Stone Virgin (37 page)

As he worked he went over, in the same painstaking detail, the finding of Litsov’s body – the face first, merely a glimmering object to begin with, then the swollen gaze, the meekly open mouth – as if to receive a biscuit, Raikes had thought afterwards. Otherwise neat and tidy … In his grey suit he had seemed to be still demonstrating an intention of some kind, as if showing the world that he was dressed for a purpose and meant business … An obscure horror stirred in Raikes at this thought of Litsov’s immaculate appearance under the water, only that left sleeve riding up a little. He had been dressed up for drowning, not for any visit to the mainland. He had fallen forward, struck his head, drowned without struggle in a foot or two of water. Afterwards the tide had pulled him about a bit, until he got caught among the stakes.

This was the obvious explanation, and presumably it was what the police believed to have happened. It was five days since he had seen Chiara and she had asked him not to phone, so he had no idea what developments there had been, if indeed there had been any. Litsov had a medical history as an epileptic, the autopsy would have revealed how much phenobarbitone there was in his system, hence whether he had been taking his regular dosage. It was all straightforward enough. However, the sense of incongruity, of logical wrongness, remained.

He wondered whether his uneasiness was due simply to the fact that he had not himself told the whole truth to the authorities. In the interval before the police arrived Chiara, though trembling still and deeply shocked, had found the firmness and clarity to warn him. They must keep to their story now, she had said – or rather, they must make sure their story was consistent with the appearances they had already created. They had spent the night separately, she at her hotel, he at his apartment. They had met the following morning and returned to the house together.

‘Everything else we can tell them just as it was,’ she said. ‘The drink at Burano, the phone call, the dinner, everything. After dinner I returned to the hotel and you stayed in the restaurant. You had another drink, settled the bill – then you went back to your apartment. I phoned you next morning and asked if you would return with me.’

‘But why?’ he said. ‘Why not make a clean breast of it?’

She had seemed incredulous, almost, at this. He did not understand, they had already made the pretence, they would have to keep to it now. Otherwise it would look suspicious. ‘They will think it has something to do with my husband’s death,’ she said. ‘It will look as if there was a conspiracy. Besides, and most important, they will think we have been lovers for a certain time before and so, you see, they will suspect all kinds of things. You do not know the Italian police as I do. They think love a great motive …’

There had been a note of contempt in her voice. Contempt for the police or for the emotion of love, he wondered now. In spite of her vehemence he had gone on making objections. Supposing someone had seen him at the hotel? Wouldn’t it be even more damaging if some witness came forward later?

She had gone to him then, taken his hands. She knew he hated lying, she felt the same, but he must think what there was at risk. Why should anyone have particularly noticed him in the hotel? Why should anyone make a connection between them? It was unreasonable to think that anyone should do so. Did he think he had been more conspicuous then because he was proposing to hide something now?

Her logic, the brief calm that had come to her aid for the purposes of this argument, astonished him. He was confident, too, in his own mind, that no one had noticed him in the hotel. As he hesitated still, wondering what kind of risk she had meant, she turned abruptly from him and stood apart with lowered head. ‘Don’t you think the shock of his death has been enough?’ she said.

This appeal, her distress, moved him in a way that argument perhaps might not have done; what seemed her loneliness at this moment brought the beginnings of tears to his own eyes. He moved to her, took her in his arms. ‘Don’t distress yourself,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. I love you. We’ll do as you want.’

Close in his arms, face hidden against his chest, she said, ‘There is one thing more, darling, but it doesn’t involve telling any lies. I don’t think we should say anything about Litsov wanting to leave the island last night, do you? There’s no point. It wasn’t really serious anyway. By mentioning it we would give the impression that it was important somehow.’

In the event, on the first occasion at least, not much had been required of him – or of Chiara either. Considering that a man had died, the statement, taken from them jointly, seemed brief to Raikes, even cursory. They related the circumstances in which they had left Litsov the evening before, their return in the morning to find him drowned. Within a couple of hours, their statement had been taken, the doctor had made a preliminary investigation, Litsov was under a tarpaulin sheet in the police launch. It was in this same launch that Raikes himself returned to Venice, keeping his back to the body, heavy with the knowledge of his lies.

The heaviness was with him still, almost like a foreboding, as he blasted delicately at the Madonna’s mouth. Her lips were revealed now, the line of them clearly marked, faintly, tenderly smiling. It seemed to Raikes suddenly that he knew those lips, that smile. Abruptly he switched off the quartz-cutter and stepped back for a better view. The mouth was wider, the lower lip fuller, than in the severer classicized Madonnas common earlier in the century. Something pagan almost, in that long, faintly curving smile. Delicacy there, however, and supreme skill on the sculptor’s part, in the fading line of the mouth and the sharply indented corners – almost as if drilled. But that was unlikely surely, at this period … What did the mouth express? Pleasure, welcome, some quality of shy excitement? Yet the body was turned away … Again it came to him that he knew the mouth, knew that faint but indubitable smile. However, the memory eluded him, remaining at the border of consciousness, un-graspable, like his sense of unresolved contradiction in the circumstances of Litsov’s death.

That same evening, at his apartment, he had had a further visit from the police, a single police inspector in plain clothes, smiling, courteous, speaking quite passable English. Sitting there, the policeman opposite in an armchair, he had been requested to go through his story again. He did so, repeating the version of events which was now official, which had become more real and solid than the wraith of truth they were concealing. The night of love was cancelled out almost, relegated to some dim margin of time. Both of them, jointly and severally, had denied it.

He longed for Chiara, for her physical presence, for the reassurance of her smile and her touch. But she had asked him not to visit, not to phone, not to make any attempt to establish contact. There was policy in this as well as feeling, he recognized that; and he had respected her wishes.

There were small variations, new questions, new details that had to be supplied. Why, the policeman asked, had they decided to go on to Venice, why not stay at Burano for the night? In his case, of course, it was clear, he had an apartment to return to.

Raikes thought it probable that they had already questioned his landlady, Signora Sapori. But she had been in bed already when he got back. He was often late. And in the morning, when she brought his coffee, he had been at his table, as usual, writing up his diary. He always made his own bed … Yes, in his case it was clear, but why had Signora Litsov elected to go on to Venice with him? The policeman’s eyes were glistening, long-lashed, good-humoured. Raikes explained that there was an hotel the Signora knew of in Venice, where she had stayed once or twice before when a similar thing had happened. She had thought it better to go there, since they knew her, and of course, having no luggage … the fog …

The policeman nodded, Yes, naturally. There was however a remaining look of what seemed speculation in his dark eyes. Signor Litsov did not leave the island very often, hardly ever in fact. He was something of a hermit, everyone said. That word again. Yet on this occasion he was dressed as if to go somewhere or meet somebody. Did he mention anything of the sort? No? And why, after all, had they decided to go back together to the house in the Lagoon, he and the Signora? The next morning, that is.

This was basically a difficult question and one that for some reason had not been really dealt with in the original statement that he and Chiara had made to the police. What made it difficult, Raikes realized now, was that he did not really know why himself; but he knew it was important not to suggest there had been a quarrel, or bad feeling of any kind. She had asked him to go, he said. She had phoned his apartment and asked him to go. But why? the policeman insisted, widening his handsome eyes. She wanted me to add my explanations to hers, Raikes said. She wanted him to understand why she had not been able to return the evening before. But she had phoned already, wasn’t that so? Yes, that was so …

This policeman, like policemen everywhere, was capable of long and terrible pauses. Suddenly Raikes remembered his success with Biagi and the workmen on the subject of female caprice.

‘She took it into her head,’ he said. ‘They get these ideas …
Si mettono in testa queste idee
.’

As if in a dream he saw the inspector smile and shrug, heard him say, ‘
Non si sa mai
, You never know …’

‘You never know,’ Raikes repeated eagerly. ‘How can you know what they will get into their heads?
Che ci possiamo fare?
’

The inspector was smiling broadly as he took his leave. ‘
Non si sa mai, eh?
’ he said. ‘You never know what they will get into their heads.’

5

ON THE EVENING
of the sixth day, while he was occupied with his diary, Chiara phoned. Would he collect Litsov’s belongings from the Central Police Station? The police had completed their inquiries; it had been concluded that Litsov died by misadventure. She had taken his agreement for granted it seemed; the police would be expecting him to call; he must take some means of identification with him.

Her voice was warm, immediate, instinct with a special kind of promise, and Raikes was deeply stirred by it, after the days of not seeing her, of thinking about her constantly. ‘When can I see you?’ he said.

‘You can come over tomorrow, if you like.’

‘Do you want me to bring the things?’

‘Things? Oh … no. I don’t want them. You will come tomorrow, won’t you? I miss you so much.’

‘I miss you, too,’ he said, and his throat tightened at the urgency of the truth in these simple words. He could not come until late afternoon, he explained: there was his work, and an official meeting at the offices of the Soprintendenza and then he had promised to have a drink with a friend, a fellow called Steadman, whom he didn’t think she knew.

‘No, I don’t know him,’ she said. ‘Come whenever you like. There will be no need for you to rush off this time.’

Excitement at the promise in these words, at the thought of seeing her, the enormous relief of knowing that the police inquiries were over, made it impossible for him to return immediately to his diary. He walked restlessly about the room for some time. So prompt was he to suggestion where Chiara was concerned that the mere sound of her voice worked immediate physiological effects on him and these were slow to subside. It was half an hour before he was collected enough to sit down again at his desk, take up the threads of what he had been writing …

One of the mysteries surrounding the Madonna is why no account has remained to us of her stay at the Casa Fioret. This suggests at least some element of deliberate suppression. Piero Fornarini in his correspondence with his cousin makes what looks very like a play on words when he refers to the donor – who was presumably the owner of the Casa Fioret at that time. It seems this man had asked for his name to be kept out of things, as also the circumstances of the Madonna’s installation. This is distinctly odd. He had a miraculous Madonna on his hands, he agreed to have her placed in a prominent position, then he spent a good deal of his time – and quite a bit of money – trying to keep it quiet. Fornarini says he should be called
Cornadoro
, Golden Horns. The immediate connotations of this are that he was rich and a cuckold. Or perhaps merely that his horns were productive of money for Fornarini. At any rate he was rich enough to ensure Fornarini’s silence; and if the horns part of it is right he would have a reason for wanting to keep things hushed up. Names ending in
oro
or
ore
were not uncommon in the period. One possible course might be to trace all such names recorded in Venice in the middle years of the eighteenth century. Far beyond my resources at present. By no means certain of success in any case – it might not be a pun at all. I have to admit that this whole line of inquiry comes to a dead end here, for the moment at least.

I am hoping for some information from Steadman tomorrow as to the life and work of this Girolamo who I am now sure actually carved the statue in 1432, on commission from the Friars of the Supplicanti. What I should like to get are some more details of his career, particularly afterwards – a man of that order of talent must have produced more work, not necessarily in Venice, but
somewhere
. Also of course, why did the friars reject it? Was Girolamo’s Madonna too naturalistic, too much a sexual being for them? There must be more to it than that. Maddening to think that the whole story is there, if only I could put my finger on the clue that would unravel it. There must be bits and pieces lying around – in some attic or archive, on some obscure shelf. Not so much unravelling, more like putting a jigsaw together …

My attacks, as Vittorini calls them, have not recurred lately, not for some weeks now. He was surprised to hear that himself. I have not taken any of the phenobarbitone yet – nor at the moment do I intend to. I haven’t been back to see him either. I am convinced that if only I could interpret them properly those things I saw would help me to understand the history of the Madonna. It seems to me just as likely or more likely that a disturbance in the impulses of the brain, this neural discharge, as he terms it, could be caused by psychic intimations as by some hypothetical lesion in the tissue somewhere. I am committing this to paper though would hesitate to say it to anyone but I think it is possible that the statue is imbued with some kind of energy and that through constant proximity over a period of time, concentrating on her as I have done, something of this could have been communicated to me. I know this is an extraordinary thing to say.