Lucifer's Shadow

42 A fateful argument

“Lorenzo!” It was late. She seemed tired, pale, and out of sorts. “You take such risks.”

There was something foreign in her expression that took me aback. Rebecca was changed somehow.

“I had no choice. We must talk.”

She calmed a little, presuming my urgency came from love, not necessity. “So. What did you think of it?” she asked. “Vivaldi, praising my efforts like that. My efforts. And the audience!”

“I thought…” This was a time to choose my words carefully. Perhaps she had ideas of her own that might circumvent any plans Leo could in the meantime concoct. “I felt they gave your work no more than the honour it deserved. And that they will not be patient when it comes to learning the identity of the artist who penned it.”

“No.” She seemed somewhat downcast at that last thought.

“Do you know what to do next?” I asked. “The more you hold back, the greater the frenzy will be for someone to claim authorship.”

“I hoped Jacopo would have some notion. Instead, when I found the courage to tell him the truth, he just looked at me as if I’ve committed some sin. He senses danger more keenly than most. He was like this before we fled Geneva, and it probably saved our lives.”

“You might flee?” I strode across the room immediately, fell in front of her, and placed my arms upon her lap. “Do not talk of running, Rebecca. I will not listen to that.”

“Would you have us stay here and face the peril, then? Some love for me that is, Lorenzo.”

These were rash, cruel words, and I could see from her face how distant they were from her true thoughts. Something was wrong between us, and I could only guess at what. I touched her soft, pale cheek. “I will lay down my life for you, Rebecca, and sacrifice our happiness if that means you prosper. But do not run too easily. And if you do, I pray you’ll let me lead the way.”

She drew back from my touch as if this were a promise she had heard before. I assume Rebecca is as new to love as me. I assume too many things.

“Jacopo says it is impossible. They would not accept a woman and a Jew as author of such a work even if I came to them as pure as driven snow. If I stand up now and reveal myself, I risk their derision first and then their anger when they discover how I have deceived them. With luck none recognised me in the church — damn Vivaldi for putting me on show like that. But if I enter the public eye, the game’s up. For all of us. There’ll be a ticket in the lion’s mouth before nightfall, and we’ll be talking to the Doge’s inquisitors in the morning.”

I held her hands tightly. They did not stir in mine.

“Well,” she said coldly. “Tell me I am wrong.”

It came to me then. If love requires a set of proofs, then one of them is this: that neither party may lie easily to the other. But if a set of proofs be required, is this truly love?

“No,” I answered. “You are not wrong. I wish I could honestly say the opposite, but Jacopo sees the situation as it is. There must be a place in the world where you may hold your manuscript in your hand and walk with it freely into an adoring hall. But Venice isn’t it. Nor anywhere else I know.”

The truth, they say, may hurt. She withdrew her hands from my tender grasp. “Then what are we to do, Lorenzo?”

“Stay calm. Stay quiet. We have a few days yet.”

A bitter laugh, a sound I had not heard from her before, rang around the room. “And will the climate be much different three, four days hence? Of course not. This is all my doing, and I have dragged you and Jacopo down with me. What a fool I’ve been. To think that talent’s all you need in this world and that if you have sufficient of it, your sex, your race, your ancestry, all these things become invisible to the masses. They judge us as much on who we are as what we may do. If I were the Doge’s harlot, perhaps things might be different, but a poor Jew stands no chance. This is a Gentile’s world, and one for men at that. I should have known it all along.”

Her dark eyes were full of anger and resentment. How could I blame her? Rebecca sought glory through her work, but more than anything, I think, she searched for some sense of her true identity in a society which would deny its existence.

“Don’t judge us all by the crowd,” I said. “There’re some who’d help you, love, and maybe more elsewhere.”

“Who?”

“Vivaldi, for one. I saw the way he watched you in the concert. Do you think he doesn’t know?”

“No. I assumed he didn’t.”

“I suspect you’re wrong. You played like a giant. You knew that work inside out. How was that possible?”

She realised there was some truth in my words. “And he will keep this secret to himself?”

“He has. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here now.”

“Then let’s hope he continues in this vein.” She seemed nervous. “There is more, Lorenzo. I can see it in your face.”

“Leo.”

“Your uncle?”

“He saw it clearly, too, and sought my confirmation. I denied it, naturally, but he doesn’t believe a word. You’ll hear from him before long, and that was why I came. Beware. Both of you. I know my uncle better than most. He is not to be trusted.”

She gasped, surprised. “Trusted? Lorenzo, it is thanks to your uncle that I first found my place in Vivaldi’s orchestra. Thanks to him that I gained an introduction to the Englishman, without whom that violin over there would still be in some Cremona workshop. He has done me many favours.”

“I don’t deny that. But Leo fancies himself a musician too. He would steal your glory for himself given half the chance.”

“That I cannot believe.”

“He thinks he has the only copy of your concerto in existence.”

“Of course he has!” She spoke as if exasperated with a child. “Do you think I have the money to copy it, even if I had the courage? And why bother? I can re-create every note from my head, and probably improve a good few along the way.”

We had never argued before. It was only much later, when this scene replayed itself over and over in my head, that I understood how little logic ran on either side.

“You do not know him!”

“And you do? I think you hate to be any man’s apprentice, and colour your view accordingly.”

“I have seen the way he looks at you!”

She laughed in a kind of triumph. “Well, now we have it. This is the true reason for your hatred, and a sorry one at that. You will spend a great part of your life in misery, Lorenzo, if you seethe with fury at every man who steals me a glance. What would you have me do? Put on a veil like the Moslems? Isn’t that scarf you Gentiles make us wear enough?”

Her anger did me a great injustice. “I came to warn you. Leo is not what he seems.”

“Find me a man who is,” she said quietly, and stared deliberately out of the window into the night.

“Rebecca…”

She rose and walked away from me. “I am tired, and this argument wearies me. It is too childish to occupy my time.”

At that the redness flooded into my head. I stood upright and regarded, with a growing fury, the back she had presented to me. “As is my love, no doubt. So let me do us both an act of kindness and remove it from your presence.”

She fairly shrieked and wheeled around to face me, eyes brimming. “Lorenzo! Don’t say such a thing. Isn’t it enough that the world tortures us without we torture ourselves? A woman may have cares and worries you cannot guess at. Sometimes they make her speak the very opposite of what is in her head. If I were to tell you that I, that we…”

Then she hesitated and fell silent, and her reluctance infuriated me. I recognised neither of us in this conversation. We had been transformed by events, although I was too stupid to understand as much. And so I did the manly thing and hid my weakness through a show of so-called strength. I retreated from her imploring arms and made for the door. “You know my opinion, Rebecca,” I heard myself say, not recognising the means by which the words formed in my mouth. “I have nothing more to add.”

Then I was out the door, ignoring her calls for me to return, bounding down the staircase like a madman. When I awoke the next morning, with an aching head from the wine I downed upon my return, I found Leo in a sweet and happy mood, dressed in his best finery, thinking of his meeting with the Levis, no doubt. Before he left, he despatched me to the cellar with instructions on what to clean and what to move, what to throw out and what to dust off, and even an order for some amateur attempt at masonry to repair some feeble brickwork in the wall. I listened, watching his eyes, thinking how covetously they would soon regard Rebecca’s form, knowing how foolish I was to let such considerations occupy space in my head at a time when I had other matters on my mind.

It was easier when Leo had gone. I abandoned the cellar and searched the house. Sure enough, I found Rebecca’s music safely deposited behind a painting of ancient Athens that covered up the canal-side wall of the great room downstairs. Leo must have had a space cut out of the brick to provide such a hiding place. More fool him.

I took the score, trying not to feel her presence through the ink upon the page, and deposited it safely in a hiding place which Leo had inadvertently suggested. The concerto was in the cellar, safe from all. Leo hated rats. As with magnets, like repels like.

Then I left the house and began to walk to Ca’ Dario, thinking of how this interview with the Englishman might fruitfully proceed. If Rebecca were to gain a benefactor, it would at least be one she might trust.