The signora glanced up from her sewing. She wanted to know if the Frenchman’s nocturnal antics disturbed me. I had got used to it, I told her, though I was still intrigued by his voluntary withdrawal from the world. She didn’t think it was entirely voluntary, she said. Cuif had appeared at court on stilts with a broomstick strapped across his shoulders and black robes down to the ground. Putting on a mask that made him look cadaverous, he had delivered a sermon on the value of hypocrisy and the benefits of fornication. It was clear that he was mocking a member of the Grand Duke’s inner circle. It was also clear that he had overstepped the mark, and the Grand Duke’s mother saw to it that he was banned from performing in the palace ever again. I nodded slowly. Cuif’s attitude to Stufa was beginning to make sense. Equally, I had learned something about Stufa himself. I wasn’t sure if it was true that Vittoria had found him by the roadside and taken pity on him, but she certainly protected him as if he were one of her own.
Fiore pulled at my sleeve. ‘We can still give him the cricket, can’t we?’
‘Not a bad idea,’ the signora said sourly. ‘If he’s really making a comeback, he’s going to need all the luck he can get.’
As I climbed the stairs with Fiore, I decided to pretend I didn’t know the real reason for Cuif’s reclusiveness. The last thing I wanted to do was to humiliate him.
When he opened the door, he was unshaven, and his hair lay flat against his skull, like grass flattened by the rain. I suspected that he had been asleep, though he denied it.
Fiore handed him the cage, which he took gingerly, between finger and thumb.
‘It’s for good luck,’ I said.
Fiore looked from the Frenchman to the insect and back again. ‘It’s just like you, isn’t it – shut in its little room.’
He scowled. ‘Thanks very much.’
Setting the cage down in the corner, he mentioned that several months had passed since he had seen me. No one had seen me, I told him. I had been working.
His eyebrows lifted high on his forehead. ‘I’ve been busy too, actually.’
He described the new act he had been rehearsing, but the language he used was so vague and abstract that I found it impossible to follow. He lapsed into a sullen silence and began to pick at his fingers.
In an attempt to lighten the mood, I told him about the German I had seen at court the previous summer. Fiore was laughing, but Cuif only gritted his teeth.
‘So that’s what I’m up against now, is it?’ he said. ‘Armless Germans?’
On the Grand Duke’s return from Rome, I received a personal note from him, instructing me to deliver the commission to a chamber high up in the east wing of the palace. He was at pains to reiterate the confidential nature of the undertaking. He would dispatch his most reliable servants, he said, but they must not know what they were carrying.
To transport the girl from my workshop to the palace, I wrapped her in numerous layers of muslin and hessian. Then, with Toldo’s help, I slid her carefully into an oblong packing case.
The day came.
As I followed the Grand Duke’s servants through the garden, it struck me that we resembled a funeral procession, with a closed coffin, two pallbearers, and a solitary mourner, and I had the sense, once again, that I was honouring the dead girl. I glanced up at the back of the palace. More than one hundred windows reflected the raw spring light. So far as I could tell, though, nobody saw us.
After passing a series of rooms the servants called ‘The Eyes’, on account of the large, round windows that gazed impassively out over the city, we arrived at a locked door. Beyond it was an unused passage, the tiled floor so thick with dust that we left footprints, almost as if we were walking on snow. We started up a steep flight of stairs. I made sure that the servants kept the packing case horizontal, one holding his end above his head while the other walked backwards, bending low, his hands down near his feet. We came out into a modest, unfurnished apartment. One half-open door gave on to a strange, empty space that had a rough grey convex floor, and I realized we must be above the flamboyant rooms with vaulted ceilings where the Grand Duke held court. Covert and neglected, the apartment felt like the kind of place where I would meet Faustina. I sneezed twice. Here, too, the floors were voluptuous with dust.
At last, we reached the chamber mentioned in the note. I unlocked the door, and we passed into a circular, domed room. The walls were painted duck-egg blue, and the floor was a vanilla marble, veined with brown and grey. The only windows were narrow and high up, where the dome gathered to a nipple. An oak table stood in the middle of the room. Nearby were two chairs, their gilt arms shaped like lions’ paws. The servants looked at me, waiting for instructions.
‘On the table, please,’ I said.
Once they had gone, their voices fading in the corridor – a murmur, a stifled laugh – I lifted the sliding panel. Slowly, carefully, I eased the shrouded girl from her container. I removed the hessian, but left the final layer of muslin draped over her naked body like a veil. It was late afternoon. The Grand Duke was due at any moment. Sitting down, I fell into a kind of reverie. I was outdoors, on a smooth, green hill. I couldn’t tell what country I was in. England, perhaps. There were wild animals nearby, but I didn’t feel in any danger. The air was warm, the ground soft and yet resilient. To be alive was such a blessing, such a –
‘Zummo?’
Dazed, I sprang out of the chair. The Grand Duke was standing by the door. He wore a cream-coloured wig and scarlet clothes, the fabric glittering with gem-stones and trimmed with little clouds of fur. He must have come straight from an important engagement. I apologized for having dozed off.
‘You work harder than any of us,’ he said. ‘You put us to shame.’
‘I doubt that very much, Your Highness.’
He was weary too, he told me. He had spent most of the afternoon with an Austrian diplomat, one of Leopold I’s advisers, who was intent on involving him in a political manoeuvre that didn’t interest him in the slightest.
‘But let us put all that aside.’ Sinking down on to a chair, the Grand Duke eyed me from beneath his heavy lids.
I took hold of the muslin and pulled it in such a way that the girl was gradually revealed. The Grand Duke’s plump lips parted, and he gripped the arms of his chair as if frightened he might be swept away. His knuckles had whitened over the lions’ paws. Not wanting to break the spell, I stood quite still.
Finally, the Grand Duke rose to his feet. He advanced on the reclining figure cautiously, on tiptoe. She appeared to have made a child of him. He stopped beside her, one hand wrapped around his mouth and chin.
‘But this is perfect,’ he murmured.
Only then, as the air rushed out of me, did I realize I had been holding my breath. I hadn’t betrayed him or embarrassed him. I wouldn’t be required to defend myself.
‘This is better than I could ever have expected.’ He turned away, and the look he gave me when he reached the far side of the room could almost have been mistaken for pity. ‘You’re a master.’
‘For weeks, Your Highness,’ I said, ‘I worked on nothing but the colour of her skin.’
‘I can imagine.’
I had used a wide range of pigments, I told him, some organic, some man-made. I had used lead-white for her face. Gold-leaf too. And champagne chalk from Northern France. I had used smalt and malachite for her armpits, dragon’s blood and fustic for her thighs.
‘But the texture was no less important,’ I went on.
I had experimented with Turkish wax, which had a vivid orange-red colour to it, and wax from Madagascar, which was sandy brown and alluringly aromatic. I had imported wax from Senegal, but it smelled so pungent that I found myself recoiling. I had even worked with wax extracted from cabbages and plums. I had adulterated my waxes with fine resins, animal fats, kaolin, ochre, marble dust, and tallow. After hundreds of hours of trial and error, I had produced a wax the like of which had never been seen before, a wax both tactile and resilient, a
wax as fleshy as flesh itself.
The Grand Duke was nodding. ‘She looks so real. If she were to sit up, or turn over, or even speak, somehow I wouldn’t be surprised.’ He laughed in disbelief at what he was saying, then seemed to shiver. Was he after all aware of a transgression of some kind? ‘Remind me how long this has taken.’
‘More than a year.’
‘It was worth the wait.’
I thanked him.
‘One thing.’ With a thoughtful expression, he moved back towards the girl. He seemed bolder suddenly, and more complacent, as if in the brief moments he had spent on the far side of the room he had become accustomed to her existence. As if, by removing himself, he had taken ownership. The speed of the transition startled me, but perhaps it illustrated his sense of prerogative. As the Grand Duke, he was used to receiving extraordinary gifts. I watched as he traced the dip in the muscle of her upper arm, the slow curve of her jaw. ‘Could you give her some hair?’
‘She already has hair,’ I said. Then, feeling foolish, I added, ‘On her head.’
‘But not,’ he said, ‘elsewhere …’
I found myself staring, but he was gazing up at the domed ceiling.
‘I used to play in here when I was young,’ he said. ‘I would hide from Bandinelli.’
‘He was your tutor, wasn’t he?’
‘My mother likes to say he was the one who made me what I am.’ The Grand Duke smiled bleakly, then looked beyond me, at the girl, and in a different voice, one that was far more practical, he said, ‘It should be real hair, from a woman.’
‘Of course.’ I hesitated. ‘But otherwise you’re satisfied?’
‘Satisfied? I’m astonished. Overwhelmed.’
His voice was trembling, and tears had welled into his eyes. It was my turn to look away.
I promised to make the necessary modifications as soon as I could.
The Grand Duke nodded. ‘I’ll see that you’re handsomely rewarded.’
I murmured that his approval was all the reward I needed, then I bowed and left the room.
I opened Faustina’s bedroom shutters a few inches to let some cool air in. The afternoon sun fell through the gap and lay on the floor like a thin, bright strip of brass. I wouldn’t normally have risked visiting Faustina in the daytime, but her uncle had travelled to Livorno to receive a shipment of spices from the south of Spain. Also, since I had successfully delivered the Grand Duke’s secret commission, I had begun to feel more confident. There was no reason, I thought, why his good will might not extend to cover every aspect of my life, including my unorthodox relationship with Faustina. Before too long, we might have privileged status, if not actual immunity. Though everything was forbidden in Florence, anything was possible.
I turned from the window and sat down on the edge of the bed. She was lying on her back with nothing on, the linen damp and crumpled.
‘So how much did he give you?’ she asked.
I told her, and saw her eyes widen.
‘Some of which I’ve already spent,’ I said, ‘on you.’
When I first arrived, we had kissed and then undressed each other, and the present I had brought had been forgotten. Now, though, I took a wide, flat box out of my bag and handed it to her.
She sat up on the bed and lifted the lid. Inside, under crisp sheets of tissue paper, was a cream silk gown with lilac petticoats. She took a quick breath and fell quite still, her face filled with light reflected from the dress. ‘I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.’ She leaned over and kissed me again. ‘But I’m too hot to try it on just now. Do you mind?’
‘Of course not. In fact, I need you to stay as you are.’ I reached into my bag a second time, producing a pair of scissors. ‘You remember the favour I asked you about?’
Faustina leaned back and looked at me drowsily, one hand cushioning her head so I could see the small round bone on the inside of her elbow. ‘What favour?’
‘I asked if I could have some of your hair.’
‘That’s right. From the private places.’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what it’s for?’
‘I can’t.’
‘What if I tried to guess?’
‘You couldn’t.’
She rolled on to her side, cheek propped on one hand, and watched as I produced three tiny packets, each of which I had labelled in advance: ARMPIT HAIR (LEFT), ARMPIT HAIR (RIGHT), PUBIC HAIR.
‘You’re very well prepared,’ she said.
‘Where should I begin?’
She touched her left armpit. ‘Start here,’ she said, then she moved her hand down between her legs. ‘And finish here.’
I bent over her and laid the blades of the scissors flush against her skin.
She drew the air in past her teeth. ‘That’s cold.’
‘Do you trust me?’
She nodded.
I began to cut the hair, which was straight and dark, though not as dark as the hair on her head. The smell that rose out of her armpit was delicate and bitter, like chicory.
‘It tickles,’ she murmured.
‘Try not to move,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
Once I had removed all the hair from her left armpit, I folded the packet shut. Faustina altered her position on the bed. As I started work on her right armpit, I could feel her watching me with a mixture of amusement and curiosity. It was as if I had an obsession, and she had decided to indulge me. Not so far from the truth, perhaps.
The right armpit was soon finished. As I moved down her body and knelt between her legs, Faustina turned her face to one side. I bent over her pubic mound. The blood rushed to my groin. Faustina had closed her eyes, and her breasts rose and fell with every deep, slow breath. From where I crouched, between her knees, she looked foreshortened, reduced to a succession of erotic places. Clitoris, nipples, lips. I wondered if she could sense my erection. Trying to ignore it, I began to snip at the dark inverted triangle.
‘Strange,’ I murmured, ‘how this hair differs from your other hair.’
‘Which do you prefer?’
‘I prefer it all.’
Eyes still closed, she smiled.
‘There’s no part of you,’ I said, ‘that I don’t prefer.’
‘You’re not making any sense.’
The coiled springs proved hard to cut, and all the time I was aware of her cunt below me, and its aroma, which was the aroma of love-making – a new mingling of her juice and mine, a recent, ripe concoction of the two of us. To give myself a better angle, I decided to kneel beside her, next to her right hip. Turning my back on her, I aimed the scissors downward, towards that little knot of tissue that gave her so much pleasure. As before, I tried to cut as close to the root of each hair as I could. Slowly, I filled the last of the three packets.
Though I was facing away from her, I heard her breathing quicken, and when I glanced over my shoulder I saw that her left hand was up against her mouth. I kept snipping at her pubic hair, getting ever closer to the place where the skin parted. Once the packet was full, and I had laid the scissors to one side, I climbed over her right leg and slid my prick into her cunt. Eyes still closed, she sank her teeth into the edge of her hand, just below the little finger.
I closed my eyes as well and moved inside her, imagining the ribbed flesh, the supple rings of muscle. Mauve and yellow flowers filled the blank screen of my eyelids, the petals loosening and drifting downwards on to smooth grey stone. I kissed the soft bristles in the hollow of her armpit, then I kissed the smaller hollow of her clavicle. I moved up to her mouth, which smelled of ripe melon. Not the wound-red Tuscan water-melon, but the pale-green variety I had bought in Naples once, and which had grown, so I was told, on the wild coast of Barbaria. I breathed her breath, I licked her lips. When I reached beneath her and held her buttocks in my hands, she trembled all over, her cunt seeming to flutter, and I thought of a fish in the bottom of a boat, a fish just lifted from the water, t
hen she tightened round me and I came. The force of it threw me sideways, and my head struck the ceiling where it slanted above the bed. I must have cried out because she opened her eyes and asked if I was all right.
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I hit my head.’
‘The ceiling is rather low.’ She began to laugh, despite herself. ‘Does it hurt?’
I was laughing too. ‘Only a bit.’
She lay back.
‘I came too quickly,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it.’
‘No, no. It was good. I liked it.’
‘I saw flowers. Huge mauve and yellow flowers, all massed together, and falling slowly through the air –’
‘When you hit your head?’
I laughed again. ‘No, before. When I was inside you.’
‘Flowers?’ she said. ‘I never heard of anything like that.’
It was a happy time, the happiest I had ever known. Later, though, when I looked back, I saw that I had been living in a kind of dream state. But perhaps that’s what happiness is: a suspension of disbelief or a willed ignorance, which, like held breath, cannot be sustained beyond a certain point.
By the first week of April, I had put the finishing touches to the commission. In the end, I didn’t use the contents of the three packets. Working with scissors had been a mistake, perhaps, since many of Faustina’s hairs were too short to implant successfully. Instead, I resorted to hair plucked from a corpse provided by Pampolini. I had, in any case, begun to feel uncomfortable about the idea of involving Faustina, not least because she claimed to be the bastard child of the Grand Duke’s wife. When confronted with the adjustments I had made, the Grand Duke declared that I had, once again, more than fulfilled his expectations, and presented me with a dark-brown doe-skin coat which he had bought in London, and whose cuffs, pockets and hem were discreetly embroidered with silver thread. I also began to be invited to the most exclusive gatherings, and met many luminaries of the age, people like Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who had developed the microscope, Hayyim Pernicca, a Kabbalistic scholar from Livorno, and Govert Bidloo, an anatomist who had written a musical work known as an opera, the first of its kind. What’s more, when I attended court, I was allowed to within a few paces of the Grand Duke, perhaps because we now had a whole new area of common ground; after all, when it came to a certain subject, I was the only person in the world he could talk to. In company, I took care to underplay the change in my fortunes. In private, though, I felt valued as never before.
Secrecy Page 17