Stone Virgin (9 page)

Restlessly he got up and went to the window. He parted the curtains a little and looked out. It was high tide. In the light from the
campo
beyond the bridge he saw the water washing over the steps of the house gate opposite, almost at the level of the
fondamenta
– another six inches and it would be flooding right over. Water covered the top step, levelled for a few seconds in a translucent skin over the stone, slopped gently off again. There was to his sense in this brief steadiness of the water, its momentary unrufflement as it lay across the step with the pale stone shining through it, something devotional, something sacramental; though he was aware of that surprise, and even faint alarm felt before in Venice at the sight of water where water had no business to be, water creeping among the abodes of man in the silence of the night, disregarded. It was as if these steps and walls and the quayside itself, all this washed and accommodating stone, though seeming to be fashioned for man’s purposes, now in his absence had reverted to its own, which was the celebration of the beauty and supremacy of the brimming water, whose levels were rising year by year and slowly drowning the city …

He returned to the table and stood looking down at the notebook. There was no other entry on this page, only three altogether for April and none at all for the previous month, confirming his belief that the sums were from some small fund for occasional expenses. But only this entry, as far as he could see, had a bracketed word in the cash column. This was difficult to make out, especially the first part of it, because the paper had worn smooth there.
Denari
he had taken it to be, the Italian word for money. But it seemed to have more letters than that. Lamplight reflected from the worn patch, making things more difficult. Acting on sudden impulse, Raikes went down on his knees and held the page up against the light. Afterwards he was to wonder whether it was the filtering light itself or heat from the lamp operating in some way, but the imprint was now quite clear and unmistakable. The word was
Fornarini
.

4

‘THAT IS A
very
old name,’ Wiseman said. ‘Goes back a long way. They were one of the original twenty-four, or so it is claimed. My gosh, yes.’ He blinked and chuckled at the thought of this. Venice was his hobby and his passion.

Raikes smiled in response, glad to find that Wiseman knew something about it, endeared by the other’s enthusiasm, which he recognized again now after the years in which they had not met; it was the quality they shared and which had kept them friends. ‘Who were
they
?’ he said. Here in this sheltered spot, the sun warm on his face, digesting his
spaghetti alle vongole
and veal cutlet, half the Merlot still left in the bottle, he felt a sense of well-being and expansiveness. ‘Sounds like a magic number,’ he said. ‘Were they the founders of the city?’

‘They were the original families who ruled as tribunes over the Lagoon islands. This was before there was any Venice at all, at least as we know it now – there was no settlement on the Rialto yet. We’re going back to the seventh century, a fairly misty period, which is why a lot of the claims can’t be authenticated. The Fornarini, for example, claim a semi-mythic ancestry going back to the founders of Rome. That’s nonsense of course. Still, they are one of the oldest.’

Raikes nodded. Wiseman’s voice, the New York accent softened by travel and by the gentle temperament of its owner, was very soothing and lulling. The wine too had relaxed him. His eyes fell on two Italian women in early middle age, both slender and smartly dressed, sitting at a nearby table. One of them raised herself slightly in her chair, in order it seemed to smoothe her skirt against the back of her legs. This slight lunge of the woman’s pelvis gave Raikes an unexpected and poignant pang in the genitals. He felt his face and body go hot. He looked away hastily, nibbled some cheese, poured Wiseman and himself more wine. What would Wiseman say, he wondered, if I told him that since my arrival in this city, since starting work on my Madonna, I have had what seem to be hallucinations, my level of sexual awareness has been so topped up I have intimations of orgasm in everything I see, I cannot look at a fork in a tree without feelings of restlessness? It would only embarrass him, of course. It occurred to him that he did not really know what Wiseman’s sexual propensities were – or indeed if he had any.

‘They have the crest feathers of an eagle on their coat of arms,’ Wiseman said. ‘Only six Venetian families were allowed to display lilies or eagles on their arms. Seven if you count the eagle’s foot of the Malipieri. They called themselves the
Case Vecchie
, the twenty-four I mean, or their descendants at least. The old houses. They were a sort of caste within a caste. I’m planning a chapter on it, not on the history of the families, but some of the anecdotes about them.’

Wiseman was in charge of the UNESCO office that had been established in Venice after the 1966 floods. In the time left over from official duties he was writing a book entitled
Venetian Byways
, a sort of compendium of historical gossip, exactly suited to his tastes and interests, which were antiquarian without being systematic. He was corpulent, and his rather full cheeks and small mouth gave him the general appearance of a cherub.

‘The fact is,’ he said now, blinking mild eyes in the pleasure of having things to impart, ‘there are gaps in our knowledge, enormous gaps. There is the
Libro d’Oro
, of course, which is still in existence – it’s in the state archives – but it only goes back to 1506 and in any case contains only certificates of marriages and legitimate births. No reference to origins, no pedigrees, no blazons. A lot of the ancient registers with details of titles were probably destroyed in 1797 at the time of Napoleon’s invasion of Venice. So really we have to rely mainly on the genealogical works compiled before 1797, based upon state papers that were afterwards destroyed. The best book on the subject is probably Marco Barbaro’s
Origin and Descent of the Patrician Families
.’

‘Where could I get hold of a copy?’

‘You could probably get one through the University here.’ Wiseman hesitated for a moment or two, then he said, ‘As a matter of fact I have a copy of the 1926 edition. You can borrow that if you like.’

‘That is really very good of you,’ Raikes said warmly. He had not failed to notice Wiseman’s struggle, and he was touched by this evidence of friendship. ‘I’ll take care of it,’ he promised.

‘Of course,’ Wiseman said, as if wishing to retract, ‘it wouldn’t be much good for the eighteenth century, you know. The Fornarini family had sadly declined by that time. There might have been twenty or thirty people with that name, very few of them possessing any money. No, they were at their peak in the fifteenth century, when your statue was carved.’

‘Still,’ Raikes said, ‘I’d like to have a look.’

‘Of course. I’ll drop round with it. Or I’ll send someone. Not where you’re working, though – it’s too messy there.’

‘I’m not working this afternoon. I’m making a start tomorrow, the twenty-fifth.’

Raikes instantly regretted saying this. He did not want Wiseman to know that he had been waiting for the Feast Day of the Annunciation before beginning; it seemed to reveal too much of his own private rituals. Wiseman was kind and sensitive and sympathetic; but he looked always for quirks and oddities, he made everything into anecdote. It was why Raikes had not given the real reason for wanting to know about the Fornarini – the last thing he wanted was to see the Madonna featuring in Wiseman’s
Byways
. And it was why he had never talked much about personal feelings to the other man, distrusting the quality of the understanding that Wiseman would give him.

However, he realized after a moment that Wiseman saw no significance in the date. No reason why he should, of course. I must stop attributing my own obsessions to other people, Raikes thought. ‘Shall we have some coffee?’ he said.

‘I suppose we’d better. I must be thinking about getting back. It’s pleasant here, isn’t it?’

‘Very.’

They were on the Riva degli Schiavoni, looking across to the marvellously fabricated shape of San Giorgio with its line of little boats along the front, like beading. Earlier, when he had been on his way to meet Wiseman, there had been a powdering of mist in the air, thicker on the broader water where the Giudecca Canal opened into the basin of San Marco, obscuring the lines of the church, softening the outline of dome and campanile. Now, something like two hours later, the light was clear and sparkling on the water, every detail of Palladio’s design was radiantly distinct, the whole thing, church and island together, seemed like a single artefact, resting improbably on its bed of mud and sand.

There were a number of small boats out on the water. A motor launch went past at speed, its prow rising and dipping like the upper blade of scissors cutting horizontally. The surface seemed hardly disturbed by this, resuming its calm almost at once, cancelling the passage. However, just below them, under the planks of the landing platform, among the mooring posts of the gondola station, Raikes saw that the water was wild demonic green in the shadow of the timbers, swirling with a sort of secretive violence against the poles. He was struck by this clandestine, treacherous behaviour of the water, and was about to draw Wiseman’s attention to it, when the latter said, ‘As a matter of fact I know someone here in Venice called Fornarini.’

‘Do you really?’

Wiseman was again looking immensely pleased. It always gave him innocent pleasure to be in possession of facts and able to impart them. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, and chuckled slightly. ‘Met them a year or so ago. She is Chiara Litsov now, but she was Chiara Fornarini before her marriage.’

‘That is most interesting,’ Raikes said. Wiseman must have been saving this up all through lunch, he thought, waiting for the most effective moment to come out with it. ‘Of course, you know everybody,’ he said.

‘I think they would remember me. Would you like to meet them?’

‘Well … yes. Yes, I would.’

Raikes’s hesitation had been caused by the fact that he had no real reason for thinking there was any connection at all between the Fornarini family and his Madonna. Mistaking its nature, Wiseman said, ‘They are an interesting couple. He is an artist, a sculptor, very talented, beginning to be successful. They don’t live in Venice itself, but on one of the islands in the Lagoon, rather remote. You have to get a boat from Burano. But they have a telephone. Litsov himself is something of a recluse, he doesn’t often leave the island. In fact he told me when I met him that he had only been away twice in the previous six months. She is more sociable. She is a remarkable woman, I think.’

‘I’d like to meet them very much,’ Raikes said, more firmly.

‘And so you shall, dear boy,’ Wiseman said. ‘Leave it all to uncle Alex.’

On this amiable note they parted, Wiseman to return to his office off the Calle Larga San Marco, Raikes to carry out a purpose that had been on his mind since the previous evening, since first his wavering torchlight had settled on that page.

He had been already that morning to the Central Post Office to check on the address and it was fortunate he had done so, as neither street nor number was now the same. There had been a reorganization of the whole system in the 1930s, and Calle Guanara did not now include the house, which was known as Casa Fioret and given as being on the Calle dei Savi, number 6.

It took him something like an hour to walk it, proceeding northwards from behind the Piazza San Marco, steering roughly by the glinting water of the Grand Canal, constantly glimpsed on his left and lost again. The street ran between the church of San Giovanni Crisostomo and the Malibran Theatre. It was narrow, with tall houses on either side, bounded by a green and malodorous canal. Casa Fioret was the last house on the right, with its doors opening on to the street and the canal running at the side, immediately below its walls. There was no bridge; the street ended at the stone steps that led down into the water. From the third-floor balcony of Casa Fioret to the corresponding balcony of the house opposite, there was a double line of washing.

The street door was massive, six or eight feet across with a high rounded arch and stone pillars at the sides with acanthus-leaf decorations. On the facing of the arch, in the centre, there was a huge lion’s head with a snarl that had weathered into amiability; and set into the wall at one side, like guardian eyes, twenty-eight bell pushes in a rectangular panel – Raikes counted them as he stood there. Twenty-eight separate lots of people now lived in Casa Fioret.

The promiscuous sheets and pyjamas and petticoats waving overhead, the evidence of multiple occupation staring Arguseyed at him, gave Raikes a chilling sense of anticlimax and futility. What could all this have to do with the Madonna? He had assumed at least some sort of continuous occupation, somebody he could question. He felt like a gambler who had suddenly run out of luck.

The heavy door was not locked; it swung open to his push. He passed through and found himself in a large paved area like an interior courtyard, with a marble well-head in the centre and a flight of stone steps, leading presumably to the upper floors. The stairs had a carved banister, made of heavy dark wood, with large smooth bosses at intervals. There was a smell of damp and urine. A baby was crying from a room on his right and from somewhere above he could hear the sound of a radio. He stood for some moments examining the design of lions’ heads around the rim of the well-head. The manes had been blended with the triangular patterns of foliation between the heads in an original and attractive manner which he could not remember seeing before. A woman with a shopping basket came down the stairs and went past him without speaking. He noticed now that the bosses on the banister were in fact human heads worn almost featureless.

At the far end of the courtyard there was a double door standing open, a sense of space beyond. Raikes passed through this into an area surrounded by brick walls, which he thought must once have been the garden of the house, though it had been levelled and cemented over. It was rectangular in shape and extensive for Venice, with a wrought-iron gate at the far end. Three very small boys were squatting over something near the wall that ran by the canal, and a little girl with bare feet swung a dishevelled doll. There were more lines of washing and two women standing talking together. It seemed to be a communal area used by the tenants. No one took any notice of Raikes at all. He stood for some moments, dismayed by the neglect and poverty visible everywhere: the rusty metal fire escapes clambering from floor to floor, the rotting eaves, the crumbling, discoloured brick. It must have been a beautiful house once, with all the space, that courtyard, the long garden running beside the canal. The design was visible still, of course, and the proportions, the spacing of the windows with their high rounded arches, the elegant stonework of the balconies, the exquisitely decorated campanella. There were so many houses like this now in Venice, hundreds upon hundreds of them, tenements for the poor, rotting away along obscure side canals. Few if any would ever be restored.