Dead Lagoon - 4

by Michael Dibdin

‘You never go to the Piazza, for example?’

  She looks at him in bewilderment. The last time she went to the Piazza was before the war, when her husband was still alive. Who would she go with now? And why?

  ‘Whatever for?’ she demands.

  The man shrugs.

  ‘Some people just like to go and stroll about there, to see and be seen. At carnival, for example.’

  Ada Zulian tosses her head.

  ‘Carnival is for children. I have no children.’

  They confront each other for a moment over this. Then the man nods, as though acknowledging what it cost her to say this.

  ‘This is the second night that this has happened,’ he says, moving to a less painful topic.

  Ada nods.

  ‘And before that?’ he asks.

  She thinks back, but before she can answer he comes back with another question.

  ‘Is there any pattern to these … experiences?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ she replies warily.

  ‘Do they occur at any particular time of day, or any particular day of the week?’

  Ada spots the trap just in time. The doctors asked her just such a question the last time, about Rosetta’s reappearances. That was before she was on her guard with the doctors, when she still trusted them, before she knew what they were capable of. So she told them the truth, that her daughter appeared each night at exactly six o’clock. Her inquisitors had seized on that with evil glee. Six o’clock, they pointed out, was precisely the time that the real Rosetta had been expected to return home on the day she vanished. The fact that the hallucinations conformed to such a regular pattern was incontrovertible proof that they were manifestations of an obsessional delusion.

  Well, she learned her lesson the hard way, but learned it she did. She won’t be caught that way again.

  ‘No,’ she replies firmly. ‘They come at any time they please. There’s no pattern at all.’

  Aurelio Battista frowns.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I can prove it!’ cries Ada triumphantly.

  She gets up and marches over to the cabinet in which she keeps the set of leather-bound folio volumes which her father used to record the accounts of the family cotton business. It is in the ample acres of blank pages at the rear of these volumes that Ada enters every day, in a hand so minute as to be practically illegible, the credit and debit balance of her own life.

  She pulls out the volume she is currently using and flips back through the pages to the point, just over a month earlier, when these manifestations began to occur. In a steady, even tone, showing no trace whatever of excitement or disturbance, she recites the date, time and duration of each intrusion to Aurelio Battista, who writes it all down solemnly in his notebook.

  As Ada replaces the huge volume in the cabinet, vindicated by the facts, she hears the seesaw clamour of a siren outside and sees a flashing blue light infiltrating the shutters on the windows at the front of the house, above the canal. In an instant, all her hard-won serenity deserts her. Can Giustiniana’s boy really be going to turn her over to the doctors?

  ‘I’ll need the key to the waterdoor,’ he tells her, putting away his notebook.

  A cunning idea suggests itself to her.

  ‘The waterdoor? But that hasn’t been used for years. I’ve no idea where the key is.’

  The siren dies to a guttural groan beneath the house. Aurelio Battista walks over to the window and undoes the fastenings.

  ‘Make fast to the mooring rings,’ he calls down. ‘We’ll be down in a moment.’

  He turns to Ada. The flashing blue lamp on the roof of the boat makes the whole room pulse.

  ‘The key, contessa?’

  Ada returns to the cabinet, opens a drawer and paws around among the keys of all shapes and sizes, some antiques, some modern copies, each labelled in her father’s pedantically legible script.

  ‘I’ve really no idea where it can be,’ she says. ‘Heaven knows when the thing was last opened.’

  In fact she remembers all too well. It was when her father’s condition became critical and he had to be moved to hospital.

  But her visitor is not to be deterred from his purposes so easily.

  ‘Then we’ll walk round to the bridge,’ he tells her. ‘There are steps down to the water there.’

  He fetches Ada’s coat and leads her downstairs. But when they reach the andron he leaves her and walks over to the massive door at the end giving on to the canal. And there the key is, of course, attached to the wall by a nail. When the man lifts it off, a rusty silhouette remains behind on the plaster. The throbbing of the launch makes the whole entrance vibrate.

  He inserts the key into the lock, which turns smoothly. The door swings open under its own weight without a sound. The tide is high enough for the ambulance to be roped in against the watersteps. One of the attendants jumps ashore while the other manoeuvres a gangplank on to the paving of the hallway. Aurelio Battista is shouting instructions to the other man, who nods earnestly. Something about what is to be done with her once they reach the hospital. With a sinking feeling, Ada acknowledges that matters are slipping out of her control. She has tried so hard, but now it is suddenly all too much. She starts to scream, to struggle, then subsides to the paving and lets them have their way with her. There is a flurry of movement, a clink of instruments, a sting in her arm, and then everything tactfully recedes.

  *

  He almost didn’t go home. If it hadn’t been for the carving knife, which he’d wrapped in newspaper in a crude attempt to preserve any fingerprints, he would probably have wandered off looking for a suitable place to eat. As it was he went home first, and that changed everything.

  Approaching the house up the long wedge of the campo, he noticed that the lights were on. He knew he hadn’t left them on himself. His mother had lectured him too often as a child about the shameful waste of leaving lights burning in an empty room, as well as the danger of a fire if a burning electric bulb – it was impossible to explain to her that there was no actual flame – were left unattended.

  For a moment, he thought twice about entering the house. What had happened to Ada Zulian had shocked him more than he had allowed himself to reveal. Even if her injuries were self-inflicted, and the balance of probability had to lie in that direction, this new development was very disturbing. A degree more pressure on the knife blade would have been sufficient to sever the artery. Such had been the implied message of those shallow cuts on Ada’s wrist. For some reason Zen felt it to be directed at him, at his presence in the city, his intrusion into whatever was going on.

  Putting aside these fancies, he opened the front door as quietly as possible and made his way upstairs. Long before he reached the landing, he could already hear noises from the living room. His only weapon was Ada’s knife. Grasping the handle through the newspaper wrapping, he crept across the landing and stood listening by the door. There was no question that someone was moving about in there.

  Footsteps approached the door on the other side. Zen stood there, clutching the knife. The knob turned and a woman appeared silhouetted in the doorway. Zen lowered the knife.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said, as though the whole situation were perfectly normal.

  Cristiana Morosini gestured awkwardly.

  ‘I thought you’d gone out to dinner,’ she said. ‘My mother’s feather duster is missing. She thought she might have left it over here. I used the key you left with her to get in.’

  Zen nodded and walked past her into the living room.

  ‘Ada Zulian phoned,’ he said.

  He set the wrapped knife down on the table.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘How is she?’ Zen repeated, a hysterical edge creeping into his voice. ‘Not so good. Not so good at all. She tried to kill herself, or make it look as though she had.’

  Cristiana Morosini rolled her eyes.

  ‘Not again!’

  Zen glanced at her sharply.

  ‘
It’s happened before?’

  Cristiana nodded.

  ‘A couple of years ago. She slashed her wrists with a kitchen knife. Fortunately one of her nephews found her in time, and they managed to patch her up. But Mamma’s right, you know. This is a case for the doctors.’

  Zen shrugged.

  ‘Well, the doctors have got her now. I packed her off to the hospital.’

  ‘Were her injuries that serious?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It’s just to keep her under observation, really. I want to make sure she’s not left alone until I have a chance to think the whole thing over and decide what to do.’

  This neutral topic exhausted, they stood awkwardly eyeing each other. Zen glanced at his watch.

  ‘Would you like to have dinner with me?’ he demanded abruptly.

  Cristiana shrugged.

  ‘I’ve already eaten. Mamma made sopa de pesse.’

  ‘Come and keep me company anyway. As an old friend of the family. I’m lonely, Cristiana. This place gives me the creeps. I don’t know why I’ve come. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I need someone to talk to. I also need a fax machine. Do you have a fax machine, Cristiana? If so you could satisfy all my needs.’

  They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Cristiana smiled and started to button up her coat.

  ‘There’s one at the office where I work. As for eating, the places round here aren’t up to much, but there’s a pizzeria which isn’t bad. We could go there if you like.’

  Zen luxuriated for a moment under her intense lambent gaze.

  ‘I’m in your hands,’ he said.

  *

  ‘Oh God, there’s Gabriella Rosteghin,’ exclaimed Cristiana with a gleeful laugh. ‘That means this’ll be all over the neighbourhood tomorrow morning.’

  ‘What will?’ murmured Zen.

  ‘You and I, of course.’

  Zen looked over at the giggling group of teenage girls casting glances in their direction from the other end of the pizzeria.

  ‘We haven’t done anything yet,’ he said mildly.

  ‘So much the better! Gabriella prefers it that way. It gives her more scope. She doesn’t need to worry about fitting in with the facts.’

  Zen sipped his beer.

  ‘Tell me about this Nuova Repubblica Veneta business,’ he said. ‘What’s it all about? How did it get started?’

  Cristiana sighed and shook her head.

  ‘About four years ago, Nando joined the Lega Veneta, which had just been formed. I told him at the time that he was making a mistake. Politics draws you in, little by little, until you forget everything else. Mind you, no one had any inkling how popular the League would prove to be. Even Bossi thought it would take at least a decade to convince people that there was a viable alternative to the traditional parties. In the event, of course, the thing was a runaway success from the start. Everyone began to scent the possibility of power. That’s when the trouble started.’

  The pizzas they had ordered arrived, Cristiana having decided that she could after all manage something, and for a while they turned their attention to eating.

  ‘I saw Tommaso Saoner today,’ Zen said, pausing to gulp some beer. ‘I didn’t recognize him at all. It might have been a different person, the way he was talking.’

  Cristiana nodded vigorously.

  ‘That’s just what happened to Nando. He’s changed completely, just as I predicted. He used to be easygoing, and such fun! But the moment he got involved in politics he turned into a total fanatic. It’s a drug. It gets into your blood and you become a different person.’

  They ate in silence for a while.

  ‘That’s what caused the split with Bossi,’ Cristiana went on. ‘Nando wanted the Lega Veneta to take its distance from the Northern Leagues, which he claimed were too dominated by Lombardy. Although the Dal Maschio family is Venetian, Nando was brought up in Pavia, and he’s never forgotten how the people there made fun of his accent. Anyway, his proposals were turned down, so he promptly resigned along with Saoner and a few others and formed his own breakaway group.’

  ‘And do they really want to resurrect the Venetian Republic?’

  Cristiana nodded.

  ‘“Our past is our future, our future is our past.” That’s one of Nando’s slogans. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? But he really believes it. He isn’t a charlatan, like so many politicians. He believes everything he says.’

  She pushed her half-eaten pizza away.

  ‘Anyway, that’s enough about him!’

  She sized up Zen with her eyes for a moment.

  ‘You’re married too, aren’t you?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Legally, yes. But that’s all in the past. And my past is certainly not my future. Not if I’ve got anything to do with it, anyway.’

  Cristiana laughed.

  ‘Children?’ she asked.

  Zen shook his head.

  ‘Although I sometimes feel as though there’s another me that’s still married to Luisella and is probably a father by now.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘Do you ever feel that? That every time you come to a crossroads in your life, there’s a ghostly double which splits off and goes the other way, the route you didn’t take. I know exactly what he’s like, my married version. I might as well be him. I could easily be. It just so happens that I’m not.’

  He smiled wryly and got out his cigarettes.

  ‘Listen to the pizzeria philosopher! Sorry, I’m talking nonsense.’

  The bevy of teenage girls passed by their table on the way out.

  ‘Ciao, Cristiana.’

  ‘Ciao, Gabriella.’

  Swathed in smirks and giggles, the group sallied forth into the night. With their departure, the room seemed to contract, becoming a smaller and more intimate space.

  ‘Do you ever think about coming home?’ asked Cristiana lightly.

  ‘Home?’

  ‘To live, I mean.’

  When Zen did not reply, she added, ‘But perhaps you have a reason for wanting to stay in Rome. Something, or someone.’

  He shook his head slowly.

  ‘Only my job.’

  ‘But you could get a transfer here if you wanted.’

  ‘Probably. But I haven’t had a reason for coming back here. Not so far.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘It’s your home,’ said Cristiana. ‘Isn’t that reason enough?’

  Zen shrugged.

  ‘It’s more often seemed a reason for staying away. Those ghostly doubles I was talking about are thicker on the ground here than anywhere else.’

  There was a brief silence between them.

  ‘Speaking of ghosts, Ada Zulian described one of her intruders to me this evening,’ Zen murmured, as though to himself. ‘She said it had a large hook nose, a fixed grin and gaping eyes and wore a loose-fitting costume in black and white check, like a harlequin. The other had pale flawless features, neither male nor female, and was dressed in a cloak of gold and scarlet.’

  Cristiana sniffed dismissively.

  ‘Sounds like carnival.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘Exactly what occurred to me. But where could Ada have seen carnival costumes? She hardly ever leaves the house, and then only to go to the local shops. You don’t see people dressed up like that in this area. She doesn’t have a television and never reads the papers.’

  ‘Perhaps she remembers it from when she was a child.’

  Zen drained off the last of his beer and clicked his fingers to summon the waiter.

  ‘When Ada was a child, the carnival didn’t exist. The children got dressed up as bunnies or cowboys or pirates, and there was a dance for the parents if the weather was good, but that was all. The chichi spectacle they put on these days, with all the jet setters from Milan and Rome dolled up in fantastic costumes which cost the earth, that’s all a recent invention. I’m willing to bet that Ada Zulian has never seen a “trad
itional” Venetian carnival outfit in her life.’

  ‘She must have done,’ retorted Cristiana, standing to put on her coat. ‘Otherwise how could she describe it?’

  Outside, a fine drizzle had started to fall. They walked home through the deserted streets and over the darkened waterways as though they owned them, as though the whole city were their private domain. The knowledge that they were a subject of gossip lent a nimbus of glamour to what in different circumstances might have seemed a fairly homely outing.

  They also laughed a lot. Cristiana Morosini had a mordant, malicious sense of humour which Zen found refreshingly direct after months of feminist earnestness. In principle he agreed with Tania’s views – or at least did not disagree with them enough to argue – but they were relentlessly correct and offered no scope for heartless humour. As Cristiana recounted a succession of decidely unsisterly anecdotes about a mutual acquaintance, Zen found himself responding with a warmth and freedom he had not felt for a very long time.

  When they reached their houses, they stopped, suddenly awkward.

  ‘Well, good night,’ said Zen. ‘Thank you for coming along. I really enjoyed myself.’

  ‘So did I.’

  She took a card from her purse and handed it to him.

  ‘This is where I work. The fax and phone numbers are on it. Give me a ring and I’ll tell you whether anything has arrived.’

  Zen watched her walk to her door and unlock it. She looked round and waved, and only then did he turn away.

  By morning, a dense fog had settled on the city. When a combination of high tides and strong onshore winds flooded the streets with the dreaded aqua alta, the council posted maps showing the zones affected and the routes on higher ground which remained open, but the fog respected no limits. It ebbed and flowed according to its own laws, blossoming here, thinning there, blurring outlines, abolishing distinctions and making the familiar strange and unlikely.

  ‘What the …!’

  ‘For the love of …!’

  ‘Watch where you’re going!’

  ‘You think you own the street?’

  Catching sight of a dishevelled elderly man with a dog at his heels, Zen hastily slipped back into the enshrouding obscurity of the fog before he got entangled in another episode of Daniele Trevisan’s vaporous reminiscences. But he had not gone much further before another collision occurred.