The Monster of Florence (42 page)

“And these cracks …” The Marshal peered at the Franchi portrait.

“Cookery, Marshal, cookery. I bake them in my oven at a low temperature, then apply my dust.”

“Who taught you?”

“The artisan who taught me to restore. An ill-tempered man who made money out of me like the rest of them. People with valueless
paintings they’re fond of want the damaged parts restored and ‘aged.’ From that to producing a whole aged painting is a short step.”

“I see. Yes.” But what he was trying to edge near to was not the how but the why. He was no longer aware of the ice-cold room.

“Even so”—he stepped carefully—“it’s hard to understand why someone like you should spend his time on something he got no credit for. You don’t seem to me a person whose interest is just financial gain. I suppose it’s a living, but not much of a one, I can see …” He looked around him at the comfortless space, letting his gaze rest pointedly on the screen half hiding the bed.

“A living!” Benozzetti moved quickly to block the Marshal’s view of that little personal corner, his face red with anger. “You may know something about painting, my dear Marshal, but you evidently know nothing of its commercial side. If a court portrait like Franchi’s brought fifty million yesterday, what do you imagine I earned for a Rembrandt?”

“Ah, well, yes … I see …”

“You don’t imagine I’m interested in bourgeois acquisitions in property, in furniture and all the rest of the trappings? Paintings, that’s what I bought, good paintings, great paintings, because I do know a good painting when I see one!”

“Oh yes, I’m sure that’s true.” He lied, then, in his “confession.” Probably made a fortune. That was one thing out of the way. “It’s not really money I’m talking about, though. Still, I can see why you got disheartened if you felt no one appreciated your work. I imagine that professor you were telling me about had a lot to answer for.” As he went doggedly on, his face became more and more expressionless until he might almost not have been present. Benozzetti, having been “switched on” now seemed to forget him and to be ranting to himself.

“They laughed at me, those worthless half-baked students, good for nothing more than to teach schoolchildren to daub. Laughed at me because of him. The professor, the man who should have taught and helped me. The man who, had he understood my talent, would have thrown down his brush like Verrocchio, never to paint again. But I made them pay, I made them all pay, pay with their cheque
books, pay by making fools of themselves, pay by giving me a lifetime of laughter at their expense—pay—”

“When did your father die?”

“What …?” Benozzetti halted, breathing heavily, aware all of a sudden of the Marshal’s presence.

The Marshal wandered away from him, looking carefully along the workbenches and shelves at the brushes, bottles, pestles and strange tools he couldn’t recognize. He looked at everything but touched nothing, his big hands still grasping his hat.

“Oh, you know how it is. A person as interesting and talented as you are … it makes you wonder where it all came from. Was your father a painter, too, for instance—this stuff here, what is it?”

“Ashes. For making ink.”

“Ah.” The Marshal wandered on, still looking at everything except Benozzetti, who followed him uncertainly, asking questions without waiting for an answer. He knew that when he hit the right question there would be no wait for an answer. Benozzetti would react like a wounded animal. The Marshal’s heart was beating fast, he could hear it in the long, silent room, as though he were afraid the reaction might be a physical attack rather than a verbal one. It even occurred to him to wonder whether the man might have a pistol by his bedside in case of burglars, but it was too far to wander casually over there. Besides, there was the screen. He wasn’t armed himself.

“Mind you, I don’t know why I should think of your father—unless I had young Marco Landini in mind. He’s artistic like his father, isn’t he? Not like you, of course, not to the same level. But perhaps you inherited some of your talent from your mother.”

“No! Don’t!”

The Marshal jumped as if the other man really had fired a shot. He wanted to look at him now but didn’t.

“I’m sorry. Should I not be looking at these jars? I haven’t touched anything—”

“No. No, it’s all right.”

Even without looking, the man’s painful breathing told him he was close to the mark. Should he go on or wait. Wait. His back was
prickling as though he were expecting claws to be dug into it. Dangerous. He’d known from the start that the man was dangerous and yet he’d come here unarmed. The voice behind him spoke again, but it wasn’t Benozzetti’s voice. A smaller, weaker sound.

“I don’t care. I don’t need—” It tailed away.

He’d lied about that too, then, to Marco. She was dead now but if she’d died when he was small, he wouldn’t even remember, let alone say, “I don’t care.” He wished fervently that he hadn’t got himself into this situation, trapped in this great big tomb full of treasures with its mad occupant. But he was here now, and it was too late. The tension of the man behind him was so great as to be unbearable. Distract him. Distract—

“Ah.” He gave a deep sigh and silently begged his dead parents’ forgiveness for what he was about to say. “I suppose you must have gone through something on the lines of what I had to go through. My mother left when I was small. The usual story, another man. Of course, these days, a mother would never abandon her child, but then no woman who could be called immoral could ever claim custody. And we victims have to try and understand their dilemma, especially …” The scar, the scar on his ear … “Especially when there’s cruelty involved. How is a woman to defend herself?”

“And how is a child to defend himself?” It wasn’t that other, childish voice now but Benozzetti’s own. The Marshal turned and looked at him. His face was quite changed. The mask through which his snake’s eyes had looked at him was gone, dissolved. The tight muscles were flaccid. He was looking at an ordinary man now, or what was left of him. Benozzetti pointed slowly at his own ear. “It wasn’t just this, this sort of thing wasn’t the worst of it, Marshal. The hatred was the worst of it because, you see, I looked like her, and as you very cleverly guessed, I inherited her talent. His second wife hated me, if anything more than he did.”

“So you were taken away from them?”

“Nothing so vulgar, Marshal. My father was a wealthy man and a man of some importance in the pharmaceutical industry. Nevertheless,
when this injury which has left me deaf in one ear brought me near to death, something had to be done. My father agreed to send me away to an expensive college where the monks kept me, even during the holidays, and there was no prosecution.”

“I see. You must have suffered a great deal. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you by mentioning it. It’s just that, as I told you the first time we met, I rarely get to meet anyone as fascinating and as talented as you. You’ve never told anyone all this before? I mean, you didn’t mention it in your piece for the paper, although you gave the impression you wanted people to understand you. Shouldn’t you tell—well, someone competent, of course, not the general public?”

His face was hardening again and he now regarded the Marshal with smiling disdain. “You’re surely not talking about a psychoanalyst? I’d thought better of you. Those people are as foolish and arrogant as the art experts.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re right. But it might come in useful to you, just the same, without your taking it too seriously yourself. After all, this confession you’ve published—”

“That wasn’t a confession! Did I call it a confession? Am I responsible for the idiocies of the newspaper world?”

“No, no.” He was back to normal again, then. “I hadn’t thought. It was just a headline, of course. But even so, there’ll be a reaction and if you should be prosecuted—”

Benozzetti laughed bitterly. “How little you understand these things, Marshal. Who do you imagine will throw the first stone? The auction house? You think they’ll admit they’ve let a forgery through their hands? No one would buy there again. The buyer, then, you expect him to admit he’s spent fifty million on a fake. I know who that buyer is, though he wasn’t present at the auction himself, and I can promise you that he will
never
admit that he’s been made a fool of!”

The Marshal had no answer to that. He still felt sure the painting had been genuine, but what difference, after all, did that make? If it were, then the one sold years ago to the American museum would be a fake and the same arguments remained. Besides, wasn’t he, like
everyone else, wanting to believe the painting was real for Marco’s sake? They were all in the same boat, weren’t they?

“Well, Marshal?”

“I understand what you’re saying.”

“I’m glad of it, because your young friend Marco isn’t going to throw the first stone, either, is he?”

“No, I suppose not. What about that American museum, though? Won’t they want to check up on their picture now?”

“Ha! When I was preparing my little denouncement I wrote to them, warning them that another version was about to go to auction in Florence and sending them the photo of me with the third one that you saw in the papers. What do you think they replied?”

“I don’t know … They asked for further proof?”

“Further proof! Further proof is just what they don’t want. Further proof of their stupidity, their ignorance, their wasted dollars? They didn’t reply, Marshal. They will never reply to anyone on the subject. They will lie low, keep quiet until it’s all blown over and their Antonio Franchi will remain just that. You’ll see that every picture I ever painted will remain somewhere in its museum or private collection.”

“In that case—” He mustn’t make a mistake now. “In that case, why did you stop? You did this because you’re giving up, didn’t you? But why? What will you do?”

“Do? I’ll do whatever I feel like doing! I don’t need all this! He waved an agitated hand around him. “I don’t
need
anything. Or anyone.”

“You needed Landini.” That was it. That was what explained it.

“Landini! A critic! Another fool! He used me to further his career!”

“Yes, I believe you.”

“Let me tell you, that man—”

“He understood you, didn’t he?”

“Nobody is capable of understanding me or my work.”

“All right. But as far as it was possible he did understand you. He told you what to paint, didn’t he?”

“Nobody tells me what to paint.”

“He suggested, then.”

“If you mean he knew the market, then yes, he suggested.”

Yes, thought the Marshal, and I can’t say it, I can’t say he knew the clients and you didn’t. I can’t say you’ve fallen flat on your face because he wasn’t there to stop you.

“And now he’s dead. Well, no doubt you’ve worked hard all your life and have as much right to retire as the rest of us.”

“Quite.”

What would he do? Go on living with his failure in this vault? The Marshal shivered. He put on his hat to go, then paused. Without looking at Benozzetti he asked, “The painting you showed me the last time I was here. You wouldn’t let me look at it again, would you?”

“So you can say it’s not by Titian?”

“No, no …”

“So you can say it’s
faultless
? It isn’t. I’ve destroyed it.”

“Ah …” As he left, he avoided looking Benozzetti in the face, not wanting to see what was there. He only touched him briefly on the arm as he went out.

The afternoon was fading to darkness, but only the freezing wind made the outside world colder than the studio. Benozzetti wouldn’t kill himself, he felt sure of that. If he were the sort to blame himself for his failures, he’d have done it as a young man, the young man who failed as a painter. What would happen to him? Perhaps it was only to cheer himself up that the Marshal muttered as he opened the car door to the welcome blast of the heater, “Perhaps he’ll try and paint.”

“What?” Di Nuccio asked.

“Nothing, nothing.”

“I kept the engine going—it’s so cold.”

“You did right.” At any rate, he’d found out all he needed to know. As to why he needed to know, he was quite unconscious of the reason and he wasn’t one to ask questions of himself.

“And what I’m wondering is …” It was always difficult explaining things to Ferrini. Explaining wasn’t the Marshal’s strong point, and then you never knew what mood he would be in. “I mean, it’s difficult enough being an adolescent … I don’t know if you remember.”

“Oh yes. I thought about sex all the time, day and night.”

The Marshal, full to bursting from dinner out in the country where they had “not lingered” until after eleven, seemed to remember thinking more about eating. He’d spent half his adolescent life in search of food and the other half worrying about being fat. He decided against admitting to this.

“Well then, how would you have felt if you’d known—known, not suspected, that your father was homosexual?”

“I’d have been terrified.”

“Exactly.” They looked at the three photographs in the open files on the Marshal’s desk between them.

“They used to take Nicolino with them down to the Cascine for their orgies,” the Marshal said. “He’ll have known, or realized later when he grew up. Amelio, from all accounts, saw it going on in the house.”

“And Salvatore Angius? We know less about him, but we do know Silvano picked him up from the gutter and ‘adopted him.’ It’s a different situation, but who’s to say he really was homosexual? That might have been the price of Silvano’s help.”

“That’s what Di Maira wondered. And a good reason to detest him, too. Well, these three lads start out even, then:

“Previous convictions for Amelio and Salvatore. Theft mostly, possessing flick knifes, both, illegal detention of arms … and … this!”

Ferrini pulled out a photocopy of a newspaper article recounting the arrest of Salvatore Angius for armed robbery together with two other men.

“No,” he said, seeing the Marshal scan the small column once and then twice. “It doesn’t specify the type of gun and I thought I’d be sticking my neck out if I asked for the file.”