Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

At the end of a day’s work, I would often wander in the palace grounds. Sometimes I would pass the modest garden that backed on to the convent of San Giorgio, attracted by the perfume of its many exotic plants. Like the Vasari Corridor, it was reserved for the Grand Duke and his immediate family, and I wasn’t allowed inside. Other times, I would visit the menagerie, where monkeys swung fluidly through the upper reaches of their cages, frowning like old men, and vultures shifted and sulked, their plumage the stiff dull black of widows’ weeds. Crevalcuore, the man who tended the animals, made himself scarce whenever I appeared. Like me, he guarded his privacy fiercely. Or perhaps he was just shy.

One evening in March, I found myself on the Viottolone, a grand sloping avenue lined with laurel trees and cypresses. Halfway down the hill, I turned left, making for the circular maze near the eastern wall. I was thinking about the girl who had waited on me at the banquet. I couldn’t forget how her arm had grazed the back of my hand, igniting that secret place in my left heel. She had chosen not to look at me, it seemed, and yet the atmosphere between us had thickened and crackled, like the air when a thunderstorm is coming. It had been months since I had seen her last, and the interval between the two encounters had been so long that I had begun to think I might have been mistaken. There might be two entirely different girls. If that was the case, though, which one had left the package at the House of Shells? With its blind alleys and its dead ends, the maze seemed to embody my frustration.

The sun dropped behind the trees; light drained from the gardens. I was following a path that led back to the gate on Via Romana when I sensed that I was not alone. I stopped. Looked round. A man stood at the entrance to a covered walkway, his glittering eyes perched on ledges of bone, his complexion sallow, damp-looking. I had the curious impression that he was there because of me. That something in me had summoned him. Brought him forth.

‘Did I scare you?’ His voice was quiet but scratchy, harsh.

My vision darkened and began to pulse, a black flower slowly opening and closing its petals.

‘No,’ I said.

‘You’re lying.’

I stared at the man. He seemed familiar, and I couldn’t work out why.

‘I can smell it on you,’ he said.

That rasping whisper — I had heard it before, on the night of the banquet, when I was hiding on the stairs.

‘I know who you are,’ I said.

It was dusk now, and his face hung like a mask among the leaves, his high square shoulders hunched, the rest of his body invisible. ‘Oh? Who am I, then?’

‘You’re Padre Stufa.’

‘And you are?’

I felt sure he knew exactly who I was, but I told him anyway. His thin-lipped mouth stretched sideways. I thought of Tacitus, and his famous description of the emperor Domitian, who was never to be more feared, apparently, than when he smiled.

‘You’re the artist,’ Stufa said. ‘You make those sculptures.’

He took a step forwards and peered at me as if I were half in shadow. He was wearing a white scapular and a black hooded cloak. The emerald on his left hand hoarded the last of the light.

‘Not that I have much time for that sort of thing,’ he added.

Though his features were gaunt, almost starved, his body was big and hollow-looking. His ribcage would be the size of a barrel.

In the distance one of the Grand Duke’s peacocks screamed.

‘I mean, what can you show me,’ he went on, ‘that I can’t see every day, out on the street?’

‘Maybe I can show you yourself.’

Before he could speak again, I walked away. Perhaps I should have been more diplomatic, but there was an abrasiveness in him that provoked retaliation, and I began to understand why Bassetti had snapped at him on the night of the banquet. Even as I approached the avenue of cypresses and laurels, I could feel his gaze on me, the inner canthus of his eyes unusually sharp and curved, like the knives used in the harvesting of grapes. Only then did I realize that he was the man who had brushed past me, the morning of Bassetti’s visit to the House of Shells.

Spring brought rain and grey skies, the redness of the poppies startling the fields. I paid Ambrose Cuif another visit. When he had poured us both a glass of wine, I told him I had finally met Stufa.

Cuif’s mouth twitched. ‘What did you think?’

I described the scene in the palace gardens.

‘I wouldn’t take it personally,’ Cuif said. ‘He’s like that with everyone.’ He paused. ‘It’s almost as if he’s got a grudge against the world.’

I didn’t follow.

The Grand Duke’s mother had found him on her way to Pisa, Cuif told me. It was around the time of the Epiphany, and the boy was standing by the roadside. His face had turned grey with the cold; his eyes were black, opaque. He would only say one word — stufa , or ‘stove’. Was he referring to the burns on his arms and legs, or was he seeking warmth? No one could tell. In any case, Stufa became the name he answered to. He had no other.

Cuif sipped his wine. ‘He probably made the whole thing up. To make himself sound more interesting.’

‘Or to make people feel sorry for him.’

‘Exactly.’

But I could see it somehow — the winter landscape, the boy with the blank eyes at the edge of the road. The carriage approaching …

‘They call him “Flesh”,’ Cuif said suddenly. ‘Did you know that?’

‘Flesh? Why?’

‘Why do you think?’

I couldn’t square the nickname with the man I had talked to in the gardens. ‘Have you got any evidence?’

‘Of course not. There’s never any evidence against people like him.’

‘So it’s all just hearsay.’

‘You sound as if you’re taking his side.’

‘I’ve had rumours spread about me too. I know what it’s like.’

‘All right. Here’s an example. Given his qualifications —’ and Cuif was unable to resist a snort of derision — ‘he’s entitled to hear confessions. Which he does. But apparently he often withholds absolution from young women until they’ve granted him — well — certain favours —’

‘Apparently,’ I said.

‘Well, if you’re determined not to believe me.’ Cuif directed a sour look at the ceiling. ‘I’ve always thought that Stufa thinks he’s unassailable. Judging by the way you’re springing to his defence, maybe he’s right.’

I sat back, toying with my glass.

‘You’ll see,’ Cuif said.

The heat descended at the end of June, not dry and fierce like the heat of my childhood, but languid, cloying, muggy. Dog days. Dog nights as well. I followed the Grand Duke’s example and decamped to Pisa, where the weather was more bearable. I attended court again, hoping to catch a glimpse of Stufa, only to discover that he had stayed behind in Florence, with Vittoria. Instead, I witnessed a bizarre, impromptu performance by an armless man from Germany. Much to the delight of the Grand Duke and his entourage, the German used his feet to doff his hat, thread a needle, write a letter in his native language, and finally — his pièce de résistance — to sharpen a razor and give himself a shave. While on the coast, I attempted to model a life-size woman out of clay, but the results were disappointing, and I destroyed them all.

In August I moved to Fiesole, where I stayed in a house belonging to Borucher. It was in those cool green hills that I came to a decision. If I were to create moulds that were sufficiently authentic, I would have to cast directly from a woman’s body. In working with the dead, I would be taking a risk — the ghosts of Jacopo and Father Paone rose up before me, one sun-blasted, the other skulking in the shadows — but the alternative, I felt, was still more perilous. The Grand Duke had emphasized the need for confidentiality. If I used a woman who was alive, how could I be sure that she wouldn’t talk?