My way was to the left, towards the church. He was walking to the right. In a moment or two he might turn away altogether, and disappear. It was a moment of decision.You will say I made the wrong one. I turned to the right, I followed him.
It was a strange and mad pursuit. I had never done such a thing in my life before. I could not help myself. He trotted ahead, his footsteps loud and clear, along the tortuous narrow passages winding in and out beside silent, dark canals, and there was no other sound at all except his footsteps and the rain, and he never once looked back to see who followed him. Once or twice I slipped: he must have heard me. On, on he went, over bridges, into the shadows, his umbrella bobbing up and down above his head, and a glimpse of his white mess jacket showing now and then as he lifted the umbrella higher. And the rain still sluiced from the roofs of the silent houses, down to the cobbles and the pavings below, down to the Styx-like canals.
Then I missed him. He had turned a corner sharply. I began to run. I ran into a narrow passage, where the tall houses almost touched their neighbours opposite, and he was standing in front of a great door with an iron grille before it, pulling a bell.The door opened, he folded his umbrella and went inside.The door clanged behind him. He must have heard me running, he must have seen me brought up short when I turned the corner into the passage. I stood for a moment staring at the iron grille above the heavy oak door. I looked at my watch: it wanted five minutes to midnight. The folly of my pursuit struck me in all its force. Nothing had been achieved but to get very wet, to have caught a chill in all probability, and to have lost my way.
I turned to go, and a figure stepped out of a doorway opposite the house with the grille and came towards me. It was the man in the white mackintosh and the broad-brimmed trilby hat.
He said, with a bastard American accent, ‘Are you looking for somebody, signore?’
4
I ask you, what would you have done in my position? I was a stranger in Venice, a tourist. The alleyway was deserted. One had read stories of Italians and vendettas, of knives, of stabs in the back. One false move, and this might happen to me.
‘I was taking a walk,’ I replied, ‘but I seem to have missed my way.’
He was standing very close to me, much too close for comfort. ‘Ah! you missa your way,’ he repeated, the American accent blending with music-hall Italian. ‘In Venice, that happens all the time. I see you home.’
The lantern light above his head turned his face yellow under the broad-brimmed hat. He smiled as he spoke, showing teeth full of gold stoppings. The smile was sinister.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but I can manage very well.’
I turned and began to walk back to the corner. He fell into step beside me.
‘No trouble,’ he said, ‘no trouble at all-a.’
He kept his hands in the pockets of his white mackintosh, and his shoulder brushed mine as we walked side by side. We moved out of the alleyway into the narrow street by the side-canal. It was dark. Drips of water fell from the roof-gutters into the canal.
‘You like Venice?’ he asked.
‘Very much,’ I answered; and then - foolishly, perhaps - ‘It’s my first visit.’
I felt like a prisoner under escort. The tramp-tramp of our feet echoed in hollow fashion. And there was no one to hear us. The whole of Venice slept. He gave a grunt of satisfaction.
‘Venice very dear,’ he said.‘In the hotels, they robba you always. Where are you staying?’
I hesitated. I did not want to give my address, but if he insisted on coming with me what could I do?
‘The Hotel Byron,’ I said.
He laughed in scorn. ‘They putta twenty per cent on the bill,’ he said. ‘You ask for a cup of coffee, twenty per cent. It’s always the same. They robba the tourist.’
‘My terms are reasonable,’ I said. ‘I can’t complain.’
‘Whatta you pay them?’ he asked.
The cheek of the man staggered me. But the path by the canal was very narrow, and his shoulder still touched mine as we walked. I told him the price of my room at the hotel, and the pension terms. He whistled.
‘They take the skin off your back,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow you senda them to hell. I find you little apartment. Very cheap, very OK.’
I did not want a little apartment. All I wanted was to be rid of the man, and back in the comparative civilization of the Piazza San Marco. ‘Thank you,’ I replied, ‘but I’m quite comfortable at the Hotel Byron.’
He edged even closer to me, and I found myself nearer still to the black waters of the canal. ‘In little apartment,’ he said, ‘you do as you like-a. You see your friends. Nobody worry you.’
‘I’m not worried at the Hotel Byron,’ I said.
I began to walk faster, but he kept pace with me, and suddenly he withdrew his right hand from his pocket and my heart missed a beat. I thought he had a knife. But it was to offer me a tattered packet of Lucky Strikes. I shook my head. He lit one for himself.
‘I finda you little apartment,’ he persisted.
We passed over a bridge and plunged into yet another street, silent, ill-lit, and as we walked he told me the names of people for whom he had found apartments.
‘You English?’ he asked. ‘I thought-a so. I found apartment last year for Sir Johnson. You know Sir Johnson? Very nice man, very discreet. I find apartment too for film-star Bertie Poole.You know Bertie Poole? I save him five hundred thousand lire.’
I had never heard of Sir Johnson or Bertie Poole. I became more and more angry, but there was nothing I could do. We crossed a second bridge, and to my relief I recognized the corner near the restaurant where I had dined. The canal here formed, as it were, a bay, and there were gondolas moored side by side.
‘Don’t bother to come any further,’ I said. ‘I know my way now.’
The unbelievable happened.We had turned the corner together, marching as one man, and then, because the narrow path could not hold us two abreast, he dropped a pace behind, and, in doing so, slipped. I heard him gasp, and a second later he was in the canal, the white mackintosh splaying about him like a canopy, the splash of his great body rocking the gondolas. I stared for a moment, too surprised to take action. And then I did a terrible thing. I ran away. I ran into the passage that I knew would lead me finally into the Piazza San Marco, and, when I came to it, walked across it briskly, and so past the Doge’s palace and back to my hotel. I encountered no one. As I said before, the whole of Venice slept. At the Hotel Byron, Prince Hal was yawning behind the desk. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he took me up in the lift. As soon as I entered my room I went straight to the wash-basin and took the small bottle of medicinal brandy with which I invariably travelled. I swallowed the contents at a single draught.
5
I slept badly and had appalling dreams, which did not surprise me. I saw Poseidon, the god Poseidon, rising from an angry sea, and he shook his trident at me, and the sea became the canal, and then Poseidon himself mounted a bronze horse, the bronze horse of Colleoni, and rode away, with the limp body of Ganymede on the saddle before him.
I swallowed a couple of aspirin with my coffee, and rose late. I don’t know what I expected to see when I went out. Knots of people reading newspapers, or the police - some intimation of what had happened. Instead, it was a bright October day, and the life of Venice continued.
I took a steamer to the Lido and lunched there. I deliberately idled away the day at the Lido in case of trouble. What was worrying me was that, should the man in the white mackintosh have survived his ducking of the night before and bear malice towards me for leaving him to his plight, he might have informed the police - perhaps hinting, even, that I had pushed him in. And the police would be waiting for me at the hotel when I returned.
I gave myself until six o’clock. Then, a little before sunset, I took the steamer back. No cloudbursts tonight. The sky was a gentle gold, and Venice basked in the soft light, painfully beautiful.
I entered the hotel and a
sked for my key. It was handed to me by the clerk with a cheerful, ‘Buona sera, signore,’ together with a letter from my sister. Nobody had inquired for me. I went upstairs and changed, came down again, and had dinner in the hotel restaurant. The dinner was not in the same class as the dinner in the restaurant the two preceding nights, but I did not mind. I was not very hungry. Nor did I fancy my usual cigar. I lit a cigarette instead. I stood for about ten minutes outside the hotel, smoking and watching the lights on the lagoon. The night was balmy. I wondered if the orchestra was playing in the piazza, and if Ganymede was serving drinks. The thought of him worried me. If he was in any way connected with the man in the white mackintosh, he might suffer for what had happened.The dream could have been a warning - I was a great believer in dreams. Poseidon carrying Ganymede astride his horse . . . I began to walk towards the Piazza San Marco. I told myself I would just stand near the church and see if both orchestras were playing.
When I came to the piazza I saw that all was as usual. There were the same crowds, the same rival orchestras, the same repertoires played against each other. I moved slowly across the piazza towards the second orchestra, and I put on my dark glasses as a form of protection. Yes, there he was. There was Ganymede. I spotted his brush of light hair and his white mess jacket almost immediately. He and his swarthy companion were very busy. The crowd around the orchestra was thicker than usual because of the warm night. I scanned the audience, and the shadows behind the colonnade.There was no sign of the man in the white mackintosh. The wisest thing, I knew, was to leave, return to the hotel, go to bed, and read my Chaucer.Yet I lingered. The old woman selling roses was making her rounds. I drew nearer. The orchestra was playing the theme-song from a Chaplin film.Was it Limelight? I did not remember. But the song was haunting, and the violinist drew every ounce of sentiment from it. I decided to wait until the end of the song and then return to the hotel.
Someone snapped his fingers to give an order, and Ganymede turned to take it. As he did so he looked over the heads of the seated crowd straight at me. I was wearing the dark glasses, and I had a hat. Yet he knew me. He gave me a radiant smile of welcome, and ignoring the client’s order darted forward, seized a chair, and placed it beside an empty table.
‘No rain tonight,’ he said. ‘Tonight everybody is happy. A curaçao, signore?’
How could I refuse him, the smile, the almost pleading gesture? If anything had been wrong, if he had been anxious about the man in the white mackintosh, surely, I thought, there would have been some sort of hint, some warning glance? I sat down. A moment later he was back again with my curaçao.
Perhaps it was more potent than the night before, or perhaps, in my disturbed mood, it had a greater effect on me. Whatever it was, the curaçao went to my head. My nervousness vanished. The man in the white mackintosh and his evil influence no longer troubled me. Perhaps he was dead. What of it? Ganymede remained unharmed. And to show his favour he stood only a few feet away from my table, hands clasped behind his back, on the alert to serve my instant whim.
‘Do you never get tired?’ I said boldly.
He whisked away my ash-tray and flicked the table.
‘No, signore,’ he answered, ‘for my work is a pleasure. This sort of work.’ He gave me a little bow.
‘Don’t you go to school?’
‘School?’ He jerked his thumb in a gesture of dismissal. ‘Finito, school. I am a man. I work for my living. To keep my mother and my sister.’
I was touched. He believed himself a man. And I had an instant vision of his mother, a sad, complaining woman, and of a little sister. They all of them lived behind the door with the grille.
‘Do they pay you well here in the café?’ I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘In the season, not so bad,’ he said, ‘but the season is over. Two more weeks, and it is finished. Everyone goes away.’
‘What will you do?’
He shrugged again.
‘I have to find work somewhere else,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I go to Rome. I have friends in Rome.’
I did not like to think of him in Rome - such a child in such a city. Besides, who were his friends?
‘What would you like to do?’ I inquired.
He bit his lips. For a moment he looked sad. ‘I should like to go to London,’ he said. ‘I should like to go to one of your big hotels. But that is impossible. I have no friends in London.’
I thought of my own immediate superior, who happened to be a director, amongst his other activities, of the Majestic in Park Lane.
‘It might be arranged,’ I said, ‘with a little pulling of strings.’
He smiled, and made an amusing gesture of manipulating with both hands. ‘It is easy, if you know how,’ he said, ‘but if you don’t know how, better to . . .’ and he smacked his lips and raised his eyes. The expression implied defeat. Forget about it.
‘We’ll see,’ I said. ‘I have influential friends.’
He made no attempt to seize advantage.
‘You are kind to me, signore,’ he murmured, ‘very kind indeed.’
At that moment the orchestra stopped, and as the crowd applauded he clapped with them, his condescension perfect.
‘Bravo . . . bravo . . .’ he said. I almost wept.
When later I paid my bill, I hesitated to over-tip in case he was offended. Besides, I did not want him to look upon me merely as a tourist client. Our relationship went deeper.
‘For your mother and your little sister,’ I said, pressing five hundred lire into his hand, seeing, in my mind’s eye, the three of them tip-toeing to Mass in St Mark’s, the mother voluminous, Ganymede in his Sunday black, and the little sister veiled for her first Communion.
‘Thank you, thank you, signore,’ he said, and added, ‘A domani.’
‘A domani,’ I echoed, touched that he should already be looking forward to our next encounter. As for the wretch in the white mackintosh, he was already feeding the fishes in the Adriatic.
The following morning I had a shock. The reception clerk telephoned my room to ask whether I would mind leaving it vacant by midday. I did not know what he meant. The room had been booked for a fortnight. He was full of excuses. There had been a misunderstanding, he said; this particular room had been engaged for many weeks, he thought the travel agent had explained the fact. Very well, I said, huffed, put me somewhere else. He expressed a thousand regrets. The hotel was full. But he could recommend a very comfortable little flat that the management used from time to time as an annexe. And there would be no extra charge. My breakfast would be brought to me just the same, and I should even have a private bath.
‘It’s very upsetting,’ I fumed. ‘I have all my things unpacked.’
Again a thousand regrets.The porter would move my luggage. He would even pack for me. I need not stir hand or foot myself. Finally I consented to the new arrangement, though I certainly would not permit anyone but myself to touch my things. Then I went downstairs and found Prince Hal, with a barrow for my luggage, awaiting me below. I was in a bad humour, with my arrangements upset, and quite determined to refuse the room in the annexe on sight, and demand another.
We skirted the lagoon. Prince Hal trundling the baggage, and I felt something of a fool stalking along behind him, bumping into the promenaders, and cursed the travel agent who had presumably made the muddle about the room in the hotel.
When we arrived at our destination, though, I was obliged to change my tune. Prince Hal entered a house with a fine, even beautiful façade, whose spacious staircase was spotlessly clean. There was no lift, and he carried my luggage on his shoulder. He stopped on the first floor, took out a key, fitted it to the lefthand door, and threw it open. ‘Please to enter,’ he said.
It was a charming apartment, and must have been at some time or other the salon of a private palazzo.The windows, instead of being closed and shuttered like the windows in the Hotel Byron, were wide open to a balcony, and to my delight the balcony looked out upo
n the Grand Canal. I could not be better placed.
‘Are you sure,’ I inquired, ‘that this room is the same price as the room in the hotel?’
Prince Hal stared. He obviously did not understand my question.
‘Please?’ he said.
I left it. After all, the reception clerk had said so. I looked about me. A bathroom led out of the apartment.There were even flowers by the bed.
‘What do I do about breakfast?’ I asked.
Prince Hal pointed to the telephone. ‘You ring,’ he said, ‘they answer below. They bring it.’ Then he handed over the key.
When he had gone I went once more to the balcony and looked out. The canal was full of bustle and life. All Venice was below me. The speed-boats and the vaporetti did not worry me, the changing animated scene was one of which I felt I could never grow tired. Here I could sit and laze all day if I so desired. My luck was incredible. Instead of cursing the travel agent I blessed him. I unpacked my things for the second time in three days, but this time, instead of being a number on the third floor of the Hotel Byron, I was lord and master of my own minute palazzo. I felt like a king. The great Campanile bell sounded midday and, since I had breakfasted early, I was in the mood for more coffee. I lifted the telephone. I heard a buzz in answer, and then a click. A voice said, ‘Yes?’
‘Café complet,’ I ordered.
‘At once,’ replied the voice.Was it . . . could it be . . . that too-familiar American accent?
I went into the bathroom to wash my hands, and when I returned there was a knock at the door. I called out, ‘Avanti!’ The man who bore in the tray was not wearing a white mackintosh or a trilby hat. The light-grey suit was carefully pressed. The terrible suède shoes were yellow. And he had a piece of sticking plaster on his forehead. ‘What did I tell you?’ he said. ‘I arrange-a everything. Very nice. Very OK.’
6
He put the tray down on the table near the window and waved his hand at the balcony and the sounds from the Grand Canal.
The Breaking Point: Short Stories Page 12