Frightened or nervous people in the audience that night would certainly not have found anything in the evening’s entertainment to put them at ease: there was nothing peaceful about Grossgemuth’s music, or the Tetrarch’s frenzies, the violent and almost uninterrupted comments from the chorus and the hallucinating effect of the sets. The chorus were perched like a flock of ravens on a sort of conical cliff, and their invective poured down on the audience like a cataract, often making people jump. Each individual element, instruments, players, chorus, singers, corps de ballet, conductor and even the audience itself was strained to the uttermost. (The dancers were on stage almost the whole time, interpreting the slightest action in mime, though the singers moved very little.) At the end of the first act, applause broke out not so much in approval as from a shared physical need to relieve the tension. The marvelous opera house vibrated with the sound. At the third curtain call Grossgemuth’s towering figure appeared among the interpreters, and acknowledged the applause with quick, perfunctory smiles, bowing his head in rhythm. Claudio Cottes remembered the three lugubrious gentlemen, and looked up at them as he clapped: they were still there, as motionless and lifeless as before. They had not stirred by so much as a millimeter, and were neither applauding nor talking: they did not even seem to be alive. Could it be that they were mannequins? They stayed in the same positions even after most of the audience had streamed into the foyer.
During this first intermission, rumors about some kind of revolution began to circulate among the audience, just as they had in the town. Here too, owing to people’s instinctive reticence, they began unobtrusively. Nor could they overwhelm the heated arguments about Grossgemuth’s opera; Cottes took part in these discussions without expressing his opinions, and made joking comments in Milanese dialect. Finally, the bell sounded to mark the end of the intermission. As he came down the stairs by the Opera Museum, Cottes found himself side by side with an acquaintance whose name he did not remember, but who smiled slyly as soon as he saw him.
“I’m glad to see you, maestro,” he said, “I wanted to say something to you . . .” He talked slowly with a very affected accent. They went on down the stairs. There was a knot of people, and for a moment they were separated. “Ah, here we are,” he went on as they came together again, “where did you disappear to? Do you know, for a moment I thought you’d disappeared underground . . . like Don Giovanni!” And he seemed to think it a striking comparison because he began laughing heartily; and never stopped. He was a pallid and nondescript man, an impoverished intellectual of good family, judging from the old-fashioned cut of his dinner jacket, the soft and slightly grubby shirt and the gray-rimmed nails. Cottes waited with embarrassment. They had nearly reached the bottom.
“Well,” said the acquaintance cautiously, met who-knows-where, “you must promise to consider what I say as confidential information . . . confidential, I say. . . . Don’t get the wrong ideas. . . . Don’t think of me as, how shall I say, . . . an official representative . . . an authority, that is the term used nowadays, isn’t it?”
“Of course, of course,” said Cottes, feeling once again the same discomfort he had felt after meeting Bombassei, but still more acutely, “of course. . . . But I assure you I don’t understand what you are driving at. . . .” The second warning bell rang. They were in the left-hand corridor which runs along by the stalls, and were about to go down the steps leading to the platea.
Here the strange man stopped. “I must leave you now,” he said, “I am not sitting down here . . . well . . . it’s sufficient to tell you this: your son, the musician . . . wouldn’t it perhaps be better . . . a little more prudence, there . . . he’s no longer a small boy, is he, maestro? But oh, dear, oh, dear, the lights have gone out already. . . . And I’ve said too much, haven’t I!” He laughed, bowed his head slightly, without giving his hand, and slipped away, almost at a run, on the red carpet of the deserted corridor.
Mechanically old Cottes found his way into the already darkened auditorium, apologized to his neighbors and reached his seat. Tumult raged in his brain. Whatever was he doing, that madcap Arduino? It seemed as if the whole of Milan knew the answer, although his father could not even imagine what it was. And who was that mysterious man? Where had he been introduced to him? Unsuccessfully he tried to recall the circumstances of their first meeting. He thought it unlikely to have been during a musical gathering. Then where? Abroad perhaps? In some hotel during the summer vacation? No, most definitely he could not remember. Meanwhile, on stage, the provocative Martha Witt was advancing with sinuous movements, a naked barbarian, to impersonate Fear, or something of the sort, as it entered the Palace of the Tetrarch.
Somehow or other, the second intermission arrived. As soon as the lights went up, Cottes looked anxiously around for the man who had talked to him previously. He wanted to question him and make him explain himself; he could not fail to furnish Cottes with
