The Garden of Angels

by David Hewson

  Chiara stopped work immediately. She had a bottle of good Franciacorta stolen when a friend of hers had helped himself to the goods in the Gioconda as the Germans fled.

  They drank it outside in the garden, listening to the goldcrests and the cheers from distant houses. Chiara said the birds were singing more loudly and he believed her too, ridiculous as that seemed.

  ‘You should marry again,’ he said and realized immediately that was the drink.

  ‘Me?’ She waved her glass at him, amused. ‘No. I’m done with men. You’re the one who needs to find yourself a smart, young wife. Then, with your charm and good business sense, you can bring in the sales.’

  ‘Jews being good at commerce,’ he said, and there was the wine again.

  She stared at him and for once there was no warmth in her eyes.

  ‘Why do you say such things? You’re Paolo Uccello. A Venetian. A good young fellow who’s come through hard times. Call yourself another name and you invite attention. There are partisans fighting among themselves out there. The relatives of some of those who were shot in San Pietro are no fans of a brother and sister called Vanni and Mika Artom. They think their kin never deserved to die for what others did. Put the past behind you, Paolo. Go out there, find us more work. I’ll train us new weavers. There’s our future. Bright and clear. Unless you have a better idea?’

  The commissions came sporadically at first, but turned into a steady stream when he started to go out into the city and show their wares. The Veneto wealthy were willing to spend their money now the Germans had gone. All the same he couldn’t forget Mika. So, in a sleight of hand he suspected Chiara knew about all along, he engineered a sales trip to Milan.

  On the free Sunday he took the train to Turin and looked around his old neighbourhood, banging on the doors of families the Artoms used to know.

  When the seventh visit produced the same, a set of strangers shaking their heads, he made contact with the local rabbi who’d returned from exile in Spain. Quite why he didn’t know – perhaps it was concern about Chiara’s reaction – but he posed as a friend of a Jewish family who’d vanished in the war. His own he knew were all dead. Someone in their circle must have survived, surely. That miserable afternoon in the home of the apologetic rabbi told him otherwise. It was as if the realization that the war was lost made the murderers of the Nazis and the Black Brigades more bloodthirsty than ever. Even the wife and daughters of the traitor Salvatore Bruno were taken after Mika killed him. They were raped, robbed and shot screaming in the hills.

  When he returned he brought back a folder full of orders and some wine and local biscotti for Chiara, who was now back in her own apartment near San Francesco della Vigna. She went through his job book, gasping at the numbers, saying they’d need to recruit and train yet more weavers and work shifts to meet demand.

  Then, ever observant, she asked him what else he’d found on his travels.

  ‘Only that the Artom family are dead, every last one of them,’ he said with a heavy heart.

  Chiara kissed him once on the cheek, the quick peck of a loving aunt, comforting a hurt child.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Paolo. You must mourn them, naturally. But it’s the living we must think of first. They have much to do.’

  Three years later a young woman accountant called Maria Ricci was summoned from Rome by the company’s bank and asked to put the fast-growing company straight with its books which were, she said on her first day, more chaotic than any she’d ever seen. Her candour and strong will reminded him of his sister. When he began to show her round the city and take her to the beaches of the Lido, she stirred in him an interest outside accounting procedures, velvet, looms and commerce. The past, the experiments, the doubts, were forgotten in the whirlwind of a sudden and quite unexpected romance. He proposed at the foot of the Eiffel Tower feeling a little foolish and one year later they were married in the splendour of the Frari, Maria’s parents looking on proudly, and always sympathetic to the loss of his own in the war.

  Being wed suited him. It was the emotional anchor he needed, one that confirmed his identity. How could he now tell anyone he was a fugitive Jewish partisan from Turin? Who would believe him? Even his accent had adapted to the rougher tones of the lagoon. Nor did people wish to revive memories of the past. Maria’s father was a Roman banker who never once spoke about what he did under Mussolini. Still, he had access to sources of finance that the fast-growing weaving company could never have found on its own, and endless contacts throughout Europe.

  Five years later the House of Uccello was established internationally, with agents in New York, London and Tokyo, their luxury fabrics travelling a world fast putting to one side the calamity of war, thinking only of the bright and peaceful future that lay ahead. The company had long outgrown the Giardino degli Angeli which was sold to the city for a pittance since no one else wanted it. A growing army of weavers, women mainly, trained by Chiara personally, assembled in new workshops in Santa Croce and Giudecca. Buoyed by rising profits and with a little help from Maria’s father the couple bought the freehold for a rundown and historically unimportant palazzo called the Colombina on the Grand Canal between the Scalzi and the Rialto bridges.

  A decade after the war came to a close, Venice was celebrating liberation with a holiday. Parties in the street. Wreaths for the fallen. A plaque had been unveiled to the victims of the Nazis on the campanile in San Pietro, not that he’d been able to go there to witness the ceremony. The memories remained too sharp, too painful.

  Instead that morning Maria had told him the news they’d been praying for. She was pregnant. Paolo Uccello kissed her over the breakfast table in the room by the canal which, after their own quarters, was the first they’d renovated.

  One hour later the post arrived and with it a letter from a man with a task he’d placed at the back of his mind. The private detective in Milan hired years before with a single mission.

  He read it, kissed Maria again then apologized. There was a sudden sales trip he needed to make. To Lausanne, by car he thought, since he might check out a few places for family holidays by the lake along the way.

  The puzzled look in her eyes left him guilty. He’d never lied to her before and never would again if he could help it. But she demurred, naturally.

  The wartime gun he’d bought from a shady dealer in Mestre was still in the locked bottom drawer of the desk in the private study he’d created for himself upstairs in the mansard.

  Just after four the following morning he got his car out of the garage the Fascists had built at Piazzale Roma and set off north.

  Over the years he’d made discreet inquiries about events that winter, asking round, hunting for information. One important source turned out to be a retired cardiologist from Giovanni e Paolo, a secret friend to both Aldo Diamante and the priest Garzone. He’d provided plenty of insight into the pair, including details of Diamante’s determined state of mind and the conversations they’d had towards the end.

  Finding Luca Alberti was a much more desperate effort to quell his conscience that he’d undertaken before Maria came along, when the memory of his sister and the sacrifice of the real Paolo Uccello continued to itch like open wounds.

  There’d been recriminations aplenty after Venice fell to the liberating Allies. No one could stop them. The Germans had been taken as prisoners of war, some to face trials, others to be shipped home to freedom. For the Venetians who’d collaborated there was no such escape. The leaders of the local Fascist government had been rounded up for brief show trials, some executed in the public square in Mestre. Their names and their infamy were recorded in the newly liberated newspapers. Alberti’s wasn’t there and when he set a local investigator on the case the word came back: the man who’d killed his sister and his friend fled the city days before it fell, where no one knew.

  Ten hours after leaving Venice in his speedy Lancia Appia convertible, he drove down from the snow-covered heights of the Alps into Montreux. The lake
ran out in front shining in the afternoon sun like an inland sea, steamers criss-crossing the water. The address he had was the Auberge Raveyres, Caux. It turned out to be a modest two-storey, wooden hotel high up in the hills, a short way along from the mountain train that climbed through the peaks soaring above the town.

  There was a ‘closed’ sign by the car park. When he drove in a woman in a pink, nylon housecoat came out immediately and began to speak French he couldn’t understand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taking out his small case. ‘I’m from Italy.’

  ‘Allora,’ she said. ‘In that case I’ll get my husband.’

  She looked about thirty-five, rural, red-cheeked, handsome and happy. As she wandered back to the house calling, ‘Ettore, Ettore,’ a young girl of four or so ran out laughing and threw her tiny arms around the woman’s knees.

  Ettore Romano.

  That was the name the detective had come up with.

  He’d only seen him the day Mika died, and then briefly. A face in the crowd. Not someone he could easily recognize nearly twelve years on, or so he expected. But when the man came out, washing his hands as if he’d been busy in the kitchen, a sturdy, fit-looking fellow, middle-aged but with the gait and confidence of a cop, he knew.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he asked, looking puzzled.

  ‘I came from Venice. We need to talk.’

  There was a long moment and he thought to himself, perhaps he should have done what Mika would in the circumstances. Just killed the bastard, there and then, no matter that his wife and kid were around.

  ‘Laura.’ The man who was Luca Alberti called out to his wife and said it would be a good idea if she took herself and Sophie, their daughter, into Montreux to pick up some supplies. The hotel would be opening for summer soon. There were some things he’d ordered. He’d sensed something. It was obvious.

  She looked puzzled but she soon left with the kid, driving an old Citroen van that had seen better days.

  ‘Nice machine,’ Alberti said, nodding at the Lancia. He’d noticed him thinking about their own decrepit vehicle. ‘Whatever business you’re in, friend, you’re doing better than me.’

  ‘My name’s Giovanni Artom. Twelve years ago you shot my sister in the back. You probably thought you’d killed me too.’

  Alberti blinked, nodded, looked around, grimaced.

  ‘Ah. I wondered how long it would be before someone came.’ He gestured at the hotel. ‘Come inside. I’ll make some coffee. Or a drink. You want a drink? Not wine. The Swiss wine’s shit. Nothing like as good as back home. The brandy though …’

  The old Citroen was gone, rattling down the rough dirt road. There was no one around. He opened the case and took out the gun.

  ‘I didn’t come here for a drink.’

  ‘Well,’ the man said, turning his back on him, walking nonchalantly for the door. ‘All the more for me.’

  The kitchen was huge, with commercial cookers and a gigantic fridge. Everything looked as if it hadn’t been used in ages.

  ‘We close for the winter. There’s no point in opening except Easter to the end of October. It’s a living. Just.’

  He took a bottle of white wine out of the fridge, got two glasses and gestured at the work table next to the sink.

  ‘You ran straight here from Venice? After the Germans lost?’

  Alberti shook his head.

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘That’s why I asked.’

  He took a gulp of wine and thought about his answer.

  ‘I wasn’t going to wait. The writing was on the wall. The place was crawling with partisans. Crawling with people who said they were partisans too, not that they ever did a thing. A few of them would string you up from a tree if someone said they saw you lighting a Nazi’s smoke.’

  ‘You did a lot more than that.’

  ‘True.’ He looked at the gun. ‘If you shoot me, a favour, please. My wife and kid will be back in an hour or so. Don’t let them find me here. There’s plenty of places in the hills.’

  Paolo shrugged and poured himself a glass anyway. The man across the table raised his in a silent toast, then narrowed his eyes and looked him up and down.

  ‘I was pretty sure it wasn’t you. When they came into that place and started shooting. Didn’t make sense at all. No partisan was going to walk round with an incriminating ID in his pocket. That wound on his leg seemed too fresh. Also …’ He squinted as if trying to remember. ‘I dealt with a few suicides back when I was in the police. I never saw anyone shoot themselves straight in the face like that. Just isn’t done. I’d seen the kid. I knew what he looked like. He wanted to make damned sure we couldn’t identify him. Did a pretty good job too. His face was a real mess. Still … if Oberg had still been alive I doubt you’d have got away with it. He was one smart guy. Anyway, they left it to me. When they turned suspicious I took in that woman who worked for him.’

  ‘Chiara? Chiara Vecchi?’

  ‘She said the Uccello kid had been taken hostage by those two wicked partisans from Turin. Maybe they’d killed him, dumped him in the lagoon. Maybe he’d got away. I didn’t believe a word but I wasn’t going to push it. We had corpses everywhere. Who needed one more? So I closed the case. I told the Crucchi the kid was either dead or missing and he was nothing special anyway, not someone to worry about.’

  Paolo stayed silent, toying with the gun.

  ‘You never knew she risked her neck saying that?’ Alberti asked. ‘Oh well. People don’t like talking about things sometimes. Plenty of reasons.’

  Still he kept on and on, as if this was a conversation he’d been holding in for years, waiting for the right person to come along and tell. The good deeds, naturally. About how he’d tried to warn off Aldo Diamante. The priest Garzone too. How neither of them took much notice. Any more than Mika that night he spotted her in the Gioconda and told her it was all a trap.

  ‘Thing is, Giovanni—’

  ‘Paolo. They call me Paolo Uccello now.’

  Alberti smiled and said, ‘So I’m not the only imposter round here. What I was going to say is … war’s like this road you find yourself trapped on and you can’t get off. You maybe get one choice at the beginning but by the time you realize it was on offer it’s gone. It makes us monsters. Some of us were monsters to begin with. Some of us just ordinary. So we’re ordinary monsters and maybe that’s worse. I don’t know. I went to work for the Crucchi because there didn’t seem anything else to do. I thought from time to time I could save a few people. Trouble is no one sees it that way, not when the chance is coming from a man like me. Diamante was never going to change who he was. He wasn’t going to bend. He was too proud. He hated us so much. Same with that priest in a way.’ He took another sip and stared across the table. ‘Same with your sister. Can’t help anyone if they won’t help themselves. So in the end you look after number one. I’m not saying I was a hero, even a little one.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I killed people when I had to. When it was that or get killed. No excuse. Just how it was. I’m not asking for forgiveness.’

  ‘I wasn’t offering it.’

  The gun. He hadn’t used one since that last time in the mountains with Mika. Alberti was looking at it, wondering.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you,’ he said getting up and dragging his chair along the floor.

  ‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’

  He laughed at that.

  ‘Don’t worry. The only weapon here’s the one you’ve got. I’ve seen enough of those damned things for one lifetime. Don’t want to see any more.’

  He put the chair against a set of tables by the gas hobs, then clambered up on it. There was a small cupboard at the very top over lines and lines of cooking pans. He opened it, took out a gilt cardboard box and blew off the dust as he came down again.

  ‘Here,’ he said, placing it on the table. ‘I kept it as a reminder of those days. Something I could look at when no one else is aroun
d. A way of keeping the bad things alive in my head because if you let them go you do no one any justice. Not Diamante. Not Garzone. Not your sister.’ He hesitated. ‘Go on. Take a look.’

  There was silver lettering on the lid: Uccello, Fine Weavers. Venice. A couple of moths flew out as he opened the thing.

  ‘Been a while,’ Alberti said. ‘Now I’ve got a daughter around. I don’t want her coming in and seeing me staring drunk and weeping at that.’

  Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, was a piece of fabric. Soprarizzo velvet from a Jacquard loom in the Giardino degli Angeli, the rampant lion of Venice repeated. One of the three he’d worked on under the tutelage of Chiara in the quiet days before the world fell.

  The background was barely recognizable, the shiny silk soiled with something dark and dense. Dried blood, so much of it the stain reached through the tissue to the lid.

  ‘After they shot those people in San Pietro … after I killed your sister … they called me back to San Marco. She’d found that evil bastard Salvatore Bruno and his little rat, Vitale. The woman got off lightly. A few bullets. Quick, I guess. Bruno …’ He closed his eyes. ‘I’ve seen a lot of things but nothing like that. Your sister carved him apart like he was a piece of meat. Couldn’t really call it stabbed. More like butchery. Then she stuffed this thing in his mouth. He’d had it made, special, for the night before. Gave some matching ones to the Germans as if it made them equal or something. That they’d look at a piece of velvet and think, OK, he can live. Him and his Jew family. They’re different. Fat chance.’

  Paolo Uccello ran his fingers across the stiff, stained fabric.

  ‘Why did you keep it?’

  He looked around the kitchen.

  ‘To remind me there’s nothing here I deserve.’ His voice had fallen a tone. ‘Not a wife who loves me and my little girl. Why else?’

  ‘You haven’t shown her? Told her who you really are?’