“So unlucky in things you love, Bambina dear,” she said and then smiled at Lydgate.
Tears came into Bambina’s eyes. She grabbed her sketch from Lydgate and excused herself. She didn’t come back for the rest of the meal. Renata’s behavior had revealed a cruel streak that a lover should take note of. I certainly was fast revising my original opinion of Renata, which, like so many strong emotions of its nature, was based on limited contact. But Lydgate appeared as infatuated as ever, and joined in Renata’s laughter.
Luigi stared morosely at Renata. She seemed annoyed and said, “If you wear a face like that with your patients, Luigi, you’re going to scare them to death, not cure them.”
It was to Lydgate’s credit that he didn’t laugh this time, although the ghost of a smile twitched at the edges of his mouth. A few moments later, when he was raising his glass of my father’s finest merlot, his hand slipped and the ruby-red liquid stained his starched white shirtfront.
Luigi neither looked in my direction nor said anything, but it was clear that he believed he himself had been the indirect agent of Lydgate’s accident.
My mother had been growing more uncomfortable. To smooth things over, she started to tell a story from her childhood in Naples. It was about a tribe of gypsies and their stealing of a beautiful little boy—one of a set of twins—from a neighboring family. I had heard the story many times, and so had my father, who had become increasingly less patient with it over the years.
After my mother’s recital, one of our cousins from Milan matched it with a tale that somehow also managed to involve both gypsies and twins. From then on the pattern was set for the rest of the evening as many of the guests recounted stories, which soon began to take on a distinctly ribald flavor when we passed from the dining room to the salon overlooking the Grand Canal.
I couldn’t help but be reminded of Boccaccio’s ladies and gentlemen killing time in the countryside while the plague ravages Florence.
Half an hour after we retired to the salon, Bambina, looking even more lively after what must have been a good cry, returned. Renata was finishing a story about a sailor and a mermaid, which despite its risque elements, she had delivered in a listless way. In fact, as the story had progressed she seemed to lose more and more energy and become paler and paler. No sooner did the thought occur to me that Luigi might have had some mesmeric influence over her than I quickly banished it as ridiculous.
When Renata finished, Lydgate indulged in a story of even more dubious taste about a coal miner from the north of England and his two daughters.
After I had acquitted myself by telling an innocuous anecdote about the rivalry between Giorgione and Titian, Bambina, who was becoming increasingly restless, made her contribution.
It was about the peacock brooch of gold and precious stones my mother was wearing. Most of us knew the story. It was part of the history of both the Da Capo-Zendrini and Zeno families, but Bambina told it as if to an audience hearing it for the first time. She made the most of its mystery and high adventure—the Turkish assault on old Constantinople, Venetian merchant ships sailing defiantly through the Bosphorus beneath the cannons of the Turks, near escapes from barbarous forms of death, and the rivalry between the Da Capo-Zendrini and Zeno families.
Throughout the account our attention was divided between Bambina and the brooch sparkling on the front of my mother’s Fortuny dress. Of everyone there the most fascinated by the brooch seemed to be Signora Zeno, who considered it with her dark eyes slightly narrowed.
It wasn’t perhaps the wisest choice of a tale because of the bad blood that existed between our families due to the brooch, but Bambina carried it off in such a light, amusing spirit that even my parents didn’t seem offended.
No sooner did she finish than Renata emitted a loud cry. She had become even paler and a slick film of sweat coated her face. She stood up abruptly and seemed dizzy, but she strode to a far corner of the room and pulled Gemma and her doll out from a shadowed recess.
When Renata asked her how long she had been there, the frightened child said that she had come down with her aunt Bambina. Whereupon Renata turned to her sister and started to berate her for her stupidity in not only having dragged Gemma from her bed at such an ungodly hour but then making it worse by having Lydgate go on with his story when she knew that Gemma would be all ears.
Although I had to agree with Renata, I sympathized with Bambina, who, for the second time that evening, was suffering from her sister’s sharp tongue. I had the sense that Renata was about to say more when she reeled slightly, let go of Gemma’s hand, and seemed about to fall. Lydgate was next to her in a moment and led her to a chair. Luigi went over. She was given water and a few minutes later Lydgate and Luigi carried her up to the Caravaggio Room.
Gemma began to cry. She said that it was her fault her mother was sick and that she wanted to take care of her as she always did. Bambina took Gemma from the salon.
Quite understandably, our group then broke up and we retired. My mother, trying to put the best face on things, said that she was sure Renata would be fine after a good night’s rest. Tomorrow we all had an outing to Torcello to look forward to, not to mention the ball in the evening, which was to be the highlight of the weekend.
But there was no outing to Torcello and no ball, for by morning Renata was dead.
Signora Zeno found her body lying at the foot of the bed. She immediately summoned Luigi. I followed him to the Caravaggio Room.
Renata’s beautiful face was contorted. There was blood on her mouth, and her hands were like two claws. The scent of perfume hung in the air and, with my seminary training, what came into my mind was: the odor of sanctity. The pleasant scent that we have been told surrounds those blessed in the service of our Lord.
I looked up at the Caravaggio. It was tilted slightly to one side, and for a few moments the boy seemed to smile at me again with living malevolence as he had when I discovered Flora’s body.
Renata’s death was said to have been from a cerebral hemorrhage. With the help of Luigi’s connections and a large sum of money from Andrew Lydgate, Signora Zeno prevented an autopsy. She claimed she didn’t want her daughter’s body violated.
Little remains to be told. Gemma was raised by her father’s parents in Perugia. Rumors reached us that Signora Zeno believed Renata would never have died if she hadn’t been “forced” to sleep in the Caravaggio Room. Our two families gradually drifted apart. There was a brief rapprochement when Bambina took it into her head that I might be interested in marrying her. When it became apparent that I wasn’t, Signora Zeno and Bambina cut off all relations.
A week after Renata’s death my father decided to remove the Caravaggio painting from the room, put it back in the lumber room, and find a buyer as soon as possible. He no longer cared what this said about his faith in God. Three family members dead in the Caravaggio Room, all of them women and all on his side of the family, was too much to blame on coincidence. The room was cursed.
But as my father was reaching for the painting, a sharp pain stabbed him in his chest, and he stopped. He didn’t need another warning. He immediately left the room. He gave instructions for the panes of the doors to the loggia to be painted black. All the doors were to be locked. Then he gave orders that no blood relatives of the Da Capo-Zendrini family were ever to enter it.
During the rest of his lifetime, and up until now in mine, none ever has. I promised my father that I would respect his wishes and not “tamper with fate,” as he came to express it to himself.
I no longer know what I myself believe or suspect. All I do know is that the Caravaggio Room has been directly associated with three deaths—Nonna Teresa, Flora, and Renata—and indirectly with that of my brother, Amerigo. I would be lying and deceiving myself if I didn’t admit that the painting has a power over me, as does my promise to my father.
And so the room has remained, hidden away, locked, with its sad and dark history. Someday I hope I will do what my father tried t
o do. Remove the painting. Make the room over into one like all the others at the Ca’ da Capo.
When and if that day comes, then this letter to my future child will no longer be necessary—unless it be as a warning that even those of us who believe in God and the saints are as weak in the grip of superstition as the most faithless heathen.
PART THREE
The Brooch
1
When Urbino finished reading the Conte Alvise’s memoirs, he put down the sheets of paper he had fetched from the library. They were a copy of the originals the Contessa had first read over twenty years ago. For a few moments the only sound was that of the violent rushes of wind against the windows.
“Isn’t Barbara the deceitful little devil?” Sebastian said, breaking the silence. “A locked room! A malevolent painting! Mysterious deaths! A jewel with a dark past! If we had known about all this before, we would have come a long time ago, wouldn’t we, Viola?”
His sister didn’t share his excitement.
“Poor Barbara,” she said. “Now I understand what she meant when she spoke of bad blood between the families, but surely no one holds anything against her?”
“You know how these Eye-talian blood feuds are, Viola,” her brother found it necessary to remind her. “No one rests until both sides are destroyed. Barbara is right in the line of fire. Don’t forget she’s an interloper, being a Brit and all, and this Bambina wanted to marry her husband. I say she’s in for it, and maybe we are, too, being her blood.”
Viola gave him a weary look.
“But what about the rest of the story, Urbino?” she said. “I mean, what happened after she read the Conte’s letter? By the way, I hope you’re not breaking any confidences.”
“I’m not—and I wouldn’t. Barbara has long given up keeping any of this a secret. She would have told you both under the right circumstances.”
Urbino freshened their drinks and told them the rest of the story.
“Strange as it might seem, Barbara didn’t immediately examine the room. Not for at least a week. When she did she found a dusty, moldy bedroom with some fine pieces of furniture and, of course, the Caravaggio, which far from having suffered from neglect, seemed to gleam with life. As a subject and composition she didn’t find the Caravaggio in any way pleasing, but Caravaggio has never been one of her favorite painters.
“She was in a quandary. Should she renovate the room completely? But what would she then do with the Caravaggio? Sell it? Donate it to the Accademia? Put it back in storage? Or should she leave the room just as it was? In the end that’s what she decided. From both fear and the inability to make a decision. Better, she thought, to keep things as they had been since 1938.
“The only member of the staff who had been here at the time of the house party was Mauro. The others had long since died or left the Da Capo-Zendrini service. Mauro had been only fifteen and had worked in the kitchen. He told her nothing that she didn’t already know from the Conte’s letter—in fact, far less, of course—but she felt that there were things he wasn’t saying. She didn’t press him, however, because she knew his loyalty over the years to the Conte and remembered how the Conte had forbade her to ask questions of any of the staff. She made some tentative inquiries among members of the family but got nowhere.
“She decided to end her halfhearted attempts to learn more. She felt as if she was betraying the Conte now that he was dead, despite his final wish for her to know the story of the Caravaggio Room.
“And so the room was relocked.
“Then I came into the picture. I met Barbara a few years after the Conte died. You know I write biographies, and I got it into my head that it would be interesting to write the biography—a history—of the Ca’ da Capo. I had toyed with the idea of doing the same thing for my Palazzo Uccello but put it aside when I learned that the centenary of the Da Capo-Zendrini family’s possession of the building was coming up in a few years. It would make a nice gift to Barbara and could be presented to the state archives and the Marciana Library. I detected that she was less than eager but thought it was because she felt it was an imposition on me.
“In the course of my research I came up against the locked room. At first Barbara was evasive, said it was closed off because it was in severe need of repair. I persisted, however, and eventually gained access to the room and its history, at least what Barbara knew from the Conte’s letter. Needless to say I was intrigued, and with her reluctant permission began to make inquiries to learn more about the painting and the room itself. I promised that nothing detrimental to Alvise or the family would find its way into the monograph I was putting together.
“I had very little success learning any more than was already known. The family was even less willing to speak with me than they had been with Barbara. The only contact I ever had with the Zenos was a brief note from the signora in response to my detailed letter. It said that she, her daughter, Bambina, and her granddaughter, Gemma, had no wish to review an episode of the past that was so disturbing to them all. Understandable, under the circumstances.
“I decided to contact Gemma directly. She was living in London, where she had acquired a reputation as a portrait painter. Barbara had met her several times, both before and after the Conte died, but they had never progressed beyond the state of acquaintanceship.
“I had little hope of learning much from Gemma since she had been only eight at the time of her mother’s death. As it turned out, I was right. The few memories she had, she found difficult to sort out from what she had overheard or was told by her family over the years. The main thing she conveyed was a pathetic sense of the confusion and fright she felt that weekend. After all these years she’s still bitter about the death of her mother. It changed the direction of her life, although she certainly has turned out well. But inside she still seems to be the little girl abandoned by her mother when she died so suddenly.
“I had more success with the provenance of the painting. The family of Signor Ugo Rigon, from whom the Conte’s father bought the house, was given the painting by a dissolute nobleman who lost heavily at the Ridotto gaming tables to a Rigon in the middle of the eighteenth century. How the nobleman came to have the painting and who owned it before he did I don’t know, but it appears to be one of the paintings commissioned by Cardinal Francesco del Monte, a highly cultured but somewhat dissolute ecclesiastic who took Caravaggio under his wing. I didn’t come across anything that associated the painting with bad luck or violence, but the fact that it was consigned to a lumber room in the palazzo and never mentioned to the Da Capo-Zendrini family when they bought the building a hundred years ago might indicate that it wasn’t considered a desirable object. Of course, there’s the possibility that the painting was forgotten by the former owner, who seems to have been a bit of an eccentric.
“That’s about it. I wrote the history of the building, but never felt happy with it because I had so many unanswered questions about that room. I admit I’d become somewhat obsessed with it and felt that all the mystery had to be brought to an end. I prevailed upon Barbara to have the room restored, not to change anything in it, and to treat it just like any other room. She eventually agreed and the room was fixed up a year ago, but she’s never used it. She saw no need to make a point of having guests stay in it when there were more desirable rooms available—more desirable, that is, even apart from the history of the Caravaggio Room.”
Viola had a pensive look on her face when he finished.
“You have a lot of influence with Barbara,” she said.
“Influence? Well, we think a lot of each other’s opinion. We try to help each other in whatever way we can.”
“And you think it was a help to her to encourage her to treat the room like any other?”
“It was my intention.” Then, as this seemed to leave too much open to question, he added: “I still think it was the right thing.”
“But no one has slept in it yet, have they?” Sebastian said. “You won’t be able to bre
athe easy until then—until Molly wakes up raring to go in the A.M.” A troubled look came into his eyes, however, and his grin faded. With peculiar forcefulness he added: “And I’m sure she will!”
“I’m sure she will, too,” Urbino said. “I don’t believe a room can cause someone’s death. I can understand a bad luck room, so to speak, but when you get down to it, most rooms in a building of this age must have their sad stories, as the Conte himself said in his memoirs.”
For a few moments each glanced around the comfortable room with its furniture, art, and bibelots that reflected the Contessa’s sensibility so clearly. The exception was, perhaps, the flagrant Veronese over the fireplace, the wedding gift from the Conte Alvise.
“‘Blood everywhere,’” Sebastian intoned in a deep, sepulchral voice. “That’s what Molly said as soon as we came down the steps of the railway station, didn’t she, Viola? She probably saw us all wading through the sticky liquid in just about every room in this place. God, can you imagine the brutality even here in—what does Barbara call it—her salotto blu? Poor souls knifed by pointed comments, bludgeoned by turned backs, poisoned by false smiles. The Murder of Reputation! The Slaying of Trust! The Death of Innocence!”
Urbino gave a little smile of agreement which he hoped Sebastian didn’t misinterpret. He had often thought along similar lines himself about the dangers of the overly socialized life. Under other circumstances he would enjoy pursuing the topic with Sebastian, if the young man could abandon just a little of his archness.
Viola, with a look of sufferance, said to Urbino, “You said that you don’t believe a room can cause someone’s death.”
“Unless he’s extremely susceptible and believes that it can. In that case, he can be frightened to death.”
“There’s another possibility, of course. Someone could take advantage of the idea of a curse to cover his own villainy,” Viola suggested in a matter-of-fact way.
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