A Man of Genius (11 page)

‘Perhaps “dull-witted” would be better.'

‘Well, dull-witted, earnest, not the kind of people we Venetians usually like and think we are.'

He fell silent again; then after a while he continued, ‘The French were not liked but were not so unpopular. I think to agree with you. My fellow citizens are quick and clever but not wise. They did not quite hate the French despite their looting and sacking – many common people welcomed them as liberators. You know they turned out nuns and orphans on to the streets?' He chuckled. ‘But you, I think, do not become so anxious over what you call Papists.'

She smiled. ‘We don't approve of harming orphans. Nuns I grant you are not so popular, except in dark novels. We love them there.'

She felt tired and was glad to stop talking and listening. But yet, when the moment came, she was sad to see this pleasant young man walk away. She turned to seek a
traghetto
for the choppy ride home.

She returned to La Giudecca and entered their apartment gingerly. She placed her jacket in her hemp bag under the bed beside her few now rather crumpled papers.

Next morning when she set out to find the palazzo near San Toma, she took it with her in a basket, then changed quickly just after stepping off the boat on the wooden planks. When she'd earned some money she'd pay off what she owed, then, when she'd earned a little
more, of course wear it for Robert to see. Why should he not?

It was not so wonderful a garment, nor did it shout expense. Indeed it was very ordinary, she thought as she looked closely at its secure, inelegant stitching in the brighter daylight. Yet it would not pass without comment in their dingy apartment.

Better if it had been a jacket for Robert. Perhaps parents were like this with children, especially demanding ones. Happier to see them fine clad and shod than themselves. Was it love, selflessness, excess humility or fear? Robert would have said it was not love but control of another, her control.

He was very concerned about control – it was the worst thing in the world.

14

S
he'd come to the Palazzo Savelli without Giancarlo Scrittori: he had some business to do, he said, but she suspected he wanted her to go alone. He wished both sides to be impressed.

The palazzo didn't disappoint. It was full of glass, the chandeliers intricate, elaborate Murano, mainly white with touches of pink in the mantels. They hung, huge fossilised sea anemones from a waving sea of dark wood rafters. On the wall were ornate mirrors in panes, some flecked with rust spots, all distorting, exaggerating or decanting the scenes before them. It was hard for Ann to know where she was. Impossible not to see oneself in different postures: made now picturesque, now grotesque, always obscure.

Her ungloved hands had coarsened from too much washing in cold water, but here in these tarnished mirrors the roughest hands were smooth and indistinct. Ann was not displeased to look down at hers when she'd removed her gloves.

She'd been shown in by a diminutive manservant, followed at once by the old woman they'd seen before – well, not so old, she now noted, someone very unlike her mother with her rouge and false hair. This woman had embraced ageing in her black garb, voice and stance. She was helped by an absence of all front teeth.

Then a footman, slightly shabby despite magnificent powdered wig setting off his brown face, ushered her up a wide flight of marble stairs with walls of fading frescoes. He left her in a large gloomy room after muttering what she supposed was a version of her name in too many syllables. Heavy curtains shaded the windows; the paintings in their ornate gilt frames were hardly visible in the dim light, darkened
further by poor placing and layers of dust.

A woman in shades of elaborate black was seated on a sofa of faded crimson velvet embroidered in dark silk swirls. Her face was pale and lined, framed by black lace.

Not unkind but not prepossessing, a little haughty.

‘I am the Contessa Savelli,' she said in heavily accented English. ‘You are Signora Jamis. Please to sit. I speak not much English.'

Ann sat on a lower facing chair upholstered in the same faded velvet. A young twinkling voice interrupted the silence. ‘Signora, we are most content you are here.'

It was the girl she and Giancarlo Scrittori had met the last time they visited the house. Now she was ready for courtesies. Again, as with Signor Scrittori, no mention was made of the first strange meeting.

‘Signorina,' she replied. ‘I too am content.'

There followed more Italian pleasantries, which Ann was unsure how to answer, the girl speaking in her light musical way, the mother in lower tones from a smiling mouth beneath remote eyes.

Then the Contessa left the room. Ann rose as she went. She glanced at a ceiling fresco of pink and white cherubs displaying undulating stains on plump flesh.

‘Let us go to another smaller place. There is good light,' said the girl. ‘We will sit near a window. There you hear the sound of water.'

‘I would like, Signorina, to do exactly what you have in mind. We have an hour for conversing or reading, what you will.'

‘Beatrice, please.' The voice fell like a warm spray over them both.

‘And I am Ann S–' She stopped, realising she'd almost used her maiden name. How absurd.

Frederick Curran said it was always best to be more than one person. She presumed he meant on paper.

‘But that is not so correct,' laughed Beatrice. ‘You are the Signora.'

‘Yes, I suppose so. I am old.'

‘Not old Signora, no, just older than I am and you are married and will teach.'

The girl was all sunshine, all smiles and shifting music. It was impossible not to respond.

So they chatted and nodded and chuckled and Beatrice wrote down phrases in a small notebook exquisitely covered in an intricate geometric pattern of muted red and cream. The hour passed in a flash.

At moments the wintry sunlight on the canal beneath was reflected through the arched window on to the carved ceiling and from there to a tarnished mirror: then all was moving, dazzling on the patched and shredded green damask walls. ‘You make more of the sunlight here,' said Ann.

‘Possibly,' replied Beatrice.

When at the end of the session the Contessa, with her mingling of stateliness, anxiety and polite hospitality, came in to check that everything had proceeded well, she must have seen the success of the lesson. Perhaps she was glad the new teacher had amused her daughter, who, Ann knew now, was quick and might become easily bored.

She'd passed some test. The Contessa would be honoured if she and her husband – a famous English author, she understood – would attend for a social evening. Not in the next weeks, for the Marchese would be in town and would want her company. The Contessa gave a smile both proud and deprecating. ‘And my son, you will have chance to meet the Conte if he will be seen.'

An odd phrase, perhaps it came from inadequate English. It chimed with Beatrice's mention of this young man who was and was not in residence. Ann supposed he lived elsewhere for part of the time. She saw that the girl gave her mother a quick glance as she spoke of him. There might be sibling jealousy.

She hoped no invitation would ever come, that its suggestion was just polite formality. Perhaps she should have set up for widowhood, so that a husband need not be produced. But in that case she'd have dressed in sombre black (widows did not wear
turquois
-hued jackets). And Giancarlo Scrittori would need to have kept quiet. Had she really
mentioned
Attila
to him? She must have done. In any case it was too late to be a widow or a spinster. She prayed the event would not happen.

She took a
traghetto
across the Grand Canal, heading to the Palazzo Grimani near San Luca. Giancarlo Scrittori had told her that the
poste restante
was located there. In her bag she had three letters for England, two with return addresses of the
poste restante
on them.

One was the customary notice to the Strand office of Moore & Stratton telling of her whereabouts. She never knew who received these notices but nothing was ever returned, so she assumed the firm was still in business.

The second was to the booksellers Dean & Munday. She doubted they would give the credit she requested since she was sending no work, but it was worth a try: beyond food and rent, she and Robert were in need of almost everything else that separated them from the Albanian beggars who snatched at their cloaks on the bridges. This was the important letter and at intervals, when she could not pass that way herself, she would send Signora Scorzeri's ragged boy to the
poste
to check for a response.

The third one, with no return address, described for Sarah the Venetian sights in the language of a guidebook. Ann had had no pleasure writing it and her cousin would have little interest reading it, but the letter would declare she was alive and thinking of Sarah and her brood in London. She would write again in a month or two and convey just as little.

She kept from Robert her trip to the post: he distrusted authorities anywhere and the office was notoriously connected with the Austrian rulers. Besides, she was increasingly eager to keep a few things to herself, even if only a bag under a bed and a furtive visit.

The next lesson suggested to Ann that young Beatrice had read rather more in English than she'd admitted. Perhaps her dignified mother did not approve of novels.

Initially the girl indicated she'd been honoured by the Contessa with an English work of Mrs Chapone,
Letters on the Improvement of the Mind
, a most interesting volume, she added. Her mother had received it from a distinguished friend who'd met the celebrated Mrs Chapone on a visit to England in happier times when Venice belonged to itself. Beatrice lowered her voice when she spoke of the city's past.

But on a second meeting it was clear that her young pupil had failed to reach the end of this improving work. She was a great deal more acquainted with the gothic stories of Mrs Radcliffe, borrowed it seemed from a girl called Mariotta rather than from the Contessa's distinguished lady friends.

‘This is a book your mother accepts?' asked Ann, turning with pleasure the familiar pages of
The Mysteries of Udolpho.

Beatrice looked worried. ‘Is the English not pure, Signora?'

‘Yes, the English is pure,' laughed Ann.

‘Then all is as it should be,' smiled Beatrice. She was, she said, ravished – perhaps not the best choice of word – by the plot. Who could not be? It was so exciting, so marvellous. The girl gave her little tinkling laughs as she mentioned the passages that related to her native city.

‘Do you remember them, Signora?'

‘Yes, I do Beatrice. I think I was a little influenced by them when I thought of coming to Venice.'

‘No, no,' Beatrice put her hands over her giggling mouth. ‘Her pictures are no guide to Venice. It is not the city we inhabit.'

‘I didn't think they were but it's hard not to keep them in the mind.'

‘That is good, Signora, for you would be disappointed if you expect to see with Mrs Radcliffe's eyes. It is art, yes?'

‘It is art.'

The girl opened a volume of the book which fell easily on to her writing tablet. Clearly it had been much read.

‘I will tell it to you, Signora, and you can correct my accent on the words.'

Ann nodded assent.

Beatrice sat upright on her brocaded chair and held the book high. Like a schoolchild on a stool with its spelling slate.

Nothing could exceed Emily's admiration on her first view of Venice, with its islets, palaces, and towers rising out of the sea, whose clear surface reflected the tremulous picture in all its colours. The sun, sinking in the west, tinted the waves and the lofty mountains of Friuli, which skirt the northern shores of the Adriatic, with a saffron glow, while on the marble porticos and colonnades of St Mark were thrown the rich lights and shades of evening.

Ann forgot she was supposed to comment on pronunciation. She was enjoying the syncopated rhythm that Beatrice brought to the familiar prose. So it was the girl who interrupted her reading.

‘This is difficult, Signora, when the lands of Friuli are so distant to the east and their mountains out of sight. You know,' and she placed the book on her lap to gesture with her hand, ‘mountains are very pleasing to the Signora Radcliffe. She finds them everywhere, even on the plains along the Brenta River. The Piazza San Marco she calls St Mark's Place, like a square in London.' She tinkled a laugh. ‘And my accent, Signora?'

‘I had not thought of it, Beatrice, you read so well.'

‘For your Mrs Radcliffe all the palazzi are magnificent. It is not quite so. Rotten wood and broken stone do not sound so well as marble.'

Ann couldn't read her mood. ‘It helps to live in your own palazzo to judge,' she ventured.

‘Our palazzo was once beautiful but not so much now. You have seen how the mirrors dirty – I forget the word . . .'

‘Tarnish.'

‘Tarnish, yes. All of Venice is tarnished. We have become poor. Mama had to sell some of her portion, a necklace of pearl and rubies.'

‘Mrs Radcliffe writes from her imagination, Beatrice.'

‘There is one real thing,' pursued Beatrice. ‘The wicked Montoni has a magnificent
salotto
but his other rooms are bare because he cannot furnish them. His grand appearance is a mask.'

They were both silent.

‘Mrs Radcliffe's Emily writes a poem whenever she is moved by a scene. You might try to write verses in English yourself, as an exercise.'

‘No, no,' replied Beatrice with a start, ‘one artist in the family is enough.'

15

I
t was after Christmas, during the long preparation for
carnevale
, that the formal invitation from the Contessa was given, and Robert had to be produced.

They formed a small party, chosen Ann assumed as suitable matches for commonplace English visitors. There was of course Giancarlo Scrittori. His familiarity with the family surprised Ann. Strange to her that the man who dealt in baubles and whose kinsman sold ready-made clothes in a cramped and overstuffed shop sat easily at the table of a proud contessa with her drawing room on the
piano nobile
of a palazzo on the Grand Canal. Sometimes Beatrice called him ‘my cousin'.

Another guest was Signor Verezzi, an elderly man with full curling white eyebrows and wispy head hair; he appeared to be a distant but poor relation of the deceased Conte. A second younger man, Signor Besan, had thinner, more aggressive eyebrows. By his gestures he made it known he came from the Contessa's side of the extended family. He had a pugnacious chin which, when he arrived, had been paralleled by the beak of a black mask. From their courteous but curt greeting, it seemed the two men were much acquainted but not close, perhaps not in political agreement. There was also Signora Zen, a sort of companion perhaps or even poorer relation or earlier governess to Beatrice – Ann was never told – there to swell the numbers of ladies but not expected to talk much when men were present. She was introduced without elaboration of role or status.

In all it seemed a very un-English combination. But then, Ann reminded herself, she knew little of aristocratic English families. Seen close they might be as bizarre as this.

The wintry light was thin in the glassy rooms. The usual seeping Venetian cold was felt equally in rich and poor apartments, but here the china and silverware glinted in the glow of wax candles and open fires, and everything had a patina of warmth. Despite having grumbled at going out for dull, mediocre company and some ominous fumbling with his necktie before they left, Robert was expanding with the full-bodied Friuli wine.

When all the guests had been assembled for some time, to Ann's surprise Beatrice's brother was produced. She'd been told he would be present, but his absence from the welcoming party persuaded her that this elusive figure had dashed off again to gamble or hunt on the mainland, or whatever noble young men did in Northern Italy. He was presented by his full elaborate name.

No further civilities were demanded of the new visitors for at once the Conte, a tall bent young man, turned from them and looked into one of the mottled mirrors, perhaps at himself, perhaps only at reflected light and darkness. Ann briefly followed his gaze.

As they began the meal the Conte continued a disturbing presence. He scowled at Robert, then looked with conspicuous inattention round the room when he spoke either in English or in his rushed inaccurate Italian. The Contessa gently cajoled her son to bring his consciousness to the table. She made matters worse, as she must so often have done. Giancarlo Scrittori engaged both mother and son when he could, used perhaps to facilitating in this great house.

Robert's Italian was not fluent, but Beatrice in particular understood enough when he lapsed into English to make an animated point, and his animation in whatever language was engaging. Even Giancarlo Scrittori, whom Robert treated frostily, leaned forward to catch what he said of philosophy and art and immaterial beauty. He hazarded a few responses, but Robert refused to engage with him. Giancarlo Scrittori was either too polite or too attuned elsewhere to notice. Ann listened to the words, made unfamiliar to her through watching new auditors.

Did she feel pride at the company's response? A little perhaps, but more resentment that he entertained others – and that she herself had dared to become wearied by his act.

As time passed, the Conte Francesco Savelli began to get the drift in Robert's mélange of languages – he'd even begun to add a little French to make himself understood. Francesco seemed to thaw, then he warmed. ‘Yes,' he suddenly said. ‘Yes, yes,
certo.
'

And before the third plates of the meal were even removed, he rose and crossed to Robert's chair, then pulled him by the arm. His mother protested but smilingly – evidently indulgence was her most successful mode with this clever, troubled son.

Suddenly Francesco jerked Robert to standing. ‘Come, come now, you must come to see my suffering Madonna. Come now.'

Only Robert was included in the invitation but to make the event less strange Beatrice also got up. Used to her brother's sudden spurts of activity, she called over to Ann. ‘Let us go too, Signora, you will want to see the wonders my brother has carved. Pardon, Mama.'

So, leaving the Contessa, Giancarlo Scrittori and the other guests – except for Signora Zen, who got up and followed silently – they trooped out of the dining hall and down the marble steps to the hallway. An ornate wooden door opened on to a large room in semi-darkness.

Francesco sprinted in and lit the candles, in such a hurry he spilled wax over a table and burnt his finger, exclaiming but still rushing on excitedly. ‘You will see,' he kept repeating. ‘My Virgin you say.'

They entered the dimly lit room. Unshaped massy stones and gnarled pieces of wood were strewn about the floor. Heads of boar and wolverine adorned one wall and on a high table were bottles of what looked like pickled frogs, moles and a half-formed human foetus, all glinting in the candlelight and waving gently as Francesco brushed past them.

The carving he beckoned towards was covered in a white damask cloth. It made the shape beneath appear a giant upturned crab. They stood and stared as the young man fingered and twitched the cloth. Then just as the waiting became oppressive, with one violent jerk of his arm, he flung off the covering. Like a magician entertaining an audience with his live rabbit. But what was produced with this gesture was more monstrous.

It was a bronze, a dark metal pile: a ravaged rock on which straddled a human form with strangulated face.

Instead of the usual beatific and smooth-faced, cradling Mary, Francesco had created a woman without her son, no infant nor grown man; a woman left ageing, alone, bereft, horrid in her uselessness, anticipating no reunion in heaven, tied to crude unyielding rocky earth.

The sculpture delivered a message of dreadful grief, grief made inelegant and ugly. This was no moving
pietà
for watchers but angular jagged anguish, the face wrenched back and the arms in grotesque gesture clawing at the air. A woman shrieking in silent metal.

Ann glanced at Robert. She had worried about his reaction – he was no lover of the plastic arts. But he was transfixed, his nervous body momentarily still. Then, changing into his usual expressiveness, he put his hand out to feel.

‘No,' said the Conte, shocked into sudden movement, ‘not to touch. She is hard, not to be caressed.'

Robert jerked his hand back as if stung, but Ann could see he was not much offended. His pale eyes, a little bloodshot from too much wine, were bright and eager. ‘It is, as you say, wonderful, magnificent.'

‘
Si si, magnifico
.'

They stood in silence.

‘My brother,' said Beatrice at last, breaking the mood, ‘my brother is very talented.'

Francesco gave her a quick scornful look and grabbed the white cloth from the table. He was about to fling it over the image again when he was interrupted.

‘No,' said Robert, ‘no, just a moment more please.'

Without smiling Francesco stayed his hand, rubbing the cloth between his fingers.

‘It is a masterpiece,' said Robert, ‘the cleverness of portraying this grief without the body of Christ, so that it is grief itself, pain itself that you have depicted here, pain of the body and spirit but through
an absence. Only this lifeless metal forced into such active shapes could catch it.'

He was speaking largely to himself using only English. Francesco Savelli understood little of his words, but he was now watching Robert with hooded eyes of almost doglike adoration. Beatrice and Ann grew uncomfortable. For both of them in different ways it was all too naked.

Then Beatrice spoke again to urge her brother to put the cloth over his work. Ann understood. Surely it was better covered.

They climbed back upstairs, Robert following the two women, with Signora Zen coming after like his shadow. The Conte stayed down in his studio. As they left, Ann could see his form slumped over the candles which he was putting out with a flick of his fingers, as if even this showing had been too much. Nobody urged him back to his mother's table.

‘My brother the Conte is very gifted,' Beatrice whispered to Ann again as they mounted the stairs, ‘but there is something in his head not so, how to say it? not so comfortable, so comforting to him or to anyone. He becomes very excited and then his work goes so well but at other times he is down the bottom of the steps. He has these melancholy moods like a – ' she paused for a word, ‘like winter coming. Nothing stops them. He howls. Poor Francesco.'

‘But not so poor perhaps if he can create such things.'

‘Oh yes, he is well regarded in Venice. But he puts over his creations his white cloths and like tonight shows people for moments only. He is a strange one. Mama worries herself over him. She becomes quite sick with it. When Papa was alive he used to take Francesco to our estate in Friuli and try to make of him a hunter and a man, but he comes back much worse, sometimes growling like an animal, more often sunk into such black feeling he is sitting down there doing nothing. He curls up his arms and legs like a mouse in a nest.' Fearing the wrong image Beatrice curled up her own hands and nestled them in her breast to make her point. It was a poignant gesture. ‘Mama was in agonies. Now, as you see, she – how do you say? – humours him.'

‘Yes, perhaps that's it.'

They entered the dining room and a little later Robert followed. He'd heard Ann and Beatrice talking but hadn't wanted to listen. Signora Zen slid silently in behind and took her place.

Robert's exultant mood was over.

Back at the table there were marzipan sweets, candied fruit, almonds and oranges, and dessert wines in coloured glasses.

Ann was on edge. She made no effort to hide her glances from Robert. She hoped he would drink no more. He knew that quite well.

He was no longer speaking, except when spoken to, but he remained polite, even attentive to the Contessa. Ever the moderator, Giancarlo Scrittori tried to engage him in conversation or bring him into general talk, but he shrugged the young man off.

Signor Verezzi and Signor Besan, who'd kept their heads bowed through much of the meal and their mouths working greedily – they were evidently used to the dramas of the house – were released by the Conte's absence and enough wine to get their own back on the English guest who'd been so talkative while they'd been silent.

‘The Austrians sent a coach and four horses to the patriarch of Venice. To draw him along the water!' Signor Verezzi laughed out his words. Then he glared at Giancarlo Scrittori, who bowed his head over his glass. He too knew the habits of the company.

‘They have given us new judges,' said Signor Besan, his jutting jaw becoming more pronounced. ‘Contemptible.'

‘It is as well to respect one's masters,' said Signor Verezzi in English.

Robert looked up, letting a scornful expression settle on his face before he lowered his gaze. He seemed about to speak, then perhaps feared he couldn't muster the language. The Italians were switching between their own and English, but it was not easy for foreign guests to intervene.

Ann spoke to prevent Robert. This way of acting had already infuriated him in London. ‘There is at least peace,' she said.

The Contessa cleared her throat to take up the point but, before she could speak, Signor Verezzi went on, now addressing Ann and
Robert directly, ‘We live by the Austrians but they are another race of people. Peace, pah.' Then more quietly, under his breath, he added, ‘Better to give hatred and contempt as Signor Besan suggests. Better not to plan and act.'

The Contessa put her arm gently on his sleeve and smiled a gracious smile to the company.

‘
Affenarsch
,' muttered Signor Verezzi, who, Ann saw, was much affected by the wine. He was not to be silenced. ‘We are poodles of Vienna.'

‘The French never tried to get into our minds. They just took the art and trinkets and went away. Napoleone brought a giant despotism – ' Signor Besan's speech made the Ss slur and he stopped, swallowed and concluded in a loud voice, ‘We are now tethered by midgets.'

‘Certainly,
certo
,' said Signor Verezzi. ‘We must ask leave to piss in the canal.'

Giancarlo Scrittori kept his eyes on the table, seeming to investigate the weave of the damask cloth.

For the moment Signor Besan abandoned any effort to intervene. He nodded, catching the Contessa in his eye.

‘Peace is important,' said the Contessa.

‘The peace of death,' Signor Verezzi continued, throwing the words directly at Giancarlo Scrittori, who raised, then lowered his eyes again, studying now the handle of an ornate fork with its Venetian lion mark. It might have been an intricate jewelled dagger laid out for sketching. Beatrice, who'd been silent, sent an encouraging look towards him.

There were matters here Ann couldn't fathom. Secrets and tangled webs she failed to discern against the candlelight. The Contessa must know how things played between these three men. Why invite them to the same table? And why with her and Robert?

‘Look at the state of our houses. We cannot afford to repair them.' Signor Verezzi waved his hand round the brilliantly candled table with its silver and glass glinting in the flames. ‘The palazzi will fall into the canals and the canals will fill up. It will become a town for
visitors to stare at. Mudbanks and seaweeds at the last. A wreck floating out to sea.'