Death in the Palazzo (7 page)

He consulted a friend who was a priest attached to the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints at the Vatican. This priest examined the room several months after Flora's death, said some prayers, burned incense, and assured my father that he need have no fear of the room.

Despite the priest's visit and my father's fervent attempt to follow the revealed truths of the Church, the Caravaggio Room remained in limbo for almost ten years. It was cleaned seasonally and used for storage, but no one ever slept there again until May of 1938.

My mother's way of dealing with difficulties was often to pretend they didn't exist. With the world around us so confused and becoming more so, thanks to Hitler and our own Mussolini, my mother decided to forget all troubles and have a big gala at the Ca' da Capo.

My father was less than enthusiastic. He feared that my mother was inviting so many guests that the Caravaggio Room would probably have to be used.

“What are you afraid of, Amerigo?” my mother said. “Father Olivieri blessed the room years ago, not that such a thing was necessary. It's ignorant superstition, and this is 1938. We're all modern and informed—
and
we trust in God.”

My father could disagree with neither the advanced date nor with what were surely my mother's far from artless comments on God and superstition. He said no more about the upcoming gala, although I detected in him an increasing uneasiness as the day drew near.

I was twenty-five and had finished my studies at Bologna with no great success and no prospects for the future. Everything seemed bleak around me—my immediate world and the larger world outside.

There were two guests coming to my mother's gala who, I hoped, would be able to lift my spirits. One was Luigi Vasco, a chum from my days at Bologna. He was a few years older and had successfully completed his medical studies. The other was my third cousin on my father's side, the beautiful Renata Bellini, a widow of only twenty-five. Despite all the warnings of my mother, I was hopelessly in love with her. It made no difference to me that she had an eight-year-old daughter and a questionable reputation since the death of her husband—along with her father, Signor Zeno—two years before in a boating accident.

My mother's patience with Renata, whom she wouldn't have found sympathetic even if I hadn't been interested in her, was tried from the first half-hour of her arrival.

“But Gemma can't possibly stay in the same room, Bianca. She's becoming such a big girl, aren't you, my love?”

Gemma, a sweet-faced girl with chestnut hair, nodded her head. Cradled in her arms was a doll. Perhaps it was because I had always wanted a little sister to love and protect or because she reminded me of Flora. Whatever it was, I felt an immediate bond with the little girl, whom I had never seen before. She looked at me directly with her large brown eyes and smiled, then whispered something to her doll.

“As you wish, Renata, but we are a little short of rooms …” My mother trailed off and cast a nervous glance at my father, who was talking to Luigi, the doctor, and Renata's mother, Marialuisa Zeno.

“Short of rooms? You make the Ca' da Capo sound like a
pensione
. Ah, but I understand! You're not still locking up that room where Cousin Flora died! Gemma and I needn't suffer because of some medieval superstition!”

My mother was silent for a few moments and gave the appearance of considering the possibilities.

“Very well, Renata. I'm sure we can make arrangements to accommodate your sweet girl.”

What transpired because of Renata's insistence on a private bedroom was that Gemma was given the room that had been set aside for them both, and Renata was installed in the Caravaggio Room. What my father had feared had happened. The Caravaggio Room was going to be used after almost ten years.

As soon as Luigi and I were alone an hour later, he made it clear why Renata didn't want Gemma in the same room. He was a close friend of the Zenos and claimed to know everything about them.

“She wants to entertain the Englishman,” he said. “She wouldn't care if she had to sleep in a closet as long as it's private and she can be with
him.
”

He indicated an attractive man in his thirties who had arrived in the company of Signora Zeno, her younger daughter, Bambina, and Renata and Gemma. He had met the Zenos through an English friend married to a Roman, who had been tutoring the family in English for the past several years. I had exchanged only a few words with him earlier and had summed up Andrew Lydgate as one of those Englishmen with an abundance of money and leisure time and a deep love for all things Italian. That this deep love might extend to Renata had not occurred to me until Luigi made his comment.

I don't know if I was more surprised at what Luigi said or the way he said it. He sounded bitter and disappointed. He went on to explain that Signora Zeno was determined to secure Lydgate as Renata's husband.

“Even a woman as beautiful as Renata has her liabilities,” he said.

“The child?”

“Yes, and she has almost no money. You know Bellini squandered what little he had.”

I observed that surely many men other than Lydgate would be very happy to take on the responsibility of Renata and her daughter. My comment had the effect I intended. Luigi could now be in no doubt that I shared his admiration for the beautiful Renata. He became all scowls and glowers, not all of them directed against me, by any means, but mainly against Lydgate. And when Luigi scowled and glowered, he did it like no man I had ever met before or have since.

Before dinner that night I pointed out to him that rather than being at odds because of our admiration for Renata, we should feel a brotherly kinship, all the more so since neither of us seemed to stand any chance because of Lydgate.

“This isn't a game for me, my friend,” he said. “I don't intend to be made a fool of.”

What he meant by this I don't know, other than that Renata might have given him reason to hope. If she had, it would have been against the wishes and advice of her mother, who, despite her regard for Luigi, would not want a husband for her daughter who had little more than his medical degree and a good heart to recommend him.

Then Luigi said a strange thing.

“Tonight during dinner Lydgate will spill wine all over the front of his shirt.”

I started to laugh, but caught myself when I saw Luigi's stern look. I remembered then that he had an interest in hypnotism and the power of suggestion, and had often entertained me with stories of how by the power of his own silent will, he could occasionally affect a response in people's behavior. To me it was all nonsense and coincidence.

It didn't occur to me that I was being inconsistent, considering my own superstition about the Caravaggio Room.

We were a relatively small group for dinner—just my parents and myself, Luigi, Signora Zeno, Renata, Bambina, Lydgate, and half a dozen assorted cousins and friends. Little Gemma was in the kitchen with the staff. A storm had swept in on us from the sea, and the rain was beating against the windows of the dining room. It seemed to make us enjoy the comforts of our table even more.

I had Lydgate on my right and Bambina on my left. Bambina wasn't her Christian name, of course. She had been baptized Cesarina, but had always been called Bambina by friends and family. What started as an endearment soon became her name, and as inextricable a part of her as her round little body and sharp mind.

As sometimes happens in siblings, Bambina and Renata were as different as different could be. Bambina was rosy-cheeked and plump, with dark Medusa locks that she tossed in her enthusiasms—and there was a considerable amount of tossing because she was full of enthusiasms. Ten years later, when I was still unmarried, she turned some of these enthusiasms toward me, but without any result. Perhaps she will still find a suitable husband.

At my mother's gala, her enthusiasms were all for Lydgate, however. Placed as I was between them, her clever comments either flew past me to their intended target or artfully rebounded from me to him. I enjoyed her display, for she was intelligent, with a knowledge of history and art. She also had some talent as an artist and had kindly made my mother a hostess gift of a charming sketch of our cat, Principessa. She insisted that Mother have it fetched so she could show it round.

“Absolutely beautiful,” Lydgate said. “Look at those eyes. You can almost hear her purr, can't you?”

But as he spoke, he wasn't looking at the sketch in his hands but across it at Renata. She returned his look with a smile.

Bambina suddenly hurled herself into an extended account of the life of Petrarch, who, it seems, was also a cat lover, and was about to recite one of that poet's sonnets to his beloved Laura.

Renata, however, interrupted her, not very graciously. She said that her sister's head was full of silly thoughts. She indicated the sketch of the cat and with a cruel smile said that it was good that Bambina had made a sketch of her beloved Dido, since she had lost the cat itself.

“So unlucky in things you love, Bambina dear,” she said and then smiled at Lydgate.

Tears came into Bambina's eyes. She grabbed her sketch from Lydgate and excused herself. She didn't come back for the rest of the meal. Renata's behavior had revealed a cruel streak that a lover should take note of. I certainly was fast revising my original opinion of Renata, which, like so many strong emotions of its nature, was based on limited contact. But Lydgate appeared as infatuated as ever, and joined in Renata's laughter.

Luigi stared morosely at Renata. She seemed annoyed and said, “If you wear a face like that with your patients, Luigi, you're going to scare them to death, not cure them.”

It was to Lydgate's credit that he didn't laugh this time, although the ghost of a smile twitched at the edges of his mouth. A few moments later, when he was raising his glass of my father's finest merlot, his hand slipped and the ruby-red liquid stained his starched white shirtfront.

Luigi neither looked in my direction nor said anything, but it was clear that he believed he himself had been the indirect agent of Lydgate's accident.

My mother had been growing more uncomfortable. To smooth things over, she started to tell a story from her childhood in Naples. It was about a tribe of gypsies and their stealing of a beautiful little boy—one of a set of twins—from a neighboring family. I had heard the story many times, and so had my father, who had become increasingly less patient with it over the years.

After my mother's recital, one of our cousins from Milan matched it with a tale that somehow also managed to involve both gypsies and twins. From then on the pattern was set for the rest of the evening as many of the guests recounted stories, which soon began to take on a distinctly ribald flavor when we passed from the dining room to the salon overlooking the Grand Canal.

I couldn't help but be reminded of Boccaccio's ladies and gentlemen killing time in the countryside while the plague ravages Florence.

Half an hour after we retired to the salon, Bambina, looking even more lively after what must have been a good cry, returned. Renata was finishing a story about a sailor and a mermaid, which despite its risque elements, she had delivered in a listless way. In fact, as the story had progressed she seemed to lose more and more energy and become paler and paler. No sooner did the thought occur to me that Luigi might have had some mesmeric influence over her than I quickly banished it as ridiculous.

When Renata finished, Lydgate indulged in a story of even more dubious taste about a coal miner from the north of England and his two daughters.

After I had acquitted myself by telling an innocuous anecdote about the rivalry between Giorgione and Titian, Bambina, who was becoming increasingly restless, made her contribution.

It was about the peacock brooch of gold and precious stones my mother was wearing. Most of us knew the story. It was part of the history of both the Da Capo-Zendrini and Zeno families, but Bambina told it as if to an audience hearing it for the first time. She made the most of its mystery and high adventure—the Turkish assault on old Constantinople, Venetian merchant ships sailing defiantly through the Bosphorus beneath the cannons of the Turks, near escapes from barbarous forms of death, and the rivalry between the Da Capo-Zendrini and Zeno families.

Throughout the account our attention was divided between Bambina and the brooch sparkling on the front of my mother's Fortuny dress. Of everyone there the most fascinated by the brooch seemed to be Signora Zeno, who considered it with her dark eyes slightly narrowed.

It wasn't perhaps the wisest choice of a tale because of the bad blood that existed between our families due to the brooch, but Bambina carried it off in such a light, amusing spirit that even my parents didn't seem offended.

No sooner did she finish than Renata emitted a loud cry. She had become even paler and a slick film of sweat coated her face. She stood up abruptly and seemed dizzy, but she strode to a far corner of the room and pulled Gemma and her doll out from a shadowed recess.

When Renata asked her how long she had been there, the frightened child said that she had come down with her aunt Bambina. Whereupon Renata turned to her sister and started to berate her for her stupidity in not only having dragged Gemma from her bed at such an ungodly hour but then making it worse by having Lydgate go on with his story when she knew that Gemma would be all ears.

Although I had to agree with Renata, I sympathized with Bambina, who, for the second time that evening, was suffering from her sister's sharp tongue. I had the sense that Renata was about to say more when she reeled slightly, let go of Gemma's hand, and seemed about to fall. Lydgate was next to her in a moment and led her to a chair. Luigi went over. She was given water and a few minutes later Lydgate and Luigi carried her up to the Caravaggio Room.

Gemma began to cry. She said that it was her fault her mother was sick and that she wanted to take care of her as she always did. Bambina took Gemma from the salon.