Secrecy - By Rupert Thomson Page 0,8

earth. He asked if the piece had a title. I told him I called it ‘The Triumph of Time’. He nodded, then sat back. To hear people speak of my work was one thing, he said, but to see it for himself – in the flesh, as it were – was a revelation.

Not long afterwards, Bassetti swept into the room with a formal offer of patronage, his expression complacent, replete, as if he had just devoured the sort of meal his employer fantasized about. Studying the document, I saw that the Grand Duke was proposing a stipend of twenty-five scudi a month. I had never been paid so handsomely.

Before I left, the Grand Duke mentioned some outbuildings on the western edge of the palace gardens, which could, if I wished, be converted into workshops. There had been a time when they were used as stables, he said in a slightly strangled voice. Then his cheeks flushed and, looking away from me, towards the window, he added that he no longer found it pleasing to keep horses.

I woke suddenly, my throat dry. Soft sounds were coming through the ceiling, sounds I could make no sense of. Thump-thump-thump … thump. And then again: Thump-thump-thump … thump.

That evening Signora de la Mar and Fiore had decided to celebrate my successful encounter with the Grand Duke by cooking a supper that made use of the truffle Bassetti had given me. The signora had suggested a risotto. When I cut into the truffle, though, it seemed to come alive. Threaded through the crumbly dark interior were dozens of frenzied white worms. I sprang back, almost knocking Fiore to the floor.

‘What a shame,’ the signora said. She thought the truffle must have spent too long in the ground.

I remembered how Bassetti had held the jar up to the light, as if it contained a precious stone. ‘Could he have known?’

‘I don’t see how.’

‘So it’s not deliberate.’

The signora gave me a curious look. Such an idea would never have occurred to her.

Abandoning the idea of a risotto, we went to a tavern near the Arno that was known for its fresh fish. I drank more wine than I was used to. Worse still, I let the signora talk me into sampling a tar-coloured liqueur that was made from artichokes and was, so she assured me, a speciality of the region.

‘What,’ I said, ‘like the truffle?’

But I went ahead and ordered the liqueur. No wonder my head ached. That odd thumping, though – it had come from the floor above.

I left my room and climbed the stairs, which coiled skywards in a tight spiral. The air felt motionless, unbreathed, as if nobody had been up there in years. I stepped out on to the landing. Standing with his back to me, and dressed in a colourless, close-fitting garment, a sort of undersuit, was a figure with the thin hips and narrow shoulders of a young boy, though his face, when glimpsed in quarter profile, was that of a man, lines fanning outwards at the corner of his eye, his sallow cheek unshaven. I was about to speak when he raised his arms in front of him, palms facing out, and launched into a series of fluid, connecting somersaults that took him off into the darkness. He seemed to disappear, in fact, and when I called out, ‘Who are you?’ there was no reply, only a click that might have been a door gently closing.

Perhaps I ought to have left it at that, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I picked my way along the landing. I found a door at the far end. Putting my ear to the wood, I heard noises I recognized. They had the same rhythm as before. The first three thumps came close together. Then a gap. Then a fourth thump, which sounded final, emphatic, like a full stop. I tried the door handle, which creaked loudly. Like the stairs, it didn’t seem to have been much in use.

‘No, no,’ came a querulous voice. ‘Not now.’

It was too late. I had already opened the door an inch, and I was peering through the crack. The man spun past, at head-height. Thump! I opened the door wider and stood on the threshold.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’ The man’s voice was reedy, petulant. This was Cuif, I realized. The insomniac.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You woke me up.’

‘I’m practising.’

‘But it’s the middle of the night.’

Cuif shrugged.

‘Are you an acrobat?’ I asked.

His eyebrows lifted,