Lucifer's Shadow

13 At large in the city

On the way to la Pietà, fiddle case at the end of his arm, Daniel enjoyed the promised detour. Scacchi had led him, at a slow but steady pace, south from San Cassian into San Polo, past the great Gothic hulk of the Frari, with its tall campanile, to the Scuola di San Rocco. Daniel recalled the place from the books in the college library. The scuole were charity brotherhoods, like Masonic lodges, each with its own funds and premises and each competing to display the finest art. San Rocco was the home of Tintoretto, whose cycle of paintings seemed to cover almost every inch of the interior.

Scacchi insisted that he pay the entry fee, then led Daniel upstairs to the Sala dell’ Albergo, where they marvelled at the centrepiece depiction of Saint Roch towering over them, and the great panoramic crucifixion. Scacchi quoted Henry James on the latter and added, “Not that I have read anything else of his, of course. Much too tedious.”

Then they went back into the main hall and he pointed out to Daniel the work which was, he claimed, the reason for their visit.

“There,” he said. They both strained their necks upwards. In the corner, close to the door which led to the sala, was a large dark canvas depicting two figures. The first, a handsome young man with blond curls and a pleasant smile, looked upwards to the second, holding two rocks in his hand. The object of his plea, clearly Christ, from the halo that shone out of the darkness around his head, was half turned to him, as if in consideration.

“Subject, please?” Scacchi demanded.

“Painting is not my field,” Daniel objected.

“Then use your head. That’s why it’s there.”

It was, in a sense, obvious, although there was something highly unusual about the work. “It’s the Temptation of Christ in the desert,” Daniel suggested. “The lower figure is Satan holding out the rocks, which are shaped like loaves, with the idea that the starving Christ should turn them into bread.”

“Spot on!” said Scacchi, beaming. “The date?”

“About 1570?”

“Ten years too early, but a good try. Now, please, tell me why this canvas is so very curious.”

Daniel stared at the painting on the ceiling. “Because the focus is almost entirely upon the Devil, not Christ.”

“Yes?” Scacchi required more.

“And because he is so…ordinary.”

“Ordinary? Surely not. Look again.”

The old man was right. “Because he is so fetching. So attractive,” Daniel said.

“Precisely! Compare this to Bosch’s Temptation of St. Anthony , painted probably no more than eighty years before. There you have devils with tails and snouts, demons ready to devour your entrails. This chap has nothing but a few feathers as his cloak and a smile as fetching as any sweet soul on earth. There you have it, Daniel. Everything you need to know about the Venetian Lucifer. That he wears such an engaging grin it is hard not to sup with him. Such a modern concept, don’t you think? Except if you look at the canvas there…”

Scacchi pointed to an oval work on the ceiling at the centre of the room.

“You will see the selfsame pose used for Eve offering Adam the fated apple. There was always a touch of misogyny in Tintoretto, if you ask me. On the way out we’ll take a look at the Annunciation downstairs. Poor girl looks as if she should never have stepped outside the kitchen, let alone mothered the Son of God.”

Daniel found it difficult to take his eyes off the figure of Satan, with its perplexing smile and pleading expression. “Why did you bring me here, Scacchi?”

“For your betterment. A man must recognise Satan when he sees him, Daniel. Particularly in a city such as this. I am no moralist, so personally I care little whether you run with one side or the other. What matters, I think, is that it is you who decides. When the Devil comes to you, there are only three options. Do you do what he wants? What ‘goodness’ demands? Or what your own nature tells you, and that may be either or none of the aforementioned? The answer, naturally, should be the last. But unless you see him — or her — for what he truly is, you can’t even begin to decide. Are you with me?”

It seemed, to Daniel, a distant argument. “I am not sure I have met the Devil. Or care to.”

Scacchi gazed at him, seeming disappointed. “That is the child inside you talking. You should be wary of him. This Venetian Lucifer will come, in his or her own time. Now…” He looked at his wristwatch. “We must be going. Musicians hate a latecomer.”

After leaving the scuola, they caught the vaporetto, disembarking at San Zaccaria accompanied by hordes of tourists headed for the Doge’s Palace and the famous piazza. On the way Scacchi announced that he had enrolled Daniel into the summer music school at the church as a speculative gift, a small pleasure to relieve the tedium of sifting the papers in the cellar. If the course was not to Daniel’s taste, he could leave at any time, though the old man hoped he would persevere. The event had some fame. It took place every two years under the sponsorship of Massiters, the international art agency whose eponymous English founder, an occasional Venetian resident, appeared at irregular intervals to applaud and inspect the beneficiaries of his generosity.

The programme attracted young musicians from around the world, partly through reputation and partly because of its location in the church of La Pietà, “Vivaldi’s church,” as the sign outside had it, though Scacchi quickly denounced this as a fraud. The original was rebuilt shortly after the composer’s death, he explained. The white classical façade photographed by thousands of tourists each week had been tacked on at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Red Priest would recognise precious little of the modern church, Scacchi said, and certainly not the lush oval interior which had replaced the customary bare, dark medieval space still seen elsewhere in the city.

The large double doors were open, giving the tourists a direct view into the nave. A middle-aged woman in a flowery dress was perched behind a desk at the foot of the steps, checking the credentials of those arriving for the event. She smiled brightly at Scacchi and greeted him with affection. Too rapidly for Daniel, and in a smattering of Italian and dialect, Scacchi spoke to her and pushed a piece of paper into her hand. Her eyebrows rose. She shrugged. Then she scribbled Daniel’s name on a plastic name badge and passed it over the table. Scacchi took it up gratefully and with profuse thanks.

“We locals get a discount on the boats and buses,” the old man explained with a victorious grin. “So why not for a little music course too? These foreigners…” He waved his hand at the crowd of young people milling inside the church. “They have money to burn.”

“Speaking of money, Signor Scacchi,” said the woman behind the table, “would you like me to present the fattura to your house at a later date?”

“As you see fit,” he replied. “A gentleman does not carry cash, naturally.”

“Naturally…” She scribbled something on a torn piece of paper and thrust it into a supermarket carrier bag half-full of such notes. Daniel somehow doubted Scacchi would ever hear of it again.

“Wear your badge always,” the woman warned. Daniel pinned it to his shirt and, at Scacchi’s beckoning, followed him into La Pietà, pausing by the iron gate that led to the oval hall, listening to the murmur of young excited voices in a dozen different English accents.

Scacchi watched him. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” he asked eventually.

“No,” Daniel replied. “I don’t care if Vivaldi wouldn’t recognise a thing. I can still feel his presence.”

“Or of those who came after and believed in him so much they placed his presence here, straight out of the ether. Either way,” Scacchi mused, “it’s all the same. Reincarnation has always seemed to me the silliest of ideas. Yet I do think there is something in the notion that a fragment of a person survives, like dust on a carpet. We breathe it in, consuming each other and the dead of past centuries while perhaps picking up a little of their stain upon our characters.”

A cello was being tuned. Two fiddles joined in.

“I’m not good enough,” Daniel said immediately. “These people are in a different league.”

“Nonsense!” Scacchi said reproachfully. “You told me in your letters you played regularly and had taken examinations.”

“And that is true, Scacchi. But exams and talent are not necessarily the same thing.”

“Oh, come. It’s just a little fun. Some playing. Some theory. Some composition. You can compose a bit, I trust?”

“A bit.”

“Then you’ll be fine. See the strutting cockerel over there?”

The old man pointed out a short figure in black shirt and trousers, with a head of abundant dark hair and a small imperial, like a misplaced moustache, beneath his lower lip.

“Guido Fabozzi,” Daniel said. “I have seen him on television.”

“Been the boss for the last four of these things. Since the incident…”

Daniel saw the look on the old man’s face. Scacchi had let something slip. “The incident?”

“There was a…problem. But that was ten years ago now. Nothing you need worry about. Fabozzi is a good man, for all his pomposity. I’ll have a word with him. Make sure he goes easy on you.”

“No! I stand or fall by my own efforts. Please.”

Scacchi seemed to like that. He touched Daniel lightly on the shoulder. Then he cast his eyes around the church again, found a figure in pale colours on the far side of the nave, and pointed him out.

“And there you have the great man himself. Hugo Massiter. Lord of all he surveys. We work in the same trade, though I doubt he’d acknowledge as much. No time like the present!”

They crossed the floor of the church, nodding politely at the sea of young faces there, until they stood beneath a large and impressive ceiling painting, which Scacchi announced as Tiepolo’s Triumph of Faith . Hugo Massiter was a man of around fifty, Daniel judged, dressed in a curiously anachronistic fashion: light shirt and trousers, blue neck scarf, and a pair of expensive plastic-framed sunglasses pushed back onto his glossy forehead. He was engaged in a one-sided conversation with a slim girl in a white shirt and jeans who listened intently to his animated speech. Scacchi held back for a moment, allowed Massiter to recognise their presence, then walked forward and embraced the man.

“Signor Massiter,” he said, smiling broadly. “You grace our city with your presence and your generosity once more, sir. How can we express our gratitude?”

“Oh, Scacchi,” Massiter replied, “there are ways and ways. Something to sell, perhaps? I have a particular object in mind. We must speak of it.”

Scacchi shook his head. “I regret I have nothing of the calibre you rightly expect. I merely deal in baubles these days. But who knows?”

Massiter introduced the girl he was speaking to as Amy Hartston, aged eighteen, from Portland, Maine. Scacchi bowed. Daniel took her soft hand and, awkwardly, shook it. She had long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, a constant smile, and the blank, vague prettiness Daniel had, against his own wishes, come to associate with a certain breed of American student.

“I don’t recall you from two years ago,” she said to Daniel in an odd accent, American, but with a genteel flatness not unlike old-fashioned upper-class English.

“I wasn’t here. I’ve never visited Venice before.”

“Wow.” She seemed amazed. “You live in England and you’ve never been here?”

“Not everyone has the advantage of a rich and generous father, my dear,” Massiter declared.

“He’s glad to get rid of me for the summer vacation,” she grumbled. “This is just camp under another name.”

Massiter beamed. He seemed, Daniel thought, much too disengaged, much too pleasant, to be the owner of a large and successful company working in the aggressively competitive world of art sales. “Ah, the young,” he said. “Never explain. Never apologise. Never feel grateful.”

“About sums it up!” Amy Hartston agreed cheerfully.

“Hmmm,” Massiter grunted, then said, “May I?” Without waiting for an answer, he picked up her violin case, gently opened it, and removed the instrument inside. Daniel Forster blinked at what Massiter held up for all to see in the poor light of La Pietà. It was an ancient fiddle, unmistakably Italian, probably of the early eighteenth century.

“This,” Massiter announced, “is what I seek, Scacchi. Well, almost, anyway. You recognise it? No peeking at the label, now.”

The old man took the fiddle and held it in his hands, inspecting the instrument minutely from top to tailpiece. The violin had a shallow belly and a narrow waist. In the yellowish artificial light it seemed a light chestnut colour, with some marks, a few old, a few more recent, perhaps the result of a clumsy owner.

“I hate these parlour games,” the old man complained. “One should not rush into a judgement.”

Massiter was unmoved. “Oh, come on, Scacchi. It’s easy enough for a man like you.”

“Hmmm,” Scacchi murmured. “I would prefer a look in good light, and with a glass, but without that I shall hazard a guess. Cremona, undoubtedly. There is no sign of Saint Theresa, so it cannot be Andrea Guarneri, though it has his feel to it. But that narrow waist. It must be the son, Giuseppe, I think. Early eighteenth century…perhaps 1720 or so.”

Amy’s eyes opened wide. “Unbelievable. How do you do that? To me it just feels like a great fiddle.”

“And it is,” Massiter said. “Though not of the highest order. I seek something rather better. From another Guarneri.”

Scacchi surveyed him, his face full of scepticism. “You mean Giuseppe del Gesù, I imagine? But, Massiter, you know there are so few of those in the world. If one were to come onto the market, everyone would know about it.”

Massiter snorted. “The open market, yes. But we play the game, Scacchi. We know there are rules and rules. Sell like that, and there are taxes to pay. And a commission to a dealer like me. The instrument I have heard of is one of his beauties, big and bold, worth a fortune, and with a canny seller who’s reluctant to show his or her face. Funny, that, eh? You, I imagine, have heard the same rumour. Now, don’t deny it.”

Scacchi demurred. It seemed to Daniel that the old man was incapable of deception in the face of Massiter’s iron-grey stare.

“You hear such nonsense on the streets, Massiter. We both know you cannot believe a word.”

Massiter’s right arm stole around Scacchi’s shoulders, then squeezed, quite hard, the flesh close to his neck. “Of course. But you will alert me should a little bird sing, won’t you? My money’s as good as any man’s.”

Scacchi took one short step backwards to detach himself from Massiter’s grip. “Daniel here is my guest and part of your school for the duration. If you have anything to say to me, or I to you, perhaps we should communicate through him. I am too feeble these days to be disturbed by the telephone.”

Massiter stared at Daniel, as did Amy Hartston. Daniel had the feeling he was being judged.

“Very well,” replied Massiter with a sudden, efficient smile, before turning his attention completely to the girl. “And as for you, my dear, I should be grateful if you would join me for dinner at the Locanda Cipriani tomorrow. They have sea urchins and bass ravioli and the finest mantis shrimp you’ll ever taste. Afterwards I’ll show you some very fine devils.”

“Cool!” the girl answered, eyes glittering.

Massiter clapped his hands lightly. “My launch leaves at seven. And you…” He peered at Daniel. “The name again?”

“Daniel Forster, sir.”

“Would you care to come along, Daniel Forster?”

He looked at Scacchi. The old man shooed him on. “Good Lord, Daniel. The only way the likes of us will eat at that place on Torcello is if someone else is paying the bill!”

“But the work, Scacchi?”

“There is always time for work. You are here to enjoy yourself too.”

“Then it’s agreed!” Massiter announced with some finality. “Both of you, bring your fiddles and some notes you intend to submit for the composition section. This circus costs me plenty, so I may ask you to play for your supper. Now…!” He clapped his large hands again, loudly so that all in the airy, oval church might hear. “On with the show, children! Avanti! Avanti! Play as if it were your last day upon this earth!”