Secrecy (3 page)

‘I was settling in,’ I said.

‘You were settling in …’

I didn’t think Bassetti was being sarcastic or disparaging. If he had repeated my words, it was in the hope of understanding them.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘His Highness will see you at noon tomorrow.’ He moved past me, out of the room. Then, by the front entrance, he swung round, one hand foraging in the folds of his robes. ‘I almost forgot.’ He produced a small glass jar with a cork stopper and held it up to the light as if it were a jewel. ‘Something to welcome you to Florence. A local speciality.’

I thanked him.

As I examined the jar, which contained a root or tuber that was round and mud-coloured, about the size of an apricot, I was aware of a movement to my right, in the gloom at the far end of the hall. A man came down the stairs, huge but silent, passing me as if I were not there, and though I didn’t see his face properly I registered a certain gauntness, and a mouth that was like a razor-cut – that still, shocked moment before the blood wells up into the wound. Bassetti followed the man into a waiting carriage. Then they were gone.

The signora appeared at my elbow. ‘Is that a truffle?’

I removed the cork from the jar. The smell was acrid,
medicinal
; it reminded me of gas.

People who knew my plague pieces were often wrong-footed when they met me for the first time, and judging by the way the Grand Duke stared at me the following day, he was no
exception
. He had probably assumed I would be a morbid, saturnine character, or even that I might exhibit signs of physical
corruption
– a livid rash, a scattering of glossy boils – yet there I was, soberly but immaculately dressed, and with a smile on my face. And why shouldn’t I be smiling? He had invited me to his city, and would now provide for me financially. Despite my initial impressions of Florence, I felt a paradoxical lightness of spirit, almost a kind of mischief; like a shade-loving plant, I tended to flourish in dark places.

He was eating, of course. He was almost always eating. Aside from his reputation for piety – his knees had the consistency of leather, apparently, owing to the many hours he spent in prayer – he was famed for his voracious appetite, but as I approached I noticed there was no meat on the table. No fish either. All I could see, heaped in extravagant profusion, were vegetables.

The Grand Duke eyed me. ‘Are you hungry?’

I told him I’d already eaten.

‘And even if you hadn’t,’ he said glumly, ‘I doubt you’d be interested. It’s a Pythagorean diet, in case you wondered. My physician, Redi, is a tyrant.’

The previous night, he went on, he had dreamed that he was hunting in the Cascine, west of the city. Afterwards, there had been a banquet. Roast venison had been served, and suckling pig, and duck. Tripe too, a favourite of his. His mouth was watering; he had to dab it with a napkin.

‘I’m tormented even when I’m sleeping.’ He shook his head. ‘Thirteen years I’ve been eating vegetables. Thirteen years!’ He sighed. ‘How about some wine?’

To this I agreed.

‘Signor Zummo,’ he said, when I was seated opposite him, ‘you can’t imagine how much I have looked forward to this moment.’

In the green light that streamed in from the palace gardens, the Grand Duke’s face had the sponginess and pallor of the mushrooms that lay untouched near his elbow.

‘Your work is fascinating,’ he went on. ‘You have a vision that is not unlike my own.’ He turned his bulbous eyes to the window. A breeze pushed at the myrtle trees; a distant fountain glittered. ‘It’s as if you’ve gained access to the inside of my head. My innermost thoughts, my anxieties – my fears.’ He began to dismantle an artichoke, setting each leaf aside, intent, it seemed, on arriving at the heart. ‘You’re sure you won’t join me?’

I realized that if I continued to refuse the offer he might take offence. Leaning over the table, I studied a dish containing a pile of brittle black strands that reminded me of filigree at first, and then, more disturbingly, of pubic hair.

‘Good choice,’ the Grand Duke said. ‘Fried seaweed.’

As the seaweed was spooned, tinkling, on to my plate, he told me he knew nothing about my origins.

I was born in Siracusa, I said, in the south-east of Sicily. For centuries, the town had been a military stronghold and an
important
trading post, but it was also a beautiful place, with a warm, dry climate and sea views on three sides. My father, a shipbuilder, had been employed by the Gargallo family. Sadly, he had died when I was six. As the second of two sons, I had been educated at the Jesuit College, though my passion for sculpting in wax had led me away from a career in the church.

The Grand Duke interrupted. ‘If the town is as idyllic as you make it sound, why did you leave?’

This was a question I had been asked many times over the years, and in replying I always chose the lie that was most suited to the circumstances, the one that would be believed.

‘I needed inspiration,’ I said.

Siracusa was a small town – a fortress, really – inhabited almost exclusively by soldiers and clerics. I saw paintings by Caravaggio – he was my first real influence – but not much else; life could be suffocating, especially for an artist. In Naples, though, I knew I would be able to breathe, and it was in that exciting, chaotic city that my vision began to crystallize. The art I was exposed to had a profound effect on me. Religious works by Luca Giordano, obviously, but also Mattia Preti’s frescoes and the plague paintings of Jean Baron. And I had spent hours in front of Gargiulo’s masterpiece, ‘Piazza Mercatello’.

‘I hope you brought a sample of your own work,’ the Grand Duke said.

I signalled to a servant, who fetched a large, square package from the next room. This was a piece I had completed while in Naples. The Grand Duke’s eyes, already bulging, seemed to protrude still further as I undid the string. The wrapping fell away, and he let out a sigh. Inside the wooden cabinet were wax figures in varying stages of decay, the degree of putrefaction indicated by the pigments I had used. A half-naked woman sprawled in the foreground, her flesh a shade of yellow that suggested that her death was recent. Nearby was a baby who had been dead for some time, its face and body a dark soil-brown. The grotto in which the figures lay was filled with crumbling stonework and shattered columns, also made of wax, and the atmosphere of desolation was heightened by the rats I had placed strategically throughout, some perched on the bodies of the deceased, others busily tugging at their entrails. Presiding over the scene was an elaborately winged and muscled male figure with a scythe. The Grand Duke bent closer, his nose only inches from the surface, as if he wanted to plunge into that rotting world and feast on the corruption.

‘Exquisite,’ he murmured.

I showed him the hole I had carved in the roof of the cabinet, which allowed a spectral light to angle down on to the scene. I also drew his attention to the landscape at the back, which I had painted in such stark, pale colours that viewers would feel they too were in the grotto with the victims of the plague, they too were being afforded a last glimpse of the land of the living – the bright, brief moment that was life on earth. He asked if the piece had a title. I told him I called it ‘The Triumph of Time’. He nodded, then sat back. To hear people speak of my work was one thing, he said, but to see it for himself – in the flesh, as it were – was a revelation.

Not long afterwards, Bassetti swept into the room with a formal offer of patronage, his expression complacent, replete, as if he had just devoured the sort of meal his employer fantasized about. Studying the document, I saw that the Grand Duke was proposing a stipend of twenty-five scudi a month. I had never been paid so handsomely.

Before I left, the Grand Duke mentioned some outbuildings on the western edge of the palace gardens, which could, if I wished, be converted into workshops. There had been a time when they were used as stables, he said in a slightly strangled voice. Then his cheeks flushed and, looking away from me, towards the window, he added that he no longer found it pleasing to keep horses.

I woke suddenly, my throat dry. Soft sounds were coming through the ceiling, sounds I could make no sense of.
Thump-thump
-thump …
thump
. And then again: Thump-thump-thump …
thump
.

That evening Signora de la Mar and Fiore had decided to celebrate my successful encounter with the Grand Duke by cooking a supper that made use of the truffle Bassetti had given me. The signora had suggested a risotto. When I cut into the truffle, though, it seemed to come alive. Threaded through the crumbly dark interior were dozens of frenzied white worms. I sprang back, almost knocking Fiore to the floor.

‘What a shame,’ the signora said. She thought the truffle must have spent too long in the ground.

I remembered how Bassetti had held the jar up to the light, as if it contained a precious stone. ‘Could he have known?’

‘I don’t see how.’

‘So it’s not deliberate.’

The signora gave me a curious look. Such an idea would never have occurred to her.

Abandoning the idea of a risotto, we went to a tavern near the Arno that was known for its fresh fish. I drank more wine than I was used to. Worse still, I let the signora talk me into sampling a tar-coloured liqueur that was made from artichokes and was, so she assured me, a speciality of the region.

‘What,’ I said, ‘like the truffle?’

But I went ahead and ordered the liqueur. No wonder my head ached. That odd thumping, though – it had come from the floor above.

I left my room and climbed the stairs, which coiled skywards in a tight spiral. The air felt motionless, unbreathed, as if nobody had been up there in years. I stepped out on to the landing. Standing with his back to me, and dressed in a colourless,
close-fitting
garment, a sort of undersuit, was a figure with the thin hips and narrow shoulders of a young boy, though his face, when glimpsed in quarter profile, was that of a man, lines fanning outwards at the corner of his eye, his sallow cheek unshaven. I was about to speak when he raised his arms in front of him, palms facing out, and launched into a series of fluid, connecting somersaults that took him off into the darkness. He seemed to disappear, in fact, and when I called out, ‘Who are you?’ there was no reply, only a click that might have been a door gently closing.

Perhaps I ought to have left it at that, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I picked my way along the landing. I found a door at the far end. Putting my ear to the wood, I heard noises I recognized. They had the same rhythm as before. The first three thumps came close together. Then a gap. Then a fourth thump, which sounded final, emphatic, like a full stop. I tried the door handle, which creaked loudly. Like the stairs, it didn’t seem to have been much in use.

‘No, no,’ came a querulous voice. ‘Not now.’

It was too late. I had already opened the door an inch, and I was peering through the crack. The man spun past, at
head-height
.
Thump!
I opened the door wider and stood on the threshold.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ The man’s voice was reedy, petulant. This was Cuif, I realized. The insomniac.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You woke me up.’

‘I’m
practising
.’

‘But it’s the middle of the night.’

Cuif shrugged.

‘Are you an acrobat?’ I asked.

His eyebrows lifted, and his mouth curved downwards. ‘I’m a jester,’ he said. ‘A
jester
. Well, I used to be.’

Barefoot, he crossed the room and looked through a window that was covered on the outside by a rusting iron grille. We were so high up that only the sky was visible. All the asperity left him, and when he spoke again he sounded pensive, nostalgic.

‘There was a time,’ he said, ‘when I owned more than a hundred costumes. I needed an entire room just for my
costumes
. Can you imagine? But we’re living in an age of austerity now, and there’s no place for people like me. Jesters are frivolous. Redundant.’

‘But I’ve seen them,’ I said, ‘in the market-place –’

Cuif snorted. ‘Those fools haven’t realized it’s over. What do you do?’

‘I’m a sculptor.’

‘So you’re probably redundant as well.’ He seemed to hope this was true.

‘No, not really.’

‘Why? Is your work
popular
?’ He gave the last word a scathing twist.

‘I’m interested in corruption and decay.’

‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ he said bitterly. ‘You’ll probably go far.’

I looked around. He had two rooms, both of which were narrow, with scabby, mouse-grey walls. The room I was standing in was bare except for a strip of matting. On a shelf near the window were half a dozen books that leaned haphazardly against each other like men who had been drinking for a long time and were now very tired.

Without any warning, the small and seemingly ageless Frenchman sprang into the centre of the room. ‘Would you like to see a somersault?’

‘By all means.’

He stood before me, feet together, hands pressed against the outside of his thighs. His face was drained of all expression. He took a quick breath, his birdcage of a chest expanding. Suddenly his head was inches from the floor, and his legs, bent at the knee, were on a level with my face. This was so unexpected that I laughed out loud. Somehow, he managed to hold the position for a moment. Upside-down. In mid-air. When he landed, puffs of dust swirled around his ankles, as if he had been performing underwater, on the seabed, and had disturbed the sediment. He threw his arms out sideways, and his mouth split open in a theatrical grin, revealing teeth that were long and ridged, like a donkey’s.

While I was still applauding, his grin faded. ‘I didn’t get that quite right,’ he muttered.

‘It was wonderful.’

He shook his head, then winced. ‘I think I hurt myself.’ He sat down on the floor and rubbed his right knee. In the window, the sky was beginning to change colour.

‘I should go,’ I said.