The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen (19 page)

“How did you manage that?”

“I know it means everything to you.”

“Gertrude, I can never thank you enough for this.” I took hold of her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.

She blushed and raised her head a little higher. “I am Viennese. I love music.”

I departed Vienna at dawn in a driving rain. The previous days had been tumultuous. Though the Marquise and Madeleine were long gone, the Marquis continued to search the city for them—and me—accompanied by his manservant, a former French soldier named Reynal and two local toughs whom Reynal had recruited in a tavern. Reynal himself was more bodyguard than manservant; a battle-hardened man, quick with his fists, handsomely compensated, his principal duty was to keep the Marquis from being assaulted and robbed during his extended casino tours. His secondary duty was to settle scores for the Marquis, a querulous, thin-skinned man who, if the opportunity presented itself, was not averse to committing robbery himself by way of Reynal. For example, on their recent visit to Marseilles, after sustaining heavy losses at the faro table, the Marquis had had Reynal ambush the big winner of the night, drunk on brandy, en route to his hotel and divest him of a thousand francs. Reynal was also adept at menacing or beating various husbands whom the Marquis had cuckolded. In short, they were a rotten pair, and for several days they had focused their attention on me.

Unfortunately for them, what must have seemed a trivial nuisance at most—their menacing and binding Gertrude—became their undoing. For though Gertrude worked at my apartment most of the time, she was an employee of Emmerich Hoyer, and
Hoyer’s twin brother, Heinrich, was the police commissioner of Vienna—a chain of connections the Marquis de Montal could never have imagined. And while Hoyer was furious that the home of one of his star clients, an apartment he himself had secured, had been ransacked, what outraged him in a more personal way was the fact that one of his servants should have been frightened and roughed up by three thugs. In order to identify the Marquis as the culprit behind all this, I had to tell Hoyer about my relationship with Madeleine. He took this information in stride—he was surprised, in fact, assuming that because of my fame and success I would have been more precocious with the ladies than in fact I was. That is, he had at first believed that I was indeed one of the Marquise’s lovers. And knowing of her many indiscretions, with men young and old, this had not seemed particularly unusual. But he was not so blasé about the Marquis’s behavior, and he immediately paid a visit to his brother at police headquarters. To my chagrin, he took me along, and the commissioner, upon hearing my story, cast me a cold glance and nodded, his initial suspicions about me—whatever they might have been—no doubt confirmed, despite the relative innocence of my liaison with Madeleine. Heinrich Hoyer was a policeman through and through, and because I had gotten myself into such a mess, I must on some level have been guilty—of
something
.

“I don’t care that he’s a Marquis; in fact, I wouldn’t care if he were the Dauphin himself: I don’t appreciate that this Frenchman has come into our city thinking he can trample on our laws, breaking into houses and assaulting citizens. And now it’s clear he has lethal, perhaps murderous, intentions toward our Venetian friend, and this is unacceptable.”

He pronounced the word “Venetian” with nearly the same contempt he’d employed for “Frenchman.” But, to use his expression, Commissioner Hoyer showed the Marquis his lack of appreciation by having him arrested, along with Reynal and his accomplices, and locked up in a dank cell in the municipal jail. The Marquis raised an enormous ruckus after recovering from his initial stupefaction, but the commissioner did not budge. Not even when the Baron Francke, a well-connected financier, interceded and tried to get the Marquis out. No, the commissioner insisted that the Marquis wait his turn, behind more than a dozen common criminals, before being arraigned in front of a magistrate during the next session of the court, three days later.

And that happened to be the very day I said goodbye to Herr Hoyer. I had shown him Bartolomeo’s letter and shared with him my feelings for Adriana and my concerns about Julietta. He understood, but still tried to discourage me from leaving Vienna. “Your star has just begun to rise,” he implored me. “I know people in Venice who can help your friends. You don’t need to go yourself.” I wouldn’t relent, and finally he gave up, and told me to send word as soon as I was ready for him to book me engagements in Venice, Ravenna, Mantua, wherever I liked. He promised that he himself would meet me in Venice in order to make the arrangements. I thanked him, though after what Bartolomeo had written me, performing was the last thing on my mind. After I withdrew a large sum for my expenses, Hoyer and I had transferred the rest of my money—a small fortune of sixty-three thousand marks at that point—from the Banco del Giro to its main office in Venice, where in our dialect it was known as the Banco del Ziro.

The commissioner had some words of farewell to me, delivered
discreetly but firmly at his brother’s office: “Think twice, young man, before you involve yourself in intrigues, or it is you who might end up in jail—or worse.” I promised I would, thanking him profusely for all he had done.

Then I said my goodbyes to everyone else at Hoyer’s office, most especially Gertrude, to whom I insisted on giving a full year’s pay.

“I cannot accept that,” she objected. “I told you, Herr Zen, I am Viennese—”

“I know, and you love music. Gertrude, you’ve done more for me as a musician than you’ll ever know. Please take the money.”

Until Montal and his henchmen were apprehended, I had stuck close to Hoyer’s house. I had grown fond of Vienna—in ways I surely would not have had I arrived homeless and penniless, as when I arrived in Venice—and a part of me was saddened about leaving. On my last day in the city, I ventured out to see some of my favorite landmarks one last time. I went to my favorite chocolate shop, and walked under the shade trees in the park by the Danube, and then made my way to the still-unfinished Palais Kinsky, where I watched the masons, high up on their scaffolds, completing the roof of the steeple. Finally, on the spur of the moment, I hailed a cab and decided to ride past Maximus’s house as well.

I traveled along the Boulevard Hauser, across the Kirchnerplatz with its green marble fountain, and through the same maze of alleys, which looked every bit as narrow and confusing as they had at night. But when I reached the south end of the Kundenstrasse, my heart sank. I knew I had the correct address, yet between the windowless church and the substation of the
waterworks, there was only a vacant lot, overgrown with weeds, enveloped in mist.

Gone was the black four-story mansion with its iron fence, cobbled courtyard, and broad lawn. There were no signs of a foundation in the damp ground. No footpaths or gardens. All that remained from the night of my visit was the enormous oak tree, but without the crows. I walked around the perimeter of the lot, then crossed the street and closed my eyes and waited a long moment before opening them again. But Maximus’s house did not rematerialize, as Massimo’s villa had on the Ramo Regina—a “trick” Maximus himself had referred to. Surely this was more than a trick, I thought. Maximus and Lila, Ludwig and Soon-ji, suddenly felt like the figures I saw in that tureen; because they were capable of disappearing without a trace, all of them seemed, strangely enough, to be more vivid, and more real.

It took me ten days to reach Padua. Hoyer hired me a sleek coach, built more for speed than comfort, with two experienced coachmen and four strong horses. The coachmen were brothers, Luther and Fritz, a husky, rough-hewn pair from the farm country of Saxony. They had broad shoulders and large, callused hands. They always seemed at ease, no matter the circumstances, maybe because they knew horses so well. We traveled through driving rain that barely let up, on muddy roads, over steep mountains, stopping only to feed the horses and ourselves and to catch a few hours’ sleep. We were detained at numerous checkpoints controlled by Prussian or Bavarian militias. There were frequent skirmishes between these rival forces, the last active combatants in a war that had formally ended the previous year. From the violence I witnessed—captured soldiers summarily hanged, wounded men left to die in fields, villages burned to the ground in cavalry raids—I would never have guessed that a treaty had been signed with great fanfare by two generals who afterward toasted one another’s health and took Communion from the Archbishop of Pressburg. Twice I had to bribe the guards at checkpoints, and once I was detained for five hours outside a remote village while a corpulent sergeant checked and rechecked my papers and interrogated my coachmen.

When we crossed the border into Venetia, I wanted to kiss the ground. Even the weather cleared at that point, and the final leg of our journey into Padua, through sunlit cornfields, olive orchards, and hilltop villages, passed without incident.

Though it was less than forty miles west of Venice, I had never been to Padua. Of course, until I traveled to Vienna, I had never been outside of Venice at all. That seemed a long time ago now, after I had performed in so many foreign cities. But it had only been fourteen months.

With its red roofs and yellow buildings, marble churches and religious statuary, Padua looked nothing like Vienna. And though it was, in fact, a smaller city, it felt huge to me because my sole purpose in being there was to find Adriana, and I hadn’t a clue where to begin. For all I knew, she might have left already. All during my journey, I had fretted about this and tried to formulate a plan of action. Fortunately, a solution awaited me.

Hoyer had suggested a hotel where I ought to stay, where his performers usually went. In writing to Bartolomeo, thanking him for his letter and informing him that I would be traveling to Padua, I had mentioned the name of the hotel, the Ippolito, on the Via Mentana. I arrived at dusk, hungry and weary. At the front desk, the concierge handed me a letter that had arrived two days earlier. It was from Bartolomeo.

Dear Nicolò
,

If you are reading this, it means you are in Padua. I am gratified you’ve returned to Venetia. I have made many inquiries, and I believe your friend Julietta might be found in the vicinity of
the Piazza Castello. I regret to say I have no further information about Adriana. Watch out for yourself. I hope we will see you soon in Venice
.

Your friend
,

Bartolomeo Cattaglia

After depositing my luggage in my room, I went outside to pay Luther and Fritz for their services. It had occurred to me that I might want to leave Padua on short notice, so I invited them to stay on with me at double their usual pay until my business was done. They gladly accepted, and after I asked the concierge for directions, we set out for the Piazza Castello. Bartolomeo’s information had raised my spirits, but they were dampened by the concierge’s reaction to my query: the Piazza Castello was evidently the nexus of the city’s worst district.

As we crossed the city to the Piazza Castello, the bustling, well-dressed Paduans around my hotel gave way, first to a neighborhood of narrowing streets and thinning crowds, and then a succession of arcades lined with cheap shops and shuttered stalls, and finally a network of seedy alleys where pimps and prostitutes, drunks and vagrants, hawkers of stolen goods, and pickpockets setting out on their nocturnal rounds outnumbered working citizens. Realizing how much I stuck out now, riding around in a fancy coach, well dressed myself, I was so glad I’d had the sense to retain the services—and company—of Luther and Fritz. Angry, quizzical eyes peered into my coach from the shadows. The denizens of those alleys would have imagined that someone my age, with those trappings, must be the son of a wealthy businessman
or nobleman. In other words, an easy target. I realized the comfort and luxury I had grown accustomed to in Vienna had dulled my street smarts; otherwise, I would have left the coach behind.

In fact, I knew I had no chance of finding Julietta unless I proceeded on foot. I told the brothers to stop, and explained to them in my fractured German why we were there. They exchanged glances. How on earth, they must have wondered, did I hope to find a single Venetian girl in one of Venetia’s larger cities? I described Julietta to them, and said I wanted to walk the perimeter of the Piazza Castello. Fritz would stay with the coach in an alley off the piazza, and Luther would accompany me. I removed my silk-lined jacket and borrowed Luther’s spare coat, its oilcloth worn and rain-spattered. To Fritz’s amusement, I mussed up my hair as well, and kicked dust onto my boots, and Luther and I set out from the south end of the piazza.

Up close, the dark doorways of the piazza revealed every manner of vice. The first two buildings we passed were obviously brothels, heavily made-up girls in gaudy dresses huddled in gloomy corridors, watched over by dour madams. Holding my breath, I stopped and studied the girls’ faces, but Julietta was not among them. Then there was a succession of booths manned by gamesters playing three-card monte and throwing dice. And a large gambling hall where men at circular tables played
cavagnole
, a game in which numbers are drawn from a spinning cage, and
ombre
, a fast-paced game I had witnessed in Vienna, in which cardsharpers are invariably mixed in among the players to gull the unsuspecting. Next came a dance club, dimly lit by red candles, where scantily dressed women performed on improvised stages, often nothing more than a sheet of wood laid on boxes. The
music they danced to was out of tune, cacophonous, but none of the leering men crowded four deep was listening to it. I did not see Julietta there, either. Outside all of these establishments, tough-looking men and hardened women were loitering, soliciting for the brothels and the gambling hall. Some of the men exhibited daggers in their belts or leaned on canes that clearly were intended to be used, not for walking, but for clubbing an adversary. These men eyed Luther and me closely, I because of my clothes (despite my attempt at a disguise) and he because of his foreign dress and country gait. Luther eyed them right back with his easy smile, taking stock of their weapons, watching their hands, and following their movements until we had passed. There were wine cellars filled with raucous drinkers, whose brawls spilled into the piazza, and more gambling houses, and another set of booths where Gypsy fortune-tellers and palm readers plied their trades.