The Venetian Affair (28 page)

“
La biondina! La biondina!
” the gondolier shouted, waving his arms still more wildly.

Claire halted and looked back at him.

“
La biondina!
” he called up to her, with absolute certainty.

“Zorzi!” Claire said, and waved back.

“Well, well,” said Fenner, “and did Giorgio teach you that ripe Venetian accent?”

“Gondola, gondola?” The appeal was directed to Fenner as keeper of the purse.

“Later,” Fenner told the broadly smiling hawk-face looking up at him.

“Tonight? When the moon is up?” Giorgio shouted. “I wait here. What time?”

Fenner looked at Claire. “Ten o’clock?”

She nodded. She was as delighted as if he had given her a Christmas present all wrapped in shining paper and bright ribbons. She looked nine years old at this moment.

“Ten o’clock,” Fenner called down.

“I wait here,” Giorgio shouted back, and saluted nonchalantly.

“And so he will,” Claire said as they left the bridge. “We had better keep that promise.” She was still very much Alice-in-Wonderland. “Imagine!
Imagine
Zorzi remembering me! It’s three years since I was here.”

“What really astounds me is the fact that you remembered him.”

“Would you forget that old sea raider’s face?”

Perhaps not. But it wasn’t the answer Fenner had gone fishing for. “Old? He’s younger than I am, I bet. He hasn’t reached the age of discussing rheumatism, has he?”

“Only the first twinges.” She may have guessed Fenner’s feelings, for she smiled and said, “I hired him for a week, last time I was here.”

“Opulent.”

“It was the cheapest and quickest way to explore the little canals and back waterways. I was sketching all the decorations—windows, balconies, doorways, lanterns—that caught my eye. There was a Venetian phase in Grand Rapids, that year. My first assignment abroad. Zorzi thought I was crazy at first. Then he began to think I was really in earnest. That pleased him. He’s a true Venetian.”

“Remembering some of those smaller canals, I’d say you really suffer for the sake of your art.”

“Oh, I had some luck with cool weather. And a large bottle of Eau de Cologne helped.” She was smiling at the memory. Quietly she said, “Remind me to buy some film, will you, Bill?”

“And after that, I shut up. Right? No suggestions, I promise.” The brown suit seemed glued to the Kodachrome window. “He is going to have a front-row seat for the next act. Want to postpone it?”

“We haven’t the time. Let’s show him what innocent travellers we are. Don’t worry, Bill”—she was really encouraging herself—“it will be simple enough if we just follow the rules.”

They almost passed the display windows. Fenner stopped, catching her arm. “What about that film you need?”

“Why, Bill—I nearly forgot.”

They brushed past the waiting man and entered the shop.

Neat Italian cursive over the shop’s entrance told them it was owned by V Arnaldi. It was small, dark, but authentic. On either side were two glass-topped counters, displaying filters and light meters in considerable profusion. There were shelves of Leicas and Rolleiflexes, all bargains at the cheap Venetian price; stacks of varied film; many excellent photographs showing how you could do it, too, if you got up at six in the morning or lived in a city without people. There was one assistant, very young and very martyred, who obviously disapproved of the prominent notice in four languages stating that this shop was open for business every day, all day. For this was a bright, warm Sunday, when reasonable places were either firmly closed or at least putting up their shutters for a pleasant three-hour lunch.

“I need some thirty-five-millimetre colour film,” Claire said in English. “Seven rolls of K 135-38.”

The boy stared at her blankly. Fenner sympathised with him.
Claire had asked for a film with thirty-eight exposures, and there was just no such thing.

“
Uno momento
,” the boy said, jolted out of his apathy. (He wasn’t stupid, Fenner decided; just bored.) Quickly he went to a curtained door at the back of the shop. A chair scraped, a limping step dragged on the wooden floor; and a white-haired man appeared, wiping his mouth from an interrupted dinner. His movements were slow, deliberate, calm.

“Mr. Arnaldi?” Claire asked.

The proprietor nodded, his eyes as blank as the boy’s had been. Outside, a second man had halted beside the brown suit, to look at the window’s display.

Claire repeated her request, with a slight emphasis on the seven. Arnaldi listened placidly, but he had noted the tightening of Fenner’s lips as he watched the street. The man in the brown suit was moving on; it was the other, a thin man, much younger, who was coming into the shop.

“Certainly,” Arnaldi said as the man entered, and selected three boxes of standard K135-36 film from the shelf behind him. He placed them in a neat pyramid on the counter in front of Claire. “Anything else today, signorina?”

“No thank you. That’s perfect.” Claire relaxed visibly as she looked at the three boxes. So Arnaldi was the right man to deal with, Fenner decided, quickly changing his mind about mistakes. “I think I’ll load the camera here,” she said, holding out her hand for it, smiling reassuringly.

Fenner gave it to her, tried to pay no attention to the strange man who had walked over to the stand beside them instead of choosing the other counter. Perhaps he was lonely, wanted company, the Coney Island-Brighton Beach type. Why wasn’t
he out at the Lido? That would suit him perfectly. “Need any help?” Fenner asked.

“Have you ever used a Stereo-Realist?”

“No,” he lied gallantly.

Claire began examining the camera’s back. “I ought to have brought that book of directions,” she said, half to herself.

Mr. Arnaldi was trying to serve the newcomer, but the man was in no hurry. He wanted a yellow filter; he needed time to choose one. He looked down, vaguely, at the boxes displayed near Claire. He liked to work close, this fellow: he was missing nothing.

“A filter for what camera?” Arnaldi was asking patiently.

The stranger hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Leica,” he said briefly. His eyes flickered over the three boxes of film that Claire had bought, still lying on the counter. “And I want some of these.” He picked them up.

“Here!” began Fenner, ready to put on an act of indignation. But Claire was unworried. She was much more preoccupied with the back of her camera, which seemed to have stuck.

Arnaldi took quick command. “That film is not made for a Leica,” he told the man. “You need—”

“I have other cameras.”

Arnaldi’s expression did not change. He merely reached to the shelf for three more yellow boxes, and stacked them into another pyramid before Claire. He drew out a pencil, opened a drawer for a piece of paper, and began calculating the cost. “I shall be with you shortly,” he told the man. “My son will help you meanwhile. Luigi! Show this gentleman the yellow filters.” He pointed his pencil at the other counter.

Luigi’s boredom vanished. “Over here,” he insisted, and led
the way quickly. The man hesitated, looking down at the filters beside Claire. “Not for a Leica,” Luigi told him firmly, and drew him, still holding his prize of three boxes, to the other counter.

Claire said, “This has got stuck again. I had it fixed only last week. Can you help?” She handed over the camera to Mr. Arnaldi, who placed it flat on the counter, lifted its back just enough to extract a folded slip of paper, which disappeared into the open drawer. He had the camera closed and locked even as he pushed the drawer shut.

“I am sorry,” Arnaldi was saying all through this small operation, “the back of your camera is not working properly. I am afraid you will not be able to load it here.” He shook his head.

“Let me try again,” Claire said, taking it from him. “Imagine walking through Venice with an empty camera.”

“Frustrating,” Fenner agreed.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Claire said to the stranger, who had come back to the stand beside her. “Am I in your way?” Then she laughed delightedly. “Look, I’ve managed it!” she told Fenner, freeing the back of the camera, holding it up in triumph.

“Next time, you’d better carry a hammer as well as a book of directions.” He reached for his wallet—he was good for that, at least—while Claire started to load the camera right under the stranger’s inquiring nose. The man’s suspicions were dying down. He watched Claire’s fingers, his interest shifting to gadgetry.

And what kind of a man is this? Fenner wondered. He is about my age, about my height, dressed in a grey suit and white shoes. Shoes and tie are not my taste. Apart from that, he might
be another version of me or my friends. His face is just the ordinary face of an ordinary man, a mixture of small worries and pleasures, hopes and disappointments, a few simple longings, several deep frustrations. Yet his business is far from ordinary, and so is his power. If Claire or Arnaldi had made one small slip, he can destroy us all: an adverse report to the men who hire him, and that might be the last mistake any of us would ever make. Does he do this for money to buy a grey suit, pay his rent, get promotion? Or does he call himself dedicated: everything, anything for the cause? Complete obedience, blind belief?... Possibly he would think of me in the same way: I’m an American, he would reason, so I do what American interests tell me to do. But he is wrong there: I am not in the middle of this fantastic game because I was given an order by Rosie or anybody else. I am here because my beliefs are shaped by my own thoughts; and a man’s thoughts are shaped by his conscience. That is what gives me my orders, and I may damn it to high heaven, but I’ll listen to it. That’s why I’m standing here. Can he say the same? Did he really choose Kalganov’s way—the bomb that burns two children to death in an apartment over a restaurant? Or is he a totally ignorant man, a know-nothing who’ll lend himself to anything? Or—even more depressing—would he enjoy seeing hate and dissension spread over Western Europe; would he gloat over anarchy?

“All ready,” Claire’s soft voice said at his elbow. “You look depressed. I’m sorry I was so slow—”

“No, no,” he reassured her quickly, and smiled. “Just hungry, I guess.”

“Would you like to lunch here?” she asked as she fastened the camera back into its leather carrier.

“And forget the Lido?”

“It doesn’t really matter... I just thought some sun and sea would iron out the travel creases.”

Was that a hint? He took it as such. “They probably would. We can dine at Quadri’s tonight, or perhaps we might try The Resuscitated Louse. You know it?” They said good day to Mr. Arnaldi. The man in the grey suit was watching them carefully, his interest again bleakly calculating, reverting to duty either hired or dedicated.

The boy Luigi darted to open the door and bow them out with a brilliant smile. He could guess from the way they were talking so easily, from the quiet look in his father’s eyes, that the difficult customer had somehow been defeated. There he was, complaining about the price of the film he had wanted so badly and which—in any case—wouldn’t fit any camera he was likely to use. He wasn’t even waiting to choose a filter, either. Hurry, hurry, hurry, Luigi’s mocking eyes told him as the man left. He would almost be too late to follow the Americans. Or was he going to follow them? No, he looked as if he would be going to pass them over to a woman who had been window-gazing at the shoe store across the street. A very dull-looking woman she was, dressed in blue; not chic, not young, not beautiful.

“Luigi!” his father called quietly. He was sealing an envelope. Luigi came back into the shop. “Take this to Pietro,” father said. Luigi placed the envelope carefully inside his jacket pocket. He didn’t need to be told to be quick and careful, or to leave by the back door that led into a wandering alley, or that the envelope contained an urgent message. He had learned all these things even as a child of seven, before he. and his father had managed to escape from the Yugoslav zone of Trieste. He
didn’t need to be told about Communist control, either. His mother, two uncles, his older brother... Even at seven, you remember that.

“Simple,” Fenner reminded Claire as they joined the stream of pedestrians outside Arnaldi’s door. “Did we follow the rules?”

“With a few improvisations,” she admitted. “There are always complications.”

“I suppose,” he said too gravely.

“One follows one’s instinct, that’s all.”

“
La biondina
is not quite the helpless little blonde that Zorzi thought she was, is she?”

“I can be very helpless, very silly, very stupid. Why do you keep worrying about what I am and what I am not?”

Why indeed? She was Carlson’s girl, he reminded himself. He forced a smile and a light voice. “The trouble about
la biondina
is that she brings out all my protective urges—and she couldn’t need them less.”

“Doesn’t she?” Her voice softened. I know what’s really troubling him, she thought: he wonders if I am another Sandra Fane, even if I am on the other side, his side. But I’m not. I am not Sandra. I have never hurt any man the way she hurt him. I have never pretended love, or used it. How do I prove that to him? I can’t. And I won’t. Because I’ll probably never see him again once we have finished this job. He’ll be back to his own life, and I to mine. They overlapped for a few days. That’s all. She sighed.

He glanced down at the large grey eyes watching him so sadly. This was no way to spend their short time together, he
told himself. “I take it all back, Claire. You look as lost and bewildered as any tourist.”

“I am.”

“This way—if we
are
trying to find a pier.” He held her arm, guiding her into a narrow
calle
that led to the Grand Canal. He glanced briefly over his shoulder as they turned the corner. He saw a Hindu girl in six yards of floating sari walking the usual two paces behind a paunchy, splay-footed husband; a couple of clear-eyed, fair-skinned Swedes stepping out bravely; a group of sauntering Venetians, carefully dressed; a dour-faced woman in blue; three English students, needing a haircut, in stained and uncreased flannel trousers; a collection of Austrians with rucksacks and
Lederhosen
; a French couple in loose shirts and flopping sandals; heads, and more heads, bobbing and floating along in the human tide. Useless to worry, he decided. “I’ll always remember our theme song in Venice,” he told Claire.