Antonietta Read online

  Omobono:—They all said Sì, sì, Zambelli! Zambelli! Then I asked some questions.

  The father waits, but Omobono offers no more. The father is forced to ask:—What did you learn?

  Omobono says her husband died ten months ago of pellagra complicated by a weakness of the lungs.

  The father:—How old is she?

  Omobono says that the guess of those who know her was that she is in her middle thirties.

  The father:—Reputation?

  Omobono sops up more gravy. Then, looking down at his plate with the birth of a smile on his face, he says:—Friendly!

  —Children?

  No children, Omobono says. Who could know whether it was the husband’s fault or hers?

  The father, in a sudden fury:—What were you doing at Leopoldo’s? You know that place is off limits. You had better swear to me that you were not playing billiards.

  Omobono:—Babbo! How could you think that of me?…I sometimes watch.

  The father:—You have no business in such a place. They have brawls. You could hurt one of your hands. You should stay away from those people.

  Omobono:—Yes, Babbo.

  The father:—Have you forgotten why I would not speak to you?

  Omobono:—No, Babbo. I was home before dark—you saw me come in.

  Now the weather on the father’s face breaks slightly for the better again, and he searchingly says:—When you say “friendly”—

  Omobono:—I was listening very carefully. There was no suggestion whatsoever…

  Omobono leaves his answer hanging. The father says nothing.

  * * *

  —

  He is at his bench, with a large rectangle of thick white paper spread out in front of him. Omobono nudges Francesco and jerks his head in their father’s direction, calling attention to the stillness, the rigidity of the back. No humming this morning. The father is tall and slender; the power in his shoulders, arms, and hands has always intimidated the slighter sons. He is wearing, over a rough linen shirt and wool pantaloons, a white leather apron that reaches well below his knees. He also wears a knitted, cone-shaped white wool hat, which will be replaced at the summer solstice by an exactly similar one of cotton. The sons and Carlo move around on tiptoe.

  He is about to draw the design for the new violin.

  What matters to the man at the bench is the voice of the finished and ripened instrument. The crucial thing in life is not to repeat oneself. Repetition dries up the springs of one’s energy, leads to sameness and dullness, and dullness tends toward death. Thus every violin must be an invention. There must be changes each time, even if they are slight—in the arching under the bridge and on the back, in the swirl of the f-holes, in thicknesses, in the shapes of the C-curves and the bigger bouts and the sides and the corners, and in the final ensemble of the fifty-eight various parts. All the parts work together to give each violin its unique tone of voice, never to be matched, any more than a given diva’s lovely singing can ever be heard from anyone else’s throat.

  Moreover, its physical beauty must also be its very own, thanks to the unrepeatable grain and waves of the plates of wood, to tiny variations in the purfling at the points, to changes in the swoop of the scroll at the head, to modulating glints of varnish—to ever-shifting mixes of the feminine and the masculine in the look of the whole. For the man at the bench realized years ago that a violin’s tone is not spontaneous: it has to be coaxed out by a violinist, and a violin that is loved by its player—for its beauty as well as for its freedom of speech and richness of voice—will give up sweeter sounds than it will if it is not so loved. He knows this to be true. He has heard it again and again: the same instrument responding differently to different expert violinists. A fine violin, he knows, is a sensitive, animate creature.

  He picks up his pen, dips it in the inkwell, draws an axis down the middle of the page with a ruler, marks off certain spaces on that line and several symmetrical measurements on either side of those marks. Then he begins to draw the shape of the bouts: the curves of the upright sides of a violin. As always, the sons are amazed, watching him—dismayed, for they know they will never be able to do what he is doing. He draws freehand, yet the curves on either side of the axis are perfect mirrors of each other. He outlines the f-holes.

  He looks for a long time at what he has done. Then he gets up and goes to the latrine to piss.

  As soon as he is out of the room, Francesco and Omobono and Carlo crowd around the bench. They see the shape of a woman’s round shoulders, close waist, and broad hips.

  Francesco whispers:—Omobono, osservalo!

  Omobono whispers:—Dio!

  Carlo asks in a whisper why they are excited. Francesco tells him that there is not a question here of minor changes from the last violin. This is new. This is a radically different basic pattern from that of the violins the old man has been making for almost a decade. No! No! For longer.

  —This is something new, Omobono.

  Omobono whispers:—He is out of his head.

  * * *

  —

  It is Omobono who dares to ask the father, when he comes back, about the new design. Omobono has pretended not to care whether his father spoke to him or not, but since Omobono’s release Francesco has already seen a subtle rounding off of the hard edge of indifference his younger brother has held up to the world for so long. That “manliness,” as Omobono must have thought of it, only made things worse in the house. It enraged the father and made him shout—at Francesco, who was supposed then to pass the shout on in a very loud voice to Omobono.

  Here is what caused the trouble, more than two years ago, between Omobono and his father.

  Omobono had just celebrated his seventeenth birthday. He hated the work in the shop, because at that time Carlo had not been bound and he was the factotum, the one who had to tidy the benches and clean the gluepot and take the wood shavings to the kitchen to be burned, and the rest of the time his father made him stand at his shoulder, watching every move of his hands, for hours on end. This was how he was supposed to learn the craft. As his mother grew sicker and sicker, his father became more and more overbearing.

  What was more, apprenticeship was a kind of imprisonment. In the sons’ earliest years, their father had laid down a strict rule that they were never to go out into the city alone after dark until they were men, until they were twenty-one. The father said that his master, Nicolò Amati, had had this rule. The apprentices could go out during the day to run errands or even to play, if they wished, during the siesta—though the father said a liutaio’s life is one of work, siesta was a time to regain hand strength in rest. As for the one daughter, Catterina, the poor thing would never have the good fortune to make violins, so in a sense she had nothing to save herself for in life, yet she was forbidden to go out even during daylight hours, unless accompanied by Feliciana the cook or Marisa the mother’s maid or Gianna the chambermaid.

  At dusk one June evening, Omobono told Francesco he was going to sneak out—to breathe air that doesn’t stink, he said. Francesco tried to talk him out of it—all very well for him, who was by then over twenty-one, to preach caution. After the father retired to his room, Omobono slipped out through the back courtyard.

  The summer twilights were long and soft. Men and women walked in the narrow streets. Life was hard. Lombardy was a worn-out toy of the Spanish Viceroys. The countryside had been ravaged for decades by famine, plague, war. Omobono’s young friends were cynical. What future could there be, except one of cheating, lying, cutting corners? Name a magistrate and whoever you were talking with would rub his thumb and fingers together, meaning: a greased wheel turns. Cremona’s cultural glories: cheese, sausages, mustard! Priests like flocks of jackdaws. Confess, sinners, confess!

  Yet there was laughter in the streets in the evenings. You could hear mandolins.

  That evening Omobono ambled alone across the piazza, gazing at girls. He strolled through side streets, walked past the cathedral and its campanile. Looking up at the tower, he grew dizzy: the tallest phallus in Italy, against a magenta sky. His chest was like a stove full of smoke, its flames smothered by wood shavings from the shop: the smoke was the pain of resentment. He had forgotten to sharpen the scrapers that morning, and his father had treated him badly all day. A girl looked him right in the eye as she came toward him—shiny dark irises, with glints of magenta in them from overhead, asking his eyes the only question that matters in life; but of course she was chaperoned—by her fat mother. They swept past him.

  On an impulse, as it grew dark, Omobono went into a tavern, on a corner across from the Palazzo del Comune, called in mockery Il Ridotto, after the foyer of a grand theater or opera house, where the gentry would gossip and flirt between acts. Here working-men, still in their sweaty work clothes, drank and laughed and gambled away their last soldi, then went home tipsy to their furious wives.

  Omobono heard his name called. Paolo Mandelli, an apprentice with the Ruggieris, about nineteen, a boastful, edgy fellow, very short and therefore careful to speak with the calm voice of a tall man. He was playing zara with several other young men on a table with a raised board at one end to bounce the dice against. He invited Omobono to join in. Omobono shook his head, no. Mandelli said a Stradivari ought to be able to cough up a few chick-peas, come on, play.

  Omobono:—My father would kill me.

  Paolo Mandelli:—Does your father drink at Il Ridotto?

  Omobono declined again and watched the others. They were having such a good time. No one minded losing two soldi; he would get them right back. Bursts of laughter like fanfares. The loser slapped the money down as if losing
were an act of defiance. The winner grinned. The dice bounced, glistened. Omobono felt something like sexual desire; his chest still hurt, but now it was more the pain of yearning. And finally he said he would play one game.

  He won from a stranger.

  He thanked Mandelli’s friends, and stepped back to watch. Mandelli said a winner couldn’t not play again. Omobono said no, he shouldn’t have played at all. The others began storming at him. Knowing that he shouldn’t play made him want to all the more, and finally he took the two spotted cubes from Mandelli on the palm of his right hand. He closed his fingers and shook the dice in the hollow of his hand. Just as he was about to throw, he had a prickling sensation at the back of his neck.

  He turned his head.

  His father stood in the doorway looking like a ghost, for he was still in the outlandish white wool cap and white apron he wore at his bench. What could he possibly be doing at Il Ridotto? Omobono did not need to ask himself that question, because it was obvious that his father had seen his restlessness at table and had grown suspicious and had searched for him in the house and had come out looking for him. Who but his father would have the instinct to come to exactly the right doorway?

  The fierce eyes raked just once at Omobono’s figure, frozen as it was leaning forward to roll the dice. Then the father turned and left—and because of his son’s defiance of the curfew would not speak to him, or be addressed by him, for more than two years.

  * * *

  —

  But now Omobono’s tongue has been set free, and he is more gratified than he will admit—he is trying to appear less sulky, as Francesco has seen, less loutish, though he is still brash. He boldly says that he and Francesco have noticed a sharp change in this new design. What does it mean?

  It is a question of tone, the father says.

  —How tone?

  The father sits at his bench. He takes up a pine board three-quarters of an inch thick, about ten inches by twenty, on which he traces the new design. With a scroll saw he begins to cut out the mold on which to build the violin’s sides. As he works, he starts talking to his sons, with his back to them. They have never heard him talk like this at his bench.

  —You were not born yet. Long before you were born, when I started out. Of course I made the violins I had been trained as an apprentice to make. From twelve years old. You think I am hard on you. Nicolò Amati never swore, understand that he never struck me, but he made me sweat. He made me swallow my spit, I tell you. He had eyes like two of these. [He picks up an awl.] Oh, how grateful I am to him! I could make a violin by myself when I was seventeen. You have never seen my early violins—all sold, grazie a Dio. I was still working in Maestro Nicolò’s shop when I married your mother. I worked on shares, you know. It was not easy. Your mother wanted Spanish-style hooped skirts from Milan. An expensive bed for her room—we were in the Casa del Pescatore in Santa Agata parish then. You were born on that bed, you unlucky little frogs. I was making violins by choice all that time from the Amati family’s “small pattern”—they were easy-speaking, you know, easy to play because they tucked under your chin and were manageable. High curves in the belly and the back. These gave a silky, bright, small tone, part soprano, part oboe—lovely. I was proud of that sweet tone. Then you came, and Catterina. Your mother wanted a bigger house, so we moved here, you know. And then four years later Maestro Nicolò died, eighty-eight and a steady hand to the very end, that was my heartbreak. After that I was completely on my own. And at that very time your mother changed. I don’t want to talk about that. I was on hot coals. I wanted to shout—wanted to make violins that would shout. A bigger tone. So for about six years I went to the Amati “grand pattern,” a bigger box—but the tone was not enough bigger. I changed each violin in detail, you know, but the strong voice that I wanted never quite came. So—when?—nine years ago—the year of your mother’s disgrace—that was when I started making my long and narrow violins, my stretto-lungo pattern. You know them. You two have chopped at them every day. I remembered the Maggini violins, from Brescia. But I made them flatter, that was the secret. And yes! They had more carrying power, you have played them, Francesco, they throw sound to the rafters at the far end of the cathedral, even when you play pianissimo. Deeper—contralto, chest tones. More difficult to play, I know, not so quick in response to the bow. But a full tone….Ohimè! I have felt so restless. Your mother is gone. The other night I was awake all night. I rolled from side to side, I was so high-strung it seemed to me I could hear the spiders making their webs. But do you know something? I was happy! I had been so stale. In the middle of the night I visualized an entire violin. How to catch it all: the purity of tone of the Amati “small,” but also the best of the “grand,” you know, with the brilliance and fullness of my own long violins, but with less reach and easier to play, new tuning of the belly and the back, entirely new, it all came to me, you’ll see, silver on the high notes, a woodwind sound on the D and G strings, but equal value from all the strings. Everything: sweetness, power, roundness, woodiness—without having to attack like a butcher with the bow. Everything. With this! Wait and see. [He shakes the already almost cut-out mold over his shoulder.]

  Something of the old “manliness” turns over with a sigh in Omobono’s head. He says:—You lay in bed and saw the tassels on that black shawl waving to you the other morning from down in the piazza, didn’t you, Babbo? Each little tassel called out Antonio! Antonio!—didn’t it, Babbo?

  The father slams down the mold, turns in his seat, looks awls at Omobono, and then, as blood fills his cheeks, gives way to a sheepish grin and says:—Why did I give you back your tongue? If you let a goat in the house, he will bleat you deaf.

  * * *

  —

  Goat. His wife’s name from her previous husband was the word for goat: Capra. He met Francesca Feraboschi Capra only once before he married her. The scene is all too sharp in his memory—a Sunday afternoon in April, thirty-two years ago. His father and mother, Alessandro and Anna, were sitting as stiffly as glazed pottery figures in straight oaken chairs in the small “formal” room of their house in Santa Cecilia parish. He remembers pacing back and forth along the south side of the room, moving each way through brilliant cubes of sunshine that poured in at two tall windows; he even still sees in his mind the motes dancing in those boxes of light. His three much older brothers, Giuseppe Giulio Cesare, Carlo Felice, and Giovanni Battista, indulging their maddening curiosity about the woman who will be produced for the baby brother, leaned at ease against the opposite wall. His older sister Angelina Teresa had the kindness not to join this awful jury.

  Sunday afternoon was the only time off for an Amati apprentice. Antonio’s work was beginning to be noticed; just the year before, he had put his own label, complete with the little woodcut monogram he has been using ever since, a double circle containing a cross and the letters A and S, inside a violin he had made, under the left-hand f-hole:

  At twenty-three he was earning, by family standards, good money, passed on to him by Maestro Nicolò in shares, in accordance with the contract that bound him. His father had insisted, since Antonio was by then making his own instruments and already had a strong reputation, that it was time for the boy to be married, and he had hired the notary Tomasino Androtti as a go-between to find a suitable bride.

  During his quest, Androtti had given reports. The most suitable possibilities, he had said, were two in number. First choice, from the point of view of bloodlines and dowry: a maiden, Rosalba Greppi, daughter of a merchant of sausages, aged twenty, unfortunately extremely plain. Second choice: Francesca Feraboschi Capra, daughter of il Signor Dottore Francesco Feraboschi, eminent mathematician. This candidate was widowed and had a passable dowry from the estate of her late husband, who died in April, two years back, of a bullet wound inflicted by a harquebus late one night in Piazza Santa Agata. Two slight disadvantages, perhaps, in that she was three years older than the applicant bridegroom, and in that there were insistent rumors suggesting that her late husband had been shot for dubious reasons either by Francesca’s brother or by his own hand—a crime in Heaven’s eyes in either case. However, this candidate was less plain than the other one. Antonio’s father had said he didn’t want his son to have to marry a frightfully ugly woman; Androtti had better pursue the second possibility.