Once again, Caterina found herself quoting scripture. “Jesus wept.”
Fifteen
T
HE REST OF THE AFTERNOON PASSED WITHOUT EVENT.
S
HE
read, she made notes, she transcribed a few passages, all about Steffani’s relatives; aside from Agostino, only a brother and a sister, they also childless, survived to maturity. “Cousin” frequently appeared as a form of address, both in letters to him and letters about him, but she was sufficiently Italian to realize that this was a term with an extralegal meaning. As for testamentary instruction, she might as well have been looking for advertising jingles. She had so far found nothing written by or even containing the name Stievani or Scapinelli or any of the variant spellings of these names.
Among Steffani’s friends and correspondents, the person he seemed most attached to was Sophie Charlotte, the Electress of Brandenburg. Caterina found frequent reference to Sophie Charlotte in letters to Steffani from other people, in which she was referred to as “Your friend the Electress,” “the Electress to whom you so warmly refer,” and “Her Highness Sophie Charlotte, who so honors you with her friendship.” The letters that passed between them showed great warmth and even more openness than could be expected, given the difference in their status.
She wrote to tell him that she was studying counterpoint, the better to prepare herself to begin to compose music, hoping that her duets would be as natural and tender as the ones he wrote. He responded by joking that he hoped she would fail in her endeavor, for should she turn to composing, “the poor abbé will go forgotten.”
At five Caterina got up to turn on a light but resisted the desire to go out to have a coffee, chiefly because she did not want to have to lock everything up and then go through the business of unlocking it and taking it all out again when she came back. At six she went to the storeroom and exchanged packets, pulling out an especially thick one that occupied most of the space on the left side of the trunk. The first letter showed promise, for it was sent by a certain Marc’Antonio Terzago and addressed Steffani as “nephew.” He thanked Agostino for the help he had given in finding a place as a student at the seminary in Padova for a young nephew and for this proof that “familial loyalty was not diminished by the immense distance between Hanover and Padova.”
She registered the man’s name. Steffani’s brother Ventura had been taken in by an uncle and had taken his name, Terzago. So here was an entirely different family of “cousins.” Could they have died out, or were they ancestors of Stievani or Scapinelli? Below it there was a letter in the less well formed hand of the boy himself, Paolo Terzago, thanking his “dear cousin” for his efforts in finding him a place at the seminary, where he was “very happy and warm.” The letter bore the date February 1726. February in northern Italy: no wonder the boy commented on the temperature in the seminary.
At seven-thirty, feeling as though she had not progressed toward any understanding of Steffani as a man, nor of having gained much information about his relatives, she got to her feet, put the unread papers facedown on top of the packet, tied it closed, and locked it in the cupboard.
Before she left, she thought she’d have a look to see if Cristina had overcome her legendary sloth and answered. And indeed the first thing she saw in her inbox was mail from her sister’s personal address.
“Cati Dearest,” she read, “your Abbé Steffani does leave behind him a wake of uncertainty.” Though she knew she had not used his name, Caterina opened her “sent” folder and reread her original email, and indeed she had not used Steffani’s name, only his title of abbé.
“I see you checking the ‘sent’ folder, dear, only to confirm that all you gave me was his title. To spare your suffering or believing that my having crossed over to the Dark Side has endowed me with Dark Powers, I say only that you gave me his dates and the fact that he was a composer, probably Italian (he was a castrato, or so you suspect, and that’s where they came from, alas), who died in Germany.
“You gave me these facts, and the training as a researcher given me at enormous expense by Holy Mother Church, which over the course of many years and countless thousands of hours has honed my mind to razorlike sharpness, gave me the sophisticated skills to put those three pieces of information into Google. Just one name comes up. Perhaps the Church could have saved all the money it spent on me and, as you so often suggest, given it to the poor?
“Indeed, ‘abbé’ was, at the time of your composer’s career, pretty much a courtesy title, and though the documentation is contradictory (I shall spare you the details) it is safe to say that to be an abbé is not necessarily to be a priest. Some were; many were not. There is a subset here of bishops who were not priests, either, and as your composer later became a bishop, I save time by telling you that wearing the miter did not, in those times, require ordination. For more about this see his patron Ernst August, who was also—though married, a father, and never ordained—the Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück. Of course Ernst August was a Protestant (hiss) but they seem to have had the same dodgy rules that allowed men (of course) to become bishops and even create/consecrate other bishops without themselves being ordained. It does make a person think of yogurt, doesn’t it, where all you have to do is add a little to make more.” Here, Caterina marveled, not for the first time, at the lack of seriousness with which Cristina often spoke of the organization to which she had given her life and spirit.
“As to the injunction that a castrato could not and cannot be a priest, your memory is, as is so often the case, Cati dearest, correct. Canon Law 1041, #5 º states clearly that anyone who has gravely and maliciously mutilated himself or another person or who has attempted suicide cannot be ordained. It is also a basic tenet that inadequacy for marriage renders a man similarly inadequate for the priesthood, no doubt an evasive way of speaking of castration or sexual dysfunction.
“Pope Sixtus V, on 27 June 1587 (you might not like us, dear, but you must admit we’re very good at keeping records), made the Church’s position very clear in his Breve
Cum frequenter
by declaring that castrati are denied the right to marry.
“So there you have it, Baby Sister, and I can add no more until I have further information from two people I’ve asked about this, all of which will come to you in due course. Things here are fine. I’m working on another book, this one about Vatican foreign policy in the last century. It’ll probably get me kicked out or sent to teach third grade in Sicily. Or maybe you could hire me as a full-time researcher? Stay well, Kitty-Cati. Keep an eye on the family for me, please, especially poor sad Claudia, who should have married that nice electrician from Castello instead of that dreadful lawyer. I miss you all terribly. There are times when I want so much to be home that I could walk out the door and start hitchhiking south. Yes, that makes me remember the time we hitchhiked to France and told
Mamma
and
Papà
that we were taking the train. Driving into Paris with that man—was he an accountant? I can’t remember anymore—was one of the most thrilling moments in my life. Getting a doctorate or being named full professor were nothing in comparison.
“I send my love to all of you and leave it to you to spread it around in direct proportion to how much anyone needs it. Love, Tina-Lina.”
As a researcher Caterina had been trained to read between the lines of texts. This was as much a habit for her as it was for a veterinarian to see mange on the skin of a friend’s dog or a voice teacher to hear the first faint signs of excessive vibrato. Her sister’s email left her uncomfortable, chiefly because of what it revealed about her mood but also at her own initial self-satisfaction at reading it. “ET, phone home,” she said in a soft voice.
She shifted from the mood of the email to its contents. What had begun as a wild surmise on her part was now confirmed as a distinct possibility; indeed, more than that. She thought of those long fingers, that beardless, puffy face, utterly devoid of the exciting angles and lines of the male face, even at the age of sixty, which Steffani had been when that portrait was painted.
She turned off the computer, picked up her bag, and went downstairs, but not before checking that the cupboard and the door to her office were locked. Roseanna had left. As she closed the outer door to the building, Caterina noticed a sign saying that the library was closed until the end of the month. It was warm outside, so there would be no suffering on the part of the people who used the reading room as a warm place to spend their time. But it was entirely possible that they also needed a place where they could pass the day.
Thinking about this and other things, she walked toward home, not the apartment where she was living but her parents’ home down near La Madonna dell’Orto, the area of the city that would ever be home for her.
She could have taken a vaporetto if she had walked back to the Celestia stop, but she didn’t like that part of the city very much, however well-lit most of it was, so she chose to walk through Santa Maria Formosa, out to Strada Nuova, and home the same way she used to return from school.
So much taken with the thought of Steffani’s life was she that, at first, she paid no attention to the man who appeared beside her, as if to pass her, and then fell into step with her. She glanced aside, but seeing that it was not anyone she knew, she ignored him and slowed her steps to let him pass in front of her. But he slowed his as well and kept pace with her. They came down into the
campo,
which was dark at this hour. The paving stones were covered with a thin film of humidity that dissipated and reflected the lights. A few meters beyond the bridge, where light also came from the windows of the shops on her right, she stopped. She didn’t bother to pretend she wanted to take something from her bag; she simply stopped and stood still, waiting to see if the man would move off. He did not.
The vegetable stand had already closed up and gone, but there were a number of people crossing the
campo,
and three or four were within hailing distance, though she didn’t know why she thought of it in those terms.
“Do you want something?” she asked, surprising herself but, apparently, not the man.
He turned and looked at her, and she didn’t like him. Just like that: instinctive, visceral, utterly irrational, but equally strong. Her instincts told her this was a bad man, and the fact that he stood and looked at her and said nothing was bad. She wasn’t in the least afraid—they were in the middle of a
campo
and there were people around them. But she was uneasy, and the longer it was that he didn’t say anything, the more uneasy she grew. He was an entirely average-looking man, about her age, short hair, no beard, normal nose, light eyes, nothing to remember.
“Do you want something?” she repeated, and again he didn’t answer. He stood and looked at her, studying her face, her shoulders, the rest of her body, and then again her face, as though he were memorizing everything he saw.
The desire to run or to strike out at him and then run came over her, but she pressed her body into obedience and remained standing still. A full minute passed. From somewhere to her right, a church bell began to ring eight-thirty, and she was late for dinner.
She started walking toward the bridge on the other side of the
campo
. She did not look behind her but she listened for his footsteps. Her mind was humming and she could no longer remember if his footsteps had been audible before. As she reached the bridge, the desire, the need, to turn and see if he was behind her became all but overwhelming, but she resisted it and continued up and down the bridge and then into one of the narrowest
calli
in the city. As she entered it, she prayed that someone would approach from the other end, but it was empty. She shook with the desire to turn around, but she kept walking until she was out of the
calle
and at the next bridge.
Up and down and into Campo Santa Marina, where she had to decide which way to go. Turn right and save a few minutes, but pass down Calle dei Miracoli, which was a narrow place with little foot traffic, or continue straight and come out by San Giovanni Crisostomo and run into the heaviest foot traffic in the city as she went toward Strada Nuova and home. She continued straight ahead.
Sixteen
S
HE MADE NO MENTION OF THE MAN AT DINNER, NOT WANTING
to alarm her parents but also not wanting to alarm herself. He had done nothing to menace her, had not even spoken to her, yet he had unsettled her and, she admitted to herself while trying to pay attention to a story her mother was telling, had frightened her. The city was a safe island in a world that seemed to be going increasingly off its axis; to read the papers was to fear that some infection was abroad. She returned her attention to her mother’s story, and to her food. Homemade polenta made from grain sent to her father by an old friend who still grew corn in Friuli. The rabbit came from Bisiol, where her mother had been buying rabbit for twenty years. The artichokes were from Sant’Erasmo; her mother had recently joined a cooperative that delivered a basket of vegetables and fruit to the house twice a week. The purchaser had no choice about what was delivered: it was what was in season, and it was organic.