Venice Noir

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Strangely enough, right at the moment when the whole encounter was at risk of turning into something of a catastrophe, she said: “I may be crazy …”

  “Or someone wants you to believe that.”

  “Yes … I may be crazy but, I don’t know why, I totally trust you. It’s been such a long time since I’ve felt that way … Okay, let’s go.”

  When I had left her early the next morning, she made me promise to get in touch with her in Venice. She was traveling there the following week for the inauguration of a foundation Harry had decided to set up on the Isla San Pietro in a palazzo being restored and widened, deliberately close to the pavilion halls of the painting Biennale, possibly in order to annoy the likes of Guggenheim and Pinault. Malicious enemy tongues had cast doubt on the viability of the project, stating that this time the mogul was in beyond his depth and likely to take a heavy fall.

  Victoria wrote down her cell phone number. I gave her mine.

  Back in Paris, it was easy for me to convince my editor of the necessity of an assignment to the Venetian lagoon, so I could write something up about the mighty Menikov’s latest folly.

  Walking through the security portal, minus shoes and belt, on my way to the departure gate, I had felt for a brief moment the unpleasant sensation of being stark naked. A nudity that owed nothing to the security measures, but stemmed from a sudden and unexpected sensation of fragility. I had tried to tell myself that this sense of unease was due to my divorce a year earlier and my yearning to see my nine-year-old son more often. The bouts of dejection took hold of me much too frequently and out of the blue. I often tried to understand these mood swings, this unstoppable double-bladed force carrying me forward, punctuated by both despair and a renewed appetite for life … But the truth was, I had known as soon as I saw him in the line that it was the presence of Harry Menikov, now a few meters behind me, that was troubling me. There was no reason for him to be on this flight, with me.

  Normally he would have traveled on a private jet, framed by his bodyguards.

  X-ray inspections, body searches, they were all of no consequence. I had been found out. The look in his eyes, oh the look! He knew, the bastard!

  A little later, on the plane, I became certain of it. It was no longer a fantasy. Sitting in the last row of the first-class cabin, his face partially concealed under the brim of his hat, he kept on watching me. I shuddered. What did he want with me? I had no need to turn around to experience the sharpness of his eagle eyes twisting like a knife between my shoulder blades. I was the sole reason he was here, just me. He didn’t give a damn about his foundation in the Doge’s city. Right now his only prey happened to be me. As much as I tried to loosen my shirt’s collar, my breathing became heavier and I could feel drops of sweat dripping down from the base of my neck. How was I going to escape him?

  A manhunt. For me, until now, it had been a word that was fully part of the worst clichés of mystery writing, a literature I was a great consumer of by the way. And now I was facing those circumstances myself; it was brutal, incomprehensible. Everything was getting mixed up in my head, memories of novels and the incontrovertible evidence of reality. I was questioning my past, refusing my future, and the present day was like a many-faceted mirror I was unable to interpret.

  I was becoming conscious of my fragility. I was a journalist, not a race-car driver or someone familiar with the hide-andseek maneuvers of veteran spies; even as a child I had shown no interest in those silly games where you pretend you are invisible. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have believed those maneuvers would come in handy one day. Now, under pressure, my only reaction had been a bewildered amateur’s: carrying my small piece of luggage on wheels onboard. This way, I told myself, I could try to lose him amongst the crowds of tourists congregating around the gaggle of guides on arrival at Marco Polo. I had noticed that Menikov, on the other hand, appeared to carry no luggage. Like all wealthy men, he had no need of anything, just a handful of banknotes and an assortment of gold cards in his pockets.

  Wow! I had a solution. A man like him would treat himself to a private water taxi to cross the lagoon and reach the historical center. Normally, I would also have treated myself to this and put it on my expense account rather than take the vaporetto. The moment was ripe for this: rush through the arrivals hall all the way to the ticket counters for the buses going to the Venice land station.

  It worked! “There’s one leaving in three minutes, over by the exit, thirty meters to your right.”

  “A single ticket, per favore, subito!” Wonderful! There were only three or four of us climbing aboard. The driver advised me he would be making a five-minute stop at the entrance to the city, where I would locate all the necessary connections to reach my final destination.

  “And if you’re interested,” he added, “for a little bit extra I can take you all the way to Padova.”

  I smiled back at him. Finally at peace, relieved. As soon as the bus drove off, following a rapid glance backward to check that I was not being followed, I took out my cell phone and sent a text to Victoria.

  A thin curtain of rain had begun to fall. Nothing unusual for early April. In my naïve ingenuity I thought it would help muddy the waters. And anyway, I didn’t feel much like a tourist. I already knew Eternal Venice, and on that particular day I didn’t give a damn about her.

  When the bus came to a stop, I stepped off with my luggage, looking all around me to make sure everything appeared normal. During the flight, I had turned down the meal offered by the flight attendant. Now I was both hungry and thirsty, so I walked into a café and purchased a panini and a beer before exiting onto the esplanade. The fine drizzle had ceased, leaving a gray sky in its place. Sitting on a stone bench, surrounded by the real people of Venice, workmen, suburbanites, I fed myself quickly, impatient to be able to smoke a small cigarillo in peace.

  Hell and damnation! I’d barely had time to take a few puffs when the next bus from the airport arrived, occupying the vacant parking space of the one that had just brought me here. A few passengers disembarked. Amongst them, unmistakable hat, Armani suit, the by now terribly familiar face. It was him! Menikov! How could he have followed me here?

  He lit a cigar, much thicker than mine, moved away, and walked up and down the esplanade, without a single glance in my direction.

  I had a sudden urge to call out to him, confront him, throw at punch at him. But something more powerful inside of me was keeping me rooted to the spot. I threw the butt to the ground. Ran toward the bus driver who was finishing his own cigarette. “You’re going on to Padova? Let me have a ticket!”

  “We’re leaving in under a minute,” he answered.

  “So close the damn doors,” I demanded brusquely, climbing onto the bus. He calmly ended the exchange by telling me he was the one who was “in charge.” If only he had been! He made his way back to the driver’s seat and started the engine. “Grazie! Grazie mille, signore!”

  As we began moving off, I noticed Menikov still smoking next to the line of stationary cabs. My throat tightened. Of course, he would just hail a cab and follow me again. Why? Why was he so concerned about little me?

  A detour of ten kilometers or so to try to get myself back on track, to forget all about this crazy affair. Art was my only concern, both in dream and in reality. I had no further need for colorful nightmares. This was not real life, even if through my own mistake I’d almost forgotten that damn fact.

  I glanced at my cell phone. No message from Victoria.

  Let them both go to hell!

  I pulled out my laptop: Padova, a map of the town, a hotel, an indispensable visit to the sublime Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel which I’d only ever seen in reproduction. I made a reservation for a visit the following day at ten thirty in the morning. The joys and temptations of the Internet. At least this silly situation I’d gotten myself into would not prevent me from enjoying visions of sheer beauty. Even if it was for the last time …

  Are you craz
y or what? There you go again with your stupid fantasies. This persecution complex you have. Okay, stop right now, everything is fine, I kept on telling myself. Following a good meal, washed down with a red Veneto wine, a peaceful night, it would all become so much clearer. Forget about the rest. It was all merely an illusion.

  Vice. It had always held a fascination for me.

  As could be expected, there were all these scenes from the Gospels, each one more spectacular than the one before. Blue backgrounds worthy of damnation … The Annunciation, the Wedding at Canaan, the Road to Calvary … Mary’s intense pain overlooking the face of her son already in the throes of death … So much emotion!

  But the vices! Like a terribly modest graphic novel unrolling in a strip below the mighty frescoes. The buffoonery of Folly. A young woman throwing her legs up in the air to signify Fickleness. Wrath hopelessly tearing itself apart. An old man holding a sword and a spear representing Injustice. I slowed down to take a closer look at him. Before being drawn to Envy, personified by a blind man with a snake’s tongue. Then, utterly fascinated, I focused on Despair. Where the Devil was savagely pulling out the soul of a suicide from his body.

  I was concentrating so hard on the paintings, I didn’t notice the presence of a man immediately to my right. Just standing there next to me. It was him! He was silent. Watching the painted image with no less an intensity than mine. We both just stood there, not making a sound. Out of the corner of my eye, I risked a quick glance at him. He responded by turning his face toward me, his eyes peering straight into mine, watching closely for any reaction in my frozen features. I promptly moved away, toward the panels illustrating the Virtues on the other side of the room. He did not follow me, walked back to the large wall of the Last Judgment. He stretched his creased saurian neck upward, as if trying to absorb in a single glance the cohort of angels and seraphims opening the doors of the Heavens under the very noses of the damned who were haloed by a river of fire by Avarice, Lust, and Pride.

  All of a sudden, Menikov moved away toward the exit without waiting for the official end of the tour. By the time I reached the Eremitani gardens, a late straggler, he had disappeared. Nowhere to be seen.

  How could I have not noticed him on the way in, as the number of visitors was strictly limited to twenty-five for each tour? He must have slipped in at the last minute while we were negotiating the climate-controled security chamber next to the chapel. Sitting right at the front, facing the screen on which a documentary feature about the historical background of the place was unfolding, I probably hadn’t made a note of him at the back. Lack of instinct. Which was in all likelihood one of the things that made us so different from each other, I told myself. On one side of the divide a natural predator, on the other an advocate of peace, of goodwill between men; not that my own life had been perfect by any measure with regard to the latter …

  Was I wrong? And what if good old Harry was not following me, had nothing to do with my travels? He hadn’t even bothered to wait for me. After all, Mr. Menikov had as much a right as any other to visit the Scrovegni Chapel. Who was I to make accusations? He was surely a master of his own destiny.

  I even began to imagine, professional duty rising in my conscience, the incredible interview I could have written up following this unexpected encounter. Giotto and Menikov: A Summit Meeting. A hell of a feature.

  Great idea. Positive, at last. You’re a journalist, not a private detective. Do what you do best.

  But there was a detail that escaped me. I was convinced of that. I had thought I knew all there was to know about the guy’s biography. The reported facts at least. But I still felt I had to conduct some additionnal research.

  Back at the hotel, I threw myself at the laptop. Navigating between websites, I found the information I had been missing.

  First of all, Harry Menikov was very religious. When he was in Italy, he never failed to visit the tomb of Sant’Antonio di Padova and leave an offering. It apparently had something to do with losing someone he loved when he was young.

  In addition, some years back he had acquired a Palladian villa on the shores of the Brenta, in the Mira area some fifteen kilometers away from the Venice lagoon, where he enjoyed coming to visit.

  I imagined this was where he kept Victoria a prisoner, surrounded by an army of servants and right-hand lackeys.

  What if I were to go there? I could rent a motorboat to travel down the river. No, the Internet told me this would take hours, because of the locks. So there was just one thing I now had to do: reach Venice as soon as possible, by taxi this time, and warn Victoria of my arrival.

  At Piazzale Roma, I took a motoscapo to navigate down the Grand Canal. Toward the end of my journey, having reached Calle Larga on foot, pulling my small case on wheels behind me, I came across a police cordon. Three Alfa Romeos belonging to the carabinieri were blocking the street, their warning lights ablaze. The last time I’d had a problem reaching my favorite hotel had been some years earlier when menacing floodwaters, so familiar to Venice, had risen to fifty centimeters, forcing visitors to wear boots or plastic trash bags all the way up to their knees. But that wasn’t the case on this occasion: yesterday’s thin rain was long gone, and the sky was pure blue but for a few luminous clouds. The obstruction was all human, nothing to do with the weather’s vagaries. Something had happened. Something serious enough to warrant three police cars parked in front of the Saturnia’s doors, as well as the stirrings of a crowd, curious passersby, the flashes of some journalists’ cameras, a curious mob always attracted by the bizarre and any inkling of morbidity.

  I hesitated briefly before pushing my way through the febrile crowd.

  I was weighed down with anxiety, to say the least. A forceful feeling of diving into a tragic new universe. A cinematic denouement from a Vittorio de Sica neorealist movie or a bloody and sensational Puccini operatic moment.

  Memories of Tosca, seen at the Fenice some years earlier with my then wife, were rising up in my throat. Passing under the hotel’s porch, I struggled with a deep feeling of sickness, and almost stepped back. But it was too late.

  At the reception desk, after I’d identified myself, the clerk gave me a lugubrious look, all lowered brow and funeral-faced. “These gentlemen are waiting for you,” he said, indicating two policemen in civilian garb smoking cigarettes in the hall, quite unbothered by the recent antitobacco laws.

  One of the men approached. “Signore, you have to come with us. We have some questions we would like to ask …”

  Just the sort of universal cop talk you’d expect anywhere.

  “The body of a woman has been found in the room you booked. We don’t know yet if it’s a suicide or murder …”

  I didn’t have the strength to object or even attempt to fathom the situation.

  They took my by my arms, one on each side. As if I were about to flee!

  “Can I contact my embassy?” I simply asked.

  How funny that right there and then I remembered that in three days it would be my forty-second birthday. And to think that, in all likelihood, I would be spending it in prison.

  SIGNOR GAUKE’S TONGUE

  BY MIKE HODGES

  Palazzo Ducale

  Lenny Gauke knows he’s being followed. From his window seat he cautiously studies the reflections of the other passengers as they take their seats in the carriage. He smiles to himself: it’s obvious none of these innocents are potential assassins, just excited tourists. Although he’s never before had dealings with the Mafia he knows a lot about its internal structure and over the years has come to admire its effectiveness. The superimposed “family” concept, with its straitjacket of ruthless sentimentality and emotional entanglement, is brilliantly effective. He sees it as the perfect template for running every human enterprise, from country to corporation, including his own. A freemason since his early twenties, Lenny Gauke is already imbued with the code of silence and secrecy. Omertà, however, is but one attribute he shares with the mafiosi: he has a
lso committed murder. Just one.

  As soon as the train pulls out of Milan station Gauke promptly leaves his seat, hurries along the swaying corridor, and disappears into the bathroom. Once the door’s shut and locked he doesn’t, as you might expect, unzip his fly or drop his pants but instead steadies himself in front of the wall mirror. His eyes, like peepholes onto a clear blue sky, immediately suck up the likeness before them. It always pleases him to remember that every image entering his head arrives upside down, and it’s his brain that twists it the right way up. He leans forward to study his forehead, wishing for the umpteenth time he had X-ray eyes to observe the workings of his labyrinthine brain––—a brain that’s served him so well. Until now. Interestingly, his image, as reflected in the mirror, is also in reverse. All this matches Lenny Gauke’s take on life.

  His gaze finally shifts, albeit reluctantly, to his waves of white hair deranged by the strong wind gusting along the station platform when he boarded the train. With a sleight of hand worthy of a conjuror, a tortoiseshell comb appears and is soon streamlining the locks back into place. He rarely does this without thinking of his mother: even into early manhood she would take every opportunity to have him sit in front of her dressing table and lovingly brush his luxuriant hair. The train lurches as it crosses some points and he has to grip the basin. His attention is thrown back onto his face and, as if to poke fun at himself, he shoots out his pink tongue. He waggles it playfully, then turns away to unlock the door and leave. Back in his corner seat he puts on his inflatable neck pillow, and sleeps like a baby for the rest of the journey.

  He wakes when the train brakes sharply several times before slowly entering Santa Lucia station. It’s his first visit to Venice and his arrival coincides with the last rays of a dying sun. As a consequence his first sight of the city’s breathtaking Canal Grande is depressingly funereal: a mosaic of long shadows edged with spires, domes, and towers that, in black silhouette, resemble tombs and mausoleums. It’s as if he’s disembarked directly into a cemetery. Gauke rather likes that idea. He cuts through the ponderous mass of human flesh descending onto the platform and moving slowly toward the exits. Suckers! The wheels of his suitcase stutter like an automatic weapon as he hurries across the concourse toward the waiting vaporetti.