Donna Leon - The Jewels of Paradise

At seven, mindful of the cousins’ eagerness and reluctant to have to listen to another admonition about having failed to do what she was being paid—they’d surely mention that if they dared—to do, she typed in Dottor Moretti’s address and wrote, “Dear Dottor Moretti, pursuant to our agreement, I am continuing with my reading of the documents. To make sense of them in the historical or personal context, I find it necessary to conduct further background research, without which many references, lacking context, will have little or no meaning. I would not like the claim of either Signor Stievani or Signor Scapinelli to be in any way weakened by my failure to understand a reference which might favor the case of either one of them, and thus it is necessary . . .”—she backed up and deleted that word, replacing it with “imperative”—“. . . that I pursue my research at the Marciana, where I am currently reading through books and documents in Italian, French, German, English, and Latin”—take that , cousins—“some of which make reference to the family situation and do create a context that suggests the Abbé’s assumption of familial responsibility and mutual interests.”

Here she began a new paragraph and described her archival research and transcribed Steffani’s letters to his cousins, noting dryly that the archives contained no response from them.

“I am optimistic that wider familiarity with this information will be of great service in my pursuit of a clear understanding and interpretation of Abbé Steffani’s testamentary dispositions.” She closed with a polite salutation and signed both her first and last names, omitting her title. She was also pleased that the letter avoided the use of any form of direct address, either polite or familiar.

“Send.”

When she looked at the table and saw that she had, in five hours, read only four documents, she thought of the weeping Francesca’s words to Dante as she explained how she and her lover Paolo, standing at her side there in hell and mingling his tears with hers, had spent their day reading until “That day we read no further.” Their reading had led them to lust, to sin, and finally to death and hell. Caterina’s was going to lead her to pasta with tomatoes, olives, and capers and half a bottle of Refosco. How much she would have preferred lust and sin.

SHE LEFT THE FOUNDATION AND, A SLAVE TO BEAUTY, TOOK THE longest way to the Riva. Once in sight of the water, she turned to the Basilica to watch the light disappear behind its pale domes. As she turned away and started walking toward Castello, she noticed how the remaining light fell on the faces of the people walking toward her and brightened them in every sense. The tourist current was high with the approach of Easter, and sudden riptides had begun to sweep past the unwary natives or slack tides becalm them, permitting large chunks of flotsam to flow around them. Things had changed in the years she had been away, and the local population now had the freedom to move swiftly against the approaching current only a few months a year. But, Caterina observed, that was better odds than the salmon got.

She had slipped her telefonino into the outside pocket of her bag, telling herself why it was necessary to do this. Perhaps she’d decide to call a friend and suggest dinner; perhaps her mother would call; or maybe another old classmate would learn she was back in town and suggest the cinema and a pizza. “Or perhaps the heavens will catch fire, Caterina, and you’ll have to call the firemen,” she told herself out loud. A short woman walking by with the aid of a cane gave Caterina a startled glance and looked around quickly, searching for a place to move away from the crazy woman.

Caterina ignored her, pulled out her phone, dropped it inside her bag, and zipped the bag shut. The phone did not ring, and so she had both the time and the sense to stop in the neighborhood store and buy olives, capers, and tomatoes, go home, make the pasta, and drink the rest of the Refosco.

Only then did she turn on her own computer and look at her mail. Sure enough, there was one from Tina.

“Dear Cati,” Cristina began, “this is the email that my friend in Constance sent. To me. Addressed to me. So I read it. Let me send it along to you so you can read it before I say anything.”

“Dear Sister Cristina, I’m happy to give what information I can to your sister and hope it will be of help to her in her research. Even after that, I will still be in your debt for your generosity in helping me gain access to the Episcopal Library of Trent.

“Your sister is evidently familiar with the ‘Affair,’ so I need waste no time outlining it. The manuscript, which I came upon while researching a book on Post-Reformation ecclesiastical taxation, is in the possession of the Schönborn family and appears to be the memoirs of the Countess von Platen, one of Count Philip Christoph Königsmarck’s former lovers, reported by all to have been passionately jealous of him. She had also been the mistress of the Elector Ernst August, by whom she had two illegitimate children. (I’ve no idea of the proper form for putting a footnote in an email and so am forced to use this parenthesis. She, Clara Elisabeth von Platen, also tried to convince her lover Königsmarck to marry her own illegitimate daughter by Ernst August, which fact you are free to use should a colleague ever attribute dissolute morals to the Italians. And to prevent your going off to discover the destiny of her daughter, be pleased to discover that she was said to be the mistress of Georg Ludwig—her half brother—soon to be King George I of England, to which country she accompanied him, later becoming the Countess Darlington and dividing his favors with the Duchess of Kendal, Melusine von der Schulenburg.)

“How the manuscript could have ended up in the archives of a family that also has an important collection of musical manuscripts, among which are many by your sister’s composer, is not within my competence to determine. Letters from Countess von Platen now held in the Graf von Schönborn’sche Hauptverwaltung in Würzburg confirm the handwriting.

“In this manuscript, which begins with the explanation that it is being written in the shadow of death, she claims a desire to tell the truth in God’s ears before that event. I read manuscripts, not souls, so I have no idea if this is the truth or her invention. Her desire to make her peace before God is quickly forgotten, for she does not miss a chance to speak badly of most of the people she mentions, even those who had died decades before.

“Of Königsmarck’s murder, after saying only that four men were involved and one of them gave the fatal blow, from behind, she says she hopes ‘his spirit found peace,’ though she also says she is not surprised at the manner of his death, ‘at the hands of those he injured,’ which presumably implicates the family of the Elector, although even the most cursory reading of the Count’s brief history might extend that list.

“After a bit of moralizing about the ‘justice meted out to this sinner and betrayer of womanhood,’ she writes, ‘although it was the hand of God that struck him down, it was the Abbé who gained from the fatal blow that sent him to his Maker.’

“Then, as if someone had asked her for evidence, she writes, ‘Did he not, Judas-like, make possible and profit from the crime? The blood money given to him bought the Jewels of Paradise, but nothing can buy him manhood and honor and beauty.’

“After that, not in the margin, but at the beginning of the next line, as though the writer intended to continue with the text, there is the single word ‘Philip,’ but nothing follows that word. The memoirs continue on the next page, but she has nothing further to say about Königsmarck.”