Stone Virgin (13 page)

‘I was surprised I could get it across my shoulders,’ she said. ‘I am developing muscles, Litsov, on this island.’

This was said without coquetry but the effect of her words was in some sort to focus the attention of the four men on the concealed mechanisms of her body as she sat there in the long-sleeved dress.

‘Muscles!’ Litsov moved his large head slowly as if this was a new thought for him.

Wiseman was merely arch. ‘I assure you,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t show to any marked extent.’ He turned a cherubic smile on her.

‘Where are they then, these mighty muscles?’ Lattimer demanded and beneath the assumed jocularity there was atavistic condescension. He looked at her with his narrow smile, his handsome, small-featured, immobile-seeming face – not so much composed as artificial-looking, Raikes thought. As if it were not quite his own … that was it, of course: Lattimer had undergone plastic surgery at some time or other; the skin of his face had been stretched.

‘You should show us,’ he said, in the same jocular tone. He glanced round at the others. Encountering Raikes’s gaze, his left eyelid flickered in a brief, incongruous wink. ‘Give us a chance to judge,’ he said.

It seemed to Raikes, who was sitting beside her and looking at her closely, that some slight shadow passed over her face – impatience, distaste, perhaps only resignation. It was gone in a second; her expression was again clear. She seemed about to speak, but at this point Maria came with a great dish of
lasagne verde
. Under cover of the polite business of serving and passing round he asked her about life on the island.

It had been hard at first, she said, and especially in the winter. Everything had been a problem to begin with. Fortunately there was good water. With children it probably wouldn’t have been possible. They had been lucky to find Maria, who came over from Treporti twice a week, weather permitting, and looked after them in all sorts of ways. Litsov of course was not practical at all. He had only been concerned to fit out the studio. She smiled as she said this, without hint of blame.

Raikes looked down the table, saw traces of Litsov’s un-pleasing smile, saw the large face revert to customary staring gravity – there was an official dignity and gloom about Litsov’s face, like that of a president on a foreign postage stamp.

‘The place was never intended for day-to-day living, I suppose,’ he said, looking back towards Mrs Litsov, nerving himself for the impact of her eyes. These had gold flecks on the iris, he had discovered, giving them a slightly tawny look.

‘No, it was a kind of shooting lodge,’ she said. ‘People used to come here to shoot ducks. Or you say duck, don’t you, in the singular? It belongs to my uncle, as a matter of fact – the island, that is. But it was my grandfather who came here. The family lived in the Veneto at that time. We had an estate near Castelfranco. My grandfather kept up the place while he lived, or so they tell me – I never came here then. They had parties here in my grandfather’s time, when he was younger. Some of those alleged hunting trips were quite orgiastic, I believe. That was in the seventies and eighties of the last century. My grandfather died when I was four and my uncle wasn’t interested much in shooting ducks, or having orgies presumably; anyway there was no money, everything had to be sold, my father went to Rome where he got a job as a bank clerk; no one came here any more except a few fishermen. Even the ducks don’t come any more, the motor boats drove them away. Still, Litsov and I got a rent-free house. We couldn’t have done anything without Richard. It was his idea in the first place. He had the whole place done up for us, practically rebuilt. He spent a fortune on it. He would have installed a generator if Litsov hadn’t taken a stand against electricity.’

Raikes nodded. Litsov had to be humoured, it seemed. However, Lattimer did not impress him as a philanthropist. If he had spent money it must be to get money back. Or had he more sentimental reasons? This was a curiously disagreeable thought, and Raikes shifted in his chair as if in physical discomfort at it.

‘What did you mean,’ she said suddenly, ‘before, when you spoke about ulterior motives?’

Raikes glanced round the table. It was a propitious moment. The other three men were talking, or rather Wiseman and Lattimer were – Litsov listened, head broodingly lowered.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I thought you might be able to help me.’ He began in a low voice to tell Mrs Litsov about his attempt to establish a connection between the Casa Fioret and the Madonna. He was aware that he was looking rather deeply into her eyes as he spoke but in the interest of the subject he felt no shyness at this. He told her about the account book he had found – though not the precise circumstances of his finding it – and the entry with the date so nearly corresponding to that of the Madonna’s installation in 1743, and the address, and the name Fornarini, how he had thought it possible that the statue had been kept there, in the house somewhere or in the garden, and transported from there to the church. He told her of his visit to the house, the present state of it, his disappointment. ‘I felt I was barking up the wrong tree,’ he said. Then he had discovered from his reading of Marco Barbaro that the Bishop of Venice, who had officiated at the installation, had been a Fornarini, was perhaps the one referred to in the notebook and so his hopes had begun to rise again, he was beginning to think there must be a connection. He spoke with a sort of fevered frankness, keeping his eyes on her face, deeply aware of her attentiveness.

‘And so,’ he said, ‘when Wiseman told me you were a Fornarini, I thought perhaps …’ Having reached this point he did not know how to proceed. What did he want from her? What did he expect? He could not have said, in any definite way. He wanted her to keep his hopes alive. ‘I thought you might be able to throw some light,’ he said at last.

Mrs Litsov shook her head in a way that seemed genuinely regretful. ‘I don’t know of any connection,’ she said. ‘You must remember that I have spent most of my life away from Venice. In Rome first and afterwards in London. And really I am not so interested in the past. Probably you think that is terrible.’

‘No, no,’ Raikes said, startled at the notion of fault in this radiant creature.

‘Even my own family,’ she said, and quite suddenly made the second gesture he was to remember from that day, raising her left shoulder and reaching across with the right hand to stroke her upper arm in a lingering, self-consoling way. There was something childlike about this movement, which touched Raikes, though out of shyness he pretended not to notice it.

‘Perhaps I got too much of it,’ she said. Evidently the gesture had been involuntary: there was no change in her voice or manner; nor was it cold in the room – there was a good fire burning. ‘Of course, there were always stories,’ she added after a moment.

‘What kind of stories?’

‘Well, for example, they say the men of the family have a special grace to produce male children.’

‘Males? I thought it was just children generally. It didn’t work a hundred per cent in your father’s case.’ He was aware of considerable gratitude that this was so.

‘I am the only girl, you know. In fact there were generally more boys than girls it seems. Then there is Francesco, who became a saint, there were a lot of stories about his goodness, and Jacopo, who was skinned by the Turks rather than become a Muslim, and Marcantonio, who was offered the crown of Naples but preferred to return to Venice and serve the State … The stories are always to their credit. It is just folklore really.’

‘That would be the Marcantonio who was Venetian ambassador to Naples early in the fifteenth century?’

‘Yes. Probably a complete gangster. You have been studying the family history then?’

‘I’ve been reading Marco Barbaro.’

‘I have an aunt in Rome, who is unmarried, she has all these books and papers, anything to do with the family.’ Mrs Litsov smiled. ‘She thinks of herself as the guardian of our name,’ she said. ‘I could write to her, if you like. She might know something.’

‘I don’t want to be a nuisance. I don’t even know whether there
is
any connection between the statue and the house. It would be more logical to look for a church.’

‘Oh, she would be pleased in any case, poor thing. She would be glad someone was showing an interest. The family papers are in America now, those that could be found. They were sold to Boston University long ago, to pay the rent, I suppose. But I will write to my aunt.’

Raikes hesitated for a moment, then he said rather awkwardly, ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t say anything about this to anyone. I’m trying to pursue these inquiries privately, you know. I haven’t told anyone else about it, only you.’ Once again he became aware that he was looking at her too intently. She smiled and said, ‘You don’t want to see it in your friend’s
Byways
for example? Of course I will not say anything.’

‘It really is very good of you to help me.’ He would have expressed this feeling of gratitude at rather more length, had he not suddenly realized that silence had fallen on the table, that his face was too close to hers, his manner too confidential, that Litsov’s solemn gaze was on him.

He sat back. The need to seem relaxed and affable led him into an ill-considered speech. ‘I’d like to say how impressed I am by your work,’ he said to Litsov. ‘The sculptures gain so much strength from being together.’ He realized at once that this implied some reservation about the works considered individually, which had not been his intention. ‘Most impressive,’ he continued hastily, ‘this balance you strike between organic form and pure abstraction.’

Litsov’s face showed no gratification at this whatsoever; the solemnity of his features deepened if anything; and it was this perhaps, this failure to make a civil response, that began to annoy Raikes – coupled with a sense of his own clumsiness. ‘Deeply impressive,’ he said, still valiantly smiling.

‘All art tends to abstraction,’ Litsov said finally and magisterially. ‘The individual creature is only a means – a way through. We look at it and we dissolve it. It is submerged in the world of forms.’

‘Oh, no,’ Raikes said, combative warmth rising within him. ‘The individual is not submerged or dissolved. That is dangerous doctrine, I think. And it is a “she” in this case, I gather, not an “it”.’

‘Paul is speaking figuratively,’ Lattimer said, in his cold, deliberate voice. ‘Surely you can see that? He is speaking as a creative artist.’

‘You say that as if it meant the same as
ex cathedra
,’ Raikes said. He glanced at Mrs Litsov. She was regarding her husband closely, with an oddly speculative expression. ‘Many people,’ he said, ‘and among them creative artists, would take a contrary view, and argue that truthful adherence to the particular is the way to universality.’

‘One body cannot be all bodies,’ Litsov said. ‘That is –’

‘It is there I disagree,’ Raikes said quickly and warmly.

‘Self-evident,’ Litsov said, as if there had been no interruption. ‘I have adapted Plato for my own use. Let me remind you what he said, Mr Raikes. He said that when the artificer of any object reproduces its essence and virtue by keeping his gaze fixed on what is self-consistent and using that as a model, the object thus created is altogether beautiful. But if he looks towards the world of becoming and uses a created model the result is not beautiful.’

There was an impressiveness about this, uttered in Litsov’s rather deep voice and accompanied by slight movements of that massive head. It was obviously by way of being a credo, for one thing; and the archetypal resonance of the phrases for once made the man’s solemnity seem appropriate, rather than merely self-important. Then he looked towards his wife and smiled and his lower face collapsed once more and his teeth showed, naked and white. ‘I have used a created model,’ he said, ‘but I have kept my gaze fixed on what is self-consistent in it.’

He looked back at Raikes. The smile still lurked but there was now, suddenly but quite unmistakably, an offendedness in his expression which till then he had possibly been trying to dissemble. ‘You think perhaps that I belittle my subject?’ he said.

‘No one could think that, Paul,’ Lattimer said. ‘No one in his senses could think that.’

Raikes paused, unforgivably. He had not meant to go so far, but the challenge rendered him obstinate. And the lady was near.

‘No,’ he was beginning, ‘no, I don’t say that –’

Then Mrs Litsov spoke, in clear tones, looking at her husband. ‘Mr Raikes is not an artist,’ she said. ‘He cannot be expected to understand the creative process. Don’t forget,
tesoro
, that he is merely a restorer of other men’s work.’

These words, which wounded Raikes more than he could have thought possible, immediately restored Litsov to good humour. ‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘A restorer? I suppose mainly of works in stone … yes? That is why I like to work in bronze, the glory of changeless metal as William Butler Yeats has it. Polished bronze, especially. I am not interested in texture, not at all.’

Raikes could think of nothing to say. It was too soon to contemplate leaving. There was the coffee yet, another session in the living room, among the glory of changeless metal. Even before that, it seemed, there would be more to endure – Litsov had begun to speak again, and his tone now was condescending and assured:

‘Well, Mr Raikes, I used to think as you do; but everything in nature assumes autonomous and natural forms, trees, animals, insects. Why not art? Have you thought of it that way? Why should art imitate other orders of things, as to be like a bottle or a house? Art is a fruit of man and must take its own shape, just as other fruits do. Otherwise, what is it? I will tell you. Merely a substitute for nature, nothing else.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Wiseman said mildly. ‘It could be called a celebration of nature, couldn’t it?’

Raikes, seeing the beard turn towards this latest contestant, was profoundly thankful for the interruption, which he felt fairly sure Wiseman had contrived expressly for his sake – he had been feeling like a caned schoolboy who must still stand and listen to the headmaster’s homily.