by Janet Todd
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
It 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 j
agged 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.
