Lucifer's Shadow

14 The taste of mud

What an unattractive trait jealousy is! I report to you, honestly, about the people I meet, and the next thing I know, your letters are spitting viper’s venom from the page. Did I react like a madman when you told me about that handsome, flashing-eyed Spaniard you met by the banks of the Guadalquivir? Let us have a little perspective here, sister. We are currently spectators in our respective worlds, children who have by accident flitted into some fancy costume ball where we scarcely belong. Would you have me tell you pious fairy tales that are as dull as ditchwater?

Still, if you wish a break from the “lovely Rebecca,” as you describe her (no, I won’t argue with that), you shall have it, though it disrupts the thread of this narrative for no good reason other than your own vanity.

The day after our visit to La Pietà (which I shall chronicle for you next), I attended with Uncle Leo when he joined Mr. Delapole at Venezia Triofante. This is one of those fashionable co fee shops where the city seems to spend inordinate parts of the day stirring small cups of a muddy brown fluid that looks as if it has just been dredged from the bed of the lagoon. I imagine there is no co fee in Seville. It is a creation of the East brought here by the Arabs apparently, who are forbidden by the Koran to consume it themselves and so sell it on to us in order to rot good Christian brains and teeth. Almost every doorway in St. Mark’s piazza now leads to a botteghe de caffè. They may soon convert the basilica into one, too, I imagine. You have no idea what geography has spared you.

The Triofante is the most acclaimed co fee shop of them all, though quite why is beyond me, since they all look the same: what I take to be the appearance of an anteroom in some obscure French royal palace, all mirrors and ormolu and chairs that don’t quite fit your bottom. Perhaps the attraction is the self-opinionated owner, one Floriano Francesconi, who lords it over the room, ejecting, on a mere whim, anyone he dislikes. Talk about the personal touch. I don’t know why the silly man doesn’t just name the place after himself and have done with it.

Mr. Delapole had more than us in tow, sniffing at his wallet. We were joined by an odd young French chap called Rousseau, who claims to be on a brief visit to the city but, according to the worried Gobbo, would not be averse to a job on the Englishman’s payroll either. Gobbo clearly sees Rousseau as a threat, which is somewhat risible, since they could scarcely be more different. Monsieur Rousseau is a pleasant enough cove, I think, but seems incapable of small talk. Every twist and turn in the conversation must always lead to some obscure allusion, effusive allegory, or mildly outrageous statement, all designed to demonstrate to the world that here is one very clever fellow indeed. I try to like him, because he is a bright chap, but I have to confess it’s very hard work.

Mr. Delapole listened to a stream of his French babble for a while, then waved his hand for silence, fixed our uncle with a penetrating gaze, and announced, “I find myself drawn to a musical career. I was thinking of writing an opera, Scacchi. Would you care to publish it?”

“Sir!” Leo almost jumped out of his seat with glee. “An opera! I had no idea your talents ran so wide.”

“A man’s talents run to many things more than he knows,” Rousseau interjected. “Why, I was only trying my hand at the English pentameter the other day, and I think I could give that Shakespeare fellow a run for his money… ”

“Oh, do be quiet,” Mr. Delapole said in a cheery tone that could not possibly give o fence. “We all know about your talents. It’s mine I’d like to discuss. An opera, Scacchi. How much for a couple of hundred quire, or whatever you call them?”

“Sir!” cried Uncle again, but this time trying his best to look mortally o fended. “Money is the least consideration here. The House of Scacchi merely seeks to defray its expenses and make sufficient profit to pay the Republic’s all-too-frequent levies. What matters most to us is the quality of the work which bears our imprint and how it may add to the greater sum of human knowledge. Our title cannot be simply bought; it must be earned.”

I thought of the hours I had spent that morning setting a few pages of The Manifold Mysteries of the Rhinoceros of Madagascar and reached for my little cup of bitter mud. I was wrong. Co fee does have its place.

“The trouble is,” Delapole mused, “opera is so… common. Perhaps something smaller. A concerto for solo violin, for example, I reckon I’m up to it.”

Leo placed his cup slowly on the table. “A favourite of my own, sir, since you know I once wrote the odd page too.”

“And presumably,” Delapole added, with a canny eye, “there is the economic argument. Fewer parts, less paper. Makes sense.”

Leo stared downcast at his little demitasse. “In a world more sane than publishing, perhaps. Paper is but a small part of our costs. The setting, the proofing, the years of skill required to spot that single errant crochet on the stave…”

“Hmmm.” Delapole seemed undecided. “Perhaps I’ll write a book instead, then. But that would be in English, and you, for all your skills, could not be expected to master such a tortured and difficult tongue. No, I’d have to send to London for that.”

An awkward silence fell upon the table, penetrated, of course, in very few seconds by a piping French voice. “It is not merely the notes that matter, my friends,” Rousseau declared. “Vivaldi is a fine musician, but I think his popularity has other sources too. It is the theatre of the thing, monsieur. The thought of all those delightful ladies, hidden from view behind screens where they produce sounds of such ethereal, sensual wonder. La Pietà is a bordello for the ears! That’s it! I shall note down those words in my little book the moment I get home!”

We all looked at the man. I do not profess to be much familiar with matters of romance, but unlike Rousseau, I think I am able to enter into a conversation about, or even with, the sweeter sex and not suffer some minor form of apoplexy (yes, I know, dear sister, R…is an exception, but I vowed not to introduce her into this portion of my narrative). The very mention of the word “bordello” appeared to place our French friend in a state of extraordinary agitation, puffing and panting, cheeks red and a rash of sweat clinging to his flabby upper lip.

Delapole leaned over and whispered just loud enough for us all to hear, “Perhaps they are naked behind those shutters, Rousseau. Have you considered that?”

The Frenchman shuddered and gave out with a whinny that would have done justice to a six-week-old foal.

“But, sir,” Gobbo interjected, “if you think about it, women are standing there stark bare all the time, aren’t they? It’s just the clothes that get in the way.”

One may as well join in this nonsense. “By which token,” I suggested, “the players behind the screen in La Pietà must be, to all intent and purpose, naked. Since we cannot see them at all, their garments, if there be garments, are as irrelevant as the shutters behind which they… perform. A naked woman now in bed in Peking is no less naked because we cannot see her.”

“And by that token”—Delapole grinned, catching the ball I had so loosely thrown him—“the world is positively brimming with unclad beauties. Look how many are in this room! If only we possessed the wit to remove those opercula from our minds that prevent our worshipping them in all their fleshy glory!”

Rousseau’s eyes fairly popped out of his skull. His head revolved on its stalk trying to take in each lady in the café (most of whom were old, an inch deep in powder, and bedecked in more clothing than you’d find in a bishop’s wardrobe after a rich man’s funeral).

“I think, I think,” he gasped, “that I shall retire now. I have but a short time in Venice and there are many sights to see.”

We watched him go, smirking cruelly to ourselves. It was an unfair trick, but Rousseau is like an old dog who hangs around the back door, begging to be kicked. One day even the kindest of folk will take a boot to him just because he asks for it so importunately.

“Concerto it is, then,” Uncle Leo announced, a tremor of hope in his voice.

“It’s finding the time, dear chap,” Mr. Delapole replied lazily. “So little to spare. So much to do.”

Shortly afterwards we walked to the molo and caught a gondola back to Mr. Delapole’s rented house, Ca’ Dario, as fine a Venetian mansion as you might enter (and most definitely deserving of the term palazzo, though mysteriously it, too, remains mere Ca’). I sat in the back with Gobbo. The brief experience of Rousseau-baiting had, I regret to say, whetted his appetite.

“You know folk at that church, the one with the music?” Gobbo asked, prodding me with a conspiratorial elbow.

“We print material for Vivaldi from time to time.”

“Good,” he said, and leered in the most obscene of ways. “I reckon our French friend deserves a little entertainment before he quits this city for good. You, Mr. Scacchi, shall be my impresario.”

The gondola turned into the great bend of the Canal. Ca’ Dario bobbed towards us on the left, a small mansion, and one with a little tilt to it (no shame in that when you’ve spent 250 years with your toes in the Venetian mud).

The afternoon heat was fading. It was a splendid view. I thought of Reb— Ah, but I made a promise.