Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

It was early morning by the time I reached my lodgings on Via del Corno. My eyes felt gritty, almost grazed, and the veins ached in my legs. I wanted nothing more than to sleep until nightfall, but I was brought up short by the sight of a bundle of rags dumped against the door of my room. As I approached, a hand emerged and scratched an ear. It was Fiore.

I asked her what she was doing there.

She sat up. ‘You never finished the story about your friend.’

I unlocked my door. Once inside, I sat her at my desk and gave her a piece of seed-cake and some acquerello . She laid her wax baby beside her and began to eat.

‘You remember I told you Pampolini’s in love with a woman who’s only got one eye?’ I said.

Mouth full of cake, Fiore nodded.

‘Know how I know?’

‘How?’

‘He’s bought himself a wig.’

Imported from Copenhagen at great expense, it was a subtle greenish-blond, and Pampolini put it on whenever he went to the one-eyed woman’s tavern. He was obviously trying to impress her.

Fiore had finished eating. ‘What took you so long, anyway?’

‘The Grand Duke wanted to talk to me.’

‘Doesn’t he have anyone else to talk to?’

‘Good question.’ I paused. ‘I think he likes the way I listen.’

She turned to the wall.

Though I was used to seeing her face empty of all expression, I still hadn’t worked out what lay behind it. Sometimes I thought she might be distancing herself from knowledge she found unpalatable or threatening. Other times it felt more serious, like an involuntary suspension of her faculties, a kind of switching-off.

‘What did he talk about?’ she asked eventually.

‘His wife, mostly.’

‘Does he love her?’

‘Yes, he loves her, but she’s gone.’

She looked at me again. ‘Did she die?’

‘No. She went back to France. That’s where she’s from.’

‘I think I heard that story,’ she said. ‘I suppose he’s sad.’

‘Yes, he’s sad. But she wasn’t very kind to him.’

Fiore sipped her acquerello .

‘She didn’t love him as much as he loved her,’ I went on. ‘People don’t always love each other the same amount, even when they’re married.’ In that moment, I saw Faustina as I had seen her last, her dress the colour of an olive leaf, and I felt the blood go rushing from my heart. I turned to Fiore. ‘Are you going to get married one day?’

Her face tilted up to mine, and she gave me a strange, stubborn look. ‘I’m going to marry you.’

‘I’m a bit old for you,’ I said gently, ‘aren’t I?’

‘That’s all right. I’ll be older soon.’

When I laughed, it startled her at first, but then she realized she must have said something clever, and she began to laugh as well.

On Friday I got to the Mercato Vecchio early. It was busy, as always, not just with stall-holders and their clientele, but with all manner of con-men, quacks and entertainers. I watched a cripple’s pet monkey juggling walnuts. Nearby was a dentist in a bloody apron, who delighted his audience by repeatedly pulling good teeth instead of rotten ones.

I had been waiting for a quarter of an hour when Faustina appeared. Stepping back into the shadow of a loggia, I sketched her as she wandered among the stalls, tasting olives and salted almonds. She had such a casual, spontaneous air about her that you never would have suspected she was meeting someone.

At last, I could resist no longer. I went up and touched her on the shoulder. She turned slowly.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said.

‘You weren’t late. You’ve been here all the time.’

‘How could you tell?’

‘I could feel it.’

‘I couldn’t believe I was the one you were waiting for. I felt really lucky.’

‘If you pay me too many compliments at the beginning,’ she said, ‘you might find yourself with nothing left to say.’

‘The beginning of what?’

Her face appeared to rock a little, like a boat disturbed by a wave that had come from nowhere.

‘And anyway,’ I said, ‘I disagree.’

‘Do you?’

I stared out over the rooftops. The pale-gold October light streamed down on to my face. My skin seemed to be absorbing it, soaking it up. Light could feel liquid.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t disagree more.’ My face still felt illuminated, not just by the sky, but by a kind of candour, the fact that I was speaking the truth. ‘I’ll never run out of ways of telling you how beautiful you are.’

She linked her arm through mine, and we walked east, along the Corso. I remembered what Marvuglia had said as we sat in his kitchen. You don’t belong together. It doesn’t look right . What did he know?

‘By the way,’ I said. ‘I drew you.’

She asked if she could see. I took out my notebook and opened it. She stared at the image for a few long moments. ‘I look like that?’

‘To me you do.’

‘It’s lovely.’

In Piazza Santa Croce a crowd was gathering for a game of calcio . Music started up close by. There was a man hunched over a lute, his hand a blur. Another man blew on a set of pipes. A third hammered at a tall, barrel-shaped drum, his face transfixed, almost demonic. Faustina stood in front of me, and I watched over her shoulder, my face close to her hair. The three men were arranged in an arc around a dark-skinned woman who wore a leather waistcoat and an ankle-length bronze skirt. Her eyelids were painted with black dots, which made her eyes look caged. She sang in a guttural, agonized voice, her head angled sideways and downwards, her hands clapping in a rhythm I had never heard before. Leaning back against me, Faustina put her mouth next to my ear. They were Spanish, she said. They came through the city every year.

I followed her across the square and into Via dei Malcontenti. As we passed alongside the church, a few hundred people surged in our direction, all looking beyond us, and I had to keep hold of Faustina and edge sideways, leading with my shoulder, or we would both have been swept back into the square.

We turned left, then right, the streets narrowing. All that remained of the music was the pulsing of the drum. She led me through a door of warped wooden staves and into a wild garden. There was a cluster of palm trees and a tiled terrace. I followed her down some steps and through an arbour, its metal frame in the clutch of superannuated fig trees and twisting vines. We walked in a green gloom, rotten fruit exploding softly beneath our shoes.

‘Who else knows about this place?’ I said.

‘I’m not sure. Children, maybe.’

She had found a twist of ribbon once, she said. Another time, her foot had caught in a wooden hoop.

Beyond a tangle of undergrowth, at the far end of the garden, was a second, smaller terrace, overshadowed by pine trees and the remains of a pergola. Two pillars, a stone bench. A few broken pots. The faded pink tiles were decorated with pale-green concentric circles, like the ripples when a pebble is dropped into a pond.

‘When I was young, I was alone a lot,’ I told her. ‘I used to break into abandoned houses.’

I described how I would stride out on to the first-floor balconies and make speeches to the crowds that massed below. A sea of faces. Deafening applause.

Faustina was brushing the leaves and dirt off the stone bench. ‘So you always knew you were going to be famous?’

‘No, no. It was just a game. Anyway, I’m not famous.’

‘You will be,’ she said.

I glanced at her, sitting there. I could see her as a little girl — dark, wary, eel-quick. ‘Were you lonely as a child?’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I had a friend called Mimmo. He thought I was a witch.’ She grinned. But then the grin faded so fast that her whole face seemed to shrink.