Death in the Palazzo

by Edward Sklepowich

  In due course the painting was cleaned by the monk. Then through his contacts in Florence and Rome, it was authenticated as a Caravaggio. Many impressive offers to buy it were made but my father refused them all without a thought and did as he had originally intended. The painting was installed in one of the bedrooms on the second floor.

  I remember the excitement in the house. Family and friends came to look at the famous picture of the mandolin player in his makeup and wig. One old man said that it would have been more appropriate if it had been hung in our former palazzo in San Polo, since this building was near the Bridge of Teats. There, during the days when the city was a Sodom of the sea, courtesans often dressed as boys in doublet and hose to attract Venetian men into their rooms when they had no success exposing their breasts.

  My brother Amerigo and I were the first to sleep in the room. We sneaked in late that night after the party was over and had our own fun. To say we slept, though, is not exactly true. We spent most of the night laughing and making up stories about the boy in the painting, and during some friendly fisticuffs broke a Chinese vase. Perhaps one of the maids noticed next morning that the coverlet had been disturbed, but no one ever said anything to us, and because we had broken the vase, we kept our silence.

  When Amerigo died three years later of a disease of the kidneys that made his body swell, I looked at his bloated face in the coffin and thought of the boy in the painting. The mortician had even put a faint coating of rouge and lipstick on his face. I have often wondered if my father noticed the faint similarity in his profound grief over having lost his eldest son.

  Perhaps I was the only one to make an association between my brother’s death and the painting in what had by then come to be known as the Caravaggio Room. Certainly it was a childish fancy.

  The room was put into occasional service and no one complained of anything more serious than a night of tossing and turning.

  Then, two years later, Nonna Teresa, my father’s mother, slept there. Her regular room needed to be repaired because of water damage.

  Her maid, Giuseppina, found her dead in bed the next morning. The doctor said her heart, which had troubled her for the previous twenty years, had given out during the night and that she had died peacefully in her sleep.

  Just because Nonna Teresa had died in the room was no reason not to use it again, of course. Death in those days almost always took place at home. Families couldn’t become overly sentimental about the rooms where their loved ones breathed their last breaths. With rare exceptions they were put into use as soon afterward as was decent, given the demands of mourning.

  A year after Nonna Teresa’s death, my cousin Flora slept in the room. She chose it herself, precisely because of the Caravaggio, which she had heard so much about.

  Flora was a beautiful girl of fifteen, a year younger than I was at the time. She was my father’s grandniece, thus my second cousin, as such things are calculated. An only child just as I had become since the death of Amerigo, Flora lived with her parents in Naples. She would visit us for several weeks most summers, when her parents were obliged to make a circuit of the spas with an aged, wealthy relative. Flora was an asthmatic, and Venice, though subject to its own malaria, was within occasional reach of the cool breezes from the Dolomites.

  Whenever Flora visited, my mother, who loved her like the daughter she hadn’t been blessed with, would take her to her friend Don Mariano Fortuny’s studio. There Flora would select whatever patterned fabric caught her eye while I wandered through the rooms and marveled at all the paintings of nymphs. On Flora’s last visit she selected, after her usual pleasurable indecision, a lovely pezza of green silk velvet which reminded her of the robe of the boy in the Caravaggio painting.

  That afternoon Flora and I spent in the conservatory of the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini. With its jungle of plants, smell of damp soil and fungus, and humidity, it wasn’t the best place for someone with her affliction. But Flora, although she loved my city, was nostalgic for her own Naples, and she felt a kinship with the profusion of plants. I often thought that her name had created some mysterious link between herself and the blossoming world.

  She would insist on inhaling the fragrance of the flowers and even take it upon herself to spray the roses, her favorite flower, with the special concoction kept on a shelf. My father had warned everyone in the house about this spray, made up by a young pharmacist in the Dorsoduro quarter, for it contained a deadly poison. Whenever one of the staff or my mother picked up the can, they wore gloves and covered their mouth. But Flora was fearless and deaf to my warnings. Perhaps her name gave her not only an affinity for the conservatory but also led her to believe that she had some special immunity to its dangers.

  On that afternoon Flora and I read passages from books aloud to each other and played cards. My mother had gone to pay a visit to a friend in the Castello quarter. When she returned to find us in the conservatory and learned that we had been there for the whole of the afternoon, she berated me for encouraging Flora in such foolhardy behavior. Flora, after telling my mother that she shouldn’t blame me for what had been her decision, retired to her room.

  When the dinner bell sounded, Flora didn’t appear. We waited for a few minutes, then my mother asked me to fetch her. Obviously the poor girl had tired herself out in the conservatory—this with a sharp look at me—and had fallen into a deep sleep.

  I knocked on the door of the Caravaggio Room. When there was no answer, I knocked again and called for her, but still with no response. I opened the door slowly.

  The room was dark. Flora or one of the maids had drawn the drapes so that whatever light was still available outside didn’t penetrate the room.

  I switched on the light. My eyes immediately went to the painting, which dominated the room more than anything else in it. The mocking smile of the boy in wig and makeup flashed at me. For a moment it seemed as if he was alive. I shivered. Then I saw Flora.

  She was lying at the foot of the bed, grasping the piece of Fortuny material. I went over to her.

  “Flora?” I whispered. She didn’t respond. I looked down at her and knew that she never would again.

  Her eyes stared up at me. Her mouth was open. Her lips were blue.

  I remember very little after this. My mother and father came up. I was sent to my room. I sat there, stunned, unable to cry. Flora was dead.

  Dead, the doctor said, because of an attack precipitated by her hours in the conservatory, smelling the flowers, breathing the oppressive air, and spraying the roses. But I didn’t believe him. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to admit some responsibility for her death for not having discouraged her from staying in the conservatory.

  No, Flora had died because of the Caravaggio painting. The smile of the strange-looking boy had told me that.

  Soon what was only the fancy of a boy saying good-bye to his childhood became the talk of the family, and then of friends and neighbors, as they remembered the death of Nonna Teresa in the same room. The Caravaggio Room was “bad luck.” It had the “evil eye.” There was a “curse” on it. And it was all because of the painting of the young man, which was baleful in some way that couldn’t be explained by reason.

  I kept my own counsel, but had many nightmares. Some of them were of my brother Amerigo with the face of the boy with makeup.

  Almost ten years passed. No one had forgotten what had happened in the Caravaggio Room. No—but the mind and the heart can become dulled and deadened with time. Even the face of a departed loved one dims over the years and the memory needs to be refreshed by looking at a photograph. This was the situation with my mother and most of our family and friends, but not with me and not, as I eventually came to realize, with my father.

  My own uneasiness about the Caravaggio Room remained as keen as ever. There was not a time I passed its door—not locked, but always closed—that I did not think of Nonna Teresa, Flora, and my brother. I could feel the boy smiling at me behind the door.

  My father�
�s response was different, as befitted a man of his mature years and unusual sensibility. He was troubled as much—if not more—by his fear, and what it meant to him as a religious man, as he was by the room itself. In his youth there had been some expectation that he would enter a monastery. He was always a model of saintly, though never overly pious or self-righteous, behavior.

  God, he had been taught, did not manifest His love or justice in heathenish fashion. Nor should a believer put any faith in the power of objects, except those blessed by Mother Church, like the miraculous body of Santa Lucia near the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini or the icon of the Virgin and Child at the Salute. In other words, my father’s faith was at war with his cold fear of the room in which his mother and his grandniece had died.

  He consulted a friend who was a priest attached to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints at the Vatican. This priest examined the room several months after Flora’s death, said some prayers, burned incense, and assured my father that he need have no fear of the room.

  Despite the priest’s visit and my father’s fervent attempt to follow the revealed truths of the Church, the Caravaggio Room remained in limbo for almost ten years. It was cleaned seasonally and used for storage, but no one ever slept there again until May of 1938.

  My mother’s way of dealing with difficulties was often to pretend they didn’t exist. With the world around us so confused and becoming more so, thanks to Hitler and our own Mussolini, my mother decided to forget all troubles and have a big gala at the Ca’ da Capo.

  My father was less than enthusiastic. He feared that my mother was inviting so many guests that the Caravaggio Room would probably have to be used.

  “What are you afraid of, Amerigo?” my mother said. “Father Olivieri blessed the room years ago, not that such a thing was necessary. It’s ignorant superstition, and this is 1938. We’re all modern and informed—and we trust in God.”

  My father could disagree with neither the advanced date nor with what were surely my mother’s far from artless comments on God and superstition. He said no more about the upcoming gala, although I detected in him an increasing uneasiness as the day drew near.

  I was twenty-five and had finished my studies at Bologna with no great success and no prospects for the future. Everything seemed bleak around me—my immediate world and the larger world outside.

  There were two guests coming to my mother’s gala who, I hoped, would be able to lift my spirits. One was Luigi Vasco, a chum from my days at Bologna. He was a few years older and had successfully completed his medical studies. The other was my third cousin on my father’s side, the beautiful Renata Bellini, a widow of only twenty-five. Despite all the warnings of my mother, I was hopelessly in love with her. It made no difference to me that she had an eight-year-old daughter and a questionable reputation since the death of her husband—along with her father, Signor Zeno—two years before in a boating accident.

  My mother’s patience with Renata, whom she wouldn’t have found sympathetic even if I hadn’t been interested in her, was tried from the first half-hour of her arrival.

  “But Gemma can’t possibly stay in the same room, Bianca. She’s becoming such a big girl, aren’t you, my love?”

  Gemma, a sweet-faced girl with chestnut hair, nodded her head. Cradled in her arms was a doll. Perhaps it was because I had always wanted a little sister to love and protect or because she reminded me of Flora. Whatever it was, I felt an immediate bond with the little girl, whom I had never seen before. She looked at me directly with her large brown eyes and smiled, then whispered something to her doll.

  “As you wish, Renata, but we are a little short of rooms …” My mother trailed off and cast a nervous glance at my father, who was talking to Luigi, the doctor, and Renata’s mother, Marialuisa Zeno.

  “Short of rooms? You make the Ca’ da Capo sound like a pensione. Ah, but I understand! You’re not still locking up that room where Cousin Flora died! Gemma and I needn’t suffer because of some medieval superstition!”

  My mother was silent for a few moments and gave the appearance of considering the possibilities.

  “Very well, Renata. I’m sure we can make arrangements to accommodate your sweet girl.”

  What transpired because of Renata’s insistence on a private bedroom was that Gemma was given the room that had been set aside for them both, and Renata was installed in the Caravaggio Room. What my father had feared had happened. The Caravaggio Room was going to be used after almost ten years.

  As soon as Luigi and I were alone an hour later, he made it clear why Renata didn’t want Gemma in the same room. He was a close friend of the Zenos and claimed to know everything about them.

  “She wants to entertain the Englishman,” he said. “She wouldn’t care if she had to sleep in a closet as long as it’s private and she can be with him.”

  He indicated an attractive man in his thirties who had arrived in the company of Signora Zeno, her younger daughter, Bambina, and Renata and Gemma. He had met the Zenos through an English friend married to a Roman, who had been tutoring the family in English for the past several years. I had exchanged only a few words with him earlier and had summed up Andrew Lydgate as one of those Englishmen with an abundance of money and leisure time and a deep love for all things Italian. That this deep love might extend to Renata had not occurred to me until Luigi made his comment.

  I don’t know if I was more surprised at what Luigi said or the way he said it. He sounded bitter and disappointed. He went on to explain that Signora Zeno was determined to secure Lydgate as Renata’s husband.

  “Even a woman as beautiful as Renata has her liabilities,” he said.

  “The child?”

  “Yes, and she has almost no money. You know Bellini squandered what little he had.”

  I observed that surely many men other than Lydgate would be very happy to take on the responsibility of Renata and her daughter. My comment had the effect I intended. Luigi could now be in no doubt that I shared his admiration for the beautiful Renata. He became all scowls and glowers, not all of them directed against me, by any means, but mainly against Lydgate. And when Luigi scowled and glowered, he did it like no man I had ever met before or have since.

  Before dinner that night I pointed out to him that rather than being at odds because of our admiration for Renata, we should feel a brotherly kinship, all the more so since neither of us seemed to stand any chance because of Lydgate.

  “This isn’t a game for me, my friend,” he said. “I don’t intend to be made a fool of.”

  What he meant by this I don’t know, other than that Renata might have given him reason to hope. If she had, it would have been against the wishes and advice of her mother, who, despite her regard for Luigi, would not want a husband for her daughter who had little more than his medical degree and a good heart to recommend him.

  Then Luigi said a strange thing.

  “Tonight during dinner Lydgate will spill wine all over the front of his shirt.”

  I started to laugh, but caught myself when I saw Luigi’s stern look. I remembered then that he had an interest in hypnotism and the power of suggestion, and had often entertained me with stories of how by the power of his own silent will, he could occasionally affect a response in people’s behavior. To me it was all nonsense and coincidence.

  It didn’t occur to me that I was being inconsistent, considering my own superstition about the Caravaggio Room.

  We were a relatively small group for dinner—just my parents and myself, Luigi, Signora Zeno, Renata, Bambina, Lydgate, and half a dozen assorted cousins and friends. Little Gemma was in the kitchen with the staff. A storm had swept in on us from the sea, and the rain was beating against the windows of the dining room. It seemed to make us enjoy the comforts of our table even more.

  I had Lydgate on my right and Bambina on my left. Bambina wasn’t her Christian name, of course. She had been baptized Cesarina, but had always been called Bambina by friends and family. What started as an
endearment soon became her name, and as inextricable a part of her as her round little body and sharp mind.

  As sometimes happens in siblings, Bambina and Renata were as different as different could be. Bambina was rosy-cheeked and plump, with dark Medusa locks that she tossed in her enthusiasms—and there was a considerable amount of tossing because she was full of enthusiasms. Ten years later, when I was still unmarried, she turned some of these enthusiasms toward me, but without any result. Perhaps she will still find a suitable husband.

  At my mother’s gala, her enthusiasms were all for Lydgate, however. Placed as I was between them, her clever comments either flew past me to their intended target or artfully rebounded from me to him. I enjoyed her display, for she was intelligent, with a knowledge of history and art. She also had some talent as an artist and had kindly made my mother a hostess gift of a charming sketch of our cat, Principessa. She insisted that Mother have it fetched so she could show it round.

  “Absolutely beautiful,” Lydgate said. “Look at those eyes. You can almost hear her purr, can’t you?”

  But as he spoke, he wasn’t looking at the sketch in his hands but across it at Renata. She returned his look with a smile.

  Bambina suddenly hurled herself into an extended account of the life of Petrarch, who, it seems, was also a cat lover, and was about to recite one of that poet’s sonnets to his beloved Laura.

  Renata, however, interrupted her, not very graciously. She said that her sister’s head was full of silly thoughts. She indicated the sketch of the cat and with a cruel smile said that it was good that Bambina had made a sketch of her beloved Dido, since she had lost the cat itself.