The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen (24 page)

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.

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.

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.”

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.

“Are you a citizen of Modena,” the clerk asked, “and is this a request or complaint of some sort? If so, you must—”

“Please tell him, sir,” I interrupted, “that Nicolò Zen of Venice, the clarinetist, would like to honor him with a performance, if it pleases him. The letter explains the rest. Thank you.”

I walked out without another word. I thought this was the sort of tone, proper but firm, to which a palace functionary would respond. Adriana and I ate lunch at a restaurant on the Via
Caselle and then strolled through the nearby park. She liked to feed the birds, and took some bread crumbs from the restaurant that she tossed them. When we returned to our hotel, I hoped to find a note from the palace awaiting us, but there was nothing. We spent the afternoon practicing an assortment of sonatas by Corelli, Albinoni, and our former Master, Vivaldi. The viola and the clarinet made for an interesting pairing: we had to imagine the accompaniment of other instruments, ideally a violin and a cello. I was still somewhat hesitant on the clarinet, unsatisfied with the fluidity of my sound, but when I mentioned this to Adriana, she insisted I was playing beautifully. Maybe so, and I just couldn’t hear it properly; or maybe she was keeping up my spirits. Either way, playing alongside her was a blessing and relieved some of the pressure I felt. I also enjoyed the intimacy of playing alone with her, just for ourselves. When we simply could play no longer, we had supper in the hotel dining room and then fell asleep in one another’s arms.

We were awakened at dawn by a knock at the door. I pulled on my pants and opened it to the concierge, who, clearly both impressed and frightened, handed me a gold envelope.

“From the Palazzo Ducale,” he said unnecessarily, for affixed to the envelope was the official red wax seal of the Duchy of Modena.

I tore the envelope open the moment he was gone, and got back under the covers. Adriana sat up sleepily.

“It worked,” I said. “He says, ‘My cousin, Count Cecci of Torino, after attending your performance in Strassburg, raved about it. I am delighted to learn that you are in Modena.’ Then he invites
us to perform at the palace the night after next. He will provide a violinist and a cellist from his State orchestra.”

She hugged me. “I can hardly believe it. You’re so clever, Nicolò.”

Maybe too clever, I thought, concerned more than ever about the quality of my own playing now that this scheme had become a reality. Now that both Adriana’s future and my own were riding on it. “I’ll send down for a pot of tea,” I said. “We need to practice some more.”

On the appointed night, Adriana put on a white dress and silver shoes we bought the previous day, combed out her long blond hair, and looked serene as could be, though I know she was anything but that on the inside. I wore a black suit and new black boots. I was edgy, but my nerves had settled down. It wasn’t so much that I felt more confident as that I had learned in Vienna how to shut the world out and turn inward at such times in order to calm myself.

As we approached the Palazzo Ducale, carrying our instruments, we stopped to gaze over the rooftops at the half moon rising against the dark blue evening sky. Then we turned around and Adriana stared hard at the palace. We had passed it several times since arriving in the city, but the prospect of entering it obviously gave her pause.

“It looks enormous,” she said. “All those lighted windows—how many people do you think are in there?”

“The Duke has a large court. And there will be other visitors, come to hear the music.”

“You’re accustomed to this, Nicolò, performing in all those big concert halls. I’m used to playing behind the grille at the Ospedale, not standing on an open stage.”

“You’ll be fine. Once you start playing, it’s all the same.”

But of course it wasn’t the performance she was fretting
about. “What if he’s not my father?” she said. “Or worse—what if he turns his back on me, as if I don’t exist? Isn’t that what he did when I was a child?”

“You don’t know what happened back then.”

She shrugged and choked back tears. “There aren’t that many possibilities, are there?”

I embraced her. “I’ll be there for you, Adriana, no matter what.”

She nodded and picked up her viola case. “I’m all right now. Let’s go.”

We gave our names to the sentry at the gate. I had only known her as Adriana dalla Viola, so when she said, “Adriana Manzone,” I squeezed her hand.

The Duke’s retainers wore red doublets and green pants, the same colors as Modena’s flag. Accompanied by a tall, bearded footman, one of these retainers led us up a grand staircase, down a wide corridor where portraits of previous Dukes hung on the walls, up a spiral staircase, and down two more corridors to what was clearly a music room, with a clavichord, a harp, and an assortment of other instruments. The two musicians who would complete our quartet awaited us in leather chairs. They were young men, cleanly shaved, wearing identical blue suits, the one tuning his cello, the other holding his violin.

They stood up, introduced themselves—Antonio and Maurizio were their names—and bowed. They knew who I was, but it was on Adriana that their gazes fell, and for good reason: the moment light touched her skin, whether sunlight or candlelight, her face grew even more radiant.

They had been informed of the program I had put together,
and they told me they had played the pieces several times. We had twenty minutes before the concert began. After tuning up together, we played the opening measures of the Scarlatti quartet that would be our first piece. I saw that Antonio and Maurizio were staring at my clarinet.

“I have never heard one before,” Antonio remarked.