5

ON THE EVENING of the sixth day, while he was occupied with his diary, Chiara phoned. Would he collect Litsov’s belongings from the Central Police Station? The police had completed their inquiries; it had been concluded that Litsov died by misadventure. She had taken his agreement for granted it seemed; the police would be expecting him to call; he must take some means of identification with him.

Her voice was warm, immediate, instinct with a special kind of promise, and Raikes was deeply stirred by it, after the days of not seeing her, of thinking about her constantly. ‘When can I see you?’ he said.

‘You can come over tomorrow, if you like.’

‘Do you want me to bring the things?’

‘Things? Oh … no. I don’t want them. You will come tomorrow, won’t you? I miss you so much.’

‘I miss you, too,’ he said, and his throat tightened at the urgency of the truth in these simple words. He could not come until late afternoon, he explained: there was his work, and an official meeting at the offices of the Soprintendenza and then he had promised to have a drink with a friend, a fellow called Steadman, whom he didn’t think she knew.

‘No, I don’t know him,’ she said. ‘Come whenever you like. There will be no need for you to rush off this time.’

Excitement at the promise in these words, at the thought of seeing her, the enormous relief of knowing that the police inquiries were over, made it impossible for him to return immediately to his diary. He walked restlessly about the room for some time. So prompt was he to suggestion where Chiara was concerned that the mere sound of her voice worked immediate physiological effects on him and these were slow to subside. It was half an hour before he was collected enough to sit down again at his desk, take up the threads of what he had been writing …

One of the mysteries surrounding the Madonna is why no account has remained to us of her stay at the Casa Fioret. This suggests at least some element of deliberate suppression. Piero Fornarini in his correspondence with his cousin makes what looks very like a play on words when he refers to the donor – who was presumably the owner of the Casa Fioret at that time. It seems this man had asked for his name to be kept out of things, as also the circumstances of the Madonna’s installation. This is distinctly odd. He had a miraculous Madonna on his hands, he agreed to have her placed in a prominent position, then he spent a good deal of his time – and quite a bit of money – trying to keep it quiet. Fornarini says he should be called Cornadoro, Golden Horns. The immediate connotations of this are that he was rich and a cuckold. Or perhaps merely that his horns were productive of money for Fornarini. At any rate he was rich enough to ensure Fornarini’s silence; and if the horns part of it is right he would have a reason for wanting to keep things hushed up. Names ending in oro or ore were not uncommon in the period. One possible course might be to trace all such names recorded in Venice in the middle years of the eighteenth century. Far beyond my resources at present. By no means certain of success in any case – it might not be a pun at all. I have to admit that this whole line of inquiry comes to a dead end here, for the moment at least.

I am hoping for some information from Steadman tomorrow as to the life and work of this Girolamo who I am now sure actually carved the statue in 1432, on commission from the Friars of the Supplicanti. What I should like to get are some more details of his career, particularly afterwards – a man of that order of talent must have produced more work, not necessarily in Venice, but somewhere. Also of course, why did the friars reject it? Was Girolamo’s Madonna too naturalistic, too much a sexual being for them? There must be more to it than that. Maddening to think that the whole story is there, if only I could put my finger on the clue that would unravel it. There must be bits and pieces lying around – in some attic or archive, on some obscure shelf. Not so much unravelling, more like putting a jigsaw together …

My attacks, as Vittorini calls them, have not recurred lately, not for some weeks now. He was surprised to hear that himself. I have not taken any of the phenobarbitone yet – nor at the moment do I intend to. I haven’t been back to see him either. I am convinced that if only I could interpret them properly those things I saw would help me to understand the history of the Madonna. It seems to me just as likely or more likely that a disturbance in the impulses of the brain, this neural discharge, as he terms it, could be caused by psychic intimations as by some hypothetical lesion in the tissue somewhere. I am committing this to paper though would hesitate to say it to anyone but I think it is possible that the statue is imbued with some kind of energy and that through constant proximity over a period of time, concentrating on her as I have done, something of this could have been communicated to me. I know this is an extraordinary thing to say.

Raikes sat back abruptly. That feverish incredulity had come over him again. Could an image of stone be affected by what human beings did to her and near her? Could this in turn affect other human beings years, centuries, later? Fornarini’s pun, if that was what it was, even the Madonna’s sanctification, was mixed up with sexual treachery. It was the day we were together near her that I knew I was in love with Chiara. There were no more visions after that. All that randiness when I first started the work … He had gone about Venice in a state of tumescence. All focused now on her, on Chiara. Even now, he thought, just listening to her voice on the phone …

Only once her tone had changed, and that was when he had asked about Litsov’s things. She had been very definite that she did not want them. Of course she would not wish to be reminded of such a terrible experience. Not even some small thing that he might have had about him … She was able to dissociate herself from the past, it was a great gift. Bereavement took different people different ways. Chiara was one of those who seek for consolation in the senses: she would try to warm herself, not sit out in the cold. Like a cat … that gesture of hers was cat-like too. That was why her voice promised him so much, barely a week after her husband’s death. The night they had spent together, had she been in flight from some misery then? If so, she kept her head well, he thought, remembering the clear and definite instructions she had given him before and after. Two different Chiaras, the ardent creature of the night, the cool tactician of the morning. It came to Raikes suddenly that he did not really know her.

Litsov, of course, he had known even less. Litsov was summed up in other people’s phrases, a recluse, a bit of a hermit, highly strung, his prices are going up, Litsov has genius, my husband is an invalid, Litsov hates telephones … He had conquered his fear that day at least, the last of his life. Almost certainly he had phoned to Mestre, spoken to the people who were casting his work. He had learned something that disturbed him, something that determined him to go and see them – there and then, without delay. Childlike, he had dressed up to demonstrate his intention. In this immaculate state, waiting for the return of the boat, he had had a fit, fallen and choked to death in shallow water. He had not taken his phenobarbitone that day. Perhaps he had forgotten, his feelings being disturbed. The same drug, Raikes thought, prescribed by the same doctor. Had Litsov too had abnormal wave-patterns, an invisible, undetectable scar on the brain?

These and other questions presented themselves to Raikes in the course of the evening. Most pressing of all was the severely practical one that came to him as he was undressing for bed. What was Litsov doing down by the water? What could have led him, in the fog and gathering darkness, knowing there was no boat, to go stumbling about at the landing-stage?