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Euterpe, Episode 3

Written by Enrico Toro

To Father Thomas Fitzherbert SJ,
Illustrissimus Collegium Anglicanum
Roma

From Maestro Giacomo Carissimi,
Grantville, USA
Seventh day of October, in our Lord's year 1633.

Dear and honored father,

How are you? I received your letter today. It was waiting for me at the Church of Saint Mary. I'm glad to know that you came back from Naples and that the Mediterranean sun and the sea breeze improved your lungs more than all the bleedings and enemas of "those damned Italian doctors." I'm also glad Count Malvezzi di Roccagiovine is paying for the publication of your last treatise. I'm sure the Venetian printers will make a wonderful job as ever.

I knew you would be worried about my soul and my well being, but I like to think that my soul is still in the grace of God and I am fine. Tired, yes, but very happy to be here. You must really have strong doubts about the strength of my faith if you think a few weeks in Protestant countries can damage my beliefs so much. I committed sins, true, as anybody else in this world, but for all I am learning here I'm prepared to spend more time in Purgatory. It is really worth the price.

I know my English is still a long way from being perfect, but I thank you anyway for having read those "long pages" of mine and for having given me many hints on how to improve myself. Nevertheless, everyday I spend here helps to improve my language skills. Maybe, in a not too distant future, you won't find my prose too hard anymore.

You have asked me to satisfy your curiosity about Grantville and the Americans. I plan to do so while telling you about the events of the last weeks.

The day after I wrote you my last letter we decided to begin our stay in this town with a visit to Father Mazzare, the man Milord Mazarino referred us to. So we took our horses and rode to the Church of Saint Mary.

The crowd cramming the paved roads of Grantville showed us a place teeming with activity. Do not believe rumors about uncanny magical devices. As a matter of fact, just like in the rest of the world, most of the people walk to their destination. A few, like us, use horses; others use a small iron device called a "bicycle" that uses human power to move people as quickly as if on horseback.

I couldn't see too many of those motor vehicles now famous throughout Europe. I've been told that they are now only used for public service or emergencies. The ones I saw here were certainly impressive: bigger and sturdier than coaches and faster than the fastest horse.

The most impressive sights of them all, I believe, are those flying machines called airplanes. Seeing them climbing to the sky and navigating through the clouds is truly a tribute to the ingenuity of man.

Grantville is certainly a town of marvels, but not the ones a normal person could expect. You won't find here cathedrals and palaces like in Rome, Florence or Venice. Grantville marvels are others, big and small.

I included in the letter a small example of such marvels. It is called photograph and it is literally a drawing made using light. The device that produces it, a camera, captures the light in a series of lenses and prints it on a special paper that has been dipped in a combination of alchemical materials. As you can see, it depicts reality much better than any drawing can do. One can only wonder how many painters will be able to earn their bread with portraits when this device will be used diffusely in Europe.

I really wish the world wasn't at war, because I believe this town is a gift of God to mankind. It should be preserved and guarded like the most important treasure we have; we could all learn. Any student of what they call their "high school" knows more about science than any member of the Accademia dei Lincei. One could live here thirty or forty years and still learn something new.

Probably the greatest marvel of all is the Americans themselves. They claim to be common people and, like common people, they don't disdain any kind of hard physical labor. Nevertheless, their knowledge and skills are astonishing.

Even if the Americans claim to be all commoners, their government seems different from the republics of the past, because it manages to involve all the citizens and to avoid the creation of a ruling oligarchy. This is a Roman republic without patrician and plebeians, Dante's Florence without popolo grasso and popolo minuto. Or, more accurately, this is a place where social distances are less evident than everywhere else.

Americans are strong advocates of what they call separation of powers (executive, legislative and judiciary) and they use "checks and balances" (one of their favorite phrases) to keep this separation working.

These people don't want guidance by a king because they think every man is born with the same rights of a prince. Each of them is a ruler of his own and a potential head of state. And, just like our kings and princes, they are stubbornly attached to their own personal rights, which, they believe, are received straight from the Omnipotent. They are ready to fight and die for them as are few other people I've ever met in my life.

They have made almost a religion of their own personal liberties. Freedom is venerated here as if it was a pagan deity of the old times. It is a semi-official state cult, the American version of the Romans' Capitoline Triad. They call this goddess "Lady Liberty" and I wouldn't be surprised if in their homeland they raised statues and temples to her.

It is probably for this passion that their laws and customs make this group of individuals work and live together. Each member of this nation can have a saying about how the government should be conducted. Surprisingly, this doesn't bring chaos, but unity and what they call "law and order." Many of them believe that disagreements and diversity of opinion are not seen as a threat, but as an opportunity to improve the wisdom of their decisions through discussion. From what I've learned about their history, I may say their republic in America was the most successful and powerful one since the times of Rome.

I hope my simple words may enlighten you on some American customs, but I am a musician, not a philosopher. I am sure people more entitled than me will write numerous and more knowledgeable tomes about the American society. Books that will help you understand this place much better than my humble ramblings. So, instead of wasting any more paper, let me return to my adventures.

Saint Mary's simplicity and small dimensions would surprise you. At a first glance you would think it is a very poor rural church, but you would be wrong, because in that church there are more books and knowledge than in many of our cathedrals.

Even without all the paraphernalia and privileges that are common in our clergymen, Father Mazzare is definitively a man of God, a true pastor of his flock.

He received us in his office. The room was quite simple and spare but for the huge amount of books and a wooden crucifix on the wall in front of his desk. I was captured by a large picture on the wall. It was a photographical representation of the pope who was the head of the Church in 1999. You will be surprised to know that he was—will be, perhaps I should say—Polish, the first non-Italian pope in many centuries.

Apparently the Catholic Church at the end of the twentieth century is quite healthy and spread all over the world. (They told me there are African cardinals and Chinese bishops!) But from what I later learned it has changed much from the one we know now. A council in the twentieth century stated that all the rites and the Bible must be translated in local languages and supported many other changes. Somehow the Church has become more similar to the Reformed churches. Oh, don't worry. They are not heathens. Priests are still not permitted to marry, even if this has become an issue in many sectors of their time's church. I know that Father Mazzare is preparing a compendium on the Catholic doctrine of the twentieth century, and I suspect that soon you will receive a copy of it from the father general, so I won't waste more time on this topic.

After we introduced ourselves, we gave the parish priest Monsignor Mazarino's letter of recommendation and explained our intents. There was a bit of confusion, at first, because it seems that the monsignor is known in Grantville as "Mazarini." But once that was clarified, Father Mazzare listened carefully to our words and then suggested that the place that would offer us the better chances to learn about future music was the school. There I could find most of the material I needed, like music recordings, music sheets and modern instruments.

He asked me if I spoke Latin and if I was interested in teaching Italian and Latin at the school. I told him I had more than ten years of experience in teaching and I could help teaching music, too.

"I can do that for free, as a token to have access to such an amount of knowledge." I added, "I have financial resources of my own."

"Perfect, maybe we can find you a job; especially if you don't mind not being paid. But there is an important issue here. Do you have any problems in having female students and working together with female teachers?"

He must have seen the barely contained surprise on my face because he explained another thing that makes this place so unique. Here women have the same rights as men. They receive the same education, have the same jobs and they can, if they want, enlist in the army.

"I would do my best," I answered. "After all, if I want to stay in this town I must learn to not have any preconceptions about what I find alien and new."

"When in Rome . . ." Father Mazzare told me, smiling, in his very good Italian free from any regional inflexion.

I must admit that, despite some moments of shyness, embarrassment and clumsiness, due mostly to my absolute inexperience in dealing with women, that later I found that many of them are better students and better musicians than their male counterparts. Here ladies like Vittoria Colonna or Artemisia Gentileschi are not the exception, but the rule.

With us still in the room, Father Mazzare used another of those amazing American devices called the telephone and called the high school principal. The telephone, familiarly called phone, someway converts voices and noises in an energy similar to the one of lightning (of which the Americans are masters) and sends it to another of those devices even at a very long distances. If we both had a phone and there was a line between Grantville and Rome we could talk to each other like we were in the same room. Awesome! Or, when said like some of my students do, totally cool!

Once the phone call was over, Father Mazzare told us he had scheduled a meeting for the day after and offered to come with us to the school. Then he asked if we wanted to take a walk with him in the afternoon, sort of a guided tour to Grantville. Finally, he invited us for lunch.

"I'm quite busy with other chores this morning, apparently Tino Nobili can't wait. But, maybe, I have something to keep you very busy with while you wait. Something I've no doubt you'll find quite interesting. Please follow me."

So he led us to his small apartment and offered us something to drink. Then he showed us one of those music playing devices Monsignor Mazarino told me about when I was still in Rome.

He pressed some buttons on it, took a small box with the name "Gloria, Music for Worship and Praise" printed on the lid and extracted from it a shiny circular mirror with a hole in the center. We finally saw a compact disc. The priest invited us to sit, put the CD in a black box and pushed another button. In a few seconds the room was filled with the notes of a composition named "Gloria" by a musician of the future named Antonio Vivaldi.

Thank God for the chairs we were sitting on. I have had months to somehow prepare myself to the richness of the music and still I was so stunned, dazzled, and inebriated that I'm not sure my legs would have been able to sustain my body.

I don't think I will ever forget the expression on Girolamo's face and the tears on young Johannes cheeks while they were listening to these engrossing and sophisticated harmonies. Harmonies created by people born in another time and in another universe. The names on the CD box said the composers were Bach, Handel, Mozart, Faure, Elgar, Bruckner and many others.

We immersed ourselves in that music for hours, playing it over and over again. There was no reason to talk among us because the music was communicating more than mere human words could ever have done.

In all this musical rapture, I felt a little worm gnawing at my mind. I could not stop worrying about how difficult it would be to adapt my knowledge, my skills, my tastes and my style to this new world. In just one CD there were hundreds of sounds, harmonies, tones, chords and instruments that I never heard before. More than ever, I understood how much study and application this research would require. Again, I felt my confidence shattering. Was the task I had given myself too Herculean for a single man?

This worry had darkened my mood enough that I was glad when Father Mazzare came back and stopped the music. Part of my gloomy thoughts vanished as if his presence had exorcised a dark spell put on me. The silence was broken, we could finally talk and we didn't have to remember to breathe anymore. It was time to think about more mundane matters.

It didn't come easily, I promise. In a single morning we had seen enough marvels to keep us busy talking for a long time. We were simply overwhelmed, drunk of Grantville. Often we feel like a group of new Marco Polos exploring the marvels of the Great Khan's Palace.

The lunch that followed, so full of answers and questions, brought us other surprises. We discovered that we didn't have to use our forks and knives to eat as they were already set on the table as thought it was a very ordinary act. Everybody here has more than one set of silverware and uses it daily. Then we ate Neapolitan maccheroni enriched with a dense, flavored red sauce made of pomi d'oro, the vegetable Americans call tomatoes. Father Mazzare was particularly amused by the idea that we were among the first Italians to eat homemade fettuccine with a tomato sauce.

I wonder if every one of us born in the seventeenth century has the same moronic look when they see Grantville for the first time. I am prone to think it is a common reaction and the Americans are not only used to it but definitely amused by it.

In the afternoon we finally made our stroll around the town. We were introduced to many parishioners met along the road, up-timers and down-timers alike. We were shown the hospital, the town council, the other churches, the stores and the other places we could use during our sojourn. We paid a visit to the bank where we used the letters of credit we brought to open what they call checking accounts. Then, following the priest's advice, we went to the local constables' headquarters where we showed our papers and made ourselves known.

It was evening when we finally finished our tour and took our leave.

While we were putting the saddles back on the horses Father Mazzare said, "Maestro, I suppose I'll see you often in church."

"Certainly," I replied.

"I'd love it if you could help me with the church chorus and maybe sometimes play the organ. It's not one of the big ones you must be used to playing, but I'd really appreciate having a professional like you offering his services to the community. Besides, this can be another useful approach to learn the sacred music composed after your time."

"It would be an honor for me, and a pleasure. I may start at your earliest convenience."

"Well, three days from now the chorus has its weekly rehearsal. Why don't you come and start getting accustomed?"

"I'll be there, Father." I said. "After such a show of kindness it is the minimum I can do for you."

The following day we met the priest a second time to go together to the high school. I was very tense and nervous because I knew that much of my research depended on what would happen that day.

Despite my tension, I didn't fail to notice that Father Mazzare was carrying two large volumes: one was named The Catholic Encyclopedia, the other was The Encyclopedia Britannica. When I asked why he was carrying such a heavy burden, he made a sibylline remark.

"Oh, this is your resume, Giacomo!"

Apparently the priest's trick worked, because, as the Americans say, I got the job.

Once in the presence of the school's principal, Mr. Saluzzo, another American of Italian origins, Father Mazzare introduced me and explained for all those present the reasons I was there.

Mr. Saluzzo seemed interested, but he began soon questioning me about my teaching experience, my knowledge of Latin and the events of my life. One of the things he was concerned about the most was my ability to teach in English.

The principal is a serious man, very competent in what he does. I'd say that, in another world, he would make a perfect member of the Company. Our discussion was all business and I soon found myself under a landslide of questions. I had to defend my position with more resolve than Horatius Cocles on the Sublician Bridge.

Americans are practical people. When they build something they first make sure it fulfills its goal and then, if it is possible, they make it beautiful. So it is for the high school. Its buildings are plain, Spartan, almost naked for an eye used to the frippery of today's architectural style, but they are perfectly designed to carry out the functions they are destined for, to teach and to learn.

The students have all the space they need, and an easy access to many important facilities. Everything is at hand, classrooms, refectory, theaters, fields where to exercise the body, alchemy rooms, music rooms and, last but not least, a library that seems to come out of long-forgotten myths. A fabulous place for the number and for the stunning quality of many of the books.

With such a vast amount of resources, I am not surprised that the school's curriculum of studies puts to shame even the best Jesuit collegium. And I know, personally, many members of the Company who would give an arm and a leg to be able to use such a formidable array of teaching tools.

I believe that the prelates who are actually serving at Saint Mary are not the only members of the Company we will see around here.

Girolamo seemed particularly impressed by the physical exercise area they call the "gym." I could see an idea was growing in his mind. So I wasn't surprised at all when, days later, he asked the principal for his permission to start a fencing class in the school. His main argument was that having students learn the arts of self defense would help in case of another raid, but I believe he is secretly pleased to teach fencing to people anywhere he goes. As usual, Girolamo's enthusiasm was highly contagious and Mr. Saluzzo accepted, on the condition that Girolamo would help buy the materials needed for the class.

Finally, in the late days of August, I was able to begin my duties at the school.

Teaching was easy. After all, it's what I've been doing in the last few years in what is considered one of the best schools in the world. Latin gave me no problem. You start with Rosa, Rosae, Rosa and Phaedrus and, in a few years, you end up reading Augustine of Ippona. And I have the crucial help of Mr. Cassels' Dictionary and many other schoolbooks I would be pleased to have copied and sent to you, should you find them useful.

My problems were more with the grading system and all the rules followed by the American school. Nevertheless, with the help of my colleagues, I ended up mastering that as well.

After the first few terrible, awkward days I also managed to get along well enough with the gentle sex's students and teachers who are crowding this school.

I think Girolamo had more problems with that than I did. When he started his classes he would never have believed that so many of his students would have been women. Considering how dashing he looks and how egomaniacal he is, I wasn't surprised when one day he confessed to me that he never felt so many eyes trying to strip him naked as in that first day of classes. He says they call him "Mr. Banderas," but he has not understood why yet. Anyway, I believe the thing grew on him. Now he likes to boast that he will make the finest duelist of Europe of one of those girls.

I suspect that his prejudices vanished once he discovered that, in the late twentieth century, Italian female fencers are considered the best in the world with a light blade. National pride may be useful sometimes!

Next week I will begin to teach a small group of students about Italy. I really would like them to learn more about its history, its customs and its lore, its language and its literature. Despite the fact that so many Americans have Italian origins, they don't seem to know much about my land. To teach this class I had to do a thorough research of all the material on Italian history present in the library, which is not much anyway. In the end, I will have to use mostly my notes and some material I found in Father Mazzare's personal library.

Apparently, in the up-time USA, Italy disappears from the map at the end of the Roman Empire, makes a small reappearance at the beginning of last century (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael), and then simply vanishes until the mid-twentieth century. They know Dante's Commedia, but they have almost no clue of the context the poet was writing about.

When I am not at work I spend most of my time studying as I plan to tell you later. We managed to sell our horses and make a good profit on the sale. At the same time we rented a big house on the outskirts of town. It is an old house, by American standards, that has just been renewed. There is plenty space for the three of us and a couple of German valets we hired to attend to our necessities.

The basement of the house and a roofed space called "the garage" are big enough to let Girolamo set his temporary shop there. On a day in early September, escorted by a small group of apprentices who work for Johannes' father, the timbers we ordered in Fussen on our way here finally arrived. The quantity was big enough to fill the basement. Since that moment, the shop has been working almost around the clock. The house is always full of noise, and we all look as busy as bees in summertime.

We aren't the only Italians in town. The trades here employ mostly Germans and Americans, but there are a few merchants coming from Milan, Venice and Genoa. One of them is particularly envied. He managed to sell a huge quantity of a blue fabric that is made in Genoa with Egyptian cotton. The Americans are particularly fond of it.

I believe that in the weeks we have spent here we have managed to create quite a comfortable life for ourselves. We have made a few acquaintances, built a trade and found many interests to pursue. I don't want to sound vain, but I am quite proud of our accomplishments.

What about the music? You may wonder. Well, this is the part of the letter I have more problems with. It's very hard to describe the things, the sensations and the problems we have had, especially in a foreign language. But I presume this is all part of the game so I will try nonetheless in the following lines.

In my first letter I told you I felt like destiny wanted me to meet Euterpe, the muse, in Grantville. When I wrote those words I thought I was using a metaphor. But now, I believe instead that my muse is incarnated in a real woman.

It happened during our first visit to the auditorium. I remember it as if it is printed in my mind.

Imagine a large hall, the size of a medium church, the floor filled with seats. Imagine this hall empty, but for one woman playing on the stage at the other end of the hall. Imagine a beautiful, black, large harpsichordlike instrument emitting a simple, but very expressive music. Imagine notes rich in timbre and tonality, powerful and delicate at the same time and all linked together in a way I find hard to describe. Forget monody and basso continuo, surround yourself in strange dissonant harmonies, in an exotic perfume for the listening.

If you can do that, you will not be surprised then that, when Mr. Saluzzo began to say something, both Girolamo and I dared to show him the apparently universal sign to make silence. He understood.

The music lasted for just a few minutes. The woman on the stage seemed so engrossed in it that she did not notice us until the very moment the last note faded away and we exploded in a sincere and enthusiastic applause whose sound made her turn toward us. She giggled and blushed like a child caught in something that is very personal and, at the same time, something she was also very proud of.

She made a little bow, left the stage and came toward us. We were still completely enthralled by her performance.

Usually Americans tower over us down-timers; instead this woman was considerably shorter than me, her figure pleasantly full. The well-defined oval of her face is framed by long chestnut hair and underlined by beautiful, shiny, amber eyes. She moves with a natural grace that is very different from the affected grace of Italian ladies. That grace, especially when combined with her outstanding self-confidence, is equally impressive.

One of the first things I learned here is that outer looks are not so strictly an indicator of social status and morality as it is among us. This notwithstanding, it will take time to become used to the way women dress here. I am still uncomfortable when they wear pants or ...