Page 16 of Palazzo
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As they did every summer, Cosima rented a house in Sardinia for two weeks and took Allegra with her. It was lively and fun, and they had friends there, many of whom had boats and invited them to spend the day on them. The time away from Rome did them both good.
They’d been there for a week when the store manager in Venice called Cosima at midnight, sounding panicked.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” he apologized.
“You didn’t. We just got home from dinner.” They had dined late on a friend’s boat in Porto Cervo and had had a good evening.
“I just got a call from the fire chief. There’s a fire.”
“At the store?” She was instantly alert as she listened intently.
“At the palazzo. He thought you should know.”
“Oh my God, there’s no one there. The Johnsons are in Aspen. How bad is it?”
“It sounds serious. It’s not contained yet. I’m going there now, but I wanted to call you first.”
“Let me know as soon as you get there.” The palazzo wasn’t far from the store, and Cosima sat for the next hour with the phone in her hand, waiting for news. She told Allegra as soon as she ended the call, and they sat together, waiting, until the store manager called them back.
“The fire is almost contained now. The palazzo isn’t destroyed, but there’s considerable damage, and probably a lot of water damage. They wanted to put the fire out as quickly as they could. One of the firefighters told me that most of the contents of the first floor are damaged, the furniture and the art. They won’t let anyone in for several hours until they’re sure it’s safe and the fire is out. I can’t really talk to them yet. I’ll call you back in the morning when I know more.” Cosima looked shocked when she hung up and reported to Allegra, who was distraught. As they talked, Cosima changed from the Pucci silk pajamas she’d been wearing into jeans and a T-shirt, a safari jacket, and sneakers.
“Where are you going?” Allegra asked her.
“To the airport. I want to be there when it opens. I’ll catch the firstflight out to Venice. I want to see the damage myself. We still own the house, and I don’t know what the Johnsons will want to do if the house is badly damaged. They may back out of the sale. Can you manage without me for a few hours?” Cosima asked her, but she knew she could, and the housekeeper who came with the house would be there in the morning to make breakfast and clean the house and help Allegra if she needed it.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Allegra offered.
“No, stay here. I’ll call you when I get there. And I’ll try to come back quickly, depending on how bad it is.” It was at times like this that Cosima was sorry she didn’t have a man in her life, to lend a hand and be there with her. Gian Battista had always been such a strong support for her before, and still was to some extent. But it was late and she didn’t want to wake him. He was at his family’s home in Tuscany for the summer, and there was nothing he could do from there. Like everything else, she had to deal with the fire on her own.
She left in a cab to the airport in Olbia twenty minutes later, waited until the airport opened, and was able to catch a flight to Rome at six-thirty, and from there caught a flight to Venice. She couldn’t even get a cup of coffee while she waited in Olbia, and had dozed in a chair for five hours before her first flight. Both flights were on time and she landed at the airport in Venice at tena.m. and took a cab to where she could catch a speedboat into the city. She was already tired when she got there, and tears stung her eyes when the Palazzo Saverio came into view.
Many of the windows were broken. Some of them had been made of antique handblown glass. There were black streaks on the façadewhere the flames had been. Firefighters were still coming in and out of the house, and there were piles of debris in the garden, made up of priceless antiques and the Johnsons’ new decor. There were people on the street staring at the activity, and one of the fireboats was still in the canal in front of the palazzo. The smell of smoke was acrid and heavy in the air. Cosima got out of the boat and ran up the dock to the house. Two firefighters stopped her, and she explained that she owned the palazzo. They stood aside then and let her peek inside. Much of Sally Johnson’s recent decorating had been destroyed, and the antique furniture was either burned or soaked. The wood paneling in the main living room had badly burned, and Cosima felt sick as she saw it. The damage looked devastating, although it might not be as bad as it looked at first, but the house had been heavily affected by the fire and the powerful water hoses used to put it out.
“You can’t go inside yet,” one of the firefighters told her. There were still firefighters everywhere checking for pockets of fire and embers that could burst into flame again. Cosima looked through all the windows that remained. Some rooms were better than others, and the ballroom appeared to be untouched. The fire hadn’t reached it yet. Some of the Johnsons’ decorative statues had melted, and others had exploded in the heat of the fire.
The palazzo had been saved, and the roof was intact, but it would take a lot of work to restore it to the condition it had been in. Cosima had no idea what would happen to the sale now, and how the Johnsons would react. It had become a much bigger project than even they had been planning to undertake. If they didn’t repair the damage, Cosima would have to. It was a daunting prospect, as she satdown on a garden chair in the midst of the debris in the garden. She called Allegra at noon, after she’d seen as much as she could. The caretakers had been away for the weekend.
“It’s a mess,” Cosima said, trying not to cry. She didn’t want to scare her sister, and knew she had to be strong.
“Is the house burned to the ground?” Allegra asked, panicked. She’d been up for hours, waiting for news from her sister.
“Several of the rooms are badly burned, especially the ones with wood paneling. There’s water damage everywhere. The tapestries, curtains, and antique chairs are ruined, one of the big chandeliers fell, and a lot of the windows are broken. It’s going to cost a fortune to repair it, and take a long time. I don’t know what condition the upper floors are in, but the fire got to the second floor before they put it out. It may not be as bad as it looks right now, but it’s pretty awful,” Cosima said. “It’s not safe to go in until tomorrow, so I’ll stay here tonight. And I want to get some kind of cleanup started before I come back.”
“Do you want me to fly in?” Allegra offered.
“No, I want you to stay in Sardinia.” It would be too hard for Allegra to try to deal with it from her wheelchair. “I’ll get Tomaso and Guillermo to help once we can go in. They’ll be back tonight.” They were the caretakers they’d had for years, and they were devoted to the family. “I’ll call you tomorrow once I’ve been inside and seen how the rest of the house looks. The first floor looks pretty bad. They’re investigating what started the fire, whether it was electrical or something else.” Some of the wiring was very old, and none of it was recent. That was part of the work that the Johnsons were planning to do, replacing a lot of the wiring to make it safer.
“I’m so sorry, Cosima. Let me know if you change your mind and want me to come and help,” Allegra said.
“Just stay at the house in Porto Cervo. We have it for another week.” Cosima didn’t bother to call Luca because there was nothing he could do either, and he probably wouldn’t offer to help. She didn’t even know where he was, on his summer rounds to visit friends. He was never a help in a crisis and wouldn’t be now.
Cosima had a long talk with the head of the fire brigade after she hung up. They were checking the house for signs of arson, which Cosima considered unlikely. She explained that the house was unoccupied for the summer. She was sure the wiring was the culprit and felt guilty that she hadn’t dealt with it before, but it was so expensive to replace and everything in the palazzo still worked, even if it was antiquated.
She hung around the scene of the fire all day, and finally at six o’clock they were sure it was safe and let her go in. They assigned a firefighter to go with her, so she wouldn’t get hurt. There was broken glass everywhere. She went from room to room carefully. The top two floors were unaffected, except for smoke damage, and the smell was awful. The bottom two floors had sustained the greatest damage. It took her an hour to check the house from top to bottom, and she took many photographs with her cellphone to show Allegra and their insurers in Rome. It was going to be a costly venture repairing it. The brigade chief was on the scene and spoke to her when she emerged.
“We have our answer,” he said with a stern expression. “We found oil-soaked rags in three of the rooms. It was arson.” He looked grim.
