The Garden of Angels

by David Hewson

  ‘I don’t mean to. I apologize if I’ve got you wrong. You can only judge a man on what you see.’

  ‘What you see is what I told you. One more prisoner in their jail.’

  Diamante got closer until his face was so close Alberti could hear his ragged breath.

  ‘I’m begging …’

  ‘What power do you believe I have?’

  ‘The power to look the other way. I saw your face. You know why they’re here.’

  Of course he did.

  ‘Looking the other way gets you killed.’ He stepped back. ‘They shoot you for just thinking about it.’

  Diamante stared at him and there was hatred in his eyes at that moment.

  ‘I’ve lost count of how many men and women I’ve seen leave this world, Alberti. Through sickness. Through violence. Neglect. Do you honestly believe death frightens me?’

  ‘It wasn’t you I was talking about.’

  ‘They want rid of the Jews. All of us who’ve lived here for centuries. Tonight I hope to relieve them of a little of their burden if you let me. Two children. Children.’

  ‘Not the mother?’

  ‘No.’ His voice went quieter, down almost to a whisper. ‘Her parents are sickly. The Black Brigades made them move to the old people’s home across the way and snatched their apartment. She insists she stays with them.’

  Alberti couldn’t stop himself.

  ‘Then tell her she’s a fool. Soon they’re going to raid that place. They don’t need a list for that. They’ve got that fellow of yours, Bruno, to help them.’

  ‘No fellow of mine. You’re closer to us than that creature.’

  ‘No.’ That was wrong. It had to be. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I told your boss. I told Bruno. A week is what I need to finish the list. They can wait.’

  ‘And in the meantime you smuggle out your little children? Like something out of a Bible story?’

  Diamante closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. He looked ill, exhausted.

  ‘I’m not a religious man, Alberti. Don’t talk to me of Bibles. Take the money and look the other way. It’s no use to me anyway.’

  Alberti snatched the notes and stuffed them in his pocket. He wasn’t sure why. It made him feel bad.

  ‘You don’t have a week.’

  Diamante squinted as if he was struggling to believe this.

  ‘No, no. They’ll wait until I’m finished. You said it yourself. The Crucchi are fighting a war. They’ve better things to do than hunt down Jews. ‘Finding these partisans you mentioned for one thing. You said they’d put it in a filing cabinet …’

  ‘I lied! I’m paid to lie. Sometimes it’s easier than telling the truth.’

  Had he been a few years younger Diamante might have gone for him at that moment.

  ‘You have the devil in you, man. Either that or you are him.’

  Luca Alberti tried to laugh.

  ‘No. I just want to live. I lied because in this world that’s how we manage. Just once I break my rule.’ He took out the money and waved it in Diamante’s face. ‘Tell yourself I did it for this if it makes you feel better. They’re coming for you all on Sunday. They know that list of yours has to be as good as complete. Give it to them tomorrow or they’ll tear this place apart, you too. Then they’ll clean out the old folk like those in that home of yours across the way. Monday it’ll be the schools. After that they can sweep up the rest, house by house. It’s arranged. They’re marking it with a party tomorrow night. There’s some decree from Salò. All Jews will be stripped of their nationality throughout the republic. Their property and their money forfeit to the state or whichever Black Brigades bastard gets to them first. You’ll be shipped off like cattle to those camps they talk about.’ He shrugged. ‘Sure, that Bruno fellow said he’d spare you. But he’s a Jew catcher. A Jew himself. He knows that’s not going to happen. They spare no one except the few who suck their cocks.’

  ‘Like you.’

  It wasn’t a question.

  ‘I’m not a Jew. A day is all you have, Diamante. Ship out what little ones you can. I risk my life telling you this. I don’t expect gratitude but if you don’t go quietly and they take you into Ca’ Loretti for interrogation. Then …’

  He didn’t want to say it but the old man made him.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then I’ll claim the right to question you myself. They barely speak Italian anyway. Not a word of Venetian among them. You won’t get out of there alive.’

  Alberti put on his beret and found the light switch for the stairs. It was a humble enough tenement for a man like Aldo Diamante who could surely have afforded much better. Somewhere in this tangle of tall, storeyed buildings there were sumptuous synagogues full of gold and silver plate, or so rumour had it. The Jews had kept their places of worship hidden away for centuries in the belief that, if only they were segregated, the rest of the world would leave them alone.

  The Nazis and the Black Brigades would descend on all those spoils in the days to come. He’d listened to Sachs and Sander talking. They wanted every last Jew wiped from the face of the earth and their hands on whatever riches they supposedly possessed. Not that Aldo Diamante’s modest apartment seemed somewhere to look for treasure.

  ‘A day,’ he repeated and wandered down the stairs.

  All the same he hung around, shivering in the shadows as a freezing night fog wound its way around the city, silvering the crooked cobbles of the ghetto, setting a frosty sheen on the wooden bridges that were the boundaries of the tiny Hebrew enclave.

  He’d been foolish. Diamante might so easily give him up if he were seized for interrogation. Were Alberti to wait and follow the fugitive children he could uncover one of the escape routes the Jews used, a prize which Oberg might appreciate, though with the taciturn German it was always hard to tell.

  Twenty minutes later the front door of Diamante’s building opened and four figures came out, two adults, the boy, the girl. The woman was howling. He could hear her across the street. Then she kissed her children one by one, hugged them, held them, whispered something in their ear as Diamante watched. Probably another lie. I’ll see you again soon. A lie she couldn’t bear to tell herself.

  Alberti wondered how many of his kind the old man had smuggled out this way. If these children made it across the lagoon to terraferma, then through the treacherous paths of the mountains into Switzerland in the hands of decent people, they’d be safe. Not that it was going to be easy, or cheap. And if the Black Brigades caught them on the way they’d be robbed, then killed like rabbits on the hillside, along with everyone with them.

  He watched the mother cuddle them one last time, then wave as they set off for the bridge that led towards Castello. He’d never got on with his own son who was twelve or thirteen now, living with his mother across the water in Mestre. They were better off out of Venice anyway. Being the wife and son of a collaborator was risky. He didn’t see why they should suffer too.

  Castello. Probably the terraces behind via Garibaldi. Or, further on, the quiet, remote island of Sant’Elena where there were clear routes into the lagoon, places a skilled boatman might smuggle a couple of youngsters into the night.

  It would have been so easy to follow them and maybe alert a guard along the way. They could take them all. Though Diamante would surely find a way to shop him then. All that talk about interrogating the man on his own was just boasting. The Crucchi would never have allowed him to be alone with any prisoner for long. Their trust went so far and no further.

  In a minute Diamante and his two tiny wards were across the bridge. The mother watched them every step of the way, dabbing at her face with a handkerchief.

  ‘You’re as good as dead,’ he thought. ‘And maybe you know it too.’

  He walked back into San Marco, along the meandering streets that led behind the Rialto towards Ca’ Loretti.

  It was time for a drink.

  Paolo hadn’t spent much time in the cellar since his
parents died in the bombing raid in Verona. Too many memories there and no practical need. Everything wrapped in oilcloths below was history and memories, neither of which he wished to approach just yet.

  Still, Vanni seemed taken by the weaving and the looms. He was curious to know more about the Uccello and so, slowly, rediscovering so much for himself, seated at the cellar table, Paolo told him what he knew. How his grandfather Simone had discovered the Jacquards unused since Napoleon closed the old weaving school on Fondamenta San Lazzaro, then, with some commercial cunning, acquired them for a song along with all the old patterns and cards the school had owned. Here they were still, templates for velvet that had graced the Vatican, the Doge’s Palace, royal castles in Russia, England and so many throughout the Habsburg Empire the record books had lost count.

  ‘Show me more,’ Vanni begged as they sat flicking through an encyclopaedia from the seventeenth century full of line drawings of machines: looms, creels, warpers and a series of trevettes, the blades used to cut the velvet’s pile. Almost two hundred years old but these were recognizably the same kind of equipment they had been using out in the glasshouse that day.

  ‘More what?’

  ‘More of what you can do.’

  Paolo returned to the stacked piles wrapped up against the wall, then sorted through them until he found his favourite. Collections of fabric samples, some assembled by his grandfather and father over the years, but one inherited from the school, dating back to a vanished weaving company that closed when Napoleon arrived.

  It was a leather-bound volume with the name of a long-lost artisan, Giacomo Benedetti, imprinted in gold on the front and beneath a date: 1778. Just eight years before the fall of the republic after more than a millennium as an independent state. Dust and the remains of insects rose like a golden mist in the lamplight as he unhinged the bronze clasp on the cover and let the contents breathe for the first time in years.

  Each page was a sample of fabric. There must have been fifty or more pieces there, the colours faded, some thread damaged by insects over the centuries, but each with a small sheet of paper sewn into the corner with the details of the pattern, the price, the thread used and the customer.

  Vanni flicked through them, smiling like a kid who’d just found lost treasure. Paolo watched, pleased to see him so happy.

  ‘Here,’ he said, as his visitor went past one of the most interesting examples, a piece of velvet his father had first shown him when he was ten or so. It was an old-fashioned pattern, soprarizzo naturally, the pile all silk, the ground eighty per cent cotton and the rest gold thread. Muscular soldiers surrounded with semi-naked muses against the background of a garden composed of fantastic flowers and winding vines. ‘Read the description.’

  Vanni’s smile grew broad with astonishment.

  ‘Oh my God. Is this true?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  The label gave a name for the pattern in French: Liberté, égalité, fraternité. The slogan of the French Republic and the revolution. The note said the customer was Benjamin Franklin, the first ambassador of the newly free United States to France and gave an address in Passy outside Paris.

  Vanni stroked the pile. The colours were so weak it was impossible to imagine what it must have been like on Franklin’s walls.

  ‘I guess even revolutionaries love a little luxury from time to time,’ he murmured. Then he ran his fingers over the velvet once more. ‘It’s like touching a ghost. A piece of history.’

  ‘My father always said that too.’

  Vanni looked at the pile of stored documents – books, patterns, cards – by the back wall. They ran to the low ceiling and stretched the width of the room.

  ‘You’ve got so much here,’ he said. ‘So much beauty.’

  Paolo laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘It’s old. It’s dead. Like this place. Like me. What can I do with this? I’ve no money. No one else but Chiara who knows how to make velvet the way they used to. Even if people wanted it.’

  Vanni’s hand fell on his knee.

  ‘People will always want beauty, my friend. In ugly times they’ll come to crave it even more. You’ve got a commission, haven’t you?’

  ‘Just the one.’

  ‘Work is work, Paolo.’ His hand hadn’t moved. If anything it felt firmer. ‘One day the war will be over and we can be ourselves again. Then you’ll rebuild the House of Uccello. You’ll get the right workers. The commissions will flood through the door. I see a great future for you. I wish I could be a part of that. I think I make a better weaver than a partisan. My sister would surely agree.’

  Smiling, his head bowed, he came and whispered in Paolo’s ear, so close his breath felt warm and welcome, ‘Do you?’

  Paolo retreated a little from his presence, closed the book, watched the dust motes rise as the ancient faded pieces of velvet went back where they belonged, obscurity and darkness.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’m being forward,’ Vanni said. ‘If I … misread the signs.’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Occasionally I drift between men and women. Which means I’m three times damned. A Jew. A communist. A part-time queer. I know the first are none of your business. But I wondered if the reason you hid away here … perhaps …’

  Beyond the tracery window there was a noise. A boat on the night lagoon. Vanni got the idea straight away and extinguished the lamp. They sat there in darkness waiting for the inevitable. But there was no white searchlight beam scanning the building, piercing the tiny tracery window, finding the damp brickwork of the back wall. No German voices.

  An arm worked its way round Paolo’s shoulders. Vanni’s mouth came close to his ear and whispered, ‘Maybe it’s nothing. Stay still. Don’t move. They won’t find us. I promise.’

  Paolo Uccello was remembering the fishermen’s boats from before the war. Sometimes his father would hire one to take the family out for a picnic in the lagoon. They were the good days, back when they had a little money. Now he’d barely set foot outside Castello in months.

  The searchlight vanished. The wash of the boat hit the rocks outside. They could hear the swell it made splashing noisily against the jetty.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Vanni said again and withdrew his arm. ‘I’m being presumptuous.’

  Paolo lit a match and held it between the two of them, then said, ‘I’ve never … Never been with a girl. Or a man. It didn’t happen. It didn’t feel right.’

  Vanni nodded and there was a brief, wry smile.

  ‘Ah. Well I went to university. It was hard not to get your hands dirty, as it were.’ He leaned on the table, elbows against the wood, hands beneath his chin. ‘Does it feel right now?’

  The match burned down to his fingers. He cried and dropped it. Vanni took out his lighter and got the lamp going again.

  He looked older, sadder sometimes now.

  ‘We should go upstairs,’ Paolo said.

  ‘You can’t run from your feelings. From what you are. It just follows you. Trust me. I know.’

  ‘I’m scared. Your sister scares me. You too. In a different way.’

  Vanni got to his feet and winced at the pain from the wound.

  ‘We need to make the most of the time we have. It doesn’t come round twice. I’m going to take a shower. If you want I’ll come to your room. Maybe just to talk.’ He held out his hand. ‘If you don’t then we shake as friends and I’ll never mention this again.’

  Vanni Artom’s hand felt warm and gentle, not that of a warrior though Paolo believed he could feel the start of the hard skin that always came from labouring on the Jacquard loom.

  The engine outside began to fade. It was headed for San Pietro and once again Paolo Uccello wondered about those words he’d spoken in haste as they dragged Isabella Finzi’s sad and mangled body out of the grey water. One rash outburst and his life was changed.

  ‘Well then,’ Vanni held out his arms. ‘Now I go upstairs. Will you help me, Paolo? With this st
upid leg it’s not easy getting up there on my own.’

  The porter who let Mika Artom into the Hotel Gioconda looked scared as hell. She wondered if he was acting under duress. It wouldn’t have been beyond Trevisan. Or her if she was running this cell. On occasion you had to be as hard on your allies as your enemy. There were times when conscience needed to take a back seat.

  A skinny, sick-looking man who might have been close to retirement, he wore a dark, grubby uniform and the downtrodden look of a hotel lackey confined to the back of the house.

  ‘Toni,’ she said when she showed up at the staff entrance bang on eight as Trevisan had commanded. ‘I’m the new girl.’

  He looked her up and down, shook his head, glanced at her fake ID, then checked her bag.

  ‘Shit. What kind of idiot are you? What’s this?’

  The gun. She took one everywhere when she was in the hills.

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘Sorry? You got to go through the guards to get into the ballroom. You think they wouldn’t notice this?’

  He put the bag in a cupboard and said she could pick it up on her way out if she wanted. Then nodded at the stairs.

  From what she’d heard the Gioconda had been one of the finest hotels in Venice until the Crucchi took over. Behind what she assumed to be a glorious façade it looked a dump. Peeling paint on the walls, cracked plaster, dust and cobwebs hanging from the ceiling of the staff quarters. The smells coming from the kitchen were good though. Wartime rationing didn’t seem to stretch to the Nazis and their Fascist friends. Trevisan had told her: they had the pick of the fruits of the lagoon, from the vegetables on Sant’Erasmo to wild fowl shot around Torcello and Burano, the best of the fish and seafood landed in the south by the depleted fleet based in Chioggia.

  ‘I said I’m sorry. Do I see you tomorrow?’

  He grunted half a laugh.

  ‘Not a chance. You make your own way in. The guy who’s portering … he’s a halfwit. Churchill could walk through that door and he wouldn’t bat an eyelid.’

  So you won’t be here when the attack begins, she thought. Good timing.

  ‘I could really use some food. It’s cold.’