Urban Venus

by Sara Downing

  Looks like that’s it then.

  Nineteen

  This book is so good. I have been drowning my sorrows this weekend, post break-up, not just with more than a teensy bit of alcohol, which always helps, but with Signore Di Girolamo’s book. Honestly, I get so engrossed in the thing that I forget to eat, be sad, be sad a bit more, get dressed and visit the bathroom. I think Sophia and Leonora believe I am slipping into a slough of despondency, and that my failure to shower, feed myself and perform other basic human functions is a sign that I am in dangerous need of cheering up before some kind of text-book depression takes over. I really appreciate their efforts, but actually, even though I’m missing Stefano and I’m really sad we broke up, I’m fine. Really I am.

  I couldn’t stop them from insisting on dragging me out tonight, though. Girls only, of course. It would be too weird to include Lanzo and Dante and not Stefano, but it is way too soon for us to have to try to pretend to be friends in a big happy group again. No, they’re not that unsubtle. But I do hope we can get back to that one day. It breaks my heart to think we might not, and I feel awful for Sophia and Leonora that they can’t see the boys in the relaxed atmosphere we’ve all been used to. Still, I’ll be out of their hair in a few more months. My time here is whizzing by so fast; I can’t quite get my head round the fact that I won’t be here forever, and that in the not too distant future I’ll be required to return to the green and pleasant lands of home. It all seems so far away, another world, and sometimes it takes a conversation with someone back in the UK to jolt me into remembering that England is my home, and I am expected to go back there. Mum keeps nagging me to pop home for a weekend, but at the moment I’m just not sure I could fit it in. Or cope with leaving Maria behind.

  I’ve gone native, I suppose. I even dream in Italian now. And I don’t just mean the Maria dreams; as far as I remember they’ve always been in Italian. But my normal night-time reveries are mostly in Italian now too, which to me is a real sign that I have well and truly mastered the language. I even talk to animals in Italian, for goodness sake. I found myself petting a friend’s cat the other day and cooing at it in Italian, calling it a ‘Bellissima gattina’. I’m sure the aloof creature wouldn’t have cared if I’d spoken to it in Swahili as long as I tweaked its ears and rubbed its tummy, but I had to pinch myself afterwards at how weird the whole thing was.

  The girls have brought me to a party at the home of a friend of Alessandra’s. They’d made earlier reassurances that connections are too far removed from our circle of friends to bump into anyone we know, and that there is no way Stefano will be there. (Leonora had a discreet word with Dante to ensure Stefano is being taken out to the opposite side of town tonight, just to be on the safe side.) I’m not really in the mood – to be honest I’d have quite liked to stay in and read some more of the book – but I appreciate their efforts and feel obliged to go along with the plan.

  Actually it has been a good night so far. Amongst a few others I do know, Francesca is here – she is a close friend of Alessandra’s so it would have been surprising if she wasn’t invited. (She is the one I’d suspected of having a bit of a fling with Vincenzo at some point, although she’s never admitted as much.) Like some cruel twist of fate, we are having a good old natter when who should appear but the man himself. Honestly, is there no one that man doesn’t know, no party in the whole of Florence he doesn’t get invited to? Alessandra’s friend must know of Francesca’s history, so I’m sure she wouldn’t have invited him directly, so maybe it’s just that he has tagged along with someone else.

  I have to say I am a bit surprised to see him, but not half as much as Francesca, who splutters on her drink, blanches to the colour of a boiled potato and quickly makes an excuse to move on somewhere else. Poor girl. Still, it confirms my suspicions that she is the ‘friend’ she’d talked about.

  ‘Ciao Vincenzo,’ I say as he breezes into the room, full of the usual brash confidence and arrogance I’ve become used to handling with more like a large ladle, than a mere pinch, of salt. He’s definitely a man who’s comfortable in his own trousers; completely at ease in any situation, happy in the knowledge that wherever he goes, there will be someone who either knows him, recognises him, or has admired him or his work from afar and therefore relishes the opportunity to be introduced to him. How great it must be to hold oneself in such high regard.

  ‘Are you on your own tonight?’ I enquire. He made his grand entrance with a couple of male friends – no sign of his adolescent arm-candy. ‘Where’s the lovely Stéphanie this evening? Having a night in playing with her dolls, is she?’ I ask, immediately regretting the vitriolic twang to my question.

  ‘Actually, Stéphanie and I broke up. I’m much older than her, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ Really, I never would have guessed. ‘We both wanted different things from the relationship, so, there you go, I am a free man again,’ he replies. ‘Anyway, where’s the lovely Stefano, tonight? Not deserted you as well, has he?’

  ‘Yep, we broke up too,’ I say in a matter-of-fact tone, managing to sound as though I am on top of it all.

  ‘We’re a right pair, aren’t we? Look at us, two of the most gorgeous people in the room,’ and he says this without the slightest hint of self-mockery – he really means it – ‘and both of us single. Alone at a party. Well, we’re not alone any more, we’ve found each other.’

  God, that man is so cheesy, but I have to say his breezy air does help to cheer me up. I detect few signs of broken-heartedness at the loss of the gorgeous Stéphanie as we slip easily into an animated conversation, but then finding something to talk about has never been a problem with us. Despite that, the thought is running through my head as we enjoy light-hearted banter: ‘Make any attempt to crack on to me tonight and I will knee you in the balls.’ I’m not in the mood for being chatted up, and in my situation, and with Leonora and Sophia here, it would be wholly inappropriate. But actually he is great company and we get along just fine, without any innuendo or sense that he is encroaching on forbidden territory.

  I make eye contact with Sophia, who is talking to someone just across the room and she mouths at me: ‘You OK?’ clearly poised to pounce and rush to my rescue should I need it. But I am OK; actually I’m enjoying Vincenzo’s company more than I have done in a while, and aside from his corny opener, it doesn’t feel wrong at all. And don’t misunderstand me; it’s not some kind of lame rebound thing, a need to feel attractive to the opposite sex after a break-up, or anything like that. We’re just chatting – and enjoying it – and pleasantly passing the time at this party until I’m allowed to go home.

  Vincenzo is interested to hear about my latest instalments in the Maria saga, and I also tell him about my conversation with Signore Di Girolamo. I don’t mention the fact that I suspect him of having dreams too. No, I need to have that confirmed by the man himself before I go around casting such wild aspersions. I would hate to be the one to ruin his reputation as a respected historian, for the sake of justifying my own situation. Believing Di Girolamo has had a similar experience to me gives mine some credence, but if he doesn’t want to tell me about it, then I have no right to voice my suspicions to others.

  At breakfast the following morning, I expect to be on the receiving end of a deluge of warnings from Sophia and Leonora about Vincenzo. He and I had chatted for the rest of the evening, and we had a thoroughly pleasant time to boot. I can imagine to the casual onlooker we’d seemed pretty cosy, but it hadn’t been necessary for my knee to make contact with his groin after all. Actually he’d saved me from the boredom of a party at which I didn’t know too many people, at a time when I lacked the inclination to make an effort to get to know any more.

  But surprisingly the girls remain mute on the topic, I imagine assuming that, so close to breaking up with Stefano, I wouldn’t dream of contemplating hooking up with someone else. And they’re right, I’m not. Vincenzo was extremely good company, I have to admit, but he is my tutor.

  Today I have
cleared the decks for a spot of work, and then some reading – hopefully finishing Di Girolamo’s book. After last night, I think I’ve managed to convince the girls that I’m not bordering on a breakdown, and it’s perfectly safe for them to leave me in the apartment on my own, without the presence of a responsible adult. They are off to some lunch or other in town, and I am glad for the time to myself.

  Coursework done, I relocate to my bed, prop myself up with a few squidgy bolsters, and settle down for an afternoon of reading. I’m now beyond the stage in the book when Di Girolamo gives Maria her name. Still no surname for her, though, which is frustrating as I’ve never dreamt it either. But the revelation that really hits me full-square in the face today is this: Maria had a daughter with Titian.

  I feel my head swim as I make the connection between my pregnant Maria and the woman in this book who bore Titian a child. So I am not mad or imagining things! Just as Di Girolamo admitting that he dreamt all this would add substance to my own dreams, mine also serve the purpose of backing up his story. He HAS to confess to me that he dreamt this; I need to see him again and put him on the spot, force him admit to it. This is so exciting! My dreams are true, I’m not insane, not imagining things, and it’s all here in this book!

  The child was called Emilia, and she was born some time around 1541. Her birth takes place quite near to the end of the book, and I am dreading it finishing, as I just want the story to carry on forever. Di Girolamo mentions very little about the child – but then maybe his dreams ended at this point for some reason, and with it, his writing. That must be the case, it has to be. I’ve never actually heard any dates mentioned in my dreams – there is no reason why I should – but the impression I get is of mid-sixteenth century, so the period would appear to be right for Emilia being the same child that Maria was carrying when she sat for Venus of Urbino.

  Di Girolamo’s Maria would seem to be about the same age as my Maria. I’ve never dreamt that she had any children prior to this, so all the connections ring very true. So when ‘I’ sat for the painting in my last dream, ‘I’ was carrying Emilia. A shiver runs up my spine as the sudden reality of this hits home. This is no longer just a series of dreams, but a collection of real snippets of sixteenth century life, containing real personalities. Although Maria has been more than real to me since the very first time I dreamt about her, today I feel that reality confirmed once and for all.

  As the book ends shortly after Emilia’s birth, the trail effectively goes cold. I don’t know what happens to Emilia – or to Maria, come to that – and I won’t do unless that’s something that I’ll later experience in one of my dreams. Presumably Di Girolamo doesn’t know either, or he’d have written about it.

  I wonder what happened to Emilia; where did she end up, what kind of life did she lead? I can’t help feeling a kind of personal attachment to her, and hope for her sake that she was born healthy, flourished in the love of both of her parents, lived a long and happy life and died at a ripe old age surrounded by a throng of grandchildren…

  Twenty

  ‘È per te,’ Sophia says, brandishing the phone as I lounge on the sofa on Monday morning. ‘È Signore Di Girolamo.’

  He sounds a bit frantic and preoccupied with something.

  ‘Can you meet me for coffee this morning?’ he asks hurriedly. ‘I have something I need to tell you.’

  Is this it? Is the big confession coming? Actually, Lydia, I had dreams just like yours. I understand exactly what you’re going through… I sincerely hope so, and this hope makes the excitement bubble up inside me. After finishing his book yesterday I’ve been left hanging; I need to know more. Not just how he knows what he does, but what happens next. Did he have any more dreams after finishing the book? Does he know what happened to Emilia? I have been unable to stop thinking about that child; there is so much more I want to know about her.

  Today I have to go back to the gallery; I need another dream of my own. The trouble is, they don’t always follow in sequential order. I could just as easily dream about Maria’s early days with Titian than the next instalment in her story; something which might help to build up an overall image of how she lived and loved, but doesn’t progress the storyline at all. It’s all very well me trying to ‘pre-order’ a dream about a specific event, but that doesn’t tend to be the way it works.

  We meet in a little bar just round the back of the Duomo. Di Girolamo is there before me, seemingly agitated and nervously fiddling with the catch on his bag as he waits for me, a cooling espresso congealing on the table in front of him. A gentleman of his generation, he stands to greet me and waits until I have sat down before taking his own seat again. He clicks his fingers and gives the barista a nod; she scuttles away to fetch two more coffees.

  ‘I needed to see you. To explain,’ he begins, a nervous cough playing at the back of his throat.

  ‘What is it, are you OK?’ I ask, wanting him to get straight to the point and tell me everything.

  ‘I’m so sorry, but I wasn’t entirely honest with you the other day. Will you please forgive me for pushing you out the door like that; it was very rude of me.’ He takes a short pause and a deep breath for courage, before continuing:

  ‘You see, I’ve never told anyone about my dreams before, and when you told me about yours, I couldn’t quite believe it could be possible for someone else to have them too. I was overwhelmed with the discovery, I suppose. In shock, you could say.’

  YES!! Finally. What a relief to hear him admit it. I was right.

  ‘It’s OK, Signore Di Girolamo,’ I begin, ‘you don’t have to apologise to me. You know I’d suspected all along that you’d had dreams too, and I’m so glad you feel you can tell me about it now.’ Here he looks relieved, the nervous tension caused by the build-up to telling me starting to lift a little from his shoulders. ‘I just couldn’t see how you could know so much – after all, none of this stuff is in the history books, is it?’

  ‘You and I, we are very fortunate creatures,’ he goes on, more calmly now. ‘We have been given a rare insight into what happened in these people’s lives. But you can understand now why I didn’t make the book widely available, can’t you? It would have caused a scandal. I’d have been forced to confess I had dreamt it all, and, well, how many respected historians do you know of who write their books based on dreams? It could have finished me. They’d have put it down as a work of fiction and that would be my reputation in tatters. I’m a historian, not a historical novelist.’

  He continues: ‘Finding you has been like a dream come true, if you’ll pardon the pun. All these years I’ve been thinking that maybe I just made this all up, that the dreams were my fantasies, but now I know you have them too, and bizarrely with such a similar subject matter, it corroborates our stories, doesn’t it? Quite marvellous,’ he says with a huge smile, clapping his hands together. ‘Whoever would have thought it!’

  Di Girolamo (I still struggle to call him Antonio, despite his insistence) goes on to tell me about his dreams. Apparently they started when he was in his thirties, at which time he was a visiting tutor on a year’s fellowship at the Sorbonne in Paris. He’d not long moved there, and had barely settled in to his new job when he found himself being drawn daily to Titian’s Concert Champêtre, ‘The Pastoral Concert’ painting in the Louvre. Pretty soon he was visiting it regularly, just like I do with Venus, desperately hoping for another instalment in the story which seemed to be unfolding in his head. He, of course, took on the persona of Titian; who else could he possibly have been?

  He became totally obsessed with it, he says, so much so that it started to detract from his work in the university. So after his academic obligations there were over, he decided to stay on for a further year, on an unpaid career break, putting together all the notes he’d taken at the time to make into a book.

  ‘Despite my initial confidence in it all, when it came down to publishing I lost my nerve,’ he admits. ‘In the end I paid a publisher quite a substantial amount of mo
ney to produce just a couple of copies for me, one to keep and a spare one just in case the first one became lost or damaged. Those were all my precious remembrances in there; I pretty much kept them under lock and key for fear of losing them, and with them losing the valuable insight I’d had into the sixteenth century.’

  ‘So why did you publish the second edition again recently, and why not make it more widely available? Couldn’t you have changed your name or something, used a nom de plume?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know what compelled me to do it. I suppose part of me wanted some recognition for what I knew, yet the other part was still holding back for fear of exposure as a fraud. Historical novels seem to be all the rage these days, don’t they, but I didn’t want my book being classified as one of those, even if it sold well and made me lots of money. I suppose it’s just a point of principle. So once again, I published – a few more copies this time – but I still didn’t distribute it widely. Only to a few select people who I thought might enjoy it, or even just like to have one on their bookshelves, unread, like Vincenzo.’

  ‘You’re no fraud,’ I say. ‘Your story backs up mine and vice versa. But I don’t know how we’d ever convince the art world that all this stuff really happened, do you? And now with media coverage the way it is, I do understand your motives for keeping quiet; they’d have ripped you to shreds, wouldn’t they?’

  He doesn’t answer my question, but instead goes on: ‘Lydia, I have to tell you this. That painting, the Champêtre, they say – these so-called experts – that it was painted circa 1510. But I know for a fact that Titian didn’t meet Maria until some time around 1537…’