Donna Leon - The Jewels of Paradise

“The Spanish Habsburgs,” he said.

“Is that a rock group?” she asked mildly.

This time she failed to make him laugh and seemed only to confuse him. Quickly, she corrected herself. “Sorry. It was a joke.”

He nodded, serious for a moment, then amused. Finally he said, “It’s because of a fidanzata I had there.” Then, to prevent any question she might have asked, he added, “We took some classes together.” She said nothing, thinking silence would prod him more than would a question.

So it proved to be. “She was an aristocrat. The daughter of a duke, and distantly a Habsburg.” He shook his head, as if to ask how it was that a man who had once known the daughter of a duke could end up in a trattoria in Venice talking about her to a musicologist.

“She always went on about her father’s right to the Spanish throne. After a while, I guess I got tired of listening to it.” Then, with a quick glance at her, “Probably because I got tired of listening to her. But I didn’t know that then. I was too young. I never met her father, but I disliked everything she said about him and her everlasting insistence that he was meant to be the King of Spain.” Then, as if he’d just heard himself saying all this, he added, “And as I began to dislike more and more what she said about him, I realized I disliked her, too. But boys don’t realize that when they’re eighteen.” He smiled at the boy he had once been, and she joined him in it.

He broke off to thread some tagliatelle around his fork, but he set it on the edge of his plate, untasted, and went on. “So I started reading about kings—not only the one her father insisted had stolen the throne from him—and their ancestors and where they came from, and how they got to be kings, and what they did while they were. And then I found myself fascinated by the way so much of their behavior led to such misery. Wonderful art, but endless human misery.” He looked across at her and smiled. “But I was eighteen, as I said, so what did I know?”

She raised her water glass, though she knew it was improper to do so in anything other than wine, and toasted him. A man who so deeply regretted human misery deserved at least that much.

THEY LAUGHED A GREAT DEAL THROUGH THE REST OF THE lunch. The only disagreement came when Andrea insisted on paying the bill, something he persuaded her to accept when he promised he would pass the expense on to his clients. It was perfectly legitimate, he explained, because they had talked about music and manuscripts during the meal. Indeed they had, she agreed, delighted at the bill’s having to be paid by the two cousins and not at all troubled by questions of legitimacy.

They were back at the Foundation in a matter of minutes; Caterina found herself wishing it had been farther away. At the door, Andrea looked at his watch—she noticed that it was gold and thin as a coin, certainly something that would have interested Signor Scapinelli. “I’ve got to get back,” he said. “I look forward to hearing from you.”

She had been studying his watch when she heard these last words. Just as she raised her head to smile at him, he reached into his pocket to pull out his wallet. He took a white card from it and handed it to her. “My email is there, so if you’ll send me the results of your research, I’ll forward it to the cousins.” Pleased as she was by his having adopted her habit of referring to Signor Stievani and Signor Scapinelli as “the cousins,” she was disappointed—she admitted it—that his eagerness to hear from her seemed prompted by the documents.

“Yes,” she said, with what she thought was an easy, relaxed manner. “I’ll get back to it and send you a summary by the end of the day.”

“Good,” he said, extending his hand. She shook it, slipped his card into the pocket of her jacket, and let herself into the Foundation. As she started down the corridor, Roseanna came out of her office.

“Oh, there you are,” Caterina said, smiling. She was uncertain about whether, now that they had become something approaching friends, she should greet Roseanna with a kiss, but she left it to the older woman to decide.

As Caterina got closer, she saw there was to be no kiss. In fact, Roseanna looked decidedly unfriendly; Caterina hoped someone else would be the recipient of her evident displeasure or had been the cause.

“Where were you?” Roseanna asked by way of greeting.

“At lunch,” Caterina said, not specifying where or with whom.

“The office was open.”

“I thought I closed the door,” Caterina said without thinking.

“Yes, the door was closed, but it wasn’t locked.” Roseanna waited, but Caterina’s silence led her to continue. “The documents were on your desk, and the storeroom was open.” Caterina listened to the tone: the words, as well as the facts, left her with no defense. Her delight at Andrea’s suggestion had led her out of the room without giving a thought to the papers or her responsibility to them, a lack of attention in which Andrea had joined her.

“I’m sorry,” was the best she could say. “I forgot.” She reached into her pocket for the keys to the door at the foot of the stairs, and her fingers found Andrea’s card. “I won’t do it again.”

Roseanna unfroze a bit but still said, briskly, “I hope not. We don’t have any clear idea of the value of what’s there.”

Again, it was the tone far more than the words themselves, for Roseanna’s disguised question hinted that she had obtained information about the value of those papers, wanted to be asked about it, and wanted to be praised for having found it.

“What did you learn?” Caterina said, moving a few steps closer to her.

Roseanna went back into her office, leaving the door open, an invitation Caterina took. When they were seated on either side of her desk, Roseanna pushed a sheet of paper across the table. Caterina recognized the letterhead of an auction house in London; below it were listed three manuscripts and the sums paid.

“Qui la dea cieca”

(1713?) 9,040 euro

“Notte amica”

(first page) (1714) 4,320 euro

“Padre, se colpa in lui”

(fragment) (1712) 1,250 euro

Caterina looked up from the paper and gave a broad smile. “Well, who’s been doing her homework?” She glanced at the paper again and asked, “How on earth did you persuade them to give you this information?” She tapped at the three sums with the tip of her finger and said, “ Complimenti .”

Roseanna smiled even more broadly and said, all anger or reproach fled from her voice, “I sent them an email, saying I was the acting director of the Foundation and telling them that, in consequence of a large donation to our acquisitions fund, we were interested in any available manuscripts by Agostino Steffani and curious about recent purchase prices.” Nodding toward the paper, she added, “They sent me this.”

Caterina’s look of open-mouthed admiration was entirely spontaneous. “Acquisitions fund?” she asked.

Roseanna waved her hand, dismissing the possibility that such a thing existed. “I assumed they’d answer a request if it was something that might make them money.”

“Ah, Roseanna,” she said, “you have a real call to work in the music business.” Caterina picked up the paper. “So this is what his work is sold for,” she mused. “It would help if we knew when these sales took place.”

“Yes,” Roseanna agreed. “You could call and ask, couldn’t you? Or write to them.”

“What language did you use?”

“Italian,” Roseanna said. “It’s the only one I know.”

Caterina let the page drop back onto Roseanna’s desk. “It might be enough just to know this, that a presumably complete aria is worth at least nine thousand euros.”