Stravaganza City of Masks by Mary Hoffman

Author:Mary Hoffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In the north of the city was a small canal where fledgling mandoliers learned their skills. No visitors or tourists ever came there; it was a backwater in every sense. It was such a narrow waterway that the houses on either side were quite close to each other. Two of them were joined by a private bridge, linking their top floors; the houses belonged to Egidio and Fiorentino, Rodolfo’s older brothers.

They were both still handsome men, although Egidio, at forty-five, was quite old for a Bellezzan. When they were at home, in one house or the other, or walking over the canal by the little bridge that linked them, the two brothers often amused themselves with watching the efforts of the newly enrolled mandoliers.

In their day, they had been the best mandoliers in Bellezza, as well as the best-looking. They had rowed the Barcone to the Marriage with the Sea and had made good money taking tourists up and down the Great Canal. At twenty-five, like all other mandoliers, they had been generously pensioned by the Duchessa. For that, if for nothing else, they would have always been grateful to her.

Egidio had started a shop which sold paper and notebooks and pencils, all decorated with the swirly marbled designs that also covered Lucien’s talisman. As years went by and Rodolfo set up his laboratory in the palazzo next to the Duchessa’s, his designs and skills had improved Egidio’s stock until it was the envy of all Europa. His shop, in a small calle near the cathedral, was always busy with tourists.

Fiorentino had a flair for cooking and, with his money from the Duchessa, he opened a café on the Piazza Maddalena. It started modestly but soon expanded; he bought the shops on either side of it and it was soon a flourishing and expensive restaurant. ‘Fiorentino’s’ of Bellezza became a byword for fine cooking in the Middle Sea. Both brothers had prospered since they ended their mandoliering days but neither had married. It seemed that no woman held any attraction for someone who had once enjoyed the favour of Silvia, the Duchessa. They were still her devoted servants, prepared to do anything she asked. And if they were jealous of their little brother, who had scarcely left her side for nearly a score of years, they never showed it.

On this day, the two brothers were enjoying a glass of wine on the terrace of Egidio’s house. They had been watching a young novice learning how to turn his mandola in mid-canal, while talking knowledgeably to a boat-load of ‘tourists’, who were in fact examiners at the Scuola. For every mandolier had to sit exams in Bellezzan history, music, literature and art, as well as pass a proficiency test on his water-skills.

This particular specimen, though undeniably handsome, was clearly finding his task difficult. The brothers slapped their thighs and whooped with laughter as the youth lost his oar and had to be paddled back to retrieve it by his cargo of examiners.

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