The Watercolourist (14 page)

One day, Bianca walks into the library in search of
Traité des arbres fruitiers.
She saw it in the hands of the master a few days ago. It is a beautiful edition
with hand-coloured tables. Don Titta purchased it in Paris, he told her once at dinner, when he decided to dedicate himself – ‘ignorant as a newborn’ – to the land. Instead
of taking the book and leaving, however, Bianca cannot resist the urge to leaf through it immediately. She stares at the drawings of the dappled skin of a pear, and then at the rust-coloured
network of some strange apple, its name sweeter than its actual flavour. Behind her, Don Titta approaches in silence.

‘Are you interested in apples, Miss Bianca?’

She jumps, then, regaining her composure, turns around and takes a step back. He is so close to her she can smell his clothes: a scent of verbena, somewhat feminine.

‘I was curious to see how Monceau managed with fruits,’ she says. ‘In the drawings from a century ago they always look so small. Not to mention the branches – so spindly
they’re frightening.’

‘A little, but that is their natural structure – they look like the hands of old men. But as far as the fruits themselves go, it is because you have ours in mind. Brusuglio is a
rediscovered paradise, or better, an Eden where we have been happily forgotten.’ He speaks without a hint of irony. ‘Our apples, do not fear, do not bring damnation. There are no
prohibited fruits here or sick ones. You can bite them to your heart’s content. You know the unwritten rule: nothing halfway. We have magnificent plants, or nothing,’ he finishes with a
smile.

Bianca returns the gesture. She knows about Don Titta’s attempts to plant white cotton and the Nanking cherry. The former caught on at first, for in one of the ledgers there is a
triumphant message detailing a bountiful crop: five kilos of raw cotton transformed into eighty aune of precious percale through octane spinning. But it was only a one-time miracle. The cold,
frost, rain and hail brought it to a bitter end. Too many enemies for a small plant that wants only heat.

Even now they are going through a strange season. It rains like there will never be sun again. The children, confined to the house, are bursting with suppressed energy. A faint green mist
presses against the trees, concealing the edges of the world.

‘Shall we send out a dove?’ Innes suggests. Both Donna Clara and Donna Julie look at him with disapproving glances. ‘Or a dog?’ he corrects himself. Bianca lets out a
little chuckle.

‘Dogs don’t like to go out in the rain,’ Pietro replies. ‘That’s why they end up pooing in the house and stinking it up.’

Shocked laughter follows from the little girls and from Enrico.

‘Stinky poo, stinky poo,’ Enrico sings.

‘Children!’ Their mother tries to call them back to order. Nanny covers her mouth in shock. Innes, master of deflection, distracts them.

‘Do you know how many days the Great Flood lasted? Seven? Five? One hundred? Twenty?’

Satisfied looks come from both mother and grandmother. It is always a good time to review the sacred scriptures.

In the space of only two days, all three girls fall ill. Hiding her own cough, Donna Julie shuttles back and forth between nursery and ground floor, carrying either insipid food
or smelly herbal concoctions. The poet, as always in such family crises, shuts himself in his study. Tommaso, afraid of being left alone with the boys, does the same. Donna Clara spends her time
worrying. Innes is left to entertain the boys, turning down Nanny’s offer of help. Bianca passes the days in the extremely humid greenhouse, watching drips of water run down the panes of
glass from her place on the iron bench, identical to the kind she sat on in the Condorcet gardens. Bianca feels good in the rain, and in water, generally. It has always been that way. It is her
element – if not by nature, then by choice. Being there, surrounded by it, she daydreams the way she did while swimming in her slow, precise manner across the dark lake at her home. It is as
though she is in a light green bubble. The aromas of the greenhouse, accentuated by the prevailing moisture, daze her. Memories take her away from this world, which clutches her like a tight corset
even though it has all the elements of comfort – freedom, independence, and a certain amount of fun. She doesn’t know quite what to make of this nostalgia. It isn’t a feeling that
she enjoys. She thinks it useless, a wasted exercise, to want things that are no longer attainable. She doesn’t really miss the lake because she knows it is still there. Its quiet, mineral
existence carries on without her. She knows she can get to it in two days by carriage. When you know something is there, when you can reach out and touch it, it exists. It’s there, even if
you
don’t
touch it. Really, the sole person she misses terribly is inside her, ready to answer when she calls, present the way that spirits are always present, their company
perceived only when you listen hard enough. And yet, Bianca feels, something is missing.

‘Who was it?’ Don Titta storms into the nursery, dripping with rain, his frock coat steaming before the fire. He looks like a ghost, a slight mist blurring his
contours. His hair, long and darker on account of the water, sticks to his pale cheeks, and his eyes flash. The little girls whisper, then Franceschina runs to seek shelter in Nanny’s arms.
Even the boys huddle together instinctively.

‘Who was it?’ he repeats, holding out the
Trait
é before him, its cover blackened and soaking wet.

Bianca feels a pain shoot through her. Without speaking, she comes closer, takes the book from his hands and places it on the rug in front of the fire. Kneeling down before the book, she opens
the pages carefully, separating those that are already buckling together.

‘You know my books mustn’t leave the library,’ Don Titta says sternly. ‘You children used it to copy out the fruits, isn’t that right?’ No one answers.
‘Isn’t that right?’ he repeats more loudly.

Five silent heads nod yes.

‘But we stayed inside. We didn’t take it out there,’ Enrico objects, as if the book is a rare animal to be kept in a cage.

‘I would like to know who brought it up to the rotunda, and above all, who left it there.’

Silence.

‘I saw Miss Bianca carrying it under her arm. She was going that way with a box of coloured pencils.’

It is Pietro.

‘It’s true,’ says Bianca. ‘I took it with me. But I also brought it back, of course, before it started to rain.’

‘Well, I’m only saying that I saw her with the book,’ Pietro repeats, staring at his feet. Bianca does not lower herself to reply.
Imagine that
, she thinks,
being
accused by a child
.

Don Titta walks out, leaving them alone.

‘This is serious,’ Bianca says, looking at them all, one by one. ‘You all know that this is a precious book and that your father is very fond of it.’

Pietro is silent.

‘It wasn’t Miss Bianca,’ Francesca says to Pietro. ‘I saw her coming back.’

‘What if we hang it up to dry?’ Giulietta proposes and the others laugh a little too loudly, needing to release some of the tension in the room.

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Bianca says. ‘But not now. First let’s finish what we were doing.’

Their game, however, has lost its momentum. Dinnertime is slow in arriving. Later, Bianca unstitches the book’s binding and hangs up the pages, a quarto at a time, in the room where they
hang the bed sheets to dry. Pia helps her, pronouncing the Latin names of trees as they pin the pages to the lines with wooden clips. As the forest of paper grows denser, shaming the masses of
socks, underwear and leggings, Bianca almost forgets her anger towards Pietro, his lie, and the prank that she is almost certain hides behind it all.

‘Signorina, Miss Bianca! Signorina!’

Bianca is sewing the dried and ironed pages back into their binding and sighs in resignation. The job takes the kind of patience that she doesn’t have: her thimble is too big and her
finger keeps falling out of it, causing her to prick herself repeatedly. In the end she just gives in. The
Traité
will be decorated with a patchwork of pinpricks of blood, the
silent witness to a sinister pact. Who would ever need the image of a Saint-Germain pear? A fruit vendor, perhaps? And what does Tommaso want from her now? Bianca puts down the needle and thread in
irritation and reluctantly lifts her head.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry about the book. I told Titta that I saw you bring it back to the library.’

‘Were you spying on me, perchance?’

Tommaso’s face reddens. ‘I would never, Miss Bianca. I was only in the right place at the right time, as they say.’

‘Thank you, but I don’t need a lawyer in training to defend me from the accusations of a spoiled and deceitful child. Or are you practising for when you get your life back
together?’ Bianca isn’t sure where all this malice has come from but she doesn’t feel like holding back. Her index finger burns with piercings. She puts the tip in her mouth and
sucks on it.

‘Oh, wonderful. Now you, too. You’re like my sister: a portrait of wisdom. In reality she’s so hideous that no one wants her.’

‘If my brother said that about me, I’d spear him with a paintbrush.’

‘I see you also know how to tease . . . No, but seriously, you should know how important it is for me to be here. I live in Don Titta’s shadow. He is my mentor, master and
model.’ Tommaso speaks with fervour.

Bianca wonders why he is telling her all this. What is going on? A second earlier they were teasing each other.

‘I will never become as important as him,’ he continues. ‘I’ve decided to have my plebeian muse speak in the manner most appropriate to her. In dialect. Would you like to
hear something? I need to reveal her to the public, my simple muse, to see what kind of effect she has on people.’

Bianca does not know whether she should be annoyed or pleased by Tommaso’s attempt at winning her trust. She hasn’t asked for it. The language of the town bothers her too; it is
different from the rugged singsong dialect that she heard as a little girl. But she realizes that it is just a matter of familiarity, that each one of us finds beauty in that which we are most
familiar with.