Stone Virgin Page 9

  She led them up the slope and into the area formed by the cane fence.

  ‘I have been putting in the seedlings for the zucchini,’ she said. ‘I grew them from seed, you know.’ She pointed to the spaced row of light green shoots against the fence, mounded up with black earth. Elsewhere in the enclosure Raikes saw tomato plants, aubergines, a straggling double row of artichokes. Along the side exposed to the sea there was a hedge of rose bushes in bright new leaf.

  ‘You do the work yourself?’ Raikes asked, and was once more lost in the woman’s gaze.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Litsov is not interested in gardening. He is always too busy with his work. I like it, you know. And you see we are a long way from any shops so it is useful to have a supply of vegetables. On the other side of the house, there is my herb garden. I’ll show you afterwards. I expect you would like a drink now?’

  They passed once more through the gap in the fence and walked in file along the path towards the house, with Mrs Litsov in the lead. She was talking still about her garden, turning frequently to look at the men behind her. It was only as they came up to the house, a long single-storey building of rough stone screened by thickets of pines, that Raikes remembered the two men he had seen and wondered whether one of them had been this woman’s husband.

  7

  THE LIVING ROOM was spacious, with a large square window at the far end, overlooking the Lagoon. Light flooded in from the shadowless expanse of water outside, creating such plenitude that the white walls seemed permeated with it and the several polished metal sculptures in the room gleamed with reciprocal reflections.

  Raikes had been at once aware of these gleaming perspectives though at first too busy with other impressions to register them fully – impressions mainly to do with the woman’s movements about the room as she got the drinks ready and brought them, vermouth for Wiseman, white wine for him. The wine was perhaps not quite as cold as it should be, she explained. It had been in the cellar, of course, but they had no refrigerator, they had no electricity. Sometimes they had ice delivered …

  ‘Now I must go and change and so on,’ she said. ‘You will think me rude. The fact is I stayed too long over my gardening. I did not forget that you were coming, but I forgot the time. And I thought my husband … But he is working still. I will not be long. There is someone else for lunch: Richard Lattimer – perhaps you know him?’

  ‘I have met him,’ Wiseman said.

  ‘He is here too, but perhaps he is in the studio with Paul. In any case I will not leave you alone for long.’

  ‘Remarkable woman, the way she manages,’ Wiseman said, when she had left the room. ‘It can’t have been easy, especially in the winter. Of course they can afford to have help now.’

  Raikes nodded. ‘I would find these distinctly disturbing,’ he said.

  ‘The sculptures? They are all her, I believe, in one aspect or another. It seems that he has had no other subject since they married. It is quite touching, in a way.’

  He was at it again, Raikes thought, composing a sentimental story. Wiseman seemed to take all the phenomena of the world on one plane only, including the evidence of obsessive vanity all around them.

  For it was vain and it was obsessive, he insisted to himself, to use your living room as a showroom for your work. One or two pieces, yes; but he had counted nine disposed about the room at different levels, semi-abstract shapes, though all, as he looked more closely, derived from the nude female body. Only one of the pieces had a face, and the face was Mrs Litsov’s.

  They caught the light, setting up in that long room a bewildering multiplicity of images, organic yet incomplete, the model only guessed at, fugitive, as if these forms had been caught at some moment of metamorphosis, line of shoulder or thigh, slopes of the breast, cleft of the buttocks, complex abdominal folds, subtle panels of the mons Veneris. Had Chiara Litsov been the model for all these, standing, kneeling, crouching, lying nude for him, supine or prone, hers the whole consummate shape these were the fragments of or clues to? Raikes sipped his cold wine, keeping these thoughts at bay. The work was erotic but there was nothing salacious in it: that was lost in the beauty of the moulding, the fugitive nature of the human likeness; wherever the eye paused that part could be dwelt on as pure form, quelling lewdness in the way Daphne’s change quelled Apollo.

  ‘That must be Lattimer’s boat then,’ Wiseman said.

  ‘Did you say you knew him? Of course, you know everybody.’

  Contrary to his usual habit, Wiseman showed no pleasure at this remark. He said, ‘I’ve met him before. He’s an art dealer. He has a small gallery here, run by a man called Balbi, and another, bigger one in London. He specializes in sculpture – any period, any style, so long as it is good. He is supposed to have a fantastic eye. He’s rich, of course. He owns a house here in Venice, somewhere in Canareggio – not far from you. He has contributed very generously to the Save Venice Fund. Quite large sums. That is how I know him – he made his first approach through Unesco after the 1966 floods. I didn’t know he was handling Litsov’s work.’

  ‘Perhaps he isn’t,’ Raikes said. ‘Perhaps he’s just a friend.’

  ‘He’s not that kind of man. You’ll see what I mean, I think.’

  At this moment, as if on cue, the door opened and a fair man in a well-cut grey suit and a noticeably beautiful yellow tie came in. ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Has she left you on your own? I see you’ve got a drink at least. Oh, hullo, Wiseman.’

  Until these last words Raikes had thought it must be Litsov himself, judging by the ease of manner, the evident familiarity with the house; though the elegance and the handsome, cold composure of the face had not seemed in keeping.

  ‘This is –’ Wiseman began, but before he could say anything more, the newcomer announced his own identity. ‘I am Richard Lattimer,’ he said, as if it were too important a matter to be left to Wiseman. His face had broken into a narrow smile – the features seemed too perfectly regular somehow for a wider one.

  ‘Simon Raikes,’ Raikes said. Lattimer’s hand was cold and his grip surprisingly strong, so much so that Raikes was conscious of having to exert a countervailing pressure in order to avoid being engulfed altogether. For a moment or two he looked directly into the other man’s pale blue eyes.

  Then Lattimer moved to the table, took up the bottle of wine and looked at the label. ‘Orvieto ’67,’ he said. ‘Not a good year. Still …’ He poured out a glass, and Raikes watched him, struck by the quick unerring way in which he handled both bottle and glass, a deftness in which there was something respectful too, almost caressive …

  ‘Well,’ he said to Wiseman, ‘still helping to preserve our artistic heritage?’

  Wiseman did not smile. ‘One does one’s best,’ he said. It sounded pompous – which Wiseman was not.

  ‘We were admiring the sculptures,’ Raikes said.

  ‘Marvellous, aren’t they?’ Lattimer said at once. Glass in hand he took a step forward and touched the nearest piece, which was the most naturalistic in execution, the armless torso with Mrs Litsov’s face. Lattimer ran a white, thick-fingered hand over the features and the breasts, showing the same caressive confidence of touch he had displayed with the bottle. The face was briefly obscured, then stared ahead, wide-eyed and serious, while the hand caressed her breasts, arousing a strange sort of recognition in Raikes which he could not for the moment understand. Being without arms made her seem curiously defenceless and exposed, an effect which Litsov had exploited brilliantly by his sensuous treatment of the breasts and nipples, the care he had taken to render the tension between the downward pulling weight of the flesh and the upsurge of life.

  ‘Litsov has genius,’ Lattimer said.

  There was something definitely odd about Lattimer’s face, Raikes decided. It was too reposeful somehow, unnaturally so. Before he could speculate further Chiara Litsov re-entered the room, apologizing for the delay. She had changed into a pale-blue dress of some material Raikes, always vague
in such matters, thought might be silk. It caught the light, shimmering as she moved towards them, becoming itself a reflecting surface among the metal ones there – it was oddly, to Raikes, as if on entering the room she had become at once included among the various versions of herself all around them.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Richard,’ she said. ‘You’ve introduced yourselves, I suppose? I hope he has been looking after you properly?’

  ‘Can I pour you a glass of wine?’ Lattimer said. ‘I’ve been in the studio talking to Paul.’

  An immediate and unmistakable impression of familiarity was conveyed in this brief exchange. Lattimer seemed proprietorial almost. Probably his way always to seem so. But there had been something else in the tone, or the inflexion, something that sounded cautionary, or perhaps like a reminder of some kind.

  ‘He’ll be out soon,’ Lattimer said, looking directly at Mrs Litsov.

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘Before we all starve to death.’

  She returned Lattimer’s look for some moments, smiling, and again Raikes had the feeling that something more particular was being conveyed. Then she moved the smile across to Wiseman. ‘And how is your book?’ she said.

  That she had remembered he was writing one visibly delighted him. In the warmth of her interest he lost his appearance of cherubic worldling and became eager, vulnerable even; and Raikes, seeing this transformation she had effected so effortlessly, was visited by a vague sense of premonition, gone as soon as felt.

  He himself said little, able for the first time to look at Chiara Fornarini steadily, now that her attention was elsewhere. If he had been expecting some degree of high-bred frailty or aristocratic languor, he did not find it. Her face was wider at the temples and cheekbones than was consistent with strict proportion, and strongly moulded; the lips were full, well shaped, amused-looking. It was the eyes that were most remarkable, wide-set, with a slight upward slant, grey-green in colour, very striking against the dark hair and the light olive tint of the skin. It was a vivid face, consonant with the strength that was evident in the body, a strength seen as much in the grace of her movements as in the full limbs and straight shoulders.

  Wiseman, in full flight now, was talking about the legend of St Ursula, explaining that in the accounts of her pilgrimage to Rome she was always said to have been accompanied by eleven thousand virgins. This error, which he was dealing with in his Byways, sprang from a misreading of the original inscription, the letter ‘M’ standing for martire, not mille, as was popularly thought. ‘It is eleven virgin martyrs, not eleven thousand virgins,’ Wiseman said. His face was glowing, his hair had somehow become dishevelled. ‘Even Pignatti,’ he said, ‘writing in 1958, falls into this same error.’

  ‘Well, but I have seen the paintings,’ Mrs Litsov said. ‘They are at the Accademia. If you go and look at the Carpaccios there, you will see that in his painting of this scene there are many more than eleven virgins kneeling with St Ursula at the Pope’s feet. There are not eleven thousand, admittedly, but he could hardly have put them all in.’

  ‘I was going to mention that,’ Wiseman said. However, he added nothing for the moment, seemed somewhat dashed in fact.

  ‘Perhaps a few tagged along,’ Raikes said. He met Mrs Litsov’s eyes. Something in their innocent steadiness told him at once that she was aware of Wiseman’s slight discomfiture, amused by it, and inviting him in as an accomplice. Suppressing all sense of disloyalty to Wiseman, he allowed himself to smile. The exchange of glances was over in seconds but it left Raikes feeling leagued with her.

  Lattimer laughed suddenly, a rather barking laugh which did little to disturb the immobile set of his face. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she probably picked them up as she went along. On the swarming principle. She was the queen virgin, you know.’

  ‘I see the whole thing as what we would now call a demo,’ Mrs Litsov said. ‘It was a mass protest of virgins.’

  ‘No, no,’ Wiseman said, without smiling. ‘Carpaccio himself didn’t know. That is the whole point. That is the point I am making in my book.’

  ‘In that case, old chap, the mistake goes back a long way indeed,’ Lattimer said coldly. ‘The story of Ursula’s mission and martyrdom is told in The Golden Legend compiled by Jacobus de Voragine round about the middle of the thirteenth century. That’s two hundred years before Carpaccio’s time. He got the account from there.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Wiseman said, ‘but he wouldn’t have seen it in that version. Carpaccio couldn’t read Latin. There was an Italian version published in Venice in 1475. My whole point is that Carpaccio –’

  But here Lattimer, obviously sensing he might lose the argument, deliberately and indeed brutally interrupted, launching into a lengthy disquisition on the various treatments of the subject in the late-medieval art, the fourteenth-century frescos of Tomaso da Modena at Treviso, Memling’s beautiful reliquary shrine in the Hôpital Saint-Jean at Bruges, both of which he had seen. His knowledge was remarkable, his memory too; and his fluency admitted no pauses. Wiseman sat flushed and silent.

  Raikes could not remember having seen before, in the course of an ordinary conversation, such self-assertion, such disregard for the rights of others, as Lattimer was demonstrating now. He was shocked by it and it occurred to him to wonder why Mrs Litsov did not in some way intervene. He stole a glance at her but her face bore no particular expression. This would be a good time, he suddenly thought, to bring up the question that had brought him. All thoughts of poor Wiseman fled. ‘I don’t know if Wiseman told you,’ he said, leaning towards her and speaking quietly, ‘but I had an ulterior motive in coming to see you today.’

  ‘Ulterior motive?’

  For a second or two Raikes met the serious eyes fixed on him. Again he was aware, not of scrutiny exactly, but a sort of speculation, as if something about him were being assessed. With a confused sense of turning the occasion into a compliment, he began, ‘If I had known, of course –.’ But this was wrong, it would seem patronizing. He stopped abruptly. Her eyes were on him still but he could see only the same cool interest in them. ‘There were one or two things I wanted to ask you about,’ he said.

  Before she could reply a tall, fair-bearded man in a faded denim jacket came into the room. He did not approach anyone but stood quite close to the wall, looking at the visitors it seemed uncertainly or perhaps diffidently.

  ‘Here is the maestro,’ Lattimer said. ‘Now we can have some lunch.’

  ‘You remember Mr Wiseman, don’t you?’ Mrs Litsov said. ‘And this is Simon Raikes.’

  ‘How do you do?’ Litsov said, making no move to approach anyone. ‘There was something to finish,’ he said, looking at his wife.

  ‘When was there not?’ she said. ‘Well, we can go and have our food now. Maria has been waiting with it for quite a while.’

  The dining room was reached through the door Litsov had entered by, then down a short length of passage. It was smaller, with the same roughcast walls. No sculptures in evidence here, Raikes noticed. Very little decoration of any kind. Various hors-d’oeuvres had already been set out: olives, prawns, aquadelle, fried squid. There was more of the Orvieto.

  Litsov began talking immediately but not about anything that concerned his guests. He had not looked directly at any of them yet. ‘Richard has told me that Adriano is still out of action,’ he said, still looking at his wife. ‘He still has this glandular fever.’

  ‘That seems to be so, yes,’ she said. ‘But I understood he was getting better. Isn’t that so, Richard?’

  ‘He is definitely on the mend,’ Lattimer said. ‘He expects to be working full out again in a matter of days.’

  ‘It is nearly three weeks now,’ Litsov said. ‘I am sick of it.’

  ‘He will not entrust the casting of your work to anyone else.’ Mrs Litsov smiled. ‘It is a compliment, caro,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Litsov said. His voice was deep, with a note of irritation in it. ‘Meanwhile, no one casts
my work,’ he said. ‘It is piling up and nothing happens, just excuses. I will not give him much longer. There are others on the mainland who can do the work as well as he can.’

  Neither Mrs Litsov nor Lattimer replied to this, and their silence seemed to irritate Litsov further. ‘You think that I will do nothing,’ he said. There was definite anger now in his voice. ‘But you are wrong. I give him one more week.’

  ‘Everything will be all right,’ Lattimer said. ‘I will take care of it.’

  Litsov brooded for some moments, looking down at the table. Then, perhaps sensing he had caused embarrassment, he looked up. With an obviously deliberate effort to be more sociable, he said, ‘You have dressed up for us today, Chiara, I see,’ and he smiled at her.

  The smile destroyed his face more or less completely. In repose it was handsome, with the broad fair brows, strong nose, blue, prominent eyes, full beard below; but jaws and chin were fashioned on a smaller scale, belonged on a child’s face almost, and when the mouth smiled it collapsed into the beard, and only the white, voracious teeth survived. ‘It is nice to see you wearing a dress,’ he said. ‘Lately it has been trousers, trousers.’

  ‘I was surprised I could get it across my shoulders,’ she said. ‘I am developing muscles, Litsov, on this island.’

  This was said without coquetry but the effect of her words was in some sort to focus the attention of the four men on the concealed mechanisms of her body as she sat there in the long-sleeved dress.

  ‘Muscles!’ Litsov moved his large head slowly as if this was a new thought for him.

  Wiseman was merely arch. ‘I assure you,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t show to any marked extent.’ He turned a cherubic smile on her.

  ‘Where are they then, these mighty muscles?’ Lattimer demanded and beneath the assumed jocularity there was atavistic condescension. He looked at her with his narrow smile, his handsome, small-featured, immobile-seeming face – not so much composed as artificial-looking, Raikes thought. As if it were not quite his own … that was it, of course: Lattimer had undergone plastic surgery at some time or other; the skin of his face had been stretched.