by David Hewson
“Scacchi sends his lad,” he said to someone behind him. “Obviously not man enough for the job himself. Come in. We won’t bite. Like some tea?”
I entered the place and found myself in a tiny, ill-lit room requiring candles even in the middle of the day. There was a pleasant smell not unlike attar of roses. The floor was carpeted, and every seat was covered in some kind of soft drape. On the lone table stood a globe and several books. In the corner, obscured by the shadow cast from the window shutter, a lady sat most upright, as if observing me.
“I think we should be going, sir,” I answered. “Vivaldi abhors lateness.”
“Decisive, eh! I think they found you a man in the city at last, Rebecca. You will take good care of her . . . um?”
“Lorenzo, sir. Lorenzo Scacchi. My uncle sent me.”
“Quite. I am sorry I cannot cure his claw, by the way. Even Hebrew medics have their limitations.”
Some kind of debt was being repaid here, I gathered. I was risking my neck not just to ingratiate ourselves with the Red Priest but to save Leo a doctor’s bill.
“I am Doctor Jacopo Levi. You shall call me Jacopo,” he told me, extending a hand. “And your ward shall be my much-loved sister, Rebecca, Lorenzo. I’d do this myself, but that would only double the risk and I fear this city is too unruly for her to venture out alone. So be wary. I don’t want to rescue either of you from the Doge’s dungeons.”
“I will do my best, sir,” I replied earnestly, watching the lady rise from the corner and move towards us, into the narrow shaft of light that entered the room from the single, small window facing onto the square. “I will do everything in my power . . .”
And do you know? I haven’t a clue what I said after that. These next few moments are burned upon my memory, but they contain only images, nothing as mundane as words. I am back where I started when I tried to describe the wonder of St. Mark’s Basin on Ascension Day. Some things defy those clumsy old foot soldiers of the alphabet. Ovid could dedicate an entire work to this lady, and perhaps in another incarnation did, but all my humble pen can give you are facts.
Rebecca Levi is, she tells me, just turned twenty-five, though she seems to me closer to my own age. She is a touch beneath my height, very slim, but with an upright bearing, straight-backed, and a strong pair of shoulders (there’s the fiddle player for you). On our first meeting she wore a fine black velvet dress that ran from her neck to ankles, sleeves cut to the elbow, as plain as you might ask for. Around her slim white throat was a narrow band of roped gold, and from her ears fell two gems, each scarlet red, of what breed I haven’t a clue, nor could I care. Rebecca has no need of jewels. Her face shone out of the gloom like that of a Madonna painted by a master in order to enlighten some dank church corner (there goes my soul—perhaps this letter is not for posting after all).
Let me start with the chin, which is delicately rounded and always facing up to you, as if to speak. Her mouth is inquisitive. She has the whitest teeth I have ever seen, each like some small, exquisite pearl. Her nose is modestly snubbed. Her skin has the pale, luminescent quality of a full winter moon, with only a faint trace of colour to her cheeks. She has brown eyes the shape of some precious opal from an emperor’s crown, eyes that twinkle, as if laughing, and never leave the person she is facing, not until their business is done. And above all this loveliness, like a frame to some gorgeous piece of classical portraiture, is as wild a head of hair as you might find on one of those gypsy lasses who used to tease us at the fair: loose and cascading, a sea of feral, shining curls and waves the colour of chestnuts fresh from the tree in October. It falls around that superlative face all the way to her shoulders, and I have no idea how much of this is artifice and how much simple wilful abandonment, though I can say that from time to time she runs her fingers through her locks as if to free or shape them, and this provides a moment which will leave an entire monastery of monks praying for instant release back into the wicked world.
My auditory senses appeared to fail me until I heard two quick, deliberate coughs from behind: Jacopo trying to bring me to my senses. I felt hot and somewhat giddy and hoped the room’s darkness was enough to cover the blood that had undoubtedly risen in my cheeks.
“He does speak, doesn’t he?” she asked in a voice, slightly accented, that is as light and musical as a flute.
Jacopo’s face came round to meet mine, his expression mock quizzical. “He did. You haven’t bewitched another, old girl? I’m clean out of broken-heart ointment.”
She giggled. No, be truthful now. She snorted! Quite unladylike, and I couldn’t help bursting into laughter too.
“There,” she said, and, with a sudden purpose, picked up a battered fiddle case from the floor, then pulled a scarlet silk scarf from her skirt pockets and tucked the best part of those lovely tresses beneath it. “Lorenzo has found his voice again. May we go now?”
Jacopo bent down to kiss his sister, an act which made my heart perform a rapid somersault inside my chest. Then he took me by the arm. “Take care of her, my boy. She’ll impress the hell out of this priest of yours, and then the fun really begins. But if anyone should challenge you, profess all ignorance and say I sent you both on this escapade, on pain of death. You’ll be amazed the things they’ll believe of a Jew in this town.”
“I will do no such thing, sir!”
Jacopo’s eyes blazed at me with a sudden anger. “You will follow my instructions to the letter, lad, or drop this escapade at once. There’s danger behind this laughter, and none of us should forget it!”
There. Two threats in the space of a single afternoon. One from my good Christian uncle, promising to incriminate me in something of which I am quite innocent. The second from some Hebrew stranger who pledged to exculpate me of a crime I was about to commit in full knowledge of my guilt.
“Very well,” I agreed, making it clear from my tone that this last part was not to my taste at all. “If you insist, then I seem to have little choice in this matter.”
“Splendid.” Jacopo was his old, amiable self again.
Outside, in the ghetto square, none looked at us twice. We strode quickly out beneath a nearby arch, over the bridge, past the guard, and into the city. Close to the church of San Marcuola and a jetty where we might find an inexpensive boat to San Marco, Rebecca suddenly grasped my arm and pulled me into a dark alley by a fish vendor’s stall. There she snatched the scarf off her head, shook her hair as if to free it from some prison, and ran her strong, slim fingers through the curls.
“If anyone asks, Lorenzo, we are cousins and visitors to the city, and any o fence we may have caused comes from our ignorance alone.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Lorenzo!”
“Yes, Rebecca.”
She seemed pleased with that. “Aren’t you even the tiniest bit afraid? I am.”
In all honesty, the thought had not occurred to me. I was too engrossed in other matters to consider much the cost of failure. I worded my reply carefully. “My father often said that fear is mainly a reason men cite for doing things they’d rather not. And that what we should fear most doesn’t lie in the external world but in our own hearts.”
“Clever man,” she said.
“I believe he was. I miss him, and my mother also. It is because they are dead that I must live with my uncle.”
She regarded me with an expression I could not decipher. “I am sorry to hear that, Lorenzo. Tell me. Do you think any will look at me now and see a Jew?”
“No,” I answered honestly. But they will look at you anyway, I thought. Who could blame them?
13
At large in the city
ON THE WAY TO LA PIETÀ, FIDDLE CASE AT THE END OF his arm, Daniel enjoyed the promised detour. Scacchi had led him, at a slow but steady pace, south from San Cassian into San Polo, past the great Gothic hulk of the Frari, with its tall campanile, to the Scuola di San Rocco. Daniel recalled the place from the books in the college library. The scuole were charity br
otherhoods, like Masonic lodges, each with its own funds and premises and each competing to display the finest art. San Rocco was the home of Tintoretto, whose cycle of paintings seemed to cover almost every inch of the interior.
Scacchi insisted that he pay the entry fee, then led Daniel upstairs to the Sala dell’ Albergo, where they marvelled at the centrepiece depiction of Saint Roch towering over them, and the great panoramic crucifixion. Scacchi quoted Henry James on the latter and added, “Not that I have read anything else of his, of course. Much too tedious.”
Then they went back into the main hall and he pointed out to Daniel the work which was, he claimed, the reason for their visit.
“There,” he said. They both strained their necks upwards. In the corner, close to the door which led to the sala, was a large dark canvas depicting two figures. The first, a handsome young man with blond curls and a pleasant smile, looked upwards to the second, holding two rocks in his hand. The object of his plea, clearly Christ, from the halo that shone out of the darkness around his head, was half turned to him, as if in consideration.
“Subject, please?” Scacchi demanded.
“Painting is not my field,” Daniel objected.
“Then use your head. That’s why it’s there.”
It was, in a sense, obvious, although there was something highly unusual about the work. “It’s the Temptation of Christ in the desert,” Daniel suggested. “The lower figure is Satan holding out the rocks, which are shaped like loaves, with the idea that the starving Christ should turn them into bread.”
“Spot on!” said Scacchi, beaming. “The date?”
“About 1570?”
“Ten years too early, but a good try. Now, please, tell me why this canvas is so very curious.”
Daniel stared at the painting on the ceiling. “Because the focus is almost entirely upon the Devil, not Christ.”
“Yes?” Scacchi required more.
“And because he is so...ordinary.”
“Ordinary? Surely not. Look again.”
The old man was right. “Because he is so fetching. So attractive,” Daniel said.
“Precisely! Compare this to Bosch’s Temptation of St. Anthony , painted probably no more than eighty years before. There you have devils with tails and snouts, demons ready to devour your entrails. This chap has nothing but a few feathers as his cloak and a smile as fetching as any sweet soul on earth. There you have it, Daniel. Everything you need to know about the Venetian Lucifer. That he wears such an engaging grin it is hard not to sup with him. Such a modern concept, don’t you think? Except if you look at the canvas there...”
Scacchi pointed to an oval work on the ceiling at the centre of the room.
“You will see the selfsame pose used for Eve offering Adam the fated apple. There was always a touch of misogyny in Tintoretto, if you ask me. On the way out we’ll take a look at the Annunciation downstairs. Poor girl looks as if she should never have stepped outside the kitchen, let alone mothered the Son of God.”
Daniel found it difficult to take his eyes off the figure of Satan, with its perplexing smile and pleading expression. “Why did you bring me here, Scacchi?”
“For your betterment. A man must recognise Satan when he sees him, Daniel. Particularly in a city such as this. I am no moralist, so personally I care little whether you run with one side or the other. What matters, I think, is that it is you who decides. When the Devil comes to you, there are only three options. Do you do what he wants? What ‘goodness’ demands? Or what your own nature tells you, and that may be either or none of the aforementioned? The answer, naturally, should be the last. But unless you see him—or her—for what he truly is, you can’t even begin to decide. Are you with me?”
It seemed, to Daniel, a distant argument. “I am not sure I have met the Devil. Or care to.”
Scacchi gazed at him, seeming disappointed. “That is the child inside you talking. You should be wary of him. This Venetian Lucifer will come, in his or her own time. Now...” He looked at his wristwatch. “We must be going. Musicians hate a latecomer.”
After leaving the scuola, they caught the vaporetto, disembarking at San Zaccaria accompanied by hordes of tourists headed for the Doge’s Palace and the famous piazza. On the way Scacchi announced that he had enrolled Daniel into the summer music school at the church as a speculative gift, a small pleasure to relieve the tedium of sifting the papers in the cellar. If the course was not to Daniel’s taste, he could leave at any time, though the old man hoped he would persevere. The event had some fame. It took place every two years under the sponsorship of Massiters, the international art agency whose eponymous English founder, an occasional Venetian resident, appeared at irregular intervals to applaud and inspect the beneficiaries of his generosity.
The programme attracted young musicians from around the world, partly through reputation and partly because of its location in the church of La Pietà, “Vivaldi’s church,” as the sign outside had it, though Scacchi quickly denounced this as a fraud. The original was rebuilt shortly after the composer’s death, he explained. The white classical façade photographed by thousands of tourists each week had been tacked on at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Red Priest would recognise precious little of the modern church, Scacchi said, and certainly not the lush oval interior which had replaced the customary bare, dark medieval space still seen elsewhere in the city.
The large double doors were open, giving the tourists a direct view into the nave. A middle-aged woman in a flowery dress was perched behind a desk at the foot of the steps, checking the credentials of those arriving for the event. She smiled brightly at Scacchi and greeted him with affection. Too rapidly for Daniel, and in a smattering of Italian and dialect, Scacchi spoke to her and pushed a piece of paper into her hand. Her eyebrows rose. She shrugged. Then she scribbled Daniel’s name on a plastic name badge and passed it over the table. Scacchi took it up gratefully and with profuse thanks.
“We locals get a discount on the boats and buses,” the old man explained with a victorious grin. “So why not for a little music course too? These foreigners...” He waved his hand at the crowd of young people milling inside the church. “They have money to burn.”
“Speaking of money, Signor Scacchi,” said the woman behind the table, “would you like me to present the fattura to your house at a later date?”
“As you see fit,” he replied. “A gentleman does not carry cash, naturally.”
“Naturally...” She scribbled something on a torn piece of paper and thrust it into a supermarket carrier bag half-full of such notes. Daniel somehow doubted Scacchi would ever hear of it again.
“Wear your badge always,” the woman warned. Daniel pinned it to his shirt and, at Scacchi’s beckoning, followed him into La Pietà, pausing by the iron gate that led to the oval hall, listening to the murmur of young excited voices in a dozen different English accents.
Scacchi watched him. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” he asked eventually.
“No,” Daniel replied. “I don’t care if Vivaldi wouldn’t recognise a thing. I can still feel his presence.”
“Or of those who came after and believed in him so much they placed his presence here, straight out of the ether. Either way,” Scacchi mused, “it’s all the same. Reincarnation has always seemed to me the silliest of ideas. Yet I do think there is something in the notion that a fragment of a person survives, like dust on a carpet. We breathe it in, consuming each other and the dead of past centuries while perhaps picking up a little of their stain upon our characters.”
A cello was being tuned. Two fiddles joined in.
“I’m not good enough,” Daniel said immediately. “These people are in a different league.”
“Nonsense!” Scacchi said reproachfully. “You told me in your letters you played regularly and had taken examinations.”
“And that is true, Scacchi. But exams and talent are not necessarily the same thing.”
“Oh, come. It’s just
a little fun. Some playing. Some theory. Some composition. You can compose a bit, I trust?”
“A bit.”
“Then you’ll be fine. See the strutting cockerel over there?”
The old man pointed out a short figure in black shirt and trousers, with a head of abundant dark hair and a small imperial, like a misplaced moustache, beneath his lower lip.
“Guido Fabozzi,” Daniel said. “I have seen him on television.”
“Been the boss for the last four of these things. Since the incident...”
Daniel saw the look on the old man’s face. Scacchi had let something slip. “The incident?”
“There was a...problem. But that was ten years ago now. Nothing you need worry about. Fabozzi is a good man, for all his pomposity. I’ll have a word with him. Make sure he goes easy on you.”
“No! I stand or fall by my own efforts. Please.”
Scacchi seemed to like that. He touched Daniel lightly on the shoulder. Then he cast his eyes around the church again, found a figure in pale colours on the far side of the nave, and pointed him out.
“And there you have the great man himself. Hugo Massiter. Lord of all he surveys. We work in the same trade, though I doubt he’d acknowledge as much. No time like the present!”
They crossed the floor of the church, nodding politely at the sea of young faces there, until they stood beneath a large and impressive ceiling painting, which Scacchi announced as Tiepolo’s Triumph of Faith . Hugo Massiter was a man of around fifty, Daniel judged, dressed in a curiously anachronistic fashion: light shirt and trousers, blue neck scarf, and a pair of expensive plastic-framed sunglasses pushed back onto his glossy forehead. He was engaged in a one-sided conversation with a slim girl in a white shirt and jeans who listened intently to his animated speech. Scacchi held back for a moment, allowed Massiter to recognise their presence, then walked forward and embraced the man.
“Signor Massiter,” he said, smiling broadly. “You grace our city with your presence and your generosity once more, sir. How can we express our gratitude?”