by Mary Malloy
“You can see that the whole thing has been mounted on a metal rod, with some sort of straps around the neck, waist and tail to hold it up.” The straps were the same dark brown color as the beast and invisible from the floor below. “It looks to be in pretty good shape, but we’ll have to get it down to be sure.” He took a tape measure from his pocket and asked Lizzie to hold one end of it opposite the tip of the animal’s nose, while he walked down to the end of the tail to measure its length.
“Is there a good working space here?” he asked.
“I think the ballroom could be turned into a very good workroom. There is certainly plenty of space and it is right next door.” She led the way back to the main floor of the library and on through the double doors to the ballroom. The shutters were still open from when she had moved them that morning, and the chandeliers were still on. Several chairs and small tables that she had pushed aside to accommodate the mummy case were scattered around the room, still covered in their protective cloths.
Carmine was enthusiastic about the space. “This will be a great place to work,” he said. “Do you think Cosimo will approve?”
Lizzie was confident that he would, but said she would call him later to confirm; she wanted to find out where Patrizio had been sent as well.
The mummy case was where Lizzie had left it and Carmine was already on his knees examining it closely. He took a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and a case of small instruments. He ran his gloved hand along the line where the top of the sarcophagus closed over the bottom, and when he came to one of the places where Lizzie had thought excess glue had squeezed out of the tight seam, he took a small metal pick, like a dentist’s probe, and got a sample of it. Putting it into a small plastic sample bag he said that the glue had certainly been added at some much later stage, but he would take it back to his lab to test it and see what it was made of and when it was made.
The two of them stood on either side of the sarcophagus and discussed its condition. “Except for some flakes here and there to the paint, which is completely normal given its age, this piece is in remarkably good shape,” Carmine said. “I know this is high on your list of desirable pieces and I don’t see any reason why it can’t travel.”
Lizzie clapped her hands together. “Great,” she said. “The day is looking better. Alligator, check; mummy, check.”
“Do you think there is a mummy inside?” Carmine asked.
Lizzie said she didn’t. “I have a colleague at St. Pat’s, an Egyptologist, who told me that most of the mummies that came to Italy in the Renaissance were consumed for medicine.”
Carmine accepted the comment as if he heard about cannibalism every day. “It seems strange that someone glued it closed,” he said. “Especially if the coffin is empty. It’s obvious the lid was well-made, to fit tightly.”
“Maybe there is a mummy inside and someone was trying to protect it from being eaten!”
Her companion smiled politely at her humor and asked what else was on her list. They returned to the library and Lizzie took the remains of their lunch into the dining room. Then she wiped off the library table and pulled out the narwhal tusk and the Marquesan club and placed them on it.
“I see they have the ubiquitous unicorn horn,” Carmine said, “to go along with the alligator.”
“But this is a real find,” Lizzie said, pointing to the club. She found the 1677 image and placed it next to it. “I only noticed this late last night, but do you think that this club is the center item in this fan of weapons?” She pointed to a decorative arrangement above the case in the center of the picture.
Carmine looked hard from one to the other. “I think it is clearly this club.”
Lizzie clapped her hand on the table in excitement. “I thought so, but I was almost afraid to believe it. If this club was in this house in 1677 then it can only have been collected on a Spanish expedition from Peru to the Philippines in 1595. After that, the next European visitor was Captain Cook in 1774. This is probably the oldest Polynesian artifact in any collection that wasn’t taken from an archaeological dig.”
Carmine carefully took the club from Lizzie and examined it. It had an arched top with two large eyes carved into it, giving it the appearance of a head. “Certainly this is in excellent condition and can travel. The Gonzagas were prolific traders and must have had connections with Spanish counterparts.”
“Patrizio, when he was in one of his good moods, showed me this box from Mexico, which must have come from a similar source.” Lizzie put the painted box on the table with the other items.
“There is a lot of Etruscan and Roman material here,” Carmine said, opening doors of cabinets to look at the contents.
“Lorenzo Gonzaga, Patrizio’s father, was an archeologist.”
“A professional or an amateur?”
Lizzie said she didn’t know, but that Maggie Kelliher had apparently taken some sort of course from him at the University. “And his father introduced him to the field. There are a lot of stone pieces down in the courtyard and I’d like you to look at some of them, especially two Etruscan burial boxes.”
“This is very nice,” Carmine said, putting a delicate bracelet on the table. It was made of twisted blue glass and he said it might be as much as two thousand years old. “And here’s another piece I would use if I were you.” He brought out a bronze jug, about eight inches tall; the handle was made of a young man dancing, his arms held up joyfully. It had, over more than a millennium, turned a lovely blue-green color.
“Done!” Lizzie said. “It’s lovely. I’ll put both these things on the list.” She looked at the inventory she had first brought to Bologna, and at the list she was making now and was happy to find that the best things from the pictures and the typed catalog were all still here in the collection. “I want to give a good representation of both natural and artificial curiosities,” she said to Carmine. “So we must include a tortoise shell, an ostrich egg, one or more of the blowfishes, and there is a wonderful chameleon, mounted on a stick, in a beautiful case in the cabinet to your left.”
“I think you might also consider a piece of furniture in that room with the Chinese wallpaper. We rushed through there, but I noticed a beautiful old-style curio cabinet there, of the type used by people who didn’t have a whole room for their collection like the Gonzagas.”
“Show me,” Lizzie said, proceeding through the dining room to the Chinese Salon. She hadn’t spent any time looking at the details of this room, and it had always been poorly lit when she passed through. Now she noticed not only the piece of furniture to which Carmine had referred but also a beautifully painted harpsichord. Above it were paintings of two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting at that very instrument.
Carmine called to her. “Look at this. The cabinet is filled with medals, coins, cameos, all kinds of beautiful small stuff. You might just be able to take the whole thing and highlight what is already in it.”
As Lizzie went to join him, they heard footsteps on the back stairs and Cosimo Gonzaga soon after appeared in the room. He began immediately to apologize to Lizzie for the events of the morning.
“I’m so sorry I left without saying goodbye, but I’m sure you must understand that I was concerned about my uncle.”
“Of course,” Lizzie said. She introduced Carmine, whom Cosimo had never met. Someone from his office had contacted the Director of the University Museum after Lizzie had said the project would need a conservator, and Carmine had been hired on his recommendation.
“I’m very impressed that you’ve been able to move forward on the project so quickly,” Cosimo said.
“We were just considering whether we might be able to bring this cabinet and its contents to Boston,” Lizzie said, explaining why they were not in the library.
“Of course. I told you that you may choose anything in the house and I meant it.” There was a group of chairs
near them, facing the windows into the courtyard, and Cosimo gestured to them to sit while he opened the shutters to let in the afternoon light. “How do you plan to proceed?” he asked as he sat down and took out a cigarette. “Sorry about this,” he said as he lit it, “I’m always trying to quit.”
“There is so much wonderful material to work with here that the only challenges I can see to selecting a final list for the exhibit loan will be the condition of individual pieces, and the difficulty of limiting ourselves to what will fit in the space in Boston.”
“Will you be able to complete the work you planned in the three weeks you are scheduled to be here?” Cosimo asked.
Lizzie said she would. “I think a solid preliminary list will be ready in the next three or four days, then Carmine and I will go over every piece taking measurements, making photographs, and assessing condition.”
Cosimo turned to Carmine at this point and in a mixture of English and Italian they spoke about his availability and whether or not Cosimo would need to talk with anyone at the University Museum to make special arrangements for Carmine’s work time.
“And after you go back to Boston?” he asked Lizzie.
“Then Carmine can supervise any restoration that needs to be done, make special mounts for objects that need them, and supervise the packing of the collection for shipment. We’ve scheduled three months for that part of the work.”
Cosimo reminded her that his nephew Beppe would be available to help for some part of that time. Lizzie silently thanked her stars that Carmine was so competent, since Justin was so incompetent.
“Everything should be ready to ship by the middle of May and then we will spend the summer installing,” she continued. “The exhibit will open on September ninth, the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first class of St. Patrick’s College.”
“Very good,” Cosimo said. “And the book to accompany it?”
“I am working on the research now and will devote the spring to writing.”
He took a long drag from his cigarette and put it out in an ashtray on the table. It was the only modern piece Lizzie could see in the room and it explained why he had chosen to sit here. “Will you be bringing in anybody else to work with you while you are in the house?”
Carmine said that he would need some help removing the alligator from the ceiling, and that he would like to set up a workspace in the ballroom, which would require a few additional hands with the labor.
“Then my only concern now,” Cosimo said, “is the security of the house and the collections. I trust you two, of course, but if you are going to bring in any other help I’d like to have a guard stationed here, and I’d like to do a quick security check of anyone who will be coming into the house. You can call me with the names and I’ll have someone in my office take care of it.”
“Would you like me to arrange for the collection to be appraised for insurance purposes?” Carmine asked. “I know art and antiquities dealers who would be able to do the job well.”
Cosimo agreed and thanked him. “Pina will be around the rest of this week, and after that I hope you will call me and let me know how the project is going. Will you need Graziella?” he asked as a final thought.
“I’m sorry that her English and my Italian are equally bad,” Lizzie said honestly, “so I don’t think that I will personally need her help, but I assume she is still living in the house, even with your uncle away.” It was almost a disappointment to learn that she would still be here.
Cosimo nodded.
“May I ask about your uncle?” Lizzie said as they all stood. “How is he? And where is he?”
“He’s in a very good small hospital, and he seems to be doing fine,” Cosimo answered. “We’ll keep him there while the work goes on here in the house.”
Lizzie thought about Patrizio returning to his library to find the best parts of the collection missing. It was a sad thought and she determined to visit him in the next few days. He was still the best source of information on the collection. A visit from her might not be the best prescription for his recovery, but a chat with his old friend Theresa Kenney would probably cheer him up.
Chapter 16
With Cosimo gone, Lizzie and Carmine returned to work and moved quickly through every item on the shelves in the library. Lizzie was astonished when the clock in the room rang ten o’clock.
“I can’t believe it has gotten so late,” she said, looking at the table, which was now covered with artifacts of all sorts. “But we have gotten so much done.”
“Without another table, we can’t really pull anything more out,” Carmine said. “Dinner?”
“Isn’t it too late?”
“Not at all. We eat late around here. There is a restaurant on Via Farina that makes a very good tagliatelle Bolognese.”
Lizzie knew the signature dish of the city because Rose and Tony had each made it for her in Boston, but she hadn’t eaten it since she’d arrived and was glad to accept the offer.
Over dinner they talked about a schedule for the next two weeks. Carmine could come the next morning and they decided to walk through the ballroom and figure out how to best set it up for the work they needed to do. He had other obligations in the afternoon and for the whole of the next day, but Lizzie wanted to devote that time to going through the various collection records to see what more she could find out about individual objects. She also decided to call Pina and see if it would be possible for her to visit with Patrizio the next afternoon.
When she returned to the house she remembered the dishes she had left on the dining room table and wondered where she would wash them. There was a small bathroom off the library and she thought there might be some sort of pantry or small kitchen off the dining room. She hadn’t really gone exploring in the house before, but she was willing to now that she was alone.
When she got to the dining room the dishes and the food scraps were gone. In their place were two plain white ceramic dishes and appropriate cutlery, cups and glasses. The tableware she had taken from the sideboard had been washed and returned. It was a reminder that she was not, in fact, alone in the house; Graziella was also here.
Though it was past midnight, Lizzie wasn’t tired and she opened her computer, which was still lying on the table in the library.
“Theresa Kenney looked just like you,” Jackie wrote in an email, “in that you both share human features. She had hair in the 1939 St. Pat’s yearbook, but the picture is black and white and I can’t tell what color it is. Why do you want to know this? It’s not like there is an astonishing likeness or anything. She’s a nice-looking enough girl, but she’s also eighteen or something, so you have quite a few years on her as she looks in this picture.”
She attached a scan of the photograph and Lizzie had to admit that it wasn’t because there was some remarkable resemblance between Theresa Kenney and herself that Patrizio had mistaken her. Maybe it was her voice and American accent. Plus, Jackie was right, Patrizio had known Theresa in her twenties, not her forties.
Jackie added another picture from the yearbook that had the title “The Bologna Boys.” In it were five young men, including Arcangelo Cussetti, the man who had married Gianna, and Patrizio Gonzaga and his brother Cosimo, the father of Lizzie’s host of the same name.
When she returned to her own room, Lizzie once again took out Maggie’s letters. She had already gone quickly through the 1920s and 30s, which were mostly reports to her mother and later her brother Tom about life in Bologna with a growing family. Lizzie was sorry that since she was looking at scans of manuscript pages there was no way for her to search for Theresa Kenney’s name to see if she appeared in any of Maggie’s messages.
She went to the window and looked across at the other side of the house. There were no lights visible anywhere, even where she had left some burning when she came upstairs. As much as it bothered her to have Graziella f
ollowing around cleaning up after her, Lizzie thought the housekeeper must be even more disturbed to have her bothersome presence in the house.
Filled with a restless energy and an enthusiasm for her exhibit project, Lizzie climbed into bed. She had no doubt at this point that the exhibition would be fabulous and she looked forward to devoting the next seven months to working on it. Though there was always the potential for glitches along the way, Cosimo was a committed supporter and Carmine was a terrific collaborator for this stage of the work.
She scrolled through Maggie’s letters until she came to 1938, the year that seventeen-year-old Patrizio had gone to Boston to attend St. Pat’s College. Her mother had died by then, and Maggie’s primary correspondent was her brother Tom, the youngest of the five Kelliher sons and the closest in age to herself. Maggie had apparently brought Patrizio to Boston and stayed in the family home, now occupied by her oldest brother Frank, and his family.
“Dear Tommy,” she wrote on November 1, 1938. “We have arrived home safely and many thanks for seeing us off at the ship. It was a comfortable enough passage and Gianna is a born sailor. Pat was very sad to see us go, but I know that you will look out for him and make sure he always feels that he is still surrounded by family. I’m glad he is there right now, and also my protégé Archie Cussetti, because we are being bombarded with anti-Fascist literature and radio broadcasts from Spain. Numbers of our young men are headed to fight the Fascists there, since there is no opportunity at this time to fight them here. I know that Archie would join them if he could, and while I don’t think Pat’s political convictions are quite so strong, I’m afraid he might follow his friend.”
In her next letter, she announced that she had taken Gianna to Switzerland to go to the same school she had attended as a teenager. “I hope she’ll still go to St. Pat’s as well when her time comes,” she wrote, “but Renzo feels that girls need socializing in a somewhat different way.” Several words were then crossed out before the text continued. “I don’t want to give you the sense that Renzo thinks Gianna any less intelligent or accomplished than her brothers, and in many ways she is clearly more advanced than any of them. Languages come wonderfully naturally to her (a talent I envy), and she reads prodigiously. But she has a wild streak that worries her father. Obviously he thinks I turned out delightfully, and hopes that Rougemont will work the same magic on her. Kiss my dear Pat for me.”