The Thief of Venice (20 page)

Ursula looked down at her shoes and said nothing. But she was as crafty as her grandmother in purloining household keys.

Later that afternoon another parade of children marched down the street, clashing their pots and singing
"San Martino! San Martino!"
At the end of the procession marched Ursula Bell, singing the nonsense song with the rest—

"San Martino xe anda in sofita,
a trovar ea so novisa,
so novisa no ghe gera
San Martin col cueo par tera!"

*43*

"It's still leaking," said the hydraulic engineer from the Dipartimento Civile. "Look at that."

The exhausted
idraulici
could see it perfectly well, the narrow streams of water gushing around the edges of the iron barrier below the bridge over the Rio dei Miracoli. The rain had made a soup of the mud at the bottom of the drained canal. The tide was rising and the goddamn moon was at the full. In a couple of hours
acqua alta
would be at its peak. One of the men mopped his muddy face with his sleeve and shook his head in disgust. "It's only a fucking drop or two."

"No, no, it's too much. It's got to be absolutely watertight. You'll have to attach more
barriere
at both ends."

"What we really need is a miracle," suggested one of the men, snickering. "How about that new Veil of the Virgin? Why don't we pray to that?"

The response was a weary shuffling back to the task of heaving up another set of rusty metal plates and ramming them down with heavy sledgehammer blows to make the corrugations lap tightly together.

The engineer shook his head as they stepped back. Wordlessly he pointed to a thin trickle still streaming at the other end of the barrier. One of the men gave the offending plate a sharp kick. The trickle stopped.

"Ecco!"
said the engineer, and they all laughed.
 

The bishop's map of the distribution of high water clearly showed that part of the
sestiere
of Cannaregio would be perfectly dry. But, descending into a gondola at the Rialto Bridge with their stout British umbrellas, the two couples soon ran into another sort of problem.

One of the gondoliers was a tenor with a certificate from a conservatory in Verona. He was very expensive. While his colleague propelled the pretty craft along the Rio Fontego and the Rio dei Miracoli, he produced for their delectation ecstasies of vibrato and operatic sobs. Suddenly he broke off in the middle of a trill, said,
"Mamma mia,"
and lifted his pole from the water.

"Whatever is the matter?" said Louise Alderney, wife of the member of Parliament.

"Que pasa?"
said the bishop, adroitly producing an appropriate phrase.

His wife looked at him with contempt. "That's not Italian, Arthur, it's Spanish." She looked up sweetly at the gondolier,
"Per favore, signore, andiamo!"

The gondolier tried to clarify the situation with excited gestures. Then he made a powerful sucking noise with his lips.

They looked at him with blank faces. The bishop stood up boldly and said, "I'll handle this." With a daring leap he landed on terra firma and ran up the steps of the little bridge over the blocked canal.

Below him four men with muddy boots looked up in surprise, unused to being addressed by red-faced members of the British clergy. The bishop spoke with heavy irony. "I must confess," he began, "that your fabled city is not quite living up to our expectations. How, may I ask, is our gondola to proceed?"

The gondolier had followed the bishop. Standing behind him he raised his eyebrows to the roots of his hair and shrugged his shoulders hugely. There followed a rapid exchange with the four muddy men in the drained canal. Soon they were all roaring with laughter.

"Oh, jolly good," said Elizabeth Cluff-Luffter, as her husband climbed clumsily back into the gondola.

"Three cheers, my lord," said Tertius Alderney, grinning.

"Hosanna in the highest!" warbled his wife Louise, who was an accomplished mezzo-soprano.
 

*44*

He found her. Or rather they found each other.

Lucia's borrowed rooms in the Ghetto Nuovo looked out on the trees in the middle of the square, and on the great wellhead from which the women of the ghetto had once drawn water. Today she sat at the window with her embroidery in her lap, alternately pulling her needle through the fabric and watching the comings and goings below.

With her embroidery she felt like an old Venetian grandmother, but her watchfulness was an anxious vigil. Lucia had no television in her small quarters, but the kindly old woman who sold lettuces and strawberries in the local shop had seen her face that morning on the screen.
"Che bella faccia! L'ho vista alia TV."

Therefore the old woman was aware that the name Lucia was known by in the neighborhood was false, but she was a tenderhearted old lady and she said she would not give Lucia away.

"Lei, non e ebrea?"
asked Lucia.

"No, sono cattolica,"
said the old woman, and she promised to pray for Lucia.

Well, it was terrible news. If she had been seen on television there might be other local people who would call the polizia. Lucia sat at the window and kept her eyes open for the approach of official-looking persons or men in uniform. Her bag was packed. She was ready to bolt by a back door.

But she was not afraid of the children. On the day of extreme high water she saw them wading barefoot in the square. They were floating paper boats called
Regina
and
Maria
and
Guido
and
Franco
. Quickly Lucia made one of her own from a piece of scrap paper, then pulled off her shoes and ran down to join them.

"From this tree," commanded Maria, "to that tree." Carefully they lined up their fragile craft. Lucia set hers down in the shallow water with the others. "Go!" cried Maria, and with excited screams the children released their boats and watched them rock gently forward. "Not fair!" screeched Maria, as Guido puffed out his cheeks and blew his boat ahead of the rest. Now they were all puffing and blowing. Lucia laughed, but she stopped laughing when she caught a glimpse of a tall stranger crossing the bridge. At once she ran splashing back to the safe haven of her own doorway and hurried upstairs.
 

Sam had been wandering around the Ghetto Vecchio and the Ghetto Nuovo for half an hour, afraid to ask anyone the whereabouts of Lucia Costanza. After all, she was the object of a search by the police. By the time he saw the children he had almost given up. Disconsolate, he smiled at them, and he smiled at rheir paper boats, which were folded yellow sheets from the Pagine Gialle, or pink pages from
La Gazzetta dello Sport
. He smiled at the names scrawled on them—
Regina, Franco, Guido, Maria, Lucia
.

He picked up the boat called
Lucia
. It was not yellow or pink. It was a folded piece of white paper on which he could make out part of a letterhead—
diSan Marco
.

"Dov' e Lucia?"
he asked quickly.

One of the girls shook her head and laughed.
"No, no. Non e Lucia! La donna si chiama Sofia."

"Ma allora, e una donna, non una ragazza?"

"Si, si, e la Signora Sofia."

"Va bene. Dov' e la Signora Sofia?"

At once they all pointed, and Sam looked up to see a woman standing at an upstairs window, looking down at him. With her dark hair flowing over her shoulders she looked younger than he remembered, but there was no mistaking the face that had so captivated him on the day he had walked into her office. Rapturously, cautiously, he called to her,
"Signora Sofia?"

Impulsively, without thinking, Lucia leaned out the window and called,
"Dottor Bell?"

For a moment they gazed at each other as though stunned, and then Lucia turned away, ran down the stairs, and opened the door.

He was running toward her, splashing in his rubber boots. It had begun to rain. The children hurried away. As he stopped in front of her there was no one else in the square.

She could think of nothing to say. Nor could he. At last he said huskily, "Are you all right, Dottoressa?"

"Oh, yes. Are you?"

"Yes, I am," he said eagerly, saying it truthfully for the first time. "Yes, yes, I'm very much all right."

Lucia couldn't help laughing. There was something so amusing about his face and voice. She remembered that he had made her laugh before. Now he said something else, but so softly that she missed it. "What did you say?"

"I said, what if someone were to hold your hand?"

Oh, how deliciously ridiculous! It was a continuation of the absurd moment in her office that day in October, the scene she had been playing and replaying so often in her head.

She smiled and looked away from him at the wet iron lid of the wellhead and the dark wet trunks of the trees. "Well, of course, it would depend on who it was."

"Me. It would be me."

A wave of hilarity swept over Lucia, and she began to laugh again.

He laughed too, and said, "Well? What do you think?"

"I don't know. Perhaps we could try it just as an experiment."

At once he grasped her hand and lifted it to his lips, and murmured, "Is the experiment working?"

Lucia couldn't stop laughing. "It's too soon to tell. Experiments usually take longer."

They waded across the square together in the misty rain, her hand clasped in his, and crossed the bridge into the Ghetto Vecchio.

Then he stopped walking and turned to her with another insane question. "What if I were to kiss you? I mean, right here in front of this good rabbi?"

The rabbi raised his black hat and smiled.

"You mean"—Lucia could hardly speak—"another experiment?"

"Yes, yes, just an experiment."

She closed her eyes as his face came near. Gently, without holding her, he kissed her lips lightly, then withdrew and murmured, "Did it work?"

"Oh, oh, I'm not quite sure." Lucia kept her eyes closed, and he tried again, putting his hands on her shoulders, kissing her seriously.

It was so lovely, so enchanting. Lucia stood perfectly still like a flower in the field, as he wrapped his arms around her and said softly, "I wasn't sure I still knew how to kiss a girl."

"It's like riding a bicycle," she whispered. "It's something you don't forget."

"Oh, God, Lucia, Lucia."

It was beginning to rain in earnest. She took his hand and led him back over the bridge to her house. The door was unlocked. Lucia drew Sam inside and led the way upstairs, leaving the door open behind her. The rising water opened it farther still. It swayed on its hinges.

Neither of these mature, highly educated and distinguished people cared that they had previously known each other for less than half an hour.
 

Richard Henchard stood outside, shielding himself from the rain under a tree. His astonishing patient, so miraculously recovered, had led him straight to Lucia Costanza.

What was the goddamn woman doing now? Well, naturally, she was about to go to bed with a famous scholar, Henchard's prize example of a pancreatic carcinoma remission, Signor Samuele Bell, who now had a lifetime of delightful fuckings ahead of him. Goddamn his vanished cancer! Goddamn his healthy balls! And goddamn his perfect ears, which might now be listening eagerly to any goddamn thing the woman might feel like telling him, between fucking endearments and fucking embraces and goddamn fucking orgasms! Henchard groaned aloud.
Oh, God, he had no time, he had no time!

Then time opened out before him. The rain came down harder than ever, but someone rushed out of Signora Costanza's door and hurried away under an umbrella. It was his patient, Samuele Bell.

Had there been a lover's quarrel already? Henchard grinned and reached in his pocket. His weapon was warm in his hand, but he kept it out of sight as he started for the door. Now, thanks be to God, he would find her alone, and then he could do with her whatever he wanted.
 

*45*

Mary had known it would be miserably uncomfortable, but she had been unprepared for the extent of the wreckage. She had hit Homer hard. Recalling the glib bragging stories of her friends, she could not remember any talking up of the costs. Had they been as terrible as this?

She looked at her watch. It was three o'clock. She couldn't go to bed and indulge in a fit of weeping.
There was no time.
She had to go out again, she had to take a vaporetto to Cannaregio and find her way back to the Rio della Sensa. She had to get back there before Richard took everything away. If she could get hold of one thing from that closet, just one many-branched candlestick or Passover plate, then she could take it to somebody—the polizia?—the carabinieri?—and they would be!ieve her when she said that something next door to Tintoretto's house smelled to high heaven.

It would do no good to accuse someone called Visconti. She had once tried to call Doctor Richard Visconti at the hospital, but there had been nobody there by that name. In escorting her iround the city he had obviously been two-timing his wife. Mary was no fool, she had figured it out, but she had managed not to care.

Now she rummaged furiously in her dresser drawers, looking for the picture of Visconti. When she found it, she tore it in little pieces, but instead of throwing them in the wastebasket she opened the pages of the book she had bought in the Ghetto Nuovo and dropped them inside. Now the torn scraps of the photograph of Doctor Richard Visconti were folded between photographs of men and women who had been deported to death camps—

SI RICERCA PAOLA SONINO
ARRESTATA IL 28 GENNAIO 1944.

CHI AVESSE NOTIZIE DI COLOMBO ANGELO
E PREGATO DI DARE LE NOTIZIE
ALLA COMUNITA ISRAELITICA.

Then she washed the tears off her cheeks, stuffed her red umbrella into the side pocket of her bag, and pulled on her boots, because
acqua alta
had been bad enough this morning, and the radio predicted
acqua altissima alle cinque
. The worst was coming at five o'clock, the highest water yet.