The Pigeon Project (6 page)

He paused, considering what to say next, finally framed it in his mind, and resumed his miniaturized writing. The message was complete. He reread it. Not quite complete. He must give some indication of why he was a prisoner, why the Russians wanted him, why at any cost he must be saved. There was barely room for a hint, space for no more than six to ten words. He sought them, found them, and meticulously fitted them, into the last blank space on the strip of paper.

Now, quickly, he folded the strip once, then again, then a third time. He stuffed it into his shirt pocket with the rubber band.

From his lunch tray, he tore off a corner of bread, broke it into crumbs. Rising, trying to show no signs of anxiety, he approached the window where the alerted pigeons were waiting. As he had done yesterday, and the day before, he put his right hand through the bars of the grille, spilled a few of the crumbs onto the ledge… Immediately, two of the pigeons went for the food, and a third crowded in to join them. The fourth pigeon, a fat dark gray one, was watching his hand. MacDonald moved his hand toward the lone pigeon, offering his palm of remaining bread crumbs. The pigeon strutted toward his hand, hovered over it, suddenly darted its beak toward the crumbs and began to eat them.

Cautiously, MacDonald slipped his free left hand through the next pair of bars, lowering it over the occupied pigeon.

For a moment, MacDonald held still, motionless. Then in a flash he dropped his left hand toward the pigeon, grabbed it about the back of its head and its breast. The startled bird was all motion, trying to squirm loose, get away, but MacDonald had its wings pinned down.

Swiftly, he drew the pigeon into the room, held it with its bottom up and its flailing claws exposed. With his right hand he dug into his shirt pocket, pulled out the rubber band and the tightly folded message.

The next and last was the most difficult part—securing the paper slip to one of the pigeon’s legs—but he applied himself to it with grim concentration. He managed to roll the paper around the pigeon’s leg without dropping the rubber band. Then he got the elastic around it, doubling it up and twisting it until it looped tighter and tighter around the paper and the pigeon’s thin leg. At last, the message held fast.

For a fleeting second, MacDonald contemplated his handiwork. He now had a carrier pigeon. He prayed it was a San Marco pigeon. But would anyone in a million years—let alone two days—notice it, retrieve it, act on it? The odds mocked him. It was the most futile endeavor he had ever undertaken. But one thought buoyed his spirit. Minutes before, the world had been blind and deaf to knowledge of his discovery and incarceration. With this winged creature, the word would go out of his cell for the first, the last, the only time.

Gripping the squirming bird, MacDonald strode back to the window. He held the pigeon high, then pushed it out between the bars, preparing to cast if off into the free air. From the corner of an eye, he saw a movement on the ground below. It came from one of the khaki-clad carabinieri guards. The guard was lifting his rifle.

MacDonald’s heart hammered. With a gasp, he threw his arm forward in a pitching motion, opening his hand, releasing the pigeon. The bird dipped, flapped its wings, rose, and was airborne to the northwest. Below, the guard had whipped his rifle to his shoulder, was aiming, training his gun on the lofting pigeon.

The rifle rang out.

Almost simultaneously, the pigeon seemed to have exploded in midair, a flurry of feathers and wings. The bird shuddered, wobbled, began to sink, beating its wings weakly. It was dropping fast when it disappeared from MacDonald’s sight.

MacDonald looked down at the guard once more. The Italian was waving what was first a triumphant and then a threatening fist at him.

Sick with grief and defeat, MacDonald turned away, trudged back to his chair, and clumped down into it, eyes on the door, waiting for them to come and board up his window.

After that, there would be only darkness.

II

For Tim Jordan, the first woman of revival (after a bad night, and his nights were gradually getting worse) usually came when he walked out of the Hotel Danieli Royal Excelsior into the glaring sunlight of Venice and faced the beginning of a new day.

The spell of the city almost always worked for him, and it was working right now as he stood unsteadily before the hotel entrance in the teeming Riva degli Schiavoni. Ahead of him, a jam-packed vaporetto had just arrived, bumping against the floating wooden landing and rocking it. The water bus was disgorging a stream of passengers—Venetians, German and French and American tourists. Moored on either side of the shaky landing were several motorboats for rent, and a motoscafo was taking on the last guests of the Danieli who were seeking the pleasures of the Hotel Excelsior beach on Lido island before the lunch hiatus.

While this was for Tim Jordan the beginning of a day, he knew that the day had awakened long hours ago. When he could, especially when he had been drinking the night before, he slept late, not joining the life of the city until noon and not getting to his desk until one o’clock. This was one of his noon days, because he had stayed up late the night before, drinking and brooding in solitude, sleeping hard and straight through, and he had not been able to get out of bed until less than an hour ago. Now, outside at last, he felt the thin, quivering band of a hangover behind his forehead, and his brain felt mussed and his legs were rubbery.

He had spent some time, late this morning, after shaving, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, and he had not liked what he had seen. He could remember himself at the time of his marriage six years ago—his youthful appearance had been frozen in the wedding picture Claire had always kept on her dressing table—when he had stood a lean, athletic five feet eleven. In the time since her death, but especially during the nearly two years past in Venice, his body had changed, become a little hunched and paunchy and soft. And not only his body, but his face also. What a ruthless biographer the human face was! The bathroom mirror had read the story of his latest years to him. His hair was still black, neatly parted at one side, and his facial features were still narrow and angular, but the rest of what had happened reflected three years of sorrow, self-pity, ennui, and dissipation. The brown eyes this morning had been bloodshot and puffy, the forehead creased, the cheeks blotched and sagging (or so they seemed), the full chin less firm. And to add to this Dorian Gray disintegration, he had cut himself while shaving.

Now he held his hands up before him. They were still unsteady. It was a sad condition for a man just turned thirty-eight, he thought. But seven cognacs last night and three years without commitment before that had worked their creeping erosions. He wanted to tell his employers, the directors of the Venice Must Live Committee, “Gentlemen, change your priorities and make your first one: Tim Jordan Must Live.” Save Jordan before the tides sweep him under, save your secretly sinking public relations representative.

He smiled wryly at this nonsense, gave his head a shake to rid it of cobwebs, and started on his daily walk. It had been his habit, ever since he had moved to Venice two years—actually, twenty-one months—ago, to take a leisurely stroll around the area, a half hour or so, winding up at a café in the Piazza San Marco for breakfast, before going to his office. Even when it rained or he was too hung over to stand up straight, he never missed the walk. It always had a salutary effect on him. He never tired of viewing the ancient Byzantine buildings and medieval monuments, or mingling with the bustling crowds of sightseers in zigzag streets, of exchanging gossip with many lively Venetians whom he now counted as friends. It was life-generating and important. It was also exercise.

He climbed the arched Ponte della Paglio, jostled by perpetual hordes of people coming and going; observed the tourists with their cameras at the stone railing photographing the enclosed overhead passageway—known as the Bridge of Sighs—which connected the Doges’ Palace with the dungeons. He pushed his way down toward the Piazzetta, the small square with its twin columns celebrating a protector of Venice and one of its patron saints.

On his way, Jordan looked at the cluster of black gondolas roped to poles in the lagoon under a red banner reading, SERVIZIO GONDOLE, searching to see if Luigi Cipolate, his favorite gondolier and bar companion, was about. He spotted Luigi just as the gondolier saw him. Jordan waved and called out, “
Strigheta
!”—Luigi’s nickname, meaning Little Witch, because his long nose and curved chin seemed to come together like those of a witch.

“Timothy!” the gondolier called back. “Good to see you so early!”

Jordan grinned and considered detouring for a short chat with his friend. It was tempting. Luigi was one of the more interesting, independent, traditional gondoliers. Only half the gondoliers owned their own boats, and Luigi was one of them. It had cost him about 5,000,000 lire—around $6,000—to buy the boat; its stainless steel, aluminum, and brass fittings; its chairs, cushions, rug. Luigi owned his own apartment, too, decorated by a wife and son, in the Dorsoduro quarter near the recently restored old church of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli. He was one of the few gondoliers who continued to wear the regulation costume of straw hat, white cotton sailor shirt over a striped T-shirt, and blue trousers. He was also one of the few who sang for his clients as his oar pushed the sleek gondola through the canals. His repertoire consisted of “O Sole Mio,”

“Santa Lucia,” and “Ciao Venezia.”

About to join Luigi, Jordan glimpsed the time on the clock tower and decided that any protracted conversation now would make him too late for work. He waved to Luigi again and headed for the Piazza San Marco. Passing between the Libreria Vecchia, with its shops and the Gran’ Caffé Chioggia beneath, and the shimmering white Doges’ Palace, he tried not to be distracted. Soon he was in the shadow of the towering Campanile, and at once the Piazza San Marco lay before him.

The sight was awesome, and never failed to inspire him with wonder. The vast outdoor square, surrounded by the golden Basilica and three colonnaded buildings on its four sides, no billboards or vehicles visible, the enclosure filled with three cafés, three orchestras, animated groups of visitors, numerous vendors, and pigeons everywhere.

Feeling better, Tim Jordan moved forward, pigeons fluttering out of his path, until he reached the dark, narrow, crowded Mercerie, the main shopping street of Venice which led from the Piazza into the city proper. Pushing along slowly, head swiveling to see what new merchandise the shopwindows were displaying, Jordan reached the first corner, where he barely avoided bumping into the priest who had emerged from the side street.

“Don Pietro,” Jordan greeted him with warmth. Pietro Vianello—the “Don” was a courtesy title for priests—was one of Jordan’s favorite conversational companions. “What are you doing so far from home?” Don Pietro had a church in the San Giacomo quarter of Venice, near the railroad station, at the far end of the city.

The priest, bald except for a fringe of wispy hair, cherubic and rotund, scowled uncharacteristically and removed a rolled newspaper from a fold of his black cassock. “I have come to San Marco to see if any of Venice is left for us,” he said with mock anger. He held up his copy of
Il Gazzettino
. “Have you seen the new municipal tax that Accardi and his gang of Communist thugs are trying to impose on gift items? If he has his way, it’ll be the end of tourism, and the death of Venice. If those Communist thugs don’t sink Venice, then the snails on your Venice Must Live Committee will manage it.”

These were two of Don Pietro’s pet subjects. A Christian Democrat, he distrusted the Socialists and detested the Communists. A native Venetian, he also feared the destruction of his city by the annual winter floods.

“I can do nothing about the Communists,” said Jordan patiently. “After all, your parishioners elected them.”

“Not my parishioners,” said Don Pietro.

“Well, somebody elected them.”

“Nobody elected them,” argued the priest. “They stole the election. That is my suspicion.”

“As for our Venice Must Live Committee,” said Jordan good-naturedly, having been over this ground before with his clerical friend, “they may be snaillike, but they are moving. They installed the Pirelli dam across the Lido entrance to the sea last winter—”

“They did not use it to keep out the tides. We were flooded in January.”

“It wasn’t ready yet—installed, but not ready. It should be all set to use this winter.”

“I hope I live to see the day.”

“You will, I promise,” said Jordan. “Now I’d better get to work.”

The priest’s scowl disappeared. “I have missed you. Come by for tea some afternoon soon. We can have a real argument.”

Jordan left him. He was still not in the mood for work. He decided he would walk a little farther, at least as far as Nurikhan’s Glass Shop, before turning back for breakfast. Sembut Nurikhan’s modernized glassware store was a short distance, just off Ramo San Zulian in the small square called Campo San Zulian. The Armenian proprietor was perhaps Jordan’s oldest friend in Venice. Shortly after Jordan’s arrival in Venice, when he had still been interested in the showy Murano glass and eager for a reliable place where he could buy gifts for his sister and her husband in Chicago and an elderly aunt in Los Angeles for whom he had affection, Nurikhan’s Glass Shop had been recommended to him. Although the store’s owner, Sembut Nurikhan, a smallish, somewhat professorial and dapper man in his fifties, had seemed remote on first meeting, Jordan had been drawn to him. He was that rarity, an honest and forthright being, and in the months that followed, Jordan had dropped in on him more frequently, eventually dined with him and his attractive Egyptian wife once a month, and the relationship had become closer.

Jordan had arrived at the shop, with its two front windows trimmed in aluminum. On display in the windows, dramatized by overhead spotlights, were pieces of glass sculpture by Seguso and Nason resting on slabs of black Swedish marble. Jordan went to the doorway and looked inside. The store was filled with customers, and under a baroque Venetian chandelier stood the proprietor surrounded by a circle of Japanese tourists. All that Jordan could see of Nurikhan was his finely etched gray-haired head, gold-rimmed glasses on his thin nose, and the oversized polka-dot bow tie.