A Sea of Troubles

by Donna Leon

  Vittorio told Carlo to stay where he was and turn the engine on when he told him to, then went to the centre of the back deck and disappeared down the hatchway to the engine room. After a few minutes, he shouted up to Carlo, telling him to switch on the engine. The starter gave a dry click and failed to engage, so he turned it off and waited. Minutes passed. Signorina Elettra came to the door to ask what was wrong, but he smiled at her and said everything was fine, then waved her to the back of the boat, out of the way.

  Vittorio called out again, and this time when Carlo turned on the engine it caught on the first try and responded to each small increase or decrease of the throttle. Vittorio came out of the hatchway and back into the cabin, saying, ‘Fuel line, like I thought. All I had to do was . . .’ but he was interrupted by the sound of his telefonino. As he reached for it, he signalled for Carlo to leave the cabin.

  Carlo backed out, careful not to let the doors slam shut, and went towards the back of the boat, where he saw Elettra standing with her hands braced on the back railing, her face raised in the direction of the sun. The engine was still rumbling loudly, covering the sound of his approach, but when he came silently up behind her and put both of his hands on the hollows of her back just above her hips, she gave no sign of being surprised. Indeed, she leaned backwards slightly and into his body. He bent down and kissed the top of her head and buried his face in the explosion of curls. His eyes shut, he stood like that, rocking against her in a steady rhythm. He heard a low rumbling that had nothing to do with the motor and opened his eyes. Off to his left, the towers of the city, distantly visible that morning, had disappeared, blocked out by a low bank of clouds that had already enveloped Pellestrina and were now scuttling towards their boat.

  ‘Oh, Dio,’ he said, and at the shock in his voice she opened her eyes to see a dark wall tumbling towards them. Instinctively, he put his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest. He turned his head back towards the cabin: his uncle was still talking on the phone, eyes intent on the two of them and, beyond them, at the storm that approached with such savage speed.

  Vittorio said something else, flipped the phone shut, and put it back into the pocket of his jacket. Stiff armed, he pushed the door open and shouted to Carlo to come into the cabin.

  He moved away from Elettra and towards his uncle, and as he did, he felt the back of the boat rise up under his feet, as though some giant hand had lifted it from the water, helping him forward. He looked back and saw her, both hands firmly grasped to the railing.

  He pulled open the door. ‘What is it?’

  Rather than answer, his uncle reached out both hands and grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, pulling his face down closer to his own. ‘I told you she was trouble,’ he said. Once, twice, he jerked savagely at Carlo’s collar, and when the younger man tried to pull away, he yanked him even lower, closer. ‘Her boss is there, in the bar. They know about Bottin and they know about the phone call.’

  Utterly confused, Carlo demanded, ‘Who knows? The Finanza? They’ve always known. Why do you think they threw me out?’

  ‘No, not the Finanza, you fool,’ Vittorio shouted back at him, his voice raised against the wind that had begun to sweep from behind them, pushing the boat forward. ‘The police. Her boss, that commissario; he had the tape with him. He played it in the bar, and that drunk Pavanello told him it was Bottin you talked to.’ He released his hold on Carlo’s collar and swatted him away with the back of his hand, shouting, ‘They’d have to be idiots not to realize I killed them.’

  Ever since Carlo had told his family why he’d been dismissed from the Finanza, he’d half feared and half known his uncle would take some sort of revenge, but Vittorio’s bold-faced admission still shocked him. ‘Don’t say that,’ he protested. ‘I don’t want to know.’ Behind him, the cabin door banged open and shut repeatedly, and he felt rain on his shoulders.

  Vittorio waved towards the back of the boat. ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Carlo shouted.

  The wind and the pounding door erased some of Vittorio’s words, but still the rage propelling them was enough to alarm Carlo. ‘You knew where she worked. Her stupid cousin told everyone. I told you to stay away from her, but you knew better. What are we going to do about her now?’

  The wind raged at them, sweeping all thought and memory up into a whirlwind and tearing them away from Carlo and out to sea, leaving him with only the thought of Elettra. He wheeled out of the cabin and fought his way to the back of the boat; he put his arms around a shivering Elettra as the skies erupted and a sheet of rain washed across them.

  He staggered, freed one arm and grabbed at the railing. Unconscious of moving or of any decision to move, he tightened his left arm around her and half pulled, half steered her towards the cabin door. He shouldered it open, and together they crashed inside, then into the left side as a wave slammed into them from the right.

  Another wave hit the boat, knocking Elettra against Vittorio, but he did no more than flick her aside with his elbow and turn back to the tiller, both hands locked to the wheel. Carlo looked through the windscreen; the wipers slapped uselessly against the sheets of water that washed across it. In the darkness that had descended on them, the three searchlights were helpless, and he could make out nothing except the rain and the white menace of waves and spray.

  The noise pounded at them from every side, and suddenly the wind picked up volume, drowning out everything else. Carlo felt the small hairs at the back of his neck bristle, but he was aware of the sensation and aware of a cramp of fear even before he realized that the sudden increase in the sound of the wind was caused by the silence of the motor.

  He saw, but could not hear, Vittorio ramming his thumb on to the starter, his other palm flat against the panel to feel the vibrations if the motor came to life again. Repeatedly he pressed, released, pressed, and only once did Carlo feel a faint rhythmic throb under his feet. But it was momentary and gone almost before he was aware of it. Again, he watched that blunt thumb press and release and press again, and then his feet felt the motor come alive, churning out a staggered beat below them.

  Vittorio took his hand from the starter and put it back on the wheel. He rose on his toes for leverage and then brought all of his weight down to swing the wheel to the left. At one point, the wheel fought back and carried him half off the floor. Carlo pushed past a frozen Elettra and, placing both hands on one of the sprouting handles of the wheel, added his weight to his uncle’s. The boat responded, and he felt their weight shift as it followed the command of the rudder, turning heavily to the left.

  Carlo had no idea where they were or what his uncle intended to do. The young man gave no thought to the map, to Ca’ Roman or to the Porto di Chioggia, an open slip of water that would pull them out to the Adriatic and into its deadly waves. He braced his feet on either side of the wheel and together they pulled the boat even farther to the left. Vittorio removed his right hand from the wheel and shoved the throttle full forward. Through his feet, Carlo felt the throbbing of the motor increase, but his awareness of the world outside the boat was so confused that he could detect no alteration in the boat’s movements. Then, at the same instant he felt the motor die, the boat thundered to a stop, hurling him against one of the spokes of the tiller and his uncle on top of him. He looked up in time to see Elettra, who had been knocked against the wall by the original impact, ricochet backwards and through the cabin doors, out on to the deck. Then there was a shuddering crash, and the boat was suddenly still.

  Carlo shoved his uncle aside and lifted himself to his feet. Aware of pain in his left side, he was concerned only to follow Elettra. Again, when he moved forward, he felt the pain, but he ignored it as he pushed through the doors of the cabin. Outside, he found crashes of thunder, the groans of roaring wind and rain. In the light that spilled out from the cabin, he saw Elettra kneeling on the deck, already pulling herself to her feet. A wave broke over the back of the boat and swept forward, sla
pping her down again and swirling her up the deck until she banged against Carlo’s feet. He started to lean down to help her, but as he moved the pain caught inside him, and he froze in place, suddenly fearful for himself and, because of that, for her.

  As he looked down at her, helpless, time stopped. Elettra raised herself to one knee and, glancing up, saw him. With her left hand, she pushed her fingers through her hair, trying to sweep the tangle from her face, but it was sodden with rain and sea water, and she could do no more than shift it to one side. He remembered how, once, he had watched her sleep, her face half covered by her hair in much the same way – and then the cabin doors exploded against his back as Vittorio burst on to the deck.

  It happened so quickly that Carlo could not have stopped him even if he had not been frozen by the pain in his side and the fear of the greater pain he knew motion would bring. Vittorio swept down over Elettra, screaming at her, screaming words none of them could hear. He grabbed her tangled hair with his left hand, yanking her to one side, screaming down at her all the while. His right hand slipped inside his jacket and emerged, clasped around his gutting knife. He cocked his arm back across his body and, knuckles upwards, swiped at her, aiming for her face or her neck.

  Carlo moved before he thought. He braced one hand against the railing on the side of the boat and kicked forward, his aim commanded only by instinct. His boot caught his uncle’s forearm just as it crossed in front of his face, deflecting it upwards. The knife sliced through the sleeve of Vittorio’s jacket, opening his arm to the wrist, and then cut through the hair he still held tight in his other hand, just grazing Elettra’s scalp. The wind stole his scream, and the knife flew out of his hand to join it. From his other hand strands of Elettra’s hair danced wildly in the wind.

  Vittorio loosened his grip and the wind tore the hair away. He pulled his arm to his stomach, turned towards his nephew as though he meant to do him violence, but what he saw behind Carlo made him turn to the front of the boat and run to the prow. He didn’t hesitate an instant but leaped forward into the water, cradling his arm to himself as best he could. The wave broke across them, knocking Carlo first to the deck and then up against the listing side of the boat. Its retreat sucked him towards the back, but Elettra’s body blocked him, and they ended in a tangled mass, half in and half out of the cabin doorway, bodies entwined in a grotesque parody of the past.

  Again, instinct prevailed and he tried to get to his feet, succeeding only when Elettra knelt beside him and pried him from the deck. Speech rendered futile by noise, he grabbed her upper arm and started towards the prow, slowed by pain. Pushing, pulling, they hauled themselves to the pointed prow. He pushed her over, without a moment’s thought. The searchlights provided enough light to allow him to see her sink, then come bobbing up in the water directly in front of him. He jumped after her, sinking into water that came above his head. When he surfaced, he screamed her name – and felt fingers grab at his hair and tug at him, though he had lost all sense, all thought, all direction. His arms floated limp at his side, and he found that he could not kick his feet, lacked the strength to do anything but float in the wake of whatever hand it was that pulled at him. Something hit against his feet, and he felt mild irritation at the sensation. He was comforted by weightlessness, which removed the pain in his side; he didn’t want to have to swim or stand, when floating was so much easier, so painless.

  But the hand pulled at him, and he was powerless to resist it. When his feet touched bottom for an instant, the pain took this as a sign that it was safe to return. Stabbing, jabbing, cutting, it filled his side, bending him over until his feet floated free and his face plunged into the water. But the hand, relentless, grabbed at his hair again, jerking him sideways and forward, away from the pleasant safety of the deep water, the ease and weightless comfort it offered. He allowed himself to be pulled a metre forward through the water and then another, and then suddenly he could go no farther. Quite reasonably, he thought, he reached to place his right hand on the fingers that still tugged at him. He patted them once, twice, and then in his most reasonable voice, he said, ‘Thank you, but that’s enough.’ Like the tree in the uninhabited forest, his words went unheard, and then an enormous wave rolled across him.

  25

  LIKE A BEACHED whale, Brunetti lay on the sand, unable to move. He’d swallowed a great deal of water, and fierce coughing had exhausted him. He lay in the rain as waves came and flirted with his feet and legs, as if to suggest he stop lying there on the sand and come in and have a proper swim. Their solicitations went unheeded. Occasionally, and entirely without conscious thought, he clawed and pushed himself forward a few centimetres, away from the frolicsome waves.

  His panic diminished, then slowly left him as he lay there. The howling of the wind was no less fierce, the lash of the rain no less severe, but somehow the solidity beneath him, the safety of beach, sand, mother earth, lulled him into a sense of protected calm. His mind began to drift, and he found himself thinking that his jacket would have to be taken to the cleaners, was perhaps ruined entirely, and he minded that, for it was his best jacket, one he’d treated himself to when sent to Milan last year to testify, finally, in a court case concerning a murder that had been committed twelve years before. The thought passed through his mind that these were indeed strange thoughts to be entertaining in his present circumstances, and then he reflected upon his own ability to find these particular thoughts strange. How proud Paola, who always accused him of having a simple mind, would be when he told her of how very convoluted his thoughts had become, becalmed on a beach somewhere beyond Pellestrina. She’d mind about the jacket, too, he was sure; she’d always said it was the nicest one he had.

  He lay prone in the rain and thought of his wife, and after a time that thought led him to pull one knee, and then the other, under him, and then it helped prod him to his feet. He looked around and saw nothing; his hearing was still dulled by the wind and rain. He turned in the direction from which he thought he must have come, searching for some sign of the boat or the single spotlight that had still been ablaze when he leaped from the deck, but darkness was everywhere.

  He put his head back and yelled into the tempest, ‘Montisi, Montisi!’ When only the wind replied, he called again, ‘Paolo, Paolo!’ but still he heard no answer. He walked ahead a few steps, his hands stretched out in front of him like a blind man’s calling as he went. After a few moments, his left hand hit against something: a flat surface rising up in front of him. This must be the wall of the abandoned fort of Ca’ Roman, known to him only as a mark and a name on a map.

  He moved closer until his chest touched the wall, then he spread his arms to explore outwards on both sides. Sticking close to the wall, he moved slowly to the right, turning to the side so that he could use both hands to feel ahead of him.

  He heard a noise behind him and stopped, surprised, not by the noise itself so much as by the fact that he could hear it. He tried to empty his mind and listened afresh to the sound of the storm; after a time he grew certain that its sound was diminishing. Clearly, there, he heard what must be the crashing of a wave, the thunderous pelting of water on hard sand. As he listened, it seemed that the wind became still milder; as it decreased in intensity, he grew colder, though that might be nothing more than the passing of the dullness of shock. He untied the life jacket and let it fall to the ground.

  He took a few more steps, reaching ahead of him, fingers delicate as a snail’s antennae. Suddenly the surface disappeared beneath his left hand, and when he reached into the nothingness, he could feel the hard rectangularity surrounding a lintel or passageway. He outlined it, still unseeing, with the fingers of both hands and then placed a tentative foot into its centre, hunting for a step or stairway, either up or down.

  A low step carried his foot down. Propping both hands on what seemed to be the sides of a narrow passageway, he went down one, two, three steps until he felt a wider area beneath his carefully exploring foot.

  In the
silence, cut off from the sound of the wind, his other senses sprang to life, and he was overwhelmed by the stink of urine and mould and he knew not what else. Inside, away from the buffeting wind, he should have grown warmer, but if anything, he now felt far colder than he had outside, as though the silence gave penetrating force to both cold and humidity.

  He stood there, listening, focusing ahead of him on wherever this void would lead him, and backwards, up the steps and out into the diminishing storm. He moved to the right until he touched a wall, then turned and braced his back against it, comforted by stability. He stood like that for a long time until, glancing in what he thought was the direction of the opening, he saw light filtering in from the outside. He walked towards it, and when he stood in the glow it cast, he held his watch up to his face. Astonished to see that it was still only early evening, he moved closer to the now-illumined steps, drawn by the promise of light and by the silence that spilled down the steps.

  He emerged into splendour: to the west, the sun made its languorous way towards the horizon, dipping behind the scattered clouds the passing storm had forgotten to sweep away and dappling the still waters of the laguna with their reflection. He turned to the east and, not far removed from the coast, saw the rear edge of the storm, thrashing its way towards what was left of Yugoslavia, as if eager to see what sort of new damage it could take there.

  Brunetti was racked with a sudden chill as hunger, stress and the slow drop in temperature had their way with his body. He wrapped his arms around himself and moved forward. Again, he called Montisi’s name, and again he heard nothing in response. From what he could see, the land around him was surrounded on three sides by water with a thin trail of narrow beach leading off to the north. His recent study of the map of the laguna told his memory that this must be the sanctuary of Ca’ Roman, though whatever wildlife was meant to be protected here was nowhere in evidence, no doubt battered into flight or cover by the recent storm.