chapter 25

The soprano could be heard, muffled by the closed doors of the auditorium, as Matt walked into the deserted lobby of the theater. The box office was closed, a curtain pulled down behind the window. It was after the intermission, the opera already into the second act. One of the doors to the hall opened, held by an usher as a couple hurried out, the woman arranging an Hermès scarf over shoulders dark with a cruise-ship tan as her husband, a large, florid man with tooled snakeskin boots, propelled her along by the elbow.

Taking in Matt’s plight with a quick glance, he reached into the side pocket of his green blazer. “You need this?” he asked, holding out his ticket stub.

“Thanks,” Matt replied, not surprised that the man had assumed he was an American. Judging by what he had overheard all day the chances were better than even that anyone you spoke to would be an American, including the panhandlers and street musicians.

The usher bowed as Matt entered and then, reading the ticket, gestured to the stairs. Up one flight, Matt hastened along the curved row of doors. Finding the box empty, he slipped into one of the plush velvet chairs, angled toward the stage. Absorbed by the drama, no one in the boxes on either side even glanced at him. The lighting gave the painted drops of the long dining hall the dreamy feel of a late-evening dinner party, as though the audience were sitting at one end of the table with the rakish Don at the other. He bantered with his manservant, Leporello, enjoying his feast as a band entertained him.

The musicians could just be seen in the tiny pit, the silver buttons on their coats winking like coins. The theater was small, a jewel box of gilt arabesque against a rich olive gray. Four rings of balconies rose like terraces of a cake to a domed ceiling decorated with classical motifs just visible in the dark. Matt searched the audience, almost lost in the shadows reflected from the stage lights, his eyes sweeping the row of boxes across from him. He stopped at the sight of a woman intent on the opera, on her shoulder the hand of a man standing behind her, hidden in the shadows. Hair swept back in a French knot, with curls at the temples, she wore a dark blue dress that shone almost black in the dim light. The inclination of her head, the air of watchful repose as she listened—

“Anna!” Matt called out, rising to his feet, leaning on the balcony. His cry was drowned out. As a tremendous chord crashed out from the orchestra, a massed roar of strings and horns and timpani that surged through the hall.

“Don Giovanni,” a deep bass intoned, insistent and overwhelming. Buffeted by the harsh chord Matt hung on to the rail as the Commendatore, tall and gray as death, appeared against a new backdrop of wintry black.

“Don Giovanni,” commanded the imposing figure again. The chord rang out again, its dark cadence washing against Matt, sinking deep inside until it vibrated in his bones. Anna was still there, but only faintly in the darkness across the hall, but she was looking for him, she had heard his voice.

“Wait!” Matt called, but the chord sounded again. He held on to the rail as it dropped in pitch, flattening and slowing to the jarring discord of the wolf tone. Gathering his strength he struggled for the door. He had to get to Anna. And Klein; he knew that was Klein with her. Out of the box he forced his way along the hall, the chord resonating in the walls and the floor, boring into him from every side as it grew and grew. The hall was endless, the doors curving ahead of him as he fought his way forward. Hanging on to consciousness against the gravitational pull of the dark he grasped at a door, hoping it was the right one. As he forced his way into the box the chord died away, leaving a silence like that after a tremendous clap of thunder.

The box was empty, the theater pitch-black, silent. He felt his way forward into nothingness, stumbling against the chairs, and then his waist met the balcony. Beyond, in the blackness, he could sense a yawning emptiness. He held the rail, senses straining into the dark but finding nothing. The theater itself could be gone, he could be standing at the edge of the world, nothing left but a railing and a small piece of carpeting under his feet.

Matt turned and felt his way out of the box, suddenly aware of material around his neck, the feeling an unpleasant reminder of a hand clutching his throat, lifting him off his feet. The deserted hallway was close with the heat and waxy smell of the hundreds of candles in the sconces and chandeliers, their flames motionless in the still air. Matt, unsteady, as though the deck of a ship were falling away under his feet, crossed the hall to a mirror.

Around his neck was a white kerchief, wrapped several times and then tied in a wide bow, nestled inside the lapels of a long white double-breasted vest. Over it he wore a long black coat, with a collar turned high in the back and broad rolled lapels. His cream-colored breeches were buttoned and tucked into tall leather boots.

Matt ran down the broad stairway to the lobby and then out to the steps of the theater. He came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the throngs promenading along the sidewalk. Passing in and out of the pools of lamplight were men wearing powdered wigs and tricornered hats. Dressed in gaily patterned coats and breeches, they escorted women in wide skirts that took up half the narrow sidewalk. The din of shod hooves and iron wheels clattering over cobblestones and the ammonial stench of manure and sweat pressed against him as he walked down the steps of the theater. Which way? Right or left, he had no idea where Anna might have gone.

Matt fell in with the passing crowd, drifting along as he tried to grasp what had happened. The world he knew, already falling apart, was now completely gone. Kalil was right, he thought; time is not linear. But what comfort was that? He had no control over it. He was still in Prague, but in the eighteenth century, and he had no money and no friends and no idea of how to get where he wanted to be. Thinking might not be the answer, but what was he supposed to do now? Just go with the flow?

“Gott im Himmel!” a man cried out as Matt, preoccupied with his thoughts, ran into him. Staggering back, the man had his sword half unsheathed.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Matt replied, his hands up.

“Watch where you go,” the man replied, switching to a heavily accented English.

“Yes,” Matt agreed, picking up the man’s hat and dusting it off before offering it to him. “My fault entirely.” He bowed, one hand over his chest, the other extended with the hat still in it.

The man glared at him as he snatched the hat. The woman at his side murmured in his ear, tugging at his arm, and he reluctantly sheathed his sword. He glanced around, sharp eyes taking in the crowd that parted around them, searching for any sign of an accomplice while feeling his pockets, satisfying himself that he still had all his effects. He settled the tricorner on his powdered wig and then stalked off, hand on the woman’s elbow.

Matt, panicked by a sudden thought, drew into a doorway out of the flow of the pedestrians. Searching through the inside pockets of his own coat, his hand found the wavy spikes of the prism. It was still there. And so was Anna’s compresa. He took it out and looked at it, just to be sure, and then put it back.

What would Kalil say now? Matt could see him in his chair, lighting a cigarette. “If you want to meet someone, Mr. O’Brien, what do you need? A time and a place.” Matt felt a faint stab of hope. Perhaps this wasn’t such a disaster after all. Yes, time is a variable, and one that he couldn’t control. But the place—those were just coordinates, like a map, and he could set them. And if he did, then time might follow. But where? He could go to Gubbio, and try to retrace his steps to the villa, but he might never find it. Was it even a part of this world? And even if it had survived, the chances were that it would be changed, and he knew that to see it, so far removed from Anna and the world he had known, would be too sad to bear. He had to find a place that was as timeless as the studiolo had been, where he could free himself from the larger world. He was ready, he could see the land that lay beyond, he could taste it and smell it. He felt like the neophyte that Anna had drawn, the man waiting to be baptized in the fresco in the Brancacci chapel. The chapel—

Of those three, which is the most important? Anna’s voice came back to him. Time was a flower, and the flower was an iris, and it stood for faith. The Brancacci chapel was where they had found each other, when he had taken out her drawings and together, looking at them, they had discovered the world that they shared. Time, and the changes wrought by time, were the varnish on top of the painting that lay beneath, unchanged and unchanging. The outer world, whether the one he had been born in, or this one of eighteenth-century Prague, even the Quattrocento, those were the facets—but the jewel itself was the world he had found with her, and it was there, in the Brancacci chapel.

Three balls over a shop across the street proclaimed a pawnbroker. Matt dodged between the carriages and entered the store, a space barely large enough for the man in a Turkish fez and a brocade smoking gown ensconced behind the counter, let alone the myriad of odds and ends lining the walls and hanging from the ceiling. Matt eased the ring off his finger, the first time it had left his hand since he had received it from his parents the day of his high school graduation. With reluctance he placed it on the green baize pad in front of the man, who watched him impassively. Before he could reach for it the ring was gone, scooped up by a brown blur.

“Bring that back,” the man in the fez ordered, looking up at the elaborate swirls on the top of a rococo cabinet.

A monkey in a short red jacket chattered in reply, waving the ring like a trophy.

“Now, Farouk!” the man barked. “Have you already forgotten what happened to your brother?”

An even more animated reply from the tiny primate set the tassel of his own miniature fez swinging wildly.

The pawnbroker reached for a long stick with a metal tip next to him. Before he could touch it the ring was on the baize, the monkey back complaining from his perch. The pawnbroker picked up the ring, his fat fingers surprisingly quick and nimble, and examined it through a loupe. “Plate,” he announced dismissively, “and look at this stone. Cut glass. Half a pistole. What am I saying? That is too much.”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Matt replied, reaching for the ring.

The man drew it back. “Permit me,” he muttered, making a show of examining it again. “The light,” he said. “So easy to make a mistake, and my eyes are not what they once were.” He sighed. “Six.”

“Twelve,” Matt replied.

The man made as to give the ring back but held on as Matt took it, their fingers meeting around the gold coils. “Nine,” the pawnbroker amended. “I’m a fool,” he added with a shrug. “I should know better than to bargain this late in the day. I always regret it.”

“I need enough to get to Florence,” Matt said.

“Four, then,” the man cried with pleasure, and reached under the counter. He laid four gold coins on the green baize. “You rob me,” he said as Matt just stared at him, but added five more to the pile. “I am a fool,” he repeated, taking the ring as Matt scooped up the coins, but he was still rubbing it between his fingers as the door closed.

Matt woke as the coach lumbered to a halt. Getting out and stretching, he could see Florence in the valley below, the last glow of dusk illuminating the white ribbed helmet of the Duomo and turning the Arno into a silver vein in a piece of black marble. When the luggage for the passengers making the penultimate stop at San Miniato had been taken down, Matt and the other travelers climbed back into the creaking Berlin, the large carriage springing under their weight like an ungainly ship. It lurched forward, soon gathering speed down the steep hillside as the horses sensed the end of their journey. The interminable week suddenly seemed as though it had passed in a blur. The coach entered the narrow streets of the city, the thundering of the hooves and wheels almost deafening as it echoed off the tall buildings crowding in on each side. The driver went at a pace that had seemed to be crawling when they had been in the open country but now was at breakneck speed. Driving along the river, Matt could see the lights on the Ponte Vecchio closing in ahead, the tall arches of the Uffizi barely visible in the moonlight to the right.

“Stop!” Matt cried out, and seized the gold-headed cane from the gaunt gentleman who had been staring at Matt since he had changed coaches for the last leg of the trip two days before, nodding whenever Matt met his gaze but saying nothing. Matt vigorously thumped the roof until the carriage ground to a halt.

“Che fai?” the driver snapped, but Matt was already gone, racing back to catch the carriage he had just caught a glimpse of as they made the turn onto the Ponte Vecchio. It had been heading in the opposite direction, toward the Pitti Palace, ablaze with lights just up the hillside. The large, open forecourt was crowded with carriages drawing up, letting their passengers off, driving away. Matt joined the crowd making their way up the steps into the palazzo, faces all hidden behind simple black dominoes or more fanciful masks. In the press at the top of the steps Matt caught sight of the man he had seen in the carriage passing on the bridge. Dressed in a long dark blue coat, he had silver hair falling loose to his shoulders. Klein. As Matt fought his way through the crowd his friend disappeared from sight into the palace, listening to the man who had just greeted him.

As Matt hurried up the stairs, a hand stopped him. Looking up, he found himself in the grip of an immense landsknecht, one of two soldiers standing guard on each side of the grand stairs, dressed in uniforms with garish striped hose and puffed sleeves, their cuirasses of polished steel almost hidden under flowing white beards. The landsknecht leaned his two-handed sword, as tall as he was, against the wall and drew a domino from the bag at his waist. Wordless, he handed it to Matt before resuming his statuelike pose.

The ballroom was already packed with guests standing in tight groups or promenading around the grand space, two stories high and running the entire back of the first floor of the palazzo. At one end an orchestra played, the festive strains of the spring movement of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons weaving through the buzz of animated conversation that filled the room. Matt wended his way through the crowd, searching for the dark blue coat and silver hair as the violinist, who had been conducting the orchestra, turned to face the audience and launched into the solo. Klein was nowhere in sight, not in the ballroom or the smaller room adjoining it where many of the guests were intent on a spinning roulette wheel and the soft slap of cards dealt by men in Pierrot costumes and blank white masks.

“Cento luigi,” Matt heard a man in a painted leopard mask say, advancing a pile of gold coins. A spectator, feathered hat under his arm, inhaled a pinch of snuff from the back of his hand, sneezing violently as the card was slipped across the felt. Continuing on, Matt scanned the crowd at the far side of the ballroom. The tall French doors stood open, the long gold curtains barely stirring in the light breeze that did nothing to lessen the almost suffocating heat from the dozens of chandeliers and tall candelabra ranked along the walls that made the room as bright as midday. Matt saw a shadow on one of the balconies, black on black, silver against the dark.

“A beautiful evening, isn’t it?” Klein asked as Matt came up next to him, his mask dangling from his hand as he leaned against the old marble balustrade.

“Johannes, what’s going on?” Matt asked, taking off his domino.

“I think you know the answer to that.”

“Do I? I know things are coming apart. Literally.”

“It’s the nature of things. The second law of thermodynamics states it clearly—disorder always increases.”

“Thanks,” Matt replied. “That’s a real help.”

Reaching into the inside of his brocade waistcoat Klein came up with a small coin, which he tossed out into the dark. The gold disk spun in a long arc up and then down, landing with a tiny splash in the still fountain. A faint grin deepened the lines in Klein’s angular face.

“You know how to look below the surface of a painting,” Klein said, “how to see the things that others find invisible. But that’s only half the equation. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear. Isn’t that how it goes? You must listen the way you look. Music of the spheres or string theory, call it what you will—there is a chord that is the sum of all things. A wave of possibility that each of us collapses into the music of our own world.”

“The wolf tone. Is that what you mean?”

“In part. But don’t confuse cause and effect. Musicians talk about centering the note. A note might be in tune, but not really ring. When it’s centered, it comes alive. All the overtones sound, all the harmonics. It becomes a chord, blossoming from a single note, and within a chord can be found an infinity of music, if you change the variable of time. An entire world, all within a single note.”

“But what does that mean?”

“Nothing,” Klein answered. “Why does it have to mean anything?”

“You’re not even trying to help me.”

Klein laughed. “Yes, you’re right. I’m doing everything in my power to stand in your way.”

“Where’s Anna?”

“I don’t know. I’m not the answer man. The particular harmony of your world is something you can only find yourself. It’s your chord, not mine. You have to unscroll it.” He smiled. “It seems so long ago, I had almost forgotten what it’s like. Don’t worry, you’ll get there.”

“How?”

“I think you know the answer to that, too. What was it that brought you to Florence? It wasn’t me.”

No, Matt realized, it wasn’t. All the way down from Prague he hadn’t thought of Klein once. He had just happened to catch a glimpse of his friend in a passing carriage, but he had been on his way to the Church of the Carmines. Which is where, he realized, he wanted to be now. There was one thing he did want to know, though, before he went.

“Why? Why did you do all this?”

“Me?” Klein asked in surprise. “Look to yourself, not to me. You’re what got you from there to here. You and only you. Each step along the way presented you with a wave of possibility, but it was you that collapsed it into a particular course of action. It was your choice, always.” He sighed. “But you’re right. I did intervene. Why? I have to admit that as a scientist I found the situation immensely appealing. But it was more than that. You might call it the rules of the road: a traveler always lends a helping hand. There was really not much else I could do. Under the circumstances, it was my obligation. My pleasure, too, I might add.”

“Good-bye,” Matt said, holding out his hand. “And thanks.”

“Best of luck, my friend.”