Three
L
IKE
L
OT’S WIFE,
C
ATERINA TURNED TO SALT; UNLIKE
THE
other woman, though, she turned immediately back into flesh and said, “But that’s im—” before she stopped herself, realizing she had no idea at all where the chests were or could be, just as, in all of this, she had no idea of what was possible or not. The cousins had spoken of the chests as though they belonged in a bank vault, yet here they were, being kept in an apartment that had rooms on the ground floor with windows without bars. Further, it was an apartment thieves had already entered with no difficulty.
Caterina could not understand the Foundation’s involvement with the chests. What Roseanna called the endowment was almost finished, the offices could have been in Albania, the heat and access to a place to sit drew a number of not quite vagrants to the library, and yet the Foundation was somehow, however peripherally, involved.
Hoping that none of this was visible in her expression, she continued, as though she’d paused to consider the exact word. “Impressive, really impressive. To have them safe in a storeroom.” It was the best she could do, and Roseanna smiled in response so Caterina went on. “How did that happen?”
“The previous owners had the storeroom built into the wall. I don’t know why. It was here when the Foundation first rented the apartment. Dottor Asnaldi used to joke about it. Sometimes he’d put his umbrella inside and close all the locks.” Then, voice lower, Roseanna asked, “They told you some of this, didn’t they?”
“Perhaps not all of it,” Caterina answered. “There was a certain lack of background in what I was told, if I might call it that.” Short of a direct request for information, Caterina could have given no clearer message.
“Since you’re going to be working on the papers, I suppose you should know where they came from.”
Caterina nodded her thanks.
“One of the cousins called Dottor Asnaldi at home about four months ago. I don’t know how he got his number and I don’t remember which one of them it was. He wanted to know if the Dottore would be interested in reading some documents and writing a report on them. All I know is that he met with the two men, the cousins, but he turned down their offer. I never knew why.” Here Roseanna gave a smile/shrug combination that Caterina was beginning to recognize.
Caterina nodded and Roseanna continued. “But he called me because he’d left me in charge and said it might be a good idea to keep the papers here, in the storeroom. That’s why they’re upstairs.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t ask the Marciana or the Conservatory, even a bank. That is, if they think the papers might be valuable,” Caterina said.
In an absentminded gesture, Roseanna ran her hand over the surface of her desk, as if feeling to see if it needed to be waxed. “It’s cheap,” she finally said. “That is, cheaper.”
“Than?”
“Than the Marciana or the Conservatory or a bank. They offered to pay three hundred euros a month, and that was in winter, when we had the heating bill to think about.” She opened her hands in a gesture replete with resignation. “Dottor Asnaldi called me with the suggestion, and I agreed. The others would have cost much more.”
Given that the place had been broken into recently, a bank might also have been safer, though Caterina saw no reason to pass this idea on to Roseanna.
“I was in charge, you see. As acting director, I had to sign the contract.”
She seemed so proud of the title that Caterina said, “
Complimenti,
” in a low voice, which caused Roseanna to blush.
Feeling that Roseanna’s pause was a suggestion that she inquire, Caterina asked, “What happened then?”
“Dottor Moretti convinced them to find someone competent to read the papers.”
“Did he think this would settle all their problems and end their dispute?”
“Oh,” Roseanna said with a laugh, “I don’t think the person exists who could do that.”
That lightened the mood and gave Caterina the courage to try to satisfy some of her curiosity. “Presumably, the trunks are safe up there.”
“Of course. The storeroom is really just a small closet, but it has
una porta blindata
. If you think about it, it’s much more than most shops have.” Then, as an addition, “There’s another, smaller cabinet, where the archives are kept.”
“The archives?” Caterina asked.
“The letters,” Roseanna said. “But Dottor Asnaldi always called them the archives.”
“Where are they?”
Roseanna raised her eyes and gazed at the ceiling, reminding Caterina of the holy cards of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux so often found lying on the tables in the back of empty churches. The hair snakes on her head, ironed flat, would have looked just like the saint’s black veil. “Upstairs.”
The unsummoned images came to Caterina of Ugolino imprisoned in the tower, Vercingetorix in the Mamertine—quickly canceled because that prison was underground—Casanova escaping from the Piombi. First there was the Director’s office and now there were the archives. How many other things were hidden away on the next floor?
“Upstairs?” Caterina repeated unnecessarily.
“It’s in the same room, but it’s only a simple wall cabinet with a key.”
“What’s kept in the archives?”
“Some scores that Dottor Dardago collected,” Roseanna explained.
“Are they part of the endowment?” Caterina asked, wondering why, if they were, they had not been sold to continue with sponsorship or, at least, alleviate some of the misery around them.
“No. Dottor Dardago left them to the Marciana, to be given if the Foundation ever ceased to function. I suppose he didn’t want things ever to be sold off, piece by piece. The Foundation merely has the use of them for as long as it’s in existence. That’s always been very clear.” But then, in a lower, more confidential voice, she added, “It’s only a few things, really, a printed copy of an opera by Porpora and some musical scores.” Before Caterina could ask, Roseanna said, sounding sad to have to say it, as if she were confessing to some minor vulgarity on the Foundation’s part, “No, only copies, and not even from the times they were written.” Then, after time enough to decide she could say it, she said, “I’m afraid Dottor Dardago was an amateur.”
To Caterina, this amateur’s collection hardly sounded like something that belonged under lock and key, but her work did not concern the archive, and so she asked nothing further about it.
“How do you get there?” Caterina asked.
Roseanna’s glance made her confusion obvious. “The stairs.” For a moment, it looked as if she were going to add something, but she did not.
“Can a person go up there?”
Roseanna made as if to push away Caterina’s question. “I don’t know if you can go up there yet.”
Like most people, Caterina disliked being told she could not do something. Like most professional women who had risen in a male-dominated profession by dint of skill and tenacity and superior talent that was never acknowledged and seldom could be admitted, she had learned to stifle her instinctive desire to shout at the source of the prohibition, though she had never learned to control the pounding of her heart that resulted from unexplained opposition.
After a few moments, Caterina asked, in a voice she managed to make sound entirely normal, “Sooner or later, I have to go up, don’t I? If I’m going to be working there.” As if suddenly recalling something, she added, “You mentioned that you receive letters. Would it be possible for me to have a look at them?” When Roseanna did not respond with an immediate negative, she continued, “It’s possible that people who contacted the Foundation in the past—with musicological information or questions, that is—might be the sort of amateur a researcher dreams of finding.” The only dream researchers had about amateurs and their suggestions were nightmares, but Roseanna need not be told this.
“We never know what will be useful,” Caterina added with a broad smile meant to include Roseanna among that
we
. “Whose rule is it, anyway?”
Roseanna thought about this for a moment and then said, “It’s not a rule, really. It’s just that the cousins are rather . . .”
“Secretive?”
This time her smile was bigger than her shrug.
Caterina smiled in return and said, unwilling to admit to no motive higher than her own mounting curiosity about the Foundation, “All I want to do is save time by learning if there are any people who might eventually be able to help in the research.” Then, as if confessing uncertainty to a friend, she said, “I don’t know if it will help me with these documents, but it might be useful to know who the interested people are. They often know a lot more than the experts do, especially in a field as narrow as this one.” It was lame, and she knew it, but Roseanna might not.
Apparently sufficient goodwill had been restored because Roseanna got to her feet, saying, “I suppose you can.” Then, with a smile of solidarity, she added, “Besides, I’m the acting director, aren’t I?”
She led the way from her office, turning toward the back of the building. The hallway ended in a door. She stopped and took a set of keys from her pocket, opened the door, and started up a set of steps. Caterina followed her. At the top, another door led into a small entrance corridor with wooden doors facing each other on both sides.
Roseanna opened a door on the left and let them into an office that looked like one, complete with barred windows. The desk was large, and a dark wooden cabinet was fitted into the wall to the left of it. On either side of the cabinet hung etchings of bewigged men. Even from this distance, she recognized round-faced Jommelli. The other might have been Hasse. She liked him; any man who would marry Faustina Bordoni had to be a hero.
Roseanna nodded toward the wooden cabinet, saying, “All of the correspondence is in there.” Caterina saw that the key was in the lock. Looking around for the storeroom, Caterina noticed a pair of smooth metal doors, almost a meter high, set into the wall to the right of the desk and partly blocked from her sight by both the desk and the chair.
Pointedly ignoring those doors, she asked, “How far back does the correspondence date, Roseanna?”
“To the beginning.”
“What sort of things do people write about?” Caterina asked with genuine interest.
“Oh, all sorts of things. You’d be amazed. Some send us copies of manuscripts or scores and ask us to identify them or verify the handwriting, and some ask for biographical information about the composers. Or what we think of new CDs, or whether we think it’s worth going to see a particular production. Sometimes people have even sent us documents and manuscripts, but never anything of great importance. There’s no telling.” She studied the cabinet for a moment and then said, “If you read through the files, you’ll get an idea.”
“If it’s no trouble,” Caterina said, interested in the letters and even more interested in showing Roseanna that she had come up here in good faith and not in the hope of learning something about the identity of the composer whose manuscripts might well be behind those thick metal doors, doors she continued to ignore.
Roseanna turned the key of the cabinet, latched her fingers expertly under the side of one door, and pulled it open. The other swung after it.
Caterina had met Roseanna only a brief time ago, but she had seen enough—the conservative clothing, the neatness with which the snakes were wrapped around one another—to know she could not have been responsible for the chaos inside the cabinet.
There were two shelves, each sized to hold manila folders, and on each of them files lay splashed about. Some leaked papers, others appeared untouched; still others were strewn across the shelves as if by a heavy wind.
Roseanna’s gasp was entirely involuntary. “
Maria Vergine
,” she exclaimed. No liar, Caterina thought, would say that. Then Roseanna gave her astonishment an upgrade and whispered, “
Oddio
.”
When Roseanna reached toward the files, Caterina said, “No, Roseanna. Don’t touch anything.”
“What?”
“Don’t touch anything,” she repeated.
The other woman looked at her with open curiosity. Then, “I don’t want the police here again,” she said with sudden energy.
Caterina leaned forward to put her body closer to the shelves. “But look at it. Someone’s been through those papers.” Then, remembering no doubt what she had seen in the cinema, she asked, “Who else has a key to this room?”
“I do. That’s all.”
“Dottor Moretti gave me one to the building,” Caterina said, wondering how difficult it would be to get into this office. “No one else has one?” she asked and no sooner saw Roseanna’s expression than she realized she had gone too far. She tried to modify the effect by going on, as if naturally, “This must be a terrible shock for you, Roseanna. To have someone come in and do this.” Her tactic of thus excluding Roseanna herself as a possible suspect was as crude as it was obvious.
Caterina ran through what she knew about the police. Their first suspects would be anyone with keys to the building. Or, learning that the disturbance—she didn’t even know if it had been a theft—concerned correspondence about centuries-old music and the men who wrote it, they would simply leave. That is, if they came in the first place.