One Great Lie, page 11
“Not so unusual here? It’s useful for jobs in the Ministry of Culture. Or a museum technician, or restorer… Lots of things.”
“That’s so cool. That it’s not unusual, I mean. Where I’m from, everyone mostly studies, I don’t know… future stuff. Like, computers or technology. Not past stuff.”
“Oh, we do that, too, but I want to work for the Ministry of Culture. It’s in my blood, I guess. My father was a… storico?”
“Hmm. Story?”
“His-storian. Right? And my mother with the bookstore, so…” He throws his hands up, like What are you going to do? He opens a door that leads to a wide marble staircase, and they walk up. “What about you? Do you study computers? Yet you want to see the Tasso poem.”
“I’m here for a writing program. Just for the summer. Before I go on to a university where I live in Washington.”
“Ah, writing!” He smiles, like he’s surprised but pleased. “In the capital.”
“No.” She laughs. “Washington the state. What were you guys working on in there? It looks so interesting.”
“Some papers, found in the flood? Every year, the acqua alta, the water rises.…”
“I heard about that.”
“There is always damage. More to restore—books, manuscripts, art. But last year—ugh. It was very bad. Mosaics in Saint Mark’s. Vivaldi scores… The entire Fondazione Giorgio Cini library on San Giorgio Maggiore! San Zaccaria, it flooded too. The carabinieri barracks to the right, the walled-off convent to the left… Che casino! The old barricade was wrecked, and boom! Three hundred years of books and records, floating in dirty water. Bones, too. The convent cemetery was…” He scoops with his palm, indicating under the building. “This floor,” he says, opening another door.
“Bones, oh my God. But all those books and records, wow.”
“Every year, it happens,” he says. “Something! The books—they’ve been in the freezer for six months, in a special chamber, so the ink is preserved and the papers don’t…” He smashes his hands together. “Now they air-dry. We check for mold. We clean. Every week, more documents arrive. This is all so interesting.” He rolls his eyes.
“It is.” She can’t imagine anyone doing anything like this at home. Adam wasn’t much of a reader, let alone caring about the book itself. He cared about his guitar and messing around online. “You said San Zaccaria? I might have had a long-ago relative that was at that convent. She was from a noble family, but that’s about all we know.”
“Yes? Un Veneziana, huh?” He smiles. “My father traced a relative to Santa Maria delle Vergini, another convent in the city. Here we are.”
This room is full of manuscripts mostly, upright in glass stands, and also lying flat in cases that circle the perimeter. Dante speaks to the librarian, an older man with white hair and tired eyes.
“Okay! Over here,” Dante says. The poem sits in one of the double-sided upright cases, so that you can view the front and back of it. It’s yellowed and fragile-looking, and yet the italic script looks strong and bold. Shivers prickle up Charlotte’s arms. It’s hard not to just press her forehead right up against the glass. Whether these were Tasso’s words or Isabella’s, it’s astonishing to think that Tasso once held this very paper in his hands almost five hundred years ago. Dante is silent next to her. Seeing it feels so monumental that she almost doesn’t want to speak.
“My whole life, I’ve lived here and never seen it,” he says after they’ve gazed at it for a while.
“It looks like a letter,” Charlotte says. She can’t read it, of course, but there are a few words at the top, set apart from the rest of the text, before the poem begins.
“It does. It is.” Dante leans toward the glass. “Mio Phoebus? I can’t tell.”
“What’s that?”
“Who is that, maybe. My Phoebus.”
“Look at the back. It’s amazing. Look at the seal.” It’s a smudge of crimson wax, with an image pressed in its center.
“The wax stamp, yes. It was one way to lock the letter, before envelopes. You see the folds,” he uses his hands to indicate the multiple tucks and pleats. “Into a little package, a small rectangle. And then the wax seal.” He makes a circle on his finger where a ring would be. “A signet ring. Do you know them?” His eyes are so serious behind his glasses.
“I know of them, but not much about them.”
“You had one if you were important. A high social standing. They were engraved with symbols. Initials, or coat of arms. Something to identify the wearer? Only the wearer. They were very personal. Like a signature.”
When he says this, Charlotte feels an immense drop of disappointment. The image in the red wax—it’s a T, with its long center and outstretched top, the sides filled in with light, decorative curves. “It’s definitely a T,” she says.
“Yes. And look at the red string. It must have wrapped around the letter. And then the wax on top. The thread would have to be cut to open it, but the seal is whole. I don’t know much about this, but it is beautiful.”
It is. But that T eliminates any doubt that the poem was Tasso’s, or at least, that he sent it. “Oh, well.” She sighs.
Dante looks at her, puzzled. “It’s not what you expected?”
She doesn’t even want to tell him. It sounds so ridiculous. But it doesn’t really matter now. “It’s crazy. Silly. But that relative in the convent? My family always said she was the one who actually wrote it, this poem. That Tasso stole it from her. They had a relationship. She’s mentioned in his biographies.” She studies Dante for any sign of a smirk or a laugh, but there isn’t one. His eyes are sweet. “I was just hoping to see something. Discover some… clue, or whatever. About her or this.” She gazes at “In Guerra.” “Silly. I mean, it’s only been five hundred years.”
“Not silly. We find unknown things all the time. Just a few months ago, a researcher discovered the oldest drawing of Venezia! From the 1300s. He found it in a book in the Biblioteca Nazionale, and no one ever noticed it there before. Last year, my professor, Dr. Martina Ricci, found a poem from the 1500s by a woman she studied for years. Hidden, because no one ever looked for it! Our work—it’s part restoration, part discovery, like a detective. Right in this room—look. There’s so much we don’t know.”
She glances around at all the manuscripts, at the lines and words and scrolling italics, all the stories of people over the centuries. “That T, though,” she says.
“Here’s another Tasso.” Dante has wandered over to an adjacent glass case. It’s a poem too, but this one’s written on a single sheet of yellowed parchment. “Tasso’s ‘Sonetto.’ ‘How can I bear to hear…?’ What? It’s hard to read. ‘The piteous sound of complaint.’ Or something like this. Ugh! Hard to understand in all of the…”
“Frosting swirls,” Charlotte says, and he laughs. “This one doesn’t look like a letter. No ring stamp. And the writing is different.” It’s not true hope, though. In the red wax of “In Guerra,” that T is a signature.
“The writing does look different,” Dante agrees. “But it’s years later? Maybe more…” He clutches up his fingers as if they’re old and arthritic.
“Yeah, probably,” she says. “And that wax seal just seems to decide things.”
“Ah, sorry,” he says.
“I was hoping for even a little window of possibility. I guess you can’t expect to solve a five-hundred-year-old mystery in ten weeks anyway.” She shrugs, but the disappointment—it’s huge. Bigger than you’d think. It feels like something sinking. She doesn’t even know why it’s so big. She just wanted to rescue Isabella from Tasso’s shadow, to bring her to light, to prove this thing that nags at her like truth does. It’s unfair, because something happened, and Isabella just sits unseen and unknown, small and invisible. Voiceless. And after Charlotte read about the girls locked away in the convents, she wanted it even more. She must have wanted it very badly, because it actually hurts, that red wax T. It practically shouts. I was here. I was the one. Me, me, me.
Chapter Eighteen
Tullia d’Aragona, writer.
Considered to be one of the best writers, poets, and philosophers of her time, she wrote strongly about feminist subjects. She was also a famous courtesan in Venice, her mother initiating her into that life when Tullia was only eighteen. Though illustrious men of letters (including famed poets Bernardo Tasso, father of Torquato; Ercole Bentivoglio; Pietro Bembo; and Muzio Manfredi) were her courtiers and wrote sonnets to her, they also later derided her and her work. Poet Pietro Aretino condemned her, likely jealous of her success, calling her presumptuous and greedy.
(1510–1556)
“I should get back,” Dante says in the sun of Saint Mark’s Square after walking Charlotte out of the big doors of the Biblioteca Marciana. “The Dottoressa Martina Ricci…” He slashes a finger across his throat. “She oversees our work here. She is what you call a slave rider.”
Charlotte smiles. God, he’s adorable. “I really appreciate you showing me around. Thanks so much.”
“Well, in bocca al lupo.”
Charlotte scrunches her face in apology. “I’m sorry. I feel so rude coming to your country without knowing your language.”
“In the wolf’s mouth,” he translates. “It means ‘good luck.’ You answer, ‘Crepi.’ May the wolf die.”
“Crepi.” She grins.
“Maybe you’ll still find your relative here somewhere.” He smiles, pushing his hair from his forehead.
And then, because she just has to know, she suddenly asks, “The librarians. They were acting so funny about me seeing you. How come?”
“Ah! Um…” He grimaces. Then, he gives a what the hell shrug. “My mother,” he admits.
“Your mother?”
“Ugh! She thinks I spend too much time at the library! She sends the girls over. From the store. Che cavolo! They want to know where the Rialto Bridge is, she sends them. The Guggenheim museum, she sends them.”
“Oh, whoa. I’m sorry. Wow, embarrassing!” She puts her face in her hands in a pretend-hide.
“Well, I don’t mind today.” He gives a shy smile. “This is the first time anyone has wanted to see a poem. I can maybe show you around more, if you like? I’m an expert at the Rialto Bridge.”
“Yikes, I bet.”
“Or, if you want to see San Zaccaria, where your relative was?”
It’s so funny, Dante, with his sweet eyes and serious glasses, offering to show her a convent. Adam or Nate—no way, this would never happen. When she wanted to go to the Seattle Art Museum once, Adam dragged around like a toddler, and Nate’s favorite thing to do is play Fortnite. It’s crazy but interesting that history is an everyday thing to Dante, usual, in the city all around him.
She laughs. Strangely, she feels more relaxed than she has the whole time since she’s been here. She feels more like herself. “I’d really appreciate that,” she says.
They exchange numbers, and Dante returns to his world of ancient books and drowned words. So what, she maybe watches him walk back, because he’s adorable from behind. Those jeans, cute, cute, cute. She ducks into a shop and buys two rings made of Murano glass for her mom and sister, then sends them a follow-up text about seeing the poem: Pretty uneventful. She adds a few sad face emojis. It’s kind of a lie. It was disappointing, but not uneventful, because she’s walking around with a new bright slice of who-knows-what-might-happen.
Charlotte meets up with Katerina, Eliot, Shaye, and Leo for pizza. Katerina and Shaye and Eliot want gelato after, but Charlotte is stuffed, and Leo wants to take some photos, because it’s another hobby he’s probably amazing at. Charlotte wanders off to FaceTime Yasmin. It’s morning where Yas is, right after breakfast. They’ve texted a few times since they both left, but it’s hard to talk with the time difference, and Yas is as busy at Goddard Space Flight Center as Charlotte is here. Now Yas shrieks when she answers. It’s so good to see her face, her familiar self.
Yas is excited, telling her all about the project she gets to work on, Life detection in icy planetary environments. God, Yas loves that stuff. They catch up on news from home—Nate broke his arm, Yas says, and Carly got a job at Elliott Bay Book Company. Carly and Yas had a stupid fight about veganism since Carly is trying it out, but Yas thinks it’s just an excuse for Carly not to eat, and, oh, Adam has a new girlfriend.
“She’s from the Eastside. I didn’t know whether to tell you or not, but I didn’t want you to just see it on social media.”
“It’s fine. That’s great,” Charlotte says. It is fine, and she’s glad he’s happy, and she doesn’t want to be with him anymore, and she feels like a totally different person already from the one who used to be with him, but it still makes her feel weird. Like, who cares, but that was fast.
“So?” Yas asks. “Is it all still incredible? Is he everything you thought? Luca Bruni?”
Well, he is, but it’s complicated. She can’t exactly tell Yas the truth. Plus, this is a private experience. They’re in his inner circle. When you get to be in a famous person’s inner circle, you don’t just go blab stuff about them. You don’t tell all of the human parts that you now know. She feels protective of him. He seems to need protection. “He’s a real person, Yas.” It sounds sort of know-it-all.
“Does that mean he’s hooking up with all the girls?” She laughs. She’s just joking, but it kind of stings. Especially because he’s out all day with Avni today, doing who knows what. She’d never tell Yas that, not in a million years.
“No, Yas. Not at all. He’s not like that.”
“I’m sorry! I was just kidding,” Yasmin says. “Don’t be mad! I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. I miss everyone. But, yeah, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience here. It’s so amazing. He is. Everything is.”
After she hangs up, Charlotte feels a gross disloyalty. But it’s hard to tell who she’s been disloyal to, Yas or Luca Bruni. No idea, but she just feels bad after all Luca Bruni’s done for her. She decides to post a photo of her and Luca, one that Katerina took last week at dinner. Luca was messing around and put his head on her shoulder after making a joke. She writes one of those long, sentimental posts she usually stops reading halfway through when other people do it. She writes about what an incredible experience she’s having with her literary hero, and how she’s grown to admire him even more, and how astonishing it is to begin to call him a friend. Maybe she also does it so Adam will see. The minute it appears, she almost deletes it. It’s just bragging, and kind of obnoxious, and in a way, she’s using him too, like Shaye was saying. Shaye’s right, people do just treat him like he’s a Famous Person, not a human being, and she regrets it. But then the likes and hearts and comments start pouring in. Maybe it doesn’t sound as awful as it feels.
* * *
That night, back at La Calamita, the mood is strange. Avni and Luca are still gone. Hailey and Ashley are fighting. There were sandwiches for dinner, and everyone just took their food somewhere else. Bethany Sparrow is nowhere to be seen. Leo and Shaye are having some long conversation by the pool, but Charlotte can hear Shaye getting annoyed. Eliot makes some stupid joke and hurts Katerina’s feelings, and she cries and then goes upstairs.
Charlotte takes some dessert, a few cookies wrapped in a napkin, out to the library. She wants to be alone, plus that turret library has an awesome view. It’s nothing like the library she was in today—everything smells new, but it has warm, comforting volumes and the light is low, and it sits at the very end of La Calamita, so she can see the silver glowing tips of the waves. She can see the whole lagoon, empty of boats anywhere near here. There is no tiny green light on a bow, heading back to the villa. It’s just dark out there, moonlight shimmers and gray-purple clouds.
Charlotte opens her laptop. She types Tasso, Phoebus, In Guerra. She reads the Wikipedia entry, one she read before, when she was trying to do that report, but now she reads it again more carefully. It talks about the original document, discovered in Tasso’s belongings after his death at age eighty-three, a document now in Biblioteca Marciana. When he first wrote it, it says, Tasso sent the poem in a letter to his father’s elder cousin Febo di Goldini, it was believed, and it was returned to Tasso after Goldini’s death. Goldini was the director of Venice’s most distinguished opera house, and he was Tasso’s only living relative, one who would certainly understand what a masterpiece it was. When she clicks on the link for that guy, she finds an oil painting of a very old man, upright at a desk.
It’s a boring conclusion to the mystery.
She types in San Zaccaria convent, girls. She reads about two nuns who worked for more than a month to make a hole in the outer wall so that men could bring their boats up to visit in secret. It is so amazing, thrilling, how they kept fighting for themselves. She reads about it like it’s a novel. Her cookies are gone. It’s getting late, but now the Council of Ten, the feared enforcers who served the city leader, the doge, are coming to spy on the girls. The Ten are installing iron grilles and gates so no one can come in, and so they can’t get out. The nuns are pelting stones at them and forcing them away.
She’s so immersed that when her phone rings, she’s startled. She looks up and is almost surprised to see herself in this newly rebuilt room in an old hospital building instead of a cold stone monastery. But she’s really surprised when she sees who’s calling.
“Charlotte?” Dante says. Char-lot-ta. Her name never sounded so nice.
“Well, hi,” she says.
“A five-hundred-year-old question to answer in ten weeks! I asked Dottoressa Ricci about the threads. The ones that wrapped around the letter? I never saw that before. She said that men and women both might write this letter, but a woman would be the one to wrap it with the silk thread.”
“Really?”
“If you got a letter like this, you would know before you opened it that is was affectionate. Even secret. It folds into a little package, like a gift between two people, more private than usual correspondence. Words of love, maybe?”
