The Blue Last (21 page)

Trueblood nodded. “That's the difference between them.” He stood and gawked at the frescoes for a good twenty minutes and paced before the frescoes for another ten while Melrose wandered around, stopped at the top of the nave and wondered what would happen if he tossed holy water on his face. Better not. There could be a thunderbolt.

“Time to go!” yelled Trueblood, rewrapping his painting—warmly, as if they were about to be heaved into a Russian winter.

 

 

 

Aldo Luzi lived in the Oltrano in a flaking stone building on a dead-end street running parallel to the river. The flat itself took up all of an upper floor, exquisitely decorated and luxuriously furnished. The materials covering sofas and chairs and footstools ran to damask, velvet, silk and brocade.

Signore Luzi was a scholar; thus, Melrose had expected a small rundown room overflowing with books, more than the bookshelves could accommodate, and stacked in piles and spilling over the worn carpet. Papers, journals in uneven towers. The room should look as crowded as the man's intellect, heaps of quarterlies and journals reflecting heaps of intelligence. Perhaps an owl on a dusty mantel. Something like that.

Nor did Signore Luzi himself fit Melrose's preformed idea of a “foremost expert.” One, he was too young (late thirties? early forties?); two, he was too good-looking (where was the bent back, the owlish eye, the spectacles, the unruly gray hair?); three, he was too well dressed, even for informality. The blue shirt was undoubtedly designer, the scarf Hermès. His mind might not belong in this sumptuous setting, but his body did.

They were seated in the spacious living room, Melrose on a dark green damask cloud, Trueblood on its dark blue twin cloud. They had bypassed the usual small talk, Melrose was glad to see, to get to the point. The only concession to the stock formalities was the espresso Luzi had served. Now, he set down his cup on the sleek coffee table to take up Trueblood's picture.

Luzi nodded at Trueblood's story of his acquiring this panel while his eyes stayed on the picture. He had a black mustache which he liked to tug at, thoughtfully.

For some moments, Luzi said nothing, but let his eyes rove the room as if trying to decide whether to buy the place. Melrose looked at his host's painting-covered walls. They were largely Renaissance, and he was surprised to see among them one of those village-nightmare works of Stanley Spencer. Higher up was a picture of a man with a bowed head, stark naked and looking as if he were being stoned to death. It could be a Lucian Freud. There was one dreamy pre-Raphaelite painting that might have been Holman Hunt's as it resembled his
Ophelia.
It showed a young woman lying by a brook amid wild flowers that blew like waves gusting back.

Trueblood set his small cup in its saucer and the
clink
dragged Melrose back from the shores of dreams.

Signore Luzi had been talking: “. . . They were so much in and out of one another's pockets—Masaccio, Donatello, Filippo Brunelleschi, Masolino. There were always the
concori—
the, uh, competitions—and, also, several different artists might work on one painting or sculpture at different times and in different years. Masolino and Filippino Lippi worked on Masaccio's
Saint Peter Enthroned.
” Luzi took up Trueblood's picture again. “The Pisa polyptych . . .” He interrupted himself to inquire whether they'd planned to go there.

“To Pisa?” said Trueblood. “Of course; it's our next stop.”

Oh? thought Melrose. No one had bothered to tell him.

“Ah, I am sorry to disappoint you, but that part of the polyptych has been covered or removed temporarily for some small restoration.”

Trueblood slid down in his chair, looking forlorn. “Well. Oh, well.”

Signore Luzi continued. “Now, several pieces
have
been discovered in churches, true. It's just that in your circumstance, finding this in an antique shop, I would think, no, this cannot be.” Still holding the painting, he continued. “Masaccio. It's hard for me to imagine such talent and reputation in a man so young. Does that happen much anymore?”

Trueblood interrupted. “But it is possible. Eleanor Ickley—do you know her?”

“Of course. I was just reading an article by her.” He pulled again at the tip of his mustache. “Now,” Luzi said, “one real authority on Masaccio is in Siena. A Signore Di Bada—”

Melrose sat bolt upright.
Real
as opposed to
foremost?
In Siena? Now that Pisa was dead in a ditch, would they still be making side trips? Oh, surely not!

Oh, surely, yes was Trueblood's response. “Di Bada. Siena, it's not far. It's only—”

“Sixty-five, seventy kilometers.” Luzi shrugged. “An hour's drive.” Luzi shrugged this distance away.

Trueblood looked at Melrose, not to ask if he acquiesced in the matter of this short journey—it was assumed anyone, even Melrose, would be thrilled to go sleuthing after Masaccio—but to see how soon Melrose wanted to go.

Melrose said nothing.

“We could leave now,” said Trueblood.

“We could,” said Melrose, “but we won't. I want to go to the glove shop.”

Aldo Luzi laughed. “But of course! Such wonderful leathers! And such colors!”

They all took the glove shop as a point of departure, rose and headed for the door. As they shook hands and said their good-byes, Aldo Luzi leaned against the doorjamb and said, “He was only twenty-seven when he died.” It was so sad, the way he said it. “Masaccio.”

Melrose asked, “What did he die of?”

Luzi thought for a moment. “Want. He died of want.”

Melrose colored, thinking that was something none of them, none of their three untalented selves, would die of, and felt diminished.

 

 

 

Outside, with the heavy door and its lion head knocker bolted, Melrose said, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice, “You can't really mean to go to Siena to yet one more foremost-authority-leading-expert?”

“I certainly do. Should I ditch the whole plan when I'm this close? Come on, Siena's scarcely an hour's drive. We can rent some really fast car.”

“
Close?
Marshall, you are not one inch or ounce closer to knowing this—” he tapped the package (once more wrapped and taped and tied) “—is genuine or not.”

Trueblood made a show of thinking this over, which Melrose knew he was not. “There're car hire places at the airport.”

Melrose took a few steps to the curb and appeared to be throwing himself in front of a Vespa which had materialized out of nowhere, out of the fuel-shocked air of Florence, before dematerializing into the dusk, failing to claim, this time, the life of one more Florentine. Melrose really wanted one of those scooters.

Taking the suicide-attempt hint, Trueblood threw his hands up (one not rising much above chest level, as the package was securely under his arm), “Okay, okay. We can go tomorrow. Let's find a drink.”

“But first, but
first
to the glove shop. Thataway.” Melrose pointed in the general direction of the Ponte Vecchio.

“I never knew you to be so glove addicted,” said Trueblood, as they strolled along. “Maybe there's a twelve-step glove program you could try.”

“Come on.” Melrose said, taking command.

 

 

 

The knock-you-into-the-Arno scent of leather engulfed him when they entered the little shop. The gloves were in glass cases and also stacked by the hundreds—thousands?—in their own little plastic cases in cubbyholed wooden shelving.

Nine or ten customers preceded them, which was easily enough to fill the tiny shop. Melrose wedged his way in (
“Mi scusi, scusi”
) to look at the gloves in the glass case.

Now it was Trueblood's turn to carp, trying to lever Melrose out and into a trattoria. Melrose stopped listening; he knew it wouldn't be long before Trueblood fell hungrily onto this fashion feast, and it wasn't. After he elbowed an old man so hunched his chin barely cleared the counter, Trueblood was trying different gloves on each hand. This was difficult with his painting pressed under one arm.

To the old man, Melrose bowed and, with a supercilious smile, waved him to his place at the counter.

The old gentleman looked at him with considerable distaste:
“Lasciami in pace!”
he very nearly spit.

Melrose blinked.
“Prego,”
he said, but for some reason he did not really believe he'd been thanked. Back to the gloves, let's see: the black kidskin with the narrow white edging at the wrists would be perfect for Diane; they'd blend with her clothes, her house, her cat. One always had to take back little presents for the ones left behind. This was an excuse to look at (easily) a hundred pairs of gloves. A suede of deep gold, perfect for Vivian. Noxious apple green for Agatha. Two pairs of lilac for Miss Broadstairs and Miss Vine. (They would probably wear them for gardening gloves.) Several more pairs for others. For himself—he looked down the counter.

Why was Trueblood unwrapping the painting? Why was he now holding it for the saleswoman's close inspection? Why was she raising pincenez, dangling from a silver chain, up to her eyes? Was Trueblood wanting to fit up St. Who with gloves? If he got testy about it, would the scene resolve itself into
Expulsion from the Glove Shop
?

Melrose went back to his own glove buying, trying to ignore the comments and labored breathing of the people behind him waiting for service. He was taking no more chances in being polite. He picked up a pair of soft leather gloves that poured like double cream onto his hand in a color called Midnight Ashes. They were a gray so dark it just missed being black. He certainly had to have those. This next pair were doeskin in a nice fawn shade. As he was debating buying these also, Trueblood shoved in beside him to show him a pair in a shade something like sea green.

“Nice, eh?”

“Beautiful.” Fortunately the painting was rewrapped. “Do you like these—” Melrose held up the nearly black gloves “—or these?” He pointed to the fawn gloves.

“Both. Get them both. See, I bought two.” Trueblood held up the bag that contained his purchases.

“Yes, but you needed a pair for St. Who. I'm only gloving myself. And I'd feel rather overly indulgent buying two pairs, I mean, at these prices. Of course I realize they'd cost twice this at home, but that doesn't make them cheaper. No, I think I'll go for the dark gray ones.” What Melrose was actually doing was giving Trueblood a chance to do his Christmas shopping. He knew Trueblood loved to purchase things on the sly, once he found that one was particularly taken with a certain article. “I think I'll take one last look at the back, if you don't mind waiting a tic.”

“No, no, go on,” said Trueblood, “they've some especially nice ones at the back.”

When Melrose looked back, Trueblood was in close colloquy with the saleswoman, who was nodding and smiling,
Si, si.
Melrose allowed enough time for the transaction at the front. When they left the shop, he smiled, for Trueblood was securing this last flat little parcel beneath the string around his painting.

Melrose felt rather humble about this and determined to stop giving his friend such a hard time over his foremost or leading expert or authority in future.

D
etermined to get to Pietro di Bada in record time, Trueblood told Melrose to turn onto the motorway, a plan quickly scotched by Melrose, who said that if he was going at all he wanted to see the Tuscan countryside, and not from the rush of a motorway.

“You'll want to stop,” said Trueblood, churlishly.

“No, I won't.”

Of course, he would, which was why he had insisted on driving. And he did, when he spied from a distance the hill town of San Gimignano. Melrose loved the name and kept practicing, trying to get the accent just right (
“San Gim-i'yon-o, San Gim-i'yon-no”
). Its needlelike towers bathed in the sun, some nearly encased in vines and flowers, its feudal walls and narrow windows, its medieval stone—all were irresistible.

Trueblood was reading his guidebook. “There were once something like four hundred towers here. Now it's only around seventy. What happened to the others?”

“Is that the point? I mean, what happened to them just doesn't seem the
point
of this town.” Melrose brought the car to a halt in the car park, and, breathing hard, they struggled up the steps onto the cobbled road and still climbed. They found a little trattoria in which to lunch on bruschetta, crostini and wine. Melrose exhausted his Italian when he asked for
la lista dei vini
and
acqua minerale
and as always came up short when the waiter (impressed by their command of the language) made his own contribution:
“Gassata o naturale?”
Melrose shrugged his shoulders in a not-caring gesture. Trueblood was having gin and tonic all over Florence because that was the way it was spelled out:
gin tonic.
Well, they'd never claimed to be linguists, had they? said Trueblood, ordering another
gin tonic.

The lunch was simple and good—when wasn't it good over here?—and afterward they ambled farther up the hill to come out on a piazza overseen by a charming church. They crossed it and came upon a museum of torture. Here was something to catch Melrose's interest! Once inside with their tickets, they appeared to be the only torture enthusiasts, for they saw no one else in the first room, where they stopped before an exhibit of a kind of iron headpiece, fashioned so as to fit over the head and keep the mouth shut. Women who passed their time in gossip paid heavily for it.