banquet, the façade had slipped. Gone was the avuncular Bassetti. And in his place? An impatient man. A fractious man. There was more than a hint of ruthlessness as well.
We’ve got plenty of other things to deal with.
I suspected that his career had been built on the misfortunes of others, misfortunes he himself engineered and would, at the same time, deny all knowledge of. I had to avoid drawing attention to myself – I should live quietly, work hard – but, like Ornella, I seemed to provoke people; I was often misinterpreted, misjudged. I would have to be ingenious, I realized, if I were to survive in this city, where scheming and machination were second nature. Though ingenuity might not be enough. I would have to be lucky too.
The wind rose again. Trees roared; roof-tiles rattled. Bracing myself against the cold, I got out of bed and had a last piss in my chamber pot.
Tramontana
.
That was the name of the wind.
The following week, as I was leaving my lodgings, I heard somebody call my name. Cuif was peering out of his top-floor window, his face a distant, pale oval. He had been working on his comeback, he told me, then laughed the somewhat hysterical laugh of a person who doesn’t see anybody from one end of the day to the other. He had a new trick, he said. He wanted my opinion. I promised I would drop in later.
When I returned that evening, I found him perched on a high stool, scribbling in a ledger. It was damp in his room, and he had wrapped himself in a coat that appeared to be made from the crudely stitched skins of vermin.
‘I’ll be with you shortly,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the page, as if, like Galileo, he was engaged in work of great historical significance.
His voluntary imprisonment had mystified me at first. Now, though, I thought I was beginning to understand. In this tiny kingdom of his own devising, he could reconstruct himself. He was watching the world turn. Waiting for the ideal moment to make his entrance.
I wandered over to the shelf by the window. The Frenchman ’s library dealt more or less exclusively with his craft. There was a copy of
Rhetorical Exercises
by the original harlequin, Tristano Martinelli. He also had
A Choice Banquet of Tumbling and Tricks, The Anatomie of Legerdemain,
and
Wit and Mirth: an Antidote to Melancholy
. I began to leaf through the Martinelli. In his short book, he claimed to be revealing the secrets of his profession. He followed his obsequious dedication to an imaginary patron with four pages of teasing chapter titles and a further seven of illustrations. He left the remaining fifty-seven pages blank. It was an exercise in mockery and obfuscation. On a more serious level, though, I thought he was saying,
I’m not going to tell you
– or even,
It cannot be told.
‘Martinelli’s a big influence.’ Cuif was standing at my elbow, head inclined.
‘I didn’t hear you cross the room.’
Cuif smiled, then he opened a cupboard, took out two long-stemmed glasses with fluted sides and poked a forefinger into each of them in turn, removing the crisp bodies of dead insects.
‘Drink?’ he said.
We were halfway through a jug of rough red wine when I asked Cuif if he knew of somebody called Stufa.
He kept his eyes on his glass. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ I said. ‘I just heard the name somewhere.’
Cuif told me that Stufa acted as a spiritual adviser to the Grand Duke’s mother, Vittoria della Rovere. She was a daunting woman, he said. Always in black, of course. Eyes too close together. Ferocious temper.
I drew him back to the subject, asking how Stufa had acquired the position.
Vittoria had adopted Stufa when he was four, Cuif said. She had educated the boy herself, just as she had educated the Grand Duke, filling his head with stories of penance and martyrdom , and it was no great surprise when, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he expressed the desire to enter the holy orders. She placed him in a Dominican monastery
We’ve got plenty of other things to deal with.
I suspected that his career had been built on the misfortunes of others, misfortunes he himself engineered and would, at the same time, deny all knowledge of. I had to avoid drawing attention to myself – I should live quietly, work hard – but, like Ornella, I seemed to provoke people; I was often misinterpreted, misjudged. I would have to be ingenious, I realized, if I were to survive in this city, where scheming and machination were second nature. Though ingenuity might not be enough. I would have to be lucky too.
The wind rose again. Trees roared; roof-tiles rattled. Bracing myself against the cold, I got out of bed and had a last piss in my chamber pot.
Tramontana
.
That was the name of the wind.
The following week, as I was leaving my lodgings, I heard somebody call my name. Cuif was peering out of his top-floor window, his face a distant, pale oval. He had been working on his comeback, he told me, then laughed the somewhat hysterical laugh of a person who doesn’t see anybody from one end of the day to the other. He had a new trick, he said. He wanted my opinion. I promised I would drop in later.
When I returned that evening, I found him perched on a high stool, scribbling in a ledger. It was damp in his room, and he had wrapped himself in a coat that appeared to be made from the crudely stitched skins of vermin.
‘I’ll be with you shortly,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the page, as if, like Galileo, he was engaged in work of great historical significance.
His voluntary imprisonment had mystified me at first. Now, though, I thought I was beginning to understand. In this tiny kingdom of his own devising, he could reconstruct himself. He was watching the world turn. Waiting for the ideal moment to make his entrance.
I wandered over to the shelf by the window. The Frenchman ’s library dealt more or less exclusively with his craft. There was a copy of
Rhetorical Exercises
by the original harlequin, Tristano Martinelli. He also had
A Choice Banquet of Tumbling and Tricks, The Anatomie of Legerdemain,
and
Wit and Mirth: an Antidote to Melancholy
. I began to leaf through the Martinelli. In his short book, he claimed to be revealing the secrets of his profession. He followed his obsequious dedication to an imaginary patron with four pages of teasing chapter titles and a further seven of illustrations. He left the remaining fifty-seven pages blank. It was an exercise in mockery and obfuscation. On a more serious level, though, I thought he was saying,
I’m not going to tell you
– or even,
It cannot be told.
‘Martinelli’s a big influence.’ Cuif was standing at my elbow, head inclined.
‘I didn’t hear you cross the room.’
Cuif smiled, then he opened a cupboard, took out two long-stemmed glasses with fluted sides and poked a forefinger into each of them in turn, removing the crisp bodies of dead insects.
‘Drink?’ he said.
We were halfway through a jug of rough red wine when I asked Cuif if he knew of somebody called Stufa.
He kept his eyes on his glass. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ I said. ‘I just heard the name somewhere.’
Cuif told me that Stufa acted as a spiritual adviser to the Grand Duke’s mother, Vittoria della Rovere. She was a daunting woman, he said. Always in black, of course. Eyes too close together. Ferocious temper.
I drew him back to the subject, asking how Stufa had acquired the position.
Vittoria had adopted Stufa when he was four, Cuif said. She had educated the boy herself, just as she had educated the Grand Duke, filling his head with stories of penance and martyrdom , and it was no great surprise when, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he expressed the desire to enter the holy orders. She placed him in a Dominican monastery
Similar Books
