The Watercolourist (20 page)

On that same visit she saw a sycamore tree. When she asked the monk about it, he bragged as if it was his very own baby.

‘It’s over one hundred and thirty years old.’

Bianca wondered how he could possibly know this. Maybe someone in the seventeenth century had taken it upon himself to record the date in the register. ‘
Planted a shoot of
Platanus orientalis L.
It looks promising; we will make it the Methuselah of our domestic forest.
’

The monk kept on speaking in a pedantic tone.

‘As you can see, the trunk is hollow. This is due to a bolt of lightning that struck the tree when it was a hundred years old, but did not kill it. Indeed, it still bears leaves and fruits
and seeds every year.’

‘So it’s a plant without a soul?’ Bianca asked her father, wanting to make the monk feel uncomfortable. He did, in fact, blush and tried to come up with an explanation.

‘The spirit is in the leaves, flowers and fruits. The spirit is not the heart of the tree, I mean. The tree has no heart.’

Returning to her studio with vegetables inside her apron after her walk with Innes, Bianca reflects that she still doesn’t really know her own true colours. She places the vegetables in a
basket, but it looks too much like a Baschenis still life. Resting in an almost random fashion on the rough table, however, they are perfect. She draws them and then colours them in. She is not
sure who would find this little bit of garden pleasing, but it is beautiful. It is life. When she finishes, she picks up a tomato with her hands, which are still dirtied with colours, and bites
into it. She eats it greedily, sucking down both the juices and the colour. Red is also a taste.

At times, Bianca thinks, children – and especially boys – really are unbearable. Pietro needs total attention. He is greedy and manipulative. He always wants to be
right, and as the firstborn he enjoys certain privileges that the other children are denied. These defects accentuate his propensity towards tyranny. Enrico follows him around and imitates his
every move, as best as he can, since he is more fragile and inclined to cry. Taken together, the boys are pernicious. One day, Bianca finds Pietro throwing a spider into another spider’s web.
From a distance she can’t understand what he is doing. She sees him lying on the ground next to his brother, tossing something and then looking into a void. She walks up to them, curious,
just in time to see the spider envelop the stranger in an excited frenzy. The victim is moving and then it stops. Pietro glances up at Bianca. She has stood in his light. He looks her up and down
with daring eyes, his lips pursed in a smile.

‘You’re cruel,’ Bianca says.

‘Even Papa does it,’ he replies. He looks around for another little insect and finds an ant to condemn. Bianca turns and walks away without saying a word. She never knows quite what
to say to Pietro.

The next day he comes up to her with his younger brother as if by chance while she is strolling in the gardens. He has his hands behind his back as if he is a miniature adult. He stands in her
way, like a bandit.

‘I have written a poem, like Papa. Would you like to hear it?’

Bianca nods, without letting herself be deceived by his innocent tone. He takes the piece of paper that he has been hiding in his hand, unravels it like a messenger, and reads aloud:

‘Did you like it?’ he asks, waiting for the usual overindulgent praise.

‘There’s a missing rhyme and a word that’s not in Italian that I do not understand. Also, “ossi” are animals’ bones, you should use “ossa” for
human bones. That’s another mistake. Principally, though, poems about bones are no longer the fashion.’

‘Maybe they’re not popular any more, but they certainly are spooky. If you saw bones, you’d scream so loud you’d shatter glass. Be careful, because this place is full of
bones. Aren’t I right, Enrico? They grow like your dear little flowers.’

Enrico, playing the part of a good sidekick, nods. Pietro walks away with his hands behind his back, gripping the piece of paper like an offended dignitary. Enrico follows him.

‘Minna, what’s this story about bones in the garden?’

‘Who told you about the bones, Miss Bianca?’ Minna says, eyes open wide in alarm.

‘I overheard the boys talking . . .’

‘Oh, those two troublemakers. It’s an ugly story. Do you really want to hear it?’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, they say the bones belong to Don Carlo.’ She sniffles a bit, and then tells the story rather too quickly, as if she feels guilty. She looks off into space, frowning as she
speaks. ‘Don Carlo owned this house. My grandfather says that he was a good man, for a count. When he died, he left everything to Donna Clara, and then everyone else came, like grasshoppers.
And the bones, well . . . at first the old lady did everything she could to make Don Carlo’s tomb beautiful. Masons came, even a master mason from Bergamo. And then, well, they moved the
tomb. There was a party . . . well, not really a party, more like a second funeral, with a priest and everything. Even Frenchmen came from France and they gave speeches about how great a man he
was. I never saw him myself. I was tiny, but they told me. They sealed the coffin in the tomb. At first Donna Clara went there every day, praying and making daisy crowns, as though she was a saint.
Then I suppose she got tired of it. Or maybe her son wanted her to stop when he moved in. Anyway, they tore down the tomb. It took two days. I remember because by then I was older. And they used
the stones to build the rotunda up there on the hill. The coffin disappeared. They say that the bones are still here, that they wander around. It makes me frightened to think of dead people’s
bones.’

‘Who are
they
?’ Bianca dares to ask, trying to make sense of the girl’s words.

‘People. Everyone,’ Minna concludes, wringing her hands beneath her apron. ‘Why do you want to hear these ugly stories, Miss Bianca? You wouldn’t want the ghost of Don
Carlo to get angry and come and tug on your feet at night, would you?’

Bianca laughs.

‘Ghosts don’t exist, Minna,’ Not until we conjure them. That’s when they begin to take shape, when we imagine them. Once we summon them forth, for whatever reason,
there’s the chance that they will never want to leave. They become so tightly wrapped up in us that they blind us with regret, guilt, and the sting of renewed grief.

There are moments when Bianca thinks of Pia as a friend. She is not
really
her friend but she wishes she could be. Theirs is a relationship that needs no words but
feeds only on glances, gestures and trust. It is an understanding that concentrates on things of small importance, transforming what little they have into things infinitely more precious. Pia gives
Bianca gifts of flowers that she picks and arranges herself with an innate tenderness, mixing the high with the low – wild snapdragons, buttercups, a nosegay of miniature roses – as if
she has always been doing it. She will put them in a teacup – with black and gold decorations – and suddenly the flowers are fit for the gods. Bianca gives Pia ribbons – not old,
used ones but new and crisp – a lace collar, and three handkerchiefs with decorated borders.

‘Do you ever daydream, Pia?’ Bianca once asks her impulsively.

They are lying on the grass, looking at the sky, hands behind their heads, feet close together.

‘Yes, I like the ones I have where I am in charge,’ Pia answers coolly. ‘I like to invent a life as it will never be.’

‘But you don’t know what your future will bring.’

‘Oh, yes – if I’ve already imagined it, then it cannot be. For this reason I invent things that are impossible. That way I can have fun and not waste my time.’

Hers is a practical economy of self-satisfaction.

‘So what do you daydream of, then?’

‘I cannot tell you, Miss Bianca. You’d laugh at me.’

‘Me? Never.’

‘What about you? What do you daydream of, Miss Bianca?’

‘I only dream at night. And I never remember anything afterwards, except for the fact that it happened. No . . . once my father came to visit me. He was dressed in a long white shirt, like
the Christ of the lambs, and he wanted to hug me but he was too far away.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘She never laughed. And then she died,’ Bianca says, grateful that they are not facing each other.

‘Maybe she knew. That she was going to die, I mean. But even Donna Julie . . . she only laughs rarely.’

What about your mother?
Bianca wants to ask.
The pretty swaddling and all the rest?
But she holds back. She doesn’t want to risk losing what they have. They can say
anything to each other and know that there won’t be any consequences; neither will either repeat what the other has said, and they don’t need to be ashamed of anything.

‘Do you think Tommaso is good-looking?’

‘Oh, come on, Pia. He’s only a boy.’

‘I know. But his hair is as smooth as silk. I’d like to run my fingers through it, mess it up a little.’

‘It’s messy already!’

Laughter, and then silence.

‘Anyway,
I
think he’s good-looking,’ Pia continues. ‘Even Luigi will turn out to be good-looking. His father wants to send him to become a servant at Crippa of
Lampugnano. We will never see each other again.’

‘It isn’t that far away. He can always come back to visit.’

‘A maid is like a prisoner. And anyway, I only like to look at him. I don’t want to marry him or anything. It’s better to be alone. I’m used to it.’

‘But one day it will happen.’ Bianca turns onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow. The child is still on her back with her eyes closed.

‘Do you feel the same way, Miss Bianca?’

Sometimes silence is the best answer.