The Gondola Scam (14 page)

"Our laws used to be proclaimed
here. He's the Gobbo."

The statue looked knackered, humping
that enormous weight. She was smiling and reached out to pat him. We had to
shove aside a heap of old vegetable boxes.

"When I was a little girl I felt
so sorry for him." She told me how in the old days wrongdoers had to run
the gauntlet naked from St. Mark's Basilica to touch the Gobbo.

''He's a lovely old thing. If the bad
men reached him, all was forgotten. For a statue to do so much good!"

"And if they didn't?"

"Ah, well." She was thinking
of my faintness at the sight of the hanging seagulls and decided the fewer
explanations the better. "Now we go to our beautiful fish market!"

I didn't quite make that, and had to
wait shakily at the San Giacomo church for her after only a brief glance at the
masses of stalls covered with eels, squids, every sort of glistening fish
imaginable, crabs, shellfish. I know that grub turns a lot of people on. I
mean, Cosima made a breathless return, hugely pleased with herself and carrying
a parcel. "What a pity you wouldn't come with me, Lovejoy! They're lovely
fish today, but the
prices!
Scandalous!"

The single arch of the Rialto Bridge
has been severely criticized over the centuries, but as I paused to give it a
last look I couldn't help thinking that Antonio da Ponte didn’t do too bad a
job. Cosima stood by me, looking.

"Is it true about
Michelangelo?" I asked her. I wasn't worried about her answer, but asking
some daft question gave me time to glance casually at the motorboat idling near
the Riva del Ferro.

"Competing to design the Ponte?
Yes. But he didn't get the contract."

"Why not?"

She gave that lovely tilted Latin shrug
I keep trying to imitate. "He wasn't Venetian, of course."

Of course. We had coffee in a campo
near the Formosa church. Cosima told me how they used to have bullfights in the
campo spaces between the canals. I don't know how much I took in of all she
told me that day, but I wish now I'd burned every word into my brain. All I did
was gaze at her lovely animated face, watch her delectable mouth move, and try
to suppress the craving growing in me. The trouble is that hunger comes
stealing into you when you least expect it. All I hoped was that her bloke wasn't
an all-in wrestler, and that he wouldn't show.

She took us on a detour and paused at a
sottoportego, a little alley going under a building. Politely she asked me to
wait a moment please. I said of course, and watched her go through into a small
courtyard beyond. She'd probably gone inside to make a discreet check that he
hadn't arrived yet. Okay, so I was second fiddle. So what? Where was the harm?
There was one of those disused wellheads in the campo's center so
characteristic of Venice's tiny open spaces. While I waited, I had a smile
watching a pigeon bathe beneath a water tap. I wouldn't have smiled if I'd
known what was coming.

The motorboat idling by the Riva del
Ferro was on my mind. It had been a weird pastel blue, with a thickset bloke at
the wheel. And I was nearly certain that the affluent older woman seated in the
center was the rich cocktail bird who had argued with me in the hotel bar last
night The boat wasn't going anywhere, just idling. And again she had given me
that incisive stare. Now, a bloke staring at a bird is merely being his usual
magpie self. But a bird ogling a bloke is either in heat or on the warpath. And
us complete strangers.

Five minutes later, Cosima appeared
without her fish parcel. We solemnly linked arms and walked on like repleted
lovers at peace with the world.

14

At ten o'clock that night I ambled down
the Riva degli Schiavoni, in absolute paradise. It had been a magic day. Magic.

Cosima's bloke hadn't shown after all.
Real luck, that. A whole day going about with Cosima, and she had taken me back
to her place—a cramped little third-floor flat, through the
sottoportego
as I'd guessed. I'd had her
bloke's supper. Odd, but she'd enjoyed the whole bit, cooking shyly but with
that determination women get. I didn't look, just read and watched her telly,
occasionally calling out questions about things that caught my attention. She
said the inky stuff she served the
seppia
fish in was the right color, and gave me polenta which she made herself. It was
good stuff. I told her she was hired, and made her laugh. And she even promised
to show me some of the lagoon's outer islands tomorrow. Magic.

Nothing happened much after that. No,
honestly. I really didn't lay a finger on her, and she showed no sign of
dragging me into the closed room beyond the tiny kitchen, stripping me naked,
and savagely wreaking her crazed lust on my poor defenseless unprotected body.
And neither of us said it was a long walk back for me to the hotel. Or said how
lonely beds are on your own. I definitely have nothing to report. Which is how
I came to be ambling home along the Riva beneath its double rows of lamps in
the night mist.

An odd thing, though. A boat started up
suddenly as I neared the Victor Emmanuel statue. It sounded familiar, like
Cesare's, but it tore off towards the Arsenale before I could see whose it was.
That’s the trouble with standing in a well-lit place, even if it is the
mist-shrouded waterfront of the Venice lagoon. You can't see them, but they can
see you. Daft as a brush, I thought nothing of it at the time. One boat in a
nation of boats is nothing, right?

That night I fell asleep blissfully
happy. Well, I would have done but for a silly game I used to play which
sometimes comes back to me at the oddest times, like a daft jingle you can't
get rid of. The game's called Edgar Allan Poe. He once said the ingredients of
a good con trick are minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity,
nonchalance, originality, impertinence—and grin! That's nine ingredients. In my
game, you must assume that Poe was wrong. You are allowed only three of his
nine, so which six ingredients do you chuck out? I always end up with
minuteness, nonchalance, and the grin. Except I tossed and turned most of the
night, ecstatically happy with memories of Cosima but playing my stupid game
over and over in my head. It's usually a sign I'm worried, but what the hell
could I possibly be worrying about? Cosima liked me. I was almost sure she did.

An hour before dawn it came to me. The
worrying thing was that nobody was grinning at all, except me.

And when I woke and went down to
breakfast at eight o'clock, Nancy, David, Agnes, and Doris had booked out. Not
a word. It happens. And anyway nothing to do with my main problem. Right?

Cosima and I were down for an airport
run for an incoming flight that day. There would be no afternoon arrival, so I
suggested she take the morning off; but to my delight she said no, she'd come
and we would do the run jointly with Cesare.

While I waited for her to arrive after
breakfast, I chatted with Cesare, whose boat had been moored by then. Today he
was at the Riva near where the big tugboats berth against those creaking,
wobbling posts.

"Got a fact, Cesare?" I said
to lessen his sourness.

"Yours are never worth any money,
Lovejoy."

That was a bit rough, but I trotted out
a cracker.

"Turner the painter did a
watercolor of the Rialto Bridge. It's lost."

He nodded. "Worth a fortune,
eh?"

"Two fortunes. Your fact?"

He looked over the water. "Every
year, Lovejoy, people drown at night in the lagoon."

I thought. "That's not worth
much."

"It may be worth more than you
know."

Narked, I started to say something but
chewed the sentence off. I shrugged and strolled over to watch the people
embarking at the waterbus, nearly falling over that old geezer who sits there
selling lottery tickets. White beard, tatty cap, his clubfoot thrust out to
trip the unwary. I'd made him laugh the day before by nicknaming him Ivan the
Terrible. He always looks asleep, but he's not. Rustle a banknote within ten
yards and his eyes are wide awake.

The Riva seemed to be filling early
today. The San Zaccaria waterbus stop was thronged with people trying to get
off. Cosima would arrive from the direction of St. Mark's, so I walked past that
daft statue as far as the bridge over the del Vin canal and stood watching.

My jubilation of the previous night had
dissipated in the strange problem of Nancy. I had asked the reception clerk
earlier if he had a message for me but no luck. That narked me. Nancy might at
least have dropped me a line or two, even if it was only a "See you again
sometime." I decided that was typical of women's callousness and leaned
over the bridge parapet to see one of the pavement artists at work, a bearded lad
with a small patient dog. Cosima couldn't miss me even in the crowd, stuck up
here.

The bearded artist was really quite
good and I became interested. He seemed to specialize in views of the Salute
church and the San Giorgio Maggiore, both easily visible from here, but he was
not averse to dashing off the odd portrait masterpiece in charcoal. He was
doing one now, of a black girl. I recognized her. She sat on the little campstool,
aware of her attractiveness and the interest of the crowd. A movie character,
Cosima had said. Yet another.

Somebody made a remark, pointing at the
sketch. The artist was provoked by that. It's just the way artists are, but
this one was especially vehement and gave the critical bystander a mouthful,
which made us all laugh. To prove a point he pulled out an unfinished sketch
and held it up, gesticulating with his charcoal. There was a lot of
good-natured backchat, but I didn't care about joining in. All I cared about
was hurtling down the bridge steps, suddenly and breathless, getting hold of
that unfinished sketch.

"The sketch almost finished and
she runs off," the artist was complaining. "All my time and genius
wasted! Leaving me unpaid! Because of thoughtless comments such as yours!"

"Finish it," somebody
suggested, amid chatter. "Then sell it."

"Who to? Who would buy—"

"Me, signore," I interrupted,
winded but struggling to sound casual.

"Ah!" the crowd exclaimed,
interest quickening. I grinned amiably.

The artist was delighted. "You
know the sitter, signore?"

"Afraid not." I made a comedy
out of the denial and people laughed because anybody could tell the sketch was
of a lovely bird. "But you have caught a certain light—"

"I'll finish it for you—"

"No. That would be a mistake. I
prefer it as it is." I had the sense to apologize to the black girl for
interrupting. Amid the babble of conversation I paid the artist a full fee and
went to sit on the bridge steps to examine the unfinished sketch. Old Ivan the
Terrible cackled a laugh nearby. The old devil was watching.

"Such bad luck with the girls that
you have to fall for a portrait?"

"Shut your gums, silly old
sod."

It was definitely Nancy. I didn't want
to ask the bearded artist when he had sketched her, because the presence of the
girl now posing for him made me somehow uneasy. I was worrying sick about
possibilities. Suppose Nancy had waited on the Riva to be collected. It might
have occurred to her to have herself drawn . . . perhaps intending it as a
souvenir? Or as a present she could leave me at the hotel? That was like Nancy.
Which raised the interesting question of why she had done neither, and left it
in the hands of a complaining and unpaid artist. So she must have left it in a
rush, under sudden compulsion. David's special “assignment.”

''Buon
giorno
, Lovejoy."

"Eh? Oh."

Cosimo was standing there smiling,
absolutely dazzling. Hastily I scrambled to my feet, trying to roll the sketch
up so she wouldn't see. I didn't want her, of all people, thinking I was loose
or immoral or anything. We descended the bridge steps and moved along the Riva
to where Cesare's boat was moored.

"Thank you for yesterday,
love," I said. "Cesare's ready."

"Not at all, Lovejoy." She
eyed the scroll I was clutching. "Souvenir?"

"Only a little sketch of the
airport." My eyes were downcast and soulful. "Where I first saw
you."

She paused. "Oh, Lovejoy!"
She said my name as if I was nothing but trouble. "What sort of man are
you?'

"Erm, only ordinary. What do you
mean, love?'

Her enormous eyes made me dizzy. It was
like looking down two deep wells. "I feel so foolish. Sometimes you're
just absurd."

"Absurd?" I was just going to
give her a mouthful when we heard Cesare yelling angrily and saw him at the
jetty pointing at his watch. We walked along and boarded, a bit guiltily I
thought, though God knows why either of us should feel guilty for nothing.
Cesare's attitude hadn't improved. Cosima's brilliant mood had dulled somewhat.
I sat there seething.

Absurd? Me?

Bloody cheek. That's the trouble with
women. No judgment of character.

Somebody once said that death and
Venice go together. Soon I would learn the hard way that they were right. If
I'd had half the sense I was born with, I'd have stopped daydreaming about sex
and the precious ancient glass of the ancient glass factories, because all the
clues were there for the asking. But, me being me and having only the brains of
a rocking horse, I ignored all the portents and simply sat in Cesare's boat and
was wafted graciously to the Marco Polo.