Stone Virgin by Barry Unsworth

the light. Afterwards he was to wonder whether it was the filtering light itself or heat from the lamp operating in some way, but the imprint was now quite clear and unmistakable. The word was Fornarini .

4
    ‘THAT IS A very old name,’ Wiseman said. ‘Goes back a long way. They were one of the original twenty-four, or so it is claimed. My gosh, yes.’ He blinked and chuckled at the thought of this. Venice was his hobby and his passion.
    Raikes smiled in response, glad to find that Wiseman knew something about it, endeared by the other’s enthusiasm, which he recognized again now after the years in which they had not met; it was the quality they shared and which had kept them friends. ‘Who were they ?’ he said. Here in this sheltered spot, the sun warm on his face, digesting his spaghetti alle vongole and veal cutlet, half the Merlot still left in the bottle, he felt a sense of well-being and expansiveness. ‘Sounds like a magic number,’ he said. ‘Were they the founders of the city?’
    ‘They were the original families who ruled as tribunes over the Lagoon islands. This was before there was any Venice at all, at least as we know it now – there was no settlement on the Rialto yet. We’re going back to the seventh century, a fairly misty period, which is why a lot of the claims can’t be authenticated. The Fornarini, for example, claim a semi-mythic ancestry going back to the founders of Rome. That’s nonsense of course. Still, they are one of the oldest.’
    Raikes nodded. Wiseman’s voice, the New York accent softened by travel and by the gentle temperament of its owner, was very soothing and lulling. The wine too had relaxed him. His eyes fell on two Italian women in early middle age, both slender and smartly dressed, sitting at a nearby table. One of them raised herself slightly in her chair, in order it seemed to smoothe her skirt against the back of her legs. This slight lunge of the woman’s pelvis gave Raikes an unexpected and poignant pang in the genitals. He felt his face and body go hot. He looked away hastily, nibbled some cheese, poured Wiseman and himself more wine. What would Wiseman say, he wondered, if I told him that since my arrival in this city, since starting work on my Madonna, I have had what seem to be hallucinations, my level of sexual awareness has been so topped up I have intimations of orgasm in everything I see, I cannot look at a fork in a tree without feelings of restlessness? It would only embarrass him, of course. It occurred to him that he did not really know what Wiseman’s sexual propensities were – or indeed if he had any.
    ‘They have the crest feathers of an eagle on their coat of arms,’ Wiseman said. ‘Only six Venetian families were allowed to display lilies or eagles on their arms. Seven if you count the eagle’s foot of the Malipieri. They called themselves the Case Vecchie , the twenty-four I mean, or their descendants at least. The old houses. They were a sort of caste within a caste. I’m planning a chapter on it, not on the history of the families, but some of the anecdotes about them.’
    Wiseman was in charge of the UNESCO office that had been established in Venice after the 1966 floods. In the time left over from official duties he was writing a book entitled Venetian Byways , a sort of compendium of historical gossip, exactly suited to his tastes and interests, which were antiquarian without being systematic. He was corpulent, and his rather full cheeks and small mouth gave him the general appearance of a cherub.
    ‘The fact is,’ he said now, blinking mild eyes in the pleasure of having things to impart, ‘there are gaps in our knowledge, enormous gaps. There is the Libro d’Oro , of course, which is still in existence – it’s in the state archives – but it only goes back to 1506 and in any case contains only certificates of marriages and legitimate births. No reference to origins, no pedigrees, no blazons. A lot of the ancient