The Watercolourist Read online

  Sometimes Pia sings.

  ‘Sing the one about the fire,’ Minna says, clapping her hands. And so she begins.

  Brusuu, brusà

  Chissà chi l’è staa?

  Sarà staa quei de Bress

  Che i fa tutt a roess;

  Sarà staa quei de Cusan

  Che i è svelti de la man.

  Brusuu, brusà

  Chissà chi l’è staa?

  Burn, burn

  Who made it burn?

  Maybe it was the folk from Bress

  Just like they do all the rest;

  Maybe it was the folk from Cusan

  Who are fast with their hands.

  Burn, burn

  Who made it burn?

  Bianca doesn’t like this song. It is shapeless, like a sweater that has lost its form following too many washings. Her favourite is far softer, sweeter.

  Ninna delle oche

  Tante, medie o poche

  Bianche con le piume

  Ninna delle brume

  Che vengono drumeumee

  Che vengono e vanno

  Sommesse, senza danno

  Che celano nel manto

  Un cavallino bianco

  Cavallo e cavaliere

  Li voglio rivedere

  Mi porteranno via

  Lontano a casa mia

  Ma casa mia dov’è

  È dove sono re

  Son re e son regina

  Ninna della bambina.

  Lullaby of the geese

  Many, some, or just a few

  White feathers

  And foggy song

  They come in autumn

  They come and go

  Soft and no trouble

  In their capes

  Hides a white horse

  Horse and rider

  I want to see them

  They’ll carry me away

  Back to my home

  But where’s my home

  It’s where I am king

  I am king and I am queen

  Lullaby of the little girl.

  ‘That’s pretty,’ Bianca says the first time she hears it. ‘Sing it again.’

  And Pia, in her strong, clear voice, obeys.

  ‘Don Titta wrote it for his daughters,’ she offers, without anyone asking her. ‘I wonder what it’s like to have a father like him. Sometimes he plays with them, too. I’ve never seen a father like that on this earth.’

  ‘Well, they don’t get to see him very often. He’s very busy and often travels to the city . . .’ Bianca stops herself mid-sentence.

  ‘Yes, but it’s better than nothing, isn’t it?’ Pia pushes away one thought with another. ‘Antonia, my friend from the piazza, gets beaten by her father every night. He drinks too much and then strikes her and her mother. Sometimes her arms are black and blue; they look like plums from the garden. And Minna’s father doesn’t even look at her.’

  She says it without malice and Minna nods, never taking her eyes off her faceless dolly.

  Pia laughs bitterly. ‘I wonder what my own father was like.’

  ‘Maybe he’s still alive,’ says Bianca.

  ‘No,’ Pia says. ‘He died for sure. Otherwise he would have come back to get me. But let’s pretend that he didn’t die. We’re allowed to dream. Yes, let’s pretend he went to the other side of the world in search of his fortune and that one day he will come back for me and he will be a lord and I will become a lady and he will be happy that I studied and am not ignorant like the others. I know how to behave in society; I even know English, and we would go to live in a palace. First, though, we would visit my mother’s grave. He knows where it is. I’m sure he does.’

  Quiet falls over the little group. Bianca doesn’t know what to say. Finally Pia breaks the silence and continues.

  ‘She’s dead, you know. She passed away giving life to me. She flew into the arms of the Lord, up there, where it’s more comfortable. Don Dionisio told me, so it must be true.’

  Ribbons, second-hand knickers, books on loan. There are other manifestations of Donna Clara’s favouritism for Pia too, and sometimes it seems excessive to Bianca. Pia is just a maid after all and Donna Clara is the lady of the house. Sometimes, in the evenings, Donna Clara makes Pia get up on a stool and recite poetry for whoever is there. A circle of tired but curious listeners will form and Pia always has a handful of new verses ready. She’ll blush slightly, close her eyes for inspiration and begin, her hands folded in front of her to prevent herself from fidgeting.

  Pensoso, inconsolabile, l’accorta ninfa

  Il ritiene e con soavi e molli

  Parolette, carezzalo se mai

  Potesse Itaca sua trargli dal petto;

  Ma ei non brama che veder dai tetti

  Sbalzar della sua dolce Itaca il fumo,

  E poi chiuder per sempre al giorno i lumi.

  Nè commuovere, Olimpio, il cuor ti senti?

  Distressed and inconsolable, the clever nymph

  Held him and with soft and gentle

  Words, caressed and tried

  To remove beloved Ithaca from his chest;

  If only he could see the smoke rise above his sweet Ithaca

  And then forever close his eyes to the light of day.

  Does this move you, Olympian, can you feel your heart?

  The maids comment on her performance.

  ‘I didn’t understand one word of it, but she’s good.’

  ‘Those little words sound just like caresses.’

  ‘She follows her lessons well.’

  Judging from the comments, it sounds like Pia really is everyone’s daughter. She bows, hops off the stool, picks it up, and nods to Nanny, who then pushes the two boys forward, dressed up in sheets. Enrico is Telemachus and Pietro is all of the suitors. They recite their parts timidly, their eyes fixed on Tommaso, who has taken it upon himself to teach them the verse and who whispers along with them, sending nods of encouragement. They conclude with a happy brawl with small wooden swords, round shields and leather armbands made by Ruggiero. No one can stop them. The duel goes on – it lasts an age; the verses of Homer are forgotten and all that is left is brotherly rancour mixed with joy, jab after jab.

  ‘Pia trusts you. She sees you as a mentor. I have never seen her so content. And I am pleased with the way you treat her,’ Donna Clara says one day to Bianca, taking her aside in an imperious yet intimate manner.

  ‘I can tell that she is very dear to you,’ observes Bianca, trying to appear nonchalant but taking advantage of Donna Clara’s conversational mood.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. It’s not just our Christian duty that pushes us to treat her favourably. Pia is truly a special girl. She’s so alive. My granddaughters are such delicate daisies; they take entirely after their mother, poor dears. Even my darling Giulietta: she cries over nothing and is always ill. I love them because they are my flesh and blood, and it’s the law of nature. But it is nice to let oneself, every so often, choose whom to love. And Pia is my choice. When she is older, I will be sure to give her a real dowry, not like the Ospedale Maggiore, with their horse blankets and two cents. We will help her find a good husband who will respect her – a shopkeeper, a merchant, or a small property owner.’

  Bianca falls silent, irked by this compunction. You treat her as if she were your doll, she thinks. You grant her certain privileges that other servants only dream of. It’s all fine now, while she’s young, but when she’s grown up she will have to fend off jealousy. You are using her. Bianca would like to voice some of these things but the words stay bottled up inside. She has no right to speak her mind to Donna Clara. She has the feeling too that there are other things at work in the background, blurring the focus of this painting whose only distinguishable feature is Pia’s face. She has been told that the girl’s father has disappeared and her mother is dead. But if Pia truly is a foundling, how do they know all these things? Who told them? And what if her story is the same one told to many lost girls, the details sewn together like a qui
lt? Do they simply feed the girls’ fantasies?

  Pia will end up heartbroken, Bianca says to herself. The thought pains her and she silently promises to watch out for the girl as long as she can.

  Bianca needs to focus on her work. She decides that she will make all the preliminary sketches in the summer and then, during the winter, when her subjects are temporarily away, she will begin painting. Without the liveliness of colour before her, though, it will be difficult. She therefore compiles a selection of different colour swatches. She takes large pieces of paper and draws rows and rows of the same-sized rectangles, and fills them with the colours she knows she will need: innumerable shades of green and brown; creamy whites; whites with hints of pink, orange or yellow; the powerful vermilion of the upside-down fuchsias and the fresh bougainvillea from Brazil; the lilac blues of plumbago and rosemary. She positions the mixtures in front of their originals to verify their intensity, force and sweetness. What she discovers is a palette of harmonious colours, shading from the palest to the most intense. It is beautiful to see. Pia is fascinated by the chart; she devours it with her eyes and speaks the names of the colours out loud, savouring them as though they are flavours. Burnt sienna. Scarlet. Viridian. Lapis lazuli. Carmine.

  Bianca’s work does not end there. Next, along the border of each rectangle, she jots down in pencil the proportions of pigment that she has used in each mixture, hoping to catch the exact hue. How much is science and how much is enthusiasm, she doesn’t know. Painting, though not a science, takes precision. It requires methodology and application, two predispositions that are not natural to Bianca, but which she has nonetheless mastered, as one does an exacting yet healthy sport that reinforces both muscles and posture.

  She also has lovely calligraphy. One day Don Titta calls her to his study to ask her to copy out, in alphabetical order, all the names of the flowers, plants, shrubs and vegetables that grow in Brusuglio, or at least the ones that grow within the confines of the walled garden.

  ‘It’s part of a bigger task that I need your help with,’ he explains, showing her the ledgers he has prepared precisely for this purpose. One lined column takes up a third of the page and the rest is filled with small squares. It is for accounting. He plans to fill it with the dates of the plants’ arrival, their costs, the origin of the grafts, and comments on their outcome: if they wither in two months, resist, die, are struck by scale insects or powdery mildew, and so on.

  ‘I need to catalogue. In these kinds of things I am consistent,’ he says. ‘I would like to do it myself, but I would have to dedicate all my time and mental energy to it. And now my mind is possessed by other thoughts . . .’ He draws a small vortex in mid-air with his index finger. ‘I’m like a coil: infinite. One thought attached to another attached to another . . .’

  Bianca wonders if that’s how poetry comes into being. Does it start with a chain of thoughts, and then – either suddenly or with premeditation – a flow of words fills out the chain the way a hand fills out a glove? She doesn’t dare ask. She has not reached that level of confidence with him yet. She fears that he might be thrown by the question and she understands that for the general well-being of the family it is best for him to be calm. When he is absent, cooped up in his study for days on end, or out on his long walks, he does not talk about his plants, the harvest or the possibility of a drought. It is as if the persona of poet is too fastidious and demanding to be able to live with that other self, the one that drags him literally back to earth – towards the land, flowers, plants, vines and grain. But it is also evident that Don Titta feels nostalgia for the part of him that he has to neglect at times.

  ‘If only one could keep ledgers of sentiments as well,’ Bianca blurts out. She brings a hand to her mouth in shock. What has she said? Why did she say it? The master looks at her in surprise and then smiles.

  ‘Even a man as highly unrealistic as myself could tell you that this would be useless. So, when will you begin the task?’

  Tomorrow. There is always a tomorrow for postponing things. The days are long and slow and she is already busy. But despite the large undertaking, she decides to add a miniature drawing to each of the entries, as well as copying out the names. It will make the ledger even more precise and complete, with its old papers, documents, accompanying letters, receipts in French and English, and accounts of seeds purchased from afar.

  From these master books, Bianca discovers more about the grand ambitions of the garden project than by visiting the greenhouses and fields in person. She learns how atypical shoots are planted and if the climate is conducive to them. She gets a sense of which seeds prosper and which wither. Every so often, though, she has to get away from her desk and get more precise information from Leopoldo Maderna, the head gardener.

  At first Maderna looks into Bianca’s eyes and answers every one of her questions in an irritated tone, as if he disapproves strongly and does not understand the hasty need for results from such a project. But then he contradicts himself, becoming excited.

  ‘The black locust trees are rooting well. Actually, the roots are propagating and are shooting up from the ground in places you’d least expect them. It’s exhausting to rip them out because they’re formed like an upside down T, like this.’ He holds out his left palm horizontally, the middle finger pointing up, to explain the shape. ‘To pull them out you need to get really deep down. There they are – over there, and there.’ And he points all around, along the horizon, at some green splotches. ‘They’re tall now. And they make up a wonderful dividing hedge, a flexible wall, but they prick worse than brambles.’

  Bianca thinks about the green tangle that surrounded the home of Sleeping Beauty. Was it planted with Robinia pseudoacacia, with those small, seemingly innocent, bright green, oval leaves that never seemed to age?

  There are trees everywhere: Acer negundo and platanoides, a grove of Salix babylonica, and the Liriodendron, with its aspiration for height and yellow flowers as big as fists. There is Ailanthus, as beautiful as it is fetid; Gleditsia, a thorny locust even crueller than the black variety. And there is Inermis, constrained to a sapling. Leopoldo tells her too about Andromeda arborea with its beautiful star name, which looks like a blazing fire in autumn. And the Clematis from Lake Como, which Bianca has always found overly dramatic, but she doesn’t say so because Como is Maderna’s home town and she doesn’t want him to stop talking now that he has started. Anyway, it is no use, he says, the Clematis won’t take. He points to these plants, struggling to climb the taut lines along a south-facing wall that ought to supply them with the necessary shade and instead puts them to shame. Maybe they prefer the north. There are the armandii and the cirrhosa varieties, with their three, pointy, garnet-coloured flowers. They are lovely, yes, but too sparse to make an impression. The intricata is all leaves and might remain as such, and the pagoda, with its exquisite name, hints at sophisticated chinoiserie. Passing from the delightful to the useful, there are vines from Burgundy and Bordeaux, but they aren’t faring too well.

  ‘The issue here is the land; it’s only good for Bersamino, that fussy grape that comes from young Don Tommaso’s parts. To find really beautiful vines, one needs to take the Via Francesca, or go beyond the Po River to the foothills of the mountains,’ Leopoldo explains, as he guides her through the estate. ‘These are grown in the French manner, as dwarves.’ Together they skirt the neat bush-trained vines from which hang miniature bunches of acid-green grapes. ‘You’ll see how good these grapes are, but a few is all that Don Titta’s table needs. Let’s hope that powdery mildew doesn’t take hold of them first.’

  After conversations like these, Bianca goes back to the study, rereads her notes, compares them with the organized shopping lists written by Don Titta, verifies the spelling and checks them against guides and dictionaries. She discovers that out there, though she does not know where exactly, there really is everything: cherry, apple, pear, apricot and plum trees, in millions of varieties. If the world were to end, everyone in town could
live for weeks off these fruits.

  Bianca finds she doesn’t want to know a thing about the repugnant art of silkworms. The mulberry trees, on which they feed, are numerous.

  ‘You mustn’t plant them too close together,’ Leopoldo tells her. ‘In the first year you breed only three branches, and keep them clean cut. We planted eight hundred and then another eight hundred. If we have too many leaves, we can always sell them.’

  In fact, she has seen many young boys coming and going with baskets full of fresh leaves to give to the silkworms that live in the peasants’ homes. They take care of them day and night like guests of honour. If you get close enough, you can hear the incessant gnashing of their jaws.

  ‘They are a Japanese green breed,’ Leopoldo explains with pride. Bianca, who does not want to see them, not even from afar, imagines them as being fat, bound in tiny flowered pieces of fabric, and wrapped in silk string. She knows they work hard, but she doesn’t want to even try to appreciate them. Leopoldo, who clearly feels more comfortable with her now, takes a dark pleasure in inviting Bianca to see where they blanch the worms.

  She saves the best for last, like a child before a plate of sweets. The flowers. Obviously, she focuses on the ones with which she is less familiar. She knows a fair amount from her studies, from her books and from visits to the most important botanical gardens in Europe. She has already come across hydrangeas and their exaggerated richness in Kew Gardens, but she learns that they are almost unknown in Italy. To get there, they come from France by sea and then wagon, like enslaved princesses. Bianca fantasizes about the shrubs in their jute sacks and the young mahogany-coloured servants who bring them fresh water every day, water that the servants want to drink themselves but cannot. She pictures the ship sailing on and on. What if there was a storm and the boat was wrecked – where would those plants end up? At the bottom of the sea? Would they breed with algae and decorate the hair of mermaids? Or would they drift along the surface, helped by the current, until reaching some desert beach, forming a grove in a new corner of the earth that has previously been known only to monkeys? No, the hydrangeas that Leopoldo Maderna is so proud of are merely the outposts of a whimsical invasion commanded by a French friend of Don Titta’s, named Dupont. In the ledger, Dupont is nicknamed ‘the flower correspondent’. He has sent plants from Paris at regular intervals with several folio sheets from the Almanach du bon jardinier. Plants also come from the offices of Longone Constantino da Dugnano, a great cello of a man, big-boned and rather slow, who carries his last name proudly and who has the tendency to blush every time he sees a woman. He brings shoots that need to be transplanted in a hurry.