Secrecy (25 page)

He accepted the praise with a certain complacency, as if his qualities and talents were beyond dispute. ‘Who am I to follow?’

‘Stufa.’

He turned away, the ragged outline of his ear reddening. He clearly knew the name.

‘If it’s too much of a challenge,’ I said, ‘or you’re afraid to take it on, I’ll understand.’

‘I’m not
afraid
. I’m just not sure it’s politic.’

I smiled at his vocabulary. ‘Maybe not. But I don’t have any choice.’

‘What kind of information are you after?’

‘Something I can use against him.’

‘That won’t be easy. I imagine he’s pretty careful.’

‘He is, and he isn’t.’

Stufa was Vittoria’s protégé, I said – in her eyes he could do no wrong – and this, paradoxically, was where his weakness lay. Since he believed himself to be invulnerable, he took more risks than one might expect.

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I’ve been watching him. Besides, it’s how the powerful behave.’

Earhole looked through the gap in the wall that served as a window. Though he wasn’t entirely reassured by my answer, I thought he could see that it made sense. It’s the people who don’t have any power who have to watch their step.

The door banged open. A woman stumbled in and dropped heavily on to a stool. She laid her head on her arms, her white scalp showing through her hair. She smelled of urine and cheap wine.

‘My mother,’ Earhole said.

He gestured to me. I followed him outside. We stood near the mud embankment, and I mentioned the children I had seen earlier.

‘It’s not a very good area,’ he said.

I smiled again.

I told him what I knew about Stufa, then handed him some change as a retainer. He asked if I had cleared it with Pampolini. I said I had. I watched as he concealed the coins, one by one, about his person. He should come to my workshop, I told him, as soon as he had something to report.

He nodded. ‘All right.’

Before I left, I asked why he put the money in so many different pockets.

‘So it doesn’t jingle,’ he said. ‘So
she
can’t hear it.’

The day of my appointment with Bassetti arrived, and as I climbed the slope that led up to the palace its heavily barred windows and crude blocks of toasted stone seemed to bear down on me. As in a dream, I had the feeling that events were moving too fast, even though I was the one who had initiated them. I felt jumbled, scattered. Unprepared.

Located on the first floor, with windows that overlooked the gardens, Bassetti’s office was predictably lavish, one entire wall depicting the alignment of the stars at the moment when he first found favour with the Grand Duke’s family. Bassetti himself was seated, pen in hand, behind a desk inlaid with ivory and
mother-of
-pearl. As amiable as ever, he told me that my request for an audience had surprised him. We knew each other too well, didn’t we, to have to resort to such formality?

‘I came here to reassure you, Don Bassetti,’ I began.

Smiling, Bassetti put down his pen.

I hurried on. ‘I’ve seen a lot of the Grand Duke this year –’

‘That’s only natural. You’re his favourite artist.’

‘He takes an interest in my work, and I find that gratifying, of course I do, but I wouldn’t want you to think –’ I broke off. This was coming out wrong, as I had feared it would.

‘I’m glad you’re here, actually.’ Bassetti leaned back in his chair. ‘I had a visitor the other day – from Sicily. Naturally enough, your name came up. He told me all kinds of stories …’

In that moment, for the first time ever, I thought I saw through Apollonio Bassetti. I was convinced that this ‘visitor’ of his was a fabrication. It allowed him to be in possession of certain inside information without appearing to have collected it himself. The effect was to render him neutral, blameless.

‘Apparently your mother had a child by your father’s employer, a man called –’ Bassetti consulted the documents in front of him – ‘Gargallo. Does that name mean anything to you?’

I felt my face flush.

‘Your father kept quiet about it, in return for which Gargallo gave you all a decent place to live. People say your father died of shame.’ He looked up from his papers. ‘I’m sorry. Didn’t you know?’ He sat back again. ‘It’s probably just idle chatter. People will say anything.’

I had to clear my throat. ‘Who told you this?’

‘There were other stories,’ he went on. ‘One of them was really quite damaging.’ The room seemed to darken, as often happens in the summer when a cloud blocks the sun; it was November, though, and the weather was overcast and grey. ‘It’s so lurid that I’m sure there can’t be any truth in it. All the same, “no smoke without roast meat”. Do you have that phrase in Sicily?’

‘We have lots of phrases.’

‘Since the Grand Duke’s reputation must be protected at all costs, I’m afraid I have no choice but to investigate the rumours. It would be negligent not to. Luckily, I have men like Stufa at my disposal –’

‘Stufa,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

‘He’s something of an expert in the field.’

‘I’m not sure how impartial he’s going to be.’

Bassetti’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Quite apart from his close
connection
with the Grand Duke’s family, Stufa’s a highly respected public servant. I’ve no reason to doubt him.’

The meeting had gone worse than I ever could have
imagined
. I stood up, thinking I should leave.

‘One more thing before you go,’ Bassetti said, all
softness
now. ‘There’s the small matter of the woman you’ve been seeing …’

My heart clenched like a fist.

‘I said “woman”,’ Bassetti went on, ‘but I suppose I should really have said “whore”.’

I reached up and touched my ear. It was important that I appeared calm. Pensive. Mildly intrigued.

‘The apothecary’s daughter.’ Bassetti’s voice was languid, almost bored. ‘I’ve seen her, actually. Quite good-looking, if you like that kind of thing.’

‘I’m not sure who you’ve been listening to,’ I said, ‘but they seem to have got their facts muddled up.’

‘Have they?’

‘Yes. You’ve been misinformed.’

‘So what did they get wrong? Not the fact that she’s a whore, surely?’

Bassetti waited to see if I would react, then he reached for the small bell on his desk. I remembered Faustina’s
fortune-teller
, and how he had used a bell to signal that he had guessed the truth about her – namely, that she was loved. Had Bassetti guessed the truth about me? The door opened behind me. ‘Show this gentleman out,’ Bassetti said, ‘would you?’

When I was halfway across the room, near the fresco that symbolized his rise to power, he spoke again. ‘As a foreigner, Zummo, you may not be aware of this, but there’s a law that applies to women like her. They’re required to wear a yellow band or ribbon, either in their hair, or round one of their sleeves.’ He lifted his eyes from the document he had been studying. He had a look I had seen on his face before, benign and drowsy, like someone who has eaten a heavy meal and is ready for a nap. ‘The penalties for not doing so,’ he said, ‘are quite severe.’

‘I came as soon as I could,’ Faustina said. ‘Have you been waiting long?’

‘About an hour,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry.’

We were in the overgrown garden, beyond the fig arbour. Only a few yards away was the place where we had first made love.

She took a step towards me, and then stopped. ‘Is something wrong?’

The sun had dropped behind the trees. The bottom of the sky looked charred. I felt the air approach, then push past, as tangible as a current of cold water in the sea. A shiver went through me, lasting longer than a shiver should.

‘They think you’re a prostitute,’ I said.

The spaces between her features seemed to widen. ‘What? Who does?’

‘Bassetti.’

‘Why would he bother with someone like me?’

‘I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing.’ I pulled a leaf off a fig tree and slowly tore it in half. ‘You haven’t denied it.’

Her cheeks burned. ‘Do you believe him?’

‘No. Of course not.’

‘You don’t sound very sure.’

‘I don’t know
what
to believe, Faustina. I’m not sure of anything. I can’t sleep.’

She put a hand on my forearm. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You asked me once if I would take you away from here. When I told you I couldn’t, you said,
What if I was in danger?
Do you remember?’

She nodded.

‘Well, now you are,’ I said. ‘These people, they’re above the law. They
are
the law.’

Only a few days earlier, I had come across a crowd gathered in Piazza di Santa Trinità, an open space that was often cordoned off for games of football. They whistled and jeered as two cloaked officials appeared with a young woman. The sign that hung around her neck said ‘For Whoredom’. The officials tore the dress off her back and began to whip her. She turned to the people who surrounded her, her shoulders streaked with blood.
Help me. I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent.
The jeers and whistling grew louder. A fisherman told me that the woman was supposed to have slept with a Jew from Livorno. It would be the same, I thought, if Faustina was accused of being a whore, and was found to have broken the law by failing to wear a yellow ribbon. She, too, would be publicly stripped and flogged.

When I turned to look at her, she seemed smaller and more fragile than before. She had put on the cream silk gown I had given her; she was too beautiful, too visible.

‘You can’t stay here,’ I said. ‘I’m worried what they’ll do to you.’

‘Why is it,’ she said, ‘that things are always being taken from me?’

‘I wish I could protect you, but I’m not sure I can.’

‘We’ve only just begun to know each other. Now it’s over.’

‘Don’t say that. This isn’t the end.’

‘It feels like it.’

I took her hand. It was cold. She had gashed the skin at the base of her thumb.

‘How did that happen?’ I said.

Sleepily, she looked down at her hand, but didn’t answer. I asked again.

‘That?’ she said. ‘I don’t know. I was in the shop, I think.’

Night was falling. The green shade in the garden deepened.

‘Don’t forget me,’ she murmured. ‘People are always
forgetting
me.’

I gripped her hand more tightly.

‘Promise me,’ she said.

‘I promise.’

She took her hand away. My words had done little to comfort her; it was like blowing on a fire that had already gone out.

‘I seem to have spent most of my life in hiding,’ she said. ‘It makes me wonder if I’ll ever be able to stand out in the open – in the light.’ Tears welled into her eyes. ‘I thought that might happen with you.’

What if I had told her to come with me, and we had left the city, and made a new life in another place? I didn’t, though. We didn’t.

‘Is there somewhere you can go – temporarily, at least? Until things die down?’

‘Sometimes I feel like a ghost –’ She shook her head, as if angry at herself. ‘But I already told you that.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s all right to repeat yourself.’

‘No. It’s
not
all right.’

She turned away. I hurried after her. She moved ahead of me through the fig arbour, the hem of her dress trapping leaves and twigs, and then releasing them. Everything was speeding up. Receding. Time was a kite loose in a gale.

When she was out of the garden, she stopped suddenly and faced me. She was calm again. Beyond her, the street angled away, dark and deserted. In the distance, I could just make out the fire-blackened pot of the Duomo, upended against the blue night sky.

‘It’s not you,’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault.’

I took her in my arms, and words came in a rush. I wasn’t sure what I was saying. I crushed her against me, my mouth in her hair.

She freed herself, stepped back. Her chin lifted. ‘You’ll be all right.’ She reached up and touched my cheek. ‘You’ll be fine. You’ll make wonderful things.’

Wonderful things. Yes, well. There followed a number of weeks when all I did was work. I saw no one except Lapa, who brought news of my mother, and the occasional meal. I would fall asleep at my table and wake two hours later with a dead arm and a stiff neck. I would yawn and stretch. Go back to what I had been doing. I had sent Faustina away, and I didn’t know where she was, or if I would ever see her again. I didn’t cry, but there was an ache in my throat, and my vision kept misting over.

November became December. Bassetti’s insinuations had stayed with me. How could they not? I kept hearing my mother’s voice, drowsy, lowered to a murmur.
I behaved badly. I was weak.
At the time, I had assumed she was referring to the fact that she had not protected me, but what if she was talking about
something
else entirely? I chose not to pursue that line of thought. I preferred to believe that Bassetti was trying to undermine me. If that was the case, he was succeeding: I felt unsteady, fragile, under siege. Predictably, perhaps, my work had darkened. Inspired by the drawings I had bought from Mr Towne, I had embarked on a detailed and definitive study of the ravages of syphilis.

Just before Christmas, Redi visited. He would have come sooner, he said, but he had been called to Pisa, where the Grand Duchess had once again been taken ill. The syphilitic woman I had just completed seemed to fascinate him, and he examined her for long minutes with the magnifying glass he always carried on his person. He was particularly taken with the tiny, solitary maggot crawling over her left retina, and I was pleased he had noticed, since it had been intended as a modest homage to him and his entomological research. After Redi had left, though, my exhilaration faded. Never before had it struck me so forcibly that I only created perfect forms in order that I might damage them. I would hack and scrape and gouge at the unblemished surfaces, and sometimes, as if imitating those who were employed by the Office of Public Decency, I would heat my instruments over a flame, then watch as their glowing tips sank into waxy flesh. I was like a perverse barber-surgeon, operating on the bodies of the healthy to make them sick. Was it true what Jacopo and others had said of me, that I was a pariah, and that my activities were morbid, contaminating and repulsive?