The True Adventures of Nicolo Zen Read Online Free

father was a mason. A good one. One day he fell from a scaffold while working at the Church of Santi Apostoli. He was lucky he wasn’t killed. But he broke his arm and it never healed properly. So then he mixed tar at the boatyard and did small jobs to support all of us. Last year he was hired to build a fireplace for a glovemaker, Signor Benito Agnetti, who lived in the Giudecca. When Father completed the work, Signor Agnetti confessed that he didn’t have the money to pay him. Father threatened to complain to the local constable and, if necessary, to the Giudecca’s commissioner, who is one of the Doge’s councillors. Signor Agnetti grew fearful and, without thinking, told my father that, in lieu of ducats, he could take any object in his shop as payment. He soon regretted that he hadn’t been more specific, for expecting my father to pick out the most expensive pair of gloves, Signor Agnetti was stunned to see my father—who wore only masonry gloves—eyeing objects with which Agnetti had dressed up the shop: a crystal pitcher, a Moroccan dagger with a silver handle, and most valuable of all, an oval mirror from Murano. But Signor Agnetti breathed a sigh of relief when my father chose this clarinet, which caught his eye suddenly on a high shelf.”
    “You must know it is a relatively new instrument,” the Master said.
    I shook my head.
    “You don’t. Do you know anything about its origins?”
    “No, sir.”
    “You know only how to play it,” he said skeptically. “All right. I’ll give you a short history. Twenty years ago, in Nuremberg, Germany, a man named Denner took the chalumeau, which was like a shepherd’s pipe, with a single reed and nine holes, and improved upon it. He gave it a proper embouchure and added two holes above the duodecime key, enabling the clarinet to produce both upper and lower registers, pitched somewhere between an oboe and a trumpet, but with greater range than either. I wondered when I would encounter another clarinetist, but I never dreamed it would be a girl your age. Your instrument is more beautifully crafted than the one I saw in Milan. It must be worth a great deal.”
    More than my father ever imagined, I wanted to say. “Signor Agnetti told my father the clarinet was a gift from his cousin, who lived in San Polo and had no use for it. Signor Agnetti gave my father the impression that he and his cousin were not on the best of terms. Knowing I loved music, and had learned to read scores while singing at our church, my father chose the clarinet for me, though he didn’t know what it was. He encouraged me to play it. We were a poor family, and he could easily have sold it instead.”
    “He was a good man,” the Master nodded approvingly, and I could see he had enjoyed the story. “So that is how you acquired the clarinet. And now I’ve given you its history. But I asked you where you learned to play it—in just one year, apparently,” he added with a raised eyebrow. “Who was your teacher?”
    I became tongue-tied, trying to invent a name.
    “Who taught you?” he prodded me.
    I decided to tell the truth. “I had no teacher.”
    He sat back in his chair. “You would have me believe you are self-taught, and on such a unique instrument?”
    I nodded.
    His eyes narrowed. “All right. I would like to hear more about that.”
    My mind was racing, but I spoke carefully. “As I said, I learned music from Father Michele at the Church of Santa Caterina on Mazzorbo.”
    “I know Father Michele,” the Master said.
    “You do?” I said, barely getting the words out.
    “We were ordained the same year. I am acquainted with most of the priests in the archdiocese.”
    I knew the Master was a priest—“the Red Priest,” people called him, on account of his hair—but even there in his own church he didn’t look or sound like one to me, not like Father Michele or any other priest.
    “I don’t see Father Michele often,” he went on, “but at Christmas we dine at the