The Lost Diary of Venice Read online

  L’amour est un oiseau rebelle / que nul ne peut apprivoiser…

  “Henry!” Joan strode in from the kitchen just as the boy was considering how best to tackle the issue of his pants. She crossed her arms and glared disapprovingly first at Henry, then at Rose. Rose shrugged.

  “He seemed so happy.”

  The boy beamed his best smile up at his mother, revealing a missing front tooth. Unconvinced, Joan rolled her eyes and shook her short red bob back from her face.

  “Dinner should be done soon,” she said, bending for the clothes pile.

  Normally, when Rose came across a particularly interesting document, she’d have rushed home to tell her father all about it. She’d have found him in his favorite chair by the fireplace, orange and blue checked wool blanket draped across his knees. Perching on the leather ottoman beside him, Rose would’ve described the palimpsest, speaking over the raspy white noise of his oxygen machine. They’d nicknamed the squat beige device “Asclepius,” after the Greek god of medicine. Her father had been a professor of classics, and even through the drowse of morphine he’d have asked all the right questions: how degraded were the pages, how legible was the undertext. Together they’d have speculated about the author’s milieu, her father no doubt recommending some obscure manuscript detailing late Renaissance Venice.

  Instead she’d come home to an empty chair, the setting sun touching light to the far edge of the checked blanket, now folded neatly on the seat cushion. Rose had stood in her own entryway, feeling the weight of that silence—then before she knew it, she was knocking at Joan’s door, stepping into the swaddling comfort of a lived-in home, with Henry’s toys scattered across the carpet and a stack of dishes in the sink. The smell of pot roast and carrots and a rustling from the office down the hall, where Joan’s husband, Mark, was sorting papers, sending out one last email before dinner. Joan calling to Rose from the kitchen, excited to hear about her day, even if she had no clue what a palimpsest was.

  Rose used to hate Joan. The first time they’d met, they’d both been on break from college, summoned home to Connecticut to have Thanksgiving dinner with their parents’ “new friends.” Rose had spent the whole meal staring at Joan. At the white barrettes in her hair, little bows molded into the plastic. At the collegiate sweater from her West Coast school and her iridescent pink nails. In the middle of dinner Joan had paused to put on lip gloss, using the wand from a pale tube with the word WINK printed in glitter along one side. The scent had wafted over to Rose, a sticky-sweet intrusion.

  “Look, you both have red hair! Sort of like family already.” Rose’s father had smiled hopefully at them over the carved turkey, steam from bowls of potatoes and stuffing and green beans nearly fogging his glasses. Rose had glared at him, only too aware of the vast difference between her own unwieldy, blond-streaked curls and Joan’s glossy, fire-hydrant waves, meant for a shampoo commercial.

  Joan’s mother, Aileen, had been easier: thick-waisted and gentle, always baking cookies and freezing leftovers and wondering if everyone was warm enough. Her very presence was somewhat miraculous—Rose couldn’t remember her father, already old to have a daughter her age, ever going on a single date. Rose’s own mother had died the summer before Rose started high school after a brief, brave fight against an unfair cancer. Grief had seared Rose and her father into a team of two then, no new members allowed. Together they’d encouraged each other’s introversion—four years had passed in a blur of takeout containers and books strewn across the dining room table, punctuated only by tedious classes and noisy bus rides with a backpack that’d seemed illegally heavy.

  The autumn Rose had left for college, her father took an early retirement from the university. She’d encouraged him to join a book club with all his new free time. You need to do something with me gone. You’ll forget how to talk to people like a normal human being. She’d even found a group, one whose reading list she knew he could tolerate. By chance, Joan’s mother had also just joined; five months later and there they were “one big happy family.”

  After that Christmas, Rose had stayed in school for as long as she could: undergraduate degree, apprenticeship in conservation. All completed in New York, just a train ride away. Whenever she needed to escape the dazzling chaos of the city, she’d spend the weekend studying in the lull of her father’s library, discussing her courses over dinner. Then Aileen died—abruptly, a stroke. Rose had tried to come back more often, but by the time she’d finished her master’s, her father’s health had faltered past repair. Two wives buried proved more than he was willing to endure. I’m enduring! Rose had sometimes wanted to shout, shaking his bird-boned shoulders. And you’re leaving me alone. She didn’t think twice about giving up her small apartment in the city to move back in and take care of him. They became a team of two, again: takeout dinners and books. Public radio programs and medication demarcating their days.

  By then Joan had come home too, with an engineer husband and a toddler in tow. She’d cut her hair and exchanged the giggly, lip-glossed version of herself for one with greater girth and calm. Every Monday night the doorbell would ring and Rose knew it’d be her—standing on the doorstep with dinner (casseroles, lasagnas, wide glass pans wrapped in tinfoil and filled with recipes from Taste of Home magazine), asking if Rose was getting enough sleep. It was Joan who’d come up with the idea for the bookshop, a way for Rose to establish her restoration business, plus get a small profit from book sales. They lived in a university town, after all; it’d be a perfect fit. Rose had agreed, and in what seemed like the blink of an eye had found herself putting a down payment on a storefront. Sometimes she felt like a movie character in a dream sequence: like she’d just woken up one day and was there, here, back home, a bookshop and cat owner. In the end, she was left with no real awareness of how it’d all happened—just a sense that it was inevitable, her life quietly arranging itself around a particular gravitational pull.

  Now, six months after her father’s marble headstone had been lowered into the damp cemetery grass, with the empty house hers alone, Rose wound up at Joan’s at least one night a week. More, if Mark was traveling for work.

  Joan straightened up, the clothes in a tight wad at her hip. She stole a peek at Rose from the corner of her eye.

  “Joan. I know it’s something when you look at me like that.”

  “Rosebud, I think you should see the computer. I left the page up.” She shifted her attention to Henry, who, deprived of his shirt and hungry, appeared to be debating whether to cry.

  Rose’s body stood of its own accord.

  In the living room, the music swelled. L’amour est enfant de Bohème, il n’a jamais jamais connu de loi…The glowing square of the computer beckoned her from the far end of the room. As she padded across the carpet, a photo on the screen came into focus. William. Clean-shaven, suited, a more polished sort of handsome than he’d been at the shop. At his side, a woman with Scandinavian good looks posed for the camera. She wore an immaculate white shift dress, hair falling in straight blond curtains from a perfect center part. They’d been photographed at a gallery—behind them hung colorful paintings, blurring into the background. Together they looked impossibly chic, the sort of couple you’d watch stepping into the backseat of a car parked outside an expensive restaurant and imagine what that life must feel like. A short paragraph of text ran down the right margin of the page: his training, a summary of projects with links to each exhibition. Then the last line:

  “Lomazzo lives in Connecticut with his wife and their two daughters.”

  Rose squinted at the screen, trying to interpret his expression. Had she just imagined it then—the surge of warmth when he’d clasped her hand? She didn’t remember seeing a wedding ring. Maybe they were separated? A small hope fluttered in the pit of her stomach, immediately squelched by reproach. No, she shouldn’t wish for misfortune like that. She must have just imagined it. Staring at the photo
, Rose realized with some surprise how far she’d allowed her thoughts to wander: she’d already pictured him coming back into the shop and casually asking her to lunch, as if the idea had just occurred to him. She’d seen them strolling, side by side, beneath the cherry blossoms that would unfurl their origami petals all through town within a month. They’d already gone to dinner together in her mind, even—there’d been candles. Two years of caregiving and here she was, raw with loneliness, spinning up fantasies about the first handsome man to touch her. Rose rubbed her face in her hands until her cheeks tingled with heat.

  From the kitchen came the crash of a pan, the quick braying of Henry’s sobs. Rose leaned to turn the volume up. Maria Callas’s voice bloomed to fill the room, her powerful aria drowning out all else.

  Tout autour de toi, vite vite , il vient, s’en va, puis il revient….Tu crois le tenir, il t’évite. Tu crois l’éviter, il te tient…

  * * *

  The next day even the sky couldn’t seem to hold a cheerful mood, erasing any patch of blue with smudgy gray cloud cover. Rose sat at her desk, watching the passersby out on the street. First the morning crowd, coffee cups in hand. Then a lunch rush of students from the university halls a few blocks away, chattering in pairs, scuttling back to class clutching crumpled to-go bags. Already, she’d casually shuffled through the stack of papers William had left; now she couldn’t help but put together a quick assessment of what a repair might cost. The number was high—she brought it down to a more reasonable sum.

  No, Rose. He’s a client like any other. If it’s too expensive you negotiate, the same way you would with anyone else. She brought the figure back up and turned to her email in-box.

  William /

  The cursor blinked expectantly on the screen. Curled up in his chair by the window, Odin tucked a paw over his good eye.

  “Fine, I’ll just cut and paste something.” Rose announced her decision to the empty shop. She found an old client letter, highlighted the text, and dropped it into the blank message field.

  Mr. Lomazzo,

  Thank you for the opportunity to work on this project. Attached for review is a detailed summary of my estimate, as well as a draft contract. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.

  R.

  It seemed formal, cold, but she didn’t know what else to write. She fished his business card out from the antique silver tray by her pen jar. [email protected]. Character by character, she typed it in. Hit Send.

  She exhaled a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

  The emails to her contacts were easier. These were fellow experts, collectors, and academics she’d met at conferences or online. She asked each if they’d come across mentions of Lomazzo in any other texts, or seen different versions of the treatise. Her own research had left her empty-handed, and she was curious: the title of the document suggested it’d been meant for publication, and Venice had been a publishing mecca. The odds it had gone to print were relatively high.

  By the time she’d biked home, one reply was waiting.

  It was from Yuri, who lived in New York. They’d struck up an online friendship years ago in a collectors’ chat forum. Rose had gathered through conversation that Yuri was older, maybe in his late seventies, with a curious mind and a dry sense of humor. They’d immediately taken a liking to each other and begun a lasting, if sporadic, correspondence. Theirs was a meeting of minds: just like her, Yuri had a fondness for research and what seemed to be a near-photographic memory. His rare-book shop was on the Lower East Side, close enough for Rose to pay a visit, but for some reason seeing each other in person felt like it might alter their friendship. She’d conjured an image of him that she didn’t want to disturb: an elderly man with round glasses balanced on the tip of his nose and an erudite glint in his eyes, manning the desk at a dusty, treasure-filled hole in the wall.

  Rosie—

  I have not personally seen a version of this treatise, but I do remember the name Lomazzo. Years ago, I came across a version of Borghini’s Il Riposo with previously unpublished notes included. Have you read Il Riposo? It’s a treatise also, published in 1584, after Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. It’s interesting, but gives enough detail of the Counter-Reformation to bore a priest!

  Point is, in going through the notes I recall mention of a treatise by Lomazzo that circulated through Italy in the late 1500s. The impression I got was that Borghini had been influenced by Lomazzo—particularly by his beliefs that writing about art can be an art form, and that art should be accessible to those who are not artists themselves.

  You know how ideas were stolen so easily back then (and now, for that matter). My hunch is that this Lomazzo’s treatise was appropriated by Borghini to some degree. As for the treatise itself, I’ve never seen it or heard mention of existing versions. If you have a copy, you should tell your client to publish it. Can you imagine the academics? They’d piss themselves! May get a substantial sum at auction too, if he’s hard up for cash.

  I hope you are well otherwise, my dear. Keep me updated on how the restoration goes. Life here is good, although I wish spring would hurry up. You know me, Rosie—these old bones can’t handle the cold like they used to.

  Yuri

  Rose had been eating dinner—canned tomato soup and a thick, flaky roll from the bakery she passed on her ride home—when the second email arrived. Her laptop was open on the table next to her, and when she looked up there it was, at the top of her in-box, the only one marked “unread.”

  R,

  Please, call me William. Thanks for sending the estimate so fast, I appreciate it. You’re very professional. I’ve signed the contract and attached a scan here, but I can bring in a printed copy, if that’s the way you usually do it (?)

  I’m interested in learning more about the restoration process. Do you mind if I stop in from time to time to see how it’s coming along?

  Thanks,

  W

  He’d copied the way she signed off, with a single letter. Or did he just happen to do that also? And what did that mean, “You’re very professional”? Had she been too formal? Joan was always telling her to loosen up, that her shyness made her seem cold. It wouldn’t kill you to try to smile more, Rose. But it was his last sentence she lingered on. He wanted to come back to the shop. That meant she’d see him again—maybe soon. She felt her pulse quicken before her mind could interject: Lomazzo lives in Connecticut with his wife and their two daughters.

  Still, she couldn’t help but read the note over three, four more times, leaning forward on an elbow as if getting closer to the screen would help her find some hidden meaning in his words. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard…

  No.

  She should send a reply tomorrow—tomorrow afternoon. Let an appropriate interval pass. She turned back to her dinner. The hunk of bread she’d dipped in the soup had gone to mush, leaving just a sad hard edge of crust poking out from the middle of the bowl. Months later she’d remember that scene: the disintegrating bread, the soup skinning over. She’d wonder if any of her actions could have altered the way events unfolded, or if it all would’ve turned out the same no matter what she’d done.

  4

  THE AIR IN THE ROOM grew palpably lighter after Corvino and Venier departed. The redhead and the brunette shifted into more comfortable positions, loosening the laces of their bodices with the same unburdening sigh Gio made when taking off his shoes at night. Chiara held her pose, gazing at him expectantly.

  He rummaged among his things for a stick of chalk, then quickly began to sketch. Holding the board in one hand and chalk in the other, he methodically captured all the small measurements that would help him re-create the composition later. The angle of her knee to the corners of the room, the placement of her arm, the spot where her jawline touched her shoulder. A dozen minute points of connection, int
ersection, and calibration that would guide him later, through sitting after sitting. Once he’d mapped her body on the parchment he paused, leaning to take a first sip of wine.

  “This is the finest home I’ve seen a courtesan installed in. You must be pleased,” he said to the room at large.

  “One advantage of knowing a statesman,” the redhead observed, before yawning. She had an aquiline nose and the habit of lolling her head back as she spoke, which lent her a snobbish air. Gio had already found her weakness, however: despite the careful application of powders and rouge, he could spot that she was older than the others.

  “Venier appreciates having a place in the city to host his dinners.” Chiara’s tone was formal, a deflection of Gio’s actual meaning: Isn’t this cage a lovely one?

  “Yes, they’re such fun, you must come to the next.” The brunette spoke now, in the sort of high, childlike voice certain women make their currency. She’d wandered to one of the side tables and stood, eyeing a bowl of grapes and twisting a strand of hair between two fingers. “Do you have a girl, Giovanni?” She looked up, her face as blank and perfect as a doll’s. He couldn’t see Chiara, sitting outside his field of view, but he felt her watching.

  “Should we begin with introductions first? Then questions?” He flashed what he hoped was a friendly grin.

  “Oh!” Her hands flew up to her chest. “Margherita. And that’s Veronica.” The redhead waggled her long fingers at him.

  “So, do you have a girl or not?” Margherita popped a grape into her mouth, chewing slowly while she stared at him.

  Gio cleared his throat. “I had a wife once, yes, if that’s what you mean.” He kept his eyes trained on the sketch, squinting to bring into focus the lines that were beginning to form the muscles of Chiara’s back.