That lightened the mood and gave Caterina the courage to try to satisfy some of her curiosity. “Presumably, the trunks are safe up there.”
“Of course. The storeroom is really just a small closet, but it has una porta blindata. If you think about it, it’s much more than most shops have.” Then, as an addition, “There’s another, smaller cabinet, where the archives are kept.”
“The archives?” Caterina asked.
“The letters,” Roseanna said. “But Dottor Asnaldi always called them the archives.”
“Where are they?”
Roseanna raised her eyes and gazed at the ceiling, reminding Caterina of the holy cards of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux so often found lying on the tables in the back of empty churches. The hair snakes on her head, ironed flat, would have looked just like the saint’s black veil. “Upstairs.”
The unsummoned images came to Caterina of Ugolino imprisoned in the tower, Vercingetorix in the Mamertine—quickly canceled because that prison was underground—Casanova escaping from the Piombi. First there was the Director’s office and now there were the archives. How many other things were hidden away on the next floor?
“Upstairs?” Caterina repeated unnecessarily.
“It’s in the same room, but it’s only a simple wall cabinet with a key.”
“What’s kept in the archives?”
“Some scores that Dottor Dardago collected,” Roseanna explained.
“Are they part of the endowment?” Caterina asked, wondering why, if they were, they had not been sold to continue with sponsorship or, at least, alleviate some of the misery around them.
“No. Dottor Dardago left them to the Marciana, to be given if the Foundation ever ceased to function. I suppose he didn’t want things ever to be sold off, piece by piece. The Foundation merely has the use of them for as long as it’s in existence. That’s always been very clear.” But then, in a lower, more confidential voice, she added, “It’s only a few things, really, a printed copy of an opera by Porpora and some musical scores.” Before Caterina could ask, Roseanna said, sounding sad to have to say it, as if she were confessing to some minor vulgarity on the Foundation’s part, “No, only copies, and not even from the times they were written.” Then, after time enough to decide she could say it, she said, “I’m afraid Dottor Dardago was an amateur.”
To Caterina, this amateur’s collection hardly sounded like something that belonged under lock and key, but her work did not concern the archive, and so she asked nothing further about it.
“How do you get there?” Caterina asked.
Roseanna’s glance made her confusion obvious. “The stairs.” For a moment, it looked as if she were going to add something, but she did not.
“Can a person go up there?”
Roseanna made as if to push away Caterina’s question. “I don’t know if you can go up there yet.”
Like most people, Caterina disliked being told she could not do something. Like most professional women who had risen in a male-dominated profession by dint of skill and tenacity and superior talent that was never acknowledged and seldom could be admitted, she had learned to stifle her instinctive desire to shout at the source of the prohibition, though she had never learned to control the pounding of her heart that resulted from unexplained opposition.
After a few moments, Caterina asked, in a voice she managed to make sound entirely normal, “Sooner or later, I have to go up, don’t I? If I’m going to be working there.” As if suddenly recalling something, she added, “You mentioned that you receive letters. Would it be possible for me to have a look at them?” When Roseanna did not respond with an immediate negative, she continued, “It’s possible that people who contacted the Foundation in the past—with musicological information or questions, that is—might be the sort of amateur a researcher dreams of finding.” The only dream researchers had about amateurs and their suggestions were nightmares, but Roseanna need not be told this.
“We never know what will be useful,” Caterina added with a broad smile meant to include Roseanna among that we. “Whose rule is it, anyway?”
Roseanna thought about this for a moment and then said, “It’s not a rule, really. It’s just that the cousins are rather . . .”
“Secretive?”
This time her smile was bigger than her shrug.
Caterina smiled in return and said, unwilling to admit to no motive higher than her own mounting curiosity about the Foundation, “All I want to do is save time by learning if there are any people who might eventually be able to help in the research.” Then, as if confessing uncertainty to a friend, she said, “I don’t know if it will help me with these documents, but it might be useful to know who the interested people are. They often know a lot more than the experts do, especially in a field as narrow as this one.” It was lame, and she knew it, but Roseanna might not.
Apparently sufficient goodwill had been restored because Roseanna got to her feet, saying, “I suppose you can.” Then, with a smile of solidarity, she added, “Besides, I’m the acting director, aren’t I?”
She led the way from her office, turning toward the back of the building. The hallway ended in a door. She stopped and took a set of keys from her pocket, opened the door, and started up a set of steps. Caterina followed her. At the top, another door led into a small entrance corridor with wooden doors facing each other on both sides.
Roseanna opened a door on the left and let them into an office that looked like one, complete with barred windows. The desk was large, and a dark wooden cabinet was fitted into the wall to the left of it. On either side of the cabinet hung etchings of bewigged men. Even from this distance, she recognized round-faced Jommelli. The other might have been Hasse. She liked him; any man who would marry Faustina Bordoni had to be a hero.
Roseanna nodded toward the wooden cabinet, saying, “All of the correspondence is in there.” Caterina saw that the key was in the lock. Looking around for the storeroom, Caterina noticed a pair of smooth metal doors, almost a meter high, set into the wall to the right of the desk and partly blocked from her sight by both the desk and the chair.
Pointedly ignoring those doors, she asked, “How far back does the correspondence date, Roseanna?”
“To the beginning.”
“What sort of things do people write about?” Caterina asked with genuine interest.
“Oh, all sorts of things. You’d be amazed. Some send us copies of manuscripts or scores and ask us to identify them or verify the handwriting, and some ask for biographical information about the composers. Or what we think of new CDs, or whether we think it’s worth going to see a particular production. Sometimes people have even sent us documents and manuscripts, but never anything of great importance. There’s no telling.” She studied the cabinet for a moment and then said, “If you read through the files, you’ll get an idea.”
“If it’s no trouble,” Caterina said, interested in the letters and even more interested in showing Roseanna that she had come up here in good faith and not in the hope of learning something about the identity of the composer whose manuscripts might well be behind those thick metal doors, doors she continued to ignore.
Roseanna turned the key of the cabinet, latched her fingers expertly under the side of one door, and pulled it open. The other swung after it.
Caterina had met Roseanna only a brief time ago, but she had seen enough—the conservative clothing, the neatness with which the snakes were wrapped around one another—to know she could not have been responsible for the chaos inside the cabinet.
There were two shelves, each sized to hold manila folders, and on each of them files lay splashed about. Some leaked papers, others appeared untouched; still others were strewn across the shelves as if by a heavy wind.