Stone Virgin Page 8

  It was late, but he conscientiously made his diary entry, recording his successful start. Afterwards he had a look at the book Wiseman had lent him.

  He had not intended to read long, merely to find his way about in the book; but he was soon absorbed. The Origin and Descent was much more than an official account of the patrician families of Venice. It contained a good deal of gossip and anecdote and personal reflections of the author – which was why Wiseman liked it so much probably, though he had been wrong about one thing, Raikes soon discovered: the Fornarini traced their origins, not simply to the founders of Rome, but through eleven emperors of Constantinople right back to the founders of Athens, which was tantamount really to saying that there had always been Fornarinis, they were eternal. However, it seemed they could actually prove a progenitor in the eighth century, which was impressive enough.

  Certainly they had had their ups and downs. In the year 1170 when Venice was at war with the Emperor Manuel I, the menfolk of the family followed their Doge to the Levant. While in winter quarters in Chios a fierce plague broke out among the fleet, the Doge returned with only sixteen ships out of a hundred and twenty, and the family was almost wiped out. But God, according to Barbaro, gave the surviving males such potency and fertility that their women conceived at a glance almost, the family was soon restocked: by the middle of the fifteenth century there were as many as fifty different branches of the Fornarini and two hundred nobles of Venice bore that name.

  The political power of the family had been founded by Marcantonio Fornarini, Venetian Ambassador to the court of Naples in the early 1400s and afterwards State Inquisitor. In the period of their greatness the Fornarini produced two Doges, three Admirals, numerous high officials and one Saint – Francesco, first Patriarch of Venice, a man of irreproachable life, whose body had not been subject to putrefaction. In the sixteenth century they were prominent members of the celebrated Company of the Hose, so-called from the tight-fitting breeches which the Companions wore. The uniform of a certain Nicolò Fornarini was described by chroniclers of the time as, ‘having the left leg crimson and the right divided lengthwise in azure and violet, and embroidered with a cypress bough’.

  This seemed to have been the high point. Thereafter the decline was steady. By the time Barbaro was writing only four branches of the family remained. The last appearance on the public stage was not edifying. Giorgio Fornarini collaborated with Napoleon and urged surrender on the Senate, a shame and a scandal in the opinion of Barbaro, for one of such lineage, particularly as it was not done out of any patriotic motive or desire to protect the Republic from the consequences of invasion but out of revenge for loss of office – he had been dismissed for what the author with tantalizing vagueness referred to as ‘shameless misconduct’.

  This motive of revenge, a certain arrogant and implacable vindictiveness, ran like a dark thread through the history of the family. One Lorenzo Fornarini, arrested by the night constables in 1323 for brawling in the street, had refused to pay his fine, and when an official of the court came to his house for the money he had threatened the man’s life. Because of these menaces his fine had been increased by one hundred lire di piccoli. Six months later Lorenzo, aided by a runaway slave named Jacopo Saraceno, to whom he had promised money, waylaid the official and stabbed him to death. It says much for Venetian justice at the time that no distinction was made between patrician and slave: both were publicly garrotted. Then there was Andreolo, who in 1509 killed a lady’s steward, an elderly man quite unknown to him, because the lady had repelled his advances, and he knew she valued the man. And there was Naufosio who while campaigning in Lombardy against the Visconti put to the sword all the male citizens of Lodara because the town had held out against him – a usage most uncommon among Venetian commanders, and for which Naufosio had been recalled …

  So Raikes read on, learning a good deal about the Fornarini family and something more about the past of Venice. But it was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and his eyes were heavy, when he stumbled on one small fact which seemed to him worth all the others put together, and irradiated his being with joy.

  Barbaro had reverted to the sainted Patriarch Francesco, extolling his virtue, praising his life of austerity and chastity, which shone like a beacon amidst the turbulence of those days. The greater was the pity then that the only other Fornarini to hold high ecclesiastical office should have so signally failed to follow his illustrious forebear’s example, should indeed have so far failed as to have been notorious for his profligacy, and that in a licentious period.

  There was a footnote to this and Raikes, looking down to the bottom of the page, discovered that the prelate referred to was a certain Piero Fornarini, Bishop of Venice from 1737 until 1752, when he had choked on a chicken bone and died.

  6

  IT WAS A day of bright sunshine, clear enough, though the sun was softened by the remnants of the night’s mists. Once past San Michele and Murano they were in the open, the great expanse of the Lagoon before and all around them, a vast glimmering sheet, patterned by its shallows, streaked here and there with rippling flashes where mud flats broke the surface; elsewhere unblemished, pale blue, with a soft shine to it as though wiped with oil.

  The boat steamed north-east towards Mazzorbo following the staked-out line of the deep-water channel. Raikes strained his eyes eastward across the shifting glimmers of the surface to where the brightness gathered and dazzled. He could make out the long shape of the Lido and the campanile of San Nicolò. Small islands, mere mudbanks tufted with vegetation, were discernible on both sides; others, more distant, were half lost in the haze, darker impurities in the clouded liquid of the horizon. To the east a mile or two away he thought he identified the island gardens of La Vignola and Sant’Erasmo which supply Venice with vegetables. He considered asking Wiseman about this, then decided against it, not wanting to accommodate the information that Wiseman, once asked, would undoubtedly pour forth – he had a chapter on the Lagoon in his Byways.

  The boat passed close to an island he remembered, the sad, abandoned San Giacomo in the Marsh, with its broken walls, grassed-over mounds of rubble and listing birch trees. ‘Appropriate name,’ he said to Wiseman. ‘It looks like a marsh, doesn’t it? A marsh that someone was once foolish enough to build on.’

  They were standing towards the stern, where it was roofed but open at the sides. Wiseman had turned up the collar of his light tweed overcoat. With his hair ruffled by the sea breeze and his cheeks rosy from the fresh air, he looked more than ever like an older-generation cherub, a worn cupid caught in some sportive billows aimed by Venus. ‘It had a population of several thousand at one time,’ he said. ‘Hard to believe now, isn’t it? The church was built by Carducci. They didn’t keep up the sea walls. Shortage of cash, or so they say – it’s the province of the Magistura alla Aqua. There are drowning islands all over the Lagoon, and quite a few underneath the water, of course, like Costanziaca for example, which was a flourishing place long before San Marco was thought of, with churches and monasteries – it was a place of pilgrimage famous throughout Italy. Then the tides just slowly made a marsh of it. The waters closed over it some time in the eighteenth century, I think.’

  They were approaching Mazzorbo now, with the campanile of Santa Caterina rising immediately before them. The motoscafo turned at right angles up the wide canal, stopped at the Burano landing stage where it deposited Raikes and Wiseman. They stood for some moments on the jetty, watching the boat nose out again towards Torcello.

  ‘What we need now,’ Wiseman said ‘is a sandolo to take us to San Pietro. We’re at the end of the line here, more or less. The water-bus services don’t go beyond Torcello. Mrs Litsov offered to pick us up here, but I said we’d make our own way. They’ll bring us back, I should think.’

  They went down to the busy little harbour, where the coloured reflections of hulls and houses rocked on the water, and almost at once found a man who was willing to take them – he was making for the mout
h of the harbour, about to set off on a fishing trip.

  ‘You need someone who knows the waters,’ Wiseman said rather nervously as they stepped down into the boat; though perhaps the nervousness was for his balance, Raikes thought, rather than the uncertainties of the Lagoon. He was more than ever impressed by Wiseman’s kindness in braving all this for the sake of introducing him to Chiara Litsov, née Fornarini. And he felt guilty in a way, as if he were going on false pretences. Still, she might be able to tell him something. His discovery of the evening before had definitely linked the name of Fornarini with the statue – and therefore, in his own mind at least, with the house in San Giovanni Crisostomo.

  Something of the excitement of that discovery returned to him as they turned eastward beyond the harbour wall in what he thought was the direction of the open sea. The light was hazier now and the long strips of the Lidi, those essential ligaments of the Lagoon, were no longer visible. With Burano left behind they were without immediate landmarks, moving on a calm waste of water, prey like everything else to its perpetual glimmering reflections. Astern, in the distance, a darker mass rose above the flats and Raikes guessed this might be the cypresses of San Francesco del Deserto, which he had read about but never visited, where there was a monastery still, and where St Francis of Assisi was said to have put in during a Lagoon storm. Though where coming from or going to he could not remember. He had planted his stick and a pine had sprung up …

  The boatman stood upright in the stern, propelling them fairly briskly with a rhythmic forward thrust on his single oar. He uttered a regular heavy breathing sound, like a quiet grunt, not a sound of exertion but seeming in the nature of self-encouragement, as another might sing. That, with the creaking of the rowlocks and the faint slap of the wash, was all the sound there was. Silent gulls probed for clams in the shallows not far away. The light flashed on their breasts as they turned. They were wading, not swimming, Raikes noticed – the water was no more than a few inches deep there. Beyond them, glistening mudbanks rose clear of the surface like a shoal of enormous amphibians basking half submerged. Here obviously both skill and knowledge of the channels was necessary; occasionally their oar gashed mud, releasing dark liquid to stain the surface.

  ‘The water’s rising, I think,’ Wiseman said. ‘All this is covered at high tide of course.’

  They were coming again into what seemed deeper water, with little tufts of islands here and there, some with ruined walls on them or the remains of what might have been gardens, still precariously clear of the surface, though half drowned already as was evidenced by the tidal detritus caught high in bushes and trees, a tangle of seaweed and bleached sticks.

  ‘San Pietro,’ the boatman said suddenly, looking back towards them. His tone was one of doubt rather than affirmation. ‘È un’ isola abbandonata,’ he said. He rested on the oar for a few moments, smiling and shrugging slightly. It was as if it had suddenly occurred to him to doubt the whole enterprise. ‘Nessuno qui,’ he said. ‘There is nobody there.’

  ‘Somebody lives there,’ Wiseman said. ‘Uno straniero. Uno scultore.’

  ‘Ah, sì.’ The boatman appeared suddenly to remember. ‘Americano, inglese?’

  ‘Inglese.’

  The boatman nodded. ‘La moglie è italiana,’ he said. Apparently quite satisfied now, he returned to his rowing.

  ‘He knew all along,’ Wiseman said to Raikes. ‘I’ve noticed the same thing before. It is as if they were testing one.’

  ‘It’s not an English name,’ Raikes said.

  ‘Litsov? No, his parents were Polish, or perhaps only his father, but he was born in England, I think. He’s beginning to do very well now, as I told you. He seems to have taken off in the last three years or so. Before that they were very poor, I believe. Now a Litsov bronze can fetch four or five thousand pounds. I know that for a fact. He’s a rising star, no doubt about it. Not that it seems to make much difference to him. He hardly ever goes off the island. She’s the one who looks after things, well, you’ll see when you meet her …’

  As Wiseman continued Raikes allowed his mind to drift from full attention. That sense of the fabulous descended on him which always lies in enclosed waters that have been intimate with man for long centuries yet still guard their remoteness. These shallows and salt marshes had provided a refuge for the people of the mainland fleeing from barbarian invaders something like fifteen centuries ago. They had been continuously inhabited ever since. It was possible because of this to imagine more willing collusions here than elsewhere between water and sky, more complex blends of light and reflection, more melting and fusion of forms. And yet the waters were no tamer than they had ever been, still responding to the elemental movements of the tide …

  ‘That’s it now, on the left,’ Wiseman said.

  Raikes turned to look in the direction indicated, saw the low shape of the island, with ragged thickets of trees, quite dense, on the left, the western side, and a ruined bell tower standing isolated against the bright haze of the sky. As they drew nearer he made out ruined walls, an arch hung with ivy, two or three tumbledown casone – low wattle huts made by local fishermen. On the other side, the side they were approaching, it was barer, without trees. A cluster of black stakes marked the moorings.

  ‘You can’t see the house from here,’ Wiseman said.

  The boat moved forward towards the landing boards. In the shallow water dark weeds slowly waved their fronds.

  ‘No sea wall here, either.’ Wiseman nodded to where the water moved among the rocks of the narrow shore.

  They stepped out on to the tarred planks. Wiseman, extracting bank notes from his wallet, asked the boatman what time he was intending to return from his fishing. ‘Perhaps you could give us a shout?’ he said. ‘Può passare da qui?’

  The man nodded, pocketing the money.

  ‘Litsov will bring us back, I expect, as far as Burano,’ Wiseman said to Raikes. ‘But it’s as well to make sure. There are others today by the look of things.’ There was a smart and very expensive-looking blue and white speedboat tied up alongside and beyond this what was presumably the Litsovs’ boat, a long narrow sandolo with an outboard motor.

  Raikes nodded vaguely. He was taken up with the loneliness and silence of the place. When the creak and slap of their boat had died away, there was no sound anywhere at all.

  They began to mount the steps up from the jetty. From the top a rough path led off through low scrub. Raikes could see the chimney and roof of the house now, against a background of trees. The path turned sharply in this direction, bringing the house in full view and with it the lagoon water beyond, and Raikes became aware simultaneously of a woman standing some way ahead of them, higher up, and of two men much farther off, near the house. The woman, on whom his attention immediately became concentrated, was wearing a dark red headscarf. Raikes had the impression that she had just straightened up from a stooping position, thus rising above a low fence of crossed cane which made a triangular enclosure there.

  The path was still rising, so that the woman was on a level some feet above them. It was a picture Raikes was to remember, composed of few but striking elements: the lonely figure against the sky, the vivid scarf, ragged pines beyond, the pale stone of the house.

  ‘Mrs Litsov, hullo,’ Wiseman called, raising his arm in something between a wave and a salute.

  She stood for some moments longer, motionless, watching them as they approached and in this brief space there was communicated to Raikes some of the involuntary reserve or distrust that people have who live in lonely places. Then she came quickly down towards them, through a narrow gap in the fence. She was smiling, a pleased smile it seemed, but from the moment she was within three yards or so Raikes found his interpretative faculties disabled, he ceased altogether to be an observing and deducing creature. An overwhelming sense of her beauty flooded his being – it was like some fruit crushed against the palate of his brain, flooding every gallery. This impression was mysterious in its first effect,
not depending on any conscious assessment – he was too stricken to register any but basic components, dark hair, high cheekbones, full mouth, eyes unexpectedly pale. It was more like a recognition of something. She was wearing a man’s pullover, large and shapeless, and loose blue trousers, and she moved lightly. She was tall for an Italian woman. He braced himself for the introductions.

  ‘Mr Wiseman,’ she said. ‘Alex, isn’t it?’ The voice was low-pitched, rather deliberate-sounding – the only sign of foreignness.

  ‘You remember me then?’

  ‘Of course I do. I can’t shake hands, my hands are dirty.’

  As she reached them she did something that Raikes was always to remember. She raised her hands and ran the palms down the sides of her body from armpits to hips in a lingering gesture that was careless and exuberant and voluptuous at the same time.

  ‘My hands are covered with soil,’ she said. ‘So, if you will permit …’ She drew close to Wiseman and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘Permit?’ Wiseman’s smile was no longer merely social. ‘I must try always to catch you at your gardening,’ he said. ‘May I introduce my friend, Simon Raikes?’

  Later that day, in the lamplit silence of his room, his diary before him, it was to occur to Raikes that he had been scrutinized rather, though smilingly.

  ‘It was good of you to ask me here,’ he said, looking for the first time directly into her eyes, which were somewhere between grey and green, and very clear and steady.

  ‘You are very welcome,’ she said.

  He did not offer to shake hands and she made no move towards him.

  ‘Are you doing some planting?’ Wiseman said, breaking a silence that might have extended.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘Would you like to see?’