Secrecy

by Rupert Thomson

  Then, one sultry morning towards the end of that month, I discovered that my gnawing sense of the unrepeatability of things had been justified, and even, to some extent, prophetic, though not at all in the way I had imagined. I was in my workshop, with the doors open to the stable yard, when Vespasiano Schwarz appeared. Sweat had blackened his armpits, and he was panting. The Grand Duke wanted to see me at once, he said. I asked if something was wrong. He didn’t know.

  The shutters were closed in the Grand Duke’s apartment, and it was much cooler than outside. After consulting with a Dutch engineer, he had built a number of circular recesses into the floor, which could be packed with ice and covered with iron lids. It was one of his more ingenious initiatives. Before my eyes could properly adjust, though, he was in front of me, and gripping my right hand in both of his.

  ‘Oh, it’s awful, just awful.’ He peered into my bewildered face. ‘You haven’t heard?’

  There had been reports of a catastrophic earthquake in Sicily, he told me. The south-east, in particular, had suffered enormous devastation; whole towns had been razed to the ground. He had no details as yet, but he understood that the death toll was high.

  ‘It’s where you come from, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Your family are there.’

  Objects swam slowly up out of the gloom. A moon-shaped marble table, a porcelain vase. A sprawling lead-grey hunting dog.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  The earthquake wasn’t recent, he told me. It had happened some time ago; news had taken a while to filter through. Spanish troops had just arrived in the city, on their way from Messina to Milan. They would have the most up-to-date information. In the meantime, he insisted that I go to the chapel and pray with him.

  Later that day, I walked down to the barracks where the Spaniards were billeted, but it was almost sunset before I could find a soldier who could tell me about Siracusa. He was drinking on his own in a tavern by the river. His wife’s family came from Noto, he said, and he confirmed what the Grand Duke had told me. Large sections of my city had been destroyed, and at least three quarters of the population had been killed. As for Noto, it had been flattened. Wiped out. There were no survivors. Augusta and Catania had disappeared too. Of the dead that had been recovered, most had been shovelled into vast holes in the ground. The fear of contagion was such that there had been no time for niceties. Blessings had only been said once the mass graves had been sealed.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know what happened to my family?’ I said.

  I gave him my name, then told him where I was from.

  Keeping his eyes on the table, he said that the part of Siracusa where I had grown up had been reduced to rubble.

  ‘My mother lived there,’ I said. ‘My aunt as well.’

  The Spaniard rubbed at his whiskery cheeks with both hands, then shook his head. ‘I didn’t hear anything about them.’

  ‘And my brother, Jacopo? Any news of him?’

  Was my brother was a military type? I nodded. If the Jacopo he was thinking of was the right one, the Spaniard said, he had built himself a villa out of town, on Plemmirio. During the earthquake, the sea had swept inland, annihilating everything in its path. Jacopo, his wife, and his three children were all missing, presumed dead.

  ‘Three children,’ I murmured.

  ‘Did your brother have children?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I took a gulp of wine. ‘His wife was blonde. Ornella.’

  The Spaniard looked at me steadily. ‘Is there anyone else you want to know about?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Nobody else.’

  No matter how often I had imagined my return, it had never quite felt real. There had been a silvery, liquid edge to everything I saw, a heightened, almost supernatural quality, as if, deep down, I knew I was picturing a scene that could not occur. At the same time, I felt involved or even implicated in what had taken place: some kind of payment had been exacted on my behalf – some strange, disproportionate revenge …

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the Spanish soldier said.

  ‘Did you lose people too?’

  He was staring down into his wine. ‘Everyone. Like you.’

  It was after midnight. Though I was sure no one had seen me smuggle Faustina through the gate that led to my workshop – we had waited until the guards were off duty – I thought it safest if we sat in the dark. Faustina faced the open door, her bare arm stretched along the back of the chair, her hand dangling.

  I had written her a note about the earthquake, and she had offered to come and keep me company. It seemed likely, I told her, that everybody in my family was dead. What I was saying sounded grandiose and hollow; though I was telling the truth, I had the odd feeling that I was exaggerating. Actually, I went on, the news made no sense to me. I had become so accustomed to the idea of never seeing my family again that it was hard to believe anything had changed.

  She understood, she said. As a child, she had spent whole days trying to visualize her father. He would scale the village walls under cover of darkness. He would wear outlandish disguises. He would bring her presents from exotic places. His visits would be magical, and utterly compelling. So much so that on the rare occasions when he appeared in person he could never quite compete. It would all seem awkward. Understated. What was different about her story, though, was that she had wanted to see him. Longed to see him.

  I rose to my feet and stood in the doorway. Outside the air shifted slowly, but with a kind of determination, like someone turning in a bed. I looked up into the sky. The soft summer darkness. The chalk dust of the stars.

  ‘Strange, isn’t it,’ I said, ‘how we’ve spent our lives imagining things that other people never even have to think about?’

  ‘I brought something to show you.’ Faustina reached for her goatskin bag and took out a notebook with a faded red cover. Dating from the years when Mimmo Righetti was her friend, it was a record of all the charms and potions she had invented. She leafed through page after page of spells that had been designed to conjure up her father. ‘None of them worked, of course.’

  ‘But he came. You told me.’

  ‘That was just coincidence.’

  She turned the page again, and there was the flying spell. She had even drawn the ingredients – the rose-and-silver clove of garlic, the crooked splinters of the spider’s legs, the grey hair discovered by the altar. The book was detailed, conscientious, almost as though she had known she would one day work in an apothecary.

  Later, when we were half-sitting, half-lying on the divan, her head against my shoulder, I asked if she had ever seen Mimmo again.

  ‘Two years ago,’ she said.

  Since moving to Florence, she had only returned to the village once, and that was to visit Sabatino Vespi, who still worked the land below Ginevra’s house. One morning, Faustina had emerged from La Cura, the church Ginevra used to attend, and had run straight into her old friend coming up the street.

  ‘Mimmo! How are you?’ Her delight sounded shallow, artificial, but he had caught her unawares.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you know …’

  He steadied himself on his crutches and looked at her, and all she could see in his face was a kind of slow pleasure. His gaze, though direct, made her feel valuable, and she found it far easier to be with him than she had imagined it would be, and suddenly regretted having avoided him for so many years.

  ‘You’re pretty good on those crutches,’ she said. ‘You almost knocked me over.’

  ‘Lucky escape.’ He smiled faintly.

  ‘I think you’re even quicker than I am.’

  ‘I’m used to them now. It gets sore, though. Under my arms.’

  ‘Is your leg sore too?’

  He glanced down at the place where his leg once was. ‘Not too bad. It sort of aches sometimes.’

  ‘I’m sorry I never came to see you.’

  ‘You’re seeing me now.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘You didn’t want to upset yourself.
I would have done the same.’

  She didn’t believe him. He would have perched on the end of her bed, and told her stories about what was happening in the village. He would have brought apricots and figs. He would have cared for her. She stared at the ground.

  ‘I did something no one else has ever done,’ Mimmo said in a low voice. ‘I flew.’ He looked off up the street, and his tongue moistened one corner of his mouth, something he used to do as a boy when he was unsure of himself. ‘Well, just for a moment, anyway.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I was there, remember?’

  ‘So,’ he said, and he was still looking past her, back into the village, ‘are you a witch yet?’

  Their eyes met, and they began to laugh.

  Not long afterwards, he told her he had to be going, and she understood that he was releasing her from an embarrassing situation, one she wouldn’t necessarily have known how to resolve. She also saw it as yet another example of his selflessness, his grace.

  She watched as he laboured through the small piazza and up the slope to the castello. He wasn’t quick on his crutches, as she had claimed, or even particularly competent. His progress was awkward, and in the end she had to turn away.

  For years she had asked herself why he had leapt off the roof. She knew the answer, of course. Because he had faith. Because he trusted her. Because he would have done anything for her. But even though she knew the answer, it seemed important to keep asking the question.

  She fell silent.

  ‘He loved you,’ I said. ‘He probably still does.’

  ‘He lost his leg.’

  ‘You were just children –’

  ‘I ruined his life.’ She lowered her head. A tear spilled down her cheek. ‘I ruined it.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I murmured.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is ridiculous. You’re the one who should be crying.’

  I held her in my arms and stroked her hair. Her breathing deepened. She drifted off to sleep. Her book of spells and potions lay open on the floor. A draught from outside flipped a page, revealing a drawing of the crow’s feather. Above it, she had written a single word: featherspoon. I saw her crouching in the yellow grass, stirring the contents of the jar. Mimmo beside her, mesmerized. Her mother had given her up. So had her father. She had no idea of her true value. She even doubted her existence. Was it any wonder if she had looked for people who would believe in her? Was it any wonder if she had then felt compelled to test that belief, to push it as far as it would go?

  She took a quick breath, as if she was about to dive beneath a wave, then turned over and laid her cheek against my chest.

  The delicate, delicious weight of her.

  ‘Do you love me?’ she murmured.

  She was talking in her sleep, or on the edge of sleep, but I answered anyway.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I love you.’

  On returning to the House of Shells one evening, I found Signora de la Mar bent almost double outside my room. When she heard my footsteps, she straightened up. A letter had arrived for me, she said; she had been about to slip it beneath my door. I took it from her eagerly. I had been corresponding with van Leeuwenhoek about his microscopes, and also with a certain Mr Salmon, who had opened a wax museum in London, and I was expecting replies from both men, but when I had the letter in my hands I saw that it was discoloured – yellow in some places, brown in others – and that there were several diagonal slashes in the paper, all signs that it had been heated and then fumigated as a precaution against the spreading of disease. Looking more closely, I saw that it had been addressed to me care of the Grand Duke’s palace, and franked in both Naples and Palermo. My heart staggered; my face felt hot.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ the signora asked.

  ‘I think it’s from Sicily.’

  I broke the seal. The letter was dated March the twenty-seventh, more than two months after the earthquake, and it was signed by my mother.

  I began to read.

  She assumed I had heard of the dreadful catastrophe that had devastated Sicily. By a miracle, she and her sister Flaminia had escaped with their lives, she said, but God in his wisdom had taken Jacopo, Ornella, and their three beautiful sons. Her own house – and much of Siracusa – had been severely damaged, and she could not have stayed there, even if she had wanted to. She had found refuge in Palermo, which had survived more or less intact. While there, word had reached her that I was living in Florence, and that I had done well for myself. She was writing to tell me that Sicily was ruined for her, and that she was on her way to join me. She trusted I could find it in my heart to welcome her. She hoped she wouldn’t be too much of a burden.

  Though I had often imagined people surfacing from the past, they were shadowy presences – strangers who knew my story, and wished me harm. I had imagined Jacopo as well, of course, brimming with self-righteousness and anger. Not once, though, not in all these years, had I imagined my mother.

  The letter rambled, and the handwriting was so shaky it might have been written during the earthquake itself. My mother had been thirty-three when she gave birth to me. She would now be seventy. How would she manage the journey from Palermo? What would I do with her when she arrived? I lifted the letter to my nose, as if for guidance. It smelled of ash and vinegar.

  ‘Well?’ The signora’s dark eyes showed above her orange shawl.

  ‘My mother’s coming,’ I said. ‘I’m going to need a place of my own.’

  I called on Lorenzo Borucher. Once I had listened to him boasting about his latest exploits – he had done this person’s hair, that person’s hair; the names rarely meant anything to me – I told him I had decided to take his advice and look for a property to rent. My timing was impeccable, he said. He happened to know of a four-storey palazzo just off Via de’ Serragli, only a short walk from the Grand Duke’s palace.

  ‘It’s not what you’d call ostentatious,’ he went on. ‘In fact, it’s rather plain. You’ll probably like it.’ His cheeks dimpled. ‘But what about the signora?’

  Like Pampolini, Borucher thought there was more to my relationship with Signora de la Mar than I was letting on, and I had done nothing to disabuse him. Since arriving in Florence, I had been mindful of what Gracián had written – namely, that one should always try and transform one’s defects into ornaments. Throughout my life I had been dogged by rumours, but only recently had I realized that the trick was not to deny them or rail against them but to add to them. The more talk that surrounded me, the less credence any of it would have. It might even help to conceal the truth.

  ‘What about her?’ I said.

  ‘Is it over?’

  I smiled, but made no comment.

  He was right when he said I would like the palazzo, though. Its rooms were modest and austere, just as he had suggested, and there was a paved courtyard in the middle that recalled the one in the house where I had grown up. Situated on a dead-end street – in Siracusa we would have called it a ‘ronco’ – it was quiet too. If I missed the House of Shells – I had become so accustomed to Cuif’s nocturnal somersaults that I found it difficult to sleep at first – I also relished my new privacy.

  Not long after the move, Fiore took me to the firework factory again. The biggest festival of the year – San Giovanni – was looming, and the Guazzi twins were rushed off their feet. Doffo explained how they had combined spirit of nitre with oil extracted from caraway seeds to create what they called ‘liquid gunpowder’. The dragon they were in the process of building would swoop across the river, he told me, on an invisible, greased wire. Once it had dived beneath the surface, spitting flame – that was where the liquid gunpowder came in – it would soar into the air again, to a great height, and then explode. Ambitious, I said. The two brothers looked at each other and burst out laughing. That’s us, they said.

  On our way back through the city, a dreary, insistent rain began to fall, a rain more typical of January or February than June, and by the time we reached
my workshop we were drenched. I lit a wood fire and hung our wet clothes over a rail. To keep Fiore happy while they dried, I gave her one of the smocks I wore when I was casting, a small lump of beeswax, and a few of my old tools. Some time later, I heard footsteps in the stable yard, and Stufa walked in.

  I straightened up. ‘This is a surprise.’

  Stufa wiped the rain off his face, then began to inspect the shelves that lined the walls.

  ‘I didn’t think you had any time for art,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘Obsession fascinates me, though.’

  He had stopped in front of my pigments, but I doubted it was the pots of mercuric sulphide and chrysocolla that had caught his eye. On the same shelf, at head-height, was the thick glass jar that contained the dead girl’s skin. In a desperate attempt to distract him I asked if he wanted me to show him round. Either he didn’t hear me, though, or he ignored the offer.

  ‘People tell me you’ve been working night and day,’ he said, his eyes still fastened on the floating piece of skin.

  Fiore spoke from the corner of the room. ‘What’s obsession mean?’

  Stufa glanced round. He had assumed we were alone, perhaps. Also, clearly, he wasn’t used to being interrupted, least of all by a child.

  ‘This, Fiore, is Padre Stufa,’ I said. ‘He’s a very important man.’

  Fiore stared at him, her mouth ajar.

  ‘She doesn’t appear to have any manners,’ Stufa observed.

  ‘She’s shy,’ I said.

  ‘Witless too, by the look of it.’

  I felt my stomach knot with fury. ‘If you’ve seen enough,’ I said, ‘maybe you’d be good enough to let us get on with our work.’