Realms of Gold Read online

  Now I shall pick up my brush and try to recreate that moment.

  But I will never paint what I saw that day in Sicchia.

  Although Bianca has read this entry before, she still feels goosebumps traveling along her arms. Nina was born in 1886, so she was only sixteen when she began to write in this diary. She must have penned this last entry in the Viennese hospital. Or maybe in some kind of sanitarium. And the watercolor of the collapsed Campanile she had painted at the doctor’s urging—where is that painting now? She wonders if Mom has ever seen it. In her own little miniature painting, the Campanile is still standing. And who was the eerie-black caped man? And Nina’s words, those mystifying words. I shall... try to recreate that moment. But I will never paint what I saw that day in Sicchia.

  When she finishes reading she heaves a deep sigh and then hands the diary to Giovanni. “Look at this beautiful binding, how soft and supple it is.”

  He takes it from her and examines it with the painstaking care of a man long accustomed to handling fragile, timeworn objects. “They don’t make leather goods like this any more,” he says, as he gives it back to her. “Not in Venice, anyway. But there’s a place in Naples where one can still get a diary like this.”

  “I ’m glad you didn’t ask to look inside,” she says. Her comment doesn’t appear to faze him.

  “Bianca, was your great-grandfather, Nina’s husband, an American?”

  She feels she has to tell him the truth. “I only recently learned that Nina never had a husband. She bore her daughter, my grandmother, out of wedlock when she was very young,” she says feeling her blood rush. “And then Nina never married, she... ”

  “She sounds like a very independent woman, a woman far ahead of her time. In those days it was a real stigma for a well-bred young woman to bear a child out of wedlock.”

  “My mother told me that her family and friends thought Nina was eccentric, but they loved her and tolerated her eccentricities. She was always full of energy and most people had a hard time keeping up with her. Right up until the time she died she never stopped traveling, learning. Just before I was born, she was killed in a plane crash over the Tamaklan. She was in her eighties. I sometimes try to imagine the stark fear she must have felt when the plane spun out of control. Whenever I allow myself to do so, it terrifies my heart.” Her eyes are pooling with tears; she wipes them away with the back of her hands, then rustles around in her bag for a wad of tissue.

  He covers one of her hands with one of his and, with the other, takes out a fresh white square from his pocket.

  “Although I don’t look like Nina in the slightest, I think part of me is very much like her. How I wish I’d inherited her golden looks—not to mention her spirit and originality. Her reckless courage.” She heaves another long shuddery sigh and blots her eyes with the proffered handkerchief.

  “How are you feeling at this moment?” he asks.

  “Sad. As though there’s something I must tend to, something she might have yearned for, something left undone. Unfinished business, I guess.”

  “Do you mean something you must complete for her? Or something you must discover about her?”

  “Maybe both,” she replies. Anxious to change the subject, she says, “Giovanni—tell me—how do you feel about American women?”

  “I’ve always liked them. Their independence, their frankness. But then, you’re not the first American woman I’ve known, Bianca.” He smiles wryly.

  A vision flashes into her mind of endless Miss America contestants, all with long blonde hair, big breasts bouncing, parading down a runway, followed by movie stars posing in their slinky dresses on a red carpet.

  “The relationship with my American friend went nowhere. After she returned to California I threw myself into my work. Mostly in Apulia and Calabria where we’d made some important archaeological discoveries. I decided that I wanted to get out of architectural restoration and back to the field—back to the business I was trained for. Digging. I missed the blood, honest sweat and tears, the precise science of a dig—and the elation of discovery.”

  “Where are you working now?”

  She catches him glancing down before he looks up right into her eyes.

  “I prefer not to discuss my project. At least not yet.”

  He begins tapping the table nervously but perceptibly as he looks at her with critical. or are they amused eyes?.

  Maybe she is boring him, irritating him, she thinks.

  “The dig has been closed until spring. Right now I have other things on my mind. You know, Bianca, I’ve wanted to contact you ever since I read your first column. I was intrigued by what you’d written. Your writing reminds me of Gabriele d'Annunzio or one of the other nineteenth-century Italian writers.”

  She realizes she should reply to his compliment—if it is a compliment—but instead she checks her watch. It's 9:48. Four minutes to go. “I’d love to talk about my work later, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to sit quietly for only a few moments to read and reflect on Nina's Venetian diary. It means so much to me.” She stops, not wanting to say more about the Campanile.

  “Of course! I would want you to. It gives me a chance to catch up on the local news.” He pulls out part of a rolled-up Gazzettino from his jacket pocket, and as he turns to the Venetian local news page, she notices his porphyry signet ring engraved with a crenellated turret.

  Now, in just a few minutes, it will be the very time when one hundred and four years ago the Campanile collapsed. Her heart races.

  “Only one more chime to let you know that it will soon be striking the hour,” he says.

  More tears well up as she imagines Nina sitting here at Quadri, in the summer of 1902, jarred out of tranquility and into terror as the bell tower collapsed. Now they watch as the Moors begin to toll the hour. Ten o’clock. After those few moments, she wipes her eyes.

  Surely he could tell that it means so much to her: he had to have noticed how moved she was, but all he says is, “Come on, Bianca. Why don’t we leave? My apartment is across the Canal, on Dorsoduro. I’d like to show it to you—and the photograph of Nina Evans and Rose Alba Bona Dea, our great grandmothers. We'll take the traghetto across.”

  She hesitates— but only for a moment.

  He pays the bill, and they push their way against the weekend crowds to the dock next to the Gritti Palace Hotel and wait for the gondolier to ferry his passengers back from Dorsoduro to the hotel.

  Giovanni pulls out some coins, hands them to the gondolier, and helps Bianca step into the boat. While she sits on the back bench, Giovanni stands tall and straight to balance the boat’s center. “Venetian men rarely sit when they cross the Grand Canal on a traghetto. They don’t consider it good manners.”

  The two oarsmen, one in the aft, one in the fore, back the boat out of the slip all the while chatting with Giovanni in Venetian dialect, all z’s and x’s to her ears. Reaching Dorsoduro, she stands, taking the gondolier's extended arm to help her step on to the wooden stairs leading up out of the water. Her foot slips on a mossy plank and then catches. She hears a gentle thud. She looks down to see one of Nina's gold earrings bounding off the boards and disappearing into the murky darkness of the Grand Canal. She raises her hand to her ear. Unable to move, unable to utter a sound, she stares into the water.

  “What happened? Are you all right?” Giovanni grabs her.

  “Nina’s earring! Gone! Fell right to the bottom! Why, why did I ever wear them?” She fights the tears. “Why did I even bring them with me? I should have known better than to trust myself! I lose things.”

  The gondolier becomes impatient. “I signori passeggieri want to leave. Would you please step aside?” Giovanni leads her into the calle and puts his arm around her shoulder. She finally gets a grip on herself. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Bianca! Don’t despair. We can try to retrieve the earring. As soon as we get home, I’ll call the shop in Mestre where I buy scuba equipment. They have a team of professional divers. We’ll find s
omeone to go down to search for it.”

  “What an optimist you are! With changing tides and passing boats, I should think the chances would be very slim.” She unclips the other earring and zips it into the secret compartment of her purse, her only consolation being that she still has one. Maybe this is an omen that she should not become involved with Giovanni. She wonders what Nina would think of him, but more than that, what would she think of her?

  *

  He unlocks the wrought iron entry gate to the Palazzo Bona Dea. They walk into the dimly lighted androne, the palazzo’s entry hall, with water access to the Grand Canal. A gondola rests high on a platform, like an altar. “It looks as though you’re making an offering to Poseidon.” Bianca says. “Maybe I ought to make one too so we can find my earring in his Adriatic.”

  He smiles. “These days we use the gondola ritually only in September, for the Regatta Storico. It’s been at the squero over at San Trovaso being repaired and painted.” As the elevator lifts them to the third floor, she enjoys his closeness, smells his spicy citrus cologne, and, in spite of the sadness of her loss, feels tremors where for a long time there have been none.

  He opens the door. “Please make yourself comfortable.”

  Collapsing in an armchair, she feels rather shaky and weak. Yet she is able to take pleasure in the setting and the warm, jeweled sunlight spilling in from old stained glass windows facing the canal. The rooms are not so large, the ceilings not so high, as she knows they must be on the gilded, frescoed floors below, especially two floors below, on the piano nobile, the grandest, most formal stanze where Venetians receive their guests.

  On one wall hangs a large portrait of a dark haired brooding woman.

  Giovanni sees her studying the portrait. “She’s Eleonora Duse, the famous Italian actress. One of her lovers was the writer Gabriele d'Annunzio. They used to keep company in a nearby palazzo.”

  “Nina writes about Duse and d'Annunzio in her diary!”

  He nods. “They were very much a part of the early twentieth century Venetian scene.” He picks up a phone book and says, “Please excuse me. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  She takes a long, assessing look around the room. The library is furnished with early nineteenth century pale wood Beidermier furniture. A guitar case is propped against one wall. Two worn but comfortable Genovese velvet sofas are separated by a coffee table with a scagliola top, a silvan scene of Orpheus strumming his tortoise lyre surrounded by deer and cavorting nymphs.

  Antique prints of Greek vases, some red figure, some black, cover two walls from dado to ceiling. Her mind flies back to the black-figured images of Amazons fighting Greek hoplites painted on the ceramic kylix found with the Krater and la Dame de Vix. She knows that the subject of Amazon women fighting armed soldiers was popular around the area of the Black Sea, especially with the Scythians.

  “We’re in luck!” Giovanni announces when he returns. “The divers are ready to search around eleven o’clock tonight. The timing couldn’t be better—a full moon but no more storms predicted so there shouldn’t be a lot of movement in the water.” He hands her a fragile Venetian glass of fizzy San Pellegrino.

  She takes a long swallow. “Do you think there’s any chance they’ll find it?”

  “Fifty-fifty. Definitely worth the try. “

  “How much do they charge?”

  “Three hundred Euros.”

  “I’d expected it to be about that much. Even if they don’t find it, we will have tried.”

  “And you’ll always remember the experience.”

  She nods. “Yes—an experience worthy of Nina’s earring.”

  “Bianca, I have a four o’clock meeting in Padua, but I’ll be back after dinner. Obviously I won’t be going to the pre-nuptial dinner tonight.”

  “Neither will I.”

  “Why don’t I pick you up at ten forty-five. We'll walk over to watch the divers.”

  She hesitates, then starts to get up.

  “Please…., I didn’t mean for you to rush off. I still have a little time. May I offer you some Pinot Grigio or an apertivo? Or maybe a vodka? An unusual brand given to me by a Ukrainian colleague. You’ll like it, come on—it will do you some good after the shock you’ve had.”

  “I usually don’t drink hard liquor, but I’d like to try the vodka, thanks. I should be leaving fairly soon. I have a lunch date at … at Harry’s Bar.” Harry’s Bar is the only restaurant that comes to mind. She hopes he didn't notice her hesitation. It always bothers her to lie, even to protect herself.

  She quickly changes the subject. “Are those prints of Greek vases by Sir William Hamilton?” she asks, knowing full well that they are.

  He hands her a small latticino glass of vodka. “Yes—my grandfather pulled apart a copy of Hamilton’s Recueils des Vases Etrusques and had the plates framed. I would never have done such a thing myself, but I must admit I enjoy having these on the walls. My grandfather—and my father, also an archaeologist, specialized in Greek ceramics. They dug with the University of Pennsylvania when they searched for the lost city of fabled Sybaris—about forty years ago.”

  “Sybaris! My boss is always talking about Sybaris. Do ancient ceramics interest you as well?” Why has she asked such a dumb question when she knows he knows she knows the answer?

  “Of course. Every archaeologist of Southern Italy has to know Greek pots. But more than that, I’m working on a theory about the rapid change from black-figure to red-figure pottery in the Hellenic world. It took place around 500 B.C., perhaps a bit earlier. I’ve always wondered what brought about this sudden stylistic change.”

  “What are your conclusions?” Now she really is curious.

  “Let’s say I have a revolutionary hunch, but it’s too long, too complicated for now.”

  “Can you at least tell me whereabouts in Southern Italy you’re digging?” She tries to avoid his eyes realizing that she’s beginning to sound like a TV interviewer.

  “My secret—at least for the time being,” he replies, pouring himself another drink.

  When he smiles, she notices that the corners of his lips turn up, like the mysterious smile of a Greek kouros.

  Her mind starts working on a scenario. She wonders if he might be involved with the Mafia, trading in illegally unearthed treasures. The Art Newspaper frequently publishes articles about antiquities smuggling in Italy. Sergio has a fit when he reads about Italians dealing in purloined patrimony. She has to listen to him yell and curse whenever he hears about museums accused of buying stolen objects with fake provenances.

  “You know, Bianca, you have such an incredible faculty to envision the past lives of objects and their ritual uses. Has anyone ever told you that you have a bicameral mind?”

  “What’s in heaven’s name is a bicameral mind?”

  “I took a course from Julian Jaynes when I was at Princeton. He believes that in ancient times people followed the instructions of inner voices in their heads and had visions from a more highly developed right brain. These hallucinations were attributed to ancestors, chiefs, or kings. Eventually they were attributed to gods. Jaynes calls the highly developed right brain the ‘bicameral mind.’ In essence, you have a highly developed right brain. You have a real gift.”

  “Have you ever thought that this so-called bicameral mind of mine might be tangled up with a vivid, lurid—even pathological— imagination?”

  “What is imagination then if it isn’t a journey into the depths of the unconscious to encounter ancestral memory? Archaeology is a science, but I’m convinced there’s room for intuition, another function of the right brain. I often envy Schliemann, who allowed himself to be guided by intuition. But Schliemann also had a beautiful and intelligent Greek wife, as well as Homer and the Iliad and the Odyssey, to guide him. Unfortunately, I don’t have a saga or epic poem to guide me—not to mention a beautiful Greek wife.”

  She turns her eyes away from his; she gets the message.

  As they are preparing to le
ave, Giovanni asks, “Bianca, did your grandmother ever speak about a woman named Margaret Norville?”

  “Margaret Norville? No—I don’t recall that she ever spoke of her—but here’s another coincidence.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “I’d guess you’d call it that. Her name is mentioned in the diary I showed you.” She pulls it out from her shoulder bag. “Nina wrote that her mother and Margaret Norville had gone to school together in Maryland. After Margaret Norville was windowed, Nina and her mother travelled to Venice. Nina was sixteen years old.”

  He smiles, takes her hand and holds it gently. “Let me explain then. During the summer of 1902, Nina’s mother, Signora Evans, rented a floor in this palazzo.” He pronounces the words slowly, deliberately, watching their effect on her. “She rented it from Margaret Norville, the Contessa Bona Dea, who was my great-great-grandmother. You are at this very moment sitting in Palazzo Bona Dea. Margaret never remarried but had a lover, an Italian writer, a would-be Gabriele d'Annunzio.”

  “You’re telling me that this is exactly where my great- grandmother Nina stayed during that visit in 1902? When did you learn all this?”

  “As a child, I heard it from Margaret Norville’s daughter, Rose Alba Bona Dea. It was Rose Alba who was the childhood friend of Nina Evans, your great-grandmother. Even when I was a young boy, she’d tell me about the young Nina Evans from Baltimore, a real American beauty with long golden hair and sapphire eyes, who’d come to stay in the Palazzo —right at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yes—she was your great-grandmother, Nina Evans,” he emphasized,

  He picks up a silver framed photograph from the piano and hands it to her. Here is my great-grandmother, Rose Alba, with her arm around Nina.” She studies the photo, so moved she instinctively leans toward him, eager to embrace the man who is a descendant of Nina’s childhood friend. As she’s about to reach out, he clasps both her hands in his; she feels him pull away slightly. She would much rather have hugged him and kissed him on both cheeks as though he were a long lost relative.