The next morning, Giovanni returned to his studio. The previous
night’s party had been a success and one telltale sign remained—a
few empty wine bottles in a box near the door. In his haste to put
away the Count’s portrait the night before, he had overlooked that.
He would take care of it soon enough, but first he wanted to know
what the Count had to say.
Giovanni opened the second strong room, brought out the portrait, and set it on the easel.
“Where is the Brueghel?” the Count asked. “Are you no longer restoring that abomination?”
“You don’t like Brueghel?” Giovanni was taken aback. “How can you possibly say that?”
“I speak my mind, and Brueghel’s work is simply dreadful. And you may include Goya and Caravaggio. Their work is heavy-handed and unceasingly bleak.”
“So who do you like?”
“Rembrandt, Raphael, and Velasquez,” the Count replied without hesitation.
“What about modern painters?” Giovanni asked.
“My portrait has not hung in the company of many modern works. I was able to admire Turner and Degas, though I suppose your term modern may or may not include such artists. Of course, I have been denied opportunities, due to that wretched crate, of viewing the work of more recent artists. Regardless, I doubt any could surpass Rembrandt.”
Giovanni pulled a stool closer and sat down. “Count, I want to know about last night. What did you think of Arabella?”
“Your wife is lovely,” the Count said, then continued in a rush of words, “You know, women are infinitely fascinating. Take my wife, for example…”
“I’m asking about my wife, Count, not any wife you—”
The Count charged ahead. “It was my uncle, Lorenzo de Medici, who arranged for me to marry Maria Pitti, the daughter of Luca Pitti, the Florentine banker who had built the Pitti Palace. It was not a happy marriage. I understand the difficulty a marriage presents. There is much that may go awry. For example, my wife could not bear children, and she was quite promiscuous. A scandal arose in Florence when her affair with Fancelli was exposed. Fancelli, you will remember, worked with Brunelleschi and had designed the Palace.”
“Sure, but what about Arabella? I hung your portrait like you asked, so you could—”
“To keep matters quiet,” the Count continued, “the family sent us to Venice, in the hope that a change of scenery would restore calm to our turbulent marriage. But it wasn’t long before Maria embarked on another affair and this time with Andrea Gritti. Enough! I returned to Florence, taking with me the very painting that you now look upon. So if you ignore those turbulent years in Venice, when my portrait was hung by a window that was left open more often than not, overlooking the Grand Canal, I do not consider that I was properly hung until I returned to the Pitti Palace in Florence.”
“Andrea Gritti. Wasn’t he the Doge?” Giovanni asked.
“That is the one. He had a distinguished military career and was elected Doge in 1523. What chance, Signor Fabrizzi, would I have stood had I stayed in Venice with a wife who was the Doge’s mistress? It was quite humiliating. I knew Gritti a modest degree. Any degree was quite enough, Signor Fabrizzi, I assure you. He was a fierce man with a bad temper. The swine Titian painted his portrait.”
“You don’t like Titian either?” Giovanni was dismayed that anyone could dismiss the great master so easily. “Did you know him?”
“It was Titian who introduced my wife to Gritti and encouraged their relationship.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Oh, I am sure it was simple spite and Florence-Venice rivalry.” The Count was bitter.
Giovanni hoped to steer the topic away from past wounds. “Did you enjoy living at the Pitti Palace? It must have been very grand.”
“Indeed it was,” the Count replied. “It was a magnificent building, and the location superb, on the south side of the Arno, near the Ponte Vecchio. We all lived there in typical family disharmony. I had my own quarters, a luxurious apartment with a perfect view of the Ponte Vecchio, where I kept to myself. I felt some shame and embarrassment, you understand, without an heir and having a wife who would bed every man who came within her sights. So I began an affair with a first cousin, Maria de Medici. The family did not approve. She was only fourteen.”
“Fourteen?” Giovanni choked on the word. “You, your cousin? Fourteen? If you did that today, you’d be put in jail.”
“I would have preferred that to the actual outcome.”
“Don’t tell me—it gets worse.”
“It begins to,” the Count said. “Maria’s brother, Francesco, challenged me to a duel. He won. I died at far too early an age. My portrait, that which you look upon now, was taken off the wall in the Grand Salon. How I would know this, being dead, I cannot say, but somehow I did not cease to be, perhaps because I cared so dearly for the fate of my portrait, as dearly as I cared for my life, which by then was extinguished. But not the portrait, though it too would be removed from sight, banished forever to the cavernous cellars at the Pitti Palace. I could not bear for that to happen any more than I could bear to lose my life. My prayers were answered by another young cousin, Catherine de Medici. How I loved that sweet girl. If not for her, I would still be in that damned cellar. It was after she became the Countess of Auvergne, on her aunt’s death. The poor girl had been orphaned when she was barely one month old and had been brought up by her aunt. Her father was Lorenzo de Medici II, another cousin, of course. When she was fourteen, she married the Duke of Orleans in Marseilles. At that wedding, it is said that Catherine wore high heels. The first time in recorded history that any woman wore high heels.”
“I’m not interested in the history of footwear.” Giovanni was getting irritated. “You wanted to listen to our guests last night, and Arabella. You haven’t told me—”
“Catherine moved to France,” the Count continued. “After all, her father-in-law was the King. It was during preparations for the move that she saved me. Her ladies-in-waiting were helping her decide what she should take, and one of the ladies glanced upon me and urged Catherine to bring my portrait with her to France. When Catherine asked who painted it, another of the ladies told her it was Botticelli. As her grandfather Lorenzo was Botticelli’s patron, Catherine could not leave my portrait behind. And so I left Florence, saved from a certain life of dust and solitude, and instead taken amidst great style and luxury to France. First at Fontainebleau, then Chambord, Versailles of course, and then I was taken to Le Petit Trianon.”
The Count paused, allowing Giovanni a chance to respond.
Giovanni rose from his stool, crossed his arms, and said nothing.
“Signor Fabrizzi, you seem to have something on your mind.”
“I asked you to tell me what you thought of Arabella. In fact, it was your idea that we host a dinner party so you could listen to her and others having conversation.”
“Well, yes, I—”
“I asked for your opinion of my wife and all you do is talk about yourself. Your life history is fascinating, I’m sure, but I want to know about Arabella.”
The Count was not quick to respond. “I have already told you that I found your wife lovely. Beyond that, I cannot say the party conversation was of great interest to me.”
“Really?” Giovanni was disappointed. “Why not?”
“In my time, Signor Fabrizzi, there was more a sense of revelry. Dinner guests would tell bawdy stories, rumors about court intrigue, and other tales far more captivating. I am sure your guests are fine people, but all they talk about is how difficult it is to get from place to place in London, about their precious and wonderful children, and I must say, very little about art.”
Giovanni hung his head. “It’s a sad fact about the world today. People will sooner talk about the latest movie, which of course everyone will forgot about next month, than discuss the awe inspired by a work of art centuries old.”
“I believe this age has less passion,” the Count said. “Or perhaps it is England. My people in Italy might be quite different. I would venture to say that Italian women today are filled with more vitality than any of your female guests last night.”
“Arabella?”
“As I said, she is lovely.”
“But what else?” Giovanni asked. “What do you make of her?”
The Count hesitated. “Signor Fabrizzi, women are more complex than men. Their motivations are not always clear. At times one must read between the lines, as they say.”
“I don’t want to read between the lines.” Giovanni was getting aggravated by the Count’s repeated dodging of the question.
The Count responded, “I do not know what else you are hoping that I might say.”
Giovanni stepped closer to the portrait. “I want to know why there is this ever-expanding gulf between Arabella and me. You seem to be the expert on women. You tell me.”
“Expertise is not required to see the problem.” The Count’s arrogance had reached new heights. “One must simply keep eyes wide open.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Giovanni was getting close to losing his temper.
“It means,” the Count calmly explained, “that if your wife seems distant, and you are not making love to her regularly, and she invites a young, attractive man to your dinner party, that perhaps, just possibly, your eyes are closed. Are you blind?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“How can you be so naïve?” the Count asked. “Have men become absurdly ignorant in the last few centuries?”
“I won’t stand here and be insulted. Especially by an inanimate object.”
“Oh no, of course not. You shouldn’t have to put up with the truth.”
“Stop avoiding the question. Tell me!”
“Your wife is having an affair with her young French friend.”
Giovanni recoiled a step, speechless.
“No man wants to be a cuckold, Signor Fabrizzi, but that is the truth.”
Giovanni narrowed his eyes. “You vile, cruel man. Or whatever you are. You are so bitter, stuck in that painting, that your only entertainment is to fabricate malicious gossip and watch others suffer as a result. I may well give you away for free to my client.”
“Signor Fabrizzi, please.”
“Shut up!” Giovanni took the portrait from the easel and started toward the second strong room.
“I am a witness,” the Count said. “You must listen. When you joined the servants.”
Giovanni stopped. “The caterers?”
“You stepped out to help them,” the Count explained, “and you left your wife alone with him. I take no pleasure in telling you this. They were in each other’s arms.”
“Liar!” Giovanni continued into the strong room.
“I have their words. He wanted to lay with her last night, but she was reluctant. He said, Don’t you want me anymore? And she said, Oh, François, you know I do.”
Giovanni seized the crate where the Count would be spending some time. “You are sick and cruel, making up outrageous lies for your own twisted sense of pleasure. Go in your box and stay there.” Giovanni slid the portrait into the crate, wanting to shove it hard, but it was a work of art after all. His code of conduct would never allow anger to damage a piece, even when the work was vehemently despised and worthless.
The Count’s muffled voice penetrated the wood. “You ask her. Go ahead. Don’t you want me anymore? Oh, François, you know I do. Ask her!”
Giovanni locked the strong room, but the Count’s voice lingered in his skull.
He pounded his fist against the metal door.
“Goddamned liar!”
He picked up the box of empty wine bottles and took them to the service elevator.
* * *
Giovanni tried to concentrate as he sliced mushrooms for the pasta
he was preparing. The small kitchen of his flat was steamy and warm
from the boiling noodles and simmering sauce, bubbling at an
agreeably low rate. With each slice of mushroom, as the blade
dropped, his mind would flop from the Count to Arabella and back
again, as it had all afternoon since his confrontation.
That she was gone when he arrived home didn’t help. But when she called, the sound of her voice reassured Giovanni. He did not mention anything about the day’s events in his studio, but he did ask why she was not home. Two of her girlfriends had arranged an impromptu dinner for a third who was feeling ill, and Arabella wanted to join them, to help out, to commiserate. She asked if Giovanni could manage dinner on his own, or go out, and to expect her later than usual.
So there he was, home alone, making himself dinner. Normally, Giovanni wouldn’t have thought twice about such a turn of events. But as he sliced mushrooms and made a neat pile to dice into smaller sections, he couldn’t stop thinking about the Count’s vicious words. What if it were true? Giovanni would be devastated. But it couldn’t be true. The Count was pretentious, pompous, and self-serving. All he wanted to do was talk about his own adventures, probably all lies, and his cruel fantasy about Arabella was just another sensational tale. It had to be.
After all, Giovanni thought, it was Arabella who had been so loving to him when he felt dead himself, barely able to get out of bed, for weeks after Serafina’s funeral. Arabella had been cheery, had come to his flat with food, and had invited him out to concerts. She had taken him to art openings that he would have normally attended, but after his tragic loss, he dreaded. His depression had not completely immobilized him, but it seriously prevented him from entering social situations in which well-meaning friends would generally make him feel worse. He would try nonetheless, with Arabella at his side. There were occasions when friends, their faces pinched with concern, would ask how he was doing. It was out of the best intentions but he found the weight of their questions unbearable. He did not want to hurt them, or to reject their heartfelt inquiries. Thankfully, Arabella was always a loving interloper, steering the conversation to a livelier or simply completely different topic, for which he was eternally grateful.
He would never forget the night they came back from an evening out, a little tipsy from too many drinks, laughing about a petty argument two friends had over the look of a handbag. It was then that he realized—it was the first time he had laughed since losing Serafina.
I owe my life to you, he told Arabella in that moment, and he kissed her, not an innocent peck on the cheek, rather his lips to hers and without any reservations. His eyes slipped closed as he indulged in the wondrous sensation, and for a moment, he was lost in time, until he realized what he had done and withdrew, fearing how she might react. Arabella gasped lightly, surprised but not scolding, and she did not voice disapproval. Gazing at him, she tugged at his shoulder, pulled his lips to hers, and returned the caress, deeper, more passionately. He did not remember exactly how, but their lips never parted as he guided her to his bedroom.
Giovanni looked down at the mushrooms he was chopping. Or what was left of them, minced to a gooey mess and juice that was running off the cutting board. He wiped the blade and set it down, then turned off the stove. He sat at his kitchen table and dropped his head in his hands.
The irony did not comfort him. He suspected the very woman who had saved him from darkness. And worse, his suspicion was based solely on the voice of a painting. How absurd, he thought. And the further irony, how the painting had come to him, from his father, who received it as a peace offering from Giovanni’s uncle, banished from the family for some murky reason.
This was ridiculous, Giovanni thought, to let his suspicions so unnerve him. It was not only pathetic, it was damaging. His stomach ached. The last thing he wanted was his favorite pasta of vermicelli, mushrooms, duck sausage, and Roma tomatoes. He wanted the acidic burn of his innards to cease.
There was a nagging fear that the Count might have been telling the truth. The distance that had grown between Giovanni and Arabella was undeniable. Although they never had a ferocious fight of any kind, he knew that his physical affections had been dampened of late. The issue of Serafina’s jewelry had merely brought that into focus.
He thought about François. He certainly was handsome. But Giovanni had seen nothing between them during dinner that suggested a sexual relationship. Arabella said François might bring more business to the House of Fabrizzi, via his worldwide French contacts. She was making a sincere effort to aid her husband, not betray him.
Then why did he feel ill, suspicious, and at the very center of it all, icily afraid? He did not want to confront Arabella with this. What good would come of it? She would resent his not trusting her and it would surely strain their relationship, complicating it even further.
And yet, he could not imagine living another twenty-four hours with the gnawing unknown that was burrowing through his intestines. He wanted to interpret the Count’s words as vindictive. And his words may well have been in that moment. But what if it were true? Giovanni was most disturbed by the Count’s precision in recounting the tale of Arabella. He had not simply claimed that she was unfaithful. He had repeated their conversation. Don’t you want me anymore? Oh, François, you know I do.
If it were true, a painting could contain the soul of its subject, overhear conversation, and speak to Giovanni, then why this outcome? Of all the people in its history, the portrait chose to upend Giovanni’s life by suggesting he organize a dinner party and then inform him that his wife is having an affair. Could such cruelty be the Count’s only reason to exist?
Giovanni admitted to himself that the Count’s words could be true. It was a possibility, but still an unknown. Giovanni would have to do something. He could not ignore his doubts, but he had no idea of how to approach the topic with Arabella. Telling her that a painting spoke to him would be reason alone for her to leave. Yet, if she was guilty of adultery, he would not want to remain with her anyway.
Perhaps the Count didn’t exist, and Giovanni was going mad. Was it all himself, he wondered. His subconscious could have picked up on the signs of her betrayal, and rising out of the depths to protect him, invented the Count as means to expose a truth that was in plain sight but Giovanni refused to face, at least, consciously. Enough of that, he thought. Ideas like that were more outrageous than a talking painting, and trying to analyze himself only made his head hurt. Besides, calling it madness wouldn’t change anything. However he arrived at doubting her fidelity, there was no going back.
“What are you doing in the dark?”
Arabella’s voice startled him. Her silhouette was in the doorway of the kitchen.
“I don’t know,” he muttered.
“For God’s sake, Gio.” She reached for the light switch.
“Don’t.”
She flipped the switch on and he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Gio, I’ve had it with your moods. I’m tired, do you understand? I’m tired of hoping you come out of these morose dives into misery.” She went to the stove and saw the unfinished dinner left out to rot. “I don’t want to live this way!” she shouted. “I don’t want your doomed attitude dragging us both down. And I don’t want the memory of Serafina always hanging over us.”
He vaulted upright. “I have not been thinking of her. It’s not that, it’s—”
“Yes it is!” She jabbed him in the chest. “It’s always her.”
Giovanni was shocked. She had never before called him a liar, nor so much as hinted that he might be.
She continued. “Gio, this has to stop, or... I don’t know. I can’t go on like this.”
“Is that so?” Giovanni imitated a boyish voice, the best he could imagine that François might sound. “Don’t you want me anymore?”
Her eyes pinched, confused.
“Wait,” Giovanni said. “Let me guess your answer.” He seized her shoulders to make her look at him. He raised the pitch of his voice to that of feminine mockery. “Oh, François, you know I do.”
She staggered back and her face went blank.
Giovanni let her slip from his grasp, and he became equally baffled. Her reaction was an admission of guilt.
“Then it’s true,” he said, though still he could not bring himself to believe it.
Her eyes welled with tears, and her lips began to quiver.
“Tell me!” he hollered.
“How…” Her voice cracked. “How could you possibly…”
“It doesn’t matter, and you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
“But you were…”
“Don’t lie to me! Tell me the truth, now.”
She began to sob. “You don’t understand. If you would just hear me, see me, you would know I needed to be the only woman in your life. Maybe you would have shown me more affection. Maybe you would have touched me more. Maybe…”
Giovanni sat down at the table.
He was right. The Count was right. He had never felt so awful to be right. He wished that he had never opened that crate. Never talked to the Count. Never…
She wiped at her tears and tried to compose herself.
He calmly said, “I’d appreciate it if you would sleep in the guest bedroom tonight. Then in the morning, we’ll talk about where you will be moving.”
As he stared down at the table, her footsteps shuffled away. After she was gone, he got up, turned off the kitchen light, and sat down at the table, in the dark. Sleeping would be impossible, or even to lie awake in the bed that he had shared with Serafina, the bed he had shared with Arabella, and the bed that awaited him, alone.