Stone Virgin (11 page)

They were approaching Mazzorbo now, with the campanile of Santa Caterina rising immediately before them. The
motoscafo
turned at right angles up the wide canal, stopped at the Burano landing stage where it deposited Raikes and Wiseman. They stood for some moments on the jetty, watching the boat nose out again towards Torcello.

‘What we need now,’ Wiseman said ‘is a
sandolo
to take us to San Pietro. We’re at the end of the line here, more or less. The water-bus services don’t go beyond Torcello. Mrs Litsov offered to pick us up here, but I said we’d make our own way. They’ll bring us back, I should think.’

They went down to the busy little harbour, where the coloured reflections of hulls and houses rocked on the water, and almost at once found a man who was willing to take them – he was making for the mouth of the harbour, about to set off on a fishing trip.

‘You need someone who knows the waters,’ Wiseman said rather nervously as they stepped down into the boat; though perhaps the nervousness was for his balance, Raikes thought, rather than the uncertainties of the Lagoon. He was more than ever impressed by Wiseman’s kindness in braving all this for the sake of introducing him to Chiara Litsov, née Fornarini. And he felt guilty in a way, as if he were going on false pretences. Still, she might be able to tell him something. His discovery of the evening before had definitely linked the name of Fornarini with the statue – and therefore, in his own mind at least, with the house in San Giovanni Crisostomo.

Something of the excitement of that discovery returned to him as they turned eastward beyond the harbour wall in what he thought was the direction of the open sea. The light was hazier now and the long strips of the Lidi, those essential ligaments of the Lagoon, were no longer visible. With Burano left behind they were without immediate landmarks, moving on a calm waste of water, prey like everything else to its perpetual glimmering reflections. Astern, in the distance, a darker mass rose above the flats and Raikes guessed this might be the cypresses of San Francesco del Deserto, which he had read about but never visited, where there was a monastery still, and where St Francis of Assisi was said to have put in during a Lagoon storm. Though where coming from or going to he could not remember. He had planted his stick and a pine had sprung up …

The boatman stood upright in the stern, propelling them fairly briskly with a rhythmic forward thrust on his single oar. He uttered a regular heavy breathing sound, like a quiet grunt, not a sound of exertion but seeming in the nature of self-encouragement, as another might sing. That, with the creaking of the rowlocks and the faint slap of the wash, was all the sound there was. Silent gulls probed for clams in the shallows not far away. The light flashed on their breasts as they turned. They were wading, not swimming, Raikes noticed – the water was no more than a few inches deep there. Beyond them, glistening mudbanks rose clear of the surface like a shoal of enormous amphibians basking half submerged. Here obviously both skill and knowledge of the channels was necessary; occasionally their oar gashed mud, releasing dark liquid to stain the surface.

‘The water’s rising, I think,’ Wiseman said. ‘All this is covered at high tide of course.’

They were coming again into what seemed deeper water, with little tufts of islands here and there, some with ruined walls on them or the remains of what might have been gardens, still precariously clear of the surface, though half drowned already as was evidenced by the tidal detritus caught high in bushes and trees, a tangle of seaweed and bleached sticks.

‘
San Pietro
,’ the boatman said suddenly, looking back towards them. His tone was one of doubt rather than affirmation. ‘
È un’ isola abbandonata
,’ he said. He rested on the oar for a few moments, smiling and shrugging slightly. It was as if it had suddenly occurred to him to doubt the whole enterprise. ‘
Nessuno qui
,’ he said. ‘There is nobody there.’

‘Somebody lives there,’ Wiseman said. ‘
Uno straniero. Uno scultore
.’

‘
Ah, sì
.’ The boatman appeared suddenly to remember. ‘
Americano, inglese?
’

‘
Inglese
.’

The boatman nodded. ‘
La moglie è italiana
,’ he said. Apparently quite satisfied now, he returned to his rowing.

‘He knew all along,’ Wiseman said to Raikes. ‘I’ve noticed the same thing before. It is as if they were testing one.’

‘It’s not an English name,’ Raikes said.

‘Litsov? No, his parents were Polish, or perhaps only his father, but he was born in England, I think. He’s beginning to do very well now, as I told you. He seems to have taken off in the last three years or so. Before that they were very poor, I believe. Now a Litsov bronze can fetch four or five thousand pounds. I know that for a fact. He’s a rising star, no doubt about it. Not that it seems to make much difference to him. He hardly ever goes off the island. She’s the one who looks after things, well, you’ll see when you meet her …’

As Wiseman continued Raikes allowed his mind to drift from full attention. That sense of the fabulous descended on him which always lies in enclosed waters that have been intimate with man for long centuries yet still guard their remoteness. These shallows and salt marshes had provided a refuge for the people of the mainland fleeing from barbarian invaders something like fifteen centuries ago. They had been continuously inhabited ever since. It was possible because of this to imagine more willing collusions here than elsewhere between water and sky, more complex blends of light and reflection, more melting and fusion of forms. And yet the waters were no tamer than they had ever been, still responding to the elemental movements of the tide …

‘That’s it now, on the left,’ Wiseman said.

Raikes turned to look in the direction indicated, saw the low shape of the island, with ragged thickets of trees, quite dense, on the left, the western side, and a ruined bell tower standing isolated against the bright haze of the sky. As they drew nearer he made out ruined walls, an arch hung with ivy, two or three tumbledown
casone
– low wattle huts made by local fishermen. On the other side, the side they were approaching, it was barer, without trees. A cluster of black stakes marked the moorings.

‘You can’t see the house from here,’ Wiseman said.

The boat moved forward towards the landing boards. In the shallow water dark weeds slowly waved their fronds.

‘No sea wall here, either.’ Wiseman nodded to where the water moved among the rocks of the narrow shore.

They stepped out on to the tarred planks. Wiseman, extracting bank notes from his wallet, asked the boatman what time he was intending to return from his fishing. ‘Perhaps you could give us a shout?’ he said. ‘
Può passare da qui?
’

The man nodded, pocketing the money.

‘Litsov will bring us back, I expect, as far as Burano,’ Wiseman said to Raikes. ‘But it’s as well to make sure. There are others today by the look of things.’ There was a smart and very expensive-looking blue and white speedboat tied up alongside and beyond this what was presumably the Litsovs’ boat, a long narrow
sandolo
with an outboard motor.

Raikes nodded vaguely. He was taken up with the loneliness and silence of the place. When the creak and slap of their boat had died away, there was no sound anywhere at all.

They began to mount the steps up from the jetty. From the top a rough path led off through low scrub. Raikes could see the chimney and roof of the house now, against a background of trees. The path turned sharply in this direction, bringing the house in full view and with it the lagoon water beyond, and Raikes became aware simultaneously of a woman standing some way ahead of them, higher up, and of two men much farther off, near the house. The woman, on whom his attention immediately became concentrated, was wearing a dark red headscarf. Raikes had the impression that she had just straightened up from a stooping position, thus rising above a low fence of crossed cane which made a triangular enclosure there.

The path was still rising, so that the woman was on a level some feet above them. It was a picture Raikes was to remember, composed of few but striking elements: the lonely figure against the sky, the vivid scarf, ragged pines beyond, the pale stone of the house.

‘Mrs Litsov, hullo,’ Wiseman called, raising his arm in something between a wave and a salute.

She stood for some moments longer, motionless, watching them as they approached and in this brief space there was communicated to Raikes some of the involuntary reserve or distrust that people have who live in lonely places. Then she came quickly down towards them, through a narrow gap in the fence. She was smiling, a pleased smile it seemed, but from the moment she was within three yards or so Raikes found his interpretative faculties disabled, he ceased altogether to be an observing and deducing creature. An overwhelming sense of her beauty flooded his being – it was like some fruit crushed against the palate of his brain, flooding every gallery. This impression was mysterious in its first effect, not depending on any conscious assessment – he was too stricken to register any but basic components, dark hair, high cheekbones, full mouth, eyes unexpectedly pale. It was more like a recognition of something. She was wearing a man’s pullover, large and shapeless, and loose blue trousers, and she moved lightly. She was tall for an Italian woman. He braced himself for the introductions.

‘Mr Wiseman,’ she said. ‘Alex, isn’t it?’ The voice was low-pitched, rather deliberate-sounding – the only sign of foreignness.

‘You remember me then?’

‘Of course I do. I can’t shake hands, my hands are dirty.’

As she reached them she did something that Raikes was always to remember. She raised her hands and ran the palms down the sides of her body from armpits to hips in a lingering gesture that was careless and exuberant and voluptuous at the same time.

‘My hands are covered with soil,’ she said. ‘So, if you will permit …’ She drew close to Wiseman and kissed him on the cheek.

‘Permit?’ Wiseman’s smile was no longer merely social. ‘I must try always to catch you at your gardening,’ he said. ‘May I introduce my friend, Simon Raikes?’

Later that day, in the lamplit silence of his room, his diary before him, it was to occur to Raikes that he had been scrutinized rather, though smilingly.

‘It was good of you to ask me here,’ he said, looking for the first time directly into her eyes, which were somewhere between grey and green, and very clear and steady.

‘You are very welcome,’ she said.

He did not offer to shake hands and she made no move towards him.

‘Are you doing some planting?’ Wiseman said, breaking a silence that might have extended.

‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘Would you like to see?’

She led them up the slope and into the area formed by the cane fence.

‘I have been putting in the seedlings for the
zucchini
,’ she said. ‘I grew them from seed, you know.’ She pointed to the spaced row of light green shoots against the fence, mounded up with black earth. Elsewhere in the enclosure Raikes saw tomato plants, aubergines, a straggling double row of artichokes. Along the side exposed to the sea there was a hedge of rose bushes in bright new leaf.

‘You do the work yourself?’ Raikes asked, and was once more lost in the woman’s gaze.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Litsov is not interested in gardening. He is always too busy with his work. I like it, you know. And you see we are a long way from any shops so it is useful to have a supply of vegetables. On the other side of the house, there is my herb garden. I’ll show you afterwards. I expect you would like a drink now?’

They passed once more through the gap in the fence and walked in file along the path towards the house, with Mrs Litsov in the lead. She was talking still about her garden, turning frequently to look at the men behind her. It was only as they came up to the house, a long single-storey building of rough stone screened by thickets of pines, that Raikes remembered the two men he had seen and wondered whether one of them had been this woman’s husband.

7

THE LIVING ROOM
was spacious, with a large square window at the far end, overlooking the Lagoon. Light flooded in from the shadowless expanse of water outside, creating such plenitude that the white walls seemed permeated with it and the several polished metal sculptures in the room gleamed with reciprocal reflections.

Raikes had been at once aware of these gleaming perspectives though at first too busy with other impressions to register them fully – impressions mainly to do with the woman’s movements about the room as she got the drinks ready and brought them, vermouth for Wiseman, white wine for him. The wine was perhaps not quite as cold as it should be, she explained. It had been in the cellar, of course, but they had no refrigerator, they had no electricity. Sometimes they had ice delivered …

‘Now I must go and change and so on,’ she said. ‘You will think me rude. The fact is I stayed too long over my gardening. I did not forget that you were coming, but I forgot the time. And I thought my husband … But he is working still. I will not be long. There is someone else for lunch: Richard Lattimer – perhaps you know him?’

‘I have met him,’ Wiseman said.

‘He is here too, but perhaps he is in the studio with Paul. In any case I will not leave you alone for long.’

‘Remarkable woman, the way she manages,’ Wiseman said, when she had left the room. ‘It can’t have been easy, especially in the winter. Of course they can afford to have help now.’

Raikes nodded. ‘I would find these distinctly disturbing,’ he said.

‘The sculptures? They are all her, I believe, in one aspect or another. It seems that he has had no other subject since they married. It is quite touching, in a way.’

He was at it again, Raikes thought, composing a sentimental story. Wiseman seemed to take all the phenomena of the world on one plane only, including the evidence of obsessive vanity all around them.