The Gondola Scam (16 page)

She hand-shushed me from calling out at
the pinnacle, and then I was murmuring and rocking my head on her breast while
her fingers made sure we were decently clothed again so as not to give offense
to any ghosts which happened by.

She talked to me, even though I was
almost oblivious in that small death which follows loving. We must have looked
so incongruous, a delicious colorful bird with dazzling, lustrous hair,
sitting-kneeling in a lost orchard with her elegant new dress crumpled, nursing
a slumbering disheveled oaf who wasn't paying the slightest heed to a word she
was saying. Odd, but women I actually love are the only ones who can switch off
my nightmares. That hour in Torcello I dozed deeper and more restfully than I
had for many a month. She did everything for me that magical time, with the
reeds soughing and the stalks clashing softly all about the edges of the
waterways. Once I half woke to hear a couple of children shouting, but Cosima
calmed me out of being startled. "They're the little ones playing
al pangalo
, darling. Only a game of
batting sticks. Shush."

At the finish she had to wake me to get
me moving. Our aim had always been to nosh at Cipriani's. Until Cosima
explained how the famous restaurant had come to the rescue of poor old Torcello
practically single-handed I hadn't realized that the famous
locanda
was the one remaining epicenter
of life in Torcello. She had booked us in, and so we dined in sunshiny elegance
looking out over the small vegetable gardens next the tiny central square of
Torcello. Beneath us, around us, entirely covered and unseen, the ruins of one
of the powerful medieval empires of Europe. Around, an innocent spectacle of
market gardening with a bloke hoeing vegetables, and a couple of buildings in
view, with a farmhouse a little distance off.

I got up courage to ask her. "What
about your, erm, intended?"

"Intended?"

"Your bloke."

"Cesare thinks too much of his own
wishes." Cosima reproved me at the impertinence by wagging her head so her
hair swung.

"Cesare? The boatman?" I
needed a minute to take that in. No big bruiser meeting us? No bloke back in
Venice?

"Cesare. But only a little.
Anyway, Lovejoy. He never has been so . . . close. Certainly not my
intended."

Hence the glowerings. Hence his growing
surliness. Hence I'm as thick as usual, because Cesare saw me threatening his own
ambitions for Cosima. That's what I needed all right, an enemy I'd picked
unerringly to reveal my interest in the Palazzo Malcontento. He was also my one
means of independent transport, apart from stolen gondolas.

Which raised the question of what Cesare
was doing back in Venice while Cosima and yours truly were whooping it up in
Torcello.

"Listen, Cosima." I'm always
awkward saying thanks. "Giving me, erm, love . . . My soul gets sort of
damp when it feels antiques go wrong."

“I know, darling. Learning about
Torcello. I told you too suddenly."

"My fault." I got my money
out to pay for our meal. "But you have the right to know everything."
I meant almost everything. "It's time for you to ask me about myself, love.
I'll answer every question with complete honesty. Promise." I meant almost
complete.

"No." Firmly she poured the
last of the wine for us. "It is time for
me
to tell
you
about
myself. We shall exchange information while we examine the remaining pieces of
Torcello. There are several hours of daylight left, darling."

"If s a deal."

"And I have arranged a surprise
for you."

I couldn't help wondering as we raised
glasses. A deal of planning had gone into this day at Torcello. I only wished
I'd been in on it, so I could work things out. I was beginning to think I'd
been surprised enough.

The dusty little center of Torcello
pulled me up short.

The Piazza—its proper name—was once the
great meeting place for the all powerful Tribune. I expected at least
some
thing, a sign, some spectacular
ruins. Anything to abate this terrible feeling of melancholy.

Instead, there's theadbare grass, dusty
paths, and two or three little cottages. A building converted to a tiny museum.
To one side is a low octagonal church, all fawn colors, and this taller
cathedral with stone swing shutters to protect its windows. A canal runs by. A
lady in traditional dress had a stall selling unbelievably mediocre modem lace.
A big stone chair stands improbably in the center of the space, God knows why,
just asking for a stray tourist to clown for a comical holiday snap.

And that's it. Get the point? That's it
all Exactly as if we'd gone to find a bustling Times Square or Piccadilly and
found instead a derelict yard.

I felt ill.

"Come, darling." Cosima
hauled me to come into the cathedral. "We'll sit for a while. I'm sorry
about the tower, but lightning's taken its top off." This temporary
setback happened over three centuries gone. I watched her fold a headscarf to
enter the cathedral. Most underrated of all woman's decorations is the old headscarf.
I touched her cool cheek to show I approved.

She said gravely, "Dearest, I want
to pray. Only to . . . explain. Not apologize. You can look at the Teocota
while I do."

I almost started a grin, thinking. What
is all this? But she wasn't joking, and moved towards a transept, her heels
clicking echoes down the nave. Grumbling inwardly that there wasn't any need to
put on airs or assume fetching little tableaux—she'd already hooked me in the
most permanent way—I turned to move parallel, along the northern length of the
nave, and saw it.

Maybe it was the sheer spectacle or its
unusual form, though I'd been expecting something profound because everybody on
earth's heard of the Teocota Madonna. Or maybe it was just having loved Cosima.
Whatever the cause, I was blammed by it. The background's gold and faint, and
the Madonna herself is somehow elongated like an El Greco, but those are just
technical points. Ignore them. Technique is only the irreverent dogma by
forgers and curators. Concentrate on technique too much and you miss love and
feeling. The mosaic face weeps. The Madonna gazes above your head, not at you,
but beyond as if at the things you've left undone and the cruelty you've
enacted on your way to Torcello. Of course, I found myself reasoning, the
Madonna didn't really mean me. She was reproaching the rest of the buggers,
because I'm always reasonable and fair-minded and have a pretty good reputation
for doing the right thing and never hurting people. Beautiful, stunning. I
shivered, but only because it was colder in the cathedral than I thought.

Or it could be the lurking horror of
realizing that the image of old Mr. Pinder had suddenly shifted in my mind. He
might not be a batty old lunatic. He could possibly be what he actually
presented himself to be: an elderly man battling against neglect and ignorance
with the only forces at his disposal to protect ancient brilliance like this
Madonna.

Christ, I thought. The notion made me
glance suspiciously at Cosima, but she was oblivious, contentedly crossing
herself after having lit two candles. No artifice, no pretense, as she came
across and whispered eagerly, "Did you like the Madonna, Lovejoy?"

"Yes, thanks."

"They say some Greeks made
it."

"They did a good job."

"Darling! Your hand is freezing.''

"I’m cold."

"Then it's time for sunshine, and
my surprise. Come, darling."

We left, the Madonna's tearful gaze
burning down above the crown of my head.

16

"We've come absolutely
miles," Cosima said.

We lay on a reedy island no higher than
a mud flat among myriad small water channels. The day was still hot, but a
steady breeze had sprung up, causing the dense reeds to make a dry clattering
sound. Here and there a duck splashed, businesslike, but that was it. Great for
secret loving picnics, but nothing else.

"How far, love?" I hated
countryside, and this remoteness was at least partly that.

She raised her head, finally kneeling
up to see across the palude flats. We'd seen Torcello's campanile when putting
the sandolo boat ashore. "About two kilometers, I suppose. Almost."

"Good idea, your lady's engine.”

Cosima laughed and fell sprawling,
embracing me. "Is the signore tired, then?" This witticism made her
roll in the aisles when she came to the punch line. "May one ask
why?"

I had to laugh with her. The surprise
had been a
sandolo
, a small
curved-looking boat. You row it standing up like a gondolier does, but mostly
with two oars. The oldish lady from whom Cosima had hired the
sandolo
had mischievously explained that
the object humped in the stem beneath a black plastic dustbin bag was an
outboard motor. "Wise to take precautions against the lagoon," she
said. "And for exhaustion, on your return." Cosima had given her a
mock scolding at such aggressiveness but the old Torcellana had cackled all the
more and pushed us off. She'd used the ancient greeting "
salve
” showing she was local.

Cosima wanted to row, but so did I. I
felt I'd rowed a race but had a high old time losing my way before Cosima said
we should stop. We had a picnic and love on the blanket she happened to have
brought along. I called her a scheming hussy and she said she didn't care.

"What's that noise?" The dozy
afternoon kept being punctured. "It's nearer."

"Shooting, beyond Santa Cristina.
The Doge of Venice used to give five ducks to the noble families every
Christmas. Folk still shoot."

"I hope we scared some off to
safety."

We'd made rather a racket the second
time around, which was okay, because apart from the occasional shrill outboard
and lazy squawkings from the dense reeds there was almost total silence. I
reached for her again but she pushed my hand away.

"There's a boat coming.
Listen."

"Stopping."

At the canal back in Torcello we'd
glimpsed Gerry and Keith puttering past the
locanda
intersection in a motor dinghy. Keith had waved. Gerry was too preoccupied
consulting a paper, apparently giving directions as they'd headed out into the
lagoon. Hardly anything to paint around here, that was for sure. Except me and
Cosima. And ducks, but they were being decimated.

Another shot sounded, not quite so
distant. No echoes like the others. Cosima drooped over me, our faces inches
apart in the hair-filtered sunlight.

"Maybe somebody looking for the
San Lorenzo. It was a great church. Now it's just a mound in the water. People
dig at low water for rubble."

"Saint Francis loved the ducks
when he came here," I accused.

"Dear Lovejoy. Always looking for
somebody else to blame."

"Bloody cheek."

"It's true. You should look at
yourself, darling, instead of the rest."

She was smiling and rubbing noses but
it's the sort of chitchat that gets you narked, especially when you know for a
start that you're twice as reasonable as everybody else.

"It's this place, love."

"Vanished splendor?"

"Maybe." I was beginning to
feel lost, remote, altogether too far from civilization and safety. All this
silence, these miles of empty shallows and tangled channels with only the
occasional distant campanile slanting to catch the late afternoon sun.

"Want to get back? There's a
vaporetto
from Torcello and Mazzorbo in
an hour. We've plenty of time."

There it was again, the spooky
reminder. Mazzorbo's name means "great city," and I knew for a fact
it was nothing more than a few villas, a boatyard, one cypress tree, and an
ivy-covered campanile. Perhaps I was letting myself become nervous. Silly,
really, because there was nothing to be worried about. Especially not out here.

"Know why I came?"

"Ulterior motive." She was
smiling, kneeling up doing her hair, mouth full of hairpins, head to one side.

"Several."

"How many are female,
Lovejoy?"

"One. You."

A warning shake of the comb at me
before she resumed her hair. 'That's all right, then."

'Then I wanted to find out why you've
cornered the world market in television people."

'That's easy, darling. They're a rich
signora's playthings."

I sat up. "Eh?"

"We did a group
charter—unfortunately through those Milanese agents, absolute gangsters with
their endless moans about commission."

"Signora Norman," I said,
relief washing over me so I prickled with sweat.

"
Si
. You'd think a rich woman wouldn't worry about a special price,
wouldn't you, but she argued over every single lira." She rapped me on my
belly with the comb. It didn't half sting. "
Bruto!
You said
one
female, Lovejoy! How did you know her name?"

I reached, tried to pull her down while
she elbowed me off, hands in her hair still. "Never even seen the woman,
love. I was only worried because it was you who approached me in the cafe that
night."