Painting Death Page 5

  Had he had any choice but to put an end to it?

  There were no such perils with Antonella. Like Morris’s mother she was a chaste spirit who put God before self and respectability before both. From the start it had been understood that the pleasures of their union would lie in knowing that they had done all that Upright Society could ever ask of any couple. They would build up the family business and guarantee employment to all those less fortunate souls who had come to rely on Fratelli Trevisan for their sustenance. They would use any excess wealth for charitable works and unimpeachable cultural projects, fitting into the busy routine occasional pilgrimages to Lourdes and to Medjugorje. Sex would be strictly a matter of decorous impregnation, after which the two would catechise their offspring in the age-old Catholic tradition, ensuring them the finest available schooling so that they too could accrue wealth and distribute it to virtuous causes, never missing Mass or confession or the annual trip to the city’s monumental cemetery where the Trevisan family’s multitudinous dead would certainly not be obliged to turn in well-appointed tombs for any misdemeanour of theirs.

  How different things might have been, Morris had sometimes reflected during these fertile years with Antonella, if his own dear dead mother had had a husband like himself, a man who admired and seconded her virtues, instead of a Neanderthal who grew more crass, drunk and violent the more her modesty verged upon sanctity. ‘I know of no finer couple in all Verona,’ Don Lorenzo had announced over after-dinner brandy one evening in the mid-nineties, as Morris wrestled the charmingly hyperactive Massimina on his knee and Antonella winced under the bite of baby Mauro’s gums on her nipples. So that if in the end there had been only two children, this was not the consequence of any disobedience of the Church’s teaching on sexual practices, but because Antonella felt that with booming world populations two little angels were quite enough; that agreed, she could imagine no further reason for inviting Morris between her ample thighs.

  The marriage was perfect. Almost. Morris loved spending his days with a woman who was unfailingly kind, thoughtful, practical and prayerful, a Veronese of the old school who had inherited quiet and efficient servants and ran her household as the Trevisan household had been run for generations: profitably, discreetly, even beautifully. It really was as if his beloved mother had returned from the grave richer and younger to become her son’s wife, but without surrendering her admirable and only mildly chiding virtues. After the turbulence of his early years in Italy, such a marriage seemed like a well-deserved point of arrival.

  All the same, something was missing. Occasionally and despite himself, as they say, the maturing Morris would find himself fantasising Paola’s excesses, her sex toys and exhibitionism, above all, that firm finger she loved to plant deep in the Duckworth fundament; or better still, though he hardly dared go there, Massimina’s adolescent tenderness, a delicate erotic love he had enjoyed all too briefly in that heady summer month of kidnap disguised as elopement.

  ‘All too briefly, Morri,’ she echoed from her gilded frame, ‘but I will never forget.’

  ‘Nor I, dear Mimi,’ he shook his head. ‘Nor I.’

  It was not that Morris ever contemplated leaving Antonella; she gave him the stability and respectability any man would kill for. But five or six years into the serenity his motherly wife provided, Morris had begun to sense that it was only a matter of time before the transgressions began; he was in a holding pattern waiting for the brutal urge to out. Perhaps good mothers naturally bred naughty boys; their virtue became your vice. Casting about, then, for some innocent palliative that might stave off the evil day, because Morris really did want to be good, he had come up with the idea of The Art Room. The family palazzo in Via Oberdan, acquired from Antonella’s first husband, Bobo Posenato, son of the homonymous battery-chicken magnate, was far too big for their modest lifestyle and given Antonella’s commendable disinterest in grand social occasions she had not resisted Morris’s request to convert the first-floor ballroom into a private art gallery.

  ‘Don’t you think she looks a little like Massimina?’ he had asked, hanging Lippi’s Madonna over the great fireplace.

  ‘Our Massimina?’

  Their daughter had been four at the time.

  ‘Your sister, silly!’

  Antonella wrinkled her nose, narrowed her eyes; Massimina had been dead eight years.

  ‘Not even a tiny bit, no.’

  ‘She’s just jealous,’ Mimi had told her killer as soon as they were alone, ‘she hates it that you still think of me.’

  Whenever he was in The Art Room, Morris was trying to decide what the next picture would be. He regularly trawled the net on his MacBook Air, which he kept on a small desk, to see what images excited him, checking all the auction-room info in case something affordable became available in the original.

  ‘We’re not jealous of her though,’ Mimi interrupted him.

  ‘We?’

  ‘Didn’t you know, Morri? Paola and I are on speaking terms again.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Morris was surprised to learn that his first wife hadn’t ended up in a quite different place from dear Massimina, but sensed it would be unwise to seek clarification. There are things it is not given to the living to know.

  Lippi’s Madonna suddenly let out a peal of healthy, youthful laughter. ‘Funny that of us three sisters you managed to end up with the only one who doesn’t like sex at all! Povero Morrees. What bad luck!’

  Morris paused. He had been pondering at the time whether Forbes would be up to copying Delacroix’s The Death of Sardanapalus. All that smutty, sadomaso luxury was very Paola. If one mustn’t transgress oneself, it surely wasn’t wrong to contemplate an aestheticised transgression.

  ‘So what do you think I should do about it?’ he had asked her, almost absent-minded.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ the girl snapped back. ‘It’s hardly my problem is it, where I am? With our Lord Jesus as well.’

  This was exactly the sort of prickly, unhelpful answer that convinced Morris that his dialogue with the dead girl was a real one; if he had just been making it up, it would all have been mere ego gratification from start to finish.

  ‘I’ve decided to collect some pictures for you to look at,’ he had told her.

  ‘As if I didn’t know,’ she came back.

  ‘Tell me what you think of this.’ He took the laptop over to where she was hanging. The sumptuous Delacroix was full screen in high-res.

  ‘Forbes could never do that,’ the girl said at once. ‘Nice picture though. Lots going on. Sexy!’

  Morris sighed: ‘Don’t you think the nude at the front looks a bit like Paola?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Mimi told him. ‘Grow up, Morri!’

  After the paintings had begun to accumulate, Antonella asked, ‘So why all the murders?’

  There was always a motherly wryness in her manner, an affectionate, perplexed shrewdness, as if dealing with an adolescent going through some particularly tricky phase.

  ‘I give Forbes carte blanche,’ Morris told her, as if resigned. ‘He copies whatever he likes. It keeps him off the drink.’

  ‘Madonna mia, that is macabre!’ she said, the day he hung Sardanapalus, ‘Naughty too. Don’t let poor Don Lorenzo see!’

  Morris was delighted with the painting. Even Mimi admitted that Forbes had excelled himself, though it was around this time that Morris had realised that his relationship with the elderly pervert was fast approaching its sell-by date.

  ‘Don’t you think the nude at the front looks a bit like Paola?’

  ‘Morris, what on earth is that man doing to the poor child?’

  ‘Knifing her, I’m afraid.’

  Antonella shook her head. ‘I don’t think I ever saw Paola naked. I wouldn’t know.’

  This was odd, Morris thought, because when she had been married to him, Paola had hardly ever worn a scrap of clothing, that is not around the house.

  Inevitably Don Lorenzo did discover the paintings and wh
enever Morris hung a new acquisition the elderly priest always made a point, after their evening Bible-readings, of dragging his gammy leg up the stairs to pass judgement. In winter, Morris liked to illuminate the grand room with real candelabra: four wonderfully baroque, wrought-iron monstrosities holding eighteen candles each. It took almost fifteen minutes to light them, lifting and lowering each circle of flame with a system of chains and pulleys, but the work was well worth it: the room became so much more exciting in their wayward, smoky flickering, with raised knives, hammers and broad swords quivering all around. Standing in front of Sardanapalus, with its bearded sadists and naked concubines, Morris enjoyed the strangely gratifying impression of being simultaneously in church and brothel.

  Don Lorenzo stopped in front of Bellini’s The Assassination of St Peter Martyr and sighed: ‘I used to dream of martyrdom myself once,’ he said. He had been a missionary in Burundi, back in the sixties, when they were killing Christians right and left. ‘I sometimes think it might all have been easier that way.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Morris assented, with feeling. He was surprised to find himself sharing, with a man he’d always supposed was supremely pious, this odd, persistent desire he had often felt to be spared life altogether, to pass at once into nothingness, delivered from temptation forever.

  ‘Considering how often our old fart in a cassock visits, you’d think he was Anto’s lover,’ Mimi said cattily.

  Morris had to be careful not to reply out loud when other people were around.

  ‘Assuming he could ever get it up,’ she insisted.

  ‘Sometimes I think a certain Madonna has a very dirty little mind,’ he chided in silent communion.

  At which the dead girl laughed so loud that Morris could barely hear what Don Lorenzo was saying about Thomas à Becket.

  ‘I was reflecting,’ the melancholy priest repeated ‘that it was a great shame England was lost to Catholicism.’

  ‘Indeed it was,’ Morris agreed. ‘Indeed it was.’

  So on the morning in which he received the freedom of the city, the scrolled certificate and silver key, it was natural, on returning home with Don Lorenzo, to invite the old priest up the stairs to see the new Judith and Holofernes and consider together the severed head of another man released from this earthly treadmill of weal and woe.

  Antonella stopped him. She was furious.

  ‘What about Mauro?’ she demanded. ‘What will happen to his schooling if they keep him in gaol? Just think what might be happening to him there! What if he has another of his toothaches?’

  Having spent a few months in gaol himself, Morris had a pretty good idea what would happen to his son if they actually sent him there. But, as he again pointed out, the boy was still in a police cell. ‘And of course I immediately asked the mayor to arrange for me to see him this afternoon.’ Taking Don Lorenzo by the arm, he added over his shoulder, ‘How could you imagine that I hadn’t already spoken, discreetly, to the cardinal?’

  Antonella was chastened. ‘What time?’ she asked. ‘I’ll get ready.’

  Don Lorenzo limped up the stairs beside his host. The morning had exhausted him, he said. His crippled ankle was a constant torment. Nevertheless, after gazing for a few moments at the painting he began to chuckle.

  ‘A man spends his life dreaming of women and then the dear girls pop his head in a basket.’

  ‘Dead right,’ Morris agreed. ‘I often envy you your vow of celibacy, Don Lorenzo.’

  In his eighties now, the priest did not reply.

  Then Morris asked, ‘I wonder if you could slip downstairs a moment and convince my signora that I should go to see Mauro alone. The boy needs a serious talking to, which won’t be possible in his mother’s company.’

  Acting on a whim, Morris stopped the car in San Zeno to invite Samira to come along. Appearing unannounced, he had often noticed, gave you more information about a person than phoning ahead. You could see how they reacted to your unexpected presence. But the girl was out. ‘At work!’ So said Tarik through the intercom.

  ‘Buzz me up a moment,’ Morris asked. The young man’s hesitation didn’t surprise him. Nevertheless it was a bit rich when his girlfriend’s brother stood defensively in the doorway, as if unwilling to let Morris into a flat he himself was paying for. Morris stood on the landing and smiled. Eventually Tarik backed away and he walked in. The smell of spicy cooking always excited him.

  Tarik seemed sullen today. He moved like a peeved cat. Morris needed no explanation for such a mood. Hadn’t he too spent most of his twenties in a similar state of mind? There was always good reason for resentment. From being mildly irritated, he now felt a surge of affection. He loved the boy’s explosive shock of glossy black hair. Youth and southern vigour. It would be good to brush it off his forehead. If only Mauro had been like this.

  ‘I have to go to Brescia,’ he told the young man. ‘Would you like to drive me?’

  ‘I’m studying,’ Tarik said.

  ‘I wanted to ask you some questions about the Middle East on the way,’ Morris invented. ‘In particular Syria, and Assyria. I mean, are they the same place?’

  That should intrigue the lad.

  ‘No, not at all, or not exactly. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Come and drive for me,’ Morris said. ‘The fact is my son has been arrested and I have to go and talk to the police. I’m a bit worried. Help me relax.’

  This formula of throwing more meat on the griddle than people could immediately handle usually did the trick. Everyone loves another’s troubles. Tarik turned and pulled a light raincoat off the back of a chair.

  ‘Is that the warmest coat you have?’ Morris enquired in the street as he gave Tarik the car keys. The young man said it was. Morris nodded, hoping it was understood that the driver would be rewarded with a proper winter jacket.

  Tarik drove with measured aggression that suggested a mix of respect for Morris’s Alfa Romeo and assertion of his own expertise and personality. His hair really was remarkable. As if all the boy’s repressed vitality were thrusting up out of the top of his skull.

  ‘No need to stop for a ticket,’ Morris said complacently at the entrance to the autostrada. ‘We have a Telepass.’

  As the radio contact buzzed and the toll barrier lifted, the Arab’s clouded face creased in a faint smile. Is there anyone who doesn’t enjoy wealth, Morris wondered? It really was so easy for the rich to seduce.

  ‘My son has got himself involved in some football violence,’ he said. ‘You know the Verona and Brescia fans have this ancient rivalry. It’s ridiculous.’

  Tarik settled in the fast lane travelling exactly 10 kph over the limit. To the left the Po Valley was a rigid geometry of concrete vineyard posts, each bearing its little crucifix of twisted trunk and outflung tendrils. To the right, the foothills of the Alps rose steeply in their grey-green winter shabbiness. Had he wished to impress, Morris could have pointed out three environmentally friendly housing developments his money was invested in.

  ‘I mean, I’d have felt better if it was political violence, with real principles involved.’ He hesitated, ‘Like the Arab Spring.’

  The boy kept his counsel, nervy wrists communicating a guarded alertness.

  ‘It saddens me that he would get himself arrested for something so frivolous, you know. Life is a serious thing and there’s so much happening in the world today.’

  The driver sat silent as a statue. Morris smiled.

  Typically, as they neared Sommacampagna, they hit a wall of fog. Equally typically, the traffic hammered on regardless, each car hanging on to the tail lights of the vehicle ahead. Aside from those red pinpoints, all colour and shape was gone; they were in a motorised underworld of mechanical wraiths. Morris felt the boy’s concentration winding up. He was relishing the challenge.

  ‘No the reason I asked about Assyria was because I have recently acquired two paintings that involve so-called Assyrian leaders: Holofernes and Sardanapalus.’

  Tar
ik’s grip on the driving wheel tightened.

  ‘It seems the latter, Sardanapalus—I’m sorry, I’m sure I’m pronouncing it wrongly and I know how horrible that can be for a native speaker—King Sardanapalus, that is, when he realised he was facing military defeat, in Nineveh I think it was, decided to immolate himself along with all his concubines.’

  Morris had always been attracted to the word ‘immolate.’ One so rarely got a chance to use it, to the point that he wasn’t quite sure what it really meant.

  ‘Well, then, what I was wondering was—’

  Suddenly the boy hit the brake, swerved dangerously across the middle lane, then again, amid a storm of protesting claxons, through the near impenetrable greyness between two lorries into the slow lane, and finally on to the hard shoulder beyond the traffic where the car bumped wildly on the broken surface before slithering to a halt.