The Watercolourist (13 page)

Pia will end up heartbroken
, Bianca says to herself. The thought pains her and she silently promises to watch out for the girl as long as she can.

Bianca needs to focus on her work. She decides that she will make all the preliminary sketches in the summer and then, during the winter, when her subjects are temporarily away,
she will begin painting. Without the liveliness of colour before her, though, it will be difficult. She therefore compiles a selection of different colour swatches. She takes large pieces of paper
and draws rows and rows of the same-sized rectangles, and fills them with the colours she knows she will need: innumerable shades of green and brown; creamy whites; whites with hints of pink,
orange or yellow; the powerful vermilion of the upside-down fuchsias and the fresh bougainvillea from Brazil; the lilac blues of plumbago and rosemary. She positions the mixtures in front of their
originals to verify their intensity, force and sweetness. What she discovers is a palette of harmonious colours, shading from the palest to the most intense. It is beautiful to see. Pia is
fascinated by the chart; she devours it with her eyes and speaks the names of the colours out loud, savouring them as though they are flavours. Burnt sienna. Scarlet. Viridian. Lapis lazuli.
Carmine.

Bianca’s work does not end there. Next, along the border of each rectangle, she jots down in pencil the proportions of pigment that she has used in each mixture, hoping to catch the exact
hue. How much is science and how much is enthusiasm, she doesn’t know. Painting, though not a science, takes precision. It requires methodology and application, two predispositions that are
not natural to Bianca, but which she has nonetheless mastered, as one does an exacting yet healthy sport that reinforces both muscles and posture.

She also has lovely calligraphy. One day Don Titta calls her to his study to ask her to copy out, in alphabetical order, all the names of the flowers, plants, shrubs and vegetables that grow in
Brusuglio, or at least the ones that grow within the confines of the walled garden.

‘It’s part of a bigger task that I need your help with,’ he explains, showing her the ledgers he has prepared precisely for this purpose. One lined column takes up a third of
the page and the rest is filled with small squares. It is for accounting. He plans to fill it with the dates of the plants’ arrival, their costs, the origin of the grafts, and comments on
their outcome: if they wither in two months, resist, die, are struck by scale insects or powdery mildew, and so on.

‘I need to catalogue. In these kinds of things I am consistent,’ he says. ‘I would like to do it myself, but I would have to dedicate all my time and mental energy to it. And
now my mind is possessed by other thoughts . . .’ He draws a small vortex in mid-air with his index finger. ‘I’m like a coil: infinite. One thought attached to another attached to
another . . .’

Bianca wonders if that’s how poetry comes into being. Does it start with a chain of thoughts, and then – either suddenly or with premeditation – a flow of words fills out the
chain the way a hand fills out a glove? She doesn’t dare ask. She has not reached that level of confidence with him yet. She fears that he might be thrown by the question and she understands
that for the general well-being of the family it is best for him to be calm. When he is absent, cooped up in his study for days on end, or out on his long walks, he does not talk about his plants,
the harvest or the possibility of a drought. It is as if the persona of poet is too fastidious and demanding to be able to live with that other self, the one that drags him literally back to earth
– towards the land, flowers, plants, vines and grain. But it is also evident that Don Titta feels nostalgia for the part of him that he has to neglect at times.

‘If only one could keep ledgers of sentiments as well,’ Bianca blurts out. She brings a hand to her mouth in shock. What has she said? Why did she say it? The master looks at her in
surprise and then smiles.

‘Even a man as highly unrealistic as myself could tell you that this would be useless. So, when will you begin the task?’

Tomorrow. There is always a tomorrow for postponing things. The days are long and slow and she is already busy. But despite the large undertaking, she decides to add a miniature drawing to each
of the entries, as well as copying out the names. It will make the ledger even more precise and complete, with its old papers, documents, accompanying letters, receipts in French and English, and
accounts of seeds purchased from afar.

From these master books, Bianca discovers more about the grand ambitions of the garden project than by visiting the greenhouses and fields in person. She learns how atypical shoots are planted
and if the climate is conducive to them. She gets a sense of which seeds prosper and which wither. Every so often, though, she has to get away from her desk and get more precise information from
Leopoldo Maderna, the head gardener.

At first Maderna looks into Bianca’s eyes and answers every one of her questions in an irritated tone, as if he disapproves strongly and does not understand the hasty need for results from
such a project. But then he contradicts himself, becoming excited.

‘The black locust trees are rooting well. Actually, the roots are propagating and are shooting up from the ground in places you’d least expect them. It’s exhausting to rip them
out because they’re formed like an upside down T, like this.’ He holds out his left palm horizontally, the middle finger pointing up, to explain the shape. ‘To pull them out you
need to get really deep down. There they are – over there, and there.’ And he points all around, along the horizon, at some green splotches. ‘They’re tall now. And they make
up a wonderful dividing hedge, a flexible wall, but they prick worse than brambles.’

Bianca thinks about the green tangle that surrounded the home of Sleeping Beauty. Was it planted with
Robinia pseudoacacia
, with those small, seemingly innocent, bright green, oval
leaves that never seemed to age?

There are trees everywhere:
Acer negundo
and
platanoides
, a grove of
Salix babylonica
, and the
Liriodendron
, with its aspiration for height and yellow flowers
as big as fists. There is
Ailanthus
, as beautiful as it is fetid;
Gleditsia
, a thorny locust even crueller than the black variety. And there is
Inermis
, constrained to a
sapling. Leopoldo tells her too about
Andromeda arborea
with its beautiful star name, which looks like a blazing fire in autumn. And the
Clematis
from Lake Como, which Bianca has
always found overly dramatic, but she doesn’t say so because Como is Maderna’s home town and she doesn’t want him to stop talking now that he has started. Anyway, it is no use, he
says, the
Clematis
won’t take. He points to these plants, struggling to climb the taut lines along a south-facing wall that ought to supply them with the necessary shade and instead
puts them to shame. Maybe they prefer the north. There are the
armandii
and the
cirrhosa
varieties, with their three, pointy, garnet-coloured flowers. They are lovely, yes, but
too sparse to make an impression. The
intricata
is all leaves and might remain as such, and the
pagoda
, with its exquisite name, hints at sophisticated chinoiserie. Passing from
the delightful to the useful, there are vines from Burgundy and Bordeaux, but they aren’t faring too well.

‘The issue here is the land; it’s only good for
Bersamino
, that fussy grape that comes from young Don Tommaso’s parts. To find really beautiful vines, one needs to
take the Via Francesca, or go beyond the Po River to the foothills of the mountains,’ Leopoldo explains, as he guides her through the estate. ‘These are grown in the French manner, as
dwarves.’ Together they skirt the neat bush-trained vines from which hang miniature bunches of acid-green grapes. ‘You’ll see how good these grapes are, but a few is all that Don
Titta’s table needs. Let’s hope that powdery mildew doesn’t take hold of them first.’

After conversations like these, Bianca goes back to the study, rereads her notes, compares them with the organized shopping lists written by Don Titta, verifies the spelling and checks them
against guides and dictionaries. She discovers that out there, though she does not know where exactly, there really is everything: cherry, apple, pear, apricot and plum trees, in millions of
varieties. If the world were to end, everyone in town could live for weeks off these fruits.

Bianca finds she doesn’t want to know a thing about the repugnant art of silkworms. The mulberry trees, on which they feed, are numerous.

‘You mustn’t plant them too close together,’ Leopoldo tells her. ‘In the first year you breed only three branches, and keep them clean cut. We planted eight hundred and
then another eight hundred. If we have too many leaves, we can always sell them.’

In fact, she has seen many young boys coming and going with baskets full of fresh leaves to give to the silkworms that live in the peasants’ homes. They take care of them day and night
like guests of honour. If you get close enough, you can hear the incessant gnashing of their jaws.

‘They are a Japanese green breed,’ Leopoldo explains with pride. Bianca, who does not want to see them, not even from afar, imagines them as being fat, bound in tiny flowered pieces
of fabric, and wrapped in silk string. She knows they work hard, but she doesn’t want to even try to appreciate them. Leopoldo, who clearly feels more comfortable with her now, takes a dark
pleasure in inviting Bianca to see where they blanch the worms.

She saves the best for last, like a child before a plate of sweets. The flowers. Obviously, she focuses on the ones with which she is less familiar. She knows a fair amount from her studies,
from her books and from visits to the most important botanical gardens in Europe. She has already come across hydrangeas and their exaggerated richness in Kew Gardens, but she learns that they are
almost unknown in Italy. To get there, they come from France by sea and then wagon, like enslaved princesses. Bianca fantasizes about the shrubs in their jute sacks and the young mahogany-coloured
servants who bring them fresh water every day, water that the servants want to drink themselves but cannot. She pictures the ship sailing on and on. What if there was a storm and the boat was
wrecked – where would those plants end up? At the bottom of the sea? Would they breed with algae and decorate the hair of mermaids? Or would they drift along the surface, helped by the
current, until reaching some desert beach, forming a grove in a new corner of the earth that has previously been known only to monkeys? No, the hydrangeas that Leopoldo Maderna is so proud of are
merely the outposts of a whimsical invasion commanded by a French friend of Don Titta’s, named Dupont. In the ledger, Dupont is nicknamed ‘the flower correspondent’. He has sent
plants from Paris at regular intervals with several folio sheets from the
Almanach du bon jardinier.
Plants also come from the offices of Longone Constantino da Dugnano, a great cello of a
man, big-boned and rather slow, who carries his last name proudly and who has the tendency to blush every time he sees a woman. He brings shoots that need to be transplanted in a hurry.

Almost all the flowers are Parisian by birth. This explains, perhaps, their reluctance to take root in these rustic lands. The
Lathyrus,
for example, is something of a failure in all
its forms. The
Bignonia
fare better, and actually are so invasive that their orange flowers are overwhelming. The
Digitalis
, with its poisonous qualities, has been planted in the
far reaches of the gardens, where no child would think of feeding their dolls with those colourful tube-like flowers. The light blue and lilac
Lobelia
create colourful stains along the
border of the great valley, light and dark hues depending on the tyranny of shade and soil. The
Achillea
,
Aquilegia canadensis
and
Rudbeckia
, with their ordinary gay
colours, grow semi-wild and are planted at the far ends of the garden. Pink sachets of
Silene
, as light as silk, stand shivering along the confines of the field. This is neither an Italian
nor a French country garden; it is different from everything, a bastard child, whose mother is beauty and father is experimentation. It lacks the charm of the English garden, where rare flowers
look like dishevelled weeds, where roses rest against tree trunks like weary girls, and where emerald-green grasses are compact and lovely with moisture. It is a garden of contradictions, like its
owner. It is high and low at the same time, plebeian and haughty.

To learn the names of things makes Bianca feel somewhat omnipotent. To learn the history of a seed, its timing, and its ways gives her a strange sense of self-possession. Copying down all that
information in the correct order – and adding her personal touch of a tiny ink drawing of a leaf, flower or fruit in the column she has created herself – is Bianca’s own way of
making sense of the world. She expects to receive compliments from the entire family once her work is finished: the poet’s sincere gratitude, an evening of oohs and aahs, the little girls
being allowed to turn the pages so they can recognize the flowers and fruits they have seen thousands of times, and learn to spell out their Latin and common names. They will ask if they can copy
the drawings, and Bianca, with enthusiasm, will promise them a colouring book with the best drawings on a larger scale for their small hands. She will enjoy a small triumph and ignore envious
glances or sly comments – the honey on the rim of the cup that holds a bitter drink.