‘But we can’t go away!’ I cried.
The gondolier said nothing, but rowed with all his strength. Then he began to talk under his breath. ‘It was a good oar, too,’ I heard him mutter. Suddenly he left the poop, climbed over the cushions and sat down beside me.
‘When I found her,’ he whispered, ‘she wasn’t quite dead.’ I began to speak but he held up his hand.
‘She asked me to kill her.’
‘But, Mario!’
‘ “Before it comes back,” she said. And then she said, “it is starving, too, and it won’t wait... ’ Mario bent his head nearer but his voice was almost inaudible.
‘Speak up,’ I cried. The next moment I implored him to stop.
Mario clambered on to the poop.
‘You don’t want to go to the island now, signore?’
‘No, no. Straight home.’
I looked back. Transparent darkness covered the lagoon save for one shadow that stained the horizon black. Podolo... .
THREE, OR FOUR, FOR DINNER
It was late July in Venice, suffocatingly hot. The windows of the bar in the Hotel San Giorgio stood open to the Canal. But no air came through. At six o’clock a little breeze had sprung up, a feebler repetition of the mid-day sirocco, but in an hour it had blown itself out.
One of the men got off his high stool and walked somewhat unsteadily to the window.
‘It’s going to be calm all right,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll go in the gondola. I see it’s there, tied up at the usual post.’
‘As you please, Dickie,’ said his friend from the other stool.
Their voices proclaimed them Englishmen; proclaimed also the fact that they were good clients of the barman.
‘Giuseppe!’ called the man at the window, turning his eyes from the Salute with its broad steps, its mighty portal and its soaring dome back to the counter with the multi-coloured bottles behind it. ‘How long docs it take to row to the Lido?’
‘Sir?’
‘Didn’t you say you’d lived in England, Giuseppe?’
‘Yes, sir, eight years at the Hotel Metropole.’
‘Then why------?’
His friend intervened, pacifically, in Italian.
‘He wants to know how long it takes to row to the Lido.’
Relief in his voice, the barman answered, ‘That depends if you’ve got one oar or two.’
Two.
‘If you ask me,’ said Dickie, returning to his stool, ‘I don’t think Angclino, or whatever his damned name is, counts for much. It’s the chap in front who does the work.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the barman, solicitously. ‘But the man at the back he guide the boat, he give the direction.’
‘Well,’ said Dickie, ‘as long as he manages to hit the Lido... . We want to be at the Splendide by eight. Can we do it?’
‘Easily, sir, you have got an hour.’
‘Barring accidents.’
‘We never have accidents in Venice,’ said the barman, with true Italian optimism.
‘Time for another, Phil?’
‘Three’s my limit, Dickie.’
‘Oh, come on, be a man.’
They drank.
‘You seem to knew a lot,’ said Dickie more amiably to the barman. ‘Can you tell us anything about this chap who’s dining with us—Joe O’Kelly, or whatever his name is?’
The barman pondered. He did not want to be called over the coals a second time. ‘That would be an English name, sir?’
‘English! Good Lord!’ exploded Dickie. ‘Does it sound like English?’ ‘Well, now, as you say it, it does,’ remonstrated his companion. ‘Or rather Irish. But wait —here’s his card. Does that convey anything to you, Giuseppe?’
The barman turned the card over in his fingers. ‘Oh, now I see, sir — Giacomelli —il Conte Giacomclli.’
‘Well, do you know him?’
‘Oh yes, sir. I know him very well.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘He’s a nice gentleman, sir, very rich ...’
‘Then he must be different from the rest of your aristocracy,’ said Dickie, rather rudely. ‘I hear they haven’t two penny pieces to rub together.’
‘Perhaps he’s not so rich now,’ the barman admitted, mournfully. ‘None of us are. Business is bad. He is grand azionista — how do you say?’ he stopped, distressed.
‘Shareholder?’ suggested Philip.
‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Dickie, ‘I didn’t know you were so well up in this infernal language. You’re a regular Wop!’
The barman did not notice the interruption.
‘Yes, shareholder, that’s it,’ he was saying delightedly. ‘He is a great shareholder in a fabbrica di zucchero--’
‘Sugar-factory...’ explained Philip, not without complacence.
The barman lowered his voice. ‘But I hear they are . . He made a curious rocking movement with his hand.
‘Not very flourishing?’ said Philip.
The barman shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s what they say.’
‘So we mustn’t mention sugar,’ said Dickie, with a yawn. ‘Come on, Phil, you’re always so damned abstemious. Have another.’
‘No, no, really not.’
‘Then I will.’
Philip and even the barman watched him drink with awe on their faces.
‘But,’ said Philip as Dickie set down his glass, ‘Count Giacomclli lives in Venice, doesn’t he?’
‘Oh yes, sir. Usually he comes in here every night. But it’s four — five days now I do not sec him.’
‘Pity,’ said Philip, ‘we might have given him a lift. But perhaps he has a launch?’
‘I don’t think he’s using his launch now, sir.’
‘Oh well, he’ll fmd some way of getting there, you may be sure,’ said Dickie. ‘How shall we know him, Giuseppe?’
‘I expect you’ll see him double, my poor Dickie,’ remarked his friend.
The barman, with his usual courtesy, began replying to Dickie’s question.
‘Oh, he’s a common-looking gentleman like yourself, sir... .’
‘I, common?’
‘No,’ said the barman, confused. ‘I mean grande come lei—as tall as you.’
‘That’s nothing to go by. Has he a beard and whiskers and a moustache?’
‘No, he’s clean-shaven.’
‘Come on, come on,’ said Philip. ‘We shall be late, and perhaps he won’t wait for us.’
But his friend was in combative mood. ‘Damn it! how are we to dine with the chap if we don’t recognize him? Now, Giuseppe, hurry up; think of the Duce and set your great Italian mind working. Isn’t there anything odd about him? Is he cross-eyed?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Does he wear spectacles?’
‘Oh no, sir.’
‘Is he minus an arm?’
‘No, signore,' cried the barman, more and more agitated.
‘Can’t you tell us anything about him, except that he’s common-looking, like me?’
The barman glanced helplessly round the room. Suddenly his face brightened. ‘Ah, ecco. He limps a little.’
‘That’s better,’ said Dickie. ‘Come on, Philip, you lazy hound, you always keep me waiting.’ He got down from the stool. ‘See you later,’ he said over his shoulder to the barman. ‘Mind you have the whisky pronto. I shall need it after this trip.’
The barman, gradually recovering his composure, gazed after Dickie’s receding, slightly lurching figure with intense respect.
The gondola glided smoothly over the water towards the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, the slender campanile of which was orange with the light of the setting sun. On the left lay the Piazzetta, the two columns, the rich intricate stonework of St. Mark’s, the immense façade of the Ducal Palace, still perfectly distinct for all the pearly pallor in the air about them. But, as San Giorgio began to slide past them on the right, it was the view at the back of the gondola which engrossed Philip’s attention.
; There, in the entrance of the Grand Canal, the atmosphere was deepening into violet while the sky around the dome of the Salute was of that clear deep blue which, one knows instinctively, may at any moment be pierced by the first star. Philip, who was sitting on his companion’s left, kept twisting round to sec the view, and the gondolier, whose figure blocked it to some extent, smiled each time he did so, saying 'Bello, non è vero?' almost as though from habit.
Dickie, however, was less tolerant of his friend’s aesthetic preoccupations.
‘I wish to goodness you wouldn’t keep wriggling about,’ he muttered, sprawling laxly in the depths of the more comfortable scat. ‘You make me feel seasick.’
‘All right, old chap,’ said Philip, soothingly. ‘You go to sleep.’
Dickie hauled himself up by the silk rope which was supported by the brass silhouette of a horse at one end and by a small but solid brass lion at the other.
He said combatively: 'I don’t want to go to sleep. I want to know what we’re to say to this sugar-refining friend of yours. Supposing he doesn’t talk English? Shall we sit silent through the meal?’
‘Oh, I think all foreigners do.’ Philip spoke lightly; his reply was directed to the first of Dickie’s questions; it would have been obviously untrue as an answer to the second. ‘Jackson didn’t tell me; he only gave me that letter and said he was a nice fellow and could get us into palaces and so on that ordinary people don’t see.’
‘There are too many that ordinary people do sec, as it is, if you ask me,’ groaned Dickie. ‘For God’s sake don’t let him show us any more sights.’
‘He seems to be a well-known character,’ said Philip. ‘He’ll count as a sight himself.’
‘If you call a limping dago a sight, I’m inclined to agree with you,’ Dickie took him up crossly.
But Philip was unruffled.
‘I’m sorry, Dickie, but I had to do it —couldn’t ignore the letter, you know. We shall get through the evening somehow. Now, sit up and look at the lovely scenery. Cosa e questa isola?’ he asked the gondolier, indicating an island to the right that looked if it might be a monastery.
‘Manicomio,’ said the gondolier, with a grin. Then, as Philip looked uncomprehending, he tapped his forehead and smiled still more broadly.
‘Oh,’ said Philip, ‘it’s the lunatic asylum.’
‘I do wish,’ said Dickie, plaintively, ‘if you must show me things, you’d direct my attention to something more cheerful.’
‘Well, then,’ said Philip, ‘look at these jolly old boats. They’re more in your line.’
A couple of tramp-steamers, moored stem to stem, and, even in the fading twilight, visibly out of repair—great gangrenous patches of rust extending over their flanks — hove up on the left. Under the shadow of their steep sides the water looked oily and almost black.
Dickie suddenly became animated. ‘This reminds me of Hull,’ he exclaimed. ‘Good old Hull! Civilization at last! Nothing picturesque and old-world. Two ugly useful old ships, nice oily water and lots of foreign bodies floating about in it. At least,’ he said, rising unsteadily to his feet, ‘I take that to be a foreign body.’
‘Signore, signore!' cried the first gondolier, wamingly.
A slight swell, caused perhaps by some distant motor-boat, made the gondola rock alarmingly. Dickie subsided —fortunately, into his seat; but his hand was still stretched out, pointing, and as the water was suddenly scooped into a hollow, they all saw what he meant: a dark object showed up for an instant in the trough of the wave.
‘Looks like an old boot,’ said Philip, straining his eyes. ‘Cosa e, Angelino?'
The gondolier shrugged his shoulders.
‘Non so. Forse qualchegatto,' he said, with the light-hardheartedness with which Italians are wont to treat the death of domestic animals.
‘Good God, docs the fellow think I don’t know a cat when I see one?’ cried Dickie, who had tumbled to the gondolier’s meaning. ‘Unless it’s a cat that has been in the water a damned long time. No, it’s — its...’
The gondoliers exchanged glances and, as though by mutual consent, straightened themselves to row. ‘Etneglio andare, signori,’ said Angelino firmly.
‘What docs he say?’
‘He says we’d better be going.’
‘I’m not going till I’ve found out what that is,’ said Dickie obstinately. ‘Tell him to row up to it, Phil.’
Philip gave the order, but Angelino seemed not to understand.
‘Non e niente interesssante, niente interessante,’ he kept repeating stubbornly.
‘But it is interesting to me,’ said Dickie, who like many people could understand a foreign language directly his own wishes were involved. ‘Go to it! There!’ he commanded.
Reluctantly the men set themselves to row. As the boat drew up alongside, the black patch slid under the water and there appeared in its place a gleam of whiteness, then features —a forehead, a nose, a mouth... . They constituted a face, but not a recognizable one.
‘Ah, povero annegato,' murmured Angelino, and crossed himself.
The two friends looked at each other blankly.
‘Well, this has tom it,’ said Dickie, at last. ‘What arc we going to do now?’
The gondoliers had already decided. They were moving on.
‘Stop! Stop!’ cried Philip. ‘We can’t leave him like this.’ He appealed to the men. ‘Non si puo lasciarlo cosi.'
Angelino spread his hands in protest. The drowned man would be found by those whose business it was to patrol the waters. Who knew what he had died of? Perhaps some dreadful disease which the signori would catch. There would be difficulties with the police; official visits. Finally, as the Englishmen still seemed unconvinced, he added, ‘Anche fa sporca la gondola. Questo tappeto, signori, in ha costato piii die rnille duecento lire.'
Somewhat grimly Philip explained to Dickie this last, unanswerable reason for not taking the drowned man on board. ‘He will dirty the gondola and spoil the carpet, which cost twelve hundred lire.’
‘Carpet be damned!’ exclaimed Dickie. ‘I always told you dagoes were no good. Here, catch hold of him.’
Together they pulled the dead man into the boat, though not before Angelino had rolled back his precious carpet. And when the dead man was lying in the bottom of the boat, decently covered with a piece of brown water-proof sheeting, he went round with sponge and wash-leather and carefully wiped away every drop of water from the gunwale and its brass fittings.
Ten minutes sufficed to take them to the Lido. The little passeggiata that had started so pleasantly had become a funeral cortege. The friends hardly spoke. Then, when they were nearing the landing-stage and the ugly white hotel, an eyesore all the way across the lagoon, impended over them with its blazing lights and its distressing symmetry, Dickie said:
‘By Jove, we shall be late for that fellow.’
‘He’ll understand,’ said Philip. ‘It’ll be something to talk to him about.’
He regretted the words the moment they were out of his mouth: they sounded so heartless.
The landing-stage was almost deserted when the gondola drew up at the steps, but the aged, tottering and dirty rampino who hooked it in and held out his skinny hand for soldi, soon spread the news. While Philip was conferring with the gondoliers upon the proper course to be taken, a small crowd collected and gazed, expressionlessly but persistently, at the shapeless mound in the gondola. The rampino professed himself capable of keeping watch; the gondoliers declared they could not find a vigile unless they went together; they hinted that it might take some time. At last Dickie and Philip were free. They walked along the avenue under acacia trees stridently lighted by arc-lamps, towards the sea and the Hotel Splendide. As they looked back they saw that the little knot of spectators was already dispersing.
No, they were told: Count Giacomclli had not yet arrived. But that is nothing, smiled the maître d'hôtel; the Signore Conte is often late. Would the gentlemen take a cocktail while they
waited?
Dickie agreed with enthusiasm. ‘I think we’ve earned it,’ he said. ‘Think of it, but for us that poor chap would be floating about the lagoons till Doomsday and none of his dusky offspring know what had happened to him.’
‘Do you think they will now?’ asked Philip.
‘You mean ...? Oh, I think anyone who really knew him could tell.’
They were sitting at a table under the trees. The air was fresh and pleasant; the absence of mosquitoes almost miraculous. Dickie’s spirits began to rise.
‘I say,’ he said. ‘It’s damned dull waiting. He’s twenty minutes late. Where’s that boy?’
When a second round had been served, Dickie motioned the page to stay. Philip looked at him in surprise.
‘Listen,’ said Dickie, in a thick, excited undertone. ‘Wouldn’t it be a lark if we sent this lad down to the gondola and told him to ask the chap that’s resting inside to come and dine with us?’
‘A charming idea, Dickie, but I doubt whether they understand practical jokes in this country.’
‘Nonsense, Phil, that’s a joke that anyone could understand. Now, put on your thinking-cap and find the appropriate words. I’m no good; you must do it.’
Philip smiled.
‘We don’t want to be four at dinner, do we? I’m sure the Count wouldn’t like having to sit down with a —a drowned rat.’
‘That’s absurd; he may be a man of excellent family; it’s generally the rich who commit suicide.’
‘We don’t know that he did.’
‘No, but all that’s beside the point. Now just tell this boy to run down to the jetty, or whatever it is called, give our message and bring us back the answer. It won’t take him ten minutes. I’ll give him five lire to soothe his shattered nerves.’
Philip appeared to be considering it. ‘Dick, I really don’t think —a foreign country and all, you know... .’
The boy looked interrogatively from one to the other.
‘It’s a good idea,’ repeated Philip, ‘and I don’t want to be a spoilsport. But really, Dickie, I should give it up. The boy would be very scared, perhaps tell his parents, and then we might be mobbed and thrown into the Canal. It’s the kind of thing that gives us a bad name abroad,’ he concluded, somewhat pompously.
The Travelling Grave and Other Stories Page 4