The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes (11 page)

Laid out in the classic cruciform of a basilica, the tiny chapel contained nave and transept and chancel. Stone virgins and transfigured saints gazed down from niches. A series of peeling, badly faded, little-known Giotto panels hung above the narthex door.

The colonel recalled being taken there as a child, his damp hand clasped in the knotty arthritic fist of his grandfather Claudio, being led into the chapel, trembling, slightly overwhelmed at the honor of having been admitted there amid the gathering of elders, and feeling very proud.

It was only after his mother’s tragic death—a death that thrust the family into the national spotlight, forever marring its name with scandal—that young Ludo ceased to go there. Then, having actively shunned the place for years, as an adult never particularly religious, he was drawn back to the chapel.

Shortly after his father’s death, Borghini stripped the chapel of all of its religious trappings, and in defiance of old Count Ottorino’s wishes, he had turned it into a shrine in memory of his mother.

Borghini had filled the little chapel with memento mori of the contessa—old sepia photos, lace gloves, pressed flowers, the contessa’s wedding veil, her jewelry, her opera glasses, sheets of music, theater bills and old librettos she cherished, all exhibited in rows of glass vitrines. The walls were hung with many of her own paintings, copies of those by her beloved Botticelli.

In the center of the room, once occupied by rows of dark walnut pews, several glass cases had been given over to objects of a more unusual nature. Among dozens of such items was a vintage World War I bayonet. Another was a diamond pendant watch, its crystal face shattered, its dials stopped at 12:31. Another was a blue painter’s smock, made of some rough utilitarian fabric, a shapeless stain of something earthy brown smeared across its front. Out of the center of that stain, the ragged ends of time-yellowed thread curled outward from what appeared to be a long gash made by something sharp.

Lining the walls of the chapel, stacked on marble consoles, were copies of old magazines and newspapers, yellowed by time, crumbly to the touch. Portraits of the Contessa Borghini stared out from their pages, her kindly patrician features radiating intelligence and warmth. Above those portraits, banner headlines screamed the words
morta, assassinata, oltraggio.
Below were portraits of his father’s dark, scowling features, the villa at the summit of the Quirinal cast in mourning, hearses drawn up to the massive oaken front doors. Throngs of mourners stood crouched beneath umbrellas, huddled near the entryway, sleeves bound in mourners’ armbands of black bombazine.

A headline from the Vatican press featured the words of the Pope, expressing regrets and profound sympathy for the family during their time of loss.

It had become his custom of late to spend several hours each week in the little chapel. Having scorned it for years, he now found the place to be a genuine comfort. When he was upset, when he was puzzled or confused, angered by a world that had become totally alien to him, he sought the solace of the chapel.

Seated in one of the few remaining pews, eyes closed, forehead cushioned in an upright palm, he appeared to be praying. He was not, however. Lost in thought, he heard the voices of ghosts, of friends and family long gone, whispering all about him. There, he could summon up the memory of his mother. Mama. Beloved Mathilde. He would imagine the music room of a winter’s evening, the small child, adorned in overly pretty clothing, propped up in his mother’s lap. She would place the chubby, little-boy fingers in the steel strings of the harp, then, guiding his hands, strum. The sound of it, rich and deep, resonated in the pit of his stomach and made him giggle.

Later, standing beside her, at her knee, or sprawled on the floor, surrounded by tubes of paint, brushes, swatches of discarded canvas she had given him, he would spend hours sketching flowers, tiny houses, cows and dogs, joyous daubs of color, all the while humming to himself, as his mother, just above him, labored over the detail of some great Renaissance master, but mostly Botticelli.

“Mama … Come, we must get there early … Please, Mama. Put down your knitting. Hurry …”

Later, when he rose from the pew and walked out of the little chapel, he felt renewed, like a man who’d gone to bed exhausted and rose refreshed: relieved of all doubts, all the uncertainties that afflicted his days like a swarm of angry gnats.

Out in the garden, dusk had gone to full darkness. Rags of mist draped the trees. It was still hot, promising to be an uncomfortable evening. But Count Ludovico was undaunted. Ready to go.

POLICE PSYCHIATRISTS ATTEMPT TO DRAW A PROFILE OF THE “TRASTEVERE HORROR”

Fetishist, obsessive-compulsive, demonist, serial killer,
these are some of the words police have used to describe the nature of the person believed to be responsible for the disappearance of dozens of people over the past several years. Preying mainly on the homeless and derelict, the “Trastevere Horror,” as he is now known, because his ghastly activities appear to center about that area, remains a stubborn riddle for the police and the carabinieri.

Striking without warning in the vicinity of the train station, where vagrants are known to congregate in the early hours of the morning, or in the notorious district of the Caracalla Baths, haunted by prostitutes after dark, the “Horror” has so far eluded detection. Only the remains of a handful of his victims have ever been found; each victim has had its eyes excised.

Police psychiatrists have been asked to suggest profiles of the sort of individual who might be capable of such acts. Professor Hugo Iardi of the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Bologna has drawn a strikingly vivid portrait of an individual outwardly unexceptional, shy, withdrawn, quite possibly even refined. Both rigid and spiritual, he might well be capable of acts of bestiality.

According to the professor, the complete absence of any sign of sexual interference with the victims prior to or directly after killing them lends a unique dimension to the case.

—
La Stampa,
Turin

W
HAT ABOUT A COUPLE
of wall washes here for the Predella panels?”

“Too dark. You’ll get glare.”

“Not if we keep the wattage down. Maybe a row of forty-watt fluorescents with UV filters, say.”

“It’s got to be soft. I want the overall feeling of this room soft.”

“It’ll be like goose down. Trust me, Mr. Manship.”

“I do,” Manship said, full of misgivings. “Just so there’s no glare.”

They moved on into a larger gallery, their footsteps clattering loudly in the vast silences of the empty museum. Manship led the way, followed by a hyperkinetic young man with a light meter bobbing around his neck and scribbling notations on a clipboard. Esteemed as a genius in that rarefied world of lighting designers, he was never referred to by anything other than his surname—Frettobaldi. His professional cards, embossed on rich creamy matte, advertised to the world, “Frettobaldi—the Leonardo of lighting.”

“No doubt you’ll want track rails in here,” Frettobaldi said, entering the gallery, twirling slowly around and around, his light meter held above him like the torch of liberty. “Four, at least, I’d judge. One for each wall. Ten units per track.” He resumed scribbling on his clipboard.

“Ten? My God. This isn’t a night game at the stadium. We don’t want to send people home with night blindness.”

Frettobaldi had a much-publicized reputation for fulminations. He took himself seriously and expected others to behave in kind. He had a volcanic temper. He did not take well to opposition. But the Metropolitan was a big commission, and prestigious, so that in this instance, some rarely exercised streak of practicality in the “Leonardo of lighting” urged accommodation.

They moved on to the next gallery.

“This is the western side of the building, am I right, Mr. Manship?” Frettobaldi strode toward the huge panoramic windows, thrusting his light meter up into inaccessible corners. Outside could be seen the skyline of Central Park West floating dreamlike above the treetops of the park.

“I have a lot of early things planned for this room. Drawings, sketches,” Manship attempted to explain. “They’re pale, faded, very fragile. You’re going to wash them out even more if you use tracks. Just give us some plain filaments here. No ultraviolet, please.”

“Too hot. Too hot, Mr. Manship. You said yourself the stuff is old. You use filaments here, you’re going to melt the stuff, for Christ sake.”

It was always this way with Frettobaldi. Manship had lit many shows with him. First came the intimidation, the naked assertion of will. When that didn’t work, Frettobaldi reverted to tantrums and then fierce sulks. But in the end, when the job was done, the show mounted and lit, Manship was glad to have suffered the ordeal.

“Can you give me a spot for
Pallas and the Centaur?
” Manship tactfully changed the subject as they turned into another gallery. “I really want to knock eyes out with this.”

Frettobaldi planted himself before the painting, tilting his head this way and that, studying it from every conceivable angle. “This is a big item, Mr. Manship, something you want to play big. What I see here is high-focus lighting, something with a lens system—something you can throw a cool beam with a hundred feet. Maybe a hundred and fifty. I can light that baby like a marquee. Pow. Pow. Pow.”

Frettobaldi jabbed the air with a fist to demonstrate the dazzling effects he would achieve. It was hard for Manship to tell Frettobaldi he didn’t want quite so much pow, pow, pow.

“I wouldn’t care to see anything too …” Manship began his cautious defense.

Mercifully, like salvation itself, a slimly elegant young woman had poked a head of close-cropped ginger hair into the gallery. “Oh, there you are.”

It was Emily Taverner, his assistant, fresh out of graduate school, full of that brusque, self-assured efficiency of the young overachiever, accustomed to the constant fawning of parents and professors.

“I’ve got Dr. Yampolski down in your office, Mark.”

“Good. Tell him I’ll be right along.”

Almost apologetically, he turned back to Frettobaldi. “Can we continue a little later? This old buck in my office was one of my teachers at the Institute. He’s proofreading catalog galleys and he’s running late.”

“I’m running late, too.” Frettobaldi glanced at his watch and fumed.

“Give me twenty minutes,” Manship said. “I’ll get rid of him.”

Even as he said it, he knew he was lying.

“Alec. Nice to see you again.”

The professor, seated in a deeply cushioned wing chair, made a faint nod and mumbled something by way of greeting. He was a tiny, compact man in his late sixties, with a meticulously barbered beard and rough pawlike hands more suited to a bricklayer than a world-renowned art historian. A trim cane of malacca with an ivory-knobbed head leaning against his knee lent an air of old-world panache.

Manship squandered about five minutes on obligatory chitchat—gossip from the gallery and auction-house worlds, news about mutual friends with whom he’d collided on his recent travels to secure paintings for the show. “You’ve got the Lemmi frescoes, I hear.” Yampolski beamed.

“Yes, indeed.”

“And I take it you found my
Centurion
where I told you?”

“Indeed I did, Professor. Just where you said it would be.” Manship smiled feebly. He hadn’t the heart to tell the old man the fate of the painting. Before Yampolski could spin more problems, Manship steered him to the prickly business of deadlines past. Shortly, the air between them sparked with tension.

“But I never—”

“Alec, you did. You promised those galley proofs.”

“You’ve no need to tell me what I promised. I know what I promised. But you misled me.”

“You did know that the printer’s deadline for all catalog copy was the second week in August,” Manship chided gently.

“Of course I knew, dear boy. But I also told you I was taking the last two weeks in August to go to the shore, did I not?”

“You did, Alec. You certainly did. But you also assured me that wouldn’t interfere with the deadline.”

Yampolski’s face reddened. The rooster wattles quivered beneath his trimly bearded chin. “But you promised me a few weeks’ grace. You said a few weeks would be no problem.”

“Perfectly true. I did promise that, I grant you. But we’re a bit beyond the grace period now, Alec. We’re talking three weeks here.”

Shortly past noon, Manship was up on the second floor, signing shipping orders and taking delivery on a truckful of paintings just arrived from Torelli in Florence.

By 2:00 P.M., the hangers had arrived and had to be dealt with. Just as he’d started down to join them, Emily Taverner buzzed him on an intercom to tell him that
The New York Times
was on the phone, trying to arrange passes for a sneak preview before opening night. Not to mention, she went on breathlessly, the fact that his desk was strewn with “call back” slips from colleagues, friends, gallery owners, proprietors of top auction houses—everyone who imagined they were owed a favor from him—all trying to wheedle not only opening-night tickets to the exhibit but also to the black-tie midnight dinner to be held on the museum’s rooftop as well.

Emily Taverner went on to report that a Mr. Leonard Rackholm, a local real estate tycoon who donated up to a quarter of a million dollars to the museum annually, had asked for twelve more tickets, in addition to the customary two he’d already been sent for himself and his wife. It was an outrageous request, but with benefactors in the category of Mr. Rackholm, one tended to pay somewhat greater attention.

Somewhere near 4:00 P.M., Manship was seated at the desk in his office, talking with the caterer confirming last-minute details for the affair. A sleek Greek gentleman with a lofty attitude, Mr. Tsacrios had brought along with him a stack of menus, photographs of past extravaganzas, and a portfolio of testimonials from all manner of luminaries—celebrities, statesmen, politicians, and social lions he’d managed to please in the long course of his career. “People who matter,” Mr. Tsacrios proclaimed importantly.