Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  The ribollita arrives, and the conversation turns to Claire’s departure. ‘I’ll try for a flight from Rome,’ she says, as the bowls are being placed on the table.

  ‘She wants to leave us,’ says Gideon to Cecilia, pulling a doleful face of rejection. ‘Saturday – off,’ he says, making a hand take off and bank away from the tabletop.

  ‘No,’ says Cecilia, incredulous.

  ‘Yes,’ says Gideon, sorrowfully resigned.

  ‘I have to,’ Claire apologises.

  ‘No,’ states Cecilia. ‘No, no, no. You must stay. It is our best day. Sunday, the big festival of Castelluccio. She knows?’ she demands of Gideon.

  ‘Oh yes, she knows,’ he answers.

  ‘You must be here. Why go on Saturday? Stay one day,’ Cecilia tells Claire. ‘She must stay, yes?’ she urges Gideon.

  ‘We shall endeavour to persuade her,’ says Gideon.

  Whereupon Cecilia says to Claire: ‘I show you.’ She bustles into the back room, whence she returns a minute later bearing photos, six or seven of them, all riddled with drawing-pin holes around the edges. ‘This is it,’ she tells Celia, putting the pictures in her hand. ‘You must not miss it.’

  Celia examines the pictures of the Saint Zeno’s day festivities: the costumed parade, the Flight of the Angel, the Palio della Ballestra. ‘Looks like fun,’ she concedes, while Gideon watches her closely, as if willing her to solve a puzzle. Her attention is snagged by a figure who, by virtue of being at the front, and on horseback, dominates the shots of the parade: he’s a portly gentleman, with big ears and a massive nose, wearing a gold and scarlet chequered cape and a fantastically complicated bit of headgear in the same colours.

  ‘The town dentist,’ explains Gideon.

  Cecilia informs her that his name was Mr Zappalorto. With an air of wistful respect, she indicates the corner table that had been Mr Zappalorto’s. ‘He was so nice,’ she says. Then, putting a finger on his image, she tells Claire: ‘He was our Vielmi, for many years. And this year Maestro Westfall is our Vielmi.’ She withdraws, leaving Gideon to continue.

  ‘Domenico Vielmi. A local bigwig, centuries ago,’ he explains. ‘Nothing to do with the story of the Falling Boy. He’s an anachronism, but a decorative one. He gives someone the opportunity to dress to the nines. This year, that person is me. It is, needless to say, a great honour,’ he says, pressing a hand humbly to his heart.

  ‘So stay,’ says Robert, ‘and admire Gideon in all his glory.’

  ‘Playing my part in celebrating the one significant event ever to have happened in Castelluccio.’

  ‘Or not, as the case may be,’ adds Robert.

  ‘Indeed,’ agrees Gideon. ‘How can you let it pass?’ he says to Claire. ‘I’ll be horrifically jolly,’ he announces, raising his wine glass with a roistering flourish.

  Whereupon Marta, obviously briefed by Cecilia, comes to the table in order to tell Claire that the show will be great, especially her contribution. ‘I whizz down the wire,’ she says, illustrating her descent with a long swoop of a hand, ‘and I have a beautiful silver crown and silver wings and silver tights, and I get to wave my bottom at everyone. It is something you cannot forget.’

  ‘The highlight of the day, needless to add,’ comments Robert.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ says Marta brightly, departing with a curtsy.

  Claire decides to stay for the festival.

  8.11

  Domenico Vielmi, son of Guglielmo di Girolamo, was born in the village of Mensano in 1350, and spent much of his life in Castelluccio, his mother’s place of birth. In several documents he is referred to as Domenico di Guglielmo, the name by which he was generally known as a young man. Of the early life of his father, Guglielmo, little is known other than that he had three sons, of whom only Domenico survived into adulthood, and that until the early 1350s he worked for his father, Girolamo, who was a weaver. In the years immediately after the plague of 1348, however, Guglielmo became a landowner, and he appears to have increased the extent of his farmland steadily throughout the two decades that followed the epidemic. By 1370 he had become prosperous enough to invest capital with a company formed by two Florentine vintners. He soon diversified his commercial activities, moved his family to a house in Florence, and became a partner in a succession of trading companies, one of which maintained an office in Avignon, where it imported cloth from Damascus and other fine fabrics for sale primarily to the papal court.

  It was while he was with this company that Domenico, having worked for partners of his father in Florence and Ibiza, began to impress his employers. ‘He has acquired a name for fair dealing and perspicacity,’ wrote the fattore of the company to Domenico’s father. ‘Your son has the judgement of a man of much experience,’ he went on. ‘He can assess at once both a man’s character and the quality of his goods. He has foresight, and he can hold in his mind so many different things that another man would require a ledger to record them.’ When the plague struck Avignon in 1374, and many traders deserted their offices in fear of the pestilence, he continued to work in the city, ‘as if through unceasing toil he might earn God’s protection.’ He survived, and at the year’s end his company’s profits were higher than they had been in the preceding year. The next year, thanks in no small part to the diligence and shrewdness of Domenico di Guglielmo, revenue was again increased.

  In 1376, with the election of Gregory IX to the papacy in Rome, the partners closed their office in Avignon and Domenico returned to Florence. Two months later, Guglielmo di Girolamo died. Father and son had been alike in more than appearance: ‘he is your reflection, in mind as in body,’ the Avignon fattore once wrote. Domenico was astute, like his father; he was a man whose word could be trusted, like his father; both were industrious, and loyal to their associates; a secret told to either man was as secure as if it had been consigned to the depths of the ocean, but they disclosed their own secrets to nobody, for, as Guglielmo once advised his son, ‘to confide in a man is to turn yourself into his slave’. But in other respects Domenico and Guglielmo were dissimilar, as became most apparent as soon as Domenico, having taken possession of his inheritance, set about increasing his fortune. His father, as his letters attest, was a convivial man, whose partners were friends as well as colleagues. In all of Domenico’s correspondence, on the other hand, there is barely a note of affection. In Avignon, he was said to have lived ‘like an anchorite’. Back in Florence, the few hours of the day that were not devoted to commerce were spent with his mother, or alone, until he married. His wife, Simonetta, the daughter of a partner, is mentioned in none of Domenico’s surviving letters that date from before their marriage, and in only two from subsequent years. Though he was often away from home on business, no letters between Domenico and his wife were found in the archive of correspondence and ledgers that came to be stored in the Palazzo Campani.

  In 1379 Simonetta gave birth to their first son, Leone; a second son, Domenico, was born in 1381; the following year Simonetta died of a fever; she was twenty-five years old, and had been married to Domenico for a little less than three years. Her husband never remarried, but he had at least one other child, a daughter called Gaia, born to a slave of the same name, in Castelluccio, in 1414.

  The letters of Guglielmo di Girolamo suggest a man of gentle temperament, never censorious of the weaknesses of less moderate colleagues. He loaned money to former partners who had suffered misfortune; to a relative of his wife, afflicted with poor health, he made several gifts of money. Domenico Vielmi was of a sterner, less charitable cast of mind. In 1387, for example, he formed a company with a cousin, whose alleged indolence led to disagreement and the premature dissolution of the partnership. Two years later, the company that this cousin had subsequently created with five brothers from Lucca failed when their ship was taken by pirates off the coast of Morocco. Suddenly impoverished, the cousin appealed to Domenico for assistance. Though the man had four children, and was reduced to living in two rooms no larger than a pair of car
ts, Domenico refused to help. Within the year he had set up a company that provided insurance policies for sea-borne goods.

  Domenico was bolder in business than his father, and by the age of forty had become much wealthier than his father had been. He traded in wheat, wood, jewellery, hides, furs and paintings. From the Black Sea and the Balkans he imported sandalwood, gall nuts, indigo, erpiment, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, pepper, cassia, cardamon and myrrh. And whereas his father was devout as well as cautious, and always averse to any forms of commerce that might have been incompatible with the teachings of the Church, Domenico – though always honest in his observance of contractual obligations – had none of his father’s religious scruples. Not only did he offer contracts with deferred payment, thereby – in the opinion of many, and not only the priests – committing the sin of usury, he also entered into agreements with John Hawkwood, the terrible Englishman. It was said that when Hawkwood’s army massacred the people of Cesena in 1377, hundreds were slaughtered with weapons that had been obtained through Domenico Vielmi. Seven years later, when Hawkwood besieged Siena, having abandoned the Pope and sold his services to Florence, it was known that Vielmi had again furnished him with arms. In the same year, soon after Hawkwood had bought the castle of Montecchio, Vielmi dined with him there. Only when Hawkwood defaulted on a debt did Vielmi cease to associate with the butcher of Cesena.

  At the age of sixty, Domenico Vielmi had a house built for himself in Castelluccio, within sight of his birthplace. Two years later he put his sons in charge of the family’s interests in Florence, and left the city. He was the richest citizen in Castelluccio, and his house was renowned for its size and for its garden, in which he cultivated oranges, roses and violets. Above the portal was displayed, in stone, the coat of arms that Vielmi had acquired, showing a three-masted ship with a star above its central mast. In the countryside around Castelluccio he owned wheat fields, vineyards, olive groves and ilex woods, and produce from his farms filled the larders of the Palazzo Vielmi. After many years of self-denial, he now allowed himself luxuries at the table: he drank from glasses that had been made for him in Venice; his salt was served in a silver salt cellar, in the shape of a ship, fabricated in Florence; a huge silver bowl at the centre of the table held scented water. Whenever his sons and their wives and children came to visit, he would have a magnificent meal served for them. On one occasion they ate a peacock stuffed with capon and pork and cinnamon and nutmeg; the bird’s feathers were put back in place before it was brought to the table, and spirit-soaked cotton was ignited in its beak, so that it breathed fire like a dragon. Vielmi kept a menagerie in his garden, with porcupines, marmosets and peacocks. A man was employed solely to take care of the animals; he was one of six servants who worked for Domenico Vielmi; another was Gaia, who had golden hair, eyes the colour of opal, and a voice that was low and quiet and ‘as pleasing as the trickle of rainwater,’ as her owner wrote, in a rare instance of tenderness.

  But there was a blight on his life in Castelluccio, in the form of Muzio Bonvalori. Though only a boy when Domenico Vielmi settled in the town, within a few years Muzio Bonvalori had inflicted damage on the Vielmi household. On April 3rd, 1415, one of Vielmi’s servants, a girl by the name of Tina, was attacked by Muzio when, out hunting, he came upon her on a country road. Vielmi, who, several years earlier, had sold some items of Limoges enamel to the youth’s father, Ercole Bonvalori, sent a letter to the Rocca in protest at the assault. That same day, a reply was delivered, in which Ercole Bonvalori expressed his regret at this occurrence, and enclosed two gold florins: one for Vielmi and one for the young woman. In September, however, Muzio offended again. Riding past San Giovanni Battista, Vielmi’s stable boy was pulled from his saddle by Muzio Bonvalori, who demanded to know why the boy had presumed to give him so insulting a glance. Before any protest could be offered, a punch was delivered to the boy’s face, with such force that, from that day on, he had no sense of smell. Once more, an apology was sent from the Rocca, with two gold coins.

  For eighteen months there was no further trouble with Muzio Bonvalori, though the threat of it was always present whenever he was encountered. But then an incident occurred, involving Vielmi himself. One afternoon, on Piazza del Mercato, Vielmi was talking to a man whose father he had known many years before, in Mensano. It was a market day, and the square was a vast murmur of conversation, until Muzio Bonvalori appeared, trailing silence in his wake, as if a serpent were crawling through the crowd and every man was afraid to provoke it. Muzio strode up to Domenico Vielmi and the man from Mensano, pushed the latter aside, and announced that he wished to have a sword made of Toledo steel, to a specific design, and that he wished Vielmi to obtain this item for him. Vielmi informed the young lord that he now lived in retirement and was no longer a merchant. In Siena or in Florence, Vielmi went on, it would not be difficult to find traders who could procure the sword for him. But why, Muzio replied, should he go to Florence or Siena when Castelluccio was home to a man for whom the entire world was one vast market? He instructed Vielmi to present himself at the Rocca. The contempt with which this order was given made Vielmi courageous: he told the young lord that if his father were to make a request of him, he would do his best to oblige him. At this, Muzio spat in his eyes and smacked him across the face, before walking away.

  A day later, Domenico became ill. He lay in bed, sweating like a blacksmith, vomiting whatever was fed to him. A physician, believing that the patient had been poisoned by the sputum of Muzio Bonvalori, administered a succession of medicines, none of which had the slightest beneficial effect. Blood was taken from an arm, and Vielmi’s condition worsened. After a week he became delirious. Night after night he awoke screaming, and Gaia was always there. For three weeks she stayed at his bedside, praying, often with their daughter asleep beside her.

  After his recovery he was somewhat more diligent in his religious observances than had been his wont. He received the Eucharist every Sunday at Sant’Agostino, and presented himself for confession frequently. With a friar from Sant’Agostino he discussed the definitions and penalties of usury, and other matters of doctrine. He donated silver candlesticks to the church of Sant’Agostino, a silver reliquary to San Giovanni Battista, a pair of Pascal candles to San Lorenzo. He gave money to Santissimo Redentore. In 1419 he made a pilgrimage to Assisi, where he prayed all night in the church of San Damiano. In what spirit these things were done, we cannot be certain.

  In 1420 Vielmi made two significant contributions to the civic life of Castelluccio, by funding the expansion of the hospice in the building that would in time become the Museo Civico, and the reconstruction of the loggia on Piazza del Mercato. But in the same year Ercole Bonvalori died, and Muzio Bonvalori was thereby freed from all constraint. Vielmi’s servants were again insulted and assaulted. At the Porta di Siena, Gaia was knocked down by Muzio’s horse. Every morning, towards midday, Domenico Vielmi would go to Piazza del Mercato to see how the work on the loggia was progressing, and it was at the loggia, in October, 1421, that he had his last confrontation with Muzio Bonvalori. The day was unseasonably cold, and Vielmi was wearing a new cloak, of blue zetani, from Roumania. Muzio rode up to the loggia. For a few minutes, without comment, he watched the masons at their work. Then, turning to Vielmi, he expressed admiration for the cloak. He enquired about the fabric. ‘I should like one the same,’ he said. ‘May I buy one from you?’ Vielmi repeated the words he had spoken before: he was no longer a businessman. ‘In that case,’ said Muzio, ‘I should like to have that one.’ His cloak was not for sale, replied Vielmi, whereupon Muzio unsheathed a gleaming new sword. ‘Toledo steel,’ he told him, and invited him to admire its edge. ‘Now, I should like to have your cloak,’ he said, and again Vielmi said that he would not sell it. With a laugh, Muzio Bonvalori bade the old man to consider the charity of Saint Martin, then cut the cloak from Vielmi’s back and threw it over his horse’s neck.

  Before the year was out, one of Vielmi’s farms had been razed by fire
, and his emblem had been prised from the portal of his palazzo. In the spring, Domenico Vielmi left Castelluccio for Florence, where he lived out the rest of his days with his sons and their families. The house in Castelluccio was leased briefly, intermittently, but was unoccupied for most of the next two decades. The Vielmi family did not return to Castelluccio until after the repentance of Muzio Bonvalori, by which time Domenico Vielmi was in his grave.

  8.12

  Teresa opens the door to Robert, and there’s no kiss. He follows her into the living room, where the TV is on. She sits down on the sofa and he sits beside her; he looks at her and she looks at the screen, simulating absorption in the discussion of the budget crisis. ‘So, are things better or worse than we thought?’ he enquires.

  ‘Have no fear. Our government will save us,’ she answers, with a quick smile.

  They listen to a professor of economics berating a man from the ministry of finance, who then berates the professor of economics. When the two men begin shouting simultaneously, she says: ‘So? How is she?’

  ‘Fine. A bit tired.’

  ‘Of course. But she’s eating?’ The question is toneless; she hasn’t taken her eyes off the screen.

  ‘She is.’

  ‘Good,’ says Teresa. On the TV a man is arguing that the south of the country should be left to fend for itself.

  ‘She’s going to stay for the festival,’ says Robert.

  ‘Good idea.’

  The proponent of separatism is now being rebuked by the professor of economics. ‘I need a glass of water,’ says Robert. ‘Want one?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  When he comes back into the room she’s not watching the debate – her eyes are aimed over the screen, at a section of blank wall. As soon as he has sat down again, she answers the question he was about to ask: ‘I was talking to Vito,’ she tells him. ‘While you were at the restaurant,’ she says. Her gaze slides down to the TV.