“I must apologise, Signor Sommer, this woman, she was the—compagno—of the Contessa who was the last occupant. This woman, she should go, she has no right to be here, but here the Law! Festina Lente—make haste slowly, as they say. She is convinced we have come to steal the Contessa’s things.” He grimaced, and gave a shivering shrug, as if the woman’s belief was a contamination of which he must rid himself.
Summers nodded. He was all too familiar with the myth of that last descendant of a noble line, withdrawn into a single room of the palazzetto, holding court among the remnants of her art collection in a huge gondola bed, her growing bulk swathed in Fortuny fabrics, tangled mane covering her pillows. Her companion had evidently adopted the same uniform, down to the untended hair.
“Well you can inform her that I am here only to research the life of Sigismondo Mortensa. The Contessa, or any other past occupant of the house, is of no interest to me. By the way, no one recognised the name of this place when I gave it to the taxi men. I got here by describing the location, but they kept calling it something else.”
“Ca’ Maledetto—accursed, damned.” Bramanti flushed and examined the floor. “It is a local name—no doubt because the fortunes of the Mortensa family have fallen so low.” He led the way into a shuttered space haunted by melancholy, contemplative ghosts of marble and bronze. The walls were decorated with panels cut from ancient Roman sarcophagi, reinforcing the sepulchral atmosphere.
Bramanti seemed to read Summer’s thoughts. “I will of course have the rooms aired and a heater brought for you. No fires, I am afraid. We must be strict about such things. And I must ask you please to be most careful about turning it off before you leave each day.” A distressing thought seemed to strike him. “You were of course informed that it is not possible to sleep here?”
“Oh please don’t worry about that, I have lodgings arranged, I am well aware how privileged I am to get access at all!”
This seemed to please Bramanti. He nodded and allowed himself a tight smile. “Now, I think you will want to see the library!”
The room was very dark. Bramanti began to throw open shutters, revealing a glorious, if rain-lashed, view of the Church of San Bartolomeo. Summers realised that his hero, Sigismondo Mortensa, must have stood where he was now standing, looking proudly every day upon the Baroque structure that was the architect’s greatest work.
The library was even more beautiful than he had imagined. The ceiling and walls were covered with frescoes faded to the colour of autumn fruits, except where immense bookcases in Palladian architectural form climbed, by Corinthian columns and wrought-iron walkways, to the painted heavens, their shelves a treasure-trove of vellum and calf.
The most remarkable object in the room was a clock over ten feet high, a kind of miniature Torre dell Orologio, with a clock face depicting Saturn devouring his children and a group of automata on top.
“Do you think it would be possible to get this going?” Summers asked.
“I could try to locate the key,” Bramanti replied doubtfully. “If I can, I will have it left here for you.”
When Bramanti was gone, Summers pulled off a few covers, releasing clouds of dust into the slanting shafts of light that fell through the tall Serlian window. A gigantic desk, big enough for six people, was revealed, along with some very beautiful and surprisingly comfortable chairs and couches. With some form of heating he would be quite at home.
This was one of his favourite moments, before the hard work began, when he could give himself up to the pleasures of his surroundings. This was doubly true in Venice. He was as susceptible as anyone to what Henry James had called “the sweet bribery of association and recollection”. Crossing to the window, he took in the mellow golden splendour of the church façade, a late Baroque extravaganza of columns, scrolls and statues, with rain pouring in cascades from every slanting surface. Behind the glassy sheets of water, the shadows gathered under the entablatures and arches which seemed cavernous, looming spaces in which the carved figures of stone seemed to move uneasily.
“Terribilità,” Summers intoned to himself Mortensa’s own favourite word for the architectural effect he sought to create. “Terribilità in spades!”
Turning to the nearest bookshelf, he took down a volume at random. The complete works of Angelo Ambrogini Poliziano, tutor to the son of Lorenzo de Medici, the first edition in its original binding! Again a book at random; a treasure from the Press of Aldus Manutius, a Greek bible of 1518. More, a copy of the Aldine Editio Princeps of Aristotle’s works; and a 1495–96 Idylls of Theocritus. Many bore the mark of the Florence Academy.
A beam of sunlight broke through the storm clouds and penetrated the chamber, turning the dancing motes of dust to gold. Summers smiled contentedly to himself.
“Ca’ Maledetto! Accursed, damned! If so, then let me be accursed and damned forever!”
In the days that followed, Summers settled into a pleasing routine. A bracing walk from his lodgings to Via Serpente, where he entered the palazzetto by the much less salubrious landward entrance. Bramanti had been as good as his word, for he found an adequate if unsafe looking heater in the library. Two large keys, joined with string, lay on the desk; one quite plain, the other beautifully ornate, with a gorgon head embossed upon it. Summers assumed that the more ornate one would wind the clock, but it was the plain one that worked. The hours struck with a mellow sound, like distantly heard church bells, and the automata moved.
On examination, Summers concluded that the scene was the flaying of Marsyas. On the left-hand side stood Apollo playing his lyre; on the right the L’arrotino or knife-sharpener crouched to whet his blade. Between them Marsyas hung by his wrists in preparation for his bloody punishment. At every hour Apollo plucked his lyre, the crouching figure sharpened his little knife, and Marsyas opened his mouth in a silent scream, turning his head stiffly from side to side. The clock was charming, and the sound pleasant, but Summers was aware at every chiming that a gathered silence of many years was being disturbed.
Every morning he researched among the Mortensa books and papers, had lunch at a local trattoria recommended by Bramanti, wandered back through the convolutions of Via Serpente, spent the early afternoon browsing over some interesting volume, then worked again until early evening. On Sunday he went to Mass in a local church, but not Mortensa’s, a visit to which he was saving as a special treat.
Rain swept in waves over the roofs and cupolas of Venice, but lost in his work, Summers hardly noticed. On days of particularly foul weather he took to bringing his lunch with him and not leaving the palazzetto at all.
The library was a delight. Once he approached a door alongside the great clock and only realised as he reached out to open it that it was a staggering piece of trompe l’œil. The bibliophilic joys, too, were unending. One afternoon he wasted hours, lost in a 1499 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the vellum binding and heavy, hand-made paper of which were just as ravishingly sensuous as the adventures conveyed by the text and illustrations. With a pang of envy, he came upon a long shelf of books on anatomy by the likes of Guido Guidi, Realdo Columbo and Gabrielle Fallopio, though surprisingly (and for Summers disappointingly) not a sign of an Andreas Vesalius De humani corporis fabrica, the one book on the subject he would have bet on finding.