Klangfarben or meet Charles Ives on the verge of a breakdown? – what if I could go back to Vienna in December 1789, find young Benedetto and observe Mozart and Salieri backstage firsthand? Wouldn't the greater temptation be to somehow keep Mozart alive after he'd become ill so he wouldn't die two years later, even if he did die of natural causes, not because Salieri poisoned him?
No, I had to be very careful about changing the past, all the What Ifs in the world aside, however tempting: saving Mozart from Klangfarben because she intended to kill the child was different. But what if I could prove, even then, Salieri did not kill Mozart? Was it too late to rescue Salieri's reputation?
Who first saw the potential in turning the Emperor's suggested story into an opera? Salieri? Or daPonte? You'd think if he wanted to please the Emperor, Salieri would've worked especially hard at it, regardless of what he thought of it. Surely, with all of his other operas, he'd set far more trivial and unappealing plots.
What about the legend how the Emperor took daPonte's libretto away from him? Would he have given it to an outsider? Would Speranzani know what had been going on to say that was true?
If I were a novelist writing historical fiction, filling in the unknowable with what was conceivable, how would this play out? Had Joseph given it to Mozart once Salieri complained he didn't want it? Or was its being unworthy sour grapes from a composer who'd had a project taken away and reassigned to a rival?
What about Mozart's letters to his father, as early as 1783, complaining Salieri was working against him with those infamous “cabals”? There had always been rancorous behind-the-scenes back-stabbings: welcome to the world of Art!
How could I manage a trip to the past on my own without help from The Kapellmeister or some time machine? It's not like I could just walk into some travel agency and ask.
Besides, I could never prove anything remotely scientifically without access to Speranzani's letters. I couldn't say, “I overheard Salieri tell Speranzani...”
Momentarily, my eyes drooped closed (I was hoping more in thought than just for the sake of dozing off), and for some reason after all these years I found myself thinking about Chuckie Rayburn. His family lived across the street which meant, because of our proximity, we played together more by default rather than choice. We were six years old, sitting in my parents' backyard, Chuckie playing with his GI Joe plastic soldiers and me with my three-times-their-size “Mozart Action Figure” to which I'd added a brightly colored cape.
This one afternoon, I recalled, a crisp autumn day among the leaves, Chuckie wanted to play with Mozart, too, but I wouldn't let him, mostly because I didn't trust him to treat him properly. Unlike his solid-construction soldiers, you could move Mozart's arms – so much for action – and I was afraid Chuckie would break him.
When I refused, Chuckie mounted a full-scale attack with his green plastic army, pushed me aside and grabbed Mozart, yanking the head off with a victorious shriek before lobbing it into the next yard. In tears, I knocked Chuckie over, him screaming “it's just a doll,” and me screaming I'd never speak to him again.
I retrieved the severed head and wrapped Mozart in a handkerchief, burying him deep inside a toy chest in the attic. Ever since, I've always remembered Chuckie Rayburn as “The Boy Who Killed Mozart.”
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
Spring fever or not, Frankie's concentration wasn't much better than Elizabeth Grundy's had been, and Rose, not surprisingly, assumed his mind was more on the catcher's mitt placed beside him on the piano bench. She looked at the uniform he was wearing, too small for his lanky frame, even for a ten-year-old, and realized something.
The Wrights were not of the social elite in Sanza, she knew that, figuring despite their pride they were probably poor. She'd noticed the wide berth Mrs. Grundy gave them when their times overlapped.
Frankie was struggling with his assignment, a simplified arrangement of a melody by Mozart but more advanced than her other beginners. But he wasn't looking at the music: he was playing it from memory.
“Frankie,” she said, interrupting him and placed two fingers on his right wrist. “You know you're not playing it as written.”
The boy hung his head, too embarrassed to look at her, dreading what was coming next.
“Yes, ma'am, I realize that.”
“And I also notice you have it memorized,” she continued, evenly and quietly.
“Yes, ma'am, I find it's easier that way. I can focus on what my fingers are doing – or trying to do.”
“Any reason why you've added these little embellishments – here particularly?” She played the melody back to him as he'd played it.
He looked up, surprised. “Well, for one thing, it's closer to the original.”
So he's listened to it, probably found a video of it on YouTube. “Very resourceful,” she thought, and smiled to herself. “And how did you find it?” The book didn't provide much helpful identification.
“I'd searched for Mozart videos and this one sounded familiar. I recognized it.”
“Do you listen to lots of music on-line?”
“When I can, yeah. I don't care much for Mozart, though.” He paused. “Not as much, anyway,” expecting to be reprimanded.
“Yes, well, there are a lot more composers out there than just Mozart.”
She asked him if he'd found any composers “other than Mozart” he particularly liked, wondering if he could remember any names.
“There was one by Bartók that was cool, some kind of dance – Something-Cosmos?”
Frankie, leaning into the keyboard, began playing the opening of Bartók's “Bear Dance.”
Rose felt her eyebrows almost hit the ceiling.
Not only was he playing it from memory, more surprisingly he was playing it in the right key. And surprisingly well. She pulled a slim brown volume of Bartók's Mikrokosmos down from her bookshelf. Flipping through it, she found the page, putting it on the music rack.
“That's it, that's the one,” Frankie said, “cool!”
It was more advanced than the little Mozart arrangement and better by a mile than “The Farmer and the Frog.”
“Frankie,” she told him, “why don't you work on this for next week?”
The boy was clearly excited. “Wow, can I?” He started playing it again.
“Yes, you may – and I think you can.”
Rose was unaware Mrs. Wright was standing in the doorway, impatient and disapproving.
“Mrs. Philips,” she said, “I'm afraid we need to leave early if Frankie is to make his baseball practice on time.”
“Well, Frankie,” she said, trying not to be affronted by her priorities – he is, after all, a ten-year-old boy – “maybe we can talk about your taking my Saturday morning theory and music history class?”
“Unfortunately, that would conflict with his Bible Study class,” she said with the finality of someone dismissing the suggestion, case closed.
She had reservations about her son pursuing any kind of career in music. “You really should be assigning him some of those wonderful old hymns, much more elevating than” – she sniffed – “this heathenish infernality.”
At his age, it was too soon to tell if Frankie could realistically pursue a career in music. His dreams could change a dozen times and his interests twice that between now and college. Without trying to get her hackles up, she needed to convince Mrs. Wright, somehow, it was the boy's decision, not hers. The point is, she knew the boy had some talent but she also knew it needed careful nurturing, however it evolved. Too much support would over-water it but without support, it could easily wither.
“And the Good Lord gave you, Rose Philips, a mere piano teacher in rural Missouri with no children of her own, such a thorough understanding how God's Gift of Genius works in a child?” Mrs. Wright turned to face her, pushing Frankie protectively behind her. “If Jesus would speak through my son, He'll tell me!”
Rose couldn't explain how somebody could recognize any signs of talent, no matter how latent, in someone as young as Frankie (and, barely controlling herself, certainly not to someone as narrow-minded as Mrs. Wright). It could take years before any talent could be realized or become evident, but she wanted to give it the chance.
If he'd been curious enough to search out videos on his own, something she hadn't expected, wasn't this the equivalent of her having gone to the library as a child to borrow some records?
If he's able to play something back after listening to an on-line video, did that mean he might have perfect pitch? Not that perfect pitch was a sign of talent by itself – lots of people had it – but it might make writing down whatever he could hear in his mind easier to realize his creativity.
The point was – she wondered if she was prepared for this discussion without first asking Frankie a few more questions – it was too early to tell if there wasn't some little spark already there.
There was the inevitable caution she urged upon every teacher to consider that the goal of giving young people music lessons, even theory and music history classes, was not necessarily to identify future musicians, but to expose young minds to great music and the discipline behind it, and ultimately to create a more appreciative audience.
So Rose pointed out another student with an ambivalent attitude toward classical music when he'd studied with her ten years ago. He didn't like it, thought Mozart was for sissies, said it's all useless. Besides, his real interest was in becoming a programming engineer, a code writer inventing computer games: that's where the money was.
“Now ten years later, he's graduated from the Allegro Conservatory and they're calling him 'the most brilliant young composer since Mozart!' I would never have thought it possible, him turning himself into a composer.”
Rose heard how desperate she sounded, afraid Mrs. Wright would take Frankie home and never let him back in her house. But honestly, she rarely had a student who exhibited such potential this young.
“Why, those first three years,” she admitted, “Dexter seemed a million miles away with no interest in the likes of Mozart.”
She started telling them, speaking directly to Frankie, now, how his first large-scale work – “it's called Absence & Return,” she said – won the prize this winter at the Conservatory for Best New Orchestral Composition. It wasn't until he'd turned 15 he began showing any signs of creativity, and now, only a few years later, this!
“Imagine, the St. Louis Symphony is performing it next season, a work by our very own Dexter Shoad, 20 years old! It was like his chances for a career just erupted out of nowhere.”
“And talent like that just... explodes, does it?” Mrs. Wright stood in the open doorway, a mother dutifully protecting her son. “If my son has musical talent it will be directed the Lord's Way.”
Rose Philips stood just as intransigent before her. “Whatever talent he has,” she said, “he can do with as he wants.”
“He's too young to know what he wants and so I show him the rightful path, teaching him to avoid temptation.”
“Mrs. Wright,” Rose said, “whether he's talented like Dexter Shoad or not, just...”
Mrs. Wright, rising to her full height, told Rose the mother of a friend of Frankie's sister Joanie's younger brother knew a cousin of an ex-girlfriend of Dexter Shoad's neighbor told her how, after he'd graduated from high school, Shoad fell in with a bad crowd. “So much for the source of your exploding talent!”
Rose took a deep breath and, shaking her head, closed the door after them, doubtful she would ever see Frankie again. Everything Rose said to Mrs. Wright offended her; Rose's very existence offended her. She had always hoped musical talent wouldn't be looked upon with suspicion, that artists weren't viewed automatically as “a bad lot.”
She remembered Moses in the wilderness, how God's words angered the Pharaoh and hardened his heart against the people of Israel. “Not the best analogy,” she thought, picking her magazines up off the floor.
There had to be a reason she worked so hard giving their children – in fact thirty years of Sanza's children – the benefits of classical music, more than their being her sole source of income.
Mrs. Grundy expected Elizabeth to become a “well-rounded young lady.” Mrs. Wright wanted Frankie playing hymns in church. Maybe that's enough...
She also remembered Mrs. Wright offering to give her her aunt's painting to hang on her wall, maybe over the fireplace. “It would certainly brighten up those dark landscapes and dreary relatives of yours.” She'd meant well, sacrificing a family heirloom, “our Crucified Lord” she described it, painted on velvet, which Rose somehow graciously declined.
The day had not gone well and she was afraid to think what else could go wrong with her next pupil. Sue-Ellen was habitually five minutes late. Rose decided she would sit and think.
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
Nephew Carlo in Legnago had promised to take a photograph of each page of young Speranzani's letters with his phone and e-mail them. “For translation,” he told us, “you are on your own, scholar.” In addition to their fragility, was he concerned about the theft of library property no matter how old or seemingly insignificant? But he didn't mind letting Toni photograph one page that mentioned Salieri's name, fortunately on the second sheet so he didn't have to keep turning pages (I remember wondering, “shouldn't Carlo be wearing gloves?”).
Even if Nephew Carlo had done research on the Speranzanis and might want to publish these letters himself, they had, so far as I could tell, little bearing on what I was looking for. At the time, it appeared to be just chatty news about his new life, nothing much I could make use of.
Now, looking back on it after finding that letter to daPonte, I shouldn't be so quick to dismiss these earlier letters which could verify the identity of “Fedele Destromano” mentioned on daPonte's first page. Combined, they might encompass all we know of one Benedetto Speranzani, whoever he had not succeeded in becoming, speaking of potential. It wasn't like I could reconstruct a biography of an otherwise unknown composer overlooked by posterity, forgotten shortly after his death. But he could be more than a footnote to Salieri and Mozart's rivalry.
There was the salivatory potential perhaps this same Benedetto Speranzani had been a witness to some detail in that still-simmering drama, whether Salieri had any reason to kill Mozart if he'd had the chance. Even in the most imaginary of crimes, especially one that gave rise to such enduring rumors, shouldn't there be a motive?
Whatever rumors existed before 1816, it wasn't until Salieri himself, old and perhaps only briefly mentally unstable, confessed they were true. And, historically, I shouldn't rely on a memorably dramatic scene from a play.
That's why I needed to find out what Speranzani may have written about to daPonte or told him at the time, whether after the fact in 1816 if not said in passing in 1789.
Now it's just a matter of waiting for those scans Vole arranged for, which I hoped he would e-mail me soon.
Again, if I were writing historical fiction like Peter Shaffer did in his play (or, for that matter, Pushkin, in his), here was a character I could introduce and flesh out, someone previously unknown. But these letters, regardless of what they might reveal, indeed proved this character existed and was not a completely fictionalized creation. The question here was how much research would I need to do (or could do) to fill in whatever was missing? Could I discover all there was to know to establish my dramatic premise?
Speranzani's early life in Legnago would be rooted in fact; there might be intrigues he'd witnessed backstage, working with The Maestro: had he left records of them in a journal or in other letters? Certainly, influential people would have spoken in front of him, treating him like a servant as if he wasn't really there.
That was something worth fantasizing about: what if somewhere there was a journal by Benedetto Speranzani only waiting to be discovered? Would his letter to daPonte mention his whereabouts so I could start searching? Or was it already “discovered,” overlooked on some shelf covered in dust because no one knew what its contents could yield?
Did Speranzani stay in Vienna or was he a court composer in some otherwise insignificant German court, the equivalent of Collegnano's New England college, turning out Italian operas for some otherwise forgotten music-loving aristocrat?
So, in the meantime, once I get these scans Vole had promised me and have a chance to get back to Venice and return to Legnago to hand-copy those letters under Nephew Carlo's scrutiny, I should, like any good scholar (not that I'm a real one), have a plan about what, if anything, comes next. Yes, they'll need to be published in conjunction with an article I'd have to write, examining the evidence of their contents, and then I'd have to send that off to a publisher. But who?
First, not trusting myself with their translation, Italian being just one of many languages I am barely familiar with, I will need to have a friend fluent in the Venetian dialect look at them. And that involves a matter of trust, a friend who'd help me rather than run off and publish the letters himself.
In that case, I should probably rely on a “civilian,” not a musicologist who'd be too eager to cheat me out of my moment of fame (the very idea of “fame” made me smile). It probably shouldn't include Nephew Carlo at the library whose familiarity with the Old Dialect struck me as a little suspect.
More likely I should ask a resident of Venice who has a classicist's knowledge of the dialect, someone like James Newhouse. Or better yet, J.P. Boniágne, who'd have a writer's ear for its nuances.
When a phone began ringing – not, alas, mine – I found myself back in Tom's cabin, Cameron startled from his deep concentration. It was Tom's land-line but he'd let it go to the answering machine.
Tom picked it up and put the phone on speaker when he heard Sheriff Betty Diddon's voice, calling from Orient, Iowa. She wanted to confirm he was the same Thomas Purdue who'd been in Orient during the Blizzard of March, 1983.
“Yes...?”
Because, she continued, they're re-opening the case about the disappearance of Phillips Hawthorne. “I'd like to ask you some questions, since I'm interviewing all surviving witnesses.”
“But I'd told them everything I knew, then. What is the point?” Tom wondered. “Is this because of that TV show?”
I could hear she'd taken a deep breath.
“It's because of the fact now, unlike then, we've got ourselves a body.”
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©2022 by Dick Strawser for Thoughts on a Train
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