The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen (12 page)

“Julietta della Tiorba,” I said, “from the Ospedale della Pietà.”

She laughed. “Della Tiorba—is that a real name?”

“Then you must be her sister, or her cousin. She is from Verona.”

“I have no sister, and I am Venetian, not Veronese.”

“Who are you, then?”

“Massimo’s assistant, of course.” She was standing beside me now. She opened the book and handed it to me. “These are his chronicles. You think the orange trees were something? Look at this.”

Across the two pages of the open book were a series of color drawings, beautifully detailed. Frame by frame, they depicted Massimo onstage performing one of his signature acts: a box containing a mouse expands and contains a cat, expands again and contains a dog, then a baby, then a horse, and finally an elephant; at which point Massimo directs the audience’s attention to the uppermost balcony of the theater, where his female assistant, flanked by the cat and the dog, is cradling the baby.

“That is the act that made him famous,” the girl said. “He first performed it in Parma, for the Duke.”

“The assistant—is that you?”

“Does it look like me?” she smiled. She turned several pages, to another color drawing. “This was before the King of Poland, at
his court. Massimo conjured an entire forest in the great ballroom. All around the audience, up and down the aisles, there were trees. Birds filled their branches and wind rustled their leaves. The taller ones swayed. Someone shouted out that trees were cropping up around the castle, into the surrounding streets, across Warsaw, until suddenly Massimo clapped his hands and it all disappeared. I was there with him that night.” She closed the book and patted the cover. “There are many such wonders in these pages. Nearly everything he has ever done.”

She walked back to the bookshelves and replaced the book. Massimo came out of the study and handed me an envelope.

“Time to go,” he said.

As I followed him from the library, I glanced back at the girl and stopped short. “Adriana,” I murmured, for now she looked exactly like her.

“Come, Nicolò,” Massimo said, pulling me into the hallway.

“How does she do that?” I said.

“She can resemble whoever you might have in your mind at that moment.”

“She can read my thoughts?”

“Not exactly. Think of it this way: you project an image and she reflects it, like a mirror. Before an audience of five hundred, she will appear to be five hundred different girls, but only one visible to each member of the audience. Her name is Meta. You’ll meet her again.”

Before I could ask any more questions, we were in the foyer, where Lodovico was waiting with a leather rucksack. My boots had been placed before a chair, on which I sat and removed the blue shoes. There was a long, narrow window beside the door, and
I glimpsed the small park with the statuary. The lion and leopard were clearly visible, but the statue of Massimo was gone. I was certain of it. A moment later, Lodovico brought me the rucksack and planted himself before the window, blocking my view.

As I pulled on my boots, Massimo said, “At the entrance to the ramo, turn left and follow the Calle della Rosa to the Grand Canal. A boat awaits you there at the dock. It will carry you across the Lagoon to San Giuliana. There you will find the coach in which you will make the rest of your journey. The bag contains all you need except these.” He handed me forty soldi. “Keep them on your person until you reach Vienna.”

“Why are you doing all this for me, sir?”

He brought his large hands together. “Never ask how, and never ask why. But this one time I will answer you. I, too, was orphaned as a boy. I was completely alone, with no resources. A Turkish magician, Hajik Nassim, rescued me from the streets. I already had a gift for magic, and he became my mentor. I owe everything to him. Music is your gift, Nicolò. Fate put this clarinet into your hands. You can accomplish glorious things with it. Don’t let the opportunity pass. I look forward to seeing you perform on a great stage and receive the accolades you deserve.” He extended his hand. “Until then, good luck.”

After I stepped outside and pulled my hat down against the howling wind, I saw that the statue of Massimo was back in the park, but without any snow sticking to it, though several inches had collected on the backs of the lion and the leopard. Could the statue really have left the park? Could it be Massimo himself, in the guise of marble, brandishing the sword? Having just witnessed some of his feats, I was not prepared to dismiss such a fantastical question. I hurried my pace and, at the gate, glanced back once more, half expecting to find that Massimo’s house was no longer visible. But it was there, all right, the windows bright and smoke curling from the chimneys.

The route to the canal was as clear and direct as Massimo had indicated. The maze I had stumbled into earlier was gone. The streets were deserted. Sheets of snow blew off the rooftops. The powder crunched under my boots. On the grounds of the Palazzo Moro two hounds were baying. Across the canal the Palazzo Fontana was pitch-black. I found a sleek caorlina awaiting me at the dock. It was manned by two oarsmen in black slickers and hoods. I settled into my seat, and without a word they started rowing, making good speed in the choppy water. Freezing spray blew into our faces, blinding me, but the oarsmen never faltered. The Grand Canal was also unnaturally empty: we passed a single gondola and a s’ciopòn, a shallow fishing boat, with an old man at
the tiller, hugging the shore. Leaving the canal for open water, I felt a wave of fear and apprehension. I had never sailed across the Lagoon in this direction, never set foot on the mainland. My longest journey had been from Mazzorbo to Venice. Now I was going to a place about which I knew nothing, where I had not a single acquaintance and could not speak a word of the language. As for Venice, I could not bear to look back at its lights, knowing that the Ospedale’s must be among them, that at this hour Adriana would be preparing for bed, and Signora Botello would be setting out dinner, and Bartolomeo, who was to have joined us, would be worrying about me.

The farther we sailed, the rougher the water and fiercer the wind. I was afraid we might capsize, but the caorlina was resilient and the oarsmen expert. Though it took nearly an hour, we came ashore finally at the small fishing village of San Giuliana. One oarsman remained in the caorlina while the second led me up a wooden ladder to the pier. We walked around the shuttered customs house, to an inn called the Marbella. Two drunken men were arguing at the entrance. Their voices sounded as if they came from the bottom of a well. Beside the inn, by a trough, there was a black coach drawn by four white horses. Two men in black slickers and hoods sat atop the coach. On its doors the letter
M
bisected by a lightning bolt was painted in white. The oarsman opened one of the doors, and I had barely clambered in when the coachman cracked his whip and the coach lurched forward.

We headed north to Mestre at a rapid clip. The road was rough and slippery. Riding in a carriage was another first for me. And what a grand carriage it was. There were two wide seats, cushioned in velvet, on which four people could easily travel in
comfort. For someone my size, all alone, it felt enormous. The curtained windows could be sealed with sliding panels of glass. Brass candleholders were set into the leather walls. There were woolen blankets and sheepskins and pillows, each embroidered with an
M
. Long drawers beneath the seats contained bottles of wine and jars of dried fruits and nuts. A third drawer, off to the side, was locked. There was a jug of drinking water. And a cabinet filled with books, playing cards, dice, and a chessboard.

I opened the rucksack and saw that Lodovico had indeed been thorough. There were two crisp white shirts, a pair of black pants, socks, and a striped vest. For victuals: two loaves of bread, a round of Asiago cheese, olives, a jar of jam, preserved figs, a bag of burdock root tea, and salt cod. Suddenly I was hungry, and I ate some of the bread and cheese with figs.

The coach rattled and its wheels whined as we passed through Mestre and turned onto an even rougher road to Mogliano Veneto. From there, for three days and nights I rode alone through valleys and over mountains, in and out of a succession of towns and villages: Preganziol, Treviso, Oderzo, Aviano, Cavasso Nuovo, Tolmezzo, Dogna. Their names sounded beautiful to me, like a long musical progression. I stayed in inns where Massimo’s name, which the coachmen gave the innkeepers, secured me a hot supper and a warm, airy room with a feather mattress. Staying in an inn—a far cry from the run-down boardinghouse where I lived before entering the Ospedale—was as wondrously strange to me as riding in a coach. But more exciting was the realization that these were the very first times in my life I had a bedroom to myself. Lying in the darkness, gazing at the starry sky through the window, listening to the muffled sounds of men drinking and
talking in the tavern below, and then the deep silence that settled over the entire establishment when the other guests were in bed, I was surprised to find that I did not feel lonely. I was comfortable being alone in those rooms, and that was something that would serve me well in the coming months.

On the morning of the fourth day, the fifteenth of February 1715, we reached the frontier at Tarvisio and crossed into Austria on a narrow mountain road. It was a brilliantly clear, cold day, and my enduring memory is of the towering pine forest we rode through and the powerful scent of the trees and their blue needles flashing with ice. After a night in Villach, where the food was suddenly Austrian—pork sausages, cabbages, and red potatoes—we proceeded north by northwest to Vienna.

I would not set foot in the Venetian Republic again for nearly two years.

Less than a month after my arrival in Vienna, I played my debut recital to a full house at the Kundstaafe Theater on the Hafenstrasse. Accompanied by a harpsichord and a violin, I performed four sonatas composed by Domenico Scarlatti and the Trio in D Major that Arcangelo Corelli composed for the Queen of Sweden. Emmerich Hoyer, my manager, had encouraged me to explore Corelli’s music, which was familiar to me, as well as Telemann’s and Handel’s, which was less so. He gave me lessons in etiquette and advice on how to deal with the varieties of people with whom I would be mingling. Over supper at his club, he introduced me to businessmen who were his friends, and more importantly, to some of the elite Austrian musicians he represented. Herr Hoyer opened many doors for me in Vienna, where he moved with ease in high society and intellectual circles. Due to his efforts, the Kundstaafe was filled with an expectant crowd that evening. Hoyer had spread the word in the newspapers, salons, and coffee shops of the city that a young Venetian, a prodigy hailing from the only European city that could rival Vienna musically, would make his international debut. Sotto voce he hinted that I had been personally mentored by Antonio Vivaldi, which of course was a gross exaggeration. Because Hoyer had an impeccable reputation for promoting talented musicians, he was able, in a very short time, to lay down the foundation of my own reputation,
which until the eleventh of March 1715 had been nonexistent. After that performance, and three others in rapid succession in April, I was indeed deemed a prodigy by the powers that be—critics, royal patrons, even local composers—and Hoyer had to turn down more engagements than he could accept. He billed me as “Europe’s first clarinet soloist,” which, though it made me cringe, was in fact true. But when I took my bows after those first performances, I never forgot that my true mentor was Massimo the Magnificent, and that while my father’s prophecy had been correct—
You will go into the world and gain fame and fortune
—my mother’s comment about my skill on the clarinet was closer to the mark:
It’s a miracle
.

Emmerich Hoyer was a short, stout man of fifty, with a florid complexion and blond hair that seemed to be standing on end at all times, defying gravity and weather, rising from his head like a plume. He had an identical twin named Heinrich, the police commissioner of Vienna, whose blond hair also stood on end. Once at a reception at the opera house, and another time leaving a coffeehouse, I mistook Heinrich for Emmerich, greeting him warmly and receiving a stony look in return. Trained as a lawyer, Heinrich had the soul of a policeman. I felt reflexively guilty in his presence—for what crimes, exactly, I couldn’t say. Without any basis in fact, I feared that Heinrich, of all people, who knew nothing about music, rather than Emmerich, who knew everything, would somehow discover the secret of my clarinet. For while Emmerich was critically, passionately perceptive, which was his business, Heinrich was coldly, scientifically suspicious, which was his.

Emmerich Hoyer wore well-tailored, expensive suits, silk
shirts, a red cloak lined with ermine, and a collection of broad-brimmed, brightly colored hats. Fortunately for me, his Italian was as good as his German, and from the moment I arrived at his large house on the Friedrichstrasse, he rarely stood on ceremony and was patient to a fault. When I discovered how impatient he was in his dealings with others, including his employees, his browbeaten wife, Carole, and diffident son, Wilhelm, recently expelled from the university, I wondered why he treated me, a nobody, so well. I didn’t delude myself that it was because of my personal charm, or even my musical talent, though he had been mightily impressed, even enthusiastic, when I played for him after he had read Massimo’s letter with obvious skepticism. Any doubts he had, I put to rest. But he was accustomed to dealing with talented musicians: that was his business, and it didn’t always entail his exuding warmth or even friendliness with clients. No, I was convinced that he was especially attentive to me because he feared Massimo and wanted to please him. It turned out that was true, but also more complicated than I could have imagined.