by Debbie Rix
The Operaio stroked his long beard and glanced at the widow. She was, he thought to himself, a remarkably beautiful woman.
‘It will still be Deotisalvi’s commission though?’
Berta smiled and nodded, ‘Naturally,’ she said.
‘And when all is said and done,’ Vernacci continued, ‘it is he who will be paid – and substantially – for it.’
Berta fingered the bag of coins that lay between them on the table, causing them to clink delicately.
‘Well, gentile signora,’ the Operaio said eventually, ‘I think some wine is called for,’ and he motioned to the page in the corner of the room.
Berta smiled graciously and touched his arm with her fine long fingers: ‘I’m sure it is the right decision, Operaio.’
Pouring Berta a glass of wine, took her hand and kissed it.
‘Signora, we will go and see him. Together we will create a fitting monument to the city, to the people of Pisa, and to God.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
June 1999
The Arno glittered, reflecting the thousands of candles decorating the houses on both the north and south banks of the river. Set into tiny glass jars surrounding the windows, outlining the doors, roof lines and balconies, the shape of each house was delineated as if with strings of fairy lights. As Sam gazed out of Adriana’s top floor window at the scene below, she thought they sparkled like stars reflected in the river that snaked between them, doubling the effect. Starlight squared, she thought to herself. Far below, on the roads running either side of the river, all traffic had been banned. In its place a constantly flowing tide of people meandered aimlessly back and forth. Families, friends, colleagues all promenading, meeting one another, shouting, laughing, queuing to buy sweet pancakes, burgers, candy floss – sold from brightly coloured stalls, lit up as if at a funfair. Children ran around wearing flashing bunny ears or waving electric wands. Somewhere in the distance a band played, but to Sam, high up on the sixth floor in Adriana’s apartment, it was the insistent beat of a bass drum that filtered up over the noise of thousands of revellers on the streets below.
From her vantage point, Sam could see that almost every window on the opposite side of the river was lit up and filled with people having private parties – luxuriating in a sense of superiority over their fellow man. Up here, where the air was clear, free from the overwhelming scent of cheap sweets and melted sugar below, Prosecco was being poured into glasses, little dishes of antipasti were being handed round. There was laughter and earnest discussion. Below, the townsfolk of Pisa walked aimlessly back and forth calling for their missing children, jostling for position, sitting on the wide sturdy walls on either side of the river, their plastic glasses filled with beer and wine.
As Sam looked down onto the crowds, a line of young people – students at the university perhaps – snaked in a conga through the crowds.
Dario tapped her shoulder and proffered a bottle Prosecco. ‘A little more, Sam?’
‘Mmm… yes please, it’s delicious. Thank you, Dario.’
‘Having fun?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ’I’ve never seen anything like it; it’s so beautiful… the lights reflected on the river, I mean.’
‘It is…. glad you came?’ he asked her kindly.
‘Oh yes – I needed to get away,’ she said, thinking momentarily of Michael’s one-sided telephone call with Carrie.
Dario had collected Sam at exactly 8.30 from the lobby of the hotel. She had washed her hair, and put on the new green dress. She had even tipped her bag out onto the bed and thrown away the debris of three weeks of living… receipts for twenty-two breakfasts, pharmacy bills for painkillers, bottles of sun block, the receipt for her new dress… it all went into the waste bin. She had shaken the now empty bag over the bath in a messy cloud of dust and sluiced it down the plughole. And with a few minutes to spare before she was due to meet Dario, she had sat quietly on her bed, collecting her thoughts. She did not know what was going to happen to her marriage. She felt in a state of almost suspended animation about it. But she was clear about one thing; she felt no guilt about having a night out.
Once outside the hotel, Dario had taken her arm and guided her through the Piazza. ‘There’s no point in taking a taxi; the whole town is turned into a… how do you say, pedestrian…?’
‘Precinct… pedestrian precinct.’
‘Exactly so,’ he said. ‘I thought we could walk through the Piazza on our way. They sometimes put candles in the windows of the buildings there, so it’s worth us looking at that on the way down to Adriana’s flat.’
On the Campo, the last halo of the setting sun glowed, blood red on the horizon.
‘It’s not dark enough to be able to see the candlelight yet – why don’t we stop here at Bar Duomo and have a glass of wine?’
He guided her to an empty table outside the bar. ‘No,’ he said, ‘champagne, it must be champagne tonight.’
As they chinked their glasses, the last rays of the sun faded from the evening sky and the white marble of the Duomo glowed softly as the cool pale moon rose above the Piazza. The Tower, by contrast, stood in darkness.
‘Normally they would set candles at regular intervals on each level of the Tower – it looks very beautiful. But because of the building work, it has not been possible I suppose.’
‘It looks a little spooky,’ Sam whispered.
‘You think there’s a ghost up there?’ Dario asked with a smile.
‘Who knows… but it’s certainly not a happy place.’
‘You think? Well that could be because of the work they are having to do to stop it from falling. That huge steel girdle does give it a strange appearance.’
Their champagne finished, they carried on towards the Arno. Down the Via Santa Maria, through the noisy market that had been specially set up for the two-day holiday. There were the usual stalls selling cheap shoes, plastic toys and hideous china. Sam wondered at the Italian’s love of tat.
‘Dario, for such a stylish people, I don’t understand how you can put up with all this rubbish.’
He laughed. ‘The Italians are a people of conflicting characteristics. We love children, but increasingly people only have one child per family. We are incredibly good at designing cars and furniture, but most Italians own a clapped out Fiat or a moped and fill their homes with cheap tat. On a personal level, the people are the most straightforward and honest you could hope to meet, and yet our country is riddled with bribery and corruption at the highest level. Welcome to Italy.’
Nearer to the river, the crowds intensified, and as they got onto the Lungarno, the main road beside the Arno, Sam gripped Dario’s arm tightly for fear of losing him in the crowd.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I won’t let you go.’ He put his arm round her shoulder and pulled her towards him. They battled their way through the revellers, and across the Ponte di Mezzo, where, incongruously, amidst the partygoers, a group of burly men were setting up a small boxing ring, ready for a match the following day. Sound systems, riggers, all casually getting on with their jobs, while around them people pushed and shoved, eating, drinking, laughing.
Once finally across the Arno, Dario swiftly led the way to Adriana’s flat. The main door to the house had been left slightly ajar to save the hostess answering the buzzer to her guests throughout the evening.
So Italian, thought Sam.
The guests at the party were just as Sam had imagined – colleagues of Adriana’s from the university, and a sprinkling of journalists and other professionals. Sam soon found herself deep in conversation with a fascinating woman in her mid-fifties. The woman was fascinating. In her mid-fifties, elegant, wearing a loose white shirt with narrow black pants, she was the epitome of Italian chic. Her dark wavy hair was tied into an elegant but messy chignon, and on her wedding finger she wore a huge silver ring set with a jet black stone
‘My name is Benedetta Gasparello – I lecture in English at the University o
f Florence. And you?’
Sam, enjoying the moment, chose not to complicate things so early on in the acquaintance by mentioning her sick husband. She said merely: ‘I’m Sam. I’m English and here… just visiting Pisa. I came with Dario.’
‘How clever of Dario to finally find a suitable woman at last. He’s been hopeless, you know… for years. We’d all just about given up hope of him ever finding anyone. He’s had the most disastrous love affairs.’
‘Oh no,’ said Sam hurriedly, ‘he’s not my boyfriend – we’re just friends.’
‘Oh,’ said the woman, ‘just as well for you then, he really is the most frightful mess emotionally.’
‘Really?’ said Sam, her curiosity aroused. ‘Do tell me about them.’
The litany of mad, sad, or crazy women unfolded.
‘The problem is’, said the woman, conspiratorily, ‘that he is just too kind, too understanding. No one else’s problems are ever too much for him. So he’s just a sitting duck – is that what you say… sitting duck? – for all these mad women. They are always beautiful though, I’ll say that for him. He has great taste.’
The woman smiled at Sam. ‘I love your dress by the way… very pretty. Did you get it here?’
Dario moved towards them, holding a bottle high above the guests’ heads.
‘Now Benedetta, what are you saying to my new friend? I don’t like the way you two have had your heads together for so long. Sam, you must not believe anything Benedetta says to you. She is a witch and tells lies and is not to be trusted.’
Benedetta, laughing, kissed him on the cheek and moved away through the crowd.
‘So tell me, what was she telling you?’ Dario asked, refilling Sam’s glass.
‘Oh you know, just boring stuff, like everyone you’ve been out with for the last twenty years. It’s quite a list, Dario,’ she said teasingly.
‘Mmm,’ he replied, ‘I know, it’s nothing to be proud of. But I’ve just never managed to meet the right person. I always go into each new relationship feeling hopeful – that this time I’ve found someone perfect. But then the bad stuff starts: they get hysterical if I have to work late, or they turn out to be emotional wrecks, and the whole thing falls apart.’
‘Oh my god,’ said Sam, suddenly worried, ‘that sounds like me… I think I might be a bit of an emotional wreck.’
‘Well, yes, and no,’ Dario was gently reassuring. ‘Because first, you are not an emotional wreck at all, you are just in the middle of a difficult emotional time that, really, is not actually of your own making. And secondly, we are not going out together… are we?’
He looked deeply into her eyes.
‘Aren’t we?’ Sam asked, faintly surprised at her own candour.
The question hung in the silence, unanswered, until Adriana arrived with Benedetta, clutching a bottle.
‘Come on you two’, she said, filling their glasses once again, ‘stop gazing into each other’s eyes and come and meet some new people.’
The couple were parted; Benedetta steered Dario towards a doctor from Milan, while Adriana introduced Sam to a couple who both worked at the local TV station, but spoke little English.
‘Caro,’ Adriana said expansively, taking the man’s arm and handing him the bottle of Prosecco, ‘meet Sam, she’s Dario’s new girlfriend and knows no one.’
The couple smiled and shook her hand. Sam, embarrassed at the introduction, did not have a sufficient grasp of Italian to correct the mythology that had developed around her relationship with Dario. So she smiled back, and together they stumbled their way through a stilted conversation about their mutual experience of the TV industry, while her Italian companion replenished Sam’s glass at every inevitable pause in their conversation. Sam began to feel a little woozy and started to look around desperately for a plate of antipasto, realising that she had drunk far more than was good for her.
She was rescued by Adriana arriving with a bowl of pistachio nuts which she handed to her guests. Sam took a large handful. ‘Venite, venite, tutti,’ Adriana announced loudly over the hubbub in the crowded room,‘i fuochi cominciano!’
Dario worked his way back to Sam. ‘Fireworks, they’re starting now, it’s midnight.’ He whispered in her ear, ‘There won’t be room for everyone here to see them properly. Adriana’s windows are not that big. Let’s go down onto the street.’
And he pulled her towards the door.
‘Shouldn’t we say goodbye?’ Sam asked.
‘No, it’s fine. Adriana won’t even notice we’ve gone. Come on.’
Down on the street, there was an air of expectation amongst the crowd. Within thirty seconds of them arriving at ground level, the first firework ripped through the sky and exploded into thousands of scarlet stars. As wave upon wave of fireworks erupted, Sam stood close to Dario, her arm linked through his. Occasionally, as a huge firework exploded with a bang, she hid her face in his sleeve. As the display crescendoed, with a spectacular three-minute finale of silver stars, the crowd whooped and cheered.
And then it was over. The crowd began to move almost immediately, heading home for the night. A huge wave of people surged towards the Ponte di Mezzo, heading north across the Arno. Caught up in the melée, Sam lost her grip on Dario’s arm and he was pulled further and further away from her across the bridge. She saw him turning round to look for her, but he was unable to fight his way back. She pushed forward determinedly but lost sight of him and found herself heading up towards Piazza dei Cavalieri. The grandiose Renaissance square was filled with yet more market stalls selling yet more tat – anything from Indian kaftans to cheap men’s shoes. Disappointed to have lost Dario, she distracted herself by idly rifling through the multicoloured outfits in front of her. As she fingered a delicately embroidered turquoise kaftan, she heard a familiar voice.
‘That would suit you very well.’
‘Dario!’ she turned and saw his smiling face and excitedly threw her arms round his neck.
‘I thought I’d lost you forever.’
‘No, never forever. Just for a few moments.’
And there, in the square, he kissed her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
November 1171
Berta’s move to the apartment within the confines of the Opera Santa Maria went without a hitch. Most of her staff had already moved on to other positions, so it was a small group of people who walked out of the front door of the palazzo for the last time. Giuseppe had gone on ahead with the cart, making several trips back and forth with the household items that his mistress was moving to the new house. Her bed, and the chests in which she kept her precious clothes and other personal items, were all to be taken – as was the glassware that Lorenzo had brought back from Syria, along with pots, pans and her collection of majolica dishes. The long serving table from the dining hall was too large to transport, and so had been sold with the house. But the tapestries, bedcovers and wall hangings were carefully packed and moved across the river to decorate the new apartment.
Massoud stopped when the party was halfway across the Arno and stood gazing at the palazzo.
‘Don’t look back, Massoud… never look back,’ said Berta. ‘We are going forward… I cannot wait to get to our new home.’
It took several days to arrange the apartment to Berta’s satisfaction. Massoud was dispatched to buy a new smaller table and chairs for the dining hall. The chests, and other smaller pieces of furniture that she had brought with her from the palazzo were all moved from room to room until Berta was happy with their final position. The room she had chosen for her bedchamber was on the top floor, from which she had a spectacular view of the Piazza del Duomo.
‘I shall be able to fall asleep each night gazing at the buildings I have spent my whole life studying,’ she said to Massoud.
The previous inhabitant of the apartment had been a solitary man who had done little entertaining. The kitchens were consequently sparsely furnished. The first time Maria lit the fire in the big kitchen fireplace, the room
filled with acrid smoke. After much prodding and rodding of the chimney, an old bird’s nest was finally dislodged, bringing down decades’ worth of dust and debris. Once swept, the fire drew well and Maria organised the kitchen, arranging the utensils and pots on shelving on either side of the fireplace. With no kitchen staff at her disposal, she needed everything to be easily to hand. When finally the new kitchen was cleaned and tidy, she sent out for supplies – fresh white bread, a tray of fresh vegetables and two plump chickens that she plucked and boned at the kitchen table.
Berta was delighted with her new home. Her bedroom had an outdoor loggia that provided a perfect vantage point for observing progress on the Piazza del Duomo and she spent many hours each day, wrapped in a fur blanket, sketching and reading, enjoying the sensation of the winter sun on her face. The slight swelling in her abdomen grew almost imperceptibly each week. On her first night at the new house, she lay in bed, gazing at the Duomo in the moonlight, her hands resting on her stomach, and thought of the child that she was carrying, aware of a tiny fluttering sensation beneath her fingers.
There had been no word from Gerardo, but learned that the Operaio had received a letter from Deotisalvi telling him he would be returning to Pisa with his young assistant at the end of the week.
Berta sent Giuseppe to Gerardo’s house with a note inviting him to visit her in her new apartment on the day he returned. That evening, she dressed in the pale lilac gown that she had last worn for their assignation at the little cassetta. Berta had asked Maria to prepare an intimate supper for two – limonia, a delicate dish of chicken cooked with lemon and almonds – and had a table set up in the corner of her bedchamber so they could dine admiring the fine view of the Duomo. She sat on the loggia, wrapped in her blanket and waited for him to come, but he did not appear. Disappointed, she sent the chicken back to the kitchen and took herself miserably to bed.
She woke the following morning very early. The sun was just rising over the Duomo when she called for her maid.
