A PALAZZO IN THE STARS

 

PAUL DI FILIPPO

 

Paul Di Filippo lives on Rhode Island. He has been writing professionally for some thirty years, and accumulated nearly that number of books under his byline.

 

 

A Curious Offer of Selective Employment

 

CAMPED OUT IN the middle of Saint Mark’s Square with their newfangled Austrian folding-seat walking sticks, the three brash young Americans attracted every native eye as they cut some carefree capers amidst their more serious artistic endeavors. They winked and smiled at all the passing women, young and old, beautiful and homely. They swigged heroic draughts of Chianti straight from straw-buffered bottles. They enjoyed a steady service of foodstuffs delivered to them from the Café Florian by scurrying waiters whom they had cajoled with largesse. They made gestures of over-obsequious deference to the suspicious patrolling carabinieri. They blew airy kisses to nuns and priests. And, of course, they sketched up a positive storm.

The past turbulent decade-and-a-half in Italy, including the country’s proud but bloody Unification, had diminished the number of timid, pleasure-seeking foreign visitors to the newborn Kingdom, and these three travelers were appreciated much as returning birds in spring, their presence regarded as a possible herald of increased patronage by Northerners reinstating Italy to the Grand Tour. An influx of highly useful dollars and pounds and francs and marks looked likely; unless, of course, the recent collapse in this year of 1877 of the corrupt government of Prime Minister Agostino Depretis resulted in further chaos—unfortunately, an Italian speciality, and hence one of the more dreaded outcomes.

Under a beneficent June sun as mellow as the expression on the face of Titian’s Madonna di Ca’ Pesaro in the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (a sight which had just this morning inspired the three men), the trio of visitors continued to sketch, while flocks of rock doves wheeled, landed, then soared aloft again. With narrow, lithe, linen-clad buttocks firmly ensconced on their small canework ovals atop hinged tripods, and well-used scuffed boots planted firmly on the pavement, they employed long, narrow, landscape-favoring sketchbooks featuring covers in mossgreen, oxblood and jonquil, as well as an assortment of pencils and charcoals, to capture some of the vibrant scene about them.

One fellow exhibited a long narrow face with a slightly bent nose, hair in two wings across his brow, radiating from a central parting, and a lush mustache. His technique as he sought to render the famed Doges Palace quite obviously partook of the new vogue of impressionism.

The second sketcher boasted a more oval face, hair already thinning across his crown, but compensated for by enormous bushy eyebrows above piercing optics. His nascent depiction of the Campanile (he had shifted his pad ninety degrees for that assignment) exhibited a sturdier realism.

The last artist possessed a somewhat plump face adorned with a small neat strip of mustache. But his thick untidy thatch of wheat-colored hair needed a trim. An aggressive chin dominated the lower portion of his physiognomy. The intensity of his concentration on the page seemed somehow, even to strangers, self-evidently a habitual part of his demeanor. Few if any smile lines had graven themselves onto his youthful but weary countenance.

This man sketched not any portion of the delightful, soul-stirring architecture of the Piazza San Marco, but rather the passing show of souls. He employed a technique midway between the naturalism of one friend and the impressionism of the other. But, today at least, his style featured a certain soupçon of the fantastic. The characters on his page were not rendered as they had been born, but rather sported in a subtle fashion, emerging from their garments in a manner at first almost imperceivable, tails and wings, horns and claws, fangs and abnormal, disturbing growths.

The trio of artists continued with their antics—the japes of the fantasist rang a bit hollow compared with those of his genuinely enthusiastic pals—and with their drawing, until finally the impressionist had cause to look over and regard the page which the wheat-haired man was fanatically belaboring.

“Good lord, Frank! Those are absolute monsters! One would think you were sitting in Bosch’s Garden rather than here in this lovely Mediterranean clime. What’s gotten into you, chum? Do you feel all right?”

Frank clapped his sketchbook shut and slid it into a scratched leather satchel by his side. He managed to look both rueful and maligned. “Oh, damn it all, John, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Nothing physical, if that’s what you mean. Just some kind of black dog at my heels. I had imagined this trip would rid me of the beast, but no such luck. And I can’t really plan my future intelligently with that mean mongrel nipping at my britches.”

John, the youngest of the trio by several years, seemed genuinely sympathetic and respectful of Frank’s dilemma, but only up to a point. “Well, I’m sure a path will present itself to someone of your sterling talents. And just consider, you have a rock-solid foundation to build on. After that knockout show in Boston—”

Frank vented his irritation on his friend. “Oh, to hell with that Boston show! It was two years ago, after all, and the load of praise rode in on the years-long coattails of insults and studied obliviousness. What a preening bunch of hypocrites, to admire the work they had slighted for so long. And all because it came from the son of a poor immigrant kraut laborer, an upstart boy who had to learn his trade decorating churches! No academy for me, or rich patrons, meant no respect. I still can’t forgive the bastards.”

The third man, sitting slightly removed from his comrades, now put down his own work and stepped over to see what the fuss was all about.

“Here, here, Frank, come off it. Get down off that high horse! What’s given you the vapors? We’re here to enjoy ourselves, in a land of beauty and delight, with plenty of lira in our pockets, no duties, and the winning charms of three young demiurges! Now, show me what you’ve been drawing that’s caused so much turmoil.”

Frank reluctantly took his pad out of his satchel. “Oh, all right, William, if you must see.”

Holding the book in his lap, Frank flipped through its pages, the weird illustrations of that afternoon’s composition eliciting exclamations and sage or joshing commentary from his appreciative, art-besotted bretheren. Frank began to feel somewhat less downtrodden and downhearted. Surely capturing these phantoms of his imagination in graphite had rendered them harmless to further disturb him.

So intent were the trio on examining Frank’s sketches that they failed to note that a new observer had joined them. Their attention was diverted from the pages only by a sonorous voice proclaiming in charmingly accented English, “Wonder of wonders! You are the very man I have been seeking!”

Frank looked up to confront a patrician figure. A rail-thin elderly gent with facial hair and a poet’s locks, both of the most startling Cremnitz White, as found in the Winsor & Newton palette. The man’s old-fashioned suit, though shabby, bespoke elegant tailoring. He carried a cane whose silver grip mimicked a dragon’s head.

“Whatever can you mean, sir?” asked Frank.

“Let us have introductions all around first, before I explain. I am the Duke of Fossombrone. Here is my card.”

The Duke tendered a neatly engraved card apiece to the artists. In turn, Frank gave their names.

“I’m Frank Duveneck. And these two roarers are John Henry Twachtman and William Merritt Chase.”

“And what brings you all here to the Queen of the Adriatic, my friends? I can’t credit that it was simply to meet my needs.”

“We’ve been studying art in Munich for some time now,” Frank said. “I’ve reached the point where I’m thinking I might even open up my own school there. But after so much hard labor we grew tired of that city, and sought to experience something completely different and relaxing.”

“Well, you have come to the antipodes, so far as that dour German culture is concerned. I’m sure you will all benefit from your stay here. And I know I will.”

“What do you allude to again with this cryptic assertion?”

“Only that I have been looking for an artist who might be able to chronicle an expedition I plan to undertake soon, and I believe you are that man.”

Frank felt compelled to speak up for his pals. “But my friends have as much talent as I. Why not one of them, or perhaps all three of us?”

The Duke said, “Allow me to see your work, gentlemen.”

John and William complied with the request. After examining their portfolios, the Duke said, “Very accomplished and stirring, sirs. But your work lacks that resonance with ineffable mystery that I detect in Signore Duveneck’s. So it is to him alone that I will tender my offer of employment.”

His curiosity piqued, Frank asked, “Exactly what are the terms and nature of this employment?”

Duke Fossombrone smiled, with some small underlying sadness attendant. “It is all too complicated to explain in the middle of the Piazza under a wilting sun. Please do me the honor, all three of you, of sharing dinner with me at my home tonight. Simply ask anyone for directions to the Ca’ d’Oro, and try to arrive by nine. Please bring neither wine nor flowers nor sweets, as I have a cellar, a garden and a baker, all of superlative caliber. I’ll see you then, gentlemen.”

The Duke of Fossombrone walked away with a slight limp, but seemed rather too proud to employ his stick as fully as another man might have done to maximize its benefits.

 

 

The Jolie Laide and the Legless Man

 

THE GONDOLA FERRYING the three American artists to the Ca’ d’Oro rocked precipitously as John and William stood at its prow, supporting each other tipsily whilst trying to harmonize with their propulsive steersman at the rear on some native barcarole whose foreign lyrics they had adapted to an indecent English doggerel. The sun had just set, empurpling the gently sloshing Grand Canal and its dreaming houses, and allowing a few eager bright stars to appear above. Civic gas lights vied with oil lanterns to oasis the dark streets of the marshy city.

Slouched comfortably low in the boat on cushions, Frank smiled at the antics of his comrades. At the moment he felt constitutionally incapable of joining them, but he admired their high-spirited roistering nonetheless. To surround oneself with boisterous chums when one was feeling grim was sound medicine, albeit of limited efficacy.

Frank’s thoughts turned to the mysterious proposition tendered by Duke Fossombrone. To take on the mantle of evidentiary artist for some daring expedition into uncharted realms sounded jim-dandy to Frank at the moment, with or without compensation. So far, Italy had not proven sufficiently remote or distracting enough to alleviate his anxieties. If to attain peace of mind he had to emulate Pierre de Brazza, currently engaged in charting the upper reaches of the Ogowe River in Africa with nothing more than a bale of trade fabrics, then so be it!

The gondola began now to arrow toward the shore. The two crooners ceased their caterwauling and substituted whistles and exclamations.

“Is that really where skinny old Saint Nick lives?”

“What a manse! Look at all that gilt. Her lines ain’t so bad neither! Though she ain’t no Jefferson Market Courthouse!”

“Frank, you snagged yourself a rich fish, boy!”

Sitting up, Frank took in the ornate, filigreed, columned façade of the alabaster palazzo. The elegant building radiated the worn dignity of an elderly widow.

“I’m not so sure about his wealth, boys. I’m pretty certain he’s just renting the place. The House of Gold’s been on and off the market for decades, ever since Marie Taglioni gave it up.”

“Not that hussy of a ballerina who started the craze for short skirts? She lived here?”

“Indeed. While you boys were out liquoring up, I made a few inquiries. Duke Fossombrone came to town only a year ago, with his son and daughter. They don’t socialize hardly at all, and no one seemed to know much about them.”

“Daughter!” said John. “Now you’re talking! Bill and I will tickle her while you and the Duke are picking sand fleas outta your trousers in Outer Mongolia.”

The gondola bumped the slanted, partly submerged, algae-slick stone steps of Ca’ d’Oro; the riders disembarked, paid the boatman, and found a big, shadowed wooden door with a large knocker that they loudly employed.

The door swung inward after only a few seconds’ delay, to reveal a young woman, dressed not as a servant but in a fashionable ensemble of dove grey and mauve.

Bill and John doffed their hats immediately, but Frank was a laggard. He was too poleaxed by her appearance to respond.

Duke Fossombrone’s daughter, if such she were, demonstrated the type of woman dubbed by the French jolie laide, or ‘beautiful-ugly.’ Her thick black eyebrows were paralleled by a sparse and downy but undeniable mustache. Her oversized nose and mouth were out of all proportion to her face. Her figure was good, but her hands were too big. Her eyes resembled those of a startled, intelligent doe. The overall impression she radiated was chimeric, that of the hybrid offspring of a human mother and some satyr or troll.

To Frank, she seemed beauty incarnate, some Mona Lisa that Goya might have limned in a twilight moment.

After what seemed an eternity of contemplation, Frank too removed his hat. The woman smiled then, said “Buona sera, signori.” She indicated by gesture that they should enter.

The artists were conducted to a cool inner garden with high walls which had been arranged to host their meal. Capacious terracotta pots overflowed with tropical greenery. A large trestle table draped with a plain white cloth held a bounty of enticing food: steaming plates of vegetables and chicken; bowls of macaroni in tomato sauce; cheeses and fruit; baskets of rolls; as well as pitchers of water and wine. Tall-footed free-standing candelabra illuminated the repast.

Standing to welcome them was the Duke. He laid his hand on the shoulder of a seated young man, presumably his son. The handsome lad, perhaps twenty-seven or so, wore a brave look compounded of equal parts hope, despair and physical exhaustion.

“Welcome, gentlemen, welcome! Allow me to introduce my family to you. My daughter, Restituta, you have met at the door. Her English, I fear, is minimal.”

Restituta curtsied in the manner of a large bird settling from the skies onto a tree limb, an awkward signature mode that Frank found only enhanced her peculiar charm.

“And this is my son, Ludovico.”

“I would stand, sirs, but cannot do so easily, and so beg your indulgence.”

Frank noticed then two artificial limbs, with wool-padded cupped tops and dangling leather straps, resting on the floor near some crutches that leaned against Ludovico’s chair.

“My son lost both legs at the Battle of Villa Glori, some ten years ago, fighting to unite our motherland. He has been struggling back to health all the time since, but I fear he has his defeats as well as his victories.”

Ludovico smiled bravely. “I was proud to make the sacrifice for our glorious Kingdom.”

Duke Fossombrone continued: “Now, gentlemen, I’m sure you have a thousand questions. But our rapidly cooling meal beckons, and I for one am famished. Let us dine, and then you’ll hear all.”

Living as they had been on a limited budget, the hungry artists needed no second invitation to commence. Selecting linen napkins and piling high their plates—more like salvers, really—Bill and John took up seats on either side of the Duke’s son (inexplicably disdaining his alluring sister) and soon had the lad reminiscing vivaciously about his martial prowess. The Duke watched approvingly, while doing more drinking of the potent red wine than actual eating.

Restituta first made up a plate for her brother, then assembled one for herself. After she found a chair, Frank brought his own meal over to sit beside her. Unable to pass more than a few words in each other’s language between them, they contented themselves with enjoying the food and exchanging smiles and nods of appreciation from time to time.

Frank was pleased to see that the young woman had a hearty appetite and no timidity about indulging it in front of strangers.

Finally, once all were sated, Duke Fossombrone got to his feet, a tad unsteadily due to his imbibing.

“Mr. Chase and Mr. Twachtman, I am sharing this secret with you, although I choose not to avail myself of your services, out of respect for your camaraderie with Mr. Duveneck, whom I definitely do wish to employ. I enjoin you to keep this knowledge sub rosa, or you might scotch the whole affair. For you see, I have had many narrow-minded auditors of my dream, men whom I relied on for friendship and support, react with sneering incredulity and even threats of incarceration, as if I were a dangerous madman. Simply because the expedition for which I need Mr. Duveneck’s talents is no common earthly one.

“I am going to the Moon!”

 

 

Visions of a Lunar Empyrean

 

“LET ME GET this straight,” said Frank for the fifth time.

The hour was well past midnight, and several candles had already guttered out and been replaced. John and Bill, wearying of the infinite parsing of what they were already calling “Fossombrone’s Folly,” had departed boozily for their lodgings in the cheap pensione where all three artists shared a room. Ludovico, wan and exhausted from the small normal efforts of eating and socializing, had been helped to bed by his sister, clomping out of the garden on his unnatural legs like some amateur, untrained stiltwalker. But Restituta had returned swiftly after seeing to her brother’s comfort. The long table had been cleared of food by a quiet and efficient servant, and on the board now was spread an expansive sheet of paper whose quasi-mechanical diagrams reminded Frank of Leonardo’s sketches.

“This mystery substance which you have access to,” Frank continued, “possesses the power to cancel out gravity? How can that be?”

Duke Fossombrone sighed. “I have no idea how it works, young man, I know only that it does. As I told you, it is a unique element, possibly stellar in origin, discovered by the Rae-Richardson Polar Expedition nearly thirty years ago. One huge chunk of ore was mined in the Arctic and brought back to civilization, where it sat in a warehouse as a useless enigma for decades, until my chance discovery of its true nature and potential.”

Duke Fossombrone had disclosed to Frank that he was a respected naturalist with connections to the Academy of Sciences at Bologna, and well-versed in experimentalism.

“And now you own this miraculous stuff, and plan to use it to travel to the Moon.”

“Finally you comprehend!”

“Oh, I savvy all right—I just don’t believe any of it!”

Duke Fossombrone sighed. “Given the lateness of the hour, I had hoped to forego a demonstration until the morning. But I can see I will not gain your participation without proof. Restituta!”

The Duke addressed his daughter in their native language, and she hastened dutifully off. Fagged from the busy day and the incredible assertions of the Duke, Frank blurted out an impolite question.

“What’s the story behind your daughter’s odd name?”

“She is named after Saint Restituta, patron saint of Ischia where she was conceived. My wife and I had long been barren, but upon a recreational visit to that charming isle we found ourselves granted our fondest wish. Unfortunately, Restituta’s mother perished in giving birth to her, but that in no way diminished my wife’s dying allegiance to the saint, nor my living pledge. And in fact the name has proven peculiarly apt, since Restituta’s main miracle was to cross the waters to Ischia not in any conventional craft, but riding upon a millstone! A voyage no more nor less wonderful than the one I intend to make to the Moon.”

Restituta returned, pushing a wooden trolley. On the trolley sat a bulky box, with wires extending into and out of some intermediary device. Frank did not recognize the apparatus at all, and Fossombrone sensed his puzzlement.

“This is nothing more than a Plante-Faure lead-acid cell, a storage mechanism for electricity, with a Wheatstone rheostat as part of the circuit. That latter device allows proper modulation of the current. All common as the pox. But here—here is the real marvel.”

The Duke picked up what appeared to be a small thin sheet of hammered copper.

“Here is a small piece of the worked ore, Mr. Duveneck. I have named the substance ‘cavourite,’ after our beloved patriot, Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour. Now, Frank—if I may be so bold as to employ your Christian name—please donate a small object of your own so you will know I have not prearranged a hoax.”

Frank found a bottle of ink in his pocket and handed it over. The Duke wrapped the bottle in the foil, then stuck the leads from the lead-acid cell onto the assemblage with a pinch of putty. He set the wrapped bottle down on the table.

“Now, watch closely, as I regulate the voltage flowing through the wires, starting from nil. I have to use a delicate touch, and my hand is unsteady at this hour, which is one reason I had hoped to postpone the demonstration.”

Manipulating the rheostat with a slight tremble, the Duke radiated an expectancy which communicated itself to Frank.

The artist kept his gaze fixed on the bottle, but a corner of his vision allowed him to note that Restituta was similarly entranced.

Was that a hairsbreadth of space showing between the bottle and the tabletop? Yes, it was! The bottle was floating!

As the Duke adjusted the rheostat, the bottle wrapped in cavourite rose higher and higher until it halted at eye-level, floating as innocently as a dandelion clock. Frank passed his hands through the sphere of air all around the bottle, looking for invisible threads, and found naught.

“But—but this is incredible!”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it? You see, the metal is inert until an electrical current of the proper type is passed through it. Then, pure levitation.” Pursing his lips, the Duke blew upon the weightless object and it drifted away in reaction. “And that is how one can maneuver in space. With breath, of a special sort.” The Duke cut the current, and the bottle fell with a solid thunk to the table.

The steed of Frank’s excitement, racing at a fever pitch, experienced a sudden reining in. “But why the Moon, of all places? This invention has so many earthly uses. Flying carriages, for one! You could become rich, or change society. Why go haring off to another world? What’s waiting for you there? What’s so special about the Moon?”

“Ah, Frank, that’s where my daughter comes in. Ever since birth, perhaps because of the special blessed circumstances of her conception, she has had visions. Vision of otherworldly scenes and personages. Even communications from them, which I have come to trust without reserve. And her visions have told her that on the Moon dwell beings who can help us. Specifically, they can restore her brother’s legs. And that is the thing my darling girl most desires.”

Frank stood flabbergasted. “But—but such creatures would have to be angels!”

Restituta understood something of Frank’s declaration. She grabbed both his hands and transfixed him with her large, dark eyes, like some lamia out of Keats. “Si, si, signore! Vedo gli angeli!”

 

 

Preparations and Flight

 

FRANK SAW LITTLE of John and William these days: he was much too busy getting ready to fly to the Moon.

Once dawn had broken after the incredible demonstration of the levitating ink pot, he had hastened across the city, woken his pals, and informed them of his intention to move out of the pensione. His chums regarded him as a man possessed, but did not seek to dissuade him. Rather, they sleepily and bemusedly wished him luck in his quixotic pursuits. Frank accepted their endorsement, gathered up his small belongings, and returned to the Ca’ d’Oro. Shown by the lone servant to the room that would be his, he laid his head down on a pillow for just a moment and woke up twelve hours later.

Finding his way down the main dining room, he discovered the Fossombrone family already seated at table.

“Ah, Frank,” the Duke said, “you have left the realm of dreams at last. Join us now, for we have much to plan and discuss. Sit with Ludovico between yourself and Restituta, and my son will translate anything you wish to say to my daughter, and also of course whatever she replies.”

So began the daily, hourly makeshift translation routine by which Frank would begin to know better the fascinating Restituta, supplemented by his gradual acquisition of a smattering of Italian, and her growing mastery of English. Ludovico proved to be so mild and obliging a linguist, one whose fondness for his sister made light all chores regarding her happiness, that at times Frank almost forgot the young man was even present. It seemed as if Frank’s expressions of meaning went straight to Restituta’s consciousness, and vice versa.

When Frank did suddenly take cognizance at intervals of Ludovico’s presence, he had to smile, for the situation reminded him of the famous quandary Cyrano de Bergerac had gotten himself involved in. And was not Cyrano also author of The Other World: The States and Empires of the Moon?

In any case, that second meal in the Ca’ d’Oro marked the beginning of a growing friendly intimacy between Frank and the jolie laide. And what he discovered over that and subsequent days—many hours of which were spent sketching Restituta—was a creature composed of paradoxical qualities. Shy in most matters, yet bold in detailing and affirming her angelic visions. Free from personal agendas, except for her bulldog tenacity in wishing to secure Ludovico his legs. Innocent of the ways of the world, yet able to see through any sham or pretense of human behavior. Intensely religious, and yet with a passion for mortal life and its sensual pleasures. Not coquettish, like so many other young women Frank knew, and yet harboring a smoldering allure. All these yoked antinomies of her character and nature made Frank regard her as a marvel, and soon, without intending to, he found himself in love with Restituta Fossombrone.

He broached his feelings just once to her, and received this reply:

“All my energies and attentions are devoted now to Ludovico’s healing, Signore Duveneck. But after we succeed, I would not look cruelly away from your kindly face.”

Frank had to content himself with that nebulous gesture of future attention. And although in other courtships he had been perhaps impatient and overbold, he found himself charmed to a new placidity.

But really, there was hardly time to play Romeo, for Frank was kept busy much of each day with the preparations for the trip to the Moon.

First, he had been ordered by the Duke to begin sketching angels. This he did by channeling Restituta’s verbal descriptions of the creations she had seen (or just imagined?) into lines on the page. This portion of his job (for which he was getting room and board and the promise of a sizable payment in dollars when they returned from the Moon) was very pleasant naturally, for with Ludovico’s help he was able to chat amiably while he sketched. After a week or so, Frank had compiled a large portfolio depicting strange beings—gaunt, attenuated, winged like bats, with faces like holy horses, creatures adapted from Doré’s oeuvre—which he presented to the Duke.

“Wonderful! These are brilliant patterns of the vague ghosts I had flitting in my mind from my daughter’s accounts. Vivid renderings will be immensely helpful, for we must be able to recognize Restituta’s patrons when we arrive on the Moon, to distinguish them from any other races we might encounter.”

But aside from employing Frank’s artistic skills, Duke Fossombrone also put him to work with a task involving some skilled artisanal labor.

“You will have noticed,” said the Duke, “that many hired men are busy about the palazzo, performing certain tasks of construction.”

“Indeed,” said Frank, who had, to his puzzlement, witnessed a sizable gang of laborers outside the palazzo each day, from dawn to dusk. They appeared to be entrenching around the foundation of the building, as if fashioning a moat, while simultaneously encasing the building in a sturdy frame of timbers anchored to the structural elements of the Ca’ d’Oro.

“Perhaps you would care to see an interior modification they have embarked on just this very hour.”

“Lead on, Duke.”

In one of the big upper-storey loggia that looked out on the Grand Canal, men were curtaining the ornate portals with thick panes of glass, whose seams they sealed with generous stroppings of India rubber. They were also applying the viscous latex substance to all the other joints in the room’s ancient construction. Moreover, at either entrance to the loggia, small anterooms were being constructed.

“Looks like you’re anticipating a Vermont mud season with those makeshift wardrobes there, Duke.”

“Ah, not at all, Frank. We are merely guarding against the intrusion of nothing. Now, come along with me to see some machinery, please.”

Perplexed but game, Frank followed the old savant.

A mass of newly delivered wooden crates awaited downstairs. The Duke itemized their contents.

“Here we have a phalanx of Planté lead-acid batteries to store the electrical current generated by these Gramme Dynamos. The Dynamos are hand-cranked, which is another task you can assist at, Frank, as can Ludovico, who possesses very strong arms, as you might have noticed, from shifting his crippled frame about. These two components insure that we will have plenty of voltaic resources to impel the cavourite, and also to power some lighting fixtures. One of my peers, Sir Joseph Swan, has graciously consented to loan me some of his prototype ‘incandescents,’ as he dubs them. And then there is a third use for the electrical current. It will fractionate water into its moieties of oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen will be released into our sealed loggia as necessary, to replenish what we breathe, while the hydrogen will be compressed and stored in tanks situated around the perimeter of the palazzo. And from these tanks will protrude directional jets.

“All of this invaluable equipment will be situated in the loggia, except for the peripheral holding tanks, of course, which will be controlled from the loggia via very reliable electro-mechanical linkages. Additionally, we will lay in plenty of foodstuffs and beverages, extra garments and bedclothes, a few pistols and some tools. Do these preparations begin to hint at anything to you, Frank? And have you any suggestions to make?”

Frank stared silently at the Duke for a few moments, before breaking into a huge grin. “Well, damn my soul! If you don’t put old Columbus in the shade, Duke, I don’t know who does! My hat’s off to you! I won’t even dare to say what I think you have up your sleeve, but if you can pull it off, the world will hail you as a hero.”

The Duke grinned modestly, and bowed his head. “A father will dare much for his progeny. And if some new knowledge of the cosmos accrues along with the patriarchal deeds, so much the better.”

“I would suggest one thing, though. Heat.”

The Duke cogitated. “Hmm, the transmissive properties of the aether, and its density, are unknown quantities. I had thought solar flux might be enough for comfort... But certainly we could add some extra insurance. Very well, I’ll write to Sir Swan immediately and see what he can provide! Now, as to your task, which requires a delicacy I cannot demand of the common laborers—”

Down to the lowest level of the palazzo the men went. There Frank saw many bundles of cuprous plates, along with kegs of hide glue.

“Here is all the cavourite in the world, hammered out to its thinnest dimensions consistent with lifting strength. I need you to affix it all evenly to the stone interior walls and columns, beams and ceiling.”

“Not the floor too?”

“No, the floor is extraneous. But elsewhere, the plates must be tightly secured. Can you do this?”

“Why, sure, it’s just like sloshing rabbit-skin glue onto a canvas. Let me at it!”

True to his boast, Frank found the process of tiling the basement of the Ca’ d’Oro with cavourite to be a trivial, albeit hot and messy one. Shirtless, with heated pots of glue bubbling, he laid down one metal square after another, conforming the pliable sheets to arches and columns alike. As the days progressed, with other work continuing in parallel, the basement of the palazzo came to resemble Peter the Great’s famed ‘Amber Room,’ a shining sun-colored box.

Restituta came demurely to visit at regular intervals, bringing refreshments and conversation in her improving English. She seemed neither repelled nor distracted by Frank’s bare manly chest, rather regarding it as a mere natural phenomenon.

When all the cavourite was in place, a single wire was run from the basement plates (their contiguous conductive surface needed only one point of electrical contact) to the batteries and rheostat controls in the loggia.

And then came the day they had all been working toward: departure for the Moon.

The voyagers had waited deliberately until darkness descended, bringing with it the anticipated full silvery pockmarked orb high in the heavens, for which they could aim.

The loggia, illuminated by Shaw’s incandescents as if a carnival scene, was replete with supplies and equipment and furniture, but still relatively spacious. Even the big tuns of water did not loom too oppressively. Through the glass wall, the gay night-life of Venice continued in its immemorial fashion, with passing watercraft arrowing lazily through the canals.

Restituta attended to the electrolysis device that was fractionating the water into useful gases. Seated, Ludovic cranked the handle of a generator to top off the batteries. Duke Fossombrone stood at the master controls. The household’s lone servant had been sent away on a contrived errand. A subliminal but real vibration of excitement and expectancy infused the chamber.

“Testing the propulsive jets for the final time now.” Muted hissing penetrated the loggia from various points around the palazzo. “All operational. I will now begin to enliven the cavourite.”

The Duke slid the rheostat control, and the Ca’ d’Oro began to shift and creak, as if in a windstorm. He advanced the control further, and new and louder popping and ripping noises mounted. Still further, and a cataclysmic tumult battered their ears, as the ancient and now weightless palazzo, reinforced by its cage of timbers but suddenly lacking a bottom to the otherwise intact Amber Room, tore completely loose from terra firma and rose gently into the sky, like a drifting feather in reverse.

The Duke halted their ascent at the height of about forty feet. Despite his expectations, Frank was astonished, his heart beating like a racehorse’s at the end of the newly inaugurated Kentucky Derby. He looked down at the light-pricked city and, despite the darkness he could see the spot vacated by the Ca’ d’Oro filling with water. Astonished gondoliers were falling into the Canal, and bellowing pedestrians pointing upward.

“Goodbye, City of Bridges!” proclaimed the Duke. “We go to build the ponte di stelle!”

 

 

To the Moon, and What Awaited

 

THE UNFORESEEN NULLITY of gravity once Earth had been left behind proved merely distracting and awkward for the Duke and Frank. Luckily, they had brought along extensive coils of stout rope of varying gauges. Using some of the lesser-strength stuff, Frank was able to arrange a spider’s web of lines that allowed one to maneuver about the loggia with ease, and to anchor oneself at a desired spot. (Of the embarrassingly messy and counter-intuitive chamberpot arrangements, conducted behind a floating folding screen, the less said the better). Thus Duke Fossombrone could handle the propulsion controls of the flying palazzo without fear of drifting away at a crucial moment, and Frank could tether himself before the windows in order to fulfill his mandate to sketch their voyage.

Not that he needed any lure of wages to make him hasten to fill his pad, penciling madly and furiously enhancing with pastel colors for hours at a stretch, till he had to be coerced to sleep or eat. What an opportunity this was, one for which any artist would have gladly given his non-facile arm! Had any painter ever been presented with such magnificent vistas before? These incredible and colorful pastures of the heavens, strewn with stars and planets and planetesimals and polychromatic nebulae as thick as daisies, made the subject matter of the vaunted Hudson River School look like a ditch full of rainwater. Not even Thomas Cole had ever achieved such grandeur. If only John and Bill had been able to come along—

But they hadn’t, and when Frank returned to Earth it was his name alone that would be made. All uncertainty about his future, all world-weariness had vanished amidst these celestial splendors.

But if the lack of weight had proven simply a bit of ‘weather’ for Fossombrone and Duveneck, an irksome aspect of the foreign environment, for Ludovico and Restituta the new condition had proven, respectively, inebriating and estranging.

For Ludovico, the lack of weight endowed him with perfect freedom of movement for the first time since he had sustained his wounds and loss. As if granted wings, he soared about the loggia, laughing and shouting.

“Sister, look at me! I fly like an eagle! Already your perfect faith has blessed me! Even if our mission does not secure me new legs, I will always have had these hours of bliss!”

Thus addressed, Restituta, huddling miserably in a floating chair that threatened to dislodge her with every stray breeze, looking like a scared rabbit in a corner of its warren, and clutching a needlepoint cushion to her bosom, tried to make a suitably positive reply.

“I am so glad, brother. You deserve such release.”

Her smile was wan and forced, as if she were trying to manufacture cheer despite some internal upheaval that commanded her true attentions.

Frank had not initially given much concern to Restituta’s grim mien, chalking it up simply to natural female timidity and anxiety. But as the trip proceeded with no cause for alarm, and she still refused to brighten up despite all cajoling, he became alarmed for her. Catching her alone in a far corner of the loggia, he spoke frankly to the jolie laide, for whom he still retained the largest of affections and hopes.

“Restituta, cara mio, what ails you? Aren’t you happy that things are going so swimmingly? Thanks to your father’s foresight and inventiveness, we are as safe as bugs in a rug while we journey where no man has gone before.”

Restituta’s large eyes brimmed with tears, but did not quite overspill. Frank thought she had never looked lovelier.

“Yes, Frank, I am proud of father. And of you too. You have both exerted yourself beyond compare in fulfillment of my implausible dreams. But it is those dreams themselves that trouble me. Le voci degli angeli—the voices of the angels, which I heard only as a murmur on Earth, have become a swelling chorus in my brain. There is not a minute now when they do not chatter to me. And some of the things they say are—disturbing.”

Frank sought to minimize Restituta’s worries. In truth, he only half-believed in her angels, placing his faith more in the Duke’s natural philosophy. Granting credence to this tale of supernatural beings living on the Moon and able to confer new limbs on Ludovico had been, he was certain, merely a necessary pretext to motivate a more practical and rational venture.

“Don’t worry, my darling. I’m sure the angels are just excited finally to have a chance to meet you. If they are indeed angels, then their intentions must be only for our good.”

Restituta spoke haltingly. “Yes... yes, I continue to believe that. But it is only that what angels deem good is so much larger and more complex than what mortals understand of that realm. And that infinitude frightens me.”

Frank spontaneously clutched the young woman to him in an embrace that sent them both pinwheeling away across the loggia. Ludovico looked up from his cranking of the Gramme Dynamos to smile. The Duke was napping, sending gentle elderly snores into the room.

Frank stole a kiss and whispered, “Have faith, Restituta. This will be a bold tale to tell our children once we are safely home, doddering elders in our seats by the hearthside.”

“I would like to believe that, Frank. Truly, I would.”

Over subsequent days, Frank continued to hover for most of his waking hours near the windows. The swelling bulk of the Moon provided endless inspiration—to the Duke as well, who employed a telescope upon its silvery face. The limiting factor on Frank’s sketching was the intense cold radiating inward from the glass. Despite positioning one of Shaw’s electrical heating mechanisms close to him and wrapping himself in a blanket, his hand would often chill and cramp.

The Duke acknowledged Frank’s stamina, saying, “What a blessing you hit upon those heaters, son! And to think I was going to put our water supply outside the loggia to save room, and pipe it in. It would have frozen solid, and then where would we have been?”

Frank pictured the rest of the rooms of the Ca’ d’Oro, outside their tiny, fragile nest of warmth and air. The ghostly mansion must be a dark and frigid and spectral domain, like Dante’s lowest Hell, or some spell-locked castle from a Gothic novel. He shivered at the forceful image.

The Duke had regularly to make steady adjustments in their course, puffing hydrogen this way and that, always seeking to catch up with the Moon not where it currently appeared, but where it would be in its orbit upon their arrival in that region. He relied more on dead reckoning than mathematics. Luckily their supply of hydrogen gas seemed equal to the task.

At last came the day when just a tiny slice of the satellite filled their view, and they hung motionless with respect to the orb.

“Daughter, where shall I land us?”

Restituta was supine, if such a term could apply in the absence of up and down, with her eyes closed and a cold wet cloth laid across her brow and held in place with a limp forearm. Her voice, when she spoke, was haunted, of a timbre unheard before.

“Move the palazzo slowly around the lunar globe, and I will direct you.”

Before too long, Restituta signalled that they hovered over the exact landing spot preferred by the angels. The Duke changed the orientation of the flying mansion, and suddenly for the first time the Moon seemed below rather than ahead. They began their controlled descent.

The return of some small fraction of their terrestrial weight was accompanied by a soft crump of the palazzo settling to the lunar soil. Outside the windows, a cloud of fine argent dust from their landing arose in eerie slow motion unlike any such event on Earth. Light spilling forth from the mansion illuminated a small wedge of pockmarked ground.

Duke Fossombrone uttered the first words of mankind upon another world. “All praise to Isaac Newton, Garibaldi, and the Pope.”

Frank swore. “Holy Christ! What I’d give to be outside so I could sketch the sight of a Venetian palace smack dab in the middle of all this starkness. It’s more fabulous than anything out of Lane’s One Thousand and One Nights.”

Restituta had joined them mechanically. Dragging himself forward easily along the ropes with leg stubs trailing, Ludovico arrived at the windows also, completing the quartet. “Lift me up, please, Frank, so I may better see.” Frank turned a fallen chair upright and hoisted the cripple into it.

“Your angels, sister! The ones who will help me. Where are they?”

Restituta’s voice sounded resigned. “Right before us, brother. Can you not see them?”

Frank said, “But there is nothing—”

And then an unearthly city appeared, as if a painted curtain of false lunar scenery had been instantly whisked away.

Needle-shaped crystal spires of all sizes, warty with random excrescenses, thrust toward the black, star-riddled sky. Portions of the structures seemed to spin, and wink into and out of existence. Twinkling pinlights of all hues glimmered from within the towers, as if signaling a convocation of fairies. And outside among the spires the angels cavorted, looking just as Frank had drawn them, employing their big bat wings to dip and curvet, swoop and glide, in whatever strange Selenic atmosphere existed. Their emaciated equine muzzles opened and closed in silent exaltation.

“The angels want to see me,” said Restituta mournfully. “I need to go to them.”

The Duke began, “But my dear, please consider—”

Frank said, “Forget it!”

Ludovico said, “Is that truly necessary, sister?”

Ignoring the men, Restituta moved toward one of the capped exit doors. Frank raised a hand to halt her—

—and found himself frozen! Straining with all his might, he still could not budge.

Restituta opened the inner door of the little ‘mudroom,’ as full of air as the loggia. She entered the chamber, then closed the door. She must have unlatched the outer door leading into the cold, dark precincts of the palazzo, for an audible whoosh of air reverberated through the panels of the mudroom.

Unable even to vent his rage and impotence, Frank felt himself going mad. Then, just at the nadir of his frustration, he lurched forward, released. He took a step or two after Restituta, then was brought up short by the Duke’s exclamation of “Look!”

Outside the window, Restituta walked serenely across the lunar soil, the hem of her long skirts stirring up the dust. A transparent nimbus seemed to cloak her. She moved steadily toward the angelic city, and then disappeared within its precincts.

“I’m going after her,” said Frank.

“No, my son! You do not know if you could even survive the lunar conditions.”

“She did!”

“But,” Ludovico said with a mixture of sorrow and fraternal pride, “my sister was always favored of the celestials.”

Frank felt he had to do something. “I can’t just stand here!”

“Let me pump some air into the portal, then.”

The Duke did so, and Frank hurried to the exit chamber. He entered, and latched the inner door. Then he opened the outer one.

The air gusting instantly out into the vacuum swept Frank off his feet and carried him willy-nilly to bang his head against the wooden arm of a sofa. He felt hot and cold at once, and struggled to rise. His eyeballs seemed as dry as the dust in an Egyptian tomb. Impossible to think—

Frank awoke lying on a pallet of blankets. He opened his eyes and saw the Duke and Ludovico bending solicitously over him. He tried to speak, but his throat was so raw he could only croak. The Duke gave him a drink of fiery grappa.

“What—what happened?”

“Ludovico was just a second or so behind you. The air pressure inside the loggia, acting against the chamber door with naught but vacuum on the far side, made it incredibly hard to open. But together, we did so. My son was sucked through, and I let the door slam. Apparently, he was able to retain his sensibilities long enough to crawl to you and drag you back. Thank the Lord you had not fallen even further away! Then he even managed to pull the outer door shut before losing his own consciousness, whereupon I could introduce fresh air into the portal. Then I hauled both of you unfortunates inside.”

Frank regarded Ludovico, and saw that the young man’s face was a map of vacuum-blistered blood vessels. He supposed his own mug looked the same. He gripped Ludovico’s mighty bicep with one hand and said, “I owe you my life, brother.”

“I learned in battle that one’s comrades are as dear as one’s self.”

Frank got painfully to his feet. “What of Restituta and the angels?”

“Nothing. And yet I—”

Without warning, silent speech filled every niche of Frank’s mind. He could tell the others were undergoing identical communications. This must have been what Restituta had experienced unrelentingly throughout the voyage.

“You may leave now,” said the majestic voice of an angel. “The one you call Restituta is safe with us, back once more where she belongs.”

“No!” shouted Frank. “Duke, pick this place up and drop it on them! We’ll rescue her somehow!”

Restituta spoke now in their minds, in a relaxed and gentle tone. “No, Frank, there is no return for me. You can only do yourself harm to cling to what I was. Please, go back to Earth safely now, while you still can. Just remember me in your heart.”

Frank lunged toward the controls that would send them aloft and hurtling suicidally into the crystal towers—

The Moon was suddenly below them, and then in the next eyeblink had shrunk to where it filled only a single pane in the array of loggia windows.

The angels had hurled them at least halfway back to Earth.

Frank howled, then started batting the floating objects around him. But all his massless punches could not assuage his grief.

By the time the Earth loomed large, the three men had all reached an emotional and spiritual accommodation, one way or another, with what had happened. Frank had even found it within himself somehow to do a number of sketches of the angelic lunar city, several of which featured Restituta striding toward it like some numinous pilgrim.

But all joy and pride in his drawings had evaporated with the loss of the woman he had loved. (And could he ever love that intensely again?) He knew he would never display his artwork from this incredible voyage, or otherwise advertise his trip. And he suspected the Duke and Ludovico felt the same. The Ca’ d’Oro would settle down onto its former foundations and be reintegrated with the city. The scaffolding would come down, the inert cavourite be warehoused, and people would soon forget the day a palazzo had taken off for the stars.

Then they were in the upper atmosphere of Earth, with the Duke at the controls, searching visually for the motherland of Italy where it lay waiting below.

Ludovico had ceased cranking the no-longer-necessary Gramme Dynamos and was scratching at the tied-off ends of his trousers.

“What’s the matter?” asked Frank.

“I don’t know, but there is a confounded itching on my stumps.”

Frank felt bad. “You must have sustained damage there while rescuing me. Probably frostbite or abrasions. And we never checked. Let me look.”

Frank unknotted one fabric leg and skinned it back.

Ludovico’s stump was no longer a mass of scars and dead cells. The skin gleamed pink and alive, and from the growing surface, five perfect embryonic toes poked forth.