The Grand Duke interrupted. ‘If the town is as idyllic as you make it sound, why did you leave?’
This was a question I had been asked many times over the years, and in replying I always chose the lie that was most suited to the circumstances, the one that would be believed.
‘I needed inspiration,’ I said.
Siracusa was a small town — a fortress, really — inhabited almost exclusively by soldiers and clerics. I saw paintings by Caravaggio — he was my first real influence — but not much else; life could be suffocating, especially for an artist. In Naples, though, I knew I would be able to breathe, and it was in that exciting, chaotic city that my vision began to crystallize. The art I was exposed to had a profound effect on me. Religious works by Luca Giordano, obviously, but also Mattia Preti’s frescoes and the plague paintings of Jean Baron. And I had spent hours in front of Gargiulo’s masterpiece, ‘Piazza Mercatello’.
‘I hope you brought a sample of your own work,’ the Grand Duke said.
I signalled to a servant, who fetched a large, square package from the next room. This was a piece I had completed while in Naples. The Grand Duke’s eyes, already bulging, seemed to protrude still further as I undid the string. The wrapping fell away, and he let out a sigh. Inside the wooden cabinet were wax figures in varying stages of decay, the degree of putrefaction indicated by the pigments I had used. A half-naked woman sprawled in the foreground, her flesh a shade of yellow that suggested that her death was recent. Nearby was a baby who had been dead for some time, its face and body a dark soil-brown. The grotto in which the figures lay was filled with crumbling stonework and shattered columns, also made of wax, and the atmosphere of desolation was heightened by the rats I had placed strategically throughout, some perched on the bodies of the deceased, others busily tugging at their entrails. Presiding over the scene was an elaborately winged and muscled male figure with a scythe. The Grand Duke bent closer, his nose only inches from the surface, as if he wanted to plunge into that rotting world and feast on the corruption.
‘Exquisite,’ he murmured.
I showed him the hole I had carved in the roof of the cabinet, which allowed a spectral light to angle down on to the scene. I also drew his attention to the landscape at the back, which I had painted in such stark, pale colours that viewers would feel they too were in the grotto with the victims of the plague, they too were being afforded a last glimpse of the land of the living — the bright, brief moment that was life on earth. He asked if the piece had a title. I told him I called it ‘The Triumph of Time’. He nodded, then sat back. To hear people speak of my work was one thing, he said, but to see it for himself — in the flesh, as it were — was a revelation.
Not long afterwards, Bassetti swept into the room with a formal offer of patronage, his expression complacent, replete, as if he had just devoured the sort of meal his employer fantasized about. Studying the document, I saw that the Grand Duke was proposing a stipend of twenty-five scudi a month. I had never been paid so handsomely.
Before I left, the Grand Duke mentioned some outbuildings on the western edge of the palace gardens, which could, if I wished, be converted into workshops. There had been a time when they were used as stables, he said in a slightly strangled voice. Then his cheeks flushed and, looking away from me, towards the window, he added that he no longer found it pleasing to keep horses.
I woke suddenly, my throat dry. Soft sounds were coming through the ceiling, sounds I could make no sense of. Thump-thump-thump … thump. And then again: Thump-thump-thump … thump.
That evening Signora de la Mar and Fiore had decided to celebrate my successful encounter with the Grand Duke by cooking a supper that made use of the truffle Bassetti had given me. The signora had suggested a risotto. When I cut into the truffle, though, it seemed to come alive. Threaded through the crumbly dark interior were dozens of frenzied white worms. I sprang back, almost knocking Fiore to the floor.
‘What a shame,’ the signora said. She thought the truffle must have spent too long in the ground.
I remembered how Bassetti had held the jar up to the light, as if it contained a precious stone. ‘Could he have known?’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘So it’s not deliberate.’
The signora gave me a curious look. Such an idea would never have occurred to her.
Abandoning the idea of a risotto, we went to a tavern near the Arno that was known for its fresh fish. I drank more wine than I was used to. Worse still, I let the signora talk me into sampling a tar-coloured liqueur that was made from artichokes and was, so she assured me, a speciality of the region.
‘What,’ I said, ‘like the truffle?’
But I went ahead and ordered the liqueur. No wonder my head ached. That odd thumping, though — it had come from the floor above.
I left my room and climbed the stairs, which coiled skywards in a tight spiral. The air felt motionless, unbreathed, as if nobody had been up there in years. I stepped out on to the landing. Standing with his back to me, and dressed in a colourless, close-fitting garment, a sort of undersuit, was a figure with the thin hips and narrow shoulders of a young boy, though his face, when glimpsed in quarter profile, was that of a man, lines fanning outwards at the corner of his eye, his sallow cheek unshaven. I was about to speak when he raised his arms in front of him, palms facing out, and launched into a series of fluid, connecting somersaults that took him off into the darkness. He seemed to disappear, in fact, and when I called out, ‘Who are you?’ there was no reply, only a click that might have been a door gently closing.
Perhaps I ought to have left it at that, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I picked my way along the landing. I found a door at the far end. Putting my ear to the wood, I heard noises I recognized. They had the same rhythm as before. The first three thumps came close together. Then a gap. Then a fourth thump, which sounded final, emphatic, like a full stop. I tried the door handle, which creaked loudly. Like the stairs, it didn’t seem to have been much in use.
‘No, no,’ came a querulous voice. ‘Not now.’
It was too late. I had already opened the door an inch, and I was peering through the crack. The man spun past, at head-height. Thump! I opened the door wider and stood on the threshold.
‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ The man’s voice was reedy, petulant. This was Cuif, I realized. The insomniac.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You woke me up.’
‘I’m practising.’
‘But it’s the middle of the night.’
Cuif shrugged.
‘Are you an acrobat?’ I asked.
His eyebrows lifted, and his mouth curved downwards. ‘I’m a jester,’ he said. ‘A jester. Well, I used to be.’
Barefoot, he crossed the room and looked through a window that was covered on the outside by a rusting iron grille. We were so high up that only the sky was visible. All the asperity left him, and when he spoke again he sounded pensive, nostalgic.
‘There was a time,’ he said, ‘when I owned more than a hundred costumes. I needed an entire room just for my costumes. Can you imagine? But we’re living in an age of austerity now, and there’s no place for people like me. Jesters are frivolous. Redundant.’
‘But I’ve seen them,’ I said, ‘in the market-place —’
Cuif snorted. ‘Those fools haven’t realized it’s over. What do you do?’