A Man of Genius (10 page)

Giancarlo Scrittori inclined his head and spoke. ‘May I, Signorina Beatrice, introduce an honoured friend, Donna Anna, Signora James. We have a proposal.'

The girl took a moment to construe the words, then smiled a wide lilting smile, gestured politely and stood aside.

‘
Permesso
,' murmured Giancarlo Scrittori as they began to follow the girl and the more reluctant old woman into the
portego
, the wide hall of the palazzo. It appeared immense and glinting, the floor made of coloured, highly polished stones set in cement. Ann had seen nothing like it. A footman scuttled from one door to another.

Suddenly they heard voices from somewhere far into the interior. They stopped. Then what she'd supposed a seagull cry hurled through the space above their heads, followed by a female voice mounting higher and higher from a low soothing murmur; then a sound of metal scraping on tiles.

‘Not now,' said the girl, still smiling. She pushed Giancarlo Scrittori back towards the front door. ‘Next week.'

Her face kept the same expression as Ann too was propelled over the coloured floor through the door and on to the stones outside, the girl still courteous but insistent, the elderly maidservant close by framing her from behind. ‘So sorry, Signora,' she said, ‘so very sorry.'

Before even the usual farewells could be exchanged, the door had closed. Giancarlo Scrittori walked on with Ann. He said nothing at all.

She stepped off a
traghetto
on to the island, then steadied herself. The water in the canal had been choppy and there'd been too many in the boat for comfort, all precariously standing between the oarsmen. She walked slowly along the
fondamenta
watching her feet over uneven flagstones and puddles. It was easy to trip.

She was reluctant to go home – home, an inappropriate word for the cold, tense apartment. She stopped and stared into the sky.

Her eyes followed a gull swooping and circling, then settling domestically on the water. The bird was buffeted by waves and boisterous wind as well as by the swirl from passing boats. It was swished up and down but never dislodged or seemingly discommoded, the closed feathers unperturbed in its nervous environment. Were the webbed feet working strenuously underneath the calm feathers or did the bird have some skill in suffering so calmly, whether from boat swell or gusts of wind, with no ruffling?

She was admiring the bird's self-composure when a group of six or seven seagulls suddenly landed beside it. All joined together and screamed raucously, flapping at each other over some blood-soaked stringy entrails she could only partially see from the way they were tugged about. They must have been thrown out by a butcher. Or did these birds find some small living thing and kill it and tear it apart with gusto? It was enough to make one laugh.

13

T
hat night Robert said that words could be dissolved into a pure void. What would be their sound?

This sort of thing used to seem wondrous though obscure when she'd sat in admiration before him.

She knew the sentiments by heart: they simply arrived in different combinations. In any case there was no truth to them, for language always lies, so could not be pure, solid or dissolved.

Still, from his saying the words at all and in whatever order and however dubious, she concluded he was in a good mood. This despite disappointment at the peasants with their clams and bare feet. He must have found men to drink with, to listen to him though understanding not one word. But he'd not trouble over that. He'd prided himself on no one truly understanding his
Attila.

Boredom fought with desire to keep him amiable. Which would win? She knew already – she was bad at keeping quiet when tired to death. The tallow smell in the room was pulling at her lungs. It had no effect on Robert, although she noted that familiar clutching at the breast, a gesture he made with his left hand alone. But that was part of his rhetoric, not pain: well, not that sort of pain.

‘When I was out I met a young man who . . .' She paused. The momentary eagerness in Robert's eye was absurd. He wanted her to say that this casually met young man, this Italian whom no one knew, had admired his fragment of
Attila
and been struck by his universal ideas which were now known only to a coterie in a few northern
districts of London. This impossible dream: the potency of
his
language.

Why on earth did she know this? And if she did, why allow the response? It had been the sparkle she'd not even tried to keep out of her own eyes that had led to this hopeless delusion.

She resumed quickly. ‘He said I might get work teaching English here – perhaps to children.'

The light faded from Robert's face. He turned away and shrugged. ‘If you want. You always want money, don't you?'

‘We
need it.'

‘We might. We've used up most of mine.'

‘We both contributed.'

‘Oh yes. You counted. You're good at keeping accounts. Life balances for you, doesn't it? What you can get out of people.'

‘That's unfair and you know it.'

‘Don't tell me what I know.'

‘It's a manner of speaking.'

‘Well of course, mistress of banality. What sort of young man?'

She didn't answer at once.

‘Just an ordinary young man from Venice. He was trying to be helpful.'

‘Meaning I'm not?' He picked up his dark green-coat with its now indelible water stain and moved towards the door. ‘Enough,' he said. ‘The stars are shining in my gloom.'

‘Thank God for that,' she mumbled. Her muffled anger swirled round the room.

A week later she met Giancarlo Scrittori again as agreed. If she'd not known it unlikely, she'd have thought he'd spent his short time in London reading those pap gothic novels with which she herself was so familiar.

Perhaps, though, the bizarre arrangements had been made simply to allow him to chatter on, so covering with many words the oddity of that aborted visit in San Toma. For nothing had been said of what
had happened at the palazzo doorway, nothing to deaden the howl from that cavernous house.

To make sure they found each other, that she had a respectable place to wait if for any reason he was detained on business or something interrupted the encounter – he doubted this would happen, but you never knew, a customer . . . he'd trailed off – he'd suggested the basilica. They would meet in the interior of San Marco. But it was dark and huge, and one could wander round it for many minutes without achieving even an arranged meeting. There needed to be a place.

‘Put one foot on the lamb which eats a willow branch and the other upon a goose. There I will be.'

She'd enjoyed the game. She'd not told him clearly what she'd done in London, but perhaps he'd assumed correctly, or expected something gothic from all English visitors nowadays. Whatever the case, the assignation was amusing and she'd arrived just a little early to take time to position herself.

Inside the basilica she hesitated. What would a mosaic goose look like? There were many animals here which had never walked the earth. She strolled round for a quarter of an hour or so before spying a likely candidate. And close to a willow-eating lamb. She stood on the spot.

Giancarlo Scrittori was almost upon her before she noticed him, so fixed was her concentration on the feet of a stylish saint cased in scarlet hose and bright sandals.

‘I have my pupil now ready for you,' he said gaily. ‘All is settled. You know, you saw her, she is a young girl of impeccable family. She wishes to learn the English well so she may read Lord Byron in original.' He smiled. ‘That is her idea, of course. Her mother has told my aunt that she thinks it must be improving material if it is written by an English milord, and I bowed to assent with her. She hears tales of his life here but I' – he gestured – ‘disabuse her of them. Signorina Beatrice is the sister of a great sculptor.'

‘I would be happy to. She is a pretty girl.'

He looked at her keenly. She blushed. Was she so starved of a little ordinary politeness?

Ah, the young man was noticing her drab clothes. Her garments were unsuited to a palazzo with great rooms.

‘I might try to find a new jacket for this work, Signor Scrittori.'

He smiled encouragingly as to a child. ‘Yes, yes, Signora. I know just where you must go, Campo San Paterian, a cousin of mine. We can be there and we can practise my unsatisfactory English as we go.'

‘You know very well your English is good and it sounds just perfect to me. With such a nice lilt. But yes, if your cousin has ready-made clothes, I am happy to come with you.'

He worried he'd insulted her. ‘So many ladies here buy such clothes when they have need of them speedily,' he said. ‘Dressmakers take their time.' He still appeared anxious that the supposed need might have offended. Then he chuckled. ‘Your English has more words and more chance to express what you do not mean, I think.'

‘Don't worry. I both need and want a ready-made jacket, something a bit brighter to fit with the brightness of Venetian ladies.'

He beamed. ‘You have a phrase, when in Rome? Which will settle for Venice too, I think.'

They had come out of the basilica and were in the Piazza San Marco.

‘It is grand. This is as I pictured it.'

‘You mean unlike La Giudecca? But you know this is partly new and it is not our creation.'

‘No?'

‘No. It has been Napoleone who has made it so grand. They say he called it the drawing room of Europe.' He pointed away from the basilica. ‘See that arcade, all new, made by the French who like grand things. We are more – how do you say? – homely.'

‘I don't think that's at all the right word for your palazzi, if the one I glimpsed is the standard.'

‘There's a real palace behind the arcade, with a great ballroom for the Emperor's stepson. Look there. They intended a great statue of Napoleone as Jupiter but he was fallen too soon. Now his place is bare.'

Although they were by now threading their way through the crowd, Giancarlo Scrittori was not diverted from his theme. His tone
and face registered no passion; yet he had to speak his protest.

‘The great Canova himself was shocked. He remonstrated with the Emperor but to what good? The French have only French ideas. They make everywhere France. They sent our basilica horses to Paris, then knocked down our palaces, our convents and churches, all destroyed as if they are without history. Now there are wide French streets where there should be noble houses.'

He checked she was listening as his voice rose above the cries of hawkers, his expression continuing amiable while he spoke bitter words. ‘He dredged the waters for his big ships and now we flood.'

‘Didn't Venice always flood, Signor Scrittori?'

‘We flood more.'

‘I hear the new island cemetery of San Cristoforo is beautiful.'

‘They move away our dead and leave us here, the living dead.' He fell silent.

Best, she thought, to give no more compliments to the French.

‘I accept that the lighting is better,' he said after a pause. The French think they are enlightened people; they will force others in the light too.'

He smiled, proud of his joke in English.

‘And the Austrians?' she asked as they passed two German soldiers smoking on a humped bridge.

‘The Austrians returned our bronze horses.'

The shop was in Campo San Paterian near San Luca, with a small front and long back. It stretched into the darkness. On both sides bales of cloth were stacked high on bricks.

A weak sun shone through the door and, as her eyes adapted to the gloom, Ann could see the pattern on the colourful fabrics, some the Indian design so fashionable back in England, others more classically geometric. Shawls in black, red and silver were draped over bales. She didn't care for gay shawls. Caroline had been so often swathed in them, while her friend Mary Davies had thought them the most feminine of items.

‘I want something serviceable.' The word puzzled Giancarlo
Scrittori. ‘I mean something I can wear in two seasons, not too warm when the sun shines or cold when it freezes, something that will last.'

‘I see. But, Signora, that is a sad use of clothes. You have a body for that. Clothes I think should make you happy and show your spirit.'

She smiled. ‘I like the idea of a jacket that will gladden my heart. Let's see if we can find the kind of garment that will delight and last at the same time.'

The cousin Tommaso was looking on, rubbing his hands, perhaps for something to do while they spoke in English, perhaps to work on his own cliché – so Robert would have said.

A vision of old merry Robert flashed before her. He could have done Tommaso and the charming Giancarlo Scrittori to a T. He'd made amusement from the predictable. Now he was as boring as any he'd imitated. How strange she couldn't use his predictability to help them both.

She snapped out of her dispiriting thought: the two men were staring at her.

‘The signora has a colour in mind?' said Tommaso.

‘Perhaps a brown,' she began. But, as Giancarlo Scrittori looked downcast, she added, ‘a bright brown, more terracotta, more orange.'

Tommaso went farther into the gloom of his narrow shop and ranged through the garments hanging on pegs from wooden rails. He passed over some brown ones – or what seemed brown in this dim light – and came forward with a
turquois
-coloured short jacket of thick knit material, wool and a little silk perhaps.

‘This would suit the signora,' he said. ‘It is a colour not for the signore here but for pale people. It is beautiful, is it not?'

‘Yes it is,' she said, ‘it is lovely but not brown.'

‘Try, please.' He gestured to a darker corner behind a torn brocade curtain.

‘Well, it is not what I had in mind.'

She went obediently to try it on. It fitted well.

‘It is I think too expensive,' she said doubtfully.

‘It is a little expensive,' Giancarlo Scrittori acknowledged. ‘But
good wearing and it will be a jacket you can use wherever you go. It will be you.'

‘How much?'

Instead of answering, Tommaso wrote a number on a scrap of billing paper, crossed it out and in that age-old custom of the salesman wrote a lower figure below. ‘For you Signora, since you are a friend of my good cousin.'

‘It's still too much,' she said.

She began taking off the jacket.

Giancarlo Scrittori gestured to stop her. ‘My cousin can give you even a better price and you can pay part from what you earn from the little Signorina Beatrice. The Savelli will pay well, I promise.'

‘But if I don't please them?'

‘Signora, you will please, I know it.'

So it was done and the jacket was packaged up.

As they walked back, Giancarlo Scrittori sought to entertain again. Perhaps he wished to get some opinions off his chest he didn't care to share with fellow citizens.

They progressed away from the main sights. There were gaps where houses had been demolished or had fallen down leaving terraced rows like mouths of broken and missing teeth. They turned into another humped road or
rio tera
where a canal had been and was there no longer, then into a large paved square.

Giancarlo saw her disappointment. ‘The French did this,' he said. ‘They demolished much but the Austrians are blamed for all.'

She looked at one palazzo half-destroyed and newly so. ‘But this cannot be the French, they left four or five years ago, surely.'

‘This we do ourselves,' he replied. ‘We Venetians. Some people do not want to pay the taxes and would rather destroy their homes.'

‘I believe the French are now less hated than the Austrians,' she ventured.

He glanced at her as if to enquire about something but he thought better of it. ‘I read it in
The Times
I think, before we left England. Or perhaps I heard it from an Italian man we met in London, an acquaintance of my husband's, a Signor Orlando.'

He made no comment. He had received a rather bitter letter from Luigi Orlando recently but there was no need to tell everyone everything.

They were walking now towards the Gesuati. Ann was relieved that their way was far less crowded than near the Rialto and the Piazza. She turned once, thinking there was someone too close whom her friend must know. But the man withdrew into a side
calle
. This uncertain closeness happened often in a city of too many people and too little space.

At last he broke the silence. ‘There is truth in it. The Austrians are, we think, rude to us – perhaps – sometimes there are insults exchanged. We think that on their surface they are dull-minded. Is that the word?'