Stone Virgin

by Barry Unsworth

  There were something like a hundred people present and Raikes wondered vaguely who they could all be. Some of the number was made up of representatives of other restoration enterprises in the city. He saw faces he knew from Venezia Nostra and the Comité Français. There were some people from the new German project at the church of the Gesuati – they had begun restoring the frescos there. He recognized the huge, bald, sad-looking Slingsby, from the American Committee to Rescue Italian Art. All coerced or cajoled here by Sir Hugo. He wondered what sort of messages they were getting through their earphones – the Japanese must be presenting some problems to the interpreters.

  ‘It is the air,’ the Japanese said, suddenly and it seemed disconnectedly. He had departed from his script again. He paused and uttered that curious crowing monosyllable in the back of his throat: Hah. ‘Even in box,’ he said, ‘air attacks art object.’ He made the shape of a box with his hands, then gave it a rapid and extremely professional-looking karate chop.

  ‘Air demolish art object,’ he said, suddenly smiling. ‘Even when in box.’

  He paused for some moments to allow the drama of this to make its impact. Then he went on with his reading: ‘From this it can clearly be understood that air of certain absolute humidity enclosed in closed vessel varies relative humidity when vessel made to travel through regions of varying temperatures …’

  Again Raikes’s attention wandered. He felt slightly nervous at the prospect of having to speak later on; but at the same time he was rather sleepy and there was a heaviness in his limbs, not unpleasant. It was a state he had become familiar with during the past week or two after working on the Madonna, not like the weariness he had felt at first, but with something almost voluptuous in it. Perhaps because of this, perhaps because of the vaporous atmosphere, he found it difficult to keep the two figures on the platform in distinct focus, and he began to have a curious sense of synchronization between the Japanese and Sir Hugo as if he were watching a ventriloquist’s act or some ingenious piece of puppetry.

  This illusion was broken by scattered clapping. The Japanese was bowing, shuffling papers, descending. Sir Hugo rose, advanced smiling to the microphone, one hand in the side pocket of his jacket, the other elegantly raised. This was his public-address posture, as hieratic in its way as that of the Madonna. Sir Hugo thanked the Japanese for his contribution and said that he personally found it deeply moving to see how truly international the efforts to save Venice had become. Venice belonged to the world. He enlarged on this, appearing to forget that the Japanese had not actually referred to Venice at all, but had spoken exclusively of Japanese saddle cloths. Two men with cameras made their way up the side of the room with that half crouching gait of photographers. From below the platform Sir Hugo was briefly peppered with flashes. Of course, Raikes thought, he would not have omitted to invite the press. The presence of these cameras immediately began to change his ideas about the kind of talk he was going to give.

  ‘We are grateful,’ Sir Hugo said, with his well-bred modulations, ‘that he should have come along and added his expertise to our think tank.’

  ‘Good God!’ Steadman muttered uncontrollably. His legs, in their grey flannels, writhed. ‘Have you ever heard such crap?’ he whispered in Raikes’s ear.

  Raikes wrinkled his nose in sympathetic distaste. Still, he thought, it was people like Sir Hugo who got things moving. Below the modish phrases and the nonchalance lay a formidable tenacity of purpose and a very definite idealism. His sense of occasion was unerring; it would not be ill-lit halls and irrelevant saddle cloths that featured in the reports going back home, but international co-operation, progress, a case for more funds. All the same, think tank …

  ‘And now,’ Sir Hugo said, ‘without more ado, I am handing over the stage to the distinguished team from Birmingham who are making what promises to be an important break-through on the –’

  It was Raikes’s impression that the Tintoretto people – or one half of the squad at least, Owen and Miss Greenaway – were in motion before Sir Hugo had actually finished, that the platform was cleared and these two in position at the light switches while the ghastly close of that sentence – it could only be ‘Tintoretto front’ – still hung unuttered in the air.

  There was a slight pause. Then Raikes heard curious shuffling sounds behind him. In common with other members of the audience he turned his head to look. It was Barfield, coming up the centre aisle towards the stage. His right leg was encased in plaster and he was leaning heavily on a stick. In spite of this he was making fairly brisk progress, perhaps anxious not to lose the momentum set up by his assistants. He was carrying a rolled-up screen under his arm. He had trouble getting up on to the platform and attaching the screen to the wall, but this merely added to the impressiveness of that gallantly limping approach. Leaning on his stick he began speaking at once, in his flat, didactic tones. He had no notes.

  ‘The main problem in these early stages,’ he said, ‘apart from the enormous size of the paintings, which has made handling them very difficult, is the fact that Tintoretto, to get the dimensions he wanted, used a large number of canvases stitched together. We have found it a very tricky operation to remove this stitching. Very tricky indeed.’

  Perhaps forgetting his disability for the moment Barfield took a step and stumbled a little. ‘It requires a light touch,’ he said, recovering. ‘It isn’t only the stitching, of course. The old lining and the layers of decomposed glue have to be removed before we can reline the paintings. I can now report that this has been successfully accomplished with the first of the paintings, The Woman Taken in Adultery, by first applying a fine gauze along the seams as a reinforcement. Once we can consolidate the surface with a new lining the actual cleaning process can get under way. This promises to be a very tricky operation. Very tricky indeed. To give you an idea of the complexities involved I’d like to show you the photomicrograph of a cross-section through the paint surface of the woman’s dress.’

  Barfield looked sharply to his left then to his right. At once nearly all the lights in the room went out, the whirring of a projector made itself heard. ‘When you’re ready, Muriel,’ came Barfield’s voice in the dimness.

  But the beam of light, when it came, did not hit the screen. It fell above and to the right, lighting up a square of blank wall. Edged purplish by this light, still leaning on his stick, Barfield gave directions. As if in an uneasy dream Raikes listened to this slightly peevish, reasonable voice.

  ‘You need to change the angle, Muriel,’ Barfield said. ‘Up a bit and about three inches over to the left, no, your left, Muriel … That’s better.’

  An abstract image of extraordinary beauty now appeared on the screen, bands of dilated blue and glowing orange, this burning off at the edges to diffusions of crimson and ochre, with complex and exquisite interactions between the spreading colour and the containing bands.

  ‘There are seven layers of paint through this surface,’ Barfield said. ‘We are looking at them horizontally, highly magnified, of course – the actual paint thickness is 0.24 millimetres in this section. No, wait a minute, I tell a lie, there are eight layers if you count the nineteenth-century repainting here.’ The walking stick entered the zone of light, pointed briefly at dark lilac mist along the edge of the uppermost band.

  Of course, Raikes thought, he might have received his injury by some other means, crushed under the weight of a Tintoretto for example. That would have been in keeping with the hectic and heroic note he had sounded – in fact all the Tintoretto people had sounded it – in the café that morning, when Miss Greenaway had slipped memorably out of her boilersuit top, and revealed, along with the beauty of her breasts, the existence of documents in the sacristy. Or he might simply have fallen downstairs …

  ‘We can’t decide whether to clean off this repainted area,’ Barfield said, ‘until we are sure about the nature and quality of the original. This is a tricky business. Tintoretto used an extraordinarily wide range of pigment. Microsco
pical and chemical analysis of paint samples from this one painting have revealed just about all the pigments available at the time. In addition to lead white, carbon blacks, red, yellow and brown ochres, we have identified natural ultramarine or lapis lazuli, azurite, smalt, indigo, malachite, verdigris, copper resinate glazes, orpiment, realgar …’

  The hypnotic effect of this litany of colours, delivered in Barfield’s flat voice, combined with the glowing composition on the screen, lulled Raikes into a state of slightly somnolent reverie. He felt immune for the moment: while voice and picture continued no calls could be made on him. He found himself wondering again why Lattimer should have chosen to show up here. So that his presence should be noted? So that Rescue Venice should be reminded of his previous generosity? He did nothing without a purpose, as Wiseman had implied, and as Raikes had discovered for himself; but the urges of the man’s egotism seemed at least as strong as conscious purpose; it was impossible for example to know whether Lattimer had wanted mainly to offer him dubious employment, that evening of his visit, or to be admired and envied in the midst of his possessions, the souvenirs of war and business, the grisly trophies of his sexual exploits.

  This brought him, by a process he did not pause to examine, to thoughts of Chiara Litsov, a resurgence of that slightly painful sense of her existence that had occupied some part of his mind ever since meeting her, a feeling half curious, half sorrowful. He was not conscious of any desire in this. In fact the heat that had plagued him earlier in his stay, when Venice had tormented him with its endless suggestions of sexual possibility, when he had gone around in a more or less permanent state of tumescence, all that had ended now – since meeting Mrs Litsov, he suddenly realized – stilled as effectively as a blow might still restless limbs, to be replaced by this painful mental scrutiny, this strange speculation which had no goal of discovery because no knowledge to proceed on, but fed on itself and was its own justification. She and the Madonna had been the twin bearings of his thoughts …

  The glowing spectrum on the screen was extinguished. The lights went on. Barfield, clearly finished, limped to the wall and took the screen down, to the accompaniment of applause. Sir Hugo was on his feet again. Raikes waited until his name was uttered then made his way up to the platform.

  He had come armed with several photographs, blown up to poster size, together with weights to make them hang properly and a suction-plug device for attaching them to the wall. The first one he showed was of the Madonna as she had been when he arrived, exhibiting her travestied form and face, the encrusted sores of her disease. This public display of her, combining with his feelings of nervousness, affected his emotions. It was only with reluctance that he had agreed to speak; basically he thought of the whole affair as a stunt of Sir Hugo’s and had a certain distaste for it, while conceding it was probably necessary; but the presence of the newspaper people and the number of what seemed ordinary members of the public had made him see that this might be something of an opportunity. When he turned from the photograph to face his audience, holding his single page of notes, he felt suddenly like the Madonna’s champion, speaking out on her behalf, belied and travestied as she was. This gave from the start an accent of feeling to his voice.

  ‘This is the lady as I first saw her,’ he said. ‘No one seeing this, I imagine, would claim that weathering improves the look of stone sculpture. She is made of Istrian stone, which is a dense limestone of very common use in Venice. She is therefore an example of what is happening to the external stonework of this beautiful city.

  ‘Weathering of course is a very long and gradual process. It may be broadly defined as the process of adjustment of minerals and rocks from the original place of formation to their present environment on the earth’s surface. The same thing applies to human beings. Adjustment to life outside the womb involves a shock to the system.’

  This was a prepared joke and there was some laughter at it, or rather the collective murmur that denotes audience awareness of humorous intention. Raikes paused, noticing faces he knew here and there. A camera flashed, recording this moment of pause.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘there was damage done to the Madonna even before she was made. There was the shock of the quarrying. The deterioration really begins there. Afterwards, over the centuries, there was a long process of recrystallization, impaired density, increased solution rate. Helped of course by the carbon dioxide always present in the atmosphere. But it wasn’t this that caused the appalling disfigurements you see in the photograph. She is suffering from a specifically twentieth-century disease.

  ‘Many of you will be familiar with the process. Sulphur dioxide is given off when fossil fuels are burned. The chimneys of Mestre and Maraghera have been pumping SO2 into the atmosphere for a long time now. And Venice is a humid place, notoriously so. In winter cold and humid, in summer hot and humid. So we have a perfect formula for disaster. The SO2 combines with the moisture always present in the atmosphere to produce sulphuric acid. This acts on all exposed stone surfaces to form calcium sulphate, which spreads over the stone like a tumour, rotting it to gypsum. Those are the encrustations you can see. Underneath them of course the decay is still going on.’

  Raikes replaced the photograph with one of a highly magnified stone sample and explained the process of electron-microscopic examination done by sectioning. He pointed out the symptoms of soluble salts accumulated on the stone in the presence of water, the powdery deposits, humid stains, loss of cohesion; the deadly ‘efflorescence’ – white needle-like crystals caused by dissolved salts sweated from the pores and crusting on the surface. Then he showed a picture of the Madonna as she was now, cleaned almost to the waist. He spoke about the progress of his work, the excellent results obtained with the air-abrasion instrument, his hopes for a complete restoration. At this point he paused. He had gained confidence in speaking but now some of his tension returned. He was about to say something he knew not to be politic.

  ‘This is just one statue,’ he said. ‘Venice is full of rotting statues. The Madonna shown here is about five and a half centuries old. If the rate of decay could be shown on a graph, there would be a very slightly rising line for the first five hundred years and an almost vertical one for the last fifty. The problem is one of time and human resources. It has taken one man rather more than one month to clean rather less than one half of one Madonna. To put the matter bluntly, Venice cannot go on relying to the extent she does at present on foreign enterprises. Unless more active steps are taken on the part of the authorities to recruit and train restorers at sufficiently attractive rates of pay, and to shoulder the financial burden of large-scale restoration projects, it will be too late. Quite soon it will be too late. This lady behind me was caught just in time. A few more years and she would have had no fingers and no nose. A few more after that and she would just have been a piece of limestone.’

  He was conscious of clapping as he took down the photograph and left the platform. As he walked back to his place he saw Muriel standing near the film projector. She had her left arm in a sling.

  4

  ONE OF THE people from Venezia Nostra spoke next, in Italian, about the work currently being done at the Palazzo Dolfin-Manin. In the course of his remarks he pointed out with noticeable emphasis that this was an Italian project, that all the people involved in it were Italians, that it was financed entirely by Italian funds. The same thing applied to the restoration of the Carpaccios at San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, recently completed. This too had been an all-Italian enterprise, he said.

  Then Sir Hugo was to the fore again, one hand in pocket, one hand extended, making his final remarks, winding things up. There was some final clapping and people began to leave. The room thinned out quite quickly. Raikes found himself standing with Steadman in the centre. The representatives of Venezia Nostra were gathered around Sir Hugo, talking eagerly. None of them glanced in Raikes’s direction, however. ‘I rather wish I hadn’t made those remarks,’ he said. After the heightened emotion of h
is address he was feeling depressed and slightly apprehensive now.

  The saturnine cast of Steadman’s face did not change but his grey eyes below their dark brows looked amused. ‘It won’t make you any friends at court’ he said. ‘There’s something about you that is distinctly self-destructive, Simon.’ He looked at Raikes for a moment then quite suddenly he broke into one of his rare smiles. ‘Paradoxically enough, it saves you,’ he said.

  Raikes returned the smile, rather ruefully. He was aware for the first time of genuine feelings of friendship between Steadman and himself and he was glad of it.

  They were joined by Miss Greenaway who said, ‘Enjoyed your talk, jolly good, made those Italians sit up.’ Her face shone with cheerful prejudice. She was wearing a green dress of thin woollen material, fitting closely, revealing the splendours of her breasts. These looked even more magnificent than usual. ‘Are we going to have a drink, Albert?’ she said to Steadman. First-name terms – Steadman’s gloomy persistence had paid off, it seemed. Miss Greenaway looked happy and her voice was quieter.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Steadman said. ‘We need a drink, after listening to Sir Hugo.’

  Before any move could be made, the rest of the Tintoretto people came up, Barfield hobbling on his stick, Muriel with her arm held in its sling, Owen walking between them like an attendant taking two patients out for an airing.

  ‘Accident?’ Raikes said.

  ‘One of the Tintorettos fell on them.’ Steadman spoke in hushed and reverential tones.

  It was obvious that Barfield did not find this at all funny. ‘We are soldiering on,’ he said. ‘It couldn’t have happened at a worse time.’

  ‘Fall, was it?’ Raikes did not know why he persisted with this questioning. Not malice, but a sort of fascinated politeness led him on.