Stone Virgin (39 page)

‘Give it up?’ Raikes said. ‘He would never have done such a thing. I know he wouldn’t. This is an
artist
we’re talking about.’

He paused. It was a dangerous moment for him to do so. ‘An artist,’ he said again. Suddenly, without warning, emotion had him by the throat, he felt his eyes threatened with tears. ‘What nonsense!’ he said loudly. ‘You think that is what people do?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Steadman said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean to sound glib about it. There could be a thousand reasons. I didn’t realize you were so sure this Girolamo was your man.’

Raikes swallowed, feeling ashamed already, though whether of his emotion or his rudeness he did not know. ‘Please take no notice of me,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit on edge, I think. I’ve got no proof at all.’

One of Steadman’s rare smiles came to his face, lighting up its rather sombre lines. ‘I wouldn’t let that deter you,’ he said. ‘Nobody else does.’ He paused for a moment or two, then said in different tones, ‘Listen, Simon, I know it’s none of my business, but you’re looking distinctly under the weather. I suspect you’ve been spending yourself on that stone lady of yours. Why not take it easy for a day or so at least? We could go over to the Lido tomorrow if you like. Have a swim, have lunch.’

‘It’s a nice idea,’ Raikes said. ‘I’m so near the end, you see. There’s just her face.’

‘After five hundred years another day wouldn’t put her out too much. Still, of course I can see you want to get her finished. When it’s all done we’ll have a big celebration dinner.’

‘That’s a marvellous idea,’ Raikes said. ‘We’ll have Barfield and Muriel in their best bandages.’

‘And Owen, with a coil of rope.’

‘Slingsby and the Japanese, carrying art object in box.’

‘Sir Hugo.’

‘That tiny editor, Beamish-Smith, for an improvisation on the theme of flesh tints. We could sit him next to Pauline.’

‘On second thoughts …’ Steadman frowned and compressed his lips as if debating the matter with himself. ‘Let’s have a drink, just the two of us,’ he said after some moments. ‘I don’t want the expense.’

This made Raikes laugh a good deal. He was inclined to laughter now, after his earlier inexplicable outburst. He was smiling still as he watched Steadman make his way across the square, through a confusion of sunlight and parasols and pigeons, in the direction of San Moise. He himself went off in the opposite direction, towards the Molo. He paused outside the Sansovino Library, gazing at the alternating lion and human faces above the central arches. The lions looked unexpectedly benignant and mild, the men distinctly ferocious, and this too seemed very funny to Raikes in the slight hysteria of his present mood, though whether the joke was deliberate or merely an accident of time was difficult to determine. High above, along the topmost balustrade, too far away for their expressions to be read, white figures in attitudes of tension and turning looked down from every pinnacle as if in some petrified apotheosis.

From here he made his way directly to the police station, explained to the policeman at the desk who he was and produced his passport in proof of it. There were two men sitting on a bench who did not seem to be policemen at all and Raikes felt obscurely offended at the thought of having to collect the dead man’s things in front of other people, not even officials – it seemed to make light of poor Litsov somehow.

However, in the event he was asked to go into an inner room, bare but for two upright chairs and a table with a mottled glaze on it. Litsov’s things were brought to him here in a large brown carrier bag. He would have taken them as they were, without examination, in his haste to get away; but one was not allowed to do this it seemed; there was an official procedure, the contents of the bag had to be checked against a list, signed for.

The policeman, who was fat and rather expressionless of feature, explained all this to Raikes, afterwards slowly laying out the articles one by one on the table: jacket and trousers, tie, socks, underclothes – pathetically Litsov had been wearing brief, jaunty red underpants. The clothes had been washed and ironed – by whom, Raikes wondered: was there a subdivision of the force responsible for this? The shoes were dull, with white tide-lines on them. Some loose change, banknotes, a wallet, a photograph, a little silver pillbox, quite empty. He had not carried much about with him. No wristwatch … The wallet was lined with plastic, so the photograph had not fared too badly. Under the stolid gaze of the policeman Raikes picked it up. It was a close-up of Chiara, blurred and streaked but still recognizable, smiling.

When the first intimation came to him of something wrong he could not have said. He was looking down the list the policeman had handed him, not really checking the items, making a sort of pretence of doing so, preparatory to signing. After all, it didn’t matter much, he thought, no one wanted these things if Chiara didn’t. Though she might well have second thoughts when she came to a calmer acceptance of her loss … His eye moved over the list, considering items at random, passing on. He saw they had the tie-pin down,
una fermacravatta
, and he glanced at the table to see if it was there. It was next to the pillbox. Beside it was a single cufflink, silver and black, in the shape of a small medallion. Raikes picked it up. It was quite heavy, a disc of some black stone, rimmed with silver, rather unusual.

‘Only one?’ he said to the policeman. ‘
Un gemello solo?
’

‘
Si signore, soltanto uno
.’

‘Where is the other one?
Dov’è l’altro?
’

The policeman raised his shoulders in a slight shrug – his first movement since putting the things on the table. ‘
Se guarda la lista
…’ he said. ‘If you look at the list you will find only one.’

Raikes saw at once that this was true: it was down there as
un gemello
, a cufflink. ‘Yes, I see,’ he said, rather vacantly. ‘
Soltanto uno
.’

The policeman’s stolidity seemed to intensify, if that were possible. The matter clearly presented no difficulty to his mind. A man drowns, it is an agony, things might well have become detached.

The only way to look at it, Raikes thought vaguely, signing the receipt, restoring the contents to their bag, taking his leave. No one, after all, would
steal
a cufflink. But the policeman had not seen Litsov in the water … At the moment of stepping out on to the street Raikes remembered that left sleeve riding up the arm a little. Of course, because the cufflink must have been missing then. But that had been the only sign of disarray. Everything else had been in place. Even his handkerchief … Litsov had not flailed about, he had not been roughed up by waves. He had been unconscious, he had choked quietly in shallow water, there had been no struggle at all.

7

CLUTCHING THE CARRIER
bag Raikes walked for some time without much noticing which way he was going. His mind, always very tenacious, was occupied with a simple logical series repeated over and over again. Could Litsov simply have forgotten or omitted to wear the other cufflink? This was unlikely; he had been dressed with conspicuous care, prepared for the world – Chiara had exclaimed at sight of his debonair tie-pin; besides, it would have been noticeable, one of his shirt sleeves would have been loose, or had a tendency to flap, or been in some way noticeably different from the other. Anyway, it was not the sort of thing you would forget to do – you might put on odd socks or forget to do up your fly, but you would know you hadn’t a cufflink in, you would feel the difference. It had to be supposed that when he and Chiara left the house both cufflinks were still in place.

Very probably at any rate, he thought. He began to feel the need for a drink. Somewhere behind this dogged reasoning he sensed something terrible beginning to loom, but he couldn’t stop. He saw Litsov’s blank stare again, that meekly open mouth. What could be imagined as happening to him in the water that could have left his handkerchief and tie in place and at the same time pulled one of his cufflinks through four separate apertures in four separate thicknesses of sodden cotton?

He was crossing the Campo San Marino now in the direction of the church of the Miracoli. At the north side of the canal he hesitated for a while, then turned left. After a few steps it came to him that he should be going in the opposite direction, towards the Fondamenta Nuova, to catch the Burano boat for his visit to Chiara. But there was something he should do first. What was it? Of course, he must put Litsov’s things somewhere … Could the cufflink have been lost during recovery of the body or by the police later? No, it was missing when I found him, sleeve of both jacket and shirt had ridden up, baring part of the left forearm. Of course at the time I did not associate this with …

At the Miracoli bridge he paused irresolutely, his desire for a drink increasing. Could someone have
taken
the cufflink? At this moment he heard his name called and turning saw Slingsby bearing down on him in what looked like the same billowing fawn suit, as if he had been in limbo since their last meeting, waiting to materialize again.

‘Well, hullo there,’ Slingsby said. ‘Mr Raikes, isn’t it? How goes it? How is the stone lady?’

Raikes felt his hand enfolded in a larger, softer one. ‘She’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’m not far off the end now. There’s only her face.’

‘That’s just great,’ Slingsby said. The pink expanse of his face eddied with suggestions of pleasure and approbation though the small blue eyes were as anxious as ever. A compound odour of gin and peppermint creams came from him.

‘What brings you this way?’ Raikes said.

‘I’ve been looking at the marble panels in the Miracoli church. That is something I do from time to time. It is a wonderful thing, Mr Raikes, and a deeply reassuring thing, to discover a beauty and harmony which depends on no depiction of the human form or other humanized motifs.’

Slingsby paused, making delicate fidgety motions just below his chin. ‘I do not like the human image,’ he said. ‘Not really. Not deep down. If you ever want a trip on a downward slope go from these beautiful marble panels to the sculptures at the Giovanni and Paolo church, severe, yes, restrained, yes, but our ugly passion for self-replication is evident already; from there to the grotesqueries of the Ospedaletto; finish up with that hideous, degenerate face on the campanile of Santa Maria Formosa – the gratuitous ugliness of which inspired your John Ruskin’s wrath and disgust.’

‘Not mine,’ Raikes said. ‘I don’t like Ruskin much. Besides, he was wrong. That face on the campanile is now thought to be a realistic portrait of a person actually suffering from a painful and degenerative disease.’ Of course, he thought, if someone did take the cufflink, then that person must have witnessed his death or found him dead and since he did not try to save him or get help or do anything at all … But why take a cufflink?

There was only one conceivable reason.

‘I hope you don’t think that disproves Ruskin’s point or mine,’ Slingsby said. ‘Facts like that have got nothing to do with truth. Somebody
chose
to carve that face, for a joke I guess – Venice is full of jokes. Would you care for a drink?’

‘I’d like one very much,’ Raikes said.

They found a table in the Café-Bar of the Miracoli on the corner of the square. Slingsby asked if they had gin and relaxed visibly when told that they did. ‘I like gin,’ he said, ‘it’s a clean drink.’ Raikes asked for cognac and swallowed half of it at once.

‘There’s another reason why I like those panels,’ Slingsby said. ‘They are reasonably secure from deterioration, at least over the foreseeable future. You can’t say that for the external stonework.’

Raikes nodded, saying nothing. It could be seen from the greater fixity of his regard that Slingsby was returning to his obsessions, now that the flurry of the encounter had died down. It was necessary only to keep up an appearance of attention. She will be waiting for me, he thought. Moving about the house, alone in it, alone on the island, lagoon water glimmering all round her, the water where her husband died. She had stayed on there in the house. He had thought this was courage … We might have a fire later, and the oil lamps on, something to drink, and we would talk, sit close together in the firelight. When I hear her voice and look into her face everything will be all right again, these hideously breeding maggots of doubt will shrivel and die … But not in that room where his bronzes are, those polished ambivalent fragments. Five thousand pounds.
Litsov is my creation, my husband almost never leaves the island
. Never again anywhere now …

‘This is granite we’re talking about,’ Slingsby was saying. ‘A granite obelisk. At one stage of its career this obelisk lay prostrate on the delta silts of the Nile, at Heliopolis, for five hundred years. Five hundred years, Mr Raikes, lost and forgotten, soaking up soluble salts by capillary migration and at a tremendous rate – this is flood-plain silt we’re talking about. Yet did the salts in those pores hydrate? No sir, they didn’t. And why? You know and I know the answer to that.’ Slingsby advanced his face a little, pausing for effect. ‘Atmosphere too dry,’ he said, carefully stretching his moist little mouth round the words. ‘All the same if it was five
thousand
years. Now you put that obelisk up here, or in New York’s Central Park or on the London Embankment and in two years the surface would be dripping off it. Two years.’

‘I know,’ Raikes said. ‘It’s amazing.’

‘See it as a courtship ritual,’ Slingsby said. ‘That is the way I have taken to thinking of it. Borrow a leaf from the naturalist’s book. Strictly heterosexual of course. The water drops we should see as female, the hungry and highly motivated SO
₂
as male. The randy sulphur dioxide swirls about just longing to get into the pants of the H
₂
O, have its way, swarm down on to the stone in aqueous solution, a nuptial flight that ends in a bath of sulphuric acid.’

Slingsby paused, staring solemnly at Raikes, his hands busy with their curious plucking motions in the air before his chest. ‘For sexual intercourse read hydrolization,’ he said.