The sky is the colour of unripe peaches. A tiny puff of cloud floats above the buildings and turns faint yellow as the sun hits it. I take a short cut through Piazzetta del Limbo, listening for the rustling sighs of the unbaptized babies, then reach the Lungarno, and hear the whirr of street cleaners. The little drone-like trucks move along the broad avenues ahead of me, and turn abruptly away from the river, buzzing up towards the cathedral.
In four days it will be Easter, Florence’s biggest event of the year, celebrated with an odd mixture of the pagan and the Christian, as if—despite D’Erreti’s best efforts—the city is still hedging its bets, appeasing whatever gods might be out there. While the cardinal celebrates Mass in the Duomo, a fancy-dress parade will wind its way through the city, its main feature a tall decorated cart pulled by garlanded white oxen and filled with fireworks. Surrounded by flame-throwers and trumpeters, the scoppio del carro, as it’s called, will finally come to a halt directly outside the doors, and as the service ends, the cardinal will release a mechanical white dove from above the high altar, sending it racing down a guy wire to dive-bomb the cart outside and, hopefully, set off a magnificent display of fireworks. The dove is supposed to contain flints collected by Mary Magdalene from the foot of the true cross, and the general idea is that if the fireworks explode with enough vigour, Florence will be happy and prosperous. If they fizzle, it’ll be a rough twelve months.
Billy is adamant that we should all follow the parade together, and have the traditional glass of Prosecco on Ponte Vecchio afterwards before Henry treats us to a feast in the apartment at Torquato Tasso. She’s even written invitations in her favourite purple gel pen. Ours arrived in the mail yesterday, and while we’ve decided we’ll join them for the parade and the fireworks, we’re ducking out of the feast because Pierangelo’s arranged a special treat. He’s taking me to the Villa Michelangelo up in Fiesole for Easter lunch.
On the Ponte Vecchio, I stop to watch the river. A sculler glides by on the still, smoky water, and I wonder if he’s the one who found Ginevra. He shoots out of the far side of the bridge, silent and straight as an arrow, glances up, sees me and smiles before he bends and pulls and bends and pulls again, rowing in perfect time with the metronome in his head.
The railings around the Cellini statue are festooned with padlocks painted with the initials and names of lovers who have vowed to stay true for ever. The shutters of the jewellers’ shops are closed and locked down, making them look like rows of giant bread boxes. A few homeless people have been dossing out by the drinking fountain, their blankets neatly arranged, bulging plastic bags piled at their heads in makeshift pillows. Two of them are sitting up, getting ready to face the day, but one, still rolled in his sleeping bag, opens an eye clouded with dreams, and watches silently as I go by.
At the grocery, the signora’s in a frenzy. The morning’s pastries and papers have arrived, but Marcello hasn’t, so she has to handle the line of customers herself. She’s muttering crazily about irresponsible youth, telling every person she serves it would never have happened when she was a kid, as she drops croissants into brown paper bags and yells at the guy who’s just arrived with the morning’s strawberries. Secretly, I think she’s enjoying herself, and when at last he arrives, Marcello seems to agree. He pulls up on the vegetable Vespa just as I’m leaving, and when the signora shouts, he winks at me. His eyes are shiny and he doesn’t even blush when I wink back. Maybe he had a really good night at the wine bar last night. I catch the strawberry he plucks from a box and throws to me as I pass.
The apartment is completely silent. I slip my shoes off so I won’t make a noise clacking around on the marble floors, and slide in my socks towards the kitchen. The door to Billy’s room is ajar. I tiptoe over to close it so I won’t wake her, and as I pull it to, I expect to see the shape of her body in the bed, clothes hung over the brass rail, shoes tipped on the floor. But the room isn’t even dark. The big metal blind is up, and her pale yellow counterpane is tucked over her pillow. I look round the door and see her belt, still draped over the back of her chair where I left it on Monday morning.
Stepping inside, I see that her earrings are on top of her dresser too, right where I put them. They’re surrounded by lipsticks, barrettes and an array of bottles of hair goop. Postcards of Billy’s favourite paintings are stuck into the edge of the mirror. Bronzino’s portraits of baby Marie de Medici and her mother, Eleanora di Toledo, stare back at me. It’s strange, but of all of us, Billy is probably the best student. She is the one who actually takes notes, and reads books. A stack of them, Gombrich and Burkhardt on the Renaissance, and Malraux’s Voices of Silence, are piled on her bedside table beside a framed, muzzy picture of a house sitting in the middle of an overgrown field that she told me once was her grandfather’s farm, or rather what was left of it after he was ruined by the Depression and the Dust Bowl.
Suddenly I feel like a kid caught snooping and whirl round, sure I’ll see Billy standing in the doorway. But there’s no one there. Unnerved, I tiptoe out. Then, for good measure, I pull the door closed behind me.
In the kitchen, I dump my bag on the table, throw the French windows open and step out onto the balcony where a thin layer of grit sticks to the bottom of my socks. All of Sophie’s windows are still shuttered, so the whole opposite wing of the house looks as if it has its eyes closed. Back inside, I put the coffee on and sing to myself, out of tune. Then, while the little silver pot begins to perk and bubble, I wander into the living room.
Milky sunlight spills through the tall window and the cushions are mussed up on the couch, a pair of Billy’s pink socks balled beside them. There’s a wine glass, one of Signora Bardino’s good ones, on top of a pile of books on the side table, a brown film forming in its base that will crystallize and be hell to clean. And there are the postcards. Billy’s been at it again, but this time she’s pushed the coffee table back so she had the whole rug to work on. Which was necessary, I guess, because since I saw it last, her collection’s grown.
I glance at the couch and the glass and I can almost see her, wine in one hand, butt in the other, surveying her creation. There’s even a dent in the cushion where she sat. The coffee pot screams suddenly, like a train coming into the station, and I go to take it off the heat, pour myself a cup and come back. As I sink down onto the sofa, I notice the green tin ashtray wedged in beside the books. Sure enough there’s one stubbed-out cigarette, its filter perfectly ringed in bright red lipstick.
This time, Billy’s made a sort of spiral. The outer circle are scenes that feature Florence: Ghirlandaio’s pictures from the life of Mary with the Loggia dei Lanzi in the background, di Bonaiuto’s scenes from the Spanish Chapel, a marriage procession on its way to the Baptistery, the Santa Trinità from Stradano’s fresco in Palazzo Vecchio. And of course, the burning of Savonarola.
As the pictures circle inwards, the city recedes and groups of people become more prominent. There’s Piero della Francesca’s eerie resurrection from Sansepolcro, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Brancacci Chapel, and a bunch of others: Christ mocked from San Marco, spat at and whipped by disembodied heads and hands, a Giotto crucifixion, a St Sebastian I can’t place, a naked woman with a halo and long dark hair covering her body, and another holding a tray. After that, the postcards spiral inwards in a series of Madonnas. Botticelli, Simone Martini, Michelangelo, Raphael. And the photo of Billy as a Perugino.
Without meaning to, I give a slight start because right in the centre of the coil there’s a postcard of a painting I’ve never seen, but recognize anyways. A young man raises his sword and drives creatures, fleeing, from a garden. They stumble and crawl and fly, and among them is a monkey with the face of an old woman. Her breast is wizened, arms scraggly, and she walks upright, four red bags dangling from her bony naked shoulders.
It’s grotesque. Billy must have looked all over to find it, combed the postcard kiosks and museum shops. Who knows? Maybe she even went to Mantua to retrieve this trophy. Because th
at’s clearly what it is—the centrepiece of her collection that she’s left here, displayed on the living-room rug for me to see.
Forget performance art, this is make-your-point art. Rub-Mary’s-nose-in-it art. I sit there for a second staring at the snake coil of images, then I get up and leave the room, slamming the door behind me.
It’s all I can do not to go back into the living room and slew Billy’s postcards across the floor. But I don’t. She did this to get a reaction out of me, just like she tried to goad me in front of all the others on Saturday night, or left my make-up all messed up on my bureau, and I’m damned if I’ll give her the satisfaction. I feel as if we’re in a sort of silent battle of the wills, and I have to marshal my forces. Telling her anything was a mistake, I think. Really, really stupid. I should have followed my instincts and shut up. I take a long bath to calm down, and afterwards I apply myself to cleaning the kitchen with grim determination.
I scrub and polish and dust, even stand on the table and take a few wipes at the chandelier. Then I wash the outside table and chairs and sweep our little balcony, sending a shower of grit and what look like seeds cascading over the edge, down past, and very possibly through, Signora Raguzza’s open window. I am considering washing the French windows when the phone rings.
I know it won’t be Pierangelo because he always uses my cell phone, so it’s probably for Billy. I stand in the hall for a second, my hand on the living-room door knob, wondering if I should just let it go through to the machine. Then I figure it might be Henry, or someone else looking for me, and answer it. As I reach for the receiver on Signora Bardino’s little ormolu desk, I’m extra careful to step over the postcards, not disturb a single one.
‘Bill?’ the voice on the other end says when I pick up, and it takes me a second to realize it’s Kirk.
‘It’s Mary,’ I say. ‘Sorry, she’s not here.’
There’s a longish pause. ‘Well,’ he says finally, ‘do you know where she is?’
Despite the fact that Kirk can’t see me, I shake my head. I guess I was assuming they’d made their fight up and she was over there.
‘No idea. I came back a couple of hours ago, but she was already gone when I got here. I thought,’ I add, ‘she might be with you.’
Kirk gives a long and theatrical sigh. ‘I don’t think she’s talking to me. At least, she hasn’t replied to any of my messages. Goddam it,’ he says. ‘I told her to get a cell, I even offered to buy her one, but she won’t let me. I’m sick of pleading with her through Bardino’s machine!’ I look down at the little black box, but the red number says 0. Billy must have wiped them off.
‘Look, I’m sure she’ll get over it,’ I say. Although, to be honest, I’m not sure what ‘it’ is, and I’m not as optimistic as I sound. Billy can probably stay mad for quite a while—the wiped messages aren’t a good sign—but the poor guy sounds so miserable that I feel I have to try to say something positive. ‘Look, if you got her a cell, she probably wouldn’t turn it on anyways,’ I point out. ‘You know what she’s like. She won’t even wear her watch. I’ll get her to call you,’ I add. ‘As soon as she shows up. I promise. You know how she can be.’
‘Yeah. Crazy.’
‘She’ll forget about it sooner or later. Probably sooner. Bet you.’
Kirk makes a humming sound as though he’s not so sure. ‘Well, I’ll be here,’ he says finally. ‘And we’re supposed to be at the bar tomorrow, for lunch. Signor Catarelli’s joining us, at one. I left Billy a message. The poor guy’s back from Genoa and La Bardina’s dispatching him, as an Easter treat, to explain the inner meaning of the Primavera. Catarelli’s Botticellis.’
He puts the phone down and I hop my way back out of the room, jumping over Billy’s art installation, ‘Very innovative, Bill,’ I say out loud. ‘But not convenient.’
Then I write a big note in her purple gel pen: ‘For God’s Sake Call Kirk, He’s Going Crazy!!!’ and stick it on her bedroom door where she can’t possibly fail to see it.
In the afternoon I go to the covered market and do all the shopping for Easter weekend. That’s our deal: I’ll shop if Piero cooks. Then I spend the afternoon reading. When he comes home, we have a drink on the roof terrace while he tells me about a big series they’re thinking of doing on Italian female writers, and then he starts dinner while I lie on the couch, listening to the news. My Italian is good enough that I can get most of it, but I still have to concentrate, so the first time he calls from the kitchen, I don’t really hear what he’s asking. The second time, he sticks his head round the door.
‘Do you want to come to the football tomorrow night? There’re tickets for a bunch of us from the office.’
I shake my head. ‘You go, have a good time.’
It’s nice of him to ask, but I’m not really a fan, and I know these tickets are precious. Besides, it’s good for him to go out and do boy stuff without me. ‘I’ll stay at the apartment,’ I yell. That way he won’t have to worry about coming home smelling of beer. Not that I’d mind. But I ought to make things up with Billy. I’m not mad about the red bags any more, just curious as to what the hell she’s been up to.
‘You sure? You’re welcome.’
‘I’m sure. Have fun.’
I wave and he vanishes back into the kitchen. A few minutes later he appears again. ‘The big yellow dish,’ he says. ‘I swear it was under the sink.’
There’s something about the illegal sex trade and human trafficking on the news, and a map with complicated lines I’m trying to follow, so without even thinking I say: ‘Graziella borrowed it.’ Then I think, Oh, shit, and sit up.
Piero is standing in the kitchen doorway, his head cocked like a dog that’s just heard a strange noise. ‘Graziella?’ he asks. ‘She came and took it?’
I nod, reach for the remote and turn off the TV.
‘When? Did she leave a note? I didn’t see it.’
‘No.’ I look at him for a second. There’s no way out of this. ‘It was about a week, ten days ago. I was here. I gave it to her.’
Maybe I can do this without actually breaking my promise to Graziella. If he doesn’t ask, I won’t tell him she was going to Monte Lupo. Or who with.
‘You met her?’
I can’t tell whether Pierangelo’s annoyed with me or not, and I nod again, trying to read his face.
‘I was here doing laundry. Actually, she frightened the life out of me. I didn’t hear her come in. I thought I was by myself, and the next thing I knew, there was somebody in the kitchen.’
Pierangelo thinks about this for a second, then he laughs. ‘Typical,’ he says. ‘In Zella’s world the intercom was never invented. So,’ he asks, ‘what did you think?’
He doesn’t seem to be annoyed with me for not mentioning it, which is a relief.
‘Of Graziella? She’s beautiful. Stunning. She looks like you, has your eyes exactly. It’s almost creepy. And nice. She was very nice to me,’ I add quickly in case he gets the wrong idea.
A wide fatherly smile breaks across Pierangelo’s face, and I remember what Graziella said, that she was his child and Angelina was Monika’s. Now, looking at her father, it’s patently true. He’s flushed with pride.
‘Well, I’m glad you liked her,’ he says. ‘I’ve been meaning to introduce you, but with Zella at college…’ He shrugs. ‘The plate’s a pain, though,’ he adds. ‘It’s one of my favourites. Let’s just hope she doesn’t break it. Zella’s got a good heart, but she’s not the most careful person on earth.’ He laughs as he turns back into the kitchen.
I sit on the couch for a second. It feels like a window of opportunity is open here, and if I don’t ask now, I might never have the chance again. I get up slowly and follow him into the kitchen.
‘Piero?’
He turns round from whatever he’s doing at the stove. With a spatula in one hand and an apron almost as big as Marcello’s tied around him, he looks like one of those TV celebrity chefs.
‘When Graziella was he
re—’ I take a breath, feeling as though I have to say this all right now, really fast, or I might never say it at all. ‘When she was here,’ I start again, ‘she said something about your mother.’
Something happens to Pierangelo’s eyes. Their pale warm green dulls, as if he’s retreated behind them, taken a step back inside his own head. ‘What?’ His voice even sounds flat.
Damn, I think, this was a mistake. But I can’t stop now. I screw up my courage and spit it out. ‘She said that you and Monika were fighting over Monte Lupo, that Monika wanted it, but that she shouldn’t get it because it belonged to your mother. Your real mother. When I asked her what she meant, Graziella said that you never really knew her. That you were raised by your aunt and uncle. It wasn’t Zella’s fault,’ I add quickly. ‘I mean, she assumed I knew.’
Pierangelo stands there looking at me and I honestly have no idea what he’s thinking. He puts the spatula down, slowly, turns the stove off so whatever it is he’s got in the sauté pan won’t burn, and walks to the refrigerator. He opens it and takes out some white wine. ‘Want some?’
‘Sure.’
Pierangelo pours us two glasses, slowly, as if now it’s him weighing up what to say, what to tell me and not tell me. ‘What else did Zella say?’
He hands me my glass and I shrug, choosing my words carefully. I’ve got poor Graziella in enough trouble already. ‘Just that,’ I say finally. As if ‘that’ wasn’t enough.
Pierangelo looks as though he doesn’t believe me, or knows Graziella better. ‘Nothing about Angelina?’ He sips his wine. ‘Or her mother?’
‘Oh sure.’ This is almost a relief, I was working myself up to lying to him about the boyfriend. ‘She said Monika was angry with you. That she blamed you for everything, and that Angelina sided with her, but she’ll probably come round. She also said Monika was crazy,’ I add. ‘Crazy as a bug, actually.’ I leave out that she called her mother a bitch.
The Faces of Angels Page 23