Carnevale

  Instead, when I tapped the door, ugly little Fletcher came strutting out to greet me. Inside was emptiness and silence, darkness and dust.

  ‘My Lord is waiting for you Missis Cecilia. He said you’d know the way. I’ll warn you, His Numps is a sad dog today’

  I walked through the deserted reception rooms, following my instinct and my memory. I found Byron sitting surrounded by books. He had chosen for his study the same room where I had spent those unforgettable moments with Casanova; I had not seen it in the daylight before. It was revealed now as a dark room with a terrazzo floor inlaid with the colours of topaz and lapis. It was an intimidating room, slanted as if sidling away, but looming thirty feet high above me. In 1782 it had seemed a quiet haven from the glitter of the party. Now it was noisy with faded luxury.

  I recognised the gold frame behind which Casanova and I had made love: now it housed a Canaletto and was hung between two effete little French landscapes. The room was crowded with small ornamental objects, like a bazaar. The walls were lined with gold and red brocade, up to a heavy frieze, from which projected little gold buttresses. High above were beams the colour of bruises. In permanent shadow, between the two Grand Canal windows, writhed a mass of stucco work now stained with smoke from the fireplace. There was a mirror between the two eyes of the windows. Reflected in this, when I entered the room, I could see Byron reclining gracefully on his sofa among columns of leather tomes.

  On the table in front of him was the Biribissi board I had painted all those years ago, the faces peeling and the animals mere ghosts of themselves.

  ‘Welcome back, Cecilia,’ he said, in an unwelcoming tone. I could see his anger boiling under his skin. ‘Look what I found in this Nicknackatorium. I discover that you have been somewhat lacking in candour. I think you have more to tell me about the Palazzo Mocenigo, Cecilia.’ He pushed the board towards me.

  He had recognised my work.

  In my new relationship with the Mocenigo I discovered more about the palazzo. When I went there as a girl with Casanova my experiences had revolved around him. I accepted everything for its surface beauty and fairy-tale qualities, as a child does. Now, after all my experiences, I was more sensitive. I found the palazzo both more beautiful and more threatening. There were things about the Mocenigo that I still could not tell Byron. He would have to find out for himself.

  Byron, who had broken every taboo, now found himself amongst violators of a different hue: the unresting, warm-blooded spirits of the Palazzo Mocenigo disturbing the air with the guilt and pain of crimes performed and suffered there.

  For the Mocenigo also sheltered the anonymous ghosts of unhappy lovers, servant-girls nursing big bellies from their masters, idiot sons poisoned in their beds, hushed-up homosexual suicides, malformed heirs quietly flushed into the canal at birth, ugly daughters shaved and tipped into convents, the beautiful ones married off against their will to decrepit noble satyrs. No, the Mocenigos were no different from any other high Venetian family.

  And yet there was also laughter in the air, and sometimes a sublime heat beat against the window. The gates swung languidly on their hinges in the breezeless garden. As the sun set, the walls bulged with phantoms like a cat in a bag. The charred phantom of the betrayed Bruno was known to stalk the dark corridors at night; petals of ash were to be found there in the mornings and strange spillages of water: his ghost was known to search everywhere for liquid to moisten his smouldering flesh as he writhed upon the stake. The beautiful women who had lived there – their beauty persevered in the mirrors, even when they died, and sometimes little gushes of perfume came forth from uninhabited corners. Their hearts were preserved in their family crypts but their transparent joys remained floating around the house. Some days, there were buds on the floor of flowers that had not been brought in, the gloves of women who had not visited. Byron tried not to eat, and thereby doubled his receptivity to the phantoms the Mocenigo offered him.

  Sodden with self-pity, drooping like a flower watered by every member of the family, Byron succumbed. Cowering in the back of the room, he tried to write. Meanwhile the ghosts of the Palazzo Mocenigo screamed at him and pushed the wine glass closer to his hand.

  Chapter 7

  Tre done in casa, inferno verto.

  Three women in the house, hell opens.

  VENETIAN PROVERB

  That spring, an elephant went on the rampage in Venice. It had been the stellar attraction of a circus on the Riva degli Schiavoni. It escaped through the Campo Bandiera e Moro, disappeared round the far corner into the Salizzada, and thundered into the church of San Antonin. The Austrian soldiers could not induce it to come out, so they dragged a cannon to the door, and shot it. The elephant’s forequarters exploded, festooning the beams with viscera, and it finally lay down to die, bellowing like a hundred women in childbirth.

  Byron described it to Hobhouse, reading aloud to me as he wrote.

  We have had, a fortnight ago, the devil’s own row with an elephant who broke loose, ate up a fruit shop, killed his keeper; broke into a church and was at last killed by a cannon-shot brought from the Arsenale. I saw him the day he broke open his own house; he was standing in the Riva, and his keepers trying to persuade him with peck loaves to go on board a sort of ark they had got. I went close up to him that afternoon in my gondola, and he amused himself with flinging great beams that flew about over the water in all directions; he was then not very angry, but towards midnight he became furious, and displayed the most extraordinary strength, pulling down everything before him. All musketry proved in vain; and when he charged, the Austrians threw down their muskets and ran. At last they broke a hole and brought a field piece, the first shot missed, the second entered behind, and came out all but the skin at his shoulder. I saw him dead the next day, a stupendous fellow. He went mad for want of She, it being his rutting month.

  I went with Byron to see the stinking corpse. He asked me to make a portrait of the elephant but I refused. I was afraid of its hulk, even in death. I knew why Byron wanted me to paint it. He saw in it a metaphor for himself: painting the vanquished giant would teach me to capture better the savage pathos of Byron himself.

  Byron liked any kind of animal. For all I know, he even shared his ancestor’s passion for cockroaches. On the whole, Byron was kinder to four-legged beasts than to his servants and his women. The animals at least never felt the scorn of his words or the dismissal in his voice. The rest of us wore his contempt like a shameful smell that clung about our persons.

  The Palazzo Mocenigo itself now growled and snarled with Byron’s own bizarre menagerie.

  At the dark heart of the palazzo crouched the covered courtyard with its stone flagged floor, odd blackened panelling and empty architraves. The air was curiously thin there, unbreathable. As if to show his new merman state, Byron ordered the wheels taken off his carriages, which had been carried to the palazzo. Their carcasses lay there, dismembered, like the ribs of ancient beasts. There was a lower chamber near the canal, which was set with columns – here Byron housed his living animals: two monkeys, several cats, three or four dogs, a wolf, a fox, a crow and an eagle. The red walls were still inset with the harlequin mirrors, so the animals were duplicated and triplicated. Their strange doppelgängers kept them in a constant state of lust and fear. Through the dim mullioned windows and the flares of light in the cracks of the door, the wretched prisoners could see and even smell the water. But, chained, caged or tethered, they could not escape their terror and misery.

  It was now the talk of Venice that the English milord was keeping a small zoo on the Grand Canal. Byron was not unaware of the appearance they made when unsuspecting guests arrived at the wooden gates which opened out to the Canal. As he had done with the entrance to Newstead Abbey, with its chained wolf and bear, Byron enjoyed making his visitors run the gamut of the screaming animals and their infernal stench before coming up to pay their respects to him, the King of all the Beasts.

  The neighbours, including Maurizio,
were in despair. But what could they do? Maurizio was afraid to say anything to Byron, whom he occasionally encountered in the courtyard. It was hard for me to imagine the two of them together, even for an instant.

  After we saw the elephant, Byron became curious about the fate of other animals in Venice. So, while I painted him, I told him stories about them, as they came to my mind. He was like a child listening to a fairy tale. ‘More!’ he cried, every time I finished a description or an anecdote. At my studio I showed him vignettes and drawings from my sketchbook.

  I described the Casotto de leone, a wooden stage where a tethered lion lay, watching delicious little Maltese poodles in full mask and party dress dancing minuets on their back legs to the strains of a charlatan’s violin. The she-dogs clutched perfect miniature fans in their coral-enamelled claw-nails. The he-dogs in their frock-coats attended their bitches solicitously.

  I showed him my sketch of the famous canary who could count to thirty.

  I told him about the horrible ceremony of cat-butting in Santa Maria Formosa, which used to take place every February, and about the way, at the same festa, the men leapt to strangle a goose suspended above the canal before sliding down its slippery body to the water.

  I showed him engravings of the bull-baiting, how the trained dogs were set upon bulls and leapt for their ears where they hung on until death. They could only be removed when the dog-pullers bit their tails or clamped their testicles. At bullfights in the very courtyard of the Doges’ Palace, the bulls had their heads severed with a single blow. I told him of the bear-tormenting, when the dogs were set on the tethered beast. When the bear caught one of his yapping attackers in his jaws they were levered open with jagged wooden spades, ripping his mouth apart.

  I showed Byron a pen and ink sketch of men leaning over tubs of water, catching live eels in their teeth. I showed him boys tying firecrackers to the feet of dogs.

  I told him about the terrible horse tournament when my father lost his life.

  ‘Poor horse!’ sighed Byron. ‘Poor beasts.’

  To complete the household, Byron now imported his bastard daughter, Allegra, by Claire Claremont. I was nervous as a deer the first time I met the child, but I searched her features in vain for a resemblance to Girolamo, or even Byron himself. She was a pretty blonde cherub, plump and solid, with nothing airy or graceful to her.

  Byron watched me. ‘I know what you are thinking. Not much like me, is she? The damnedest thing is that she doesn’t even look like her mother, which is a relief. However, she is more like me in spirit.’

  It was true. Allegra was wilful and I often heard her scream, several times saw her kick at a servant or a cat. But she preferred to laugh. Byron was affectionate towards the child, as he was towards the other beasts. Every time I saw him stoop to ruffle her hair or smile at her, I imagined him doing the same thing to Girolamo. This is how he is as a father, I thought. And this. I realised that I was, pointlessly, jealous on my son’s behalf.

  Byron liked to have Allegra around him. She was often playing in the room where I painted him. She sang incomprehensible tunes to herself, and treated her father like any other adult. After a while Byron accepted her presence without comment and absorbed her personality into his circle so that it no longer disturbed him. He stopped noticing her. Little Allegra tottered unsupervised down grimy staircases and lay under tables like a dog.

  Byron bought Allegra a velocimano, a little wooden horse mounted on wheels. Its ears flared straight out from its head. Allegra plucked at its mane, made of real horse hair. She steered the toy with little handles behind his head. One day, unnoticed by her father, she opened the great doors and steered the velocimano right down the stairs to the pit of the beasts, any one of which might have devoured her.

  Byron’s friends, the Hoppners, found this atmosphere too dangerous for a child. Allegra was moved to the English Consul’s house.

  Byron had one more beast to add to his zoo: the baker’s wife, Margarita Cogni.

  I think that it was probably Margarita’s primitive animal nature that attracted him. ‘She is one of these women who can be made to do anything. I am sure if I put a poniard in her hand, she would plunge it where I told her – and into me, if I offended her. I like this kind of beast, particularly …’

  ‘Pythoness,’ he called her. ‘Tiger.’ ‘Lioness with a cub.’

  I had to agree with him: Margarita Cogni was a terrifying animal. It had taken her just a few months to separate him from Marianna Segati, and claim him for her own. When she knew her moment of triumph, her inhuman shrieks of joy could be heard echoing down the Grand Canal. Byron dared not clap his hand over her mouth. He might lose a finger. I felt about her much as I had felt about Marianna, except that I, too, was physically frightened of her.

  One night in August 1818, Margarita Cogni sat upon the steps of the palace and refused to go home to her husband, that becco etico, consumptive cuckold, as she called him. She was not to be removed, neither by the intervention of the police nor the parish priest, so Byron made her his housekeeper. He was a little embarrassed with his unexpected acquisition. However, she kept the household in rare order and saved him money. She believed, as an Italian, that everyone was cheating him, and treated them accordingly: with screams and blows. Soon the Mocenigo was being run on a shoestring. Margarita had found another way into Byron’s heart.

  ‘But how do you manage her?’ I asked, when he came to my studio.

  ‘I don’t even try. I let her rampage. It’s amusing to watch. She has already frightened the learned Fletcher out of his remnants of wits more than once … Don’t worry, Cecilia, I can deal with anything but a cold-blooded animal such as the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned-and-confounded Miss Milbanke.’

  Margarita was beyond control, despite what Byron had said to me. In order to spy on him, she learnt to read. Byron had not exaggerated: she terrified both Tita and Fletcher. At the sound of her step, they cringed like hyenas. Margarita would not allow another woman inside the Mocenigo unless she was old and frightful. She would wait for Byron through the night on the steps of the palazzo, her eyes phosphorescent with burning tears and her dark hair coiling as tumultuously over her brow and breasts as the snakes of the Medusa. When Byron eventually came home, he found her welcome almost dangerously enthusiastic. She bore him away in triumph.

  When Margarita became a fixture, I was merely philosophical, and went back to my studio. I had no wish to be disfigured by Margarita’s fingernails. Byron had already left his mark on me – and, more importantly, I had already realised that to become a part of his everyday life would rob me forever of any attraction Byron still felt for me. He visited the studio most days, and we continued to meet at San Lazzaro.

  Sometimes, however, I would come to the Mocenigo, where my easel was still permanently in place in his study. We devised a way to placate Margarita: I painted a quick study of her in the finery she insisted on wearing now that she was living la vita di palazzo. She had renounced her white faxoléto for a ridiculously long train that she dragged around behind her. She gave herself a comical parcel of airs, looked a walking caricature of a great lady. I painted her as one, but kindly, without irony. When she saw her likeness she snatched it from my easel and ran away with it. But after that she would nod at me almost amicably. She had accepted me as part of the household, like Fletcher or Tita: another diligent and devoted creature in service to her master.

  After that I could paint Byron while he worked on the first canto of his new poem Don Juan, which he had commenced at the beginning of September 1816. He declared, from the first stanza, that it would be his masterpiece. Although he often affected to scorn it, he was still hungry for fame. ‘Its fumes are frankincense to human thought,’ he told me. It was true, I reflected. My own worldly success hung about me like spun sugar, sweetening my life.

  Apart from the times when Byron read aloud from his work, these days we sat in silence. We were still afraid of Margarita. Every now and then, from one of t
he three doors that punctuated the study walls, La Fornarina would dart in. Finding all in order, she would run to Byron, straddle him briefly. He caught my eye over her shoulder. This was part of his pleasure. Under my canvas, I reached for the paper and charcoal. These moments would not go unrecorded, on the page or inside me.

  One day, while we were working, a calamitous noise erupted downstairs among the servants. Eventually, Fletcher came pattering upstairs to explain. Margarita had found a pretty Rialto girl lingering in the kitchen after delivering some potatoes for one of Byron’s horrid boil-ups. The girl had been attacked and lay unconscious on the floor. Margarita was circling her prey, and seemed about to be deliver the coup de grâce.

  ‘Bring her to me,’ Byron told Fletcher. ‘Then endeavour to resuscitate the victim.’

  Hair streaming, colour roused, blood under her fingernails, Margarita came spitting into the room, with the stiff-legged gait of a dog in its courting display.

  ‘Margarita, you are a bitch,’ Byron told her. Now, cagna in Italian is a filthy insult, like lingua biforcuta, but worse. I drew in my breath, waiting for the tall girl to crumple or erupt in screams.

  But Margarita merely curtsied and answered, ‘Sì, la tua cagna — your bitch. Sono sempre in calore. I am always on heat.’

  Byron laughed and dismissed her. Margarita first took his head between her hands and engulfed his mouth with hers. He pulled away and at this she rushed off, quick tears wetting her cheeks, a howl in the air. Byron turned to me, wiping his mouth. ‘You know what we say in England about women, “the more they cry the less they piss.”’ He added, ‘I hate to see a woman cry like I hate to see a goose go barefoot.’