That part of the Ponte Vecchio that he could see from this upper story of the tiny hotel was drenched in light. Such a distillation, such a concentration of light, Melrose had never seen before. It cast a golden skin across the Arno and beaded the graceful arc of the bridge where the goldsmiths traded, as if even more gold were called for, as if there could never be too much of it, as if the city could dissolve into sheer light and luster.
Florence’s abundant charms had laid themselves at his feet last night when, after stowing their things in the high cool rooms of their small hotel, they had gone in search of dinner. Trueblood had picked this hotel, liking its seclusion on a street so narrow it could hardly accommodate more than the two of them walking abreast. The hotel seemed to occupy no more than a floor of a building that seemed otherwise tenantless. Melrose loved it; he loved the lobby-reception room, the antique furnishings of his own small room and everything going about in slippered silence.
Except Trueblood, who now stood in his doorway. “Come on come on come on come on” jabbered Trueblood, with the speed of an auctioneer.
It was, thought Melrose, an unseemly pace for this otherwise slow morning. “Good lord, allow me to enjoy this vision of Florence.”
“We want to go to the Brancacci Chapel. That’s first.”
Trueblood was carrying the brown-paper-wrapped Masaccio panel, about as convenient as lugging an oar around. There had been a bit of a row with a long-suffering flight attendant over the disposition of this long parcel: Trueblood wanted it sitting in the seat beside him (as if St. Who was not very sturdy on his legs), and the flight attendant had told him no. It must ride somewhere out of people’s way. And, no, he could not purchase another ticket for it. Trueblood had given in and put it overhead, but had not been happy. He got a crick in his neck from constantly having to look up.
As Melrose swept coins and credit cards off the nightstand and into his pocket, he said, “Aren’t you afraid you’ll lose that walking around?”
“No.”
They left the room, Melrose sighing and exclaiming he trusted he wasn’t to be herded around at this pace the entire time they would be here. Trueblood didn’t answer, just went on before him through the little lobby. Melrose loved the cool space of this lobby, with its blush-tinted stone flooring, rich dark moldings and white busts in alcoves. Reception consisted of a Regency desk and the chap behind it. The breakfast room, where Melrose was headed, though Trueblood was not, was large enough for only four tables and gave the impression, since the other three were unoccupied, that it was a dining room of one’s own.
Failing to steer Melrose off course, Trueblood resigned himself to sitting down at the table. They were served by the ubiquitous reception-desk-fellow and another young man. The service was swift and pleasant and the food delicious. It would have been an altogether relaxing experience had not Trueblood sat sighing and checking his watch every two minutes. Melrose ignored this and tucked into the hotel’s homemade granola. “This is quite good. Have some.”
“I did. I ate an hour ago.”
“You’ve already eaten and you’d starve me? No, don’t unwrap Masaccio again.”
Trueblood was carefully sliding a thumbnail under the tape and folding the brown paper back as tenderly as a baby’s bunting. He had acquired a small magnifying glass which he clicked out of its black case and went about moving it all over the exposed part of the panel.
“For God’s sakes, Marshall, you know every inch of that painting by now. Who is this chap you’re dragging me to see?”
“A man named Luzi. Aldo Luzi. An expert, perhaps the most expert in all of Italy on early Renaissance art.”
“Really? But what about the Ickley woman? She, you said, was the foremost authority.”
“Then she was; she was then.”
“What in hell are you talking about? ‘Then’? It was only yesterday. Are entire reputations to be made or broken over this suspect Masaccio?”
Trueblood inspected a small croissant, then took a bite. “She is the authority in Britain. I only mean I thought she was the foremost authority until she filled me in on this Luzi chap.”
“Ah!” Melrose looped a little spoon of plum jam on his toast and said, “Then ‘foremost’ authority cannot move across borders.”
“Don’t be a nitwit.”
“Okay. Anyway, the Ickley woman couldn’t tell if the painting’s authentic?”
“It wasn’t something she could swear to either way. She could tell the panel, the paint, the varnish, and so forth were right for that period.”
“The period being-”
“Early 1400s. You know the Renaissance better than I do.”
“But only the British version.” Melrose signaled the waiter for more coffee and Trueblood slid down in his chair, eyes closed. “Actually, there was no Renaissance anywhere else; Italy had the whole thing tied up and screaming.”
Trueblood sliced him a look as the waiter poured coffee. “Don’t prattle on, will you?”
“You sound exactly like Agatha.”
Trueblood rewrapped Masaccio, then bounced in his chair a couple of times, displaying the frustration and impatience of a child.
Melrose laughed. “Here’s a side of you I’ve never seen. You’re as determined as a four-year-old trying to get his parents to stop eating and get up and go. This, so he can also go and do absolutely nothing.”
“Well, I’m not going to do nothing.”
Melrose sighed. “All right. I’m ready; bring on the Brancacci.”
“Bran-kah-chi, Bran-kah-chi.” Trueblood separated each syllable as if slovenliness in pronunciation would show a lack of respect that would have all of Florence bolting its doors and turning its back. He rose suddenly and walked toward the door.
“Finished!” said Melrose, throwing up his hands. He carefully folded his big napkin while Trueblood lurked in the doorway.
They descended a marble staircase into the murky depths of the entryway. They walked through the door into white light on pocked gray stone while on the other side of the narrow street purple shadows filled the crouched doorways, watched over by stone sculptures of animals and angels.
They walked, Trueblood in front and occasionally looking back and waving Melrose along.
Finally, they were crossing the Ponte Vecchio, Trueblood giving no quarter for pausing by these windows filled with gold necklaces, bracelets, earrings. The goods, Melrose thought, might have been molded out of the golden surface of the Arno-this morning’s dream scene. He was yanked back by Trueblood’s iron grip; the only thing he would be allowed to stand and ogle would be inside the Brancacci Chapel.
Melrose insisted on looking in the window of the little glove shop just at the other end of the bridge. Nothing but gloves! They lapped over one another in tiny colored waves of turquoise, lemon yellow, lapis lazuli, cobalt blue, crimson. He got pulled away yet again, and Melrose thought Trueblood must really be smitten if he could ignore such an addition to his wardrobe.
The temptations of the Ponte Vecchio behind them, Trueblood once again got in front; he was pointing at some destination, which in a while composed itself into a piazza and a church. “I forgot this was on the way. It’s the Santa Feliceta and there’s a fresco in here we want to see, too.”
It was a painting of the Annunciation, and Melrose liked the startled I-can’t-believe-what-you-just-said look on the face of Mary, turning to look at the angel delivering what was supposed to be really good news.
“Marvelous,” said Trueblood.
“Have you ever seen an Annunciation painting where Mary looks as if she’s saying, ‘Hey, cool.’ Think about it. I’d probably wear that look if Agatha told me she was moving into Ardry End. Poor Mary.” Melrose wished he could tell the Virgin Mary she should be glad that was only the Archangel Gabriel before her and not Marshall Trueblood, who was disappearing up the shadowy nave.
When Melrose found him in the piazza, Trueblood said, “We can skip the Pitti Palace, if you don’t mind.”
If he didn’t mind? By no means did he mind. All he wanted was to get back to that glove shop. “Okay. Later.”
“Then come on,” Trueblood said testily, reclaiming his lead. Over his shoulder, he said, “Next stop, the church of the Carmine. Where the frescoes are. It’s on the way to Luzi’s.”
Nothing was on the way, thought Melrose, lost in a little maze of alley-like streets. They turned off the Via Sant’ Agostino to the Via De’ Serragli and the church sprang into view-at least into Trueblood’s, for he trumpeted, “There it is! You’ll be astonished!” He squared his shoulders and secured his picture before him like a shield, as if to defend himself against too much astonishment.
Melrose shrugged and said, “Okay, but listen, when we finish here, I want to go back to that glove shop…”
“Glove shop? Am I losing my mind?”
Again, Melrose shrugged. “I don’t know.” He decided he would take dumb rhetorical questions literally from now on. “But I want some gloves even if you don’t.”
This exchange had taken them into the chapel and down the nave to Trueblood’s cherished frescoes, where they now stood. “Melrose, we’re standing before perhaps the greatest frescoes ever painted.”
“I know, but I’m serious about the glove shop.”
Trueblood was carefully undoing the brown paper, which had begun, it appeared, to molt at the creases, light showing through the frayed folds, like a much-read love letter or a whore’s stockings. Holding it up, he looked from St. Who upward to St. Peter, nodding and nodding.
“It looks like the same painter,” said Melrose, “and looks like the same style, still, you’ve got to ask yourself-”
“I’ve asked myself every question in the book,” Trueblood’s eyes riveted on the fresco. Melrose had to admit all of this was astonishing. He’d seen many representations of Adam and Eve’s being drummed out of Paradise, but never with such expressiveness. Eve’s expression was especially harrowing: the mouth a rictus of pain, eyelids closed and slanting down as if she’d just been blinded. There were various scenes from the life of St. Peter: the tribute money, healing the sick with his shadow. “The thing is, didn’t Masolino paint some of this? Didn’t you tell me they worked together?” Melrose looked on the other side of St. Peter’s raising someone from the dead, he wasn’t sure who, to another rendering of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise. “That’s what I mean. Obviously, another painter painted that representation; everything about it is different.” The two figures seemed completely calm and courtly. “That’s a traditional depiction.”
Trueblood nodded. “That’s the difference between them.” He stood and gawked at the frescoes for a good twenty minutes and paced before the frescoes for another ten while Melrose wandered around, stopped at the top of the nave and wondered what would happen if he tossed holy water on his face. Better not. There could be a thunderbolt.
“Time to go!” yelled Trueblood, rewrapping his painting-warmly, as if they were about to be heaved into a Russian winter.
Aldo Luzi lived in the Oltrano in a flaking stone building on a dead-end street running parallel to the river. The flat itself took up all of an upper floor, exquisitely decorated and luxuriously furnished. The materials covering sofas and chairs and footstools ran to damask, velvet, silk and brocade.
Signore Luzi was a scholar; thus, Melrose had expected a small rundown room overflowing with books, more than the bookshelves could accommodate, and stacked in piles and spilling over the worn carpet. Papers, journals in uneven towers. The room should look as crowded as the man’s intellect, heaps of quarterlies and journals reflecting heaps of intelligence. Perhaps an owl on a dusty mantel. Something like that.
Nor did Signore Luzi himself fit Melrose’s preformed idea of a “foremost expert.” One, he was too young (late thirties? early forties?); two, he was too good-looking (where was the bent back, the owlish eye, the spectacles, the unruly gray hair?); three, he was too well dressed, even for informality. The blue shirt was undoubtedly designer, the scarf Hermès. His mind might not belong in this sumptuous setting, but his body did.
They were seated in the spacious living room, Melrose on a dark green damask cloud, Trueblood on its dark blue twin cloud. They had bypassed the usual small talk, Melrose was glad to see, to get to the point. The only concession to the stock formalities was the espresso Luzi had served. Now, he set down his cup on the sleek coffee table to take up Trueblood’s picture.
Luzi nodded at Trueblood’s story of his acquiring this panel while his eyes stayed on the picture. He had a black mustache which he liked to tug at, thoughtfully.
For some moments, Luzi said nothing, but let his eyes rove the room as if trying to decide whether to buy the place. Melrose looked at his host’s painting-covered walls. They were largely Renaissance, and he was surprised to see among them one of those village-nightmare works of Stanley Spencer. Higher up was a picture of a man with a bowed head, stark naked and looking as if he were being stoned to death. It could be a Lucian Freud. There was one dreamy pre-Raphaelite painting that might have been Holman Hunt’s as it resembled his Ophelia. It showed a young woman lying by a brook amid wild flowers that blew like waves gusting back.
Trueblood set his small cup in its saucer and the clink dragged Melrose back from the shores of dreams.
Signore Luzi had been talking: “… They were so much in and out of one another’s pockets-Masaccio, Donatello, Filippo Brunelleschi, Masolino. There were always the concori-the, uh, competitions-and, also, several different artists might work on one painting or sculpture at different times and in different years. Masolino and Filippino Lippi worked on Masaccio’s Saint Peter Enthroned.” Luzi took up Trueblood’s picture again. “The Pisa polyptych…” He interrupted himself to inquire whether they’d planned to go there.
“To Pisa?” said Trueblood. “Of course; it’s our next stop.”
Oh? thought Melrose. No one had bothered to tell him.
“Ah, I am sorry to disappoint you, but that part of the polyptych has been covered or removed temporarily for some small restoration.”
Trueblood slid down in his chair, looking forlorn. “Well. Oh, well.”
Signore Luzi continued. “Now, several pieces have been discovered in churches, true. It’s just that in your circumstance, finding this in an antique shop, I would think, no, this cannot be.” Still holding the painting, he continued. “Masaccio. It’s hard for me to imagine such talent and reputation in a man so young. Does that happen much anymore?”
Trueblood interrupted. “But it is possible. Eleanor Ickley-do you know her?”
“Of course. I was just reading an article by her.” He pulled again at the tip of his mustache. “Now,” Luzi said, “one real authority on Masaccio is in Siena. A Signore Di Bada-”
Melrose sat bolt upright. Real as opposed to foremost? In Siena? Now that Pisa was dead in a ditch, would they still be making side trips? Oh, surely not!
Oh, surely, yes was Trueblood’s response. “Di Bada. Siena, it’s not far. It’s only-”
“Sixty-five, seventy kilometers.” Luzi shrugged. “An hour’s drive.” Luzi shrugged this distance away.
Trueblood looked at Melrose, not to ask if he acquiesced in the matter of this short journey-it was assumed anyone, even Melrose, would be thrilled to go sleuthing after Masaccio-but to see how soon Melrose wanted to go.
Melrose said nothing.
“We could leave now,” said Trueblood.
“We could,” said Melrose, “but we won’t. I want to go to the glove shop.”
Aldo Luzi laughed. “But of course! Such wonderful leathers! And such colors!”
They all took the glove shop as a point of departure, rose and headed for the door. As they shook hands and said their good-byes, Aldo Luzi leaned against the doorjamb and said, “He was only twenty-seven when he died.” It was so sad, the way he said it. “Masaccio.”
Melrose asked, “What did he die of?”
Luzi thought for a moment. “Want. He died of want.”
Melrose colored, thinking that was something none of them, none of their three untalented selves, would die of, and felt diminished.
Outside, with the heavy door and its lion head knocker bolted, Melrose said, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice, “You can’t really mean to go to Siena to yet one more foremost-authority-leading-expert?”
“I certainly do. Should I ditch the whole plan when I’m this close? Come on, Siena’s scarcely an hour’s drive. We can rent some really fast car.”
“Close? Marshall, you are not one inch or ounce closer to knowing this-” he tapped the package (once more wrapped and taped and tied) “-is genuine or not.”
Trueblood made a show of thinking this over, which Melrose knew he was not. “There’re car hire places at the airport.”
Melrose took a few steps to the curb and appeared to be throwing himself in front of a Vespa which had materialized out of nowhere, out of the fuel-shocked air of Florence, before dematerializing into the dusk, failing to claim, this time, the life of one more Florentine. Melrose really wanted one of those scooters.
Taking the suicide-attempt hint, Trueblood threw his hands up (one not rising much above chest level, as the package was securely under his arm), “Okay, okay. We can go tomorrow. Let’s find a drink.”
“But first, but first to the glove shop. Thataway.” Melrose pointed in the general direction of the Ponte Vecchio.
“I never knew you to be so glove addicted,” said Trueblood, as they strolled along. “Maybe there’s a twelve-step glove program you could try.”
“Come on.” Melrose said, taking command.
The knock-you-into-the-Arno scent of leather engulfed him when they entered the little shop. The gloves were in glass cases and also stacked by the hundreds-thousands?-in their own little plastic cases in cubbyholed wooden shelving.
Nine or ten customers preceded them, which was easily enough to fill the tiny shop. Melrose wedged his way in (“Mi scusi, scusi”) to look at the gloves in the glass case.
Now it was Trueblood’s turn to carp, trying to lever Melrose out and into a trattoria. Melrose stopped listening; he knew it wouldn’t be long before Trueblood fell hungrily onto this fashion feast, and it wasn’t. After he elbowed an old man so hunched his chin barely cleared the counter, Trueblood was trying different gloves on each hand. This was difficult with his painting pressed under one arm.
To the old man, Melrose bowed and, with a supercilious smile, waved him to his place at the counter.
The old gentleman looked at him with considerable distaste: “Lasciami in pace!” he very nearly spit.
Melrose blinked. “Prego,” he said, but for some reason he did not really believe he’d been thanked. Back to the gloves, let’s see: the black kidskin with the narrow white edging at the wrists would be perfect for Diane; they’d blend with her clothes, her house, her cat. One always had to take back little presents for the ones left behind. This was an excuse to look at (easily) a hundred pairs of gloves. A suede of deep gold, perfect for Vivian. Noxious apple green for Agatha. Two pairs of lilac for Miss Broadstairs and Miss Vine. (They would probably wear them for gardening gloves.) Several more pairs for others. For himself-he looked down the counter.
Why was Trueblood unwrapping the painting? Why was he now holding it for the saleswoman’s close inspection? Why was she raising pincenez, dangling from a silver chain, up to her eyes? Was Trueblood wanting to fit up St. Who with gloves? If he got testy about it, would the scene resolve itself into Expulsion from the Glove Shop?
Melrose went back to his own glove buying, trying to ignore the comments and labored breathing of the people behind him waiting for service. He was taking no more chances in being polite. He picked up a pair of soft leather gloves that poured like double cream onto his hand in a color called Midnight Ashes. They were a gray so dark it just missed being black. He certainly had to have those. This next pair were doeskin in a nice fawn shade. As he was debating buying these also, Trueblood shoved in beside him to show him a pair in a shade something like sea green.
“Nice, eh?”
“Beautiful.” Fortunately the painting was rewrapped. “Do you like these-” Melrose held up the nearly black gloves “-or these?” He pointed to the fawn gloves.
“Both. Get them both. See, I bought two.” Trueblood held up the bag that contained his purchases.
“Yes, but you needed a pair for St. Who. I’m only gloving myself. And I’d feel rather overly indulgent buying two pairs, I mean, at these prices. Of course I realize they’d cost twice this at home, but that doesn’t make them cheaper. No, I think I’ll go for the dark gray ones.” What Melrose was actually doing was giving Trueblood a chance to do his Christmas shopping. He knew Trueblood loved to purchase things on the sly, once he found that one was particularly taken with a certain article. “I think I’ll take one last look at the back, if you don’t mind waiting a tic.”
“No, no, go on,” said Trueblood, “they’ve some especially nice ones at the back.”
When Melrose looked back, Trueblood was in close colloquy with the saleswoman, who was nodding and smiling, Si, si. Melrose allowed enough time for the transaction at the front. When they left the shop, he smiled, for Trueblood was securing this last flat little parcel beneath the string around his painting.
Melrose felt rather humble about this and determined to stop giving his friend such a hard time over his foremost or leading expert or authority in future.
Determined to get to Pietro di Bada in record time, Trueblood told Melrose to turn onto the motorway, a plan quickly scotched by Melrose, who said that if he was going at all he wanted to see the Tuscan countryside, and not from the rush of a motorway.
“You’ll want to stop,” said Trueblood, churlishly.
“No, I won’t.”
Of course, he would, which was why he had insisted on driving. And he did, when he spied from a distance the hill town of San Gimignano. Melrose loved the name and kept practicing, trying to get the accent just right (“San Gim-i’yon-o, San Gim-i’yon-no”). Its needlelike towers bathed in the sun, some nearly encased in vines and flowers, its feudal walls and narrow windows, its medieval stone-all were irresistible.
Trueblood was reading his guidebook. “There were once something like four hundred towers here. Now it’s only around seventy. What happened to the others?”
“Is that the point? I mean, what happened to them just doesn’t seem the point of this town.” Melrose brought the car to a halt in the car park, and, breathing hard, they struggled up the steps onto the cobbled road and still climbed. They found a little trattoria in which to lunch on bruschetta, crostini and wine. Melrose exhausted his Italian when he asked for la lista dei vini and acqua minerale and as always came up short when the waiter (impressed by their command of the language) made his own contribution: “Gassata o naturale?” Melrose shrugged his shoulders in a not-caring gesture. Trueblood was having gin and tonic all over Florence because that was the way it was spelled out: gin tonic. Well, they’d never claimed to be linguists, had they? said Trueblood, ordering another gin tonic.
The lunch was simple and good-when wasn’t it good over here?-and afterward they ambled farther up the hill to come out on a piazza overseen by a charming church. They crossed it and came upon a museum of torture. Here was something to catch Melrose’s interest! Once inside with their tickets, they appeared to be the only torture enthusiasts, for they saw no one else in the first room, where they stopped before an exhibit of a kind of iron headpiece, fashioned so as to fit over the head and keep the mouth shut. Women who passed their time in gossip paid heavily for it.
In the next, where the relics really got going, a young lad of perhaps ten or eleven was walking about with a gelato, and Melrose wondered how he’d ever got the dripping cone in here. The boy was standing before the iron maiden, licking the ice cream with fervor.
As Trueblood peeled away and walked pretty much in a trance around the various rooms, Melrose followed the boy. He liked the manner in which the lad could counterfeit the effects of each device. The iron maiden had him pressing his fingers against his chest, distorting his face in pain and emitting low-key shrieks as the spikes penetrated his flesh. Before the neck clamp (another original cure for women with loose lips), the boy turned his hands backward (having finished his ice cream), clutched his neck and stuck out his tongue. A couple of exhibits later in front of what looked like an electric chair, he went rigid, holding out his arms and giving a few quick shivers. Next, to simulate the effect of one’s torso being trapped in the metal box while one’s limbs were being severed, he bent in half and applied an imaginary saw to his arm, scraping it back and forth. The knives, the clubs, the swords, the chains, the pickaxes all fell to his interpretation.
This kid was in love with pain, thought Melrose. Where were his parents? In the cellar, bound and gagged? The museum was quite entertaining, really, and he wondered the owner didn’t charge more. At the entrance was a sign that explained this was a private collection. Children weren’t allowed as the displays might be too harrowing for them. Harrowed was what this boy was not. The exhibit finished, Melrose and the boy found themselves at the exit.
Trueblood had ambled out and Melrose saw two adults and a girl, all looking harassed and irritated. The boy’s mum and dad and sister, it would appear.
The boy had emerged and the mother was extremely quarrelsome: “Gerald! I told you not to go in there! What were you doing?”
Americans. Did that explain it?
“Nothing. It was boring.”
The family turned and walked away. But for one sumptuous moment, the boy looked back over his shoulder at Melrose and winked.
“What we should do,” said Trueblood, when they were back on the road, “is divide up Long Pidd into contrade.” He had purchased a little guide to Siena and was reading from it.
“Suits me, as long as Theo Wrenn Browne and Agatha aren’t in mine.”
Trueblood slewed a look at him. “Don’t you know anything about around here?”
“I know the medieval cure for gossip.”
Trueblood grunted. “Well, contrade are something like tribes. In Siena there are seventeen. This division of neighborhoods is as old as the Tuscan hills apparently.”
“What’s so great about that? There are at least that many in London: there’s Chelsea, Battersea, Knightsbridge-”
“No, no, no. It’s not the same at all. Those are just geographic; those are postal zones. These are neighborhoods that are very tight,” he said clutching himself, making Melrose think he had a lot in common with the boy back there. “People are very loyal to them, they’ve got their own flag, their particular emblem-like a goose or an elephant-and they’re extremely competitive.”
Siena sat on its hill, looking down at them at dusk, full of little lights bathed in mist, a city small, earthy and beautiful.
Dark quickly overtook dusk after they’d left the car again in a car park and climbed up steps and down steps and up again. A soft rain fell, more mist than rain, as they made their way along the Via Di Stalloreggi toward the Duomo. Every once in a while, Trueblood would stop and scrutinize the city map, then nod and continue.
“We’re looking for the Via Del Poggio,” he said. Trueblood pointed at a plaque. “See?”
Melrose made out what appeared to be a turtle. “So this is the turtle contrada?”
“I don’t think that’s the way they refer to it.”
They found the Via Del Poggio. Over one door was a small flag. “That,” said Trueblood, “identifies it, too. And there’s the plaque, see?” This door opened and as quickly closed. In this flurry of light, Melrose made out another turtle.
“Here’s Di Bada’s house!”
“Good. It’s getting cold. But if he’s one of your true foremost authorities or leading experts, he probably will not be offering drinks.”
“What’re you talking about?” asked Trueblood, raising the small brass door knocker.
Melrose shrugged. “I don’t know.”
But he did when the gentleman he supposed to be the one they’d come to see opened the door and peered out over the tops of his glasses (which had ridden down his nose), and squinched his eyes as if blinking in an unaccustomed light and as if the light were out here instead of in there. If Aldo Luzi had been erudition’s antithesis, Pietro di Bada was its crowning glory, the very definition of scholar. If symbols could walk! Here was a cherub of a man, quite old and round shouldered, the shoulders covered with a shawl.
Trueblood bowed slightly and said, “Signore di Bada? Professor di Bada? I’m Marshall Trueblood, and this is Mr. Plant-”
“Non capisco, non capisco.” The old man waved Trueblood’s words away, looking irritated that he had been sucked to the door by some fool who couldn’t even speak the language.
Trueblood tried again. Pointing to him, he asked, “Signore Pietro di Bada?”
“Si, si.”
Ah, they were getting somewhere! “Signore Aldo Luzi was supposed to have called you and explained that we were-”
“Parli lentamente!” Signore di Bada exclaimed, annoyed at being kept in the cold doorway.
Trueblood looked at Melrose, and they both shrugged.
“The phrase book,” said Melrose pointing to Trueblood’s pocket. “It’s some command to speak something. Inuit? Senegalese? Who the hell knows?”
“I found it, I found it! ‘Slowly.’ We’re to speak slowly.” Trueblood cleared his throat and with contorted mouth said, “Aldo Luzi. He. Said. You. Were. The. Leading. Au-thor-i-ty on Mas-ac-ci-o.”
“For once he’s right. Come.” His outstretched arm ushered them in.
Melrose said, stupidly (he later realized), “Parla inglese?” It was one of his overworked phrases, and he hoped it wasn’t Spanish.
“Speak English? It is obvious, is not? Why you two speaking Italian?” Di Bada started laughing fit to kill, as if putting one over on them was what he’d been waiting to do all day. He waved them in, still laughing. It was a gasping sort of laugh, a mildly snorting laugh, somewhere between gasp and hiccup.
This little charade didn’t fit the “foremost authority” picture at all. For such a person, humor would be dry, reflective, ironic. Wit, trenchant. However, the milieu reinforced Melrose’s picture: books and papers everywhere, light from a green-shaded desk lamp pooling on the scuffed wood of the desk and beaten-up Oriental rug.
Signore di Bada wrestled a couple of straight-backed chairs free of encumbrance, sending a stack of journals and assorted papers spilling to the floor. “Sit, sit.” He waved them down, neither of them able to put his feet on anything but papers and journals. Melrose scraped some of the papers together and held them out to Di Bada, who said “Grazie.”
“Prego,” returned Melrose.
Di Bada laughed again. He was, apparently, still jubilant over his little practical joke. “Mi scusi.” He wiped the tears from his eyes and blew his nose on a handkerchief roughly the size of Northamptonshire, which he then bunched and jammed into his pocket. “So! Luzi said you wanted help about a painting you think is of Masaccio? It isn’t, but let’s have a look.” While Trueblood carefully unwrapped the painting, Di Bada asked Melrose, “You been to Siena before? No,” he answered himself. “You like Firenze? Sì, sì, Firenze, who would not love it? I tell you who. We, the Sienese! I tell you a little story about the Black Death, is very funny.”
Melrose was already laughing.
“In fourteenth century, one of our principal fountains was the Fonte Gais. A group of Sienese found and dug up a statue of Venus and set it atop the fountain. Then came the Black Death, and the preachers and soothsayers said it was having that pagan statue up there that caused it. So one night, a little group disguised as peasants stole it away, broke it to pieces and then sneaked across the border to bury the pieces in Florentine land, so the Black Death would turn from Siena to Firenze.” Here came that hiccupy, snorty laugh that made the old man shake like a bowl of jelly. He seemed always on the verge of it. Any old joke or prank, good or bad, was better than no joke at all for Signore Di Bada.
“Oh, the panel you brought-” He set it on the floor, holding it at arm’s length. “Hmpf! It looks as if it could be one panel in a triptych-”
“Polyptych,” said Trueblood, eager to move the identification along.
Thick eyebrows floated above black-rimmed glasses as Di Bada peered at Trueblood. “You know so much, my friend, why do you come to me?”
Trueblood washed his hands around in air, saying “No, no, no. Sorry. I only meant it was suggested to me by this antiques dealer that it might be part of the Pisa polyptych… possibly?”
Di Bada rested the panel against the end of his desk and crossed his small hands on top of it. He shook his head slowly back and forth, seemingly at Trueblood’s folly. “Signore Trueblood, you realize how you are an idiot? Oh, it’s true, quite true, that nearly a dozen different parts of that polyptych have turned up, but in places such as ancient churches-”
“I believe that’s where she said she found it. The church in San Giovanni Valdarno.”
Di Bada held up a hand, palm out, as if to push back this absurdity and said, “That is Masaccio’s birthplace. That a painting so important could be overlooked in that church? For centuries?” Di Bada flapped his hands as if wishing them away. “Signore Trueblood, this is ludicrous.”
Trueblood objected. “But isn’t that the way things often are found? By some strange confluence of place, time and person? Several pieces of the Pisa polyptych were found in just that way, weren’t they?”
Di Bada was waving the words away before Trueblood was half finished. “Perhaps, yes, but I tell you, not by somebody in an art gallery. You go to Pisa? No, it is a shame that the St. Paul in the Museo Nationale is taken down. They feared for its safety, I think. You have got in your own country, in London, the center of the altarpiece: Madonna and Child Enthroned. Then there is Berlin, where there must be four or five of the panels, and the predella of Saint Julian; one in Naples; another piece in some city in California no one can remember. No, Signore Trueblood, I fear you have been-” he tapped his temple with a finger “-what is the word? ‘Duped,’ ah yes. Duped.”
Melrose, who thought he would never take up Masaccio’s cause after all of this trouble he’d been put through, still, even he was irritated by Di Bada’s attending more to himself than to the panel.
As if he read Melrose’s brain waves, Di Bada shoved his glasses up on his head, and brought the picture so close to his face his nose was all but touching it. “Masaccio. Hmpf!”
Melrose interpreted the “Hmpf!” not as a sound of dismissal but of curiosity. He watched Di Bada rise, move to one of the many bookcases, reach down a dusty-looking volume and riffle its pages. “Masaccio was a man possessed,” he said, turning pages. “It’s all he cared about-art. He neglected everything else, everyone, including himself. There were long periods when he saw no one. He belonged to this guild-the Speziali-who had grocers among its members, and I’ve always been amused by that. Well, Masaccio got so bad, so afraid others might steal his work, he became-what is the word?” He snapped his fingers several times.
“Paranoid?” Melrose suggested.
“Paranoid, sì. So paranoid the only person he would admit to his lodgings was this grocer. For a time when he forgot to eat he enlisted the grocer’s aid, told him to bring bread and cheese. The grocer had no more to do with art than to be a member of the same guild as the painters. He was trustworthy. He was completely disinterested. Why not trust the person who can gain nothing, eh? Why not trust the grocer?” Di Bada returned to his chair behind the desk and sighed. “You know he died when he was very young-”
“Twenty-seven,” Trueblood put in.
Melrose thought he detected a lump in the throat here.
“Imagine what he would have accomplished had he lived even another ten years.” The old Italian meditated on empty air. “The great Brunelleschi; Donatello, perhaps the greatest sculptor since the Greeks; and our Masaccio, the first great naturalist.” He said to Trueblood, “You have been to the Brancacci Chapel? Of course you have. Then you have seen one of the strongest uses of perspective in the St. Peter Healing with the Fall of His Shadow. This is said to be the first Renaissance painting. Your eye plunges down that city street at the same time St. Peter is walking toward you. Things move in this painting; the shadow of St. Peter moves. Masaccio developed chiaroscuro; he was the first to use the cast shadow as a device. You have been of course to the Santa Maria Novella, no?”
“No. I mean not yet.”
Di Bada looked at them as if they were heretics. “You stay in Firenze and not go to see the Trinity? Well, when you go, look at the Trinity from the west aisle. You will see how the great vaulted ceiling seems to open from the space in which you stand. It was Masaccio’s purpose to project his subjects into the earthly sphere to suggest the reality of the supernatural. See, your eyes meet Mary’s eyes. That gaze induces the belief that she is present. It is revolutionary.”
There was a silence suffused (Melrose hoped) with the proper respect. Trueblood finally broke it, saying, “But I wish you would take another look at the panel, Signore Di Bada.”
“If it would please you.” Di Bada ran his eye over the saintly figure, even got so far as to take out a magnifying glass, a big one with a horn handle. He ran this over the painting, his eye making quick little darts. He returned the magnifying glass to its perch atop a small hill of books. He thought for a little while. “Perhaps you shouldn’t rest your case on the opinion of such as I. I am an expert, true. But there is one who knows perhaps even more-”
Melrose tried to keep from slipping down in his chair, but did not wholly succeed. Trueblood was, of course, all ears.
“-this is Tomas Prada who lives in Lucca. It is worth your time to see him. I am sorry I cannot be more helpful. I can only say what I said before, that this is so unlikely to be by Masaccio…” Di Bada shrugged.
He went on, with a shake of his head. “Masaccio had nothing. He owed money to others; he possessed nothing; he had pawned his clothes. Yet was he not one of the chosen? I sometimes envy the mental state that simply forgets the material world. Not ‘denies’ it, for that of course is to acknowledge it before pushing it away. But no, Masaccio forgot that it even existed. He was one of the chosen.”
All through dinner-a marvelous fish soup, followed by a tagliatelle alle noci, followed by partridge, right into their dolce, a warm zabaglione-they argued. Not in a bellicose way, because the restaurant was too fine and the food too good, not even particularly contentiously or continually. They brought it up, let it lie, brought it up again.
Melrose said, “I simply refuse to go to a ‘One-who-knows.’ ”
“It’s not that far. Lucca’s almost right on the way.”
“ ‘Almost’ is the operative word here. Now listen: we have already spoken to the foremost authority and leading expert. I refuse to drag myself-”
“ ‘Drag’? It’s a Maserati.”
“On these drifting hills nothing is a Maserati. I refuse to go in search of One-who-knows.” Except that Melrose was intrigued by now with this entity he himself had really conjured out of Di Bada’s phrase. He really wanted to see this inquiry through to its godforsaken end. He did not, however, want to agree to this third leg of their journey without a certain amount of resistance. Anyway, it was fun listening to Trueblood whimper and plead. He picked up his glass of Chianti (which was unlike anything you could get in England) and said, “Oh, all right.” He dipped his spoon once again into his Marsala-drowned custard. How could something so simple taste so wonderful?
Trueblood was pleased as punch. Melrose said, “You know, the more we go on with this, the nearer we get to the question, not the answer.”
Trueblood looked a little shell-shocked, his eyes like cartoon eyes, Xs in place of pupils. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, really. It’s just something I felt. Marshall, what are you doing?”
“Huh?”
“Why are you chewing your zabaglione? It’s custard.”
“I’m not chewing. But I was thinking, shouldn’t we go to Pisa; even if we can’t see that part of the altarpiece, we could walk around the Carmine to sort of feel the context.”
Melrose knew that Trueblood knew that entreaty would fall on deaf ears.
He glanced quickly at Melrose and said, “No, I expect not.” He had the look of one who had finally discovered his home, only to find the family had been turned out of the house…
Melrose took another swallow of the Chianti and asked himself if Trueblood-running all over Tuscany with his questionable painting-if Trueblood weren’t, like Masaccio, one of the chosen.
The next morning Melrose was awakened at some intransigent hour by Trueblood’s banging on his door.
“Sorry,” he said when Melrose stumbled to open it. “But just knocking wasn’t enough.”
“At dawn, it usually isn’t.”
“Dawn? Good lord, it’s after eight.”
“Close enough to dawn for me.” Melrose yawned.
The sun had come out yet there was still this ocean of mist at their ankles, and Melrose felt as he had the night before, that he was standing on a ship’s prow, looking out over empty water. After coffee and rolls, they stashed their small bags in the trunk and aimed the car toward Lucca.
This time, Melrose didn’t have to be argued into taking the autostrada. Neither did the Maserati. They flew.
A buxom girl in a dirndl and peasant blouse opened the door, painted an astonishing blue, and said, “Posso aiutarle?”
Melrose did not think she’d asked “What posse of retards are you?” So he assumed it must be something to do with offering help. He asked if she spoke English. “We’re English-inglese?”
“Ah, sì, sì!”
“We’d like to see Signore Prada. I called-”
“Non capisco…”
She seemed genuinely upset. Melrose put an imaginary phone to his ear and pretended to be dialing. “Mr. Plant? Mr. Trueblood? Called before.”
“Ah, sì! Per favore.” Her outstretched arm motioned them in to a hallway pleasantly adorned with more photographs than Melrose had ever seen on one wall, a delicate table with a soft-glowing lamp on it, and the scent of a flower he couldn’t determine. They followed her down the hall to a door she lightly knocked upon.
“Avanti!”
The girl opened the door and let them pass before her. “Grazie,” said Trueblood.
“Prego.” She nodded and left.
The gentleman who had been standing by the window Melrose assumed to be Tomas Prada. “Signore Prada?” said Melrose. He introduced himself and Trueblood. “We called about the painting.”
Tomas Prada, Melrose judged, was somewhere in his late fifties. He had very dark hair and a thick mustache, both of which showed signs of gray. His features were chiseled, his cheekbones and nose sharply defined.
“Ah, yes. The Masaccio. Please, sit.” Prada indicated two comfortable-looking armchairs. He himself continued to stand by the window.
He must also have been a painter; Melrose saw the easel and what looked like fresh paint on the canvas, a study of an olive grove, as nearly as he could tell. “You’re a painter yourself?”
Prada gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Si. I teach at the Accedemi in Florence. Three days a week only, so I choose to continue to live in Lucca.” Prada left the window and came across the room. “Now, let’s see this Masaccio you fancy you’ve found.”
Melrose (who for some reason had today put himself at the helm of this little ship) thought his comment rather patronizing and set him straight: “It’s not precisely our fancy. Mr. Trueblood has shown this to several people, here and in England, all authorities on Renaissance art, including your friend Pietro di Bada. Neither he nor the others feel they can say definitely that it isn’t Masaccio’s work.” Although Di Bada had come damned close.
Prada smiled a rather inky smile. His mustache was all over it. “Wall sitters.” He waved away the other authorities, including his friend Pietro.
Melrose frowned. “ ‘Wall sit…’? Oh, you mean fence-sitters.”
“Those who cannot make their minds up. Let me see.” With both hands he took the panel, which he rested upright on the floor against the easel. He gave it a quick once over. Then he took it to the window and made his examination slower. “First, have you run tests on the material”
“Yes,” said Trueblood.
“And the paints, the surface, they are compatible with the fifteenth century?”
Trueblood nodded.
Prada again leaned the panel against the easel, adjusting its position so that it got more light. He looked at it for some time, one arm across his midsection, the other braced there as he indulged the nervous habit of pulling at his mustache. Prada was silent for some moments, staring at St. Who. After a while he said, “These altarpieces were commonly dismantled, the separate parts to be taken by whatever family had commissioned the work in the first place. Sold perhaps, perhaps passing through many hands. None of the Pisa polyptych is in the church of the Carmine anymore, and only one piece is in Pisa itself, in a museum. This is very interesting.”
Prada moved to the window again to look at the painting. “You know Donatello had a lock put on his workshop because he feared others would steal or plagiarize his work. Which at least one did. There was so much competition for commissions, for they meant not only money, but more commissions.” He said all of this to the painting. Looking up from his examination, Prada sighed. He handed the picture back to Trueblood. “I have a suggestion. You have started at the end of your search. Go back to the beginning.”
“Come?”
“The beginning. Instead of the end. Now, how did you come by this picture?”
“In an antique shop. I’m a dealer myself.”
“And what about the shop that sold this to you? Is it reliable?”
Trueblood nodded.
“What is the provenance? Where did he find it?”
“She. According to the woman who sold it to me, she found it in San Giovanni Valdarno.”
“That is something that tells against it, to claim it was found there. And how could one even entertain the notion that this is part of the Pisa polyptych, and hang it up to sell? No. How much did you pay for it, if I may inquire?”
“Two thousand pounds.”
Prada nodded. “In other circumstances, quite a lot of money, but only a fraction of what this would be worth if it was whole and if it was genuine. You said it was tested for its physical properties?”
“Yes,” said Trueblood, “as well as could be in a short time.”
Prada moved to the easel again. “Would it be St. John the Baptist? He has the weighty form you find in Masaccio’s figures. The chiaroscuro-that shadow just there-” he pointed to the side at what Melrose couldn’t even make out, it was so subtle “-is Masaccio, yes? And the spatial effects. Sì… Of course, you know Masaccio was the first to make use of Brunelleschi’s architectural perspective? The receding diagonals giving the illusion of reality. The centric point, the vanishing point. You have seen the Trinity?”
They both grunted what they hoped would pass for an “Of course.”
Tomas Prada smiled beatifically. He could easily have taken the place of one of these panels. “I think not. I think you have not been to the Santa Maria Novella.”
What the hell was this, anyway? Did Prada mean to give them a lie-detector test? Wasn’t it enough for these Italians they had come all the way from London? And driven over half of Tuscany pursuing this dream?
“You must go, obviously. You see, Masaccio made an astonishing leap between the style of the San Giovanni triptych and the Trinity. No other painter, not even Leonardo, changed so quickly and with such amazing results. You must see this vaulted ceiling. The perspective, the blurring, the vanishing point. What is interesting is that the doctrine of redemption is also a blurring, a sfumatura, of space and time. Christ gives himself once, but then there is the Eucharist, where he gives himself again and again, unendingly, in complete contradiction of time and space. You see? The receding diagonals give the illusion of reality so that one might, in seeing the forms in the painting as real, believe in the subject. Perspective was Masaccio’s theology.” As he said this he was looking at Trueblood’s painting.
“To see what pieces have been recovered of the Carmine polyptych, you would have to go to Vienna, Berlin and, of course, London. The National Gallery houses-” Prada grew thoughtful “-the central panel, I believe. The Madonna and Child. The entire predella story is in Berlin. This”-he tapped Trueblood’s panel-“would have been one of the wings, the side panels next to the Madonna. St. John or St. Nicholas, probably. I mean if it was authentic.”
Melrose shot Trueblood a look to see if Berlin, having got two mentions, was now in the travel plans, but Trueblood was wholly taken up with what Tomas Prada was saying.
Right now, Prada was smiling. “Perhaps I must join my friend Di Bada on the wall-”
“Fence?” said Melrose, matching the smile.
“Sì. Only, there’s one thing that greatly perplexes me, Mr. Trueblood.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you see, what we know of the Pisa polyptych in its wholeness, we know only from Vasari’s description. We haven’t the advantage of seeing these parts in a catalog or as a print, have we? So if this is a fake, a forgery, what was it copied from?”
Trueblood looked befuddled. “A good question, a good question, Signore Prada.”
Prada sighed. “A good question, perhaps. But I think a better question might be, ‘Can you live without an answer?’ ”
Trueblood considered. “I could; I’d just rather not.”
He was beating his head on the dashboard and loving it.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” said Melrose, as they drove down the curving road away from the Prada house.
“Why didn’t we think of what they were copied from? It’s so obvious.”
Melrose was enjoying the feel of the car as they rolled through the Tuscan landscape, verdant even in December. They had been here for only three days and it felt like weeks, months, even. Travel had that sort of intensity; sights, events crushed together so that one wound up thinking, No, it surely must have taken me a week to see that, not merely an hour.
The fingers of his gloved hand upon the steering wheel (he was wearing his new gloves) tapped out a little tune. He was in good spirits. Trueblood was winched down in the passenger’s seat, contemplating nothing except his own thoughts and turning now and then to look at the painting in the back, where it lay, now unwrapped as if it had no more to hide.
That night they dined at the Villa San Michele on an ambrosial fish netted in some heavenly stream. For dessert, there was a soufflé Grand Marnier. When they finished, Trueblood asked the waiter to bring their coffee and cognac out to the terrace. “Fa caldo, Signore.”
“Sì,” said Trueblood, not caring whether it was or wasn’t. The waiter brought the drinks and withdrew.
“They’re so ceremonial,” said Melrose, with a laugh. In the dark, they looked down on the city of Florence, its lights spread out across the city like drifts of fallen stars.
Trueblood uttered a giant sigh. “We leave tomorrow.”
They sipped their cognac, lighted cigarettes. Standing in the softly scented air, there came what felt to Melrose a mortal silence. Here he was in a place he had not wanted to come to, and which now he did not want to leave. He felt out here an awful longing; he felt like crying, really. Images flickered in and out of consciousness: the vine-wrapped towers of San Gimignano, its laddered, uphill streets; the conspirator’s wink of the lad who was hurried away from the Museum of Torture; Siena, the color of warm earth; its purple-shadowed streets; the blue door of the house in Lucca; the echoing stairway of their little hotel.
“Maybe,” said Melrose, “Diane was right after all.”
“How so?”
“See Florence and die.”