‘What is la luna like? Are the moon-folk good there?’
She considered my questions for a moment. ‘I have no doubt la luna is a magical place.’
‘A magic place?’ My toes and fingers began to tingle.
‘Very much so. Listen, and I shall tell you how I came to know about it. Once upon a time,’ Doña Marisa began, ‘a maja dancer rose from obscurity, and after she had given up her infant daughter, she married a Spanish nobleman and that is how she became a Doña. Some days she suffered greatly from her husband’s violent temper, other days she loathed his cruelty to others, yet it was the only life she knew, and she swore she would never be poor again, roasting chestnuts and begging for food. She and Don Rafael had removed to Seville, to his ancestral home, and after one season, he became disenchanted with her, and she with him.’
‘He’s a bad man.’ I thought again of her scarred temple.
‘True, but he was wealthy and titled. In Spain, one must marry such a man to be free,’ she revealed to me. ‘You see, it is customary for a Doña, being a married woman, to choose a cortejo, an escort, and thus she needn’t see her husband that much.’
This confused me as to why a husband and wife didn’t want to see each other, and when I glanced at Emmerence, she seemed just as puzzled as me.
‘One day,’ continued Doña Marisa, ‘a handsome nobleman, he being an avid art collector from Inglaterra, wandered to Seville to view the paintings by Velázquez, Zurbarán and Murillo. This English nobleman, known to all as Lord Scapeton, came under the Doña’s spell, and he consented to be her cortejo, escorting her in town, serving her chocolate, whispering sweet words into her ear and paying her a thousand attentions.’
I gaped at her, nearly falling from the seat. ‘Lord Scapeton, the ogre? I kicked him good and hard.’
‘You kicked him? When?’ Señor Gonzalez was all astonishment. ‘Why was I not told of this?’
Doña Marisa shushed him. ‘The Doña and her English cortejo became inseparable. Together they sojourned in Cádiz, to find the Doña’s real father, Don Luis de Luna, who, to their surprise, was a prosperous Genoese merchant. He had obtained naturalisation and the status of hidalgo in Spain, and thus the Spanish pronounced his surname de Luna instead of di Luna.
‘When the Doña claimed to be his natural daughter, Don Luis cast a sceptical eye upon her, for he was a childless man. She showed him the ancient key that had once belonged to her mother – the key that Don Luis had given her mother an age ago when the two of them had been lovers. Startled at first, he gathered his wits, and he pronounced that if she could find Villa La Luna – a hidden villa in a place near the sea in Liguria – and if the key opened the door to his villa, then he would acknowledge her as his natural daughter.’
My eyes became round as saucers. ‘Where is the key?’
With great care, she removed a necklace that she wore underneath her clothes. She dangled the chain, attached to which hung an ornate iron key with la luna, the full moon, at one end. My fingers tingling, I cupped the key in my hands, to feel the weight of it, the magic of it. Señor Gonzalez pointed to the handle of the ring, which he called the bow. The middle part he called the stem, and the bottom part he called the wards, which reminded me of the teeth on a rake.
‘On their return to Seville,’ continued Doña Marisa, in a low voice, ‘the Doña’s cortejo became drunk from a flask of red wine, and he revealed to her that his younger brother had fathered a child with a “low creature” in Portugal during the war and had brought the child to live with him and his wife in the town of Scarborough.’
I wrinkled my brow. ‘Scarbro’? That’s my home.’
Doña Marisa nodded, and she resumed her story. ‘No thanks to his brother’s foolery, he said, everyone in Inglaterra knew of this illegitimate child and her origins. He grumbled that the Portuguese mother of the child was not of their rank; for, had she been, a good match could have been made for the child, and his family would have benefitted from the alliance.’
I stared blankly at her, wondering what this meant.
‘Do not you understand?’ Doña Marisa grasped my hand. ‘Lord Scapeton is your papai’s brother. I had no idea until then. Believe me, when I say, no two brothers could be more dissimilar.’
Thunderstruck, I cast down my eyes, recalling Lord Scapeton’s cold contempt for me. ‘My papai says I’m his love child and his creature.’
‘You are my creature, too,’ Doña Marisa assured me, squeezing my hand.
‘Lord Scapeton and Colonel Fitzwilliam are brothers? What insanity is this?’ Señor Gonzalez uttered a ferocious growl. ‘What happened to this English cortejo?’
‘He disappeared one day with the south-west wind,’ recalled she. ‘Upon learning the identity of the child, the Doña suffered a shock, and when she dared to whisper the name of her child – the child whom she had believed lost to her for ever – it broke the spell that had bound the cortejo to her. Without so much as a proper leave-taking, he forsook her once he had obtained his true heart’s desire – a rare copy of Goya’s controversial Los Caprichos that Don Rafael had kept hidden behind a false wall in his library and had finally agreed to sell to him.’
‘Ay! What a tragedy to give up those rare prints.’ Señor Gonzalez bemoaned the loss of what he referred to as Goya’s critical eye of Spanish society.
I puzzled my wits together. ‘Lord Scapeton tricked everyone?’
Doña Marisa paused for a moment to rub her maccaroni-filled belly. ‘He cared not a whit for his lady,’ admitted she. ‘The Doña served as a means for him to get close to Don Rafael. With a celerity that astounded many, the Doña chose a new cortejo among her many admirers, he being a kind and honourable Spaniard named Sábado Gonzalez, who agreed to escort her to Inglaterra, although he nor anyone else knew at the time of her secret plan to find her long lost daughter. How intractable she was of her desire to see Inglaterra, so much so that Don Rafael gave her a small chest containing many gold escudos in exchange for leaving him in peace. “Begone for ever,” thundered he. She set out in the world then, determined that she, with her daughter by her side, would find Villa La Luna.’
Señor Gonzalez grasped her hand to kiss it. ‘Mi amor, I shall help you find this Villa La Luna.’
‘What if we can’t find it?’ worried I.
Doña Marisa wiped a tear or two from her eyes. ‘We must find it. I cannot return to Spain because of the bargain I struck with Don Rafael. He gave me the money for the journey on the condition that I begone for ever.’ Soon the story-teller in Doña Marisa turned melancholy after relating her sad history to us, and she thereafter dozed with her head resting on her cortejo’s shoulder.
At the summit of the Bocchetta pass, where we espied a dazzling city far off in the distance, I swore I could taste the salty air. ‘The sea!’ enthused I, rousing Doña Marisa from her deep slumber. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t seen the sea since our departure from Rotterdam. Emmerence, having never seen the sea before, wondered if it ended at the horizon, until Pico explained to her that no one ever reaches the horizon – it runs away from you – and, once out on the high seas, you’re surrounded by this wily horizon, which is why some folks get lost and end up captured by pirates or blown overboard by a French man-o’-war.
I had a better theory. ‘God made the sea touch the sky where He lives. He likes to dip His toes into the cold water to refresh Himself.’
‘Dip his toes into the water like a dandy? Yer nincompoop,’ exclaimed Pico. ‘When God wishes to refresh Himself, He makes it rain. Once He soaps up, He stands underneath a rain cloud an’ makes it shower. That’s why the next mornin’, the air smells fresh an’ clean.’
‘God doesn’t bathe much in the summer,’ observed I, recalling the dry summer days in Portugal.
Pico slapped his forehead in exasperation. ‘That’s why God makes flowers bloom in the summer. All the heavy perfume in the air masks His manly odour.’
‘But you said God isn’t a dandy,�
� protested I.
Señor Gonzalez scoffed at us. ‘Qué absurdo! What nonsense! God does not smell. And He’s not a dandy. He’s a true majo who wears a capa flung over His left shoulder.’ Señor Gonzalez muttered that he would go distracted, and if he had his way, children would be sent up to the moon until they could speak sense.
Thereafter, we descended into the heights of San Pietro d’Arena near the entrance of Genoa – the native city of Don Luis de Luna.
‘Genova, la superba, ti saluto,’ Señor Gonzalez greeted the city in the Italian way.
‘Genoa, the proud,’ his lady agreed.
‘Mira! There’s the ancient light-house, La Lanterna, at the entrance to the harbour.’
She viewed the busy harbour with her spyglass. ‘There must be a thousand boats and vessels floating on the water.’
‘Oh, how the marble palazzos glow. Such wealth. Such brilliance.’
‘I wonder which palazzo is ours?’ she teased him.
It seemed to me, though, as if Genoa had been enchanted into a state of drowsiness. Did Napoleon, he being a stregone or sorcerer, cast a spell on the Genoese long ago to trick them and render them powerless? From our lofty position here on the heights, the life below reminded me of tiny insects, creeping along inch by inch, and the lateen sails, like triangular ghosts, drifted in the harbour and beyond, as if weary from finding nothing much to haunt on the water.
Señor Gonzalez had praised Genoa. But a seasoned traveller I had become, at least I thought so, and a city from afar often presents a vision of magnificence, filling you with the highest of moon hopes and expectations. Then, more often than not, you end up having the great misfortune to journey inside such a city, where the poverty and misery and rot press up against your carriage window, stirring up many an unpleasant sensation in your weary traveller’s soul.
Sure enough, as our carriages conveyed us through the crooked, stinking lanes of Genoa with its tumble-down tenements, I suffered yet another keen disappointment, because a moon this was not. Oh, if the maids in Rotterdam could scrub these streets clean. The lanes here were so narrow that the tall houses, each painted a different colour and covered with dirt, seemed to lean towards each other, leaving just a sliver of blue sky above. My spirits low, I closed my eyes to feel a prayer. Ti saluto! God! Please do not hide Villa La Luna in one of these miserable lanes.
I pressed my nose to the glass, observing the streets teeming with endless activity. The Genoese gathered amidst the twists and turns of the vicoli or alleys, chit chatting in high spirits. Señor Gonzalez drily remarked that conversazione seemed to be the favourite form of amusement here. We drove by a knot of men playing a noisy, rapid game with their fingers, shouting bets and arguing and hurling insults at each other. Having my own fingers and knowing how to count fingers, I wished to learn the game, and so Señor Gonzalez promised to teach us this thing known as Mora. For a moment, I convinced myself that life here wasn’t as bad as I had imagined it would be, until we came across the churches and convents, where hundreds of friars, monks and priests swarmed in the squares, some of these religious men carried in sedan chairs with utmost ceremony to avoid the stenches and squalor and dirty people.
As if he could read my gloomy thoughts, Señor Gonzalez ordered the driver to advance towards the centre of the city, to Pietro Romanengo fu Stefano. He had heard of this confectioner’s shop, and he believed it would be just the thing to cure what ailed me. We stopped in front of an elegant shop with tall glass windows and two cherubs poised above the entrance to greet patrons. There, inside this sweet-smelling shop, stood many a French-designed glass case displaying brightly-coloured candies, or rather ‘sugary gewgaws’, which was how Señor Gonzalez referred to them.
A wealthy signora dressed in the French fashion and attended by her escort, swept forward to buy boxes and boxes of candies, fixing her eyes, ever and anon, at us children and Señor Gonzalez. ‘She assumes I’m their father,’ he whispered to Doña Marisa. This confused me until the escort handed his lady into a carriage where two young children awaited them, and I overheard the shop-keeper’s remark that the signora had seven children fathered by her cicisbeo. ‘Seven!’ Señor Gonzalez drew back in horror, and he fumbled with his bolsa to buy sugar-coated fichi or figs for his lady and a box of rosolio drops for us children.
‘Genova, la superba,’ mumbled he, as he sucked on a rosolio drop.
I licked my lips in anticipation.
‘Niños?’ He cupped his ear.
The three of us giggled. ‘La superba.’
‘Bueno. And now for your reward.’ He placed a rosolio drop onto each of our tongues, where the tasty sugar pebbles burst into a flavoured liquid – violet for Emmerence, mint for Pico and rose for me.
We set off next for Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, where, with our letter of introduction from Marchesa Castiglione, we would stay as her guests at Villa Leone. Señor Gonzalez claimed that our bolero dance had intrigued the Marchesa, who had taken a liking to Doña Marisa, thereby saving us many a franc. Did not we look forward to being served cioccolato every morning? I bounced with eagerness at the mention of chocolate, because cioccolato italiano was like no other chocolate on earth, and I hadn’t savoured it since we quit Milan. Pico declared it a cup of tasty mud, as did Emmerence, who pondered whether Jesus would drink it. When I told her that Jesus ate maccaroni – he having told me so in my dream – she laughed good naturedly when I insisted that he did.
‘What are you writing, Señor Gonzalez?’ inquired I.
He scribbled something in a small journal-book that he always carried with him. ‘Hmm? Oh, I’m just imagining how an object without a mouth could eat maccaroni.’ Lost in his thoughts, he turned to gaze out the window, as if something on the street would reveal the answer to him.
As I’ve said before, I’m of the opinion that grown-ups often don’t make any sense, and when they do utter nonsense, it’s best to ignore them. So when we reached the grand Villa Leone, and he and Doña Marisa broke out into silly raptures with the elaborate frontage of carved lions, the captivating loggia, the number of glazed windows, &c., I gave an inward shrug. Those sorts of things did not signify to me. We children had come under the spell of a rather large frog that chirped in the fountain. Señor Gonzalez bemoaned that here, surrounded by wealth and beauty, the sole thing we cared for was a silly frog and whether it would eat maccaroni.
‘Señor Gonzalez, may we give froggy a rosolio drop?’ I held out my hand.
‘Absolutely not,’ Señor Gonzalez guarded his box of sugary gewgaws.
‘If he croaks “la superba”, may he have one?’ pleaded I.
‘Humph. If your frog can talk, then I am emperor.’ He struck a mock pose, raising an imaginary sceptre.
I pointed to one of his boots. ‘Señor Gonzalez, what’s that thing on your foot?’
‘Ay! Scorpion!’ Of a sudden he turned into a wild man, swinging his arms and kicking his legs high in the air, while the odd little creature dashed off to safety, snapping its pincers. Once Señor Gonzalez had regained his breath and manly composure, he flung his brown capa over his left shoulder, and he hastened to join his lady. She, having watched this spectacle with undisguised mirth, awaited him near the balustraded flight of steps.
Inside Villa Leone, the two of them broke out into raptures with the marble floors, the double staircase, the tapestries, the frescoes, the ornate furniture and the chandeliers, their duelling cries of ‘look here’ and ‘look there’ in each salon making my head spin like a teetotum. I imagined that a king and queen must live in this palace and that they mustn’t have any children, because no child would be allowed to sneak and play at bowls inside any of the long passages, or press his greasy fingers on the highly-polished furniture when the butler wasn’t attending to him, or throw his pease out the window while the grown-ups amused themselves in one of the salons.
Each day at our lavish abode, where we supped on omelette, potage au macaroni and crème au chocolat, Doña Marisa would puzzle
her wits together to find Villa La Luna. Some days she and Señor Gonzalez journeyed eastward on the coast; other days they journeyed westward. While they were from home, we children sometimes received a visitor named Padre Pozzi, he having formed an acquaintance with Emmerence during his sojourns in Brieg. The padre and Emmerence would converse in Italian and discuss the history of Genoa while Pico and I sat under a fig tree, playing a noisy game of Mora or throwing mounds of fig leaves at each other.
Whenever Doña Marisa complained of head-ache, Señor Gonzalez would take us children to Genoa. One time he took us to a puppet theatre where the marionettes performed a comedic ballet that turned into a bizarre riot where the puppets hit each other with sticks. ‘Qué ridiculoso!’ exclaimed Señor Gonzalez. Another time he bought bright red Genoese caps for Pico and me, and a mezzaro or white veil for Emmerence. But if there was one thing Señor Gonzalez dearly loved to do in Genoa, it was to drive through the stench of the city to reach the Strada Nuova and Strada Balbi – the streets of palazzos – where he goggled at ‘the extravaganza’, and thereafter to visit the Annunziata, a church made of pure gold inside.
One day, when the winds presented favourable, he hired a small felucca, an open boat with two lateen sails and six rowers and steered by an able mariner. Here, afloat in the noble harbour, we sailed by small boats called gondolas and many a picturesque felucca, some of the larger open boats having three lateen sails and twelve rowers.
‘La superba,’ Señor Gonzalez saluted Genoa. ‘See how the marble amphitheatre of palazzos rises from the sea, surrounded on high by a dozen hills the colour of crème au chocolat and dotted with white country-houses?’
I, Sofia-Elisabete, Love Child of Colonel Fitzwilliam Page 16