The Lost Diary of Venice Read online

  Aurelio reached a hand out for the jug. “Well, if we do go to war, the armory will ensure our fleet is well fortified.”

  “If Venier sails to fight the Ottomans, what becomes of the girl?” Gio passed the liquor over.

  “Corvino will undoubtedly watch after her—whether asked to or not.” The two men exchanged a glance. Aurelio cleared his throat. “He won’t do anything, Gio. Not while she’s in favor.”

  “Let’s pray then that she doesn’t fall from grace.”

  “I’ll pray and drink to that, good friend.” Aurelio filled two empty glasses that sat on the table.

  Outside, the smell of salt rolled in on a courier wind, carrying the threat of rain.

  * * *

  The Ottoman ships cast long shadows across the water. Sailing quietly in the dim, they slid along the coast of Cyprus, toward the village of Nicosia. Well after sundown they skulked ashore, waves cracking open across their sturdy hulls. Under cover of night, the inky shapes of ten thousand bodies crept out onto the beach, streaming upward in dark rivers of clambering limbs, disappearing into the forest. At first light, the men would lay siege to the village that now lay slumbering, unawares. First Nicosia, then Famagusta—the island’s two strongholds. Without them, Cyprus could not stand.

  From a nearby hilltop, General Lala Mustafa Pasha observed the progress of his men. At his side, an olive tree shuddered in the wind. You are right to tremble, he thought. Soon, he would make the whole island shake under his force. He—Mustafa—who only a few years ago had been nothing but a tutor: Selim’s favorite instructor. Now look at him, commanding campaigns! He took a great gulp of chill night air, smoothing his mustache with a press of forefinger and thumb. How many nights had he and Nassi stayed awake, scheming? Nassi yearned to watch Venice burn, Mustafa was eager to prove his worth in battle, they both had the sultan’s ear—together they’d made the perfect team. Charting their course into the late hours, weaving a story that would at last convince Selim…

  Now it was all unfurling according to plan. Best of all was that Mustafa’s eldest son would fight alongside him. The general peered out at the clusters of men disintegrating into shadow. His boy must be among them now: healthy and strong, buoyed by the courage of youth. If he performed well in battle, if the strongholds were captured, handsome rewards could await them both. Glory herself lay before them, ripe and open-legged. Mustafa gazed up at the stars, immune to his ambition, hypnotized by their own watery reflections.

  The muffled clamor of steel and armor drifted up from the beach below.

  5

  THE WIND CHILLED ROSE’S FACE as she biked, but she could feel a flush of sun unfurling over her shoulders, and the air smelled of green beginnings. She pictured the book waiting for her in the darkened back room and began to pedal faster, wheels whirring along the white line edging the road. At the café, Joel noticed the change.

  “You’re here earlier than normal, aren’t you?” He glanced up at the clock—a tacky thing that hung above the bathroom door, a lopsided cup of coffee painted in its center.

  “Wanted to get a head start on a few things, I guess.”

  “Guess so.” The milk burbled and frothed under the steamer.

  She was two hours ahead of schedule to be exact. Thermos in hand, she hurried back to the shop but kept the sign turned to CLOSED. As she set her coffee down on the desk, Odin roused himself. Stretching both front paws out, claws scratching the air, he made a valiant effort to open his one good eye. As soon as he heard the dry rustle of his food bag, however, he sprang to life with a demanding mew. After feeding duties, Rose slid open a drawer under the register and fished out an old-fashioned key, cast in an intricate design. She headed down the hall toward the back of the shop, where she used the key to unlock a second room.

  If the front was meant to project a cozy, inviting atmosphere, then this chamber was its shadow self: white walled, shocked awake by sterile light. Her true sanctuary. A long table took up the center of the room, glass top reflecting a cold glare from rows of LEDs overhead. A dark-screened computer sat on a desk in the corner, flanked by ceramic speakers. Nearby, an expensive-looking camera mounted on a stand hovered over a drafting table, which was lacquered white and framed by lamps. Open steel cabinets ran the length of one full wall, housing an assortment of tools, brushes, and papers. Concrete-colored linoleum gleamed.

  “The operating room” Joan liked to call it.

  The manuscript was waiting for her in a neat pile on the center table. Like an athlete before a race, Rose ran through the same routine each time she began work. First, music. Today it would be Beethoven, beginning with the violin sonatas. At the computer, she pulled up a favorite playlist. As the opening strains swelled from the speakers, she briefly considered Beethoven’s deafness. What would it have been like to hear the notes fade away? Her thoughts danced in time with the violins. She remembered reading a letter Beethoven had written to his brothers, confessing that he’d considered but rejected suicide. How could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce?

  She also remembered reading that evidence of cirrhosis had been found in his body.

  The bulbs overhead shuddered, a fault of the old building’s wiring. She turned the volume up and shifted her attention to her tools. Scissors, tweezers, Japanese paper. Knives, magnifiers, small handheld UV lights, scalpels, brushes, mats, pastes—one by one, she took them from their proper places and laid them in order on the worktable. Next, the book. The strings she’d clipped on the first day had left the manuscript a loose stack of stiff sheets. By their relative flatness and the puncture marks along their edges, it was clear they’d been properly bound at some point. She began imagining options for a new binding; it would need to be beautiful—something for William to remember her by. Supple, good-quality leather. Oxblood, perhaps.

  Along the perimeters of the pages ran the evidence of time: black smudge at the outer edges, where the fiber was most damaged, torn and faded to near transparency. Then a gradual burnt umber color moving toward center. Only the very middle of the vellum was still pale, yellowed with age. The effect made the book look as if it’d been lightly singed all along the outside.

  She removed the cover page and read the title again. Trattato dell’arte della pittura, scultura, ed architettura. By Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo. She ran a fingertip over the name, felt the faint ridges pressed into the vellum so many years ago. The very fact that the treatise had been written on vellum was interesting: by the 1570s, paper would have been readily available. Yet it was only the quality of the skin that had let Giovanni erase the first document and rewrite his treatise over top. He must have taken a blade to it, scraping away until the original ink had lightened enough that he could rotate the book sideways and begin to write again. But why? He’d not completely eradicated the undertext, and the result was that the two layers of calligraphy formed a neat grid on every sheet, darker top and faded bottom each vying for attention.

  Rose lifted the first several pages, stiff and brittle in her hands, arranging them on the table. She scanned the sentences, tripping over the intersecting lines inked so long ago. Was the lower writing a first draft? She tried to see if she could parse a repeating pattern in the words that ran across and down the pages. The two layers didn’t seem to be the same, though she couldn’t be sure: her Italian was limited to art terms and useful phrases for travelers, dov’è il bagno?

  She imagined Giovanni, an artist living in Venice. She could picture that city: canals crowded with gondolas, arching bridges linking neighborhoods together. She’d been there once, during undergrad, when she’d signed up for a summer course on textile repairs. The exchange school was in Milan, but the class had spent a long weekend in Venice. The city had been overrun with tourists even then, an astounding number of groups trailing like ducklings after their guides, who invariably held poles aloft, affixed wit
h brightly colored flags flapping in the breeze. Rose had eaten gelato every single day of that blazing, sun-flooded summer, always the bacio flavor, a decadent blend of chocolate and hazelnut she’d been devastated to leave behind.

  Rose tried to envision a Venice without tourists—without gelato, even. When Veronese and Titian were still alive and painting, when William’s ancestor must have paced the avenues of that glimmering city on the water…She sighed. The only real way to figure out what Giovanni had written was to get to work. Settling into the task at hand, she began by carefully placing the first pages on stronger backing paper. On a legal pad, she made notes to herself in tidy print, indicating where extra fiber would be needed to stabilize the most damaged areas. With a soft brush, she whisked away any dirt from the sheets, pausing to assess the wax stains left where Giovanni had undoubtedly written by candlelight. As the music surged and ebbed, she focused her attention on the top layer of text. The writing was indeed about art. Over and over, she saw words even she could recognize: composizione, proporzione, ombra, luminosa.

  Composition, proportion, shadow, light.

  After the introduction concluded, images began to appear: elegant portraits of male and female forms, lines demarcating their various parts. Charts and graphs offered a key, demonstrating how a body might achieve proper balance and proportion. The drawings reminded Rose of da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man.” If what Yuri had said was true, Giovanni was trying to provide a way for even a layperson to evaluate the quality of a painting. The execution of the sketches was masterful—though they were only diagrams, Giovanni had taken care to develop the musculature of each figure with delicate shading. She tried to imagine what his paintings might have looked like.

  What did William’s paintings look like?

  She’d asked that question of herself every day since he’d first come in the shop, but after what Joan had showed her, she’d decided not to look at his website again. She didn’t need to see his paintings to do the work. And the fact was, she’d become surprised by how often she thought of him, vaguely nervous at the number of times a day her mind drifted back to the moment of his handshake, his rough-tender skin—no matter how often she told herself to stop.

  Keep it professional, Rose. No Internet searches. No wandering mind.

  Pages now occupied the whole of the long central table. They filled the room with a distinct scent: dust and musk, conjuring images of Italian summers, slanting sunlight and bougainvillea on the vine. The smell seemed to creep into her clothes and hair, fogging her thoughts. By the thirtieth page, it was as though she’d absorbed some aspect of the book—or perhaps it’d absorbed her, Giovanni gradually coaxing her to join him in his world of script and sketches. Her sensitive fingers registered each texture on the page. She found herself treating the vellum tenderly, as if it were living flesh.

  Obsession was approaching, the way it often did. She could sense it coming on, soothing and hypnotic. Sometimes she wondered if this was how an alcoholic felt raising the glass after a dry spell. Knowing there’d be no going back. If a project excited her, she had the tendency to skip meals, to forget to open the shop or go outside. To stop brushing her hair. She’d been told such behavior was unhealthy—by teachers, by Joan. Even by Joan’s mother, Aileen, in her tender, fretting way. Everyone needs some fresh air, honey. But her father had always said it was a special person who could focus their attention so absolutely. By the grace of his blessing, she’d never tried to fight it, though her tendencies made a lonesome companion. She didn’t care to consider, however, how much her current focus might be related to the fact that the treatise was her one link to William.

  After the two hours she’d designated were up, Rose forced herself to unlock the bookshop door and sit behind the desk. To smile politely and recite the right lines—Would you like a receipt with that?—her mind still fixated on what lay waiting in the back. When the last visitor left, she flipped the sign again. CLOSED. She stayed well into the night, cleaning, repairing, stacking. The playlist, set on repeat, cycled through in search of its own beginning. A quarter of the way into the book, she lifted another page.

  A woman stared directly up at her.

  Rose’s heart contracted like a fist. In middle school, just after puberty struck, she’d devoured countless romance novels—secreting herself away in corners of the public library to read, too embarrassed to bring the books up to the desk and check them out. In those paperbacks, the female protagonist was usually described as “hauntingly beautiful.” Rose had always wondered what that meant, exactly.

  This, she decided, gazing down at the drawing. It meant this.

  The woman’s face consumed the page, minutely detailed down to her neck, which descended in quick lines indicating the slope of her shoulders. A single strand of pearls rolled across her clavicle, a jeweled pendant dangling at her breastbone. Her skin seemed luminous, the high planes of her face offset by shadows lingering in the bends and curves of her flesh, chalk and ink transforming the pendant into a glittering gemstone. The woman’s features were a study in symmetry and proportion, yet it was her expression that overtook Rose. There was something half-hidden in it, a quality that grasped at the viewer like an undertow. Subtle shading at the corners of her mouth and eyes suggested melancholy, a magnetic vulnerability.

  Rose leaned in, trying to dissect the composition. The rich tones of violins billowed out to fill the room, the bulbs overhead flickered. Rose stared at the woman and the woman stared back, and for a moment Rose saw life in those pupils, so deep and dark on the page. For a moment it felt as if the woman were trying to share something very, very important, if only Rose could understand—

  She leaned back, blinking. Her heart beat hard against her sternum, her cheeks burned. Barely conscious of her actions, Rose carried the page to the drafting table and flicked on the lamps that were fastened to the edges. The tabletop shot into brightness. Centering the sketch, she pulled the camera forward to take a scan. Across the room, the image appeared on the computer screen. Even pixelated, the drawing still held its power. The skill of the artist was extraordinary—Rose had to assume it was Giovanni’s, though there wasn’t a signature. She also noticed an absence of perforations along the side of this sheet; the drawing must have been tucked inside the book after it was bound. As she waited for the scan to finish, Rose realized with a jolt she’d never responded to William’s email. He’d want to see this.

  She clicked Reply to his message and attached the image, then drumrolled her fingertips on the tabletop. Couldn’t cut and paste this time.

  W.

  Thanks so much for returning the contract. I’ve actually already started work on the book. You’ll be glad to know The pages are in excellent condition, considering their age.

  I wanted to tell you To keep you updated, I did reach out to a few friends contacts and have some interesting details about a mention of Giovanni in another text. It’s in a version of a treatise It might be easiest to explain this in person when you stop by (which you’re welcome to do at any time).

  I found the attached portrait in going through the pages and thought you might like to see it. It seems Giovanni was very talented—though I’m sure you’re not surprised. : ) Giovanni was evidently very talented.

  R.

  She read it over again. Deleted the last line. Clicked Send.

  * * *

  William was up late. He walked through the muted house into the kitchen and poured himself a whiskey. Ice hit the glass, clattering into the silence. He didn’t want to sleep was the truth of it. He wanted this time to himself.

  Don’t get enough time to yourself as is? He could hear Sarah’s voice in his mind, sweet and sharp-edged, as he walked back to the dining room. It was true, though, he did get time to himself. After Jane and Lucy were dropped off at school, he had the whole day to himself. But days weren’t the same, filled with light and the lists Sara
h left on the counter: groceries to pick up, errands to run. Broken bits to fix around the house. Or call a handyman, she’d say, and he resented her for that every time. As if he couldn’t fix his own home. Well…

  No, nights were different. He could think at night, read his magazine articles, read his books. Click pointless links on the computer. Get angry at the news. Stare at his own reflection lit up in the windows, sitting at an empty dinner table. A forty-one-year-old. A dad. A man who used to be handsome, was still well known, but now whose hair was going gray—and worse, thinning on top. Now heads didn’t turn so quickly when he walked into a room, and he was forced to admit how much he needed them to, how much he’d relied on that small surge of confidence.

  It’s all part of the process, William. Not Sarah’s voice this time, but their therapist back in New York. Lois. Lois with her carefully modulated expressions and thick gray hair that tucked just under her ears like a cap. She’d always worn the same shade of lipstick—a dark, matte red—and a variation of the same outfit for every meeting: slacks, sensible shoes, a chunky necklace in a bold color over a cream or taupe sweater. “Statement necklaces,” Sarah had told him they were called. In the narrow office bathroom, framed inspirational messages hung on the walls—Start where you are; What you do today can improve all your tomorrows—and on more than one occasion William had wanted to punch through the glass and tear them right down the middle of their smug, Thomas Kinkade–style sunsets.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want the relationship to get better. It was just that from the start, Lois had so obviously thrown in with Sarah, so easily understood her side of things. William, have you been listening, or just hearing?

  But I didn’t do anything wrong!

  It became his only fallback. Because it hadn’t been him—it’d been her. It’d been Sarah he’d seen on the street when he came to surprise her for lunch, Sarah who’d been leaning against the wall outside her office, smoking. Since when had she started smoking again? Obeying instinct, William had ducked under the awning of a bodega across the street to watch, elbowing in between crates of oranges and bananas, browning limes. She was with a male co-worker: tall, lanky, floppy brown hair—the sort William could imagine wearing boat shoes with no boat, pressed khakis on the weekends. They were laughing; the man had leaned in to whisper something and Sarah had laughed again, covering her mouth, collapsing one shoulder into his chest. Then they’d finished, thrown their butts on the ground, strolled back toward the glass doors.