The Unknown Masterpiece (13 page)

‘Wretched or guilty men,
Hasten to approach!’

“In the horrible tumult of unchained passions, no holy voice would have been heard; but at this critical moment, it is the voice of the divine Catholic Church that rings forth, rising effulgent above all the rest. Here I was amazed to find, after so many harmonic treasures, that the composer devised a new vein for the splendid number
Glory unto Providence
, written in the manner of Handel. Robert enters, lacerating our souls with his ‘If I could only pray!’ Impelled by Hell’s decrees, Bertram pursues his son and makes a final effort. Alice comes to reveal the mother, and then we hear the great trio toward which the whole opera has been moving: the triumph of the soul over matter, of the spirit of good over the spirit of evil. The songs of faith disperse the evil choruses; joy is transcendent, but here the music weakens: I see a cathedral rather than hearing the concert of euphoric angels, some divine prayer of delivered souls applauding the union of Robert and Isabelle. We must not remain under the weight of Hell’s enchantments; we need to emerge with hope in our hearts. As a Catholic composer, I needed another prayer from Moses. I’d like to know how Germany would have contended with Italy, what Meyerbeer would have done to compete with Rossini. Yet despite this minor defect, the composer might point out that after five hours of music so substantial as this, Parisians prefer a flourish to a masterpiece! You’ve heard the cheers this work has received—it will have five hundred performances. If the French have understood this music...”

“It’s because it presents ideas,” the count interrupted.

“No, it’s because it offers—and with what authority!—the image of struggles in which so many perish, and because each individual existence is drawn to it by the memory of its own experience. And I, wretched as I am, I’d have been satisfied to hear those celestial voices I’ve dreamed of so often.”

At this moment Gambara fell into a sort of musical ecstasy and began to improvise the most melodic and harmonious cavatina Andrea had ever heard, a divine song divinely sung, the theme of which had a grace comparable to that of the
O filii et filiae
, but filled with delights only the highest musical genius could devise. The count remained plunged in intense admiration: the clouds dispersed, the blue of the sky reappeared, figures of angels appeared and raised the veils which hid the sanctuary, the light of heaven fell in floods. Soon silence reigned. Andrea, startled to hear nothing more, stared at Gambara who, his eyes fixed and his body rigid, breathed a single word:
God!
The count waited until the composer descended from the enchanted realms to which he had mounted on the iridescent wings of inspiration, and resolved to enlighten him with the very illumination he had brought down with him.

“Well now,” he said, offering Gambara another full glass and toasting him with his own, “you see that this German has created, as you say, a sublime opera without concerning himself about theory, while the composers who write grammars of their art like literary critics are quite capable of being detestable musicians.”

“Then...you don’t like my music?”

“I say no such thing, but if instead of seeking to express ideas, and if instead of carrying musical principles to extremes, in which you lose sight of your goal, you were simply willing to awaken certain sensations, you would be better understood—unless in fact you have mistaken your vocation altogether. You are a great poet.”

“So!” cried Gambara. “Twenty-five years of study in vain! You would have me study the imperfect language of men, when I hold the key to the
Celestial Word
! Oh, if you were right, I would rather die...”

“You? No. You are great and strong; you will begin your life again, and I shall sustain you. We will present to the world the rare and noble alliance of a rich man and an artist who understand each other.”

“Do you really mean it?” asked Gambara, struck with a sudden stupor.

“As I’ve already told you, you’re more of a poet than a musician.”

“Poet! Poet! That’s better than nothing. Tell me the truth, whom do you prize more, Homer or Mozart?”

“I admire them equally.”

“Word of honor?”

“Word of honor.”

“Hmm...One word more. What do you think of Meyerbeer and Byron?”

“By naming them together in that fashion, you’ve judged them.”

The count’s carriage was at the door. The composer and his noble physician were driven in a few moments to Gambara’s new lodgings; they hurried up the stairs and in another moment were in Marianna’s presence. As he burst in, Gambara threw himself into his wife’s arms. As he did, Marianna stepped back and turned her head aside; her husband did the same, leaning toward the count.

“Ah, monsieur,” Gambara said in a hollow voice, “at least you might have left me my madness.” Then his head dropped, and he fell to the floor.

“What have you done?” cried Marianna, giving her husband’s body a glance in which pity struggled with disgust. “He’s dead drunk!”

The count, with the help of his footman, gathered Gambara in his arms and laid him on his bed. Andrea left, his heart filled with a dreadful joy.

The next day the count deliberately let the usual time of his visit go by; he was beginning to fear that he had duped himself and paid too dearly for the comfort of that wretched household, its peace now forever troubled.

Presently Giardini appeared, bringing a note from Marianna. “Come,” she had written, “the damage is not so great as you would have liked, cruel man!”

“
Eccellenza
,” said the chef, while Andrea was dressing to go out, “you were a magnificent host last night, but you must agree that apart from the wines, which were splendid, your maître d’hôtel served no single dish worthy to figure on the table of a true gourmet. And you won’t deny, I suppose, that the viands you were served in my house the day you did me the honor of sitting at my table were infinitely better than any of those which sullied your magnificent silver service last night. Hence this morning I awoke thinking of the promise you had made me of a chef’s position. I now consider myself as attached to your household.”

“The same thought occurred to me some days ago,” replied Andrea. “I had mentioned you to the secretary of the Austrian Embassy, and you may henceforth cross the Alps whenever you choose to do so. I have a castle in Croatia which I seldom visit, and there you may combine the functions of concierge, wine steward, and maître d’hôtel on a salary of two hundred écus. This same emolument will be paid to your wife, who will tend to the rest of the household service. You may perform your culinary experiments
in anima vili
, which is to say, on the stomachs of my vassals. Here is a check on my bank for your traveling expenses.”

Giardini kissed the count’s hands, as is the Neapolitan custom.

“
Eccellenza
,” he said, “I accept the check without accepting the situation you offer, as it would be a dishonor to myself to abandon my art, declining the verdict of the finest gourmets, who are without a doubt those right here in Paris.”

When Andrea finally arrived at Gambara’s apartment, the composer rose and came to meet him.

“My generous friend,” he said with the most open expression, “either you took advantage of the weakness of my constitution yesterday in order to play a trick on me, or else your own brain is no more proof than mine against the vapors of our good Latian wines. I prefer this latter supposition, for I should rather doubt your stomach than your heart. Whatever the case, I forever renounce the frequentation of wine, whose abuse led me the other night into many blameworthy follies. When I think that I nearly...” Here he darted an apprehensive glance at Marianna. “As for the wretched opera you obliged me to listen to, I have given the matter some thought. It is no more than music produced by the most ordinary means, no more than mountains of notes heaped up,
verba et voces
: the dregs of that ambrosia which I quaff in deep draughts as I create the celestial music it is given to me to hear. I have recognized the origin of those mangled phrases. The man’s
Glory unto Providence
is a little too like a piece by Handel; the chorus of knights riding to battle is closely related to the Scottish tune in
La Dame blanche
; and if indeed the opera pleases as much as it appears to do, it is because the music derives from anyone and everyone, hence its popularity. I must leave you, dear friend, since this morning my head is filled with ideas which seek only to ascend toward God on the wings of music; but I wanted to see you, to speak to you. Farewell! I go to ask pardon of the muse. We shall dine together this evening, but no wine, not for me at least. Oh yes, I am quite determined...”

“I despair of him,” Andrea said, blushing.

“Ah! You reassure my conscience,” exclaimed Marianna. “I dared not question it further. My friend! My friend! It is no fault of ours, he does not want to be cured.”

Six years later, in January 1837, many musicians unlucky enough to have damaged their wind or string instruments would bring them to a dilapidated and disreputable house in the rue Froidmanteau, on the fifth floor of which lived an old Italian named Gambara. For the last five years, this artist had lived alone, abandoned by his wife and subject to many misfortunes. A musical instrument which he had counted on to make his fortune, and which he called the panharmonicon, had been sold by the bailiffs at public auction on the Place du Châtelet, together with great quantities of ruled paper covered with musical notations. The day after the sale these scores had been used in Les Halles to wrap butter, fish, and fruit. In this way three grand operas, of which this poor man used to speak but which a former Neapolitan cook (now a huckster of questionable groceries) declared to be a heap of rubbish, had been scattered throughout Paris and used to line the wicker baskets of secondhand peddlers. In any case, the landlord had received his rent and the bailiff’s men their pay. According to the old Neapolitan huckster, who sold the whores of the rue Froidmanteau the leftovers of the most sumptuous dinners given in town the night before, Signora Gambara had followed a Milanese count to Italy, and no one could say what had become of her. Weary of fifteen years of poverty, perhaps she had ruined this count by her extravagance, for they were so much in love with each other that in all his life the Neapolitan had never seen an example of such a passion.

One evening toward the end of that same month of January, when Giardini the huckster was telling a whore who had come to find something for her supper about this divine Marianna, so pure, so lovely, so nobly devoted,
and who nevertheless had ended up like all the others
, the whore and the huckster and Signora Giardini noticed in the street a tall woman with a dusty, blackened face, a walking skeleton peering at the street numbers as she passed, evidently trying to recognize a house.

“
Ecco la Marianna!
” said the huckster in Italian.

In the wretched huckster, Marianna recognized the Neapolitan Giardini. Showing no concern for whatever misfortunes had brought him to this wretched state, she entered the place and sat down, for she had walked from Fontainebleau; indeed the poor woman had walked fourteen leagues that day, and had begged her bread from Turin all the way to Paris. The sight of her dismayed this wretched trio. Of her marvelous beauty nothing was left but her lovely eyes, now sick and lusterless. The only thing that had remained faithful to her was misfortune. She was warmly welcomed by the old instrument mender, who saw her enter his room with inexpressible pleasure.

“Here you are then, my poor Marianna!” he said kindly. “While you were gone,
they
sold my instrument and my operas, too!”

It was difficult to kill the fatted calf for the prodigal’s return, but Giardini produced some leftover salmon, the whore paid for the wine, Gambara offered his bread, Signora Giardini laid the cloth, and in this fashion these poor wretches supped together in the composer’s attic. When questioned about her adventures, Marianna refused to answer and merely raised her fine eyes to heaven, murmuring to Giardini: “...married to a dancing girl!”

“How are you going to live?” asked the whore. “The journey has done you in, and...”

“Made me an old woman,” said Marianna. “No, it’s not exhaustion, and it’s not poverty either. It’s grief.”

“Now then, what’s that?” asked the whore. “And why didn’t you send anything to your man here?”

Marianna replied with no more than a look, but it was a look that went straight to the poor girl’s heart.

“And proud into the bargain!” the whore exclaimed. “Excuse me! What good will that do her?” she murmured to Giardini.

That year, musicians must have taken exceptional care of their instruments, for repairs did not suffice to pay the expenses of this wretched household; Marianna earned little enough by her needle, and the couple was reduced to employing their talents in the lowest of all spheres. They left the rue Froidmanteau at dusk and walked to the Champs-Elysées in order to sing duets which poor Gambara accompanied on an even poorer guitar. On the way, his wife, who on these expeditions covered her head with a muslin rag, led her husband to a wineshop in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and made him drink several little glasses of brandy, enough to intoxicate him—otherwise his music would have been intolerable. Then they took up their positions in front of the gay world sitting on iron chairs along the promenade, where one of the great geniuses of the age, the unknown Orpheus of modern music, performed fragments of his scores, and these fragments were so remarkable that they won the favor of a few coins from the Parisian idlers. When an amateur of the Théâtre des Bouffons who happened to be sitting there failed to recognize the opera from which these pieces were taken, he questioned the woman dressed like a Grecian priestess who was making the rounds with an old tin plate in which she collected alms.

“My dear, where does that music come from?”

“From the opera
Mohammed
,” replied Marianna.