by David Hewson
“Oh, Scacchi,” Massiter replied, “there are ways and ways. Something to sell, perhaps? I have a particular object in mind. We must speak of it.”
Scacchi shook his head. “I regret I have nothing of the calibre you rightly expect. I merely deal in baubles these days. But who knows?”
Massiter introduced the girl he was speaking to as Amy Hartston, aged eighteen, from Portland, Maine. Scacchi bowed. Daniel took her soft hand and, awkwardly, shook it. She had long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, a constant smile, and the blank, vague prettiness Daniel had, against his own wishes, come to associate with a certain breed of American student.
“I don’t recall you from two years ago,” she said to Daniel in an odd accent, American, but with a genteel flatness not unlike old-fashioned upper-class English.
“I wasn’t here. I’ve never visited Venice before.”
“Wow.” She seemed amazed. “You live in England and you’ve never been here?”
“Not everyone has the advantage of a rich and generous father, my dear,” Massiter declared.
“He’s glad to get rid of me for the summer vacation,” she grumbled. “This is just camp under another name.”
Massiter beamed. He seemed, Daniel thought, much too disengaged, much too pleasant, to be the owner of a large and successful company working in the aggressively competitive world of art sales. “Ah, the young,” he said. “Never explain. Never apologise. Never feel grateful.”
“About sums it up!” Amy Hartston agreed cheerfully.
“Hmmm,” Massiter grunted, then said, “May I?” Without waiting for an answer, he picked up her violin case, gently opened it, and removed the instrument inside. Daniel Forster blinked at what Massiter held up for all to see in the poor light of La Pietà. It was an ancient fiddle, unmistakably Italian, probably of the early eighteenth century.
“This,” Massiter announced, “is what I seek, Scacchi. Well, almost, anyway. You recognise it? No peeking at the label, now.”
The old man took the fiddle and held it in his hands, inspecting the instrument minutely from top to tailpiece. The violin had a shallow belly and a narrow waist. In the yellowish artificial light it seemed a light chestnut colour, with some marks, a few old, a few more recent, perhaps the result of a clumsy owner.
“I hate these parlour games,” the old man complained. “One should not rush into a judgement.”
Massiter was unmoved. “Oh, come on, Scacchi. It’s easy enough for a man like you.”
“Hmmm,” Scacchi murmured. “I would prefer a look in good light, and with a glass, but without that I shall hazard a guess. Cremona, undoubtedly. There is no sign of Saint Theresa, so it cannot be Andrea Guarneri, though it has his feel to it. But that narrow waist. It must be the son, Giuseppe, I think. Early eighteenth century...perhaps 1720 or so.”
Amy’s eyes opened wide. “Unbelievable. How do you do that? To me it just feels like a great fiddle.”
“And it is,” Massiter said. “Though not of the highest order. I seek something rather better. From another Guarneri.”
Scacchi surveyed him, his face full of scepticism. “You mean Giuseppe del Gesù, I imagine? But, Massiter, you know there are so few of those in the world. If one were to come onto the market, everyone would know about it.”
Massiter snorted. “The open market, yes. But we play the game, Scacchi. We know there are rules and rules. Sell like that, and there are taxes to pay. And a commission to a dealer like me. The instrument I have heard of is one of his beauties, big and bold, worth a fortune, and with a canny seller who’s reluctant to show his or her face. Funny, that, eh? You, I imagine, have heard the same rumour. Now, don’t deny it.”
Scacchi demurred. It seemed to Daniel that the old man was incapable of deception in the face of Massiter’s iron-grey stare.
“You hear such nonsense on the streets, Massiter. We both know you cannot believe a word.”
Massiter’s right arm stole around Scacchi’s shoulders, then squeezed, quite hard, the flesh close to his neck. “Of course. But you will alert me should a little bird sing, won’t you? My money’s as good as any man’s.”
Scacchi took one short step backwards to detach himself from Massiter’s grip. “Daniel here is my guest and part of your school for the duration. If you have anything to say to me, or I to you, perhaps we should communicate through him. I am too feeble these days to be disturbed by the telephone.”
Massiter stared at Daniel, as did Amy Hartston. Daniel had the feeling he was being judged.
“Very well,” replied Massiter with a sudden, efficient smile, before turning his attention completely to the girl. “And as for you, my dear, I should be grateful if you would join me for dinner at the Locanda Cipriani tomorrow. They have sea urchins and bass ravioli and the finest mantis shrimp you’ll ever taste. Afterwards I’ll show you some very fine devils.”
“Cool!” the girl answered, eyes glittering.
Massiter clapped his hands lightly. “My launch leaves at seven. And you...” He peered at Daniel. “The name again?”
“Daniel Forster, sir.”
“Would you care to come along, Daniel Forster?”
He looked at Scacchi. The old man shooed him on. “Good Lord, Daniel. The only way the likes of us will eat at that place on Torcello is if someone else is paying the bill!”
“But the work, Scacchi?”
“There is always time for work. You are here to enjoy yourself too.”
“Then it’s agreed!” Massiter announced with some finality. “Both of you, bring your fiddles and some notes you intend to submit for the composition section. This circus costs me plenty, so I may ask you to play for your supper. Now...!” He clapped his large hands again, loudly so that all in the airy, oval church might hear. “On with the show, children! Avanti! Avanti! Play as if it were your last day upon this earth!”
14
The taste of mud
What an unattractive trait jealousy is! I report to you, honestly, about the people I meet, and the next thing I know, your letters are spitting viper’s venom from the page. Did I react like a madman when you told me about that handsome, flashing-eyed Spaniard you met by the banks of the Guadalquivir? Let us have a little perspective here, sister. We are currently spectators in our respective worlds, children who have by accident flitted into some fancy costume ball where we scarcely belong. Would you have me tell you pious fairy tales that are as dull as ditchwater?
Still, if you wish a break from the “lovely Rebecca,” as you describe her (no, I won’t argue with that), you shall have it, though it disrupts the thread of this narrative for no good reason other than your own vanity.
The day after our visit to La Pietà (which I shall chronicle for you next), I attended with Uncle Leo when he joined Mr. Delapole at Venezia Triofante. This is one of those fashionable co fee shops where the city seems to spend inordinate parts of the day stirring small cups of a muddy brown fluid that looks as if it has just been dredged from the bed of the lagoon. I imagine there is no co fee in Seville. It is a creation of the East brought here by the Arabs apparently, who are forbidden by the Koran to consume it themselves and so sell it on to us in order to rot good Christian brains and teeth. Almost every doorway in St. Mark’s piazza now leads to a botteghe de caffè . They may soon convert the basilica into one, too, I imagine. You have no idea what geography has spared you.
The Triofante is the most acclaimed co fee shop of them all, though quite why is beyond me, since they all look the same: what I take to be the appearance of an anteroom in some obscure French royal palace, all mirrors and ormolu and chairs that don’t quite fit your bottom. Perhaps the attraction is the self-opinionated owner, one Floriano Francesconi, who lords it over the room, ejecting, on a mere whim, anyone he dislikes. Talk about the personal touch. I don’t know why the silly man doesn’t just name the place after himself and have done with it.
Mr. Delapole had more than us in tow, sniffing at his wallet. We were joined by
an odd young French chap called Rousseau, who claims to be on a brief visit to the city but, according to the worried Gobbo, would not be averse to a job on the Englishman’s payroll either. Gobbo clearly sees Rousseau as a threat, which is somewhat risible, since they could scarcely be more different. Monsieur Rousseau is a pleasant enough cove, I think, but seems incapable of small talk. Every twist and turn in the conversation must always lead to some obscure allusion, effusive allegory, or mildly outrageous statement, all designed to demonstrate to the world that here is one very clever fellow indeed. I try to like him, because he is a bright chap, but I have to confess it’s very hard work.
Mr. Delapole listened to a stream of his French babble for a while, then waved his hand for silence, fixed our uncle with a penetrating gaze, and announced, “I find myself drawn to a musical career. I was thinking of writing an opera, Scacchi. Would you care to publish it?”
“Sir!” Leo almost jumped out of his seat with glee. “An opera! I had no idea your talents ran so wide.”
“A man’s talents run to many things more than he knows,” Rousseau interjected. “Why, I was only trying my hand at the English pentameter the other day, and I think I could give that Shakespeare fellow a run for his money. . . .”
“Oh, do be quiet,” Mr. Delapole said in a cheery tone that could not possibly give o fence. “We all know about your talents. It’s mine I’d like to discuss. An opera, Scacchi. How much for a couple of hundred quire, or whatever you call them?”
“Sir!” cried Uncle again, but this time trying his best to look mortally o fended. “Money is the least consideration here. The House of Scacchi merely seeks to defray its expenses and make sufficient profit to pay the Republic’s all-too-frequent levies. What matters most to us is the quality of the work which bears our imprint and how it may add to the greater sum of human knowledge. Our title cannot be simply bought; it must be earned.”
I thought of the hours I had spent that morning setting a few pages of The Manifold Mysteries of the Rhinoceros of Madagascar and reached for my little cup of bitter mud. I was wrong. Co fee does have its place.
“The trouble is,” Delapole mused, “opera is so . . . common. Perhaps something smaller. A concerto for solo violin, for example, I reckon I’m up to it.”
Leo placed his cup slowly on the table. “A favourite of my own, sir, since you know I once wrote the odd page too.”
“And presumably,” Delapole added, with a canny eye, “there is the economic argument. Fewer parts, less paper. Makes sense.”
Leo stared downcast at his little demitasse. “In a world more sane than publishing, perhaps. Paper is but a small part of our costs. The setting, the proofing, the years of skill required to spot that single errant crochet on the stave . . .”
“Hmmm.” Delapole seemed undecided. “Perhaps I’ll write a book instead, then. But that would be in English, and you, for all your skills, could not be expected to master such a tortured and difficult tongue. No, I’d have to send to London for that.”
An awkward silence fell upon the table, penetrated, of course, in very few seconds by a piping French voice. “It is not merely the notes that matter, my friends,” Rousseau declared. “Vivaldi is a fine musician, but I think his popularity has other sources too. It is the theatre of the thing, monsieur. The thought of all those delightful ladies, hidden from view behind screens where they produce sounds of such ethereal, sensual wonder. La Pietà is a bordello for the ears! That’s it! I shall note down those words in my little book the moment I get home!”
We all looked at the man. I do not profess to be much familiar with matters of romance, but unlike Rousseau, I think I am able to enter into a conversation about, or even with, the sweeter sex and not suffer some minor form of apoplexy (yes, I know, dear sister, R...is an exception, but I vowed not to introduce her into this portion of my narrative). The very mention of the word “bordello” appeared to place our French friend in a state of extraordinary agitation, puffing and panting, cheeks red and a rash of sweat clinging to his flabby upper lip.
Delapole leaned over and whispered just loud enough for us all to hear, “Perhaps they are naked behind those shutters, Rousseau. Have you considered that?”
The Frenchman shuddered and gave out with a whinny that would have done justice to a six-week-old foal.
“But, sir,” Gobbo interjected, “if you think about it, women are standing there stark bare all the time, aren’t they? It’s just the clothes that get in the way.”
One may as well join in this nonsense. “By which token,” I suggested, “the players behind the screen in La Pietà must be, to all intent and purpose, naked. Since we cannot see them at all, their garments, if there be garments, are as irrelevant as the shutters behind which they . . . perform. A naked woman now in bed in Peking is no less naked because we cannot see her.”
“And by that token”—Delapole grinned, catching the ball I had so loosely thrown him—“the world is positively brimming with unclad beauties. Look how many are in this room! If only we possessed the wit to remove those opercula from our minds that prevent our worshipping them in all their fleshy glory!”
Rousseau’s eyes fairly popped out of his skull. His head revolved on its stalk trying to take in each lady in the café (most of whom were old, an inch deep in powder, and bedecked in more clothing than you’d find in a bishop’s wardrobe after a rich man’s funeral).
“I think, I think,” he gasped, “that I shall retire now. I have but a short time in Venice and there are many sights to see.”
We watched him go, smirking cruelly to ourselves. It was an unfair trick, but Rousseau is like an old dog who hangs around the back door, begging to be kicked. One day even the kindest of folk will take a boot to him just because he asks for it so importunately.
“Concerto it is, then,” Uncle Leo announced, a tremor of hope in his voice.
“It’s finding the time, dear chap,” Mr. Delapole replied lazily. “So little to spare. So much to do.”
Shortly afterwards we walked to the molo and caught a gondola back to Mr. Delapole’s rented house, Ca’ Dario, as fine a Venetian mansion as you might enter (and most definitely deserving of the term palazzo, though mysteriously it, too, remains mere Ca’). I sat in the back with Gobbo. The brief experience of Rousseau-baiting had, I regret to say, whetted his appetite.
“You know folk at that church, the one with the music?” Gobbo asked, prodding me with a conspiratorial elbow.
“We print material for Vivaldi from time to time.”
“Good,” he said, and leered in the most obscene of ways. “I reckon our French friend deserves a little entertainment before he quits this city for good. You, Mr. Scacchi, shall be my impresario.”
The gondola turned into the great bend of the Canal. Ca’ Dario bobbed towards us on the left, a small mansion, and one with a little tilt to it (no shame in that when you’ve spent 250 years with your toes in the Venetian mud).
The afternoon heat was fading. It was a splendid view. I thought of Reb— Ah, but I made a promise.
15
Dust and parchment
LAURA INSISTED ON JOINING DANIEL FOR THE FIRST sortie into the bowels of the derelict warehouse next door. He was initially grateful for her company, if a little disconcerted by her mode of dress. During the day she wore a white nylon housecoat buttoned down the front, the kind favoured by shop assistants. It seemed to him a uniform, a statement that said: however much you make me part of this family, I remain a servant. She served breakfast in it. She wore it to hand out the evening glasses of spritz, which always arrived after the last chime of six from the bell of San Cassian over the rio. It was an object behind which she could hide, just like the sunglasses which were almost permanently fixed to her face the moment she left the house.
Their rooms were both on the third floor. Laura seemed to occupy most of the rear; he was in the small bedroom that sat next to the warehouse, the third window on the right as seen from the front. Each morning th
ey met on the landing and exchanged pleasantries. Each time, too, he was unable to quell some odd discomfort at her presence, not least because of the uniform. It was the middle of summer and at times unbearably hot. Laura’s solution to this problem was to go naked beneath her housecoat except for underwear, then bustle about her business with a constant physical activity. A simple act—passing a glass, picking up a plate—was apt to reveal a small segment of tanned skin and a glimmer of bright white fabric.
In the cellar the pristine housecoat was filthy within minutes, which did little for her temper.
“I appreciate your help,” he told her. “But I really don’t want to put you to the trouble.”
“You mean you don’t want me here?”
“No,” he replied with some firmness. “I meant that I am being paid to sift through all this filthy junk, and you’re not. I’m grateful, but it really isn’t necessary.”
She threw a pile of ruined eighteenth-century news sheets to the floor. Almost everything of any promise appeared to be damaged by floodwater. Daniel’s hopes of sifting gold for Scacchi from the cellar had begun to fade after only fifteen minutes’ investigation. They had found two more electric lanterns; the four lamps now cast a reasonable amount of illumination but revealed little except dust and ruined parchment. Aladdin’s cave seemed bare of anything that had not been rendered useless by the passing of time and the insistent, seeping waters of the lagoon.
Laura walked over, stared him crossly in the eye, and folded her arms. “What is your problem, Daniel Forster?” she demanded, turning to shaky English, as if this would hammer home her point. “Are you uncomfortable being around me?”
“No! It’s just that I am used to working on my own.”
“Pah! What kind of skill is that? Are you to be a solitary man, then, Daniel?”
The arrow struck home. He was aware that there was a shyness in him, with good reason. He was only now emerging from “the sick years,” the time spent flitting between college and the small bedsit they had rented when his mother’s illness and their poverty coincided. There was a hiatus in his life which set him apart, though he was not yet ready to explain as much to Laura.
