by Tim Heald
No wonder the place made him sad.
But, and it was a big and significant but, she was a wonderful old thing. Bone structure, breeding, you could call it whatever you wanted, but La Serenissima had a quality that was unique. He loved her and always would even if she sank beneath the “drill” philosophy that had found such an eerie expression in the American presidential election of 2008. Venice could have been saved, but the world was not the place in which to perform such an operation. The world was about money and profit and economics. Venice was concerned with matters ethereal, and there was no fusion between the two points of view.
Bognor sighed and tied a desultory knot in his Apocrypha tie. He remained a jacket-and-collar sort of person with a striped signifier discreetly threaded at the neck. God knew why he bothered. Upbringing, background—yes; oh, and deception. Most people who wore striped-club or old-boy ties came from a striped-club, old-boy-tie background with all the baggage that was implied by such impedimenta. This didn’t apply to Simon. He was entitled to the tie and the background was his, but if you judged him by this carapace, you would be making a mistake. It was a mistake frequently made, but it was a mistake nonetheless. He wasn’t what he seemed.
Lunch at Montin with Dibdini. It would be like old times. Just the two of them. They had been lunching together at La Locanda Montin, hidden away behind its deliberately unobtrusive lantern, for longer than either man cared to admit. Both of them had become creatures of habit, which was something that seemed to Bognor to be a necessary concomitant of age. It was often suggested that one tended to be more Conservative as one got older, but the capital C was an irrelevance. It only counted insofar as it was a consequence of the lowercase article. The tendency not to tinker with anything if it worked, however imperfectly, was one that had become more pronounced as Bognor aged. So, of course, was the sense of having seen everything before. That was a product of years. Obviously. The longer one spent on Earth, the more chance one had of enduring repetition. This was true of big things and small. One day, England would win the Football World Cup. One day, World War III would break out. These were articles of Bognor’s belief.
So was the inevitability of Venice’s final demise. To think otherwise was to be a contemporary Canute. The sea would triumph just as the sea always did, and the great city would eventually sink beneath the waves, sooner rather than later if global warming was all it was cracked up to be. If he were a betting man, he would have checked the relative odds for the islands of the Venetian lagoon and Maldives. Smart money would be on Venice he reckoned, though the republic of Tuvalu might be worth a flutter. His affection for the city made this knowledge even more difficult to bear. Affection was too weak a word for what he felt, though. Like other Englishmen from Lord Byron and John Ruskin to John Julius Norwich, he felt passionately about Venice, even more so because he knew she was doomed. In that sense, she was more human than almost any other place he could think of.
“Penny for them,” said Monica, his wife, who had come into the piano nobile without his noticing.
“Nothing,” he lied absentmindedly.
“You don’t do nothing,” she said. “Buzz, buzz! Your thoughts may be bumping into one another and canceling one another out in all directions, but don’t tell me there’s a vacuum. I don’t believe it. Michael. You were thinking about Michael.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. He gave up on the tie he’d been trying to knot, unraveled it with a jerk and started out all over again. “Maybe I was thinking about Michael. I haven’t seen him for a year. Perhaps he’s changed.”
Lady Monica gave a subdued English version of what might otherwise have been a guffaw. The sound was derisive, disguised as a laugh but devoid of humor. It was also, if not quite ladylike, at least feminine. Discreet, therefore, but unmistakably scornful, not to say disbelieving. She did not believe much of what her husband said.
“Too late for him to change. Too late for any of us, as well you know.”
She liked Venice, too, but not as much as her husband. The city was essentially feminine, which meant that a woman like Monica was alert to Venice’s wiles, skeptical of her sophistry. She was also more of a fatalist than Simon. If it was written, then written it was, and no human agency could change it. If your name was on the bullet, then you had to bite on it. Nobody else had a chance. Monica was a realist and inclined to pessimism.
“He is him. You are you. Ça, c’est tout,” she said.
“Not necessarily,” said Bognor. “Nothing is what it seems. It’s like Conan Doyle said about the English countryside: happy, safe, smiling face, but actually she harbors more nefarious activity than the foulest urban sink or hellhole.”
“Whereas Venice, which seems so sinister and saturnine, is actually safe as houses.”
“You said it,” Bognor agreed. “But then when you start believing that, life has an unpleasant habit of biting you in the bum and calling your double bluff.”
“So,” she said, taking over the tie-knotting herself with a shake of the head and a not very convincing display of uxorious exasperation, “Venice seems criminal, but actually isn’t, but just when you become convinced that she’s all gaudy ostentation, she spews up a corpse.” She finished tying the knot in his gaudy striped tie and stepped back, smiling, to inspect her handiwork. “In a manner of speaking,” Bognor agreed, thanking her with a studiedly asexual peck on the cheek, “and Michael gives the impression of being a retired music master from a rather dim boarding preparatory school on the south coast of England.”
“Precisely,” she said, “and you think that tweedy exterior conceals a razor-sharp reality within. I, however, believe that the tweedy exterior conceals a tweedy interior. Just like you. It’s part of the reason you’re so attached to each other.”
He made as if to cuff her. Her teasing was playful, but not entirely so; his response likewise. She was fond of him, very. But she was not convinced that he was any good at his job, much less that he deserved his knighthood. Feet of clay, which didn’t mean to say she didn’t love him. In fact, if he was as good as was sometimes alleged, she wouldn’t have married him in the first place, and she certainly wouldn’t have stayed with him for most of their natural adult lives.
“I’m running late,” he said. “I’ll see you in the Frari behind the altar around three fifteen.” And he gave her another perfunctory kiss and left, heading for luncheon at La Locanda Montin.
3
“Buon giorno, Fred.”
Bognor spoke Italian the way he spoke most foreign languages. He wished to communicate; he wished to appear friendly; he did not want to compromise his Englishness. Therefore, he adopted a Churchillian style with little or no concession to accent and a slight tendency to bombast. He liked being abroad; he liked foreigners; but he was true British through and through. He didn’t believe in assimilation, inclining instead to difference. Nevertheless, he was extremely well disposed.
Hence “Buon giorno, Fred.”
“Buon giorno, signore,” said Fred. Fred was part of the scenery and always had been. He almost certainly wasn’t called Fred, but that was what Bognor had originally christened him, and Michael had agreed, and Fred had entered into the joke if indeed it was a joke for it had become accepted and therefore natural. Fred had wispy white whiskers and wore a crumpled off-white linen jacket in which he appeared to sleep. His black tie was gray with age and gravy. Or ragù.
“Negroni?” asked Fred as Sir Simon entered the restaurant.
“Mille grazie,” said Bognor, knowing that Dibdini would already be sitting behind one. They always began with Negronis, named after the count who had invented them and who had died from a surfeit at a disgracefully tender age: Campari, gin, a slice of orange, a dash of soda. That was it. Maybe there was a little of some other kind of vermouth. He wasn’t sure, but although the cocktails were lethal and should have rendered them incapable, they only made them mellow. Just the one. Which didn’t prevent them from drinking wine with the meal and maybe hav
ing some sort of digestivo with the coffee. One did. One was abroad. With a friend. And Fred made them. His probably weren’t the same as the one the count asked for when he wanted his americano strengthened that day in Florence; nor the one he bottled in the family distillery in Treviso where they played rugby, nor the one Orson Welles made popular when writing to that small town newspaper somewhere in Ohio, but what the hell, when in Venice. And Fred’s Negronis or whatever they were, well …“Hey, Michael. Wonderful. How good to see you. And you haven’t changed a bit.”
This was not true, but the expression and the hug and the double kiss that went with it, they were all part of the ritual, a small token of their friendship.
They stepped back, hands on opposite shoulders, surveyed each other head to toe, shook their heads, and sat down.
“Well,” said Bognor, “who’da thunk it?”
It was always a pleasure to see each other, and they met often enough for change to be virtually imperceptible. Professional circumstance brought them together, but the bonds that bound them had nothing to do with work. They were the same sort of people: bright, indolent, depressed about the world in general but surprisingly happy with their own particular lot within this overall pretty ghastly scheme of things. Neither cared for authority, status, or people who liked to think they were in charge. Both were members of the awkward squad, but their appearance suggested a level of conformity and class that was deceptive and sometimes came as an unpleasant surprise to people who made assumptions.
They sat. Bognor’s Negroni, aka Fred’s Special, arrived. The silence was comfortable, and when Simon spoke, his question was comfortable as well.
“Busy?” he asked conversationally.
“It depends what you mean by busy,” said the Italian. His English was perfect. He was blessed with perfect pitch and spoke several languages like a native. Even Swahili and Urdu. “You know perfectly well what I mean.” Bognor laughed, enjoying the occasion. The sunlight was thin, almost frigid. They were the only two outside. You couldn’t call it warm, especially for a Venetian. Maybe for an Englishman, though.
“We had a murder yesterday. A real one.” No equivocation. No question of ambiguity: no question of was it or was it not natural causes or maybe an assisted suicide. This was a real murder. “A man was shot. In the back. One minute, he was alive and apparently fit and happy. The next minute, he was struck down.”
“Hmmm.” Bognor sipped his drink and was transported back through numerous similar occasions in the same place with the same man having much the same conversation. “You got the man who did it?”
“Man or woman.” Michael smiled. “Can’t be sure. We don’t even have a witness.”
“No witness?”
The Italian policeman studied his orange slice as if it were a potential witness and replied softly, “No witness. The driver of the boat was looking straight ahead. The deceased was the only passenger on board. The man from the hotel had turned to go indoors. We think he was killed soon after leaving, but it could have been almost anywhere along the Grand Canal. Everyone in the city was in disguise. It’s Carnival.”
“I’d noticed.” Bognor spoke drily. Some people, like himself, were playing themselves, but just as many were playing the fool, unrecognizable in grotesque masks.
“We have the instrument of death.”
“A bullet?”
“A bolt.”
“From the blue.” Bognor smiled, and Michael, who spoke perfect English even down to idiom, smiled with him.
“From a crossbow.” He paused. “At least that’s what my man says. He is speculative, of course. Doesn’t want to be pinned down. Is as ambiguous as he dares.”
“Crossbow,” Bognor repeated fatuously.
Fred came to take their order, which was superfluous. It was always the same: prosciutto e melone, fritto misto, a carafe of the house white, a slice of dolcelatte, a double espresso, and maybe a glass of grappa. Always the same. Part of the ritual. “Crossbows went out with the ark,” said Bognor. “And always a distinctly foreign weapon. We went in for longbows.
Agincourt and all that. Hearts of ash. Crossbows were for sissies and Europeans.”
“Still quite lethal,” said Dibdini. “Quiet to the point of virtual silence. And at this time of year as prevalent as a false nose or a tricorn hat.”
“I suppose so,” said Bognor. “And the stiff ? Some sort of local? All dressed up and nowhere to go?”
“Not dressed up in the sense that I suspect you mean,” said Dibdini. “A slightly lame vicuna overcoat, which might have seen better days. Savile Row tailored suit. Shirt from some shop in Jermyn Street. Underclothes and accessories likewise. Silly tie. Handmade. Silk. He was an American, I need hardly say.”
“No,” said Bognor. He supposed not. Fred came with the prosciutto e melone. Also the carafe. Bognor snapped off a piece of grissino and chewed thoughtfully.
“Gay?”
“Seems to have batted and bowled,” said Dibdini, “to judge from his address book. Professionals of every known sex plus some. One or two gifted and enthusiastic amateurs as well. Surprised he had time for anything else.”
“Hmm.” Bognor polished off his breadstick and looked thoughtfully at the prosciutto e melone. “What else? How did he make his money?”
“The money must have been considerable,” said the Italian. “He was staying in a suite at the Danieli, ate in the most expensive places, and was using one of those new pink cards. Film.”
“Porn?”
“Not as far as I can see. Pulp features. Things like The Coffee Grinders.”
“Not Silverburger?”
“Why? You know him?”
By way of answer, Bognor almost choked on his forkful of prosciutto e melone.
“Know him? Everyone knows Irving G. Silverburger,” he said, hiccupping disbelievingly. “He’s constantly in the gossip columns; he’s always on TV. He’s almost A-list. He’s a celebrity—get him out of here.”
“Someone just did,” said Dibdini, managing his first mouthful of the antipasto better than the Englishman, “though I have to confess that he was not known in Italy. Most people had never heard of him. Myself included.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say something unpleasant about the third world, Italy, and Mr. Berlusconi, but Bognor thought better of it and simply allowed himself one of his all-purpose I sees which conveyed everything and nothing at the same time, depending on one’s point of view.
“No, you don’t,” said his friend. “You think that because Italy had never heard of your Mr. Silverburger we are somehow a third-rate country and that I, in particular, being completely ignorant of this person, am also, in some sense, third rate. And I have to tell you that knowing nothing of this person is a badge of honor. He is typical of a world and of a culture that has happily passed us by. Our values are enduring and permanent and real. We spit on people such as your Silverburger.”
“Speaks very highly of you,” said Bognor, spearing another segment of melone, equanimity evidently restored.
Dibdini laughed. “No,” he said, “and I am surely sorry that he is dead, but he was not a person of substance. Wealth, perhaps, and in your world, he may have enjoyed a passing notoriety. But your world is not our world.”
It was on the tip of Bognor’s tongue to say something disparaging, but he bit back what would probably have seemed like a cheap gibe and had more prosciutto e melone, a slug of dry yet aromatic wine, and tore a piece of crusty bread from the basket of rolls in front of him.
“I’m not going to get involved in a discussion of Irving G. Silverburger’s true value to society,” he said, “nor are you. We might fall out about it. All I’m saying is that he was something of a household word in Britain. He may have been a four-letter word, but that’s not the point. The point is that he was well known.”
Fred removed the prosciutto e melone plates and brought the fritto misto—rings of squid, tiny fish, and scallops, all encased in light batter. The
same the world over and available even in London, but tastier somehow here in Venice, even though Bognor sensed the lagoon was as full of human corpses as fish. Here, under a lemon sun, you could smell the Adriatic, and his friend wore a tweed jacket, which he would maintain was in some sense “classical English” but which only an Italian could wear. Better cut for a start. Bognor smiled in a general, nonspecific way. Silence here was golden. It was like the recipe for a perfect marriage in which one’s spouse was the only person in the world who didn’t have to speak during a long journey in the car. Monica was like that, or should be, the theory usually overwhelming the reality, if you saw what this meant.
The two friends squeezed lemons over their fish. The fruit had probably been on a local tree an hour or so earlier. Bognor liked the idea.
“So you’ve got a real live murder on your hands,” he said, smiling.
“Indeed,” said Dibdini. He smiled. “Good to have something to get your teeth into after all that tax evasion by old money. Correction, just old these days. The money’s gone, even the family silver. That’s the problem. They can’t pay. Nothing left.”
He grimaced.
“A real murder,” said Bognor. “Now you see him, now you don’t. Any publicity yet?”
“Not yet,” said Dibdini. “We’ve kept the reptiles at bay. His passing is secret. Next of kin have yet to be informed.”
“Did he have any family?” asked Bognor. “I never think of Silverburger being a family person, but he must have arrived in the usual way. I think of him as getting wherever he was without a trace, but there was presumably a mother and father.”
“A sister,” said the Italian, “somewhere out West. Father made automobiles in what used to be Detroit. Died ages ago. Mother, too. The sister lives in some small town in Middle America. Husband runs some sort of greasy spoon. Regular family. Not like Irving G.”