Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

‘I know what you mean, Theo,’ Julia said, taking it in good part, ‘I know Yatzi’s not really real. But I don’t care.’

‘I think that’s beautiful,’ Friederike said, reached across the table and gripped Julia’s hand. But then she speaks, Hermann had said that day in Leipzig, and she’s just a girl. Like you, he’d said. About the same age too. She smiled quiveringly, holding Julia’s gaze, hoping to convey some message of fellowship.

‘I don’t give a damn what they do with me when I go,’ Theo said cheerfully, ‘they can put me on a hillside for the crows to pick at for all I care.’

‘Oh, but you’d want your friends to come to your funeral,’ Julia said. ‘You’d want the proper thing. The singing, the candles, the wake.’

‘Respect for the dead is important,’ the Italian said, inaptly serious.

‘For their memory,’ Theo conceded, ‘absolutely. But not for the clay. That doesn’t matter at all.’

‘I want all my loved ones standing round tossing handfuls of earth and weeping,’ Otto said. ‘And the finest coffin available.’

‘Me too,’ agreed Friederike.

‘You can have everything,’ Theo said. ‘But you won’t know about it.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Julia.

‘I suppose I can see what you mean,’ Friederike said. ‘What’s the point of a grand state funeral if no one likes you? Better a wooden cross and a cheap casket and people standing around who love you. But I do like to think I’d get a good send-off myself.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ said the professor, ‘the streets will be lined. But all the same…’

‘Now,’ the Italian said, suddenly leaning forward, animated, ‘shall I tell you a story?’

‘Oh, do!’ said Friederike.

Massimo took a long drink of red wine, cleared his throat. ‘When the Medici ruled Florence…’ he began.

Otto beamed. ‘Ah, a history lesson!’

The Italian paused and glared at him.

‘Please, carry on.’

‘When the Medici ruled Florence,’ he continued, speaking precisely, in heavily accented English, ‘there is a conspiracy to kill these brothers, these Medici. But it goes badly. And of course these men, these conspirators, of course they meet terrible ends. But there is one man. One old man. A conspirator. Him, they torture.’ He spoke fiercely, glaring round the table at each of them in turn but avoiding Julia’s eyes. He had not been able to make eye contact all evening. ‘He is dead. They hang him from the window. They dig a grave and put him in. He is buried.’

He paused for effect, ‘So,’ he said, ‘what do you think happens next?’ Without waiting for an answer he continued, his voice hard and disgusted. ‘The people in the streets dig him up. Take him home. You understand, they take him to his house, through the streets, like an old sack through the streets. They come to his own house and knock on the door with his head. They shout: “Open up! Your master knocks!” That is their fun. Then they throw his body in the river and away he goes but down the river there are children, who pull him out. “What more can we do,” they say. So they hang him up in a tree and thrash him till they grow bored.’

‘Massimo,’ Friederike said, ‘what is this for?’

‘Friederike, I am sorry. That is the end. They are bored. They throw him back in the river and off he goes to sea. The end.’

‘That’s a hideous story!’ she cried.

‘Yes it is. And every word is true.’ Massimo sat back, folding his arms. ‘And that man’s name was Jacopo Pazzi.’

‘It may be true,’ she snapped, ‘but do we really want to listen to this kind of thing at the table? That was horrible, Massimo.’

‘Herr Professor, Herr Lent,’ said Massimo, ‘what did you think of my story?’

‘A vile story,’ the professor said, ‘obviously.’

Theo’s face, which had grown disgusted during the telling, was now detached and amused. ‘I can see what you’re getting at,’ he said, ‘but that story is only vile for us. For poor old Jacopo it’s neither here nor there.’

‘But that’s horrible,’ said Julia, sickened. ‘Massimo, was he a very bad man?’

‘Not so bad,’ he said, colouring. ‘For the times. Not the worst of them.’

‘Why did they hate him so much?’

‘Who knows.’

‘Now I wish I didn’t know that story,’ she said.

‘And yet, Herr Lent, Herr Professor, they will tell you this is not so bad. They will say this corpse is no more than an old sack.’

‘Oh but of course this is as old as the hills,’ the professor said. ‘It comes down to human nature in the end, and its genius for humiliation. That is why Hector dragged the body of Achilles round the walls of Troy. That is why the conquering army defiles the corpses of the conquered, that is why the heads of traitors were displayed on—’

‘Enough,’ said Friederike.

Theo smiled at Julia. ‘It’s grisly and filthy and unpleasant,’ he said, ‘but it didn’t affect poor Jacopo in any way at all.’

‘It feels to me as if it did,’ said Julia. ‘They should have left his body in peace.’

‘What’s so disgusting,’ the professor said, ‘is the intention of the beasts. The enactment.’

Massimo smiled for the first time. His face revealed itself to be friendly and wryly cheerful. ‘But what if I could see the future,’ he said, looking at Theo, ‘what if you were Jacopo Pazzi? And I say to you: I see this for you. This is what they will do. And what if you knew that I was right and that this was in front of you?’

Theo laughed. ‘Well, you are a card,’ he said.

‘You make believe that your soul would not recoil.’

A filthy thought. The man’s got a vile mind .

‘Were you laughing at me,’ she asked when they got home, tossing the veil aside. He still got a shiver seeing her magnificent head, all beast, released from its constraints. He followed her into the bedroom where she pulled out all her flowers and feathers roughly, throwing them down on the dressing table with a carelessly graceful gesture. ‘For keeping Yatzi?’

‘Of course not. Do I ever?’

‘You’re always laughing at me,’ she said, taking off her pearl cross, ‘you tease me all the time.’

‘Only in a nice way.’

‘Huh.’

He picked up Yatzi, smiling. ‘Hello, old boy!’ he said jovially, ‘thanks for holding the fort. Everything fine?’

‘See?’

He laughed. ‘You don’t believe me,’ he said. ‘I find your medieval mind charming. I wouldn’t have it any other way.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with it!’ She took off her ear-rings, her choker, her bangles. ‘You’d stop children playing with their toys,’ she said.

‘No, I wouldn’t.’ He sat down with his hands behind his head.

‘Anyway, you’re just as bad. What about your Venetian umbrella?’

‘That’s not the same at all.’

‘Yes, it is. You were so miserable when you lost it.’

‘Because it was a nice umbrella. I don’t credit it with a mind.’

He laughed.

‘I don’t credit Yatzi with a mind. It’s the same thing. People get attached to things.’ She stood up and walked to the closet. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’

‘Come here,’ he said, catching her hand as she passed by, pulling her towards himself and kissing the top of her head. ‘Aah!’ he said, ‘you’re so small!’

The truth was, he was no longer repelled. Such a good old stick, Julia, truly brave. If it was him, he’d have cut his wrists at puberty, most like. And in fact, when you got to know her, you saw her in a different way. Not that you could ever forget what she was, of course, just that she came to seem less monstrous, more strangely normal. She was just Julia, and he never got tired of looking at her. Her face at times — a most peculiar thing — almost beautiful. Like the head of a tremendous wild creature, other, unearthly, impossible.