by Tim Parks
Approaching Castelvecchio for his first encounter with Zolla, the building’s rust-brick parapets and extravagant crenulations, the medieval moat, the drawbridge and the grand arched gate, had something fantastical about them, Morris thought: it was a castle of fairy-tale encounters, a place where he might undergo some defining trial of courage or vertù, in mortal combat perhaps, with King Eglon. He smiled, but felt a shiver about his neck too. The last thing he wanted was to kill again. Whether Volpi or Stan. Actually, he had never wanted to kill. All the same, it was Castelvecchio, he sensed, this show at Castelvecchio, Painting Death, that would ultimately determine how Morris was to be remembered: as a minor eccentric collector with more copies than originals, or as a major force for reflection and renewal in the world of European art!
If only he could be sure that the show would really come off.
Professor Angelo Zolla was both a mystery and a disappointment. Younger than Morris had supposed, perhaps not even forty, he had an impressive, well-equipped, over-tidy office all to himself, from whose open door he could, if he so desired, keep an eye on the half-dozen staff the museum employed for management and marketing. Trim as the institution’s director was lardy, Veronese as Volpi was Neapolitan, the young professor must, Morris at first assumed, be at least potentially hostile to the older, more powerful man. Casting about for complicity, the Englishman had made a few casually condescending remarks about southerners and complimented Zolla profusely on his smart, silver-grey suit, pastel shirt, Rotary-look tie and finely toned physique. Smiling blandly from a perma-haze of deodorant and aftershave, his small moustache clipped to rhomboid perfection, Zolla seemed pleased enough, but deaf to any implied criticism of his boss. Because he hadn’t picked it up, Morris wondered, or because he chose to ignore it? It was hard to know whether the man was completely stupid or very shrewd. Morris felt vulnerable, as great men must.
About the show, however, the art historian was enthusiastic. ‘Our Beppe does tend to play the old pessimist,’ he reassured the Englishman, who had expressed concern that Volpi might not be a hundred per cent on board.
‘I’m sorry?’ Morris said. ‘Our Beppe?’
‘Il direttore,’ Zolla laughed. ‘Giuseppe Volpi. Not to worry. I’ll bring him round. He’s actually a wonderful man.’
Again, this should have been encouraging, but Morris sensed there was something wrong. It was evident that Zolla genuinely wanted to curate the show. Studying the man’s curriculum on the museum’s website, Morris quickly realised that in the past he had merely played dogsbody to other curators, collecting and ordering the appropriate artworks, editing and publishing the catalogues. To be a curator in his own right would represent a significant career breakthrough. This had to be positive. On the other hand, Zolla seemed unable to grasp what Morris intended the show to be or why he had proposed it in the first place. Experienced art historian or not (but how else could he have got a full professorship so young?), Zolla seemed to know only one basic formula for any exhibition: meticulous classification plus fulsome rhetoric: you arranged a group of paintings by artist, school or chronology, and then declared them sublime. Mission accomplished. ‘An exhibition bringing together the finest representations of violent death,’ was all he had offered by way of description on the letter calling in loans from such august institutions as the Louvre, the Met and the National Gallery. Were the serious folks in those places likely to part with their marvellous artworks to support such a banal proposition from a provincial backwater like Verona? More was required.
Over the following weeks Morris tried and tried, talked and talked, about his ideas, plans and theories, the psychology of the show as he saw it, the implied cultural critique, the institutionalisation of violence, the aestheticisation of horror, and Zolla had listened politely, apparently patiently, but still didn’t get it. Not that he countered Morris’s arguments; he rarely expressed disagreement. He just didn’t seem to appreciate how profoundly the subject of murder connected with the depths of the collective psyche and the organisation of contemporary society. Above all, he wouldn’t hear of sending a second email with a detailed account of their/Morris’s plans for the show.
‘These are busy men, Morris,’ he shook his head. Somehow they had been on first-name terms almost from the start, something unusual in Italy, though without any real familiarity. Frequently Zolla hazarded a few words in schoolboy English, then waited, smiling, for Morris’s compliments. ‘We are not wanting to try hard their patience, do we?’
‘What about using conflicting voices in the captions?’ Morris hinted. ‘We could give aggressively opposing views of some of the key images. “Was Cain framed?” Or: “To start history rolling, a good man has to die.” That would force people to look at the pictures in a new way. What we want is to get them thinking.’
Zolla sat very straight behind his polished desk. He was always perfectly groomed. His papers were in order. His PC had a magnificent screen without a speck of dust. His nails were manicured, his cuffs immaculate.
‘That might be confusing, Morris,’ he eventually said. Surely it was best to keep the captions simple: the artist, the date, the work’s ownership history, and a brief comment on the genius involved, so that people knew that they were looking at quality. For more complex considerations—the school of painting, the particular brush technique, the circumstances of the commission—there were the audio guide and the catalogue, for which he was already drawing up a list of highly respected contributors. Obviously the public’s understanding would be facilitated by hanging the canvases in strict chronological order.
‘You’ve forgotten to ask for Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac,’ Morris complained.
Zolla was always affable, confident, generous, deodorised.
‘Since Isaac is not actually killed,’ he explained in careful English, ‘I decided that this painting is not being included in the show.’ He switched to Italian. ‘I’m afraid we would be accused of a methodological error, Morris. You cannot imagine how ready other art historians are to, how do you say in English, “poke hole” or “pick hole.” They are a murderous crowd.’
He smiled at this little joke.
To Morris’s mind the dramatic image of a bearded old man with a knife at his child’s naked throat could not have been more devastatingly on theme. Foolishly, he pleaded his case: ‘The point is, it’s a murder about to happen. The fact that the whole disgraceful scenario was instigated by Jehovah Himself speaks worlds, don’t you think, Angelo?’
Zolla nodded sagely: ‘We have to be a bit careful, Morris, you know, on that front, Verona being such a Catholic town.’
For the first time Morris felt some sympathy for the Hellas Verona fans and their choral blasphemies. Walking out of Zolla’s room, he began to notice how the regular office staff would glance up with quiet smiles on their lips. They thought something was funny.
It would occasionally happen during these visits that Morris ran into Volpi, leaning on a walking stick, perhaps in the corridor, or taking some visiting dignitary round the museum, and he too smiled the smile of someone who knows something that the recipient of the smile does not. What was it?
‘You don’t have the charming Signorina Al Wazid with you today, Signor Duckworth,’ Volpi remarked, his chins resting on his collarbone like a pile of Assyrian cushions.
‘Miss Al Zuwaid is at work. In the Cultural Heritage Department.’
‘Ah, of course. Fine people, fine people.’ There was a perennial dampness about the fat man’s dewlaps. He was breathing heavily.
What was the ‘of course’ about, Morris wondered? Had he ever mentioned where Samira worked? He seemed to remember having presented the girl as his secretary.
Volpi used the lift to go downstairs, even if it was only one floor. Out of politeness Morris joined him, though the space was so tight he had to flatten himself against a metal wall to avoid contact with the man’s grotesque paunch. ‘And the haft also went in after the blade,’ he remembered. What a
nice word haft was.
‘She has a brother, does she not?’
Now Morris was alarmed; it was another threatening item tossed into his juggling mind. Volpi laughed.
‘Oh, not to worry, Signor Duckworth, I just ran into the two of them in the piazza and the pretty lady was, er, kind enough to introduce me to the young man. A charming couple.’
Couple was a strange word to use, Morris thought. For a brother and sister. If he could never decide whether there were any brain cells at all in Zolla’s head, he felt sure that Volpi had too many.
‘Your concern for them does you honour,’ Volpi went on charitably as the lift doors opened. He scratched behind his ear and took a deep breath before propelling his bulk into the corridor.
Morris decided to say nothing, as if the matter were of the utmost indifference to him. He had been right to stop bringing Samira here. The brute had his eyes on her.
To reach the street they now had to walk through the ground floor of the museum’s permanent exhibition. First a room of medieval sculpture and statuary, then some second-rate seventeenth-century paintings, then the display of the so-called armi bianche.
‘You know the story behind the Arch of the Saints?’ Volpi enquired. He took off his glasses and began to polish them on his handkerchief.
Morris nodded. He had no idea.
‘I suppose beheading was a relief after walking for miles with nails in your feet.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ Morris replied at random.
Volpi sighed, then suddenly shook head and jowls vigorously from side to side. Evidently this was a tic, the spirit’s instinctive urge, Morris interpreted, to free itself from a mountain of flab.
‘And do you know why they were called armi bianche ?’
The director was waddling between a line of showcases displaying short sharp swords, long stilettos and dangerously pointed pike heads.
Morris hesitated.
Volpi raised his heavy eyebrows.
‘I have no idea,’ Morris said, perhaps aggressively.
‘Nor do I,’ Volpi laughed. ‘But it does seem odd to call something white that is essentially made to get very dirty, doesn’t it?’
Morris tried to laugh. Was the man reading his mind? Was he aware of the story of King Eglon? The dirt came out. Morris had added the murder to Zolla’s list of requests. There was a painting in Budapest. And Madox Brown’s woodcut of course.
For a moment they stood by one of the cases and contemplated the weapons. The business of arranging scores of swords, knives, spears and pikes in neat long lines according to type and date made them seem rather harmless, Morris thought. Even boring. Yet the moment a man picked one of these things up, he realised, and closed his fingers round the solid haft, felt the weapon’s weight and purpose, ran a finger along its keen blade, touched the killing point, then the heart would start to pound and the blood to throb, he had no doubt. Morris suddenly shivered.
‘Perhaps, Signor Duckworth,’ the fat man’s voice seemed to bubble like oil through sludge, ‘we could include a few of the more, er, evil daggers in the show, what do you think? And a pike or two, for good measure. Perhaps a spear. To give people a hint of what it would mean to use such things. Actually, I can’t see why we shouldn’t have some kind of situation where they are allowed to pick one up and get a sense of how they feel. The more modern shows do that kind of thing these days. For example, beside the Massacre of the Innocents.’
Morris breathed deeply.
‘No doubt you have seen the research on how people’s response to paintings intensifies when exposed to the objects depicted in them?’
Morris hadn’t. But how stupid, he suddenly thought now, to be so anxious; the evident truth was that Volpi had finally recognised what a brilliant idea the show was. He had come on board and was offering his expertise.
‘It is an interesting thought,’ he said carefully: ‘The murder weapon beside each painting, yes. Though I suggest we seek Professor Zolla’s opinion first. Angelo has a strong sense of what is appropriate or not.’
Volpi turned rather brusquely. His paunch quivered.
‘I should have asked, how have you been getting on with our resident professor?’
‘Very well,’ Morris said neutrally. With the museum’s director actually favourable now, it suddenly seemed even more important to send a convincing account of the show to those museums that held the goods.
‘You appreciate, do you, what a fine collaborator I have found for you?’
‘I’ve been very impressed,’ he said, ‘by Professor Zolla’s grasp of detail.’
Volpi laughed. ‘Angelo’s is a very special mind. He was telling me about your idea of introducing contrasting captions. I think it might work well.’
‘Why, thank you, Angelo seemed worried that—’
‘I’ve reassured him.’
This was too good to be true.
Volpi now rotated his bulk towards Morris and extended his chubby hand.
‘I’ll go so far as to say, Signor Duckworth, that inviting the Arab boy, I can’t recall his name, Signorina El Zidow’s brother, to be involved is both provocative and, I hesitate to use the word, but I have to say it, brilliant. Yes provocative and brilliant. A delightful young man. Many charms. Complimenti. We shall have to think about the details very carefully, of course. Verona is, as you know, a supremely bigoted and provincial town. Anything perceived as an offence to the Catholic faith, or an encouragement to the Moslem, would be condemned without trial and boycotted at once. On the other hand, it could be the kind of idea that puts this show on the world map. Local immigrant commissioned to caption international show. Could anything be more politically correct?’
Morris moved in a daze. Was he dreaming? He usually hated it when the separate parts of his life were allowed to meet without his being present to check that they did not conspire against him. How did Volpi know about his invitation to Tarik? On the other hand, with things going so well it would be churlish to complain.
‘You’ve been interceding for me, haven’t you?’ he remarked to Massimina later in the candlelit Art Room. He had been wondering whether perhaps it was too late to ask for Goya’s Saturn Devouring One of his Sons, or Cannibals Contemplating their Victims. Goya was special.
‘No more than usual,’ she told him. ‘You’re always in my prayers, Morris.’
‘By the way, do you know what’s wrong with Mimi?’ he asked, meaning his daughter.
‘Of course I do.’
‘And so?’
‘I think you should ask her yourself, Morris.’
‘But—’
‘I wish I’d had a father when I was first dating boys,’ she interrupted, rather heatedly. ‘Then maybe I wouldn’t have ended up here on the wall. You ask her. Before it’s too late.’
Was she just being melodramatic to keep him anxious? He wouldn’t put it past her.
‘What do you think’s going on with Massimina?’ Morris asked his wife the following afternoon. ‘She’s at home all the time. She does nothing but send text messages.’
‘Maybe she’s in love.’
Antonella was picking one or two dead heads from a vase of lilies on the table in the salotto. ‘Aren’t they nice?’
‘People in love are usually happy and full of energy.’
‘You just need things to worry about, Morris, caro,’ his wife smiled. ‘Speaking of which, how’s Mousie getting on?’
For a month now Morris had taken Mauro into the office every day. The company occupied the seventh floor of a commercial building block near the Verona Sud autostrada exit.
‘Everybody loves him. It doesn’t matter who I put him next to, they end up spending the day talking about Hellas Verona.’
Antonella smiled indulgently.
‘It was nice of Stan to bring these,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘It’s an expensive time for flowers.’
Morris hardly winced. With nothing to do during his extended holiday of Veronese nostalgia, Stan h
ad been buzzing around Palazzo Duckworth like a tired blowfly, the kind that drone themselves to death in dusty corners. Fancifully, Morris imagined the sound emanating from one of Sickert’s Camden Town Murders. Buzz buzz buzz, around the corpses in those squalid bedsits. Wasn’t there some audio technology, he vaguely remembered, they had developed for museums that allowed you to have sound triggered and localised around each exhibit? You could have children whimpering, women shrieking, saints groaning. Bring death alive.
‘Stan’s mellowed with old age,’ Morris agreed. ‘Invite him this evening. He’s always pleasant company.’
‘He’s gone to England for a couple of days.’
Shame!
‘To visit Forbes’s ex-wife, if he can find her.’
Damn. A virtual hand rose from Morris’s alarmed mind to catch yet another dangerous missile. Sooner or later, something was going to explode in his face.
‘I had no idea they were such close friends,’ he said.
Antonella frowned: ‘It seems Stan had lent him quite a lot of money.’
So that was it! So much for friendship. Immediately it occurred to Morris that perhaps the American could be bought off. If only he could think of some delicate way to propose it. Send him away with the money he had come to recover. How much could it be in the end?
At Samira’s, Morris gave Tarik a list of the paintings he would require captions for. Samson and Delilah. Sardanapalus. Absalom. Judith and Holofernes. Jael and Sisera. King Eglon. The Death of Agag. The Levite and his Concubine. Othello and Desdemona. And Saint Bartholomew.
At the table they went through a PowerPoint together. Samira sat close to Morris, absently stroking his left thigh, while to his right Tarik had his chin in his hands, elbows on the table, shaking his head as image after bloody image popped up before them.
‘Just study what happened,’ Morris told him. ‘Wikipedia has the background. Then write whatever you feel in response. Maximum five hundred characters. Including spaces. That’s six or seven lines. Then I’ll edit.’
