Secrecy - By Rupert Thomson Page 0,30

I’d have to be going. But the first grappa turned into a second, and then the proprietor brought us another two, on the house. I noticed how Pampolini watched her walk back to the kitchens, her thick-waisted body twisting as she edged between the tables.

‘Not bad,’ he said, ‘if you can overlook the missing eye.’

I thought this was one of the funniest things I had ever heard. Slightly hurt, but with a half-smile on his face, the barber-surgeon waited until I had finished laughing. Then, in an attempt to get his own back, perhaps, he asked if I had been seeing anyone. No, I said. I’d been too busy, working.

‘Not even a little fling with that Spanish woman?’

‘No – and anyway, she’s not Spanish. It was her husband who was Spanish.’

‘But she’s a widow …’

‘So?’

‘You know what she wants, don’t you?’ He eyed me across the table. ‘Old chickens make good soup.’

I looked down, smiled. Shook my head.

‘Are you sure you haven’t?’ he said. ‘You’ve been living there for long enough.’

Two more grappas appeared.

‘I saw this girl once,’ I said, ‘in a shop window –’

But Pampolini wouldn’t let go of the Spanish theme. ‘Did you hear what happened to the husband?’

I repeated what Bassetti had told me.

‘That’s only the half of it,’ Pampolini said.

Signore de la Mar had become dejected and violent. He had taken to beating his wife. That was how she’d lost her front tooth. Then he died. It was thought to be an accident – death by misadventure – but they had quite a reputation as poisoners, the Florentines …

I stared at Pampolini. ‘You mean she killed him?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

The conversation lurched, veered sideways, and he began to discuss anatomy. He described a dissection which he had performed in front of an audience that included Francesco Redi – it was how they had met – and which he had conceived of as a homage to the anatomy lesson given by Dr Pieter Pauw in Leiden in 1615. Had I seen de Gheyn’s engraving of the event, with skulls circling the base of the operating table, and a couple of dogs waiting patiently for scraps? This was a subject for which we both had an inexhaustible appetite, and it was five o’clock before I managed to tear myself away.

Once outside, I found myself wandering in the maze of streets on the south side of the ghetto. Every now and then, in the gap between two buildings, or at the end of a dark alley, I would catch a glimpse of the rust-coloured dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, disproportionately large, like a grown-up playing a child’s game. Where, I wondered, was the girl I had mentioned to Pampolini, the girl I had seen only twice in my life, the girl whose existence was so vivid and yet so tenuous that I sometimes felt as if I had made her up?

I turned the corner and nearly jumped out of my skin, for there she was, no more than fifty yards away. Her wrists were thin, her black hair shone. There was an urgency about the way she moved. Something clear-cut too. Defined. To see her on the street, with people all around her, was like seeing a knife in a drawer of spoons. I had long since come to a standstill, and I was smiling, not just at her beauty, but at the beauty of coincidence. Who was it who wrote that chance provides us with exactly what we need?

When she noticed me, she slowed down, adjusting the basket she was carrying. She seemed startled, even a little bewildered, as though the possibility that I might appear had not occurred to her.

‘I didn’t expect it to happen like this,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry?’

Her voice, which I had just heard for the first time, was low and smoky. What would it sound like if she said my name? Or if she said she loved me? But what was I thinking? Was I drunk? Well, yes. Obviously.

‘To be honest, I didn’t expect it to happen at all,’ I said. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere, but I’d just about given up.’

‘So how did you find me?’

‘Pure luck – though, oddly enough, I was thinking about you when you appeared.’

‘Perhaps you’re imagining things. Perhaps I’m not really here.’ She seemed wistful, as if what she was saying might actually be true.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Faustina.’

We moved on along the street, past a place known for its fried fish. We crossed the Mercato Vecchio. The