The Watercolourist Read online

  Almost all the flowers are Parisian by birth. This explains, perhaps, their reluctance to take root in these rustic lands. The Lathyrus, for example, is something of a failure in all its forms. The Bignonia fare better, and actually are so invasive that their orange flowers are overwhelming. The Digitalis, with its poisonous qualities, has been planted in the far reaches of the gardens, where no child would think of feeding their dolls with those colourful tube-like flowers. The light blue and lilac Lobelia create colourful stains along the border of the great valley, light and dark hues depending on the tyranny of shade and soil. The Achillea, Aquilegia canadensis and Rudbeckia, with their ordinary gay colours, grow semi-wild and are planted at the far ends of the garden. Pink sachets of Silene, as light as silk, stand shivering along the confines of the field. This is neither an Italian nor a French country garden; it is different from everything, a bastard child, whose mother is beauty and father is experimentation. It lacks the charm of the English garden, where rare flowers look like dishevelled weeds, where roses rest against tree trunks like weary girls, and where emerald-green grasses are compact and lovely with moisture. It is a garden of contradictions, like its owner. It is high and low at the same time, plebeian and haughty.

  To learn the names of things makes Bianca feel somewhat omnipotent. To learn the history of a seed, its timing, and its ways gives her a strange sense of self-possession. Copying down all that information in the correct order – and adding her personal touch of a tiny ink drawing of a leaf, flower or fruit in the column she has created herself – is Bianca’s own way of making sense of the world. She expects to receive compliments from the entire family once her work is finished: the poet’s sincere gratitude, an evening of oohs and aahs, the little girls being allowed to turn the pages so they can recognize the flowers and fruits they have seen thousands of times, and learn to spell out their Latin and common names. They will ask if they can copy the drawings, and Bianca, with enthusiasm, will promise them a colouring book with the best drawings on a larger scale for their small hands. She will enjoy a small triumph and ignore envious glances or sly comments – the honey on the rim of the cup that holds a bitter drink.

  One day, Bianca walks into the library in search of Traité des arbres fruitiers. She saw it in the hands of the master a few days ago. It is a beautiful edition with hand-coloured tables. Don Titta purchased it in Paris, he told her once at dinner, when he decided to dedicate himself – ‘ignorant as a newborn’ – to the land. Instead of taking the book and leaving, however, Bianca cannot resist the urge to leaf through it immediately. She stares at the drawings of the dappled skin of a pear, and then at the rust-coloured network of some strange apple, its name sweeter than its actual flavour. Behind her, Don Titta approaches in silence.

  ‘Are you interested in apples, Miss Bianca?’

  She jumps, then, regaining her composure, turns around and takes a step back. He is so close to her she can smell his clothes: a scent of verbena, somewhat feminine.

  ‘I was curious to see how Monceau managed with fruits,’ she says. ‘In the drawings from a century ago they always look so small. Not to mention the branches – so spindly they’re frightening.’

  ‘A little, but that is their natural structure – they look like the hands of old men. But as far as the fruits themselves go, it is because you have ours in mind. Brusuglio is a rediscovered paradise, or better, an Eden where we have been happily forgotten.’ He speaks without a hint of irony. ‘Our apples, do not fear, do not bring damnation. There are no prohibited fruits here or sick ones. You can bite them to your heart’s content. You know the unwritten rule: nothing halfway. We have magnificent plants, or nothing,’ he finishes with a smile.

  Bianca returns the gesture. She knows about Don Titta’s attempts to plant white cotton and the Nanking cherry. The former caught on at first, for in one of the ledgers there is a triumphant message detailing a bountiful crop: five kilos of raw cotton transformed into eighty aune of precious percale through octane spinning. But it was only a one-time miracle. The cold, frost, rain and hail brought it to a bitter end. Too many enemies for a small plant that wants only heat.

  Even now they are going through a strange season. It rains like there will never be sun again. The children, confined to the house, are bursting with suppressed energy. A faint green mist presses against the trees, concealing the edges of the world.

  ‘Shall we send out a dove?’ Innes suggests. Both Donna Clara and Donna Julie look at him with disapproving glances. ‘Or a dog?’ he corrects himself. Bianca lets out a little chuckle.

  ‘Dogs don’t like to go out in the rain,’ Pietro replies. ‘That’s why they end up pooing in the house and stinking it up.’

  Shocked laughter follows from the little girls and from Enrico.

  ‘Stinky poo, stinky poo,’ Enrico sings.

  ‘Children!’ Their mother tries to call them back to order. Nanny covers her mouth in shock. Innes, master of deflection, distracts them.

  ‘Do you know how many days the Great Flood lasted? Seven? Five? One hundred? Twenty?’

  Satisfied looks come from both mother and grandmother. It is always a good time to review the sacred scriptures.

  In the space of only two days, all three girls fall ill. Hiding her own cough, Donna Julie shuttles back and forth between nursery and ground floor, carrying either insipid food or smelly herbal concoctions. The poet, as always in such family crises, shuts himself in his study. Tommaso, afraid of being left alone with the boys, does the same. Donna Clara spends her time worrying. Innes is left to entertain the boys, turning down Nanny’s offer of help. Bianca passes the days in the extremely humid greenhouse, watching drips of water run down the panes of glass from her place on the iron bench, identical to the kind she sat on in the Condorcet gardens. Bianca feels good in the rain, and in water, generally. It has always been that way. It is her element – if not by nature, then by choice. Being there, surrounded by it, she daydreams the way she did while swimming in her slow, precise manner across the dark lake at her home. It is as though she is in a light green bubble. The aromas of the greenhouse, accentuated by the prevailing moisture, daze her. Memories take her away from this world, which clutches her like a tight corset even though it has all the elements of comfort – freedom, independence, and a certain amount of fun. She doesn’t know quite what to make of this nostalgia. It isn’t a feeling that she enjoys. She thinks it useless, a wasted exercise, to want things that are no longer attainable. She doesn’t really miss the lake because she knows it is still there. Its quiet, mineral existence carries on without her. She knows she can get to it in two days by carriage. When you know something is there, when you can reach out and touch it, it exists. It’s there, even if you don’t touch it. Really, the sole person she misses terribly is inside her, ready to answer when she calls, present the way that spirits are always present, their company perceived only when you listen hard enough. And yet, Bianca feels, something is missing.

  ‘Who was it?’ Don Titta storms into the nursery, dripping with rain, his frock coat steaming before the fire. He looks like a ghost, a slight mist blurring his contours. His hair, long and darker on account of the water, sticks to his pale cheeks, and his eyes flash. The little girls whisper, then Franceschina runs to seek shelter in Nanny’s arms. Even the boys huddle together instinctively.

  ‘Who was it?’ he repeats, holding out the Traité before him, its cover blackened and soaking wet.

  Bianca feels a pain shoot through her. Without speaking, she comes closer, takes the book from his hands and places it on the rug in front of the fire. Kneeling down before the book, she opens the pages carefully, separating those that are already buckling together.

  ‘You know my books mustn’t leave the library,’ Don Titta says sternly. ‘You children used it to copy out the fruits, isn’t that right?’ No one answers. ‘Isn’t that right?’ he repeats more loudly.

  Five silent heads nod yes.

  ‘But we stayed inside. We did
n’t take it out there,’ Enrico objects, as if the book is a rare animal to be kept in a cage.

  ‘I would like to know who brought it up to the rotunda, and above all, who left it there.’

  Silence.

  ‘I saw Miss Bianca carrying it under her arm. She was going that way with a box of coloured pencils.’

  It is Pietro.

  ‘It’s true,’ says Bianca. ‘I took it with me. But I also brought it back, of course, before it started to rain.’

  ‘Well, I’m only saying that I saw her with the book,’ Pietro repeats, staring at his feet. Bianca does not lower herself to reply. Imagine that, she thinks, being accused by a child.

  Don Titta walks out, leaving them alone.

  ‘This is serious,’ Bianca says, looking at them all, one by one. ‘You all know that this is a precious book and that your father is very fond of it.’

  Pietro is silent.

  ‘It wasn’t Miss Bianca,’ Francesca says to Pietro. ‘I saw her coming back.’

  ‘What if we hang it up to dry?’ Giulietta proposes and the others laugh a little too loudly, needing to release some of the tension in the room.

  ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Bianca says. ‘But not now. First let’s finish what we were doing.’

  Their game, however, has lost its momentum. Dinnertime is slow in arriving. Later, Bianca unstitches the book’s binding and hangs up the pages, a quarto at a time, in the room where they hang the bed sheets to dry. Pia helps her, pronouncing the Latin names of trees as they pin the pages to the lines with wooden clips. As the forest of paper grows denser, shaming the masses of socks, underwear and leggings, Bianca almost forgets her anger towards Pietro, his lie, and the prank that she is almost certain hides behind it all.

  ‘Signorina, Miss Bianca! Signorina!’

  Bianca is sewing the dried and ironed pages back into their binding and sighs in resignation. The job takes the kind of patience that she doesn’t have: her thimble is too big and her finger keeps falling out of it, causing her to prick herself repeatedly. In the end she just gives in. The Traité will be decorated with a patchwork of pinpricks of blood, the silent witness to a sinister pact. Who would ever need the image of a Saint-Germain pear? A fruit vendor, perhaps? And what does Tommaso want from her now? Bianca puts down the needle and thread in irritation and reluctantly lifts her head.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry about the book. I told Titta that I saw you bring it back to the library.’

  ‘Were you spying on me, perchance?’

  Tommaso’s face reddens. ‘I would never, Miss Bianca. I was only in the right place at the right time, as they say.’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t need a lawyer in training to defend me from the accusations of a spoiled and deceitful child. Or are you practising for when you get your life back together?’ Bianca isn’t sure where all this malice has come from but she doesn’t feel like holding back. Her index finger burns with piercings. She puts the tip in her mouth and sucks on it.

  ‘Oh, wonderful. Now you, too. You’re like my sister: a portrait of wisdom. In reality she’s so hideous that no one wants her.’

  ‘If my brother said that about me, I’d spear him with a paintbrush.’

  ‘I see you also know how to tease . . . No, but seriously, you should know how important it is for me to be here. I live in Don Titta’s shadow. He is my mentor, master and model.’ Tommaso speaks with fervour.

  Bianca wonders why he is telling her all this. What is going on? A second earlier they were teasing each other.

  ‘I will never become as important as him,’ he continues. ‘I’ve decided to have my plebeian muse speak in the manner most appropriate to her. In dialect. Would you like to hear something? I need to reveal her to the public, my simple muse, to see what kind of effect she has on people.’

  Bianca does not know whether she should be annoyed or pleased by Tommaso’s attempt at winning her trust. She hasn’t asked for it. The language of the town bothers her too; it is different from the rugged singsong dialect that she heard as a little girl. But she realizes that it is just a matter of familiarity, that each one of us finds beauty in that which we are most familiar with.

  Tommaso falls silent, waiting for encouragement. He smiles, blushes, rakes his hand through his hair, and all of a sudden the pale-faced dandy is taken over by a young boy with dishevelled wisps of hair across his forehead and a vein of cheerfulness. Bianca understands only about half of the words he recites: a confused story about nuns in love, it seems. She smiles despite herself, so great is the passion which ignites him. One strange verse catches her attention:

  Mì t’hoo semper denanz de la mia vista, Mì non pensi mai olter che de tì, In di sogn no te perdi mai de pista, Appena me dessedi, te see lì, Mi gh’hoo semper in bocca el mè Battista, Semper Battista tutt el santo dì . . .

  You are always before my eyes,

  I can’t think of anything but you,

  In my dreams I never lose sight of you,

  As soon as I lie down you are there,

  The name of Battista is always on my lips,

  Always Battista, all the blessed day . . .

  The performance ends.

  ‘Miss Bianca?’

  ‘Yes?’ Bianca comes back to earth and applauds, as deserved. ‘Bravo.’

  Tommaso composes himself. ‘Really, you liked it?’

  ‘Well, I must admit that it wasn’t all very clear to me . . . maybe I liked it because I didn’t know what you were saying. But it has a melody to it. Isn’t that important in poetry? That it has a melody?’

  ‘Oh yes, as long as it’s a tune and not a toot!’

  He has gone back to his wisecracks. This improper side of Tommaso is much more fun. Bianca looks at him in fake shock and they both burst out laughing.

  ‘I’ve noticed that you’re becoming more intimate with our junior poet,’ observes Innes coldly, a few days later.

  ‘Are you jealous?’ Bianca asks, a hint of a smile on her lips.

  Innes ignores the insinuation.

  ‘Tommaso definitely has some artistic feeling inside him but he’s just wasting his time,’ he tells her.

  ‘At least he’s not a drone, like Bernocchi.’

  ‘Don’t be so quick to judge, Bianca. Drones are not bad insects.’

  ‘If you like Tommaso so much, why does it bother you that I talk to him?’

  ‘I didn’t say I liked him. I said that I see something in him, but I can’t stand watching him waste his energy. I think that for his own good he should leave. Everything that is holding him back, including certain gracious maidens who are willing to indulge him, harms him. As long as he lingers in the shade of the oak tree, he will remain as fragile as an offshoot.’

  ‘You’re accusing me of exerting too much influence over him, Innes. He’s here because of his master, mentor and model. But wait,’ Bianca says with a little shrug, ‘maybe that’s not the right order.’

  ‘Right. But now that the cuckoo has made his nest here in Brusuglio, it’s going to be difficult to get him to leave.’

  ‘I think a nest is exactly what he needs.’

  ‘Don’t deceive yourself, Bianca. He’s your age: neither a babe nor an orphan. He’s a man. This “nest”, as you call it, allows him to prolong his boyhood at the expense of others, avoiding confrontation with hardship. If he truly wishes to live as a poet, he should tend to his own matters, make his own decisions and sever ties.’

  ‘But he won’t get a penny from his family if he gives up, the poor thing.’

  ‘Poor thing? He could be a handyman by day and write at night, if he really cared so much about it. He could rent a room at an inn and sort out his thoughts. But here he finds warmth or a breeze depending on the season. He drinks and dines well. He is cared for. Sooner or later his clothes will wear out and I don’t think Don Titta will want to buy him a new wardrobe.’

  ‘You are quite vicious. You sound like me.’

  ‘Perhaps I do only
feel envy, Miss Bianca. He is so young; everything is still possible for him and it irks me to see him throwing away such an opportunity by fooling around with the ideas he has of himself.’

  ‘And what are you, old? Come on. At thirty, a woman is old and a man is in his prime. Soon, I will surpass you in this gloomy race. I will be in mourning for my withered years of youth while you will still be a promising shoot.’

  ‘That’s what disturbs me.’ Innes grows solemn and melancholy. He becomes reflective, as though Bianca isn’t there. And she, who has failed in her attempts to amuse him, is annoyed with herself.

  ‘The ghost is back!’ Pietro lunges into the room, bringing a gust of cool air with him that remains even after Nanny has shut the French window. He removes the cap that his grandmother and mother force him to wear even during the summer, on account of his earaches, and drops it on the floor. Nanny retrieves it swiftly. The boy’s colouring is vivid and his hair dishevelled, making him more attractive than usual, livelier. He stomps his feet in excitement: ‘I saw it! She was on top of the rotunda, and when I got near, she disappeared inside! She’s in the rotunda!’

  The girls cover their mouths and hold their breath. Donna Julie sighs and looks away, as if to erase the sight of her son looking so wild. She detests these sorts of displays.

  ‘You could have taken me with you!’ Enrico whines.