by David Taylor
“Very funny,” he said, wondering why he was laughing too.
“Do you think Bacon met his enlightened monk there?” She nodded towards the ballroom.
“No, they would have met in the Ridotto Morosini near the Rialto.”
“What’s a ridotto?”
“It’s a literary salon. The Venetian historian Andrea Morosini turned his palazzo into a gathering place for scholars and statesmen; somewhere they could socialize and speak freely on every topic under the sun.”
Cheryl spread her hands in bewilderment. “So why come here?”
“Imagine you’re young – well, in your case, that’s not too difficult – and you’ve been sent to Venice. You hold your talks with the Giovani in the Ridotto Morosini, fine, but that’s not necessarily where you want to stay. Not when the Morosinis have another palace in Venice’s red light district. Wouldn’t you rather lodge where there’s plenty of night life?”
“Of course I would but that’s me, at home with the fallen women.” She pouted provocatively.
“This used to be the largest palace in Venice and only a stone’s throw away from the Campo Santa Margherita with its cluster of trade guilds. The square teemed with apprentices, courtesans and rent boys and the inns kept late hours. Every kind of erotic pleasure was on offer.”
“Maybe he was one of Francis’ lovers.” Cheryl pointed to the other figure in la Tintoretto’s canvas. “What do you make of our Othello?”
The chess-playing Moor wore a beard and a green turban. The upper part of his body was clothed in a gold embroidered vest with a long silver sash wrapped diagonally across his chest. Beneath his loose fitting culottes she could see red hose and Moroccan slippers. Above his head, fruit bearing branches intertwined in geometric arabesques while rippling water and a stylized city landscape served as a background to the picture.
“Othello is posing for his portrait on a summer’s day in Giudecca and he’s no more a black man than I am. He’s an actor from the Commedia dell’arte and his surname is Moro.”
Cheryl’s eyes widened. “Whoa there, Holmes,” she gulped. “How do you work that out?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson. The city is clearly Venice – that’s the Basilica San Marco with the original Campanile while off to the left you can see the Zattere – and the city only appears like this when viewed from the island of Giudecca. The canvas was painted in summer because the Moor isn’t wearing a shirt and the black mulberry tree fruits then. The green turban is supposed to signify a pilgrimage to Mecca but you can forget about that because our guy is wearing stockings. Moors never wore stockings. On the other hand, tight red stockings were traditionally worn by Pantolone, one of the principal characters in the Commedia dell’arte. As for the actor’s name, it’s obviously Moro. The ‘House of the Moor’ is just around the corner from here. It’s called that because a former occupant, Cristoforo Moro, was sent to Cyprus as the island’s civil governor in 1508 and, although white and Venetian by birth, his story is linked to that of Shakespeare’s Othello.”
Freddie paused for breath. “One thing more,” he added. “The Italian word for the black mulberry is ‘gelsomoro.’ Leonardo da Vinci recognized this when he painted a mulberry tree mural around the coat of arms of his patron, the Duke of Milan, who was a very dark-skinned individual. The mulberries were a pun on his nickname, Il Moro, the Moor. Leonardo loved his little jokes.”
Cheryl clapped her hands in appreciation. “To sum up, your Moro character and Francis meet in the Morosini salon and become chums. Tintoretto’s daughter is commissioned to paint them playing chess. Moro poses in a Moor’s costume as an in-joke and the artist apes Leonardo by adding a mulberry leaf motif to her composition. The plot thickens.”
They looked at one another and burst out laughing. “One thing though,” she said between giggles, “can we be sure La Tintoretto had a sense of humour. Women took themselves very seriously in those days because no man did.”
He stood up to go. “Let’s see where she grew up.”
Cannaregio lay between the northern bank of the Grand Canal and the Venetian lagoon. The sestiere stretched from the railway station to the city hospital where Freddie had so recently been a patient. It was famous for its artists’ studios, the first-ever Jewish ghetto and for a funnel-shaped square known as the Campo dei Moro. Once she saw the crude stone figures that gave the square its name, Cheryl had to have her picture taken next to them.
“These are effigies of the three Mastelli brothers who were medieval merchants,” she said after consulting her guidebook.
“What about the fourth statue?” Freddie asked innocently, clicking away with her digital camera.
“Oh, I don’t know, perhaps it’s a Mastelli servant.”
“Very democratic, don’t you think, to immortalise a twelfth-century servant in stone.”
“You’re not buying this, are you?”
“No, the theory doesn’t hold water – too many statues, not enough Mastelli brothers. There’s a better explanation. Earlier today, before you arrived, I read an article by a Cambridge professor in which she claimed these stone Moors were dressed like characters out of a comic opera. This one over here, the one with the outsize turban, acquired his headgear at a much later date. Why, she wondered, would anyone bother to make such a jokey addition to a statue of someone who’d died three hundred years earlier? What’s more likely is that the sculptor was poking fun at a contemporary figure and the professor suggested it might be one of the Moros because of the name and the family’s long connection with the spice trade.”
Freddie shepherded Cheryl along the pavement. “And look at the next door neighbour. Jacopo Comin, alias Tintoretto.”
“That settles it then,” she said with hardening resolve. “Tintoretto’s daughter must have known the Moro nickname. What’s next?”
“Well, if we’re quick, we might squeeze in a visit to the Biblioteca Marciana.”
As they walked to the nearest vaporetto stop he explained why. The Marciana possessed an amazing collection of early manuscripts and was bound to have the Libro d’Oro, the Golden Book, in which, according to custom, the names of the Venetian nobility were inscribed as soon as they were old enough to serve on the Great Council. The chess-playing Moro ought to appear in its pages.
The trip down the Grand Canal had Cheryl purring with pleasure. “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to, Freddie, and I’m seeing it with you,” she said, dropping her voice for intimacy and clinging to his arm as their waterbus approached St Mark’s Square.
They were soon fighting for space in Venice’s most famous square. Cheryl’s head was buried in her guidebook. “We are now in the Piazzetta or Little Piazza and should notice its geometric pavement of dark volcanic rocks and white Istrian stone.”
“You should look at these columns,” he suggested. “The winged lion of Venice is on the top of that plinth while St Theodore is on the other one, holding a spear with a slain dragon at his feet.”
“They were called the Columns of Justice because criminals were executed between them,” she read out.
“Homosexuals were burned alive here,” he told her.
Beyond St Theodore’s column lay the Libreria, the magnificently ornate Renaissance building which Sansovina designed to hold the Biblioteca Marciana. The Roman influence was inescapable.
“It reminds me of the Coliseum or the Theatre of Marcellus,” Freddie said in a hushed tone, “essentially pagan but breathtakingly beautiful – all about Venetian wealth and power in the early sixteenth century.”
Cheryl didn’t share his sense of awe. “That’s Renaissance folk for you. They had this obsession with classical antiquity. It’s a wonder they didn’t go round in togas and tunics.”
Inside the library, great art complemented the architecture. Titian’s allegorical painting of Wisdom adorned the entrance hall ceiling while, in the Reading Room, the industrious Tintoretto had filled several of the false wall niches with canvases of h
eroically posed Greek philosophers.
“You want what?”
The voice, bordering on disbelief, belonged to an English-speaking reference librarian.
“The Golden Book of Venice, late 1570s,” repeated Freddie, trying to make it sound like a common or garden request.
“I’m afraid there is a long waiting list for all our golden books. However, if you tell me what you’re looking for, I will do my best to suggest an alternative information source.”
He wondered whether she was as stilted in her own language and attempted to answer her in Italian. It took several minutes to explain that he was seeking a member of the Moro family whose entry into the Golden Book probably coincided with the plague years in Venice.
“Do you know anything else about him?” She sounded more animated now.
“Well, he would appear to have had an interest in the Commedia dell’arte.”
“Then you are in luck. There’s an excellent book on early male actors. I’ll bring it to you.”
Cheryl was keeping a seat for him at one of the highly polished wooden tables. Freddie slumped into his chair and felt an immediate energy loss. The thought occurred that he and Francis Bacon might be enjoying a private moment together. Even so, the waiting was agony.
“Don’t bite your finger nails!” His mother used to say that. This time the scolding came from Cheryl who was less than happy when the book finally arrived. “Shit, it’s in Latin!”
Fortunately it came with pictures, including a small engraving of a decrepit, mean-looking old man dated 1585. They could barely make out the inscription.
In parte autem Carnavale Venezia Pantalone piano per Lodovici Moro, etates viginti quinque. ‘In the Carnevale Venezia, the part of Pantalone was played by Lodovico Moro, aged twenty-six.’
“He’s our man, Freddie. He’d be twenty-two when Francis came to Venice. They were almost the same age and they both liked the theatre. We’ve nailed it.”
Their rejoicing was interrupted by an announcement. The library was about to close.
25 JULY 2014
Whether it was the dazzling sun streaming through the shutters or the sound of church bells that woke her, Cheryl couldn’t be sure. Drugged with love, she snuggled into the double bed and replayed the night they had spent together.
It had begun in the gondola. She had delicious memories of lying back on soft, dark-fringed cushions, soothed by the gentle splash of the gondolier’s oar and the stillness of the night, watching the rippling interplay of water and light as they glided through a labyrinth of narrow canals, imagining herself a famous courtesan, bejewelled and bare-breasted, satisfying her lover in the dark recesses of their boat.
“Did you know gondoliers vowed never to reveal any passion they witnessed in their rowing boat,” she had said, dropping an obvious hint. “The penalty for breaking this oath was death.”
Freddie had laughed at her. “That’s a tall story if ever I heard one.”
But the thought had been planted. Their mouths met in the darkness. One of his hands cupped a breast while the other slid beneath the thin fabric of her dress. This was hardly a new experience, although she had never been groped in a gondola before, but the way she had writhed beneath him, groaning with pleasure as his fingers sent electric shocks through her body, was unprecedented.
He filled her up. He was perfect. And so was Venice. A city resting precariously on water should be ruled by Poseidon but Venice belonged to other deities, to Venus and Morpheus, the god of dreams. Half fairy tale, half tourist trap by day, the serene republic became a shimmering, enchanted world of romance once the sun set.
Burrowing under the bedcovers, still giddy with desire, Cheryl couldn’t quite believe her luck. Two days ago she had been utterly miserable, cleaning the nicotine stained walls in her mother’s disgusting flat, when the phone rang and Simon told her about Freddie’s latest accident. She hadn’t stopped to think before catching a flight to Venice. It was the best decision she had ever made. During last night’s ecstatic interplay he had asked her to move in with him. They would start flat hunting on their return to Oxford.
Through the open bedroom window, she could hear footsteps on the quayside and clanging and shouting as a barge was unloaded. The city was awake and alive with fresh possibilities. In the distance a church clock struck the hour. She counted to eleven. She had slept in.
Clambering out of bed Cheryl skipped across the parquet floor and into the bathroom for a quick shower. A few minutes later, feeling clean and composed in a white linen dress with plenty of foundation cream to cover her love bites, she stood in the hotel lobby looking for her partner.
He was sitting outside on the restaurant pontoon gazing across the water at a domed marble temple glistening in the sun. She tapped him on the shoulder. “What’s that church called?”
“That’s Il Redentore, the votive church Palladio designed after the plague,” he told her.
“They’ve stopped serving breakfast but I’ll get you something.” He beckoned to a waiter and spoke to him in Italian. This was a new Freddie, erect of bearing and assertive. It was amazing what good sex could do.
While they waited for the coffee and croissants to arrive, he picked a creased copy of a magazine off the table and waved it at her. “While you were getting some sleep, I’ve been busy.”
“Like I ever doubted it,” she found herself blushing.
“The hotel gave me this. It’s called News on the Rialto and it mentions a Ca’ Foscari University professor who is writing a book on the Venetian aristocracy. I gave him a call and Enrico Gentile turned out to be a Shakespeare buff who’d read an article I once wrote on Portia’s Belmont. Anyway, we got on like a house on fire and when I asked him about the spice trade he went into absolute overdrive. In the sixteenth century Venetian merchants were importing shed loads of pepper and other spices like cumin into Europe – thousands of tons of it – and the Moros were one of the wealthiest families with several villas scattered around the archipelago.”
“Did you ask him whether they had a place on the Giudecca?”
“I did and he said yes.”
“There can’t be any Moros left on the island. Surely that would be too much to expect.”
The grin on Freddie’s face broadened. “That’s the best part,” he said. “In searching for direct descendants of the old aristocracy Gentile came across a Moro. Her married name is Cristobel Carpenter. Her husband was a cattle baron in Wyoming before he died of a heart attack. The widow lady has come home and, at lunchtime today, she’s hosting a cocktail party for the Save Venice Fund in the Gallerie dell’Accademia. Gentile has wangled us an invite so we can meet the redoubtable Cristobel. He says she’s a cool customer.”
Cheryl could scarcely believe it. The past and present were coming together. Then she thought of the chic, sophisticated rich women who would be attending Cristobel’s cocktail party and looked at her dress, bought for forty quid in an end of season sale on Oxford High Street.
“But I haven’t got anything to wear,” she moaned.
This feminine reaction took him by surprise. “Don’t worry, darling,” he said. “You look fine.”
But she couldn’t help worrying. Her lopsided education had not prepared her for a roomful of snobbish art experts who knew their Titians from their Tiepolos.
“Who’s going to be there anyway?” she asked truculently as the waiter poured her coffee.
Freddie gave her his doe-eyed look. “Enrico thinks they will be mainly rich Americans and Venetian high society. Apparently they are getting on better these days. The local nobility used to despise their American benefactors, accusing them of only being interested in the social side of fund-raising. But these charges are wearing a little thin now that hundreds of works of art have been restored. Then there’s the expelled royalty to think of.”
Cheryl found this oddly reassuring. She was firmly convinced that exiled crowned heads, grand duchesses and the like, were simply a troupe of perform
ers swanning around Europe for the benefit of Hello magazine and, if called upon, that she could hold her own with them.
“Right,” she said, “when do we have to leave?”
“Five minutes ago,” he replied. “We’re already late.”
The Accademia Galleries were within easy walking distance of the hotel but Dorsoduro’s cobbled streets were hard going in high heels. “Venetian women never wear stilettos or any other kind of elevated heel,” said Freddie unsympathetically as they gave their names to a gallery attendant.
As soon as she entered the Sala dell’Albergo Cheryl felt conspicuous in her cheap off-the-peg dress. The room was full of immaculately clad lounge lizards adopting attitudes of studied perfection. Bored looking young heirs and heiresses rubbed shoulders with tanned silver-haired artistic entrepreneurs and old American money clad in vintage silk dresses and beautifully cut suits. From what she could gather, they were celebrating the repair of the gallery’s fifteenth-century wooden roof and the restoration of Titian’s epic canvas Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple.
A waitress offered them a choice of cocktails. Freddie opted for a Lavender and Peach Bellini while she chose the Pomegranate Manhattan, a bourbon infused drink that tasted like cat’s piss.
Mingling with her fellow guests she caught snatches of gossip. A balding American in a bright blue Tom Ford suit was advising his group that “without Cristobel the whole thing would have fallen apart long ago.” “Just like Venice,” tittered an elderly woman in an expensive diamond necklace.
Someone was whispering in Cheryl’s ear. “Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tribes, the bores and bored.”
She swung round to find a beautiful young man curling his lip in a supercilious grin.
“Lord Byron,” she said, identifying the poet, “but you’re no Don Juan.”
“No, but I could be if you only said the word.”
“I have two words for you. Get lost!”
Having declared herself a no-go area Cheryl wandered off in search of Freddie who was in earnest conversation with the British ambassador to Rome and an aesthetic looking individual whom he introduced as Mark Whitaker, a research fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge.