The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen (14 page)

My thoughts went round and round like this—I don’t know for how long—until I felt someone patting my cheeks and sprinkling water on them. I opened my eyes and wondered why I was looking straight up at Stefan and the waiter and why they loomed so large over me. I realized I was lying flat on my back on the coarse soil with the bottle, nearly empty, planted beside me. They helped me up and Stefan dismissed the waiter. He put his arm around me and guided me toward the hotel. As we climbed the grassy slope, I pushed him away, bent over, and threw up. It took me a minute to get everything out, and the next thing I remembered, it was morning and I was lying on top of the bedclothes wearing my shirt and pants.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to perform that night. My head was splitting. But riding to Stuttgart on a pitted road was no respite. When we arrived, I was hungry but had no desire to eat. I couldn’t rid myself of the taste of the sausages I had consumed the previous night, in fact every night since leaving Vienna. I was sick of every kind of sausage the Germans made, and their hard black bread, and their diced potatoes swimming in butter. I missed Gertrude’s cooking, but even more, I craved the simple spicy food enjoyed by even the poorest Venetians: grilled fish and pasta, olives and peppers. For the rest of my tour, I abstained from sausages, and ate mostly bread, cheese, and pickles. And I didn’t drink again for a
while. Stefan kept a closer eye on me, and stopped ordering wine with dinner, which was certainly unnecessary. As we were returning to Vienna by way of Innsbruck, he informed me that Herr Hoyer was going to be extremely pleased: in addition to being so well received, my performances had garnered receipts of forty-two thousand marks.

“Which means, Nicolò, that after Herr Hoyer takes his commission and deducts expenses, you yourself will be depositing roughly twenty-eight thousand marks in the bank. Congratulations.”

Until then, I had never deposited or withdrawn a single pfennig or zecchino at a bank. In fact, aside from the morning I visited the Banco del Giro with Herr Hoyer to open an account, I had never even set foot in a bank.

Though I now had firsthand experience of fine hotels, expensive restaurants, and the best tailors, the amount of money Stefan mentioned, and the fact it was mine, was beyond my comprehension. As it turned out, those sums amounted to only three-quarters of what I actually earned; the other quarter Stefan had systematically concealed and attempted to steal from Herr Hoyer and me by partially diverting the transfers intended for Hoyer’s bank in Vienna to his own bank in Pressburg. I was sorry to learn that Stefan was so dishonest, and such a pious hypocrite to boot, but not nearly as sorry as he was when Herr Hoyer discovered his treachery, and—even worse for Stefan—when Massimo learned of it.

I learned how to hold a girl in my arms and kiss her in a lavish apartment on the Kaplanstrasse, a boulevard lined with poplars trimmed to the exact same height. I remember the details of the place clearly: a line of tall windows with sky-blue curtains, birch logs sprinkled with frankincense crackling in the fireplace, the strong perfume of lilies wafting up from a lush garden. There was also a vase of those lilies, freshly cut, on the drawing room table. Above the mantelpiece there were assorted paintings of horses: grazing beside the Danube, carrying cavalrymen into battle, racing around a track. The dining room was entirely walled in mirrors and illuminated by purple candles. A portrait of the dowager Empress in her youth dressed up as Pallas Athena—armor, scepter, plumed helmet—hung beside the door. The marble sinks had gold fixtures. In the parlor there was a plush divan with golden pillows. The parquet floor was inlaid with suns and moons composed of quartz. I had never seen such things before, and imagined that only men like the Doge or the Pope could possess them. However, far more memorable and precious to me was the first kiss I received from Madeleine Pellier, the younger sister of the Marquise de Montal, on that divan. Estranged wife of the Marquis, the Marquise was a vivacious young woman of twenty-two. Her name was Noémi. She was quite beautiful; men could not take their eyes off her. Seven years younger, her sister Madeleine
shared her good looks. In fact, because the resemblance between them was so strong, and because the Marquise looked younger than her years while Madeleine looked older, people often mistook them for one another. But they were very different: while Noémi (after our first meeting, she told me to stop calling her Marquise) could be moody and secretive, given to long silences, Madeleine was spontaneous and open, with a sweet, clear voice and infectious laugh.

The sisters had come to one of my performances at the Kärntnertor theater. I was playing an all-Poglietti program with a string quintet. At the reception afterward at the Aldenfer Hotel, I was introduced to them by an old friend of Hoyer’s, Baroness Mannheim, a statuesque woman of forty whose husband was the commissioner of public works. The Marquise was sitting at a corner table sipping pink champagne when the Baroness led me over to her. She was wearing a deep blue gown. She had a full figure, intense brown eyes, and honey-colored hair that framed her face. Her features reminded me of the famous statue of Minerva in the Metzenplatz, but softer. She was the sort of woman men fell in love with at first sight. For a boy of fifteen, she seemed unattainable, as indeed she was. But I sensed that the same could not be said of Madeleine, who joined us a few minutes later. It was not just her easy demeanor, but in fact the way she looked at me as she sat down beside her sister and announced in a crisp, clear voice, “You were just splendid tonight, Herr Zen. We must talk all about it.”

She was the image of her sister, all right, but slenderer, with slightly darker, longer hair, a less pronounced Gallic nose, and blue eyes rather than brown. Their lives were inextricably linked:
orphaned young, they had lived with their grandmother, a genteel woman in failing health who spent the last twenty years of her life as a kind of shadow. To save herself and her sister from poverty, Noémi had set out to find a husband. With her good looks and former lineage, she didn’t have to search for long. At nineteen, she married the Marquis de Montal, a man Madeleine detested and Noémi herself did not particularly like. It turned out to be an even bigger mistake than either of them had imagined. Quickly, unhappily, Noémi discovered that the Marquis, a bad-tempered, taciturn man more than twice her age, had a greater passion for gambling and prostitutes than for her. During his initial infatuation, he had been on his best behavior, impressing her with his wealth and his powerful connections at Court. He had wined and dined her in Lyon and given her expensive jewelry. He had been solicitous of Madeleine, showering her with gifts as well and promising to become her guardian and protector. He and Noémi were married in the chapel on his estate in Quercy. Madeleine was the maid of honor. Three hundred people attended.

Five months later, the Marquis abruptly announced that he was bored with the Marquise and was setting out for Marseilles and Nice on business; that is, the business of frequenting casinos and brothels. He expected his new wife to remain on the estate, overseeing the household and maintaining appearances. He slashed her personal allowance and cut off Madeleine’s completely. Realizing he had shown his true character, Noémi did not attempt to dissuade or even reproach him. She bided her time until the day he left, then told Madeleine to pack as many of her things as she could carry, took her own jewelry and all the money she could lay her hands on, opened a line of credit at the Bank de
Lyon, and ran away, first to Paris, then Vienna. She didn’t know if he would come after her; so far, she had only received two letters, forwarded from Paris: an angry one from her husband himself and a threatening one from his lawyer. Meanwhile, she had enough money so that she and Madeleine could live extravagantly for some time, in Vienna or any other city. She apparently wasn’t thinking too far into the future, but Noémi did know this much: she had made many friends among the nobility in both Paris and Vienna, none of whom doubted that, if the Marquis were to divorce her, she would quickly make a new match. The fact she had fled her husband, and was fast acquiring a reputation for wildness, seemed to make her all the more desirable. And the younger version of her that was Madeleine even more so.

The Baroness left us alone, and when two army officers immediately came over and engaged Noémi in conversation, Madeleine took my hand and led me to a table on the veranda, signaling a waiter for more champagne.

She began speaking to me in French, but checked herself when I shook my head.

“Italian?” she asked.

“That would be better.”

“My sister says you are a genius, Nicolò Zen. Your music is heavenly. So tell me about yourself.”

I wasn’t just flattered, I was smitten. By now, I had met a good number of beautiful women and girls in society, but always formally, alongside their husbands or parents, as you would expect. Many of the married women had sons and daughters older than me, and the girls my own age had been in sophisticated company all their lives. I had never had any of these girls approach
me so boldly, with so little pretense and so much warmth, taking me aside as if she wanted me all to herself. Which, in fact, she did. Just a few months earlier, I could not have imagined such a scenario. I drew on the poise I had developed onstage and the reserve Hoyer had advised me to maintain when I was in society, speaking little and cultivating what he called an aura of mystery. I was still too green to be starstruck around famous people, but Hoyer liked to remind me that during and after my performances
I
was the star. Yet to these affluent people, I was also an oddity, because of my class as well as my age. Many of them looked on me warily. As members of the gentry, they were accustomed to being admired, and I—a boy many rungs down the social ladder—was putting them in the position of admirers. In Mazzorbo, where everyone but a few landowners was poor, I felt far removed from issues of class. Struggling to get by, we lived every day with the consequences of class, but with little time to ponder its workings in that larger world which remained unreachable and abstract for me until I arrived at the Ospedale and learned some hard lessons. In Vienna, rubbing elbows with princes and ministers of state, I was continuing my education. Lesson one being: however precocious my talents, I was there to entertain, they to be entertained, and when I was gone, someone would take my place. Perhaps I would be remembered, even venerated, as Hoyer insisted. He truly believed in me, and promoted me relentlessly, helping me to achieve great fame in a short time. I really was considered the first true solo clarinetist in Europe, a groundbreaker, just as Massimo had predicted. My performances were analyzed and acclaimed. I was indulged, celebrated, fêted. My reputation began to outpace my comprehension of it. Composers were inserting clarinet parts
into their scores, not just in Vienna, but in Venice and Paris. Hoyer told me that Vivaldi himself had featured prominent clarinet solos in his newest opera,
Juditha triumphans
. It amazed me that I might have inspired the Master.

How much had all this gone to my head? Enough so that when a girl of Madeleine’s class approached me, I was excited, momentarily flustered, but not completely surprised. I had heard that Viennese girls in high society were precocious and flirtatious; past the age of sixteen, they enjoyed a good deal of latitude in their relationships. Evidently this applied to girls visiting the city as well.

Madeleine Pellier wanted to know about me, but what on earth was I going to tell her?

She made it easy for me. She began with an observation. “Do you see that gray-haired lady sitting with the young officer? That’s the Baroness Manzer with her lover. She is forty-five years old and he is twenty-seven. In France that would be unusual, even scandalous. Here it is the norm. Older women are respected for their experience. And girls are expected to become experienced sooner rather than later. It’s very civilized, even by French standards, don’t you agree?”

How could I not, especially the way my pulse was racing.

Madeleine shrugged. “I have not been in Vienna long enough to know. My sister keeps a tighter rein on me than she ever has on herself. When it comes to men, she’s a bit of a hypocrite in more ways than one. But enough of that. What about you, Nicolò Zen? In addition to your talent, you’re a very handsome fellow. And you’re a Venetian. Have you had many lovers?”

I had only a few seconds to decide whether to tell the truth. When I opened my mouth to reply, Madeleine smiled.

Leaning closer to me, she reached across the table and took my hand. “Wouldn’t you like to escort me home?”

I glanced at her sister, still chatting with the two officers, who were fawning over her.

“Oh, she’ll go out to supper with one of them—or maybe both,” Madeleine said wryly. “She’ll let me take the carriage.”

Ten minutes later, we were crossing the Josefsplatz Bridge in the Marquise’s gilt-trimmed coach.

“Are you hungry?” Madeleine asked. “We have a wonderful cook.”

Indeed they did. A light supper of cheese and meat was laid out for us in the dining room, and the maid who served us uncorked a bottle of champagne. I barely touched my food, and after my experience in Ulm, made sure only to drink one glass of champagne. When Madeleine took my hand and led me back down the hall to the parlor, I felt light-headed, as if I had drunk the entire bottle. When we passed the master bedroom, I noted that the maid had turned down the sheets and coverlet on the large bed and lit only two candles, which glowed amber in the darkness. Yet another vase of lilies filled the room with its perfume. A bottle of brandy and a pair of crystal goblets sat on a silver tray on the bedside table.

“As you can see,” Madeleine said archly, “Noémi will be home tonight, but not for a while.”

In the parlor, new logs had been placed upon the fire. The curtains had been discreetly drawn. Madeleine led me directly to
the divan, nestled close to me, and put her lips to mine. She did it again, her eyes twinkling as she inclined her head and this time applied more pressure and ran her tongue along my lips. I parted them, and her tongue met mine and slowly twirled around it. I had never kissed, or been kissed, like this, and drinking in her perfume, feeling the warmth of her body against mine, I did what came naturally, and put my arms around her.