Juliet
‘I grieve for you,’ said Maestro Ambrogio, wishing he could take this beautiful child in his arms and comfort her. ‘You have borne too much.’
‘I have borne nothing!’ Her blue eyes pierced the painter’s heart. ‘Do not grieve for me, just be so kind as to take us to my uncle’s house without any further questioning.’ She caught herself, and added quietly, ‘please.’
When he had safely delivered monk and girl to Palazzo Tolomei, Maestro Ambrogio returned to his workshop at something resembling a gallop. He had never felt quite this way before. He was in love, he was in hell…in fact, he was everything all at once as Inspiration flapped its colossal wings inside his skull and clawed painfully at his rib cage, looking for a way out of the prison that is a talented man’s mortal frame.
Sprawled on the floor, eternally puzzled by mankind, Dante looked on with half a bloodshot eye as Maestro Ambrogio composed his colours and began the application of Giulietta Tolomei’s features onto a painting of a hitherto headless Virgin Mary. He could not help but begin with her eyes. Nowhere else in his workshop was such an intriguing colour to be seen; indeed, not in the entire city was the same shade to be found, for he had only invented it on this very night, almost in a fever frenzy, while the image of the young girl was still fresh on the wall of his mind.
Encouraged by the immediate result, he began to trace the outline of her remarkable face underneath the flaming rivulets of hair. His movements were still magically swift and assured; had the young woman at this very moment sat before him, poised for eternity, the painter could not have worked with more giddy certainty.
‘Yes!’ was the only word escaping him as he eagerly, almost hungrily brought those breathtaking features back to life. Once the picture was complete, he took several steps backwards and finally reached out for the glass of wine he had poured for himself in a previous life, five hours earlier.
Just then, there was another knock on the door.
‘Shh!’ hushed Maestro Ambrogio, wagging a warning finger at the barking dog. ‘You always assume the worst. Maybe it is another angel.’ But as soon as he opened the door to see what demon had been dispatched by fate at this ungodly hour, he saw that Dante had been in the right.
Outside, in the flickering light of a wall torch, stood Romeo Marescotti, a drunken grin splitting his deceivingly charming face in half. Apart from their encounter only a few hours earlier, Maestro Ambrogio knew the young man only too well from the week before, when the males of the Marescotti family had sat before him, one by one, in order to have their features incorporated into a formidable new mural in Palazzo Marescotti. The paterfamilias, Comandante Marescotti, had insisted on a representation of his clan from past to present, with all credible male ancestors—plus a few incredible ones—in the centre, all employed, somehow, in the famous Battle of Montaperti, while the living hovered in the sky above, cast as the Seven Virtues. Much to everyone’s amusement, Romeo had drawn the lot least suitable for his character, and consequently Maestro Ambrogio had found himself forging the present as well as the past as he expertly applied the features of Siena’s most infamous playboy to the princely form perched on the throne of Chastity.
Now chastity reborn pushed his kind creator aside and stepped into the workshop to find the coffin still sitting—closed—in the middle of the floor. The young man was clearly itching to open it and peer once more at the body inside, but that would have meant rudely removing the Maestro’s palette and several wet paintbrushes that were now resting on top of the lid. ‘Have you finished the picture yet?’ he asked instead. ‘I want to see it.’
Maestro Ambrogio closed the door quietly behind them, only too conscious that his visitor had been drinking too much for perfect balance. ‘Why would you wish to see the likeness of a dead girl? There are plenty of live ones out there, I am sure.’
‘True,’ agreed Romeo, looking around the room and finally spotting the new addition, ‘but that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?’ He walked right up to the portrait and looked at it with the gaze of an expert; an expert not in art, but in women. After a while he nodded. ‘Not bad. The eyes are remarkable. How did you…’
‘I thank you,’ said the Maestro hastily, ‘but the true artistry is God’s. More wine?’
‘Many thanks.’ The young man took the cup and sat down on top of the coffin, carefully avoiding the dripping brushes. ‘How about a toast to your friend, God, and all the games he plays with us?’
‘It is very late,’ said Maestro Ambrogio, moving the palette and sitting down on the coffin next to Romeo. ‘You must be tired, my friend.’
As if transfixed by the portrait before him, Romeo could not tear away his gaze long enough to look at the painter. And when he finally spoke, there was a sincerity to his voice that was new, even to himself. ‘I am not as much tired,’ he said, ‘as I am awake. I wonder if I were ever this awake before.’
‘That often happens when one is half-asleep. Only then does the inner eye truly open.’
‘But I am not asleep, nor do I wish to be. I am never going to sleep again. I think I shall come every night and sit here instead of sleeping.’
Smiling at the ardent exclamation, a most enviable privilege of youth, Maestro Ambrogio looked up at his masterpiece. ‘You approve of her, then?’
‘Approve?’ Romeo nearly choked on the word. ‘I adore her!’
‘Could you worship at such a shrine?’
‘Am I not a man? Yet as a man, I must also feel great sorrow at the sight of such wasted beauty. If only death could be persuaded to give her back.’
‘Then what?’ The Maestro managed to frown appropriately. ‘What would you do if this angel was a living, breathing woman?’
Romeo took a deep breath, but the words escaped him. ‘I…don’t know. Love her, obviously. I do know how to love a woman. I have loved many.’
‘Perhaps it is just as well she is not real, then. For I believe this one would require extra effort. In fact, I imagine that to court a lady like her, one would have to enter through the front door and not skulk beneath her balcony like a thief in the night.’ Seeing that the other had fallen strangely silent, a brush-stroke of ochre trailing across his noble face, the Maestro proceeded with greater confidence. ‘There is lust, you know, and then there is love. They are related, but still very different things. To indulge in one requires little but honeyed speech and a change of clothes; to obtain the other, by contrast, a man must give up his rib. In return, his woman will undo the sin of Eve, and bring him back into Paradise.’
‘But how does a man know when to hand over his rib? I have many friends without a single rib left, and I promise you, they were never once in Paradise.’
The earnest concern on the young man’s face made Maestro Ambrogio nod. ‘It is as you said,’ he acknowledged. ‘A man knows. A boy does not.’
Romeo laughed out loud. ‘I admire you!’ He put a hand on the Maestro’s shoulder. ‘You have courage!’
‘What is so very wonderful about courage?’ retorted the painter, bolder now that his role as mentor had been approved. ‘I suspect this one virtue has killed more good men than all the vices put together.’
Again Romeo laughed out loud, as if he did not often have the pleasure of such saucy opposition, and the Maestro found himself suddenly and unexpectedly liking the young man.
‘I often hear men say,’ Romeo went on, unwilling to quit the topic, ‘that they will do anything for a woman. But then, upon her very first request, they whine and slink away like dogs.’
‘And you? Do you also slink away?’
Romeo flashed a whole row of healthy teeth, surprising for someone who was rumoured to attract fisticuffs wherever he went. ‘No,’ he answered, still smiling, ‘I have a fine nose for women who ask nothing more than what I want to give. But if such a woman existed’—he nodded towards the painting—‘I would happily break all my ribs in pursuit of her. Better still, I would enter through the front door, as you say, and apply for her hand before I had ever even touched it. And not only that, but I would make her my one and only wife and never look at another woman. I swear it! She would be worth it, I am sure.’
Pleased with what he heard, and wanting very much to believe that his artwork had had such a profound effect as to turn the young man away from his wanton ways, the Maestro nodded, rather satisfied with the night’s work. ‘She is indeed.’
Romeo turned his head, eyes narrow. ‘You speak as if she were still alive?’
Maestro Ambrogio sat silently for a moment, studying the young man’s face and probing the depth of his resolve. ‘Giulietta,’ he said at last, ‘is her name. I believe that you, my friend, with your touch stirred her from death tonight. After you left us for the tavern, I saw her lovely form rise by itself from this coffin.’
Romeo sprang from his seat as if it had burst into flames beneath him. ‘This is ghostly speech! I know not whether this chill on my arm is from dread or delight!’
‘Do you dread the schemes of men?’
‘Of men, no. Of God, greatly.’
‘Then take comfort in what I tell you now. It was not God who laid her out for dead in this coffin, but the monk, Friar Lorenzo, fearing for her safety.’
Romeo’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean, she was never dead?’
Maestro Ambrogio smiled at the young man’s expression. ‘She was ever as alive as you.’
Romeo clasped his head. ‘You are sporting with me! I cannot believe you!’
‘Believe what you want,’ said the Maestro, getting up and removing the paintbrushes, ‘or open the coffin.’
After a moment of great distress, pacing back and forth, Romeo finally braced himself and flung open the coffin.
Rather than rejoicing in its emptiness, however, the young man glared at the Maestro with renewed suspicion. ‘Where is she?’
‘That I cannot tell you. It would be a breach of confidence.’
‘But she lives?’
The Maestro shrugged. ‘She did when I saw her last, on the threshold of her uncle’s house, waving goodbye to me.’
‘And who is her uncle?’
‘As I said: I cannot tell you.’
Romeo took a step towards the Maestro, fingers twitching. ‘Are you saying that I will have to sing serenades beneath every balcony in Siena until the right woman comes out?’
Dante had jumped up as soon as the young man appeared to threaten his master, but instead of growling a warning, the dog merely put its head back and let out a long, expressive howl.
‘She will not come out just yet,’ replied Maestro Ambrogio, bending over to pat the dog. ‘She is in no mood for serenades. Perhaps she never will be.’
‘Then why,’ exclaimed Romeo, all but knocking over the easel and portrait in his frustration, ‘are you telling me this?’
‘Because,’ said Maestro Ambrogio, amused by the other’s exasperation, ‘it pains an artist’s eyes to see a snowy dove dally with crows.’
III.I
What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other word would smell as sweet
The view from the old Medici fortress, the Fortezza, was spectacular. Not only could I see the terracotta roofs of Siena broiling in the afternoon sun, but at least twenty miles of rolling hills were heaving around me like an ocean in shades of green and distant blues. Again and again I looked up from my reading, taking in the sweeping landscape in the hope that it would force all stale air from my lungs and fill my soul with summer. And yet every time I looked down and resumed Maestro Ambrogio’s journal, I plunged right back into the dark events of 1340.
I had spent the morning at Malèna’s espresso bar in Piazza Postierla, leafing through the official early versions of Romeo and Juliet written by Masuccio Salernitano and Luigi da Porto in 1476 and 1530 respectively. It was interesting to see how the plot had developed, and how da Porto had put a literary spin to a story, which, Salernitano claimed, was based on real events.
In Salernitano’s version, Romeo and Juliet—or rather, Mariotto and Giannozza—lived in Siena, but their parents were not at war. They did get married in secret, after bribing a friar, but the drama only really began when Mariotto killed a prominent citizen and had to go into exile. Meanwhile, Giannozza’s parents, unaware that their daughter was already married, demanded that she marry someone else. In desperation, Giannozza had the friar cook up a powerful sleeping potion, and the effect was so great that her imbecilic parents believed she was dead and went ahead and buried her right away. Fortunately, the good old friar was able to deliver her from the sepulchre, whereupon Giannozza travelled secretly by boat to Alexandria, where Mariotto was living the good life. However, the messenger who was supposed to inform Mariotto of the sleeping-potion scheme had been captured by pirates, and upon receiving the news of Giannozza’s death, Mariotto came blasting back into Siena to die by her side. Here, he was captured by soldiers, and beheaded. Chop. And Giannozza had spent the rest of her life weeping in a convent.
As far as I could see, the key elements in this original version were: the secret marriage, Romeo’s banishment, the harebrained scheme of the sleeping potion, the messenger gone astray, and Romeo’s deliberate suicide-mission based on his erroneous belief in Juliet’s death.
The big difference, of course, was that the whole thing supposedly happened in Siena, and if Malèna had been around, I would have asked her if this was common knowledge. I highly suspected it was not.
Interestingly enough, when da Porto took over the story half a century later, he too, was eager to anchor the story in reality, going so far as to call Romeo and Giulietta by their real first names. He lost his nerve over the location, however, and moved the whole thing to Verona, changing all family names—very possibly to avoid retribution from the powerful clans involved in the scandal.
But never mind the logistics; in my interpretation—aided by several cups of cappuccino—da Porto wrote a far more entertaining story. He was the one who introduced the masked ball and the balcony scene, and his was the genius that first devised the double suicide. The only thing that did not immediately make sense to me was that he had Juliet die by holding her breath. But perhaps da Porto had felt that his audience would not appreciate a bloody scene…scruples that Shakespeare, fortunately, did not have.
After da Porto, someone called Bandello had felt compelled to write a third version and add a lot of melodramatic dialogue without—as far as I could see—altering the essentials of the plot. But from then on the Italians were done with the story, and it travelled first to France, then England, to eventually end up on Shakespeare’s desk, ready for immortalization.
The biggest difference, as far as I could see, between all these poetic versions and Maestro Ambrogio’s journal, was that in reality there had been three families involved, not just two. The Tolomeis and the Salimbenis had been the feuding households—the Capulets and the Montagues, so to speak—while Romeo, in fact, had been a Marescotti and thus an outsider. In that respect, Salernitano’s very early rendition of the story was the one that came closest to the truth; it was set in Siena, and there had been no mention of a family feud.
Later, walking back from the Fortezza with Maestro Ambrogio’s journal clutched to my chest, I looked at all the happy people around me and once again felt the presence of an invisible wall between me and them. There they were, walking, jogging, and eating ice cream, not pausing to question the past, nor burdened, as I was, with a feeling that they did not fully belong in this world.
That same morning, I had stood in front of the bathroom mirror trying on the necklace with the silver crucifix that had been in my mother’s box, and decided I would start wearing it. After all, it was something she had owned, and by leaving it in the box she had clearly intended it for me. Perhaps, I thought, it would somehow protect me against the curse that had marked her for an early death.
Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there are many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, as it did now.
When I returned to the hotel, Direttore Rossini came towards me like the messenger from Marathon, dying to tell me the news. ‘Miss Tolomei! Where have you been? You must go! Right away! Contessa Salimbeni is waiting for you in Palazzo Pubblico! Go, go’—he shooed me the way you would a dog hanging around for scraps—‘you must not leave her waiting!’
‘Wait!’ I pointed at two objects that sat conspicuously in the middle of the floor. ‘Those are my suitcases!’
‘Yes-yes-yes, they were delivered a moment ago.’
‘Well, I’d like to go to my room and—’
‘No!’ Direttore Rossini flung open the front door. ‘You must go right away!’
‘I don’t even know where I’m going!’
‘Santa Caterina!’ Though I knew he was secretly delighted with yet another opportunity to educate me about Siena, Direttore Rossini rolled his eyes and let go of the door. ‘Come, I will draw directions!’
Entering the Campo was like stepping into a gigantic seashell. All around the edge were restaurants and cafés, and right where the pearl would have been, at the bottom of the sloping piazza, sat Palazzo Pubblico, the building that had served as Siena’s city hall since the Middle Ages.
I paused for a moment, taking in the hum of many voices under the dome of a blue sky, the pigeons flapping around, and the white marble fountain with the turquoise water—until a wave of tourists came up behind me and swept me along with them, rushing forward in excited wonder at the magnificence of the giant square.
While drawing his directions, Direttore Rossini had assured me that the Campo was considered the most beautiful piazza in all of Italy, and not only by the Sienese themselves. In fact, he could hardly recount the numerous occasions on which hotel guests from all corners of the world, even from Florence, had come to him and extolled its graces. He, of course, had protested and pointed out the many splendours of other places—surely, they were out there somewhere—but people had been unwilling to listen. They had stubbornly maintained that Siena was the loveliest, most unspoiled city on the globe, and in the face of such conviction, what could Direttore Rossini do but allow that, indeed, it might be so?
I stuffed the directions into my handbag and began walking down towards Palazzo Pubblico. The building was hard to miss with the tall bell tower, Torre del Mangia, the construction of which Direttore Rossini had described in such detail that it had taken me several minutes to realize that it had not, in fact, been erected before his very eyes, but at some time in the late Middle Ages. A lily, he had called it, a proud monument to female purity with its white stone flower held aloft by a tall red stem. And curiously, it had been built with no foundation. The Mangia Tower, he claimed, had stood for over six centuries, held up by the grace of God and faith alone.
I blocked the sun with my hand and looked at the tower as it stretched against the infinite blue. In no other place had I ever seen female purity celebrated by a 335-foot phallic object. But maybe that was me.
There was a quite literal sense of gravity about Palazzo Pubblico and its tower, as if the Campo itself was caving in under its weight. Direttore Rossini had told me that if I was in doubt, I was to imagine that I had a ball and put it on the ground. No matter where I stood on the Campo, the ball would roll right down to Palazzo Pubblico. There was something about the image that appealed to me. Maybe it was the thought of a ball bouncing over the ancient brick pavement. Or maybe it was simply the way he had pronounced the words, with whispering drama, like a magician talking to four-year-olds.
Palazzo Pubblico had, like all seats of government, grown with age. From its origins as little more than a meeting room for nine administrators, it was now a formidable structure, and I entered the inner courtyard with a feeling of being watched. Not so much by people, I suppose, as by the lingering shadows of generations past, generations devoted to the life of this city, this small plot of land as cities go, this universe unto itself.
Eva Maria Salimbeni was waiting for me in the Hall of Peace. She sat on a bench in the middle of the room, looking up into the air, as if she was having a silent conversation with God. But as soon as I walked through the door, she came to, and a smile of delight spread over her face.
‘So, you came after all!’ she exclaimed, rising from the bench to kiss me on both cheeks. ‘I was beginning to worry.’
‘Sorry to keep you waiting. I didn’t even realize…’
Her smile dismissed everything I could possibly say. ‘You are here now. That is all that matters. Look’—she made a sweeping gesture at the giant frescoes covering the walls of the room—‘have you ever seen anything so magnificent? Our great Maestro, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, made them in the late 1330s. He probably finished this one, over the doors, in 1340. It is called Good Government.’
I turned to look at the fresco in question. It covered the entire length of the wall, and to make it would have required a complex machinery of ladders and scaffolding, perhaps even platforms suspended from the ceiling. The left half depicted a peaceful city scene with ordinary citizens going about their business; the right half was a wide view of the countryside beyond the city wall. Then something occurred to me, and I said, baffled, ‘You mean…Maestro Ambrogio?’
‘Oh, yes,’ nodded Eva Maria, not the least bit surprised that I was familiar with the name. ‘One of the greatest masters. He painted these scenes to celebrate the end of a long feud between our two families, the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis. Finally, in 1339, there was peace.’
‘Really?’ I thought of Giulietta and Friar Lorenzo escaping from the Salimbeni bandits on the high road outside Siena. ‘I get the impression that in 1340 our ancestors were still very much at war. Certainly out in the countryside.’
Eva Maria smiled cryptically; either she was delighted that I had bothered to read up on family lore, or she was miffed that I dared to contradict her. If the latter, she was graceful enough to acknowledge my point, and said, ‘You are right. The peace had unintended consequences. It happens whenever the bureaucrats try to help us.’ She threw up her arms. ‘If people want to fight, you can’t stop them. If you prevent them inside the city, they will fight in the country, and out there, they will get away with it. At least inside Siena, the riots were always stopped before things got completely out of hand. Why?’
She looked at me to see if I could guess, but of course, I couldn’t.
‘Because,’ she went on, wagging a didactic finger in front of my nose, ‘in Siena we have always had a militia. And in order to keep the Salimbenis and the Tolomeis in check, the citizens of Siena had to be able to mobilize and have all their companies out in the city streets within minutes.’ She nodded firmly, agreeing with herself. ‘I believe this is why the contrada tradition is so strong here even today; the devotion of the old neighbourhood militia was essentially what made the Sienese republic possible. If you want to keep the bad elements in check, make sure the good men are armed.’
I smiled at her conclusion, doing my best to look as if I had no vested interest. Now was not the time to tell Eva Maria that I did not believe in weapons, and that, in my experience, the so-called good men were no better than the bad ones.