by Jane Langton
“It’s a pretty wonderful painting though,” whispered Mary. “How noble she is.”
“Of course,” said Sam. “That’s my whole point. That a man of genius can take any absurdity and turn it into something magnificent. Come on, look at Moses striking water from the rock.”
They followed him around the room, staring up in awe at the paintings and listening to Sam’s whispered blasphemies.
“Hey,” said Homer as they completed the circuit, “there’s another room over here.”
“More of the same.” Sam led the way.
It was a chamber called the Albergo. Tintoretto’s Crucifixion occupied an entire wall. “Oh,” said Mary, and then she fell silent. Homer gripped her hand.
“John Ruskin said a clever thing about this one,” said Sam softly. “Usually I can’t stand Ruskin, he’s so bossy and narrow-minded, but this time—”
“What did he say?” murmured Homer.
Sam knew it by heart. “I must leave this picture to work its will on the spectator, for it is beyond all analysis and above all praise.”
Then he stopped talking, and they stood silently gazing at the tumble of muscular figures erecting the crosses of the thieves, the armed men on horseback, the weeping mourners, the threatening sky, and the towering figure of Christ with his arms spread wide on the cross.
CHAPTER 19
Mrs. Wellesley was the perfect stereotype of a mother-in-law—sharp, critical, inquisitive, and demanding. The fact that she was also a supreme bore was another feather in her cap. Sam put up with her patiently, remembering how devotedly she had nursed her dying daughter. And how could he have refused her unselfish offer to stay on after Henrietta’s death and take care of Ursula?
Sam had been grateful. He had welcomed his mother-in-law with a newly furnished bedroom, a generous stipend and a comfortable allowance for expenses, and she had taken hold at once.
Therefore how could he cavil at the nature of her care? Ursula was well fed, well bathed, well clothed, supplied with expensive dolls and toys, and taken to suitable films and entertainments. Last summer there had been an expedition to the sandy beaches of the Lido and another to a theme park on the mainland.
“I hope you don’t expect me to take the child to church,” Dorothea had said at once. “I regard the Christian religion as dangerous for the impressionable mind of a child, especially the papist version here in Italy.”
“Oh, no, of course I don’t expect it.” But Sam had felt a slight misgiving. It was true that he himself made jokes about saints’ bones and relics of the True Cross, and here he was putting the matter to the test! And yet his mother-in-law’s severe atheism seemed a cold inheritance for a little child.
So for the last three years father and grandmother had been sharing the task of caring for the youngest member of the family. Mrs. Wellesley provided supervision over the little girl’s every move, Sam supplied the affection the child was hungry for, whispering to her in Italian and bouncing her on his knee—
Al passo, al passo
Va il cavallo del gradasso.
Al trotto, al trotto
Va il caval del giovanotto.
Al galoppo, al galoppo
Va il cavallo dell’ Ursula, e … PUMFETE!
But why was his mother-in-law so inquisitive? Sam found her habit of poking into every nook and cranny of his private life especially irksome. Her nosiness was the reason for the lock he had attached to his study door two years ago. At least now he could keep his papers and correspondence away from her prying eyes, although sometimes Sam wondered if his letters were opened before he picked them up from the hall table. The envelopes sometimes looked a little odd, as though they had been opened very delicately and pasted shut again.
For Dorothea Wellesley the lock was infuriating. It was an insult. How could there be secrets between her and her son-in-law? Did Sam have a secret woman? Someone he didn’t dare bring home? Oh, she wouldn’t put it past him!
The truth was, Sam’s mother-in-law was as suspicious as her daughter had been of his possible erotic adventures. In fact it was Dorothea’s warnings about the perfidy of men that had been responsible for Henrietta’s wariness. She had been cautioned about voluptuous secretaries, curvaceous librarians, and sultry professional colleagues. She had been frightened into a state of perpetual jealousy. She had confronted Sam with her suspicions at every turn.
Poor dear Henrietta! She was gone now, carried off by a malignancy that had spread from her breasts to her lymph nodes to her liver. But her mother was still on guard. Three years after the death of Sam’s wife, Mrs. Wellesley suspected darkly that he was ready for new amorous adventures. He was still so good-looking! And a widower! And a man with an important position! And therefore highly vulnerable to the seductive attentions of women on the make. He might betray Henrietta’s memory at any time by sneaking off with some alluring female. Dorothea knew the pitiful prevarications of men. If there was one thing on this earth that she understood from top to bottom, and inside and out, and back to front in all its lust and deceit, it was the opposite sex.
Why did Sam always lock his study door? What secrets lay inside that room? What evidences of infidelity?
The arrival of the mysterious package at last goaded her into action. Dorothea began a campaign of discovery. On the very first day she won a victory. Foolish Sam! On his way upstairs to take a nap he forgot to bring his keys. There they lay, fully exposed on the table in the hall.
Which was the key to his study? Dorothea recognized the house keys and the key to the car that was parked at Piazzale Roma. The Marciana key bore a tag. There was only one left. It must be the one she was looking for.
She snatched it up and ran out of the house. There was a negozio di ferramenta around the corner, right next to the Church of San Giovanni in Bragora. Dorothea nipped out of the house and waited at the counter for the proprietor to finish counting out screws for one customer and helping another to choose an aluminum ladder. At last she presented her key and asked for two copies.
The errand took too long. When she got back, Sam was just emerging from his nap, looking more exhausted than ever.
“Oh, Sam, dear, I hope you’re feeling better?” Dorothea backed up to the hall table and artfully dropped the borrowed key.
His face looked wasted from lack of sleep. “I’ll just make myself a cup of coffee.”
Dorothea watched him trudge away in the direction of the kitchen. Quickly then, she reattached the borrowed key to the key ring. Then she hurried into her bedroom and laid the new keys on her dresser next to the photograph of Henrietta as a bride.
In the Gallerie dell’Accademia a Byzantine reliquary with fragments of the True Cross is displayed beside a portrait of Cardinal Bessarion.
CHAPTER 20
The more Mary went exploring with her camera, the more she was convinced that Venice was the city of Tintoretto. His paintings were everywhere, in church after church—in San Giorgio Maggiore, the Salute, the Frari—and of course in the Ducal Palace, where his Paradise was one of the largest paintings in the world.
She was in awe of Tintoretto. One morning, looking for a new route of exploration on her map, she found the words Casa del Tintoretto in the middle of Cannaregio. She had been in this sestiere before. She had seen the desiccated body of Santa Lucia of Syracuse in a glass coffin like Snow White’s, she had seen the Ghetto Nuovo and the Ghetto Vecchio, she had cashed a traveler’s check on the Strada Nuova and stopped at a newsstand for a Paris edition of the Herald Tribune.
But she hadn’t run across the house of Tintoretto. Everything she had read about him was admirable. Did he live in a palace? Whatever it was, she wanted to find it, to imagine the way he had lived.
It wasn’t easy. Cannaregio was a maze of little wandering streets and dead ends. The canal she wanted was the Rio della Sensa. When she found it at last, she was surprised to see a gulf where the water should have been. This part of the rio had been drained. In place of the sparkling jade-
green water running so pleasantly in all the other canals, there was only a muddy crevasse.
Crossing the bridge over the empty gully, she looked for the Campo dei Mori. It had to be here somewhere. Yes, of course, here it was, the Square of the Moors. One of them was set into the corner, a clumsy carved figure wearing a kind of turban. Well, fine, but where was Tintoretto’s house?
Mary looked vaguely left and right, then paused to watch two families with dogs confront each other in the square. The little terrier stood rigid and barked. “Ma dai, ma dai!” chastised its owner. The other dog was old and shaggily dignified. The two groups moved off together, their dogs trotting beside them, tails floating high.
Come now, concentrate. Mary opened her map, which was coming apart at the folds, put her finger on the Casa del Tintoretto, folded the map again, and set off firmly to the right.
Doctor Richard Henchard had been inspecting his treasure. He had opened up the entire wall with the wrecking bar and moved everything out of the hiding place into the closet, and then he had hung a curtain over the ruined wall. For the moment he left the newspaper-wrapped packages alone and concentrated on the golden objects, the scrolls and the plates and cups and candlesticks and the funny-looking things like little castles, and of course the painting, most especially the painting. It was very old and very fine. Could it possibly be a Titian? If so, it was worth millions of lire, billions, trillions.
Like Sam Bell on the other side of the city, Richard Henchard had attached a lock to the door to keep out prying eyes. It was only a padlock, but it would do the trick. Then he hired an expensive locksmith to change the lock on the street door in case that noodle-brained female, Signorina Pastora in the Agenzia, should take it into her head to rent the place again.
The question was, how to turn all this splendor into cash? Well, there was no hurry. He would explore various avenues. The gold objects should probably be melted down. Should the painting go to an art dealer in Paris? And how could he preserve anonymity? The things were absolutely, undeniably his own, but it might be necessary to produce documentary proof of legal possession. And that might be tricky, very tricky indeed.
Henchard clasped the padlock shut, pocketed the key, descended to the street, and locked the outer door. Turning away he at once caught sight of a woman with a camera. He watched as she took a picture, then another. Why didn’t she stop? She was moving along the fondamenta, photographing every house.
Who was she? Ordinary tourists wouldn’t take so many pictures. If she was just a tourist who was interested in the painter’s house, why was she photographing the entire row?
Christ, now she had reached his own place—she was shooting the very window behind which his treasure was hidden. Fortunately the window was heavily curtained. Whoever had created the hiding place had nailed a blanket over the glass, a double thickness of wool. The blanket was furry with dust, like the contents of the chamber, and speckled with black strands from the crumbling ceiling, but it still kept out the light. No sunshine had entered the little room for years, and nothing could be seen from outside.
But she was still staring up at the window through the lens of her camera. Goddamn the woman! What the hell was she doing?
At last she lowered the camera. She was turning to him, looking at him. “Permesso, signore, posso andare internamente, nella casa del Tintoretto?”
Her accent was American, not English. He moved toward her, smiling, and spoke in his native tongue. “Can one go into Tintoretto’s house? I’m sorry, but it’s not a museum. It’s a private house.”
Mary touched a button on her camera to close the shutter. Abandoning her labored Italian, she said, “I see. That’s too bad.”
She was a tourist then? Only a tourist? “You’re visiting from America?”
“Yes.” Mary smiled. “My husband and I are here for six weeks. We’re teachers on sabbatical.”
“Sabbatical? I see. You’re on vacation.” Perhaps she was not simply a tourist after all. “Oh, signora,” he said, remembering a fragment of history, “perhaps you’d like to see the painter’s church?”
“Tintoretto’s church?” She looked pleased. Her cheeks were plump and pink. “Does it have some of his paintings?”
Henchard didn’t have the faintest idea. “Oh, yes, many paintings. The Church of the Madonna dell’ Orto. It’s not far away. May I show it to you?”
He watched as the American woman thought it over. It was apparent that she was a virtuous woman, highly respectable and intelligent. Mentally removing her blouse and unhooking her brassiere, he could see that she was deep-breasted, a veritable goddess.
“Permit me to introduce myself,” he said easily, offering up a pseudonym. “My name is Richard Visconti. I am a doctor, but this is my day off.” Well, of course that was a lie. It meant he’d have to cancel an appointment, but that would be a relief anyway because the patient was a sad case, a man with a terminal carcinoma.
She had made up her mind. She was smiling broadly. “Why, yes, that’s very kind of you.”
He bowed, and lifted his arm in a courtly gesture. “Andiamo!”
The space between the houses and the edge of the fondamenta above the muddy excavation was narrow. Henchard took Mary’s arm with an air of courteous male guardianship, guiding her past a place where the paving stones had been taken up and piled at one side.
“My name is Mary Kelly,” she said, glancing at him with that air of easy frankness so typical of American women.
“Buongiorno, Mrs. Kelly. Or is it Doctor Kelly? Instinct tells me you have a doctor’s degree.” She grinned and didn’t deny it, and he made up his mind to ask her to lunch after the tour of the church.
Richard Henchard was an old hand at playing a fish. This one required the most delicate lure, the gentlest of tugs on the line.
Homer was in the kitchen of the apartment on the top floor of Sam Bell’s house when Mary walked in. She was a little tipsy after drinking three glasses of wine in the company of Doctor Visconti.
He was eager to tell her about his afternoon in the catalog room of the Biblioteca Correr. “Mary, it was amazing. They don’t have any computerized records at all, just a couple of kind librarians. Everything was on cards, good old catalog cards, and when they couldn’t find the one for the book I wanted, they pulled out a shoebox from under the counter.”
“A shoebox? Oh, surely not a shoebox?”
“What did you see today, my darling?”
“Well, let’s see. I saw Tintoretto’s house in Cannaregio, only I couldn’t go in. I just saw it on the outside. And the Church of the Madonna dell’Orto. It was Tintoretto’s parish church, that’s why I wanted to see it.”
“I see. It was another Tintoretto day, is that it? Those paintings of his really got to you.”
“Oh, right, they certainly did. Oh, Homer, excuse me. I’m worn out. I’ve got to lie down.”
Dropping onto the bed, Mary wondered why she had said nothing to Homer about having lunch with Richard Visconti. She didn’t know why. She just hadn’t wanted to, that was all there was to it.
CHAPTER 21
The month of November began with rain. Sam held his umbrella low over his head and kept to the inland side of the Riva degli Schiavoni, away from the brimming bordo of the lagoon.
He had a lot on his mind. At least, thank God, the conference was over. But although his new sense of carelessness had been liberating for a while, it had stopped working. He cared too much about too many things.
There was item number one, but there was no point in thinking about that.
Item number two was the disappearance of Lucia Costanza, but there was no point in thinking about that either.
Item number three was more possible, his mission to reverse the Venetian belief in fraudulent relics, in the beseeching power of lighted candles, in the sanctimonious prayers broadcast over Radio Maria, una voce cristiana nella tua casa. With the help of Lucia Costanza and with the astonishing permission of Father Urbano and the
cardinal patriarch, Sam was now putting the relics to the test.
So far in his investigations he had determined that the so-called pieces of the True Cross had come from several different kinds of wood. It was a gratifying discovery. But how old were they? That was important too. Sam didn’t have the equipment to carbon-date the fragments, so he would have to have the permission of the cardinal patriarch to take them out of his house under guard and carry them across town to the university.
Item number four was the Marciana. Sam was ashamed of the way he’d been neglecting his duties. During the months of preparation for the conference and the exhibition, and then during the intense week of the conference itself, his ordinary work had fallen far behind. His boss, the director of the Marciana, had made a few gentle remarks, almost too courteous to be understood as complaints.
And Signora Pino kept looking at Sam in melancholy urgency with an important letter in her hand or a paper to sign or a contract for vastly expensive repairs that urgently needed his signature. This morning she reminded him of his meeting with the Piazza Council. “Oh, of course,” said Sam. “Thank you. I had forgotten.”
The Piazza Council was the new group of functionaries from all the major institutions in the neighborhood—the Biblioteca Marciana, the Palazzo Ducale and the Museo Correr, the office of the Soprintendenza ai Beni Artistici e Storici di Venezia, the Procuratie di San Marco, and of course the Basilica di San Marco itself.