On the night of the concert Lucia went to bed early. As soon as she closed her eyes a fragmentary vision from last month came back without her bidding, the day when that crazy man had walked into her office with his two ridiculous proposals. Like a constantly rewound piece of tape, the vision appeared and reappeared.
He would walk in and put his hands on her desk and say that insane thing, and then a moment later, after the tape had rewound itself, he would walk in just as gallantly and say it again. And then again.
*33*
Homer Kelly had nothing against music. In fact he liked music, on the whole. And he had heard some of this music before.
How could he ever forget the performance of Handel's Messiah in Harvard's Memorial Hall, with its wild interruption? Of course it had been Bach's Saint John Passion, not the Saint Matthew, that he had heard with Mary in the Church of the Commonwealth in Boston, but that event had been insane too, because the entire audience had narrowly escaped being crushed to death by a collapsing vault. In Homer's experience exalted music was often accompanied by staggering climaxes of catastrophe or joy.
But there were no astonishing interruptions this evening in the enormous spaces of the monastic Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari during the performance of selections from the sacred music of Hayden and Handel, Monteverdi and Bach. The lofty vaults stayed put. No long-dead ghost appeared beyond the rood screen to bring the entire audience to its feet, to topple the bass viols and entangle the music stands of the second violins. Tonight the several parts of the program followed one another serenely.
Sam Bell sat with Mary and Homer on folding chairs between the old choir stalls, listening, staring up at the same time at the painting over the altar, Titian's Assumption of the Virgin. Buoyed up on clouds and supported by the thrust of the springy bellies of her attendant cherubs, she seemed to be lifting her hands in wonder at the chorus from the Saint Matthew Passion.
It was the wild mob scene near the end, with all the citizens of Jerusalem shouting at Pilate, "Lass ihn kreuzigen, lass ihn kreuzigen."
Homer stuck his elbow into Sam's side, and muttered, "What the hell are they saying?"
"Ssshhh, Homer," whispered Mary.
Sam gave Homer a bitter sidelong glance and translated softly, "Let him be crucified."
"Oh," said Homer, and for a moment he kept still, but when the chorus shouted something else, "Sein Blut komme uber uns und unsere Kinder," he nudged Sam again. "Blood, what's that they're singing about blood?"
Sam muttered it under his breath, "His blood be on us and on our children. Shut up, Homer."
"Oh, right."
"Please!" Someone was leaning forward from the row of seats behind them, hissing in Homer's ear, "Would you kindly pipe down? Some of us are trying to hear the music."
It was the bishop of Seven Oaks, acting as spokesman for his delegation of music lovers from the British Isles.
Homer squirmed around and saw the four glowering British faces, and perceived at once that he had been a boor. "Oh, sorry, sorry." He hunched his head apologetically down into his shoulders and turned back to the chorus.
But the shouting had stopped. For a moment the high vaults rang with the echoKinder, Kinderand then the fiddlers and flutists lowered their instruments and mopped their brows and the singers filed out. It was all over.
Gasping, emotionally frazzled, Mary and Homer staggered out of their seats and wandered around the huge church, while Sam guided them to more masterpieces of Venetian painting. They could hardly take them in. They were suffering from something they had experienced in Florence, aesthetic overload.
Rising against one wall were reliquaries like the ones in the Treasury of Saint Mark, containing miscellaneous holy bits of bone. Sam gave them a contemptuous wave of his arm, and they headed for home.
It was true that there had been no collapse of the high brick vaulting, no astonishing apparition disrupting the music. And yet something alarming and climactic had happened, although Homer was not yet aware of it. A crack had appeared in his mind. Later on it would produce a mighty fall of rock.
*34*
Once again it was raining. In the Hotel Danieli a lavish morning tea was spread before the bishop of Seven Oaks and his lady and the member of Parliament for the Channel Islands and his wife. There were sofas and tapestried chairs, silver teapots and damask napkins, tea wagons with cakes and scones and raspberry jam.
Everything within the hotel was perfectly satisfactory. Outside, it was not. Water slopped over the edge of the lagoon and slipped across the pavement to the very door of the hotel.
The bishop, Arthur Cluff-Luffter, was accustomed to speaking with authority. "You know, we don't have to stay here. There are other hotels in this city."