The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists (20 page)

The desk’s drawers hung open, their contents scattered over the floor. The papers on top were in disarray. Sandretti, in formal evening wear, looked more annoyed than frightened. Marco stood next to him, and it was easy to see their close resemblance, though Marco had a helpless expression. Only Anna looked competent to deal with whatever had happened, but her mouth was set. Was this all part of her plan, or was she dismayed by a new turn of events? I couldn’t tell.

I asked, “Have you called the police?”

All three of them, Sandretti, Marco and Anna, said no. “Signore Sandretti does not believe that anything has been taken from his desk,” Anna said shortly.

Anna circled in on Andrew, who shrank into his chair. His pajamas were navy blue flannel, dark against his freckled white skin. “And none of you heard anything?”

“I’d just gone to sleep,” said Andrew, pouting a little in the direction of Marco. It was clear he’d been hoping to be joined in bed, but hadn’t been.

“I was in the bath,” said Bitten. “Suddenly I heard shouting. I got up and came to see. The Signore was shouting at Marco.”

“I fell asleep,” said Marco miserably. “I came into the library to read a book, and I fell asleep. Someone came in while I was sleeping and did this. I feel very, very guilty. My father is right to be angry.”

Anna didn’t look as if she believed him. Had she seen, as I had, the scrapes around the lock that suggested a forcible entry?

Frigga came into the library. “What is it?” she asked in German.

“It is nothing,” Anna replied. “Marco fell asleep and someone came into the library and mussed the desk.”

Frigga turned to Marco and said in English. “I asked you to bring me some warm milk, young man. But you did not.”

“When was that?” asked Anna.

Frigga looked at her watch. “More than an hour ago. I have been waiting!”

Which meant the person who tried to strangle me couldn’t have been Marco. I glanced at Anna, but she ignored me.

“I am sorry,” said Marco. “I mean to bring you the milk. But I fell asleep.”

Sandretti had said nothing through all this, but now he lashed out at his son with invective.

Andrew tried to intervene. “The important thing is that nothing was taken.”

But Anna was looking at the tiers of instruments displayed on the wall above the desk. “When I was last here,” she said conversationally, “there were two violins in the middle row. But now I believe there is only one.”

Sandretti boxed his son’s ears, and Marco cowered.

Andrew leapt up, but Bitten pulled him back.

Frigga looked bewildered, Anna thoughtful.

What I wanted to know was, where did Bitten get that bathrobe?

“We shall search the house,” said Sandretti.

“The morning is time enough to call the police and report the theft,” said Anna in a low voice to Sandretti. And then to the rest of us, she said, “It’s after midnight. I personally am off to bed.” She did not look at me as she went by. Her leaving seemed to drain the room of drama, and the others mumbled that they too would go to their rooms and deal with this tomorrow. Marco was the first to leave, fleeing his father, and Andrew went after him. Bitten turned to Frigga and for the first time seemed to see her as she was, a frail figure in a foreign country. She took Frigga’s arm and slowly led her from the library.

This left only Sandretti at the desk, head in his hands, not making any attempt to straighten the mess. I pitied him, and yet there was some hint of an elaborate play about the incident that troubled me. The theft might have been real, but it was not completely unexpected.

I returned to my hotel, vowing I would wash my hands of the whole affair.

When I woke up the next morning, I reached automatically for
Lovers and Virgins
, but it wasn’t there. I recalled again how fast the novel had sunk, like an accused witch during the Inquisition. I felt lost, but also free. Free to lie here in my soft hotel bed, at liberty to listen to the rain falling heavily against the windows. I didn’t have to move, I could order breakfast in bed.

I didn’t have to read; I could just lie here, imagining the last hundred pages of the Venezuelan novel.

Lourdes would rise to the rank of Mother Superior of the order and become a patron saint of the poor and visionary (the author had clearly had her headed for the insane asylum, but I wasn’t having any of that).

Mercedes would write a great feminist tract that would result in her being excommunicated. She would flee to Paris, where she’d spend her remaining years attending the salons of Madame de Staël and perhaps befriending Mary Wollstonecraft. (Instead of becoming a strange and embittered spinster recluse.)

I suspected the author had had plans to marry off both Maria and Isabella. Fine—let Maria’s stable hand turn out to have escaped the fire, and let him and Maria find each other again in middle age on the Technicolor pampas. But Isabella—who was good enough for her? Perhaps the eldest daughter of the neighboring
hacienda
. Let them discover happiness together, merge their property and start a school for the children of their workers.

I basked a little in alternatives I’d just bestowed upon these imaginary characters. I was giving them something better, these poor slaves of fiction who had otherwise been force-marched under armed guard, with shackles on their wrists and ankles, along the dusty roads of the author’s weak imagination.

I basked, and then I sighed. I got up and brought over to the bed the pile of second-string novels, the other three books that Simon had asked me to look at. Unless I wanted to depend on Nicky’s hospitality the whole winter, I would have to find something here to translate, something that I could stomach translating and that, unlike poor
Bashō in Lima
, had more print than white space.

But before I could investigate them further, there was a knock on my door. Hastily pulling on a pair of black jeans, I went to open it, expecting that Anna de Hoog might have had a change of heart and was here to tell me whom she was working for and why.

It was Roberta, in a heavy slicker and tall green gum boots, carrying a large plastic carrier bag.

“The water is rising,” Roberta said, throwing off her slicker and shaking her curly black head. “It’s the
acqua alta
, the high tide. In another hour, many low-lying passageways will be flooded and difficult to get through.”

As she took off her boots, there was another knock. Who now? But it was only the maid, with coffee and croissants.

“I took the liberty of ordering breakfast,” said Roberta. “I have something to show you. She pulled a paper-wrapped parcel from her carrier and began to unwrap its contents.

“You left the restaurant very suddenly last night,” I said. “The rain started, the barge sailed off, and you were nowhere to be seen.” I almost added, “and someone tried to choke me,” but I didn’t want to appear melodramatic.

“I saw my brother there last night, and I knew that if he was there, then I could get into my father’s house. When the rain started, I ran off.”

“Your brother?” I said, gulping coffee. “Your brother was at the restaurant? But Frigga says she saw him at the
palazzo
; she asked him to bring her a glass of milk, and
he
says he slept right through the break-in.”

As Roberta unwrapped the last of the parcel, I suddenly realized I didn’t need to tell her that her father’s library had been robbed.

There lay the evidence, in the form of two leather-bound volumes much like the one we’d seen yesterday in the conservatory library. Instead of Anna Maria stamped in gold, the name was Vittoria Brunelli.

“Vittoria Brunelli was from my mother’s side of the family,” explained Roberta excitedly. “I suppose the bassoon belonged to her once. We can probably look back in the records of the Pietà and find that she was in the
figlie del coro
. But look!” She opened one of the volumes. “This is Vivaldi, I believe—the scores of his bassoon concertos. But the other book has music that I don’t recognize as Vivaldi’s. Of course it could be some other composer, but what if it is her own music? I believe it might be, because of this.”

Roberta took a letter that had been folded twice from the back of the volume.

“It seems to be to some member of her family, probably a brother or sister, given the manner of address. It’s dated 1746, and she is writing from the Pietà. You know they also taught music to talented girls from good families who were not orphans; she must have been one of them. She is talking about several recent performances, at least one of which featured a concerto of her own. Earlier Vittoria had composed in Vivaldi’s style; now, she writes, ‘The bassoon concerto was in my own hand, written in secret,’ and goes on:

You must understand that I could not do otherwise. They would not take me seriously; they would never let me compose. The music of others is like words addressed to me: I must answer and hear the sound of my own voice. And the more I hear that voice, the more I realize that the songs and sounds which are mine are different.”

“But this is exactly what Nicky has been looking for,” I exclaimed. “A woman from the Pietà who composed her own music. A bassoonist, no less. What if some of those thirty-nine bassoon concertos are hers? And to think, it was in your father’s library all this time.”

“I should have put it together sooner,” Roberta said. “But I have never known a great deal about my mother’s family. My mother died when I was eight. My father, of course, had a collection of instruments when I was growing up. I always remember him claiming that several came from the
ospedali
, but I never realized that the instruments were part of my mother’s dowry and that there might be more than just instruments. When I saw the leather-bound volume of Anna Maria in the library of the conservatory, I remembered similar volumes I’d seen and been curious about as a child.”

“You didn’t ransack your father’s desk then?”

“I didn’t touch his desk! I went right to the shelves and found these where I remembered them. It took only about ten minutes altogether. When I returned home, I discovered the letter inside. There may be others there in the library.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“The old German woman stuck her head out the door as I was leaving, and asked me something in German, so I just nodded and said,
Si, si, signora
.”

“She thought you were Marco and were going to bring her some milk, poor thing. She must not have realized she was speaking in German. Did you lock the library door as you left?”

“No. I’d forced it open and had broken the lock. I still had a key to the house, but not to the library. When I was growing up, the library was never locked.”

“So someone must have come in after you, looking for something different. Andrew and Bitten were back from the cemetery. Anna de Hoog was gone…it couldn’t have been Frigga?”

Roberta shrugged. “Was anything taken?”

“Yes, a violin.”

“My father’s financial situation is very poor. He has many expenses and appearances to live up to. But I don’t think he makes much money from arranging concerts. He used to have my mother’s money, but he spent it. I suppose he is trying to steal the instruments from himself to collect insurance. First the bassoon and now this violin.”

“But he didn’t steal the bassoon,” I said, and gave her the background. I was puzzled, to say the least, by Signore Sandretti. Every time I’d seen him, he had seemed to be in a foul mood, which had been directed mainly at Marco.

“My father has a very bad temper,” Roberta agreed. “He often beat us when we were growing up. When he found out I was a lesbian, he made me leave home.”

“When was that?”

“About five years ago when I was twenty. I was glad to go, to tell you the truth. I don’t like my brother, but I feel sorry for him, living with our father. Whether or not he is gay, he should be treated better. It has bred a kind of hatred in Marco for our father, a desire to punish him, and yet Marco still feels that our father will protect him. Francesca’s mother is not very happy about our relationship, but she would never make her leave home. Well, perhaps that would be better. We could live together.”

For Roberta and Francesca, I saw, living together was a beautifully romantic prospect. Far be it from me to suggest otherwise. Personally I ran from the thought of a domestic relationship based on the instability of romance. Nicky and I wouldn’t have survived all these years together if we’d been in love.

“It will work out,” I said. “If nothing else, eventually your father will grow old and lose his power over Marco. And over you.”

“My father won’t be old for years and years,” said Roberta. She sighed and ran a hand through her black curls. Centuries before, like her relative Vittoria Brunelli, Roberta probably would have grown up in a convent or been turned over to the Pietà when her mother died. I pictured her in a severe dress with a little lace at her collar. It wouldn’t have suited her as well as jeans.

“Come on,” I said, “I know Nicky would like to see these volumes of music. She’ll be over the moon about them, in fact.” It struck me that I hadn’t seen Nicky since last night. She didn’t even know that someone had tried to strangle me.

“If you don’t have boots,” said Roberta, “you might want to put these plastic bags over your shoes.”

I laughed. I might not have a fabulous fashion sense, but no way was I going to walk around Venice with plastic bags on my feet. It didn’t make it any better that I didn’t have my usual leather jacket, but instead had to wear the flowing black velvet cloak, now sadly bedraggled around the edges.

I changed my mind about footwear when we got downstairs to the lobby. Water was just beginning to slosh over the threshold onto the marble floor of the entry hall. The management had installed two planks as well as a woman with a mop. Outside, the Záttere was flooded. It was as if the Giudecca Canal came right up to the buildings. Rain gushed down; everything was a gray-white blur.

I stepped back inside and put the heavy plastic bags Roberta offered over my shoes. Then we began to make our way through the streets of the Dorsoduro to Nicky’s hotel. Wooden platforms lay end to end like low banquet tables over some of the streets. Two opposing streams of people snaked along the platforms above the water. Their feet made a rumbling sound, off-stage thunder at a provincial theater. In front of the Accademia, lines of tourists under umbrellas huddled miserably.