The Unknown Masterpiece (9 page)

“You must not lose hope,” said Andrea. “Perhaps you have reached the end of your ordeals. Until my efforts, united with yours, have brought your works to the world’s attention, surely you will permit a compatriot, an artist like yourself, to offer you some advance on the inevitable success of your scores.”

“Anything that concerns the conditions of material life is in my wife’s hands,” Gambara answered. “She will decide what we can accept without shame from a man of honor such as you appear to be. For myself, it has been a long time since I have indulged in such extended confidences, and I ask your permission to take my leave. I feel a melody beckoning me, it passes before me, dancing the while, naked and shivering like a lovely girl who begs her lover for the garments he has hidden from her. Farewell! I must go and dress my mistress; I leave my wife with you.”

Gambara made his escape like a man who reproaches himself for wasting precious time, and Marianna, in some embarrassment, attempted to follow him; Andrea dared not retain her, but Giardini came to their rescue. “You heard him, signora,” he said. “Your husband has left you more than one affair to settle with
il signor conte.
”

Marianna sat down again, but without lifting her eyes to look at Andrea, who hesitated to speak to her.

“Signor Gambara’s confidence in me,” Andrea said with emotion, “surely deserves his wife’s as well. Will the lovely Marianna refuse to tell me the story of her own life?”

“My life,” Marianna replied, “is no more than the life of ivy on a wall. And as for the story of my heart, you must think me as devoid of pride as of modesty if you ask me to tell you that, after what you have just heard.”

“And from whom should I ask to hear it?” cried the count, passion already dimming his wits.

“From yourself,” Marianna replied. “Either you have already understood me, or you will never do so. Try asking yourself.”

“I shall, but you must hear me out. This hand which I take in mine—leave it there as long as you recognize my version as the truth.”

“I’m listening,” Marianna said.

“A woman’s life begins with her first passion,” Andrea said, “and my dear Marianna’s began only on the day she saw Paolo Gambara for the first time; she required a true passion to relish, and above all some interesting weakness to protect and support. The fine feminine organization with which she is endowed is less drawn to love, perhaps, than to maternity. You sigh, Marianna? I have touched one of your heart’s living wounds. What a fine role it was for you to play, young as you were, that of the guardian of a fine mind gone astray. You told yourself: Paolo will be my genius, I shall be his reason, and together we shall compose that semidivine being known as an angel, a sublime creature who delights and comprehends, in whom virtue and wisdom never stifle love. Then, in the first bloom of youth, you heard the myriad voices of nature which the poet sought to reproduce. Great was your enthusiasm when Paolo spread before you all the treasures of poetry while seeking their formula in the sublime but limited language of music, and you admired him even as a delirious exaltation carried him far away from you, for you wanted to believe that all this errant energy would eventually be returned to love. You knew nothing of the jealous tyranny thought exerts over minds obsessed with it. Gambara had surrendered himself, before ever knowing you, to that proud and vindictive mistress against whom you have vainly struggled to this very day. For one moment you glimpsed happiness: fallen from the heights where his mind continually soared, Paolo was amazed to find reality so sweet, and you supposed that his obsession would relax its grip in love’s arms. But soon music and the idea of music reclaimed its victim. The dazzling mirage which had suddenly transported you amid the joys of mutual passion darkened the solitary path you were now condemned to follow. In the account your husband has just given, as in the striking contrast between your features and his, I have glimpsed the secret anguish of your life, the painful mysteries of this ill-matched union in which you have received the sufferer’s share. If your conduct was always heroic, if your energy never flagged in the exercise of your arduous duties, perhaps in the silence of your solitary nights, that heart whose rhythm echoed so desperately in your breast protested more than once! Your cruelest torment was your husband’s very greatness: had he been less noble, less pure, you might have abandoned him; but his virtues sustained your own. Between your heroism and his, you wondered who would be the last to yield. You pursued the true greatness of your task, as Paolo Gambara pursued his chimera. If love of duty alone had sustained and guided you, perhaps triumph would have seemed easier; it would have sufficed to stifle your heart and to transport your life into the world of abstractions, religion would have absorbed the rest, and you would have lived within an idea, the way holy women extinguish nature’s instincts at the foot of the altar. But the charm that suffused your Paolo’s entire person, the elevation of his mind, the rare and touching evidences of his tenderness continually cast you out of this ideal world where virtue sought to keep you, arousing forces ceaselessly exhausted by the struggle against love’s phantom. And still you did not doubt! The least gleams of hope lured you in pursuit of your sweet chimera. Finally, the years of disappointment have caused you to lose the patience an angel would have foresworn long since. Today, that ideal so long pursued is only a shadow and no longer a body. The madness so close to genius must be incurable in this world. Obsessed by this realization, you considered your entire youth to have been sacrificed, if not wasted; bitterly you acknowledged nature’s mistake in having given you a father when you sought a husband. You wondered if you have not exceeded the duties of a wife in dedicating yourself so loyally to a man wedded only to science. Marianna, leave your hand in mine; everything I have said is true. And you have searched everywhere for comfort, for consolation; but you are in Paris now, and not in Italy where men and women know so well how to love.”

“Oh, let me end the tale!” Marianna exclaimed. “I prefer to say such things myself. I shall be frank; I feel I am speaking to my best friend. Yes, it was in Paris that all that you have so clearly explained actually happened; but when I saw you, I was saved, for until then I had nowhere encountered the love dreamed of since my childhood. The way I lived, even the way I dressed shielded me from the notice of men like you. The few young men whose situation kept them from insulting me became still more odious in my eyes because of the coarseness with which they treated me: either they patronized my husband as an absurd old man, or they treacherously sought to get into his good graces in order to betray him. All of them tried to persuade me to leave him; none understood my reverence for this soul, so remote from us only because it is so near heaven, this friend, this brother I long to serve forever! Only you have understood the ties that bind me to him—tell me you have taken a sincere interest in my Paolo, without ulterior motives...”

“I accept your praise,” Andrea interrupted, “but don’t go too far, don’t force me to deceive you. I love you, Marianna, as we love in that beautiful country where we were both born; I love you with all my soul and all my power, but before offering you this love, I must show myself worthy of yours. I shall make one last effort to restore to you the man you’ve loved since childhood, the man you’ll always love. Until success or defeat, accept without embarrassment the comfort I want to give you both; tomorrow you and I will find suitable lodgings for him. Do you esteem me enough to permit me a share in your guardianship?”

Amazed by this generosity, Marianna once again gave her hand to the count, who then left the house endeavoring to avoid the effusive civilities of Giardini and his wife.

The next day, the count was ushered by Giardini into Gambara’s apartment. Though already convinced of her lover’s high-mindedness, for certain souls are prompt to understand, Marianna was too good a housekeeper not to betray her embarrassment at receiving so great a gentleman in so wretched a room. Yet everything in it was spotless. She had spent the entire morning dusting the strange furniture, the handiwork of Signor Giardini, who had employed his leisure moments making such items out of the scraps of instruments Gambara had discarded. Andrea had never seen anything so peculiar in all his life. In order to preserve the semblance of gravity, he was compelled to look away from the grotesque bed the ingenious chef had fashioned out of the case of an old spinet, and turned instead to Marianna’s narrow cot, its simple mattress covered with white muslin, which suggested thoughts at once melancholy and delightful. Andrea wanted to discuss his plans and the rest of the day’s schedule, but the enthusiastic Gambara, realizing he had at last encountered a willing listener, buttonholed the count and forced him to listen to the opera he had written for Paris.

“To begin with, monsieur,” said Gambara, “permit me to inform you of the subject in a few words. Here in Paris, those who receive musical impressions do not evolve them within themselves, as religion teaches us to develop holy texts by prayer; hence it is difficult to make such persons understand that there exists an eternal music in nature, a flowing melody, a perfect harmony, troubled only by revolutions independent of the divine will, as the passions are independent of human will. I therefore had to find an immense frame to contain both effects and causes, for my music’s goal is to offer a representation of the life of nations conceived from the loftiest perspective. My opera—whose libretto I also composed, for a poet would never have developed such a subject—deals with the life of Mohammed, a figure who joined the magic of ancient Sabaeanism to the Oriental poetry of the Jewish religion, producing one of the greatest of human poems, the dominion of the Arabs. Doubtless Mohammed borrowed from the Jews the notion of absolute government, and from the pastoral or Sabaean religions the roving spirit which has created the brilliant empire of the caliphs. His destiny was inscribed in his very birth—his father was a pagan and his mother a Jewess. Ah, to be a great musician, my dear count, one must also be very learned. Without culture, without local color, there are no ideas in music. The composer who sings for singing’s sake is an artisan, not an artist. This magnificent opera of mine continues the great work I had already undertaken. My first opera was called
The Martyrs
, and I plan to create a third one on the subject of
Jerusalem Delivered
. You must understand the beauty of this triple composition and the diversity of its resources:
The Martyrs
,
Mohammed
,
Jerusalem Delivered
! The God of the West, the God of the East, and the struggle of their religions around a tomb. But let us speak no more of my lost splendors—lost forever! Here is the argument of my opera.”

There was a pause, and then Gambara resumed: “The first act shows Mohammed living as a sort of middle-man in the house of Khadijah, a rich widow to whom his uncle introduced him; he is in love and ambitious; driven from Mecca, he flees to Medina, and dates his era from that flight (the Hegira). The second act shows Mohammed as a prophet founding a warrior religion. Act three presents Mohammed turning away from all experience, having exhausted life, and concealing the secret of his death in order to become a God, the last effort of human pride. Now you will be able to judge my method of expressing by sound a great subject which poetry renders only imperfectly in words.”

Gambara sat down at his piano with a meditative expression, and his wife brought him the huge album of his score, which he never opened.

“The whole opera,” he observed, “is built on a bass line as on a rich terrain. Hence Mohammed must have a majestic bass voice, and his first wife must be a contralto. Khadijah was no longer young—she was twenty. Now listen, here’s the overture! It begins (in C-minor, andante, three-four time). Do you hear the sadness of an ambitious man whom love cannot satisfy? Through his laments, by a transition to a related key (E-flat, allegro, four-four time), we hear the cries of the impassioned epileptic, his ravings, as well as several warrior motifs, for the omnipotent saber of the caliphs begins to flash before his eyes. The many beauties of his one wife afford that same feeling of love’s plurality we find so striking in
Don Giovanni
. Hearing these motifs, you get a glimpse of Mohammed’s paradise, don’t you? But here (A-flat major, six-eight time) there is a cantabile to delight even the most unmusical soul: Khadijah has understood Mohammed! She informs the people of the prophet’s conferences with the Angel Gabriel (maestoso sostenuto, in F-minor). The magistrates and priests, who feel this newcomer has attacked them, just as Socrates and Christ attacked dying or worn-out governments and religions, pursue Mohammed and drive him out of Mecca (stretto, in C-major). Then comes my lovely dominant (in G, four-four time): Arabia hears her prophet, the horsemen arrive (G-major, E-flat, B-flat, G-minor, all in four-four time). The human avalanche swells! The false prophet has begun to practice on a tribe what he will impose on the world (G, G). He promises the Arabs universal dominion, and he is believed because he is inspired. The crescendo begins (with the same dominant). We hear several fanfares (in C-major), brasses worked into the harmony which will express the initial victories. Medina is conquered by the prophet, who marches on Mecca (an explosion in C-major). The orchestra’s powers spread like wildfire, each instrument speaks, we hear torrents of harmony. Suddenly the tutti is interrupted by a graceful theme (minor thirds). Do you hear the last cantilena of devotion? The woman who has sustained the great man dies, concealing her despair from him—she dies observing the triumph of a man for whom love has become too vast to limit itself to one woman, and she adores him enough to sacrifice herself to the greatness which extinguishes her! A conflagration of love! And here the desert invades the entire world (C-major again). The orchestra’s full forces return in a terrible fifth of the fundamental bass which dies away—Mohammed is weary, he has exhausted all things! And this is the man who sought to die as God? Arabia worships him and prays, and we return to my first theme of melancholy at the very beginning (C-minor). Don’t you hear in this music,” Gambara asked, lifting his hands from the keys and turning around toward the count, “this vivid, jostling, strange, melancholy, and always grand music, the expression of the life of an epileptic frenzied by pleasure, unable to read or write, making his very defects the stepping-stones to his greatness, turning his every fault and failure into triumph? Don’t you sense in this overture—a mere sample of the entire opera—some notion of the prophet’s seduction of an eager and amorous race?”