What was it like to become a celebrated soloist in Vienna? Terrifying, thrilling, beyond anything I had imagined, much less experienced. At first it all seemed to be happening to someone else. The huge audiences; the stage that floated in the darkness like a ship, with me and a few other musicians on deck; the deference paid me by some of those musicians after they first heard me; the envy I felt from others; the ovations and encores; the glittering receptions; the postconcert banquets of lobster, caviar, sturgeon, and wild boar hosted by Vienna’s most affluent residents, bankers and barons who could not have guessed they were fêting a boy from the rough, remote island of Mazzorbo, where the finest holiday menu consisted of broiled eel and cornmeal and a salad of dandelion greens.
I performed with quintets and trios, with the Royal Orchestra at the Imperial Opera House before twelve hundred people, before the Archduke’s brother at the Hofburg Palace. I revelled in it; it was a transcendent time for me, playing fabulous music with the finest musicians. My repertoire kept expanding, fed by the vast amounts of Austrian and German music I encountered: Bach and Froberger, Kerll and Pachelbel, as well as Italians I had never heard of like Carissimi and Poglietti. When there was no clarinet part in the score, as was often the case, I assumed the musical line assigned to the flute or trumpet, playing the high and low octaves accordingly. The sheer volume of performances Hoyer booked for me, and the quality of the musicians with whom I played, enabled me to hone my technique and achieve the subtlest effects. My interpretive skills increased tenfold. And my ability to concentrate for long stretches, shutting out the rest of the world, ensured that my clarinet never failed me. Not once.
Hoyer leased me a well-appointed coach and sent me on tour, occasionally joining me in the cities near Vienna. I performed in Linz, Pressburg, Salzburg, and Munich, as far north as Stuttgart and as far west as Zurich. Hoyer’s assistant, Stefan, a gangly young man who dressed like a deacon, was my constant companion. He kept to himself, a man of few words and fastidious habits: polishing his boots every night, trimming his beard every other day, praying aloud before every meal. Our routine seldom varied. On travel days, we rode through deep forests and vast fields of wheat and corn. Spectacular vistas opened up before us: snowcapped mountains and silver alpine lakes and enormous billowing clouds, just above the peaks and therefore closer to the earth than they would be anywhere else. We passed other coaches, lone horsemen, farmers with ox-drawn carts, and occasional platoons of Austrian soldiers as well as Bavarian stragglers making their way across the Tyrol. When we arrived in a city, we checked into one of the best hotels. I bathed and changed my clothes. Stefan attended mass at the nearest church. In the afternoon we went to the concert hall so I could rehearse with the local chamber group or orchestra with whom I would be performing. We returned to the hotel, where I dined early and took a nap. Then we went back to the concert hall for the performance. Invariably there was a reception afterward hosted by local dignitaries. Then to bed. Stefan’s job was fourfold: keep me on schedule; see to my needs; deal with the local promoters and managers; keep track of receipts and transfer funds to Vienna.
Everything proceeded without incident until we arrived in Ulm and I got drunk for the first time in my life, on white Rhine wine. I had played eight concerts in ten days and was exhausted. It was a hot August night. We were in a hotel on a small lake. We ate on the terrace, and after dinner Stefan went up to his room and I stayed outside, listening to the crickets and gazing out over the water. The surface was silver beneath a full moon. If I closed my eyelids halfway, I could have been in Venice, in Burano maybe or at the tip of the Lido. As was his custom, Stefan had drunk two glasses of wine. Before the waiter could take away the bottle when he cleared the table, I poured myself a glass and drank it down like water. It was sweet. I drank another glass, and my stomach grew warm and my head light. All my weariness from performing and traveling seemed to seep away. I asked the waiter for another bottle and some fruit, as I had seen Hoyer do at the end of every meal. Two more glasses of wine and I found myself on the shore of the lake, weeping. I was thinking of my mother and father, of my sisters, of Julietta and Prudenza, and most of all, of Adriana. I feared I would never see her again. Never be able to explain to her what had happened during my last night at the Ospedale. I had refrained from sending her a letter, knowing Marta would intercept it, which would only make things worse for Adriana. I would have given anything to see her, knowing that if she inquired about my whereabouts from Bartolomeo, he would tell her that I had simply disappeared without a word of farewell—or thanks. No matter how persuasively Massimo reassured him, the fact remained that I had disappeared a second time, and I was certain she would think even less of me for it.
My thoughts went round and round like this—I don’t know for how long—until I felt someone patting my cheeks and sprinkling water on them. I opened my eyes and wondered why I was looking straight up at Stefan and the waiter and why they loomed so large over me. I realized I was lying flat on my back on the coarse soil with the bottle, nearly empty, planted beside me. They helped me up and Stefan dismissed the waiter. He put his arm around me and guided me toward the hotel. As we climbed the grassy slope, I pushed him away, bent over, and threw up. It took me a minute to get everything out, and the next thing I remembered, it was morning and I was lying on top of the bedclothes wearing my shirt and pants.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to perform that night. My head was splitting. But riding to Stuttgart on a pitted road was no respite. When we arrived, I was hungry but had no desire to eat. I couldn’t rid myself of the taste of the sausages I had consumed the previous night, in fact every night since leaving Vienna. I was sick of every kind of sausage the Germans made, and their hard black bread, and their diced potatoes swimming in butter. I missed Gertrude’s cooking, but even more, I craved the simple spicy food enjoyed by even the poorest Venetians: grilled fish and pasta, olives and peppers. For the rest of my tour, I abstained from sausages, and ate mostly bread, cheese, and pickles. And I didn’t drink again for a while. Stefan kept a closer eye on me, and stopped ordering wine with dinner, which was certainly unnecessary. As we were returning to Vienna by way of Innsbruck, he informed me that Herr Hoyer was going to be extremely pleased: in addition to being so well received, my performances had garnered receipts of forty-two thousand marks.
“Which means, Nicolò, that after Herr Hoyer takes his commission and deducts expenses, you yourself will be depositing roughly twenty-eight thousand marks in the bank. Congratulations.”
Until then, I had never deposited or withdrawn a single pfennig or zecchino at a bank. In fact, aside from the morning I visited the Banco del Giro with Herr Hoyer to open an account, I had never even set foot in a bank.
Though I now had firsthand experience of fine hotels, expensive restaurants, and the best tailors, the amount of money Stefan mentioned, and the fact it was mine, was beyond my comprehension. As it turned out, those sums amounted to only three-quarters of what I actually earned; the other quarter Stefan had systematically concealed and attempted to steal from Herr Hoyer and me by partially diverting the transfers intended for Hoyer’s bank in Vienna to his own bank in Pressburg. I was sorry to learn that Stefan was so dishonest, and such a pious hypocrite to boot, but not nearly as sorry as he was when Herr Hoyer discovered his treachery, and—even worse for Stefan—when Massimo learned of it.