Rupert Thomson - Secrecy

‘How did you like the truffle?’

He seemed once again to writhe or coil beneath his clothes, a sudden, subtle oscillation that was over almost before it had begun. The first time I witnessed the phenomenon, in the parlour at the House of Shells, I had assumed it was a symptom of my own nervousness or disorientation, a temporary warping of my vision. Now, though, I wasn’t so sure.

I told him I had enjoyed the truffle very much. A taste like no other, I said. Impossible to describe. His plump lips parted; his tongue lolled and glistened between his teeth. He wanted to know if it had been my first. Indeed it had, I said. Throughout this apparently innocuous exchange, I watched for a flicker of amusement, or even of malice, but I saw nothing.

Bassetti introduced me to the Grand Duke’s physician, Francesco Redi. The Grand Duke had described Redi as a tyrant, but I had never met anyone less tyrannical; he was a docile man, with the sensitive, elongated face of a horse. I told him I was looking for an anatomist; I would be needing body parts, but I was also keen to resume my study of the art of dissection. Redi apologized profusely. He would be unable to collaborate with me himself. He had turned sixty-five, and his energies were failing. Besides, he was preoccupied with his research, what he called ‘the unmasking of untruth’. He recommended a barber-surgeon by the name of Pampolini, who practised at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.

Not long afterwards, Lorenzo Borucher walked up to me.

‘How are your lodgings? Bearable? Oh, good.’

A hairdresser by trade, Borucher spoke fast, almost breathlessly, hands twirling on the end of powerful wrists. It was he who had called on me in Naples, informing me of the Grand Duke’s passion for my plague pieces, he who had delivered the letter of invitation.

I mentioned that Bassetti had been to see me.

You wouldn’t think so to look at him, Borucher said, but Bassetti came from humble stock. His father had worked as a coachman. His influence was not to be underestimated, though. He organized the Grand Duke’s political and social life, and he was also active in matters of morality. As the driving force behind the Office of Public Decency, he had encouraged the Grand Duke in his persecution of licentious behaviour. He came down particularly hard on sodomy and prostitution.

As Borucher talked on, I began to consider the significance of Bassetti’s appearance at the House of Shells. Given his lofty position, it surprised me. Surely a written summons would have sufficed? But perhaps I had learned something about the way he operated. He put no trust in the judgement of others. He insisted on seeing things for himself. There was no matter so small that it didn’t warrant his interest or attention.

And there had been someone with him, I remembered — a man with a strange, gaunt face … I was about to ask Borucher if he knew who that might be when the Grand Duke’s elder son, Ferdinando, appeared in front of me. He had been spared the exaggerated features his family were known for, but the deep vertical line between his eyebrows suggested a vexed, impatient nature.

‘I should warn you,’ he said. ‘My taste in art is nothing like my father’s.’

‘People say you have a wonderful collection.’

‘I own a Raphael and a del Sarto. In general, though, I prefer the Venetians —’

‘That’s right. You do.’ The man who loitered at the Grand Prince’s elbow wore a lilac robe and pink leather slippers.

Ferdinando rolled his eyes. ‘I was talking about artists, Cecchino.’

Cecchino was a singer, he told me. From Venice, obviously.

The singer turned to face me. He had painted his lips a shade of mauve that made his teeth look yellow, and his eyebrows were two astonished arcs. ‘Actually, I’m familiar with your work.’

Ferdinando looked at him.

‘Yes,’ Cecchino said, ‘I distinctly remember a bare-breasted woman. She was dying, I think — or perhaps she was already dead.’ He waved a hand; it didn’t matter. ‘What intrigued me was how sensual she was. It almost made me want to leap on top of her and ravage her.’ He appeared to hesitate. ‘Or rather, it would have,’ he added slyly, ‘if I were that way inclined.’ Cecchino sidled closer, and I was enveloped in his perfume, which was dense and sickly, like a lily when its petals go brown at the edges. ‘You’ve been so patient with my clumsy compliments that I feel I should reward you. Would you like to hear me sing?’

‘It would be an honour,’ I murmured.

I had imagined an intimate recital for certain privileged guests in the gardens of some ducal villa — Pratolino, perhaps, or Lappeggi — but as Cecchino stood in front of me his mauve lips parted, and he released a high-pitched note of such concentrated power that it seemed to obliterate not only the room and everybody in it but the world outside as well. When the note ended, it left a void. Then the world returned, a little paler and more unsteady than before.

Cecchino turned to the Grand Prince. ‘There are tears in his eyes.’

‘You frightened him.’

‘Really? Don’t people sing in Sicily?’

‘Not like that,’ I said.

Ferdinando began to laugh, and once he had started he couldn’t stop. The Venetian was laughing too.

‘You’re very funny,’ Ferdinando said when he had himself under control again. ‘We must see more of you.’

The steps outside Santa Maria Nuova were packed with people seeking admission to the hospital. As I drew near, a man seized me by the arm. He had a deep gash on his cheek, and his eyes swam with some sort of rheum or glair. I couldn’t help him, I said. I wasn’t a physician. He began to rant about how clerics received preferential treatment, and how the poor were left to fend for themselves. Though his grip was fierce, I managed to shake him off, but not before he had bled all over my sleeve.

I found Pampolini in a small green room with a high ceiling and a single barred window. A stocky man, with a head that was wider at the jaw than at the temple, he was crouched over a wooden desk, making hurried notes. Pinned to the wall behind him were a number of anatomical drawings.

When he sensed my presence, he stopped writing and looked up. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘What?’ I glanced at my sleeve. ‘No, no. One of the people outside mistook me for a surgeon. He wouldn’t let go of me.’

‘You’ve got the hands of a surgeon — or a cook.’

He was referring to my scars and burns, the legacy of twenty years of working with wax.

‘Francesco Redi sent me,’ I said.

Pampolini nodded. ‘A good man, especially if you’re interested in worms.’

‘Which I am.’

I introduced myself. I had recently been taken on by the Grand Duke, I said. Pampolini asked me what I did. As I described my little theatres filled with the graphic, tortured bodies of the dead and dying I saw his eyes brighten.

‘Some people think my work’s a little —’ I hesitated — ‘extreme …’

He let out a sudden, full-throated laugh. ‘In that, sir, we’re alike. And yes — though you’ve been too delicate to raise the subject — you’ve come to the right place. I know what you’re after, you see. Cadavers!’ He had climbed to his feet and was rubbing his hands. This, clearly, was a man who loved his job. ‘We have a plentiful supply here at Santa Maria Nuova, and I’d be happy to help you out.’

Just then, a boy put his head round the door. He said there were three people waiting to be bled. Before he withdrew, I noticed that one of his ears was missing. That was Nuto, Pampolini said. Nuto’s mother was employed by a slaughter-house for pigs near Via Frusa. She was a frightful drunk. He had been teaching Nuto the rudiments of his trade. Some grammar too.