Malachite Ceramic
He hurries across the square. Rather than go straight to the Palazzo Pallido, he turns south toward St. Mark’s. He needs the comfort of open space around him, to gather his thoughts.
Once he’s moving with the rising sun flickering on his face, bringing out all sorts of pinks and oranges from the city’s facades, memories of last night start pouring through his mind. The ecstasy that was hoped for, but never expected. Sybille’s astonishing yielding to intimacy. For Zorzo, uncovering her was like coming across hidden treasure, a magnificent thing that has lain out of sight, a hidden city under the sand.
He comes into the piazza, into a great block of sun, and stands there. “I love her,” he whispers to himself. “I do.”
He holds his hands to his head and could almost laugh. This is happiness, he thinks, and St. Mark’s Square, the greatest rectangle in Christendom, unpeopled in front of him.
Then people come, youngsters, navy cadets, swaggering, arrogant, clutching bottles. They must have been up all night. They’re making fun of one of their number. Someone steals this cadet’s cap and the others toss it to one another and the poor lad tries to catch it. Zorzo moves away, toward the water, and as a breeze comes in from the lagoon, it carries a bitter scent. He’s still there, the hanged man between the columns of the piazzetta, his head at right angles to his body, his coat even more jarringly fine against his yellowy black skin. Sybille was right: it’s almost impossible to imagine what crime he could have committed.
When Zorzo arrives at the Palazzo Pallido by the back door and heads past the kitchens, he hears Sybille and her husband arguing in the hall upstairs. He halts, his first terrifying thought that Fugger has found out about last night. He glances over his shoulder to the exit, wondering if he should slip away until he can find out more. But then he notices a pair of cooks, one cleaving the heads off rabbits and smirking at the other, signaling, surely, that the row is domestic and not grave. Zorzo ascends a little further, until he can hear clearly.
“I’m not asking you, woman, I’m telling you,” Fugger is saying. “It’s of no consequence whether you like it or not. It’s decided. I thought you hated all this water around you anyway.”
Sybille notices Zorzo hovering below. “There are people here, Jakob. Please lower your voice.”
“What people? What do I care?” Then he notices where she’s looking.
“I’ll return later,” Zorzo suggests.
“No,” Fugger barks. “Come up.” When Zorzo doesn’t immediately move, Fugger snaps, “Come up, for pity’s sake, where I can see you!”
Zorzo does as he’s told, although he would just as well take Fugger by the throat and tell him what he thinks of men who abuse their wives. The three of them stand for a moment in silence, Fugger looking Zorzo up and down before saying, “You have until tomorrow noon to finish. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Fugger continues glaring at the painter, as if he’s noticed something he’s missed before. He suspects, Zorzo’s sure in that moment, before Fugger says, almost casually, “And I hope you’ve done a good job, if you want to please her father.” He turns on his heels, ascends to his salon and slams the door behind him.
Sybille shares a petrified look with Zorzo before hurrying down into the chapel. “He is mad,” she says under her breath. “It is lucky you came when you did.” Shaking all over, she holds the back of her hand against her cheek.
“What happened?”
“There is some report or other of plague in the city. Who knows if it is to be believed, but we’re leaving. I suggested traveling had more risk and we should stay where we are. But we go the day after tomorrow. Can you finish by then?” she asks distractedly. It’s clearly not the first thing on her mind.
“I’ll do my best. Leaving?” Can he tell her he’s devastated? Ask if she feels the same? He waits for her to calm, to show him some warmth, acknowledge, in her eyes at least, the night they just spent together.
“He asked who it was.” She nods at the painting. “Who I was running toward so happily. I might have suggested it was him had I not feared he’d strike me for insolence.”
Zorzo takes Sybille’s hand and tries to kiss it, but she pulls it away. “Don’t. I can’t. I’ll go and change.”
All day Sybille is distracted. She can’t keep still, or remember the position of her arms or feet or the angle of her head. Every time Zorzo corrects her she clenches her jaw, or fists, but says nothing. Her eyes are red around the edges, not just from lack of sleep but from a private stress, and her pupils never steady, not for one moment. Zorzo is completely thrown off balance by her behavior. He can’t understand how she could have spent the night with him—which alone would be an earthshaking act, given her circumstances—and now be so remote. Perhaps she feels guilty and is pretending it didn’t happen; or maybe the house is oppressing her and she’ll return to normal when she’s out of it. Zorzo doesn’t know how to ask. He must be soft, he thinks, and first put her at ease.
“How many people have married in this room, do you think?”
Sybille gives a weak smile, but says nothing.
“I can’t resist a wedding,” Zorzo goes on. “Is anyone ever unhappy at one? Even if they know the marriage is doomed. A wedding is like the first warm day of the year, wouldn’t you say? Nothing but hope. After it, everyone might revert to being sworn enemies again, but for that day, peace.”
Sybille gives another perfunctory smile but adds nothing to the conversation and Zorzo decides to carry on in silence.
He starts making mistakes. When he’s touching up the line of her brow, he puts too much paint on the brush and a drip falls down the canvas, against her cheek like a black teardrop. It’s the most subtle part of the painting, built up, layer upon layer—in soft pinks, off-whites and Egyptian blue—to give her skin translucency. As he attempts to clean it, he ends up making the mark worse. He tries to divert his attention to the dress and the background, but, like picking at an unhealed scab, he keeps returning to the damaged area.
“I’ll have to wait until the morning to fix it,” he says in the end and puts some cloth over the top of the canvas to avoid looking at the mistake.
In the afternoon, the moment Sybille hears her husband’s boat depart, she breaks from her position and hurries over to the window. Zorzo peers over her shoulder as the barge retreats. He hopes she might relax a little now, but she’s wringing her hands and seems more agitated than ever. He puts his palm, very tenderly, against the small of her back, just so she can feel the warmth of it, but at his touch, she stiffens, before moving away.
“I have to get out of this dress,” she says. “I can’t breathe. Meet me upstairs. In the room I took you to before. You know the one? Take the back stairs. I need to talk to you.” Before he has time to respond, she’s gone, a bustle of ultramarine hurrying to the hall.
Zorzo turns back to the window. Fugger’s barge is ebbing into the distance, almost out of sight. He cleans his brushes and, as always, makes sure the phials of pigment are corked for the night. At length he turns the easel so the painting faces the room, carefully removes the cloth he placed over it earlier and stands back to look. He’s relieved. Now the paint has dried and settled, the damaged area doesn’t look so bad. Though Sybille appears to have a blackening wound down her cheek, he’s confident he can rectify the issue in a matter of hours. What is more gratifying is that the picture works. His hunch has paid off. The canvas has drama and immediacy. There’s a sense of mystery to it, as he’d hoped, in her relation to the background of statues. More unexpected, and perhaps the thing that elevates the painting the most, it has a quality of danger. This is a person who, though alluring, we’re not sure we can trust. In any case, Zorzo is confident there will be no hindrance with payment, especially now he’s been tasked with finishing ahead of time. And as soon as he receives the money, he’ll go straightaway and retrieve his father’s ring.
He goes up through the house. Every corner of it creaks against his passing. Though there are pools of lamplight here and there, mostly it’s dark and he gets temporarily lost. He finds himself on an unfamiliar upper landing and has to retrace his steps until he eventually discovers the door to the salon she meant.
“Are you there?” he says, giving a little knock. There’s no reply and he enters. The room is empty, cold too. It looks different today. No fire lit, nor food waiting. The lilies have gone, though the vases remain, still with their water, dirty and stagnant. The window is open and a trail of fallen petals leads to the window ledge. Some of the stamens have burst into little pools of dark indigo. The flowers must have been thrown out in a hurry, for when Zorzo goes to close the window, he notices stems strewn against the lower ledges of the building and at the side of the canal below. He closes the casement.
“You found it all right?” says Sybille from the doorway. Clasped in her fist is a set of heavy-looking keys. She’s changed from her dark blue gown to a silver floor-length cloak. Only in paintings has Zorzo seen a woman like her. She’s extraordinary. The cloak is embroidered—in what must be a million silver beads—in a swirling pattern that looks like a cornfield in a storm. It would have taken seamstresses months to create, be worth a fortune, and she wears it as if it were a common housecoat, thrown on.
“What is it—?” He coughs against the sudden dryness in his throat. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Jakob has forced my hand, with his plan to leave Venice. I have so much to do.” Sybille half circles the room and the silver beadwork of her gown stretches and curls. Again, Zorzo feels as if he imagined last night, that it hadn’t really happened, that she’s forgotten. She looks at him and says, “I know where prince orient is, and I can get it for you now. You can see it tonight and take it home with you.”
Of all the things Zorzo thought she might say, this was not one of them.
“He keeps it in a safebox in the ballroom, a metal cabinet where he stows precious things. He discussed it with Cardinal Soderini the evening after da Vinci was here. I didn’t tell you at the time because that was when I was trying to get you to leave the whole business; you remember, at San Zaccaria? One of these keys opens the safe.”
For a moment Zorzo feels a wash of relief, of triumph, that his instincts were right all along and that his plan is paying off. But the news has come in such an odd way, hurriedly and without fanfare. And it seems too obvious to point out that he can hardly steal the prince orient, that surely it would be missed. “You said you have much to do?”
“If we get into the cabinet, and I find the material for you, will you help me?”
“With what?”
“Not a small matter. Not a palatable one either. There’s risk, but little to you—if you do as I tell you.” She freezes, holds up her hand and turns her ear to the door. “Did you hear something?”
“No,” Zorzo says, though he’s too dazed to notice anything but her.
“They’ve barely gone. It’s too early.”
She exits back along the landing and listens from the top of the stairs. Zorzo’s skin prickles about the shoulders and the room seems oppressive. He finds his head turning to the sole painting in the room, his eyes meeting those of Sybille’s brother, Edvard. The young man’s face, as pale as the dove on the perch beside him, seemed elegant and composed before. Today, Zorzo detects a hunted, fearful man. Edvard’s gaze seems to say, Get out of this place, run from it as fast as you can, forget prince orient—or your life will be overturned as mine was. Zorzo tries to imagine how Fugger has people dealt with, the ones that cross him. He notices blood on the canvas. Three spots of it seem to bleed into the breast of the dove. He’s about to look closer, to see if it’s real or painted on, when Sybille comes back.
“It’s not them,” she whispers. “No one here but us. Follow me. I’ll show you.”
Not waiting for him, she descends the back stairs. Zorzo goes after her, at a remove, following her down one flight and along an unfamiliar passageway into the main part of the house.
“Quickly,” she says, her hushed voice echoing around the repeating tiers of stairs and landings. She stops at the entrance to the salon, the room in which Zorzo was interviewed. “In here,” Sybille calls and goes inside.
Zorzo knows he must leave the Palazzo Pallido. Not a small matter, not a palatable one either, she said, but in a manner that implied it was far from either, that it was dreadful. He feels stranded, a tiny thing against the red marble pillars of the chamber, held by some invisible force. He orbits the gallery and puts his head around the salon door. It’s dark inside. Sybille is standing beside the double doors at the far end, beneath one of the blind angels whose hands reach out to the room. “Come in,” she murmurs. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” She motions toward the double doors. “It’s in here, in the ballroom.”
Zorzo can feel sweat pool in the small of his back. “Sybille, let us leave this matter now.” Can he say he’s frightened of her, long keys held like daggers in her hand, silver gown shimmering, pale face floating above, that she reminds him of a siren of Greek mythology, a creature to tempt men to their doom, that still she hasn’t answered his question, explained what help she needs or acknowledged, in any form, the night they just spent together? “I’ll not go in there. Come, leave it now. I’ll return in the morning to finish the painting.”
“Just look. What harm is there in that?” Then, more impatiently, “I risked everything getting these keys. I had to steal into Tomas’s room when he was in the house. When he’s out of it, he keeps his door locked. He could have caught me, but I risked it for you.”
This might have been gratifying to hear any other time, what she’s done for him. As well as the fact she’s offering the prize that Zorzo has long sought. “Sybille, this cannot be the way to do it—”
“At least come and look at your color. I thought it was life and death to you?”
Zorzo wonders if he does what she asks, if he goes into the room, perhaps this new coldness in her might dissolve. He crosses over to her. She gathers herself and knocks on the ballroom door, softly, to check that no one is inside, then turns the handle and opens it. Cool air creeps out. The scene feels surreal, preposterous, as if fictional characters are enacting it. They enter.
Zorzo was expecting a large room, but even so, the size is shocking. It’s extravagantly high. It’s as cold as a catacomb and as echoey, due to the dark green ceramic that tiles the entirety of the walls and floor. Zorzo’s heard accounts of porcelain interiors, in Constantinople and Granada, but never set eyes on such a thing in Venice. The tiles have the color of a forest at night, and are veined with spidery traces of gold that come and go as you cast your eye around. There’s something Germanic about it, a chamber from a dark tale of folklore, or a place where grand poisonings take place. A long table seems to hover midair, like a floating carpet, and two dozen high-backed chairs are set, not around it, but pinned against the walls.
“It’s here,” Sybille says, leading Zorzo over to a waist-height trunk of metal, centered like an altar at the far end of the room. She starts trying the keys, one by one probes them back and forth. The rattle of metal, echoing against the malachite walls, makes Zorzo almost nauseous with anxiety. “I can feel the mechanism inside but it won’t drive home,” she’s saying.
The trunk frightens Zorzo, the gravity it seems to possess—a slab of scarred metal, strengthened by iron bands and fist-sized rivets. It seems to smell of furnaces and gunpowder, to have an elemental, indestructible quality, as if it’s endured through time, been hauled through ancient wars. A great part of him longs to see if truly it contains prince orient, but his instinct to flee from live danger is more overwhelming. “Sybille, truly, I do not like to be in this room. Tell me, what help do you need?”
“I mean to end him,” Sybille says.
“End him?”
“My husband. Tomorrow.” She’s almost matter-of-fact in the way she utters it. “Have I tried this one?” she says of one of the keys. “It looks too thin.” Zorzo can’t believe what he’s hearing, what she’s suggesting so casually. “At San Isepo. He goes alone,” she continues. “Just him and the abbot in the monastery’s chapel. No Tomas, no other men watching over him. There, an end to him. It is planned in every detail. For a year I have planned it. It’s the reason I came with him to Venice.”
Dots of dark color dance in front of Zorzo’s eyes, and the room tilts away from him. How has it happened? He was seeking a color, just that, but now he’s in a new land, where violence is in the air. She wants him to help her kill her husband. Is that what she’s always wanted? The only thing? Is that the reason Sybille persisted with Zorzo from the start, why she came to see him, why she insisted, even against her husband’s wishes, that Zorzo paint her portrait? “End him?” he repeats, clinging to the hope he’s misunderstood.
“I’ll need you only to get me away afterward. Get me away quickly. Nothing more serious than that. Why do these wretched keys not work?”
“No, Sybille. I cannot. Of course I cannot.”
“You don’t want your color?” She’s scornful now. “I thought it was a miracle, that it came from the stars. That it will make your name for all time.”
“But you think I would murder for it?” He’s asking himself as much as her. In the moment, he wonders whether murder is the only price there is.
“And I tell you again. It’s I who will do it. I need help to leave this island, that’s all.”
“What has happened to you since yesterday?”
“Time has happened. It has run out.”
“Did it mean anything to you? The night we spent?”
“This has nothing to do with that.”
“But tell me all the same. For me, it was...” He shakes his head as images of her flesh, her ecstatic eyes, tumble back and forth through his mind. His eyes return to the sight in front of him: Jakob Fugger’s indestructible trunk and the treasure it contains. Prince orient and Sybille are still entangled. “I’ve thought nothing through, about you and I,” he mutters, unable to marshal his ideas into a plan. “You are married, you live far away from here.” He knows he sounds like a lovesick adolescent, but goes on. “I thought at least a friendship had begun.”
“Do you want the color or not?”
“Of course, but not in this way. Not here in this room.”
There’s silence for a moment and there’s more than disdain on her face. There’s hatred. “And you fancy yourself as the hero of Thermopylae? I’ll find someone else, then. I’m leaving. You know the way out.”
As she turns to go, Zorzo takes her by the arm and she slaps him.
“You too. Men’s hands on me always. Get out.”
As Zorzo reels and cups his palm to his cheek against the burn, there comes the sound of footsteps approaching across the next room. The door clicks open and a corridor of light creeps across the floor. Sybille hides the keys in the folds of her gown.
“Who is it?” she says to the silhouette in the doorway. “Tomas, is that you?” It’s him for sure: his immense frame all but fills the opening. “Has something happened? Did you not go to San Isepo?” Why is she asking that? It makes her sound guilty. “Tomas, is it you or not?”
“Madam,” he replies blankly and Zorzo has no idea how much the man has heard or what he’s thinking. “Herr Fugger cut his visit short today.”
“Signor Barbarelli asked to see the ballroom,” Sybille goes on, crossing back to the door and in control of her voice again. “The chamber is famous in Venice, isn’t it? I take it that’s allowed? Him looking?”
Zorzo goes in her wake, but even when he’s close to Tomas and can see his face properly, he can’t get a reading from it. “It is a remarkable room,” he says in a voice that he hopes sounds passionless. “I’ve heard about it since I came to Venice and always wanted to look for myself.”
“Good night, then, Signor Barbarelli,” Sybille says breezily. “I’ll see you in the morning. Last day.”
“Good night.” He nods at her, and at Tomas, who stands to one side, but not quite enough for Zorzo to be able to get through the door without turning at a slight angle. Certain that Tomas is following him with his eyes, he strides across the salon and exits. He doesn’t go down the main stairs—he’s too terrified of coming face-to-face with Fugger—and instead circles the landing to the back stairs they just used. He halts halfway down. There’s another man below, though he’s half the breadth of Tomas.
“Sir, is everything all right?” the figure says and Zorzo realizes it’s Johannes. He tries to steady his breath. “Everything is good,” he manages. “Home now.”
He slips past Johannes and carries on down, through the kitchens and out. Halfway along the passage to the road, he stops and vomits.