The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen

  From the underside of the bridge, five bodies were hanging by their necks on long ropes, swaying slowly. Gulls were wheeling overhead, screaming, but it was a flock of crows that had alighted on the shoulders of the corpses, pecking at their faces, agitating the crowd all the more. Only when I reached the edge of this crowd could I could confirm what I had suspected: it was Aldo and the four members of his gang suspended over the canal, their necks broken and their faces reduced to bloody pulps. The crows had yet to pluck out Aldo’s blank, milky eyes, but I would be lying if I said I felt a shred of pity for him at that moment.

  8

  Two days later, Adriana and I departed Venice for Modena, a journey of one hundred miles. In the meantime, a good deal had happened. Julietta agreed to serve as Massimo’s assistant. After her ordeal in Padua, and with slim prospects as a musician, she was thrilled to be asked. Meta would stay on at the villa until Julietta was sufficiently trained. After that, Meta planned to move to Vicenza, to begin a new life. Without hesitation during her convalescence, Massimo had granted her request to be reunited with Lila, whom he had sent for in Vienna.

  “You have worked tirelessly for me, without complaint,” he said. “I promise that you and your sister will never want for anything.”

  I knew he was disappointed about losing Adriana’s services—and company—but our enlisting Julietta, and her obvious enthusiasm, seemed to have mollified him.

  The sensational deaths of Aldo and the members of his gang had become the talk of the city. When I arranged to meet Bartolomeo at his sister’s house, he greeted me with a bear hug and then looked over my well-tailored clothes.

  “Quite an improvement since the last time I saw you,” he said dryly.

  I thanked him for alerting me to the plight of Julietta and Adriana, and filled him in on what had transpired since I left Vienna. Signora Botello again treated me like one of her long-lost sons, who were still on active duty in the Ionian Sea. When she said she didn’t approve of how thin I looked, I appreciated the irony: a diet of rich Viennese food and enjoyment of the finer creature comforts had left me less robust than when I was surviving on scraps. She insisted I share their supper of fish stew, grilled eel, and pickled radishes. “And plenty of bread basted with oil,” she added.

  Bartolomeo told me Aldo had been suspected of numerous robberies and assaults, kidnappings, and at least one murder, but the constables had never been able to catch him red-handed or find witnesses who would talk. Interrogated by magistrates from Castello and the Dorsoduro, and once by a State Attorney who could have thrown him in prison on the spot, he fell back on his blindness to elicit sympathy. How could a blind orphan, he declared, who relied on charity and goodwill, be responsible for so much mayhem? “I can barely dress myself,” he would whine, “much less wield a knife or club.”

  “For a time, it worked,” Bartolomeo said, slicing the bread. “But when Aldo learned that a captured member of his gang was willing to testify against him, as well as Marta and Luca, and that the police had secured warrants, he fled to Padua, and Marta and Luca disappeared—probably to a far more distant place. I am surprised Aldo returned here at all. He had made many enemies, honest and crooked.” Bartolomeo looked at me from under his thick eyebrows. “Someone he crossed caught up with him—with a vengeance. He wasn’t just killed: he was executed.”

  Though those of us residing in Massimo’s villa felt sure we knew the identity of Aldo’s executioner, we did not dare broach the subject with Massimo. What could we have said? Adriana, Julietta, and Meta evinced as little regret as I had over Aldo’s fate. They did not personally witness the gruesome spectacle at the Rialto Bridge, but knowing of his various crimes, and of the damage he had intended to inflict on them, I doubt even that would have softened their hearts.

  As for Massimo the Magnificent, I would always feel conflicted about him—not surprising, since literally and figuratively, he was a man split in two. He could be a beneficent force, using his considerable powers and connections to help the likes of me, a poor boy who had come to him out of nowhere. I owed him a great deal, and perhaps for that reason trusted him more than he might have expected. He was also the most terrifying and enigmatic man I ever knew. Even those he cared about—perhaps us most of all—were frightened of him because we knew what he was capable of and sensed that he only revealed a fraction of those capabilities.

  On that last day, after Lodovico had loaded our baggage onto a cart, and Adriana and I had said our goodbyes to Julietta and Meta, Massimo took me aside in the courtyard.

  “You have not yet tried to play the clarinet again, have you?” he said.

  “You know I haven’t.”

  “Any regrets?”

  “None.”

  “Fears?”

  “Some.”

  “And what is it you most want now?”

  I indicated Adriana, awaiting me beside the cart.

  He nodded approvingly. “You’re very lucky, Nicolò—maybe more than you know. Many of us don’t seize the moment when we meet the right partner. We assume there will be other such moments.” I was surprised, for however oblique, this was the most personal revelation I’d ever heard from him. “I will share with you something my old mentor, Hajik Nassim, once told me,” he went on. “Remember it well: ‘Those who truly guide you in life do not show you where happiness lies, but where it doesn’t.’ ”

  1

  We traveled for three days, mostly on the road south originally built by the Romans in the time of Augustus Caesar. Once we were past Padua, broad yellow fields opened up on either side of us. Farmers were cutting the tall hay, the sun reflecting off their scythes. Women with kerchiefs round their heads and baskets on their backs walked alongside the road. The baskets were filled with cucumbers, tomatoes, and ears of corn. The sky was a radiant blue, cloudless, almost painful to stare at.

  With Adriana beside me, I felt at peace with myself for the first time in a while. Though she tried to remain cheerful, I could see she was preoccupied, anxious about the reception she would receive in Modena, wondering if she would be received at all. I really did have a plan. It was quite simple, really, and rather ingenious—or so I told myself. If her request to see the Duke was rebuffed by his retainers, I would, without mentioning Adriana, present myself at his palace alone and tell them that I would be pleased to give a recital, at the Duke’s pleasure, to honor his love of music. I had learned of the latter by making a few inquiries before we left Venice. Albinoni and the violinist Coletti had performed at his court, and the Duke himself played the clavichord and fancied himself to be rather proficient. I was not being immodest when I thought there was a good chance my reputation might have preceded me as far south as Modena. I really had gained a good measure of fame in Vienna, and throughout Austria and Bavaria, and as Herr Hoyer often told me, I was not only the foremost clarinet soloist in Europe, and a prodigy, but was also a pioneer of sorts on the instrument. Should I require it, I also had a letter from Herr Hoyer to the musical director at San Angelo in Venice. I was supposed to deliver this letter in person, but I had held on to it in case I was asked for a formal reference. At any rate, if, as I expected, the Duke invited me to perform for him, I would take Adriana along and at the appropriate moment introduce her to him. It might be awkward at first, but I hoped that, seeing her face to face, he would be more receptive to her than his silence with regard to her letters might indicate. At any rate, she would be able to address him directly. I couldn’t extend my planning beyond that point.

  Of course, all of this entailed my getting into the Duke’s good graces, and that meant entertaining him properly with my clarinet. When I told Massimo that I had no regrets about the clarinet’s having been restored to its original state, I was telling the truth, for all the reasons I had first given him. But on the day he acquiesced to my request, I had no idea I might be giving a recital on which Adriana’s happiness hinged. The timing was unfortunate. I knew the first performance I gave after the clarinet was altered
was going to be a challenge. The closer we got to Modena, the more I asked myself why it had to be this one, putting that much more pressure on me. All my bravado to Adriana about making things right suddenly rang hollow to me.

  As if reading my mind, she took hold of my arm at that moment and rested her head on my shoulder. “Everything is going to be all right,” she said. “It’s not going to do any good for me to fret about it.”

  Nor I, I thought, and a few minutes later she had drifted off to sleep.

  2

  That first night we put up at an inn in the town of Lendinara, beside the Adige River. A night I would never forget. Of course Massimo had given us separate bedrooms while we were his guests. This would be the first time we shared a room. At first, Adriana seemed to have no qualms about this. She acted as if it was perfectly natural. As for the innkeeper, he eyed us skeptically until I asked for his best room, and without hesitation paid him in advance the inflated amount that came off the top of his head. I signed the guestbook Signor & Signora Nicolò Zen. Then the innkeeper picked up our bags and led us upstairs and told us our supper would be ready whenever we were.

  We ate roast chicken and potatoes at a table by the window in the small dining room on the first floor. There were two men drinking wine at the bar, and a table with an old married couple. From across the field behind the inn we could hear roosters crowing and donkeys braying. I asked for wine and the innkeeper’s daughter filled two goblets with dark wine from a barrel. When she served them, she looked us over, especially Adriana’s white dress, which had been a gift from Meta. The girl was our own age—Adriana had just turned sixteen and I was several months short of it—and she was clearly curious about why a seemingly affluent couple would have stopped at a country inn when they were only a few hours from Ferrara, a city with luxurious accommodations.

  Only when we returned to our room did it seem to hit Adriana that we were going to share a bed. Later she would tell me that the fact we had been dormitory mates at the Ospedale was what had made it all seem so natural to her. I’m not sure I believed her completely—not because she would lie to me, but because it really did seem natural, though being dormitory mates and being lovers were not comparable.

  And it was lovers that we became in that room, after standing by the window to gaze at the stars. We were both nervous when we sat down on the edge of the bed—I less so after my liaison with Madeleine Pellier, to whom I was grateful at that moment. But when I took Adriana in my arms and we kissed, it felt very different than it had with Madeleine. I was excited in the same way, and eager, but I was not just infatuated with Adriana, I was in love with her.

  3

  Modena is a smaller city than Padua or Ferrara. At its center is the enormous Duomo, a cathedral built on the tomb of the city’s patron saint, Geminianus. Along its north end, also enormous, is the Palazzo Ducale. At that time, it was debatable which of the two was more important in the life of the city: the Church, headed by a distracted archbishop ambitious to become a cardinal and leave Modena for Rome, or the State, which was synonymous with an equally ambitious Duke whose sole focus was Modena, which he wanted to make as influential as the cities to her east and west, Bologna and Parma.

  Rinaldo d’Este—Rinaldo III—was the Duke of Modena. The d’Este line was long: at one time, Rinaldo’s ancestors had also held the title of Duke of Ferrara and controlled the two large, rich provinces on either side of the Panaro River, an area of roughly sixteen hundred square miles. Now all that remained of that domain were two outposts, the principalities of Mirandola, twenty miles to the north, and Casina, ten miles to the south. The latter, the poorer of the two, was nestled high in the Apennine Mountains and ruled by the Duke’s sister, Beatrice, the Baronessa Casina. Her father had married her off to Barone Casina, a fading aristocrat who received a large dowry, in order to consolidate Modena’s hold on the principality. The Baronessa had been widowed young. Because she and her daughter, Maria Angela, were his only remaining blood relatives, the Baronessa was maneuvering to have the Duke anoint Maria Angela as his successor in Modena. To date, he had resisted her entreaties, but the Baronessa was certain she would convince him. She reasoned that he had no choice, after all, unless he remarried at the age of sixty-two and fathered another child. But that was unlikely; he seemed to be frozen in deep mourning and perpetually gloomy. Preceding the deaths of his children, Rinaldo d’Este had lost his wife, Charlotte Felicitas, four years earlier. In retrospect, that was the worst blow of all. When it came to running the government, however, the Duke remained strong-minded and intellectually sharp, well attuned to his citizens. He didn’t suffer fools, and he was not easily deceived or outmaneuvered. Having ruled for four decades, he knew how to inspire both loyalty and fear. He spent many hours in his library and liked to entertain visiting scholars. But, as always, the concerts and recitals he sponsored at the palace were his greatest pleasure. There were intimate evenings for members of his court, local gentry, influential bankers and merchants, but also frequent performances open to all that his late wife had preferred, which were staged in the great hall of the palace.

  Adriana and I entered Modena on a warm afternoon and found a hotel near the palace. I requested a room on the top floor in the rear, where I could play my clarinet without disturbing anyone, and they accommodated me.

  It was an expansive room that overlooked a narrow, littleused courtyard. It had a large bed, a washbasin and pitcher, heavy drapes, and a Persian rug. Curling her toes in the thick rug, Adriana sat down on the edge of the bed. I had grown accustomed to hotels during my tours, but she had never stayed in a large urban hotel. I hung up my jacket, washed my hands and face, and took my clarinet from its case.

  “What are you doing?” Adriana asked, removing her stockings.

  “I need to practice.”

  “Come here,” she said, holding out her arms.

  I walked over and she pulled me onto the bed.

  “I need to practice, too,” she said, blushing, and we burst into laughter.

  4

  Adriana was asleep two hours later when I put on a robe and took up my clarinet. This was the first time I would play it since Massimo had returned it to its original state. I was still nervous, but with all the turmoil of late, I was glad I had waited.

  I raised the clarinet to my lips, wet the embouchure, placed my fingertips on the keys, and blew a middle D. Then E, F, G, up the scale and back to D. I waited a few beats, then launched into the opening bars of Corelli’s Sonata no. 4, a piece I had performed many times, written for the flute but easily transposed to the clarinet. Concentrating on each measure, I tried as always to hear it in my head first; but now, instead of leading me, the clarinet was following; instead of offering cues, it was taking mine. I was rusty, and for the first hour terrified that I was sounding worse and worse. But gradually I relaxed—something I had taken for granted as a performer—and once I realized I could relax enough to block out my fears, my playing improved. In fact, I sounded better than I expected. Even while empowering me as a performer, the clarinet had been teaching me, honing my technique, pushing me toward perfection by enabling me to play nearly perfectly.

  Still, I was wary. Perhaps because I had been relying on the powers of the clarinet more than I needed to (which had never occurred to me), I may have grown accustomed to holding back, deferring my own instincts, however rough or eccentric they might be. It was a conundrum: because I had played so well, on a newly invented instrument, people had considered me unique and rewarded me with enormous attention; yet, now that I was on my own, I worried that my playing was not only less polished, but not nearly so unique. That morning I was awfully hard on myself and thought I sounded like any number of wind musicians, which had certainly not been the formula for my great success. Perhaps what was missing was not so much Massimo’s magic as my own soul.

  I didn’t know how long Adriana had been lying awake, listening to me practice, when she said, “Are you going to let me in on your plan?
I think I need to know.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  I sat down on the bed and laid it out for her in detail. She listened carefully, nodded in agreement several times, and then said, “Haven’t you overlooked a certain possibility?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Instead of my accompanying you to the palace and joining the audience while you perform, how about if I accompany you on the viola instead?” She smiled. “I’d like to have a hand in seizing my own fate.”

  5

  Early the next morning, I walked over to the Palazzo Ducale. The palace is an imposing, elegantly designed building of pale stone, with tall windows and ornate balconies and balustrades. Three stories high, with a tower at either end and a spacious rectangular rotunda crowned by a clock steeple, it had a marching green that could accommodate two battalions and elaborate gardens in the rear containing three fountains, an arbor, and a two-hundred-foot reflecting pool lined with statues of angels and demons. Oddly, many of the demons had angelic faces and most of the angels looked demonic. Gargoyles jutted from the eaves of the towers.

  Four guards in red and black uniforms flanked the entrance. They admitted me to an anteroom where two clerks were sitting behind imposing desks. I handed one of them a letter I had written to His Grace, Rinaldo d’Este, Duke of Modena, and asked that he kindly deliver it.