Then Count Mortimer announced that he would continue alone. The light of an irreversible decision shone in his eyes. He organized a packet of food and a bottle of water and strode out of the farm toward the rocky terrace from which, according to the peasant, one could see the towers and steeples of San Piero clearly! For a few moments no one stirred; then two of them moved to follow him: the secretary, Vasco Detui, and Dr. Attesi. They hoped to arrive at their destination before nightfall.
Their feet aching, the three trudged on painfully in silence over the great stretch of parched stony ground beneath a merciless sun. After two hours they arrived at the summit of the terrace of rock; but they were still unable to see San Piero for the land was covered with a thick haze.
They walked one behind the other, following the indications of a small compass that Mortimer had attached to his watch chain. They crossed the terrace and continued over dry ground and stony ridges; the sun beat down as fiercely as ever.
In vain they peered ahead in the hopes of seeing the outline of a bell tower loom through the haze. They had obviously been walking around in circles or had been overoptimistic in their calculation of the speed at which they walked; in either case it couldn’t be far now.
It was almost sunset when they came across an old man riding toward them on a donkey. He was coming from his nearby farm—he explained—and was going to Passo Terne to make some purchases.
“Is it very far to San Piero?” inquired Mortimer.
“San Piero?” replied the old man as though he hadn’t understood.
“Good Lord, San Piero, the town nearby—surely you’ve heard of it?”
“San Piero,” repeated the old man as though he were talking to himself. “Well, sir, now you come to mention it, the name isn’t unfamiliar to me. Yes, I seem to remember my father often talking about a town over there,” (he pointed to the horizon) “a big town called something of the sort. San Piero, or San Dedro perhaps. But I never really believed him.”
The little old man with the donkey disappeared behind them. The three sat down on the rocks. No one dared to be the first to speak; and so night fell.
Finally Mortimer spoke through the darkness: “My friends, you have suffered enough on my behalf. As soon as it’s light you must set off on the way back; I’ll go on. I’ll be late, of course, but I don’t want the people of San Piero to have waited for me in vain. They’ve made such tremendous sacrifices to receive me, poor folk.”
Later, Detui and Attesi reported how the wind swept away the haze from the plain but there was still no sign of San Piero. Ignoring their prayers, Mortimer decided to continue his inaugural journey alone, over the blank and empty desert.
They saw him walk slowly but firmly over the dry stones until he vanished from view. But two or three times they imagined they saw a sudden flash of light: the sun glittering on the buttons of the uniform of a distinguished man.
The Scala Scare
FOR THE FIRST PERFORMANCE IN ITALY OF PIERRE Grossgemuth’s Massacre of the Innocents (entitled La Strage degli Innocenti), Maestro Claudio Cottes had no hesitation about putting on white tie and tails. True, it was already well on in May, when the purists reckon that the Scala season has reached its downward phase; by then the public mostly consists of tourists, who are generally offered safe operas without complicated staging, automatically selected from the traditional repertoire; it matters little if the conductors are not the best known, and if the singers are routine Scala performers who rouse no particular curiosity. At this time of year the elite take liberties which would be regarded as scandalous during the most sacred months of the Scala season: it is almost a sign of good breeding for the women to wear simple afternoon dresses instead of full evening regalia, and for the men to come in blue or dark gray suits with colored ties, as if they were making a social call on a neighboring family. Some regular subscription-holders carry their snobbery to the point of not turning up, without ceding their place to anyone else, so that the seat is left empty (and so much the better if it comes to be noticed by their acquaintances).
But this particular evening was a gala occasion. La Strage degli Innocenti constituted an event in itself, because of the discussions it had provoked over a large part of Europe after its production in Paris, some five months earlier. The Alsatian composer Grossgemuth described the opera as a “popular oratorio in twelve scenes, for chorus and soloists,” and it was said that he had changed direction once again, and late in life was using bolder and more disconcerting language than ever before. As a leading figure of the present day, he had announced that at long last he was “restoring opera to the forgotten regions of truth, and recalling it from an icy exile, where alchemists had been keeping it alive on heavy drugs.” His supporters claimed that he had broken free of the immediate past in order to make a return (but what a return) to the glorious traditions of the nineteenth century—and some of them even found connections with Greek tragedy.
But the chief interest of the opera lay in its political repercussions. Although he had lived near Grenoble for many years, Pierre Grossgemuth was obviously of German stock, and had a Prussian look about him, which had been softened by age and the practice of his art. During the occupation, his behavior had not been beyond reproach. He had been unable to refuse when the Germans had invited him to conduct a charity concert, though previously
