Rupert Thomson: Secrecy

Some days later, Signora de la Mar called through my door. ‘You have a visitor.’

I didn’t answer. I was working on a sketch of the girl I had seen, and didn’t want to be disturbed.

The door opened. ‘He’s from the palace.’

I looked round. The signora’s face was flushed, and not, I thought, because she had just climbed five flights of stairs.

She shrugged. ‘I can tell him you’re busy if you like.’

‘Perhaps I’d better see what it’s about.’

I followed her down to the parlour.

Standing with his back to the window was a man in opulent dark robes. He was heavily built, with a greying moustache. I put his age at about sixty.

‘The House of Shells,’ he said. ‘It’s some years since I was here.’ His voice was rich and succulent, a voice that was used to being listened to. ‘You know the story, I take it?’

I shook my head.

The signora’s husband came from Salamanca, he said, which was famous for pies filled with scallops. There was a house in the city that was tiled with scallop shells, apparently, and it had been the Spaniard’s dream to recreate the house in Florence. The winters were too wet, though, and the shells kept coming loose. Or else people would steal them. Little by little, he lost his strength, his sense of purpose.

‘And it was shellfish, oddly, that killed him in the end.’ He fingered his moustache. ‘You’re from Sicily, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long since you were there?’

‘Sixteen years.’

‘You don’t miss it?’

‘I miss it, yes.’ Why did his gentle probing unnerve me so? He was probably just being polite. ‘And you, sir? Where are you from?’

‘You don’t know who I am?’

‘You haven’t told me.’

Though my visitor remained quite motionless, he appeared, in that moment, to writhe or undulate, reminding me of something I had seen in the market in Palermo once — a snake rising, charmed, out of a basket. It only lasted a second. I pinched my eyes.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m the Grand Duke’s private secretary. My name is Apollonio Bassetti.’ He rolled the syllables on his tongue like pieces of soft fruit. ‘His Highness has been asking for you.’

I watched Bassetti carefully. He seemed to be taking an interest in the dust that had gathered at the edges of the room.

‘So far, though,’ he said, ‘you have failed to present yourself.’

I had known full well that I was expected at the palace, and yet, for reasons I could not explain, I had found myself delaying the moment. I had been sleeping late, and walking the streets, sometimes with Fiore, sometimes on my own. I had spent evenings in the tavern, drinking the local wine — red by all accounts, though it had blackened my lips as if poured straight from an inkwell. While there, I had fallen into conversation with men who earned their living in any number of strange and desperate ways. One sold unguents door-to-door and occasionally wrestled bears. His name was Quilichini. Another — Belbo — oversaw the execution of criminals on a piece of waste ground beyond the eastern gate. A third collected dead animals and dumped them in a boneyard called Sardigna.

‘I was settling in,’ I said.

‘You were settling in …’

I didn’t think Bassetti was being sarcastic or disparaging. If he had repeated my words, it was in the hope of understanding them.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘His Highness will see you at noon tomorrow.’ He moved past me, out of the room. Then, by the front entrance, he swung round, one hand foraging in the folds of his robes. ‘I almost forgot.’ He produced a small glass jar with a cork stopper and held it up to the light as if it were a jewel. ‘Something to welcome you to Florence. A local speciality.’

I thanked him.

As I examined the jar, which contained a root or tuber that was round and mud-coloured, about the size of an apricot, I was aware of a movement to my right, in the gloom at the far end of the hall. A man came down the stairs, huge but silent, passing me as if I were not there, and though I didn’t see his face properly I registered a certain gauntness, and a mouth that was like a razor-cut — that still, shocked moment before the blood wells up into the wound. Bassetti followed the man into a waiting carriage. Then they were gone.

The signora appeared at my elbow. ‘Is that a truffle?’

I removed the cork from the jar. The smell was acrid, medicinal; it reminded me of gas.

People who knew my plague pieces were often wrong-footed when they met me for the first time, and judging by the way the Grand Duke stared at me the following day, he was no exception. He had probably assumed I would be a morbid, saturnine character, or even that I might exhibit signs of physical corruption — a livid rash, a scattering of glossy boils — yet there I was, soberly but immaculately dressed, and with a smile on my face. And why shouldn’t I be smiling? He had invited me to his city, and would now provide for me financially. Despite my initial impressions of Florence, I felt a paradoxical lightness of spirit, almost a kind of mischief; like a shade-loving plant, I tended to flourish in dark places.

He was eating, of course. He was almost always eating. Aside from his reputation for piety — his knees had the consistency of leather, apparently, owing to the many hours he spent in prayer — he was famed for his voracious appetite, but as I approached I noticed there was no meat on the table. No fish either. All I could see, heaped in extravagant profusion, were vegetables.

The Grand Duke eyed me. ‘Are you hungry?’

I told him I’d already eaten.

‘And even if you hadn’t,’ he said glumly, ‘I doubt you’d be interested. It’s a Pythagorean diet, in case you wondered. My physician, Redi, is a tyrant.’

The previous night, he went on, he had dreamed that he was hunting in the Cascine, west of the city. Afterwards, there had been a banquet. Roast venison had been served, and suckling pig, and duck. Tripe too, a favourite of his. His mouth was watering; he had to dab it with a napkin.

‘I’m tormented even when I’m sleeping.’ He shook his head. ‘Thirteen years I’ve been eating vegetables. Thirteen years!’ He sighed. ‘How about some wine?’

To this I agreed.

‘Signor Zummo,’ he said, when I was seated opposite him, ‘you can’t imagine how much I have looked forward to this moment.’

In the green light that streamed in from the palace gardens, the Grand Duke’s face had the sponginess and pallor of the mushrooms that lay untouched near his elbow.

‘Your work is fascinating,’ he went on. ‘You have a vision that is not unlike my own.’ He turned his bulbous eyes to the window. A breeze pushed at the myrtle trees; a distant fountain glittered. ‘It’s as if you’ve gained access to the inside of my head. My innermost thoughts, my anxieties — my fears.’ He began to dismantle an artichoke, setting each leaf aside, intent, it seemed, on arriving at the heart. ‘You’re sure you won’t join me?’

I realized that if I continued to refuse the offer he might take offence. Leaning over the table, I studied a dish containing a pile of brittle black strands that reminded me of filigree at first, and then, more disturbingly, of pubic hair.

‘Good choice,’ the Grand Duke said. ‘Fried seaweed.’

As the seaweed was spooned, tinkling, on to my plate, he told me he knew nothing about my origins.

I was born in Siracusa, I said, in the south-east of Sicily. For centuries, the town had been a military stronghold and an important trading post, but it was also a beautiful place, with a warm, dry climate and sea views on three sides. My father, a shipbuilder, had been employed by the Gargallo family. Sadly, he had died when I was six. As the second of two sons, I had been educated at the Jesuit College, though my passion for sculpting in wax had led me away from a career in the church.