“I didn’t tell you one thing, though,” he said, glancing away in near embarrassment. “I never finished my degree before I decided to come back to study law.”
“Came back? From where?”
“Well, in Spain. My mother’s Spanish, you see, so I was raised speaking both languages.” Caterina was so surprised to hear him sounding—was this the right word?—apologetic that she said nothing and waited for him to continue his story.
“I didn’t finish,” he said.
“What happened?”
He set his fork down and ran his right hand across his perfectly combed hair. “My father got sick, and someone had to come back to be here. He was a lawyer, my father, so one of us had to be ready to take over his practice. Both of my brothers are older than I, so they already had their professions.” He paused here to look at her, as if to see if she were still sufficiently Italian, even after all her years abroad, to understand the compelling necessity of his return.
Caterina nodded and said, “Of course.” Then, “But you were a historian, not a lawyer.”
He shrugged, took another sip of his water, smiled, and said, “Not a historian but a young man who had spent two years reading history. They’re not the same thing.” He paused but Caterina said nothing, waiting for him to tell her all of this in his own way and at his own speed.
“I’d had two years of doing what I loved, so perhaps it was time to . . . to come home and grow up.” Leaning forward and making his voice deeper and more sinister, he added, “Slaves to their families, these Italians.”
In ordinary circumstances, she would have laughed, but something stopped her from giving more than a grin and a nod.
“Law was . . . different,” he went on.
“Easier?”
He shrugged again. “Different. Less complicated. I did the courses in three years, passed the exams, then the state exams, and here I am, two decades later and none the worse for it.”
She wondered about that but merely smiled and poured some water into both their glasses. After some time had passed and she had returned to her pasta, he asked, “What is it about music that attracts you?”
Without thinking, she said, “It’s so beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing we’ve done.”
“We, as in humans?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I believe that.” Surprised to hear herself sounding so uncharacteristially absolute, she added, “Or maybe it’s no more than that music is the one art that most thrills me. More than poetry and more than painting.”
“And why this Baroque music? Why not something closer to us in time?” he asked, sounding honestly curious.
“But it is modern,” she answered without thinking. “It’s got strong rhythms and catchy tunes, and the singers are free to invent their own music.” Seeing the question appear on his face, she went on, “When they come close to the end of an aria, they can sing variations on what’s gone before. The conductor writes them or they find a score with variations in it or they can write their own.” Involuntarily, she raised her hand and drew a series of arabesques in the air with one finger.
He smiled. “No copyright infringement?” He smiled to show he was joking.
This nudged her toward confession. “I’m a musicologist, so I shouldn’t admit this sort of thing, but I love the spectacle of it, too: dragons, people and monsters flying through the air, witches, magic all over the place.”
“Sounds like fantasy movies.”
He meant it as a joke, but she gave a serious answer. “That’s what a lot of the operas were like. It was popular entertainment, and the producers put on a show. The singers were the Madonnas and Mick Jaggers of their times. They delivered the hit tunes. I think that’s why the music is becoming popular again.” She saw his skepticism and added, “All right, all right, not mass popularity. But most opera houses do a Baroque opera every season.” She thought about this for a moment, realizing that she had never been asked these questions by an attractive man, perhaps by any man. “Or maybe it’s only that singing’s so close to us. We do it with our bodies.”
“Isn’t dance the same?” he asked, reminding her that he was a lawyer.
She grinned. “Yes. But I can’t dance, and I once thought I could sing, or wanted to sing.”
“What happened?” he asked, setting down his fork.
“I don’t have the talent,” she answered simply, as though he had asked the time. “I had the will and the desire, and I think I have the love of it, but I didn’t—and don’t—have the vocal talent.” She rested her fork on the side of her plate and took a drink of water.
“That’s very dispassionate,” he observed.
With something less than a smile, she said, “It wasn’t at the time.”
“Was it difficult?”
“If you’ve ever been in love, and the person turns and walks away from you, saying that you aren’t the right one, well, that’s what it’s like.”
He looked down at his plate, picked up his fork, set it down again, looked back at her, and said, “I’m sorry.”
Caterina smiled, this time a genuine smile. “It was a long time ago, and at least the training helps me now. It’s easier to understand the music, at least vocal music, if you think of it in terms of music you’ll have to sing or want to sing.”
“Will you excuse my ignorance if I say I believe you without really understanding you?”
“Of course,” she said, and then to lighten the mood she added “Besides, it gives a person the chance to see how very strange people can be.”
“Musicians?” he asked.
“And the people around them who aren’t musicians.”
“Could you give me an example?”
She thought for a while, allowed stories to run through her memory, and then said, “There’s a story about King George the First, but before he went to England, having a conversation with Steffani and saying he wanted to change places with him. This went on until the King actually tried to run an opera company. And this is why I’m sure this story is apocryphal. After three days, he gave up and told Steffani it would be easier to command an army of fifty thousand men than to manage a group of opera singers.”
Dottor Moretti laughed and said, “I’ve always admired people who can do that.”
“What?”
“Think of giving up.”
“You think the King was serious?” she asked, amazed that he could be so literal-minded.
“No, of course not. But that he could think of it, want to do it.” He stopped for a moment, then added, “I envy him.”
She didn’t want to talk about this anymore, so she asked, “Did you have a century? Or a country?” Then, after a moment’s thought, “Or a person?” When he looked confused at the sudden change of subject, she added, “As a historian?”
He smiled and the mood lifted again. “I did.” Seeing that he had captured her attention, he said, “And I have a confession.”
This stumped her. “About what?”
“Monarchy.”
Caterina waved her hand in front of his face. “Are you going to tell me you’re the lost son of Anastasia, and that you’re really the Czar of all the Russias?”
He laughed out loud, put his head back and laughed so loud that people at other tables shot glances at them. The laugh changed to snorts, something Caterina would never have thought possible in connection with Dottor Moretti, though perhaps it fit with Andrea.
When these subsided, she said, “Wrong guess, eh?”
“At least you didn’t ask if I’m the son of King Zog of Albania.” That set him off again, and he ended removing his glasses and wiping his eyes with his napkin.