“Go on, then.”
“Puccini works only at night,” I said, “from about ten thirty p.m. to three or four in the morning. At that time the rest of the household will be asleep. At midnight, you and I will creep into the garden of the Villa Puccini and locate his studio, which I believe is on the ground floor. A window will certainly be open because the nights are still warm. So while I hide in the bushes, you will stand outside the open window and sing softly the gentle aria ‘Un bel di vedremo’ from Madame Butterfly. If everything goes right, Puccini will rush to the window and will see standing there a girl of surprising beauty–you. The rest should be easy.”
“I rather like that,” Yasmin said. “Italians are always singing outside each other’s windows.”
When we got to Lucca, we holed up in a small hotel, and there, beside an ancient piano in the hotel sitting-room, I taught Yasmin to sing the aria. She had almost no Italian but she soon learnt the words by heart, and in the end she was able to sing the complete aria very nicely indeed. Her voice was small but she had perfect pitch. I then taught her to say in Italian, “Maestro, I adore your work. I have travelled all the way from England . . .” etc., etc., and a few other useful phrases, including of course, “All I ask is to have your signature on your own notepaper.”
“I don’t think you’re going to need the Beetle with this chap,” I said.
“I don’t think I am either,” Yasmin said. “Let’s skip it for once.”
“And no hatpin,” I told her. “This man is a hero of mine. I won’t have him stuck.”
“I won’t need the hatpin if we don’t use the Beetle,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to this one, Oswald.”
“Ought to be fun,” I said.
When all was ready, we drove out one afternoon to the Villa Puccini to scout the premises. It was a massive mansion set on the edge of a large lake and completely surrounded by an eight-foot-high spiked iron fence. Not so good, that. “We’ll need a small ladder,” I said. So back we drove to Lucca and bought a wooden ladder, which we placed in the open car.
Just before midnight we were once again outside the Villa Puccini. We were ready to go. The night was dark and warm and silent. I placed the ladder up against the railings. I climbed up it and dropped down into the garden. Yasmin followed. I lifted the ladder over onto our side and left it there, ready for the escape.
We saw at once the one room in the entire place that was lit up. It was facing toward the lake. I took Yasmin’s hand in mine and we crept closer. Although there was no moon, the light from the two big ground-floor windows reflected onto the water of the lake and cast a pale illumination over the house and garden. The garden was full of trees and bushes and shrubs and flower beds. I was enjoying this. It was what Yasmin called “a bit of a lark.” As we came closer to the window, we heard the piano. One window was open. We tiptoed right up to it and peeped in. And there he was, the man himself, sitting in his shirtsleeves at an upright piano with a cigar in his mouth, taptapping away, pausing to write something down and then tapping away again. He was thickset, a bit paunchy, and he had a black moustache. There was a pair of candlesticks in elaborate brass holders screwed onto either side of the piano, but the candles were not lit. There was a tall stuffed white bird, a crane of some sort, standing on a shelf alongside the piano. And around the walls of the room there were oil paintings of Puccini’s celebrated ancestors–his great-great-grandfather, his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his own father. All these men had been famous musicians. For over two hundred years, the Puccini males had been passing on musical gifts of a high order to their children. Puccini straws, if only I could get them, were going to be immensely valuable. I resolved to make one hundred of them instead of the usual fifty.