by Jane Langton
The two gondoliers were punctiliously dressed in navy blue uniforms with sailor collars. Red ribbons dangled from their straw hats. One wore glasses, the other had a gold earring. At once they began bantering with the boy and his girlfriend. Everybody laughed. The boy shook his head. The price was too high.
Sam and Mary watched as the gondoliers flirted with the girls and adjusted their prices. There was a whispered conference, and at last the girls were handed down into one of the gondolas, taking their places in the thronelike chairs or stepping tippily across the first gondola into the second. The boys stepped down after them. Everyone was pleased. They were laughing. The gondoliers tossed away their cigarettes and took up their poles.
Mary smiled too, and turned to Sam, but he had moved away across the square. He was talking to another pair of kids, also in costume. The boy wore a grubby brocaded coat and a pair of silken knee-pants, unfastened at the knees and drooping down his shins. The laces of his sneakers trailed on the pavement. The girl had a pink skirt puffed out at the sides like panniers. It was too long. She was stepping on the muddy hem.
They were selling concert tickets, speaking in a mixture of English and Italian. “Un concerto nella chiesa dei Frari! Monteverdi, Handel, Bach! Choruses, soloists, orchestre!”
“We’ll all go, shall we?” said Sam, and he shelled out thousands of lire. Mary quickly paid the Kellys’ share, then scrabbled in her bag for more thousands to pay her way into the Accademia.
Sam hurried her up the stairs. “You can see all this later,” he said, rushing her down a corridor.
“Oh, all right,” said Mary, glancing left and right, catching tantalizing glimpses of famous works of art.
He slowed down at last. “Here we are.”
The room was devoted to eight huge paintings of the miracles performed by a relic of the True Cross belonging to the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista. It was the very same relic that was about to be entrusted to Sam Bell.
Mary was entranced. “Sam, what’s this one all about? Why are they all swimming in the water?”
“It was a religious procession,” explained Sam. “The brothers were carrying the cross over the bridge when it fell in the water. Of course they all jumped in to save it, and one of them managed to grab it.” He glanced at Mary. “They seemed to think it was a miracle.”
“Mmm,” said Mary. “I see.” They moved on, and at once she was excited. “Oh, Sam, how wonderful! It’s the Square of Saint Mark. It looks just the same right now.”
“Well, perhaps not quite,” murmured Sam. He pointed. “Do you see the reliquary, there under the canopy?”
“Oh, yes, all gold, how beautiful. Where’s the miracle?”
“The kneeling man, there on the right. He’s praying for the healing of his injured son back home. Afterward, guess what? His son was okay. How’s that for a miracle?”
Mary laughed. “Well, they must have thought it was a miracle. I mean, just look at all the trouble and expense they went to. I’m glad they did. It’s a magnificent painting. Okay, what’s next?”
“This one’s a sort of anti-miracle.” Sam looked up at the painting, which was crowded with active figures and gondolas and people looking out of windows and tall men in red and black robes standing solemnly in the foreground. “It’s a funeral procession. They were carrying the reliquary into a church for the funeral of one of the brothers, when it suddenly became so heavy they could hardly carry it.”
“Why? What sort of miracle was that?”
“I think it was a case of disrespect. The dead man had not been sufficiently devoted to the relic, so it refused to take part in his funeral.” Sam shook his head in cynical wonder. “Queer sort of miracle, if you ask me.” He hurried Mary to the other end of the room. “This one’s my favorite.”
“Well, no wonder.” Mary gazed with delight at the wooden bridge, the crowds of people, the palaces crowned with chimney pots, the gondolas with their elegant gondoliers. “And, oh, Sam, look at the laundry up there against the sky on long poles! What delicious detail! But where’s the miracle?”
“It doesn’t seem very important, does it? It’s up there on the loggia. The man in black is possessed. He’s being cured by the relic of the cross.” Sam turned to Mary. “Look, cara mia, I’ve got to get back. You stay as long as you like.”
“Oh, thank you, Sam. I’m greedy to see all the rest.”
Sam found his way back to the grand staircase and walked out of the Accademia. His cynicism about the relic was stronger than ever. The brothers of the confraternity had claimed that their relic alone, unlike other pieces of the True Cross, was miracolosa, but on the evidence of these paintings all its wondrous prodigies were a poor lot. Of course it was good that they had inspired these glorious works of art, but as miracles, they were pitiful.
And one of them distressed him, the miracle condemning one member of the brotherhood, the man whose lack of reverence had angered the relic. Sam felt a twinge of personal connection. He too was about to be irreverent. In presuming to touch the golden reliquary with doubting hands would he be showing his own contempt? Would the cross fight back?
Vaporetto number 1 scraped against the floating dock. “Attenzione,” cried the girl as she unwound the rope. “Un momento.”
Sam waited for the flood of disembarking passengers, then stepped on board, thinking how strange it was that his perfectly logical mind could harbor such a thought.
As the vaporetto pulled away he stood at the railing, gazing at the Palazzo Barbaro drifting slowly past, imagining Henry James leaning on one of the balconies, looking back at him. Or perhaps Mrs. Jack Gardner had just this moment turned away from one of the lofty Gothic windows to talk to John Singer Sargent. “Oh, please, Mr. Sargent, do tell me which Venetian palace I should dismantle and carry back to Boston?” Whether they had been morally right or wrong, you had to admit that they had left a rich purple stain on the air. How alive they had all been!
Sam moved into the seating compartment of the vaporetto and found a place to sit down. They were dead now, of course. All dead.
CHAPTER 26
The reliquary arrived under guard in a wooden crate. Sam signed for it, lugged it into his study, and locked the door.
It was very large and very gold. The front was adorned with a golden Christ on a golden cross, the back with a golden image of John the Evangelist, patron saint of the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista. The reliquary itself was shaped like a cross with crystal arms. The uppermost arm enclosed the frammento del Lignum Crucis, the small scrap of wood that was supposed to have come from the cross on which Christ was crucified. Little figures of the mourning Mary and Saint John were flung out at the sides on their own pedestals. Attached to the edges of the reliquary sixteen jewels stuck out into empty air, as though the goldsmith had thought to himself, “Why not pretty it up a little more?”
Sam set it carefully on his desk, then stood back. In the shadowy room it glimmered and glowed. When a ray of morning sunlight struck past the neighboring rooftops of the houses on Salizada del Pignater and slanted through the window, the reliquary flared up like a thousand candles.
Well, that was the goldsmith’s art. But as an object of study the tiny piece of Lignum Crucis was going to require very sophisticated equipment because it was encased in crystal. Sam had promised Father Urbano that he would not take the reliquary apart. Therefore he had arranged to borrow a more powerful gadget from a biochemist at the university, a microscope that could examine its object with a high degree of resolving power, even through the crystal.
It was two days before Sam had time to go far across the city to the Department of Physics and Chemistry. It was not in the famous palace housing the rest of the university, the Ca’ Foscari on the Grand Canal. Instead he had to take Vaporetto #52all the way around Dorsoduro past the Zattere to the stop at Santa Marta, and then walk a long way to the neighborhood of the Church of San Niccolò. Fortunately both ends of the journey were in parts of the city a few in
ches higher than the lowest places. Salizada del Pignater was just south of a deeper area around Campo Sant’ Antonin, and the Quartiere Santa Marta was entirely in the clear. Sam walked to his destination dry-shod.
“State of the art,” said the biochemist proudly, showing off his microscope, instructing Sam in the subtleties of its use. “It’s a reflecting microscope, you see, Sam. You’ll have a working distance of a good inch, not just a millimeter.” Packing it into its case he said, “Questa maledetta cosa è molto pesante. It weighs a ton. Too bad you can’t bring your object here.”
Sam looked doubtfully at the big case and explained, “I wish I could, but I’ve promised to keep it locked up in my house until it goes back under guard.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake be careful. I mean, Jesus, Sam, this thing’s worth a king’s ransom.”
“Oh, I will, I promise I will.” Sam picked up the case, then set it down again.
“Can you manage it?” said the biochemist, opening the door.
“Naturalmente.” Sam picked up the case again with a show of ease. “Ciao, Carlo. Grazie tante.”
“Prego.”
But the microscope in its thick protective case was almost more than he could manage. Sam grasped the handle with both hands and shuffled out of the building, leaning backward. What kind of superman was Carlo anyway? Had he ever tried to carry it himself?
In the Campò San Niccolo he hailed a student and paid him to lug the microscope to the vaporetto stop at San Basilio. There he was able to take a water taxi to the Riva and up a little rio all the way to Salizada Pignater. Molto costoso, but he had no choice.
Home at last, Sam hoisted his burden up two flights of stairs, thumping it down on every step. At last he was able to slide it across the floor to his study door. Gasping, he unlocked the door, dragged the case inside, and cried out.
The beautiful six-hundred-year-old reliquary from the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista lay flat on the table. The small crystal chamber had been shattered. The fragment of the True Cross was gone.
CHAPTER 27
The most striking thing about Doctor Richard Henchard was not the fact that he was a capable surgeon, educated at the University of London and the Collegio Medico at Bologna. The dominating thing about him was his appearance. If women didn’t exactly faint in his presence, they found him irresistible. Sensible grandmothers lost their dignity, middle-aged women made fools of themselves, young women fell all over him.
The poor man couldn’t help having an endless series of extra-marital affairs. It could hardly be called his fault. What could a man do if women perpetually surrounded him in billowing clouds, with the fatty muscles clothing their femurs exposed to the great trochanter, their chubby glutei maximi swaying, their globular mammary glands brushing his chest?
Actually Henchard wasn’t especially interested in women except as a sort of useful subspecies. You could hardly call them human. Of course he was married to Vittoria, because everybody had a wife, and now he was stuck with that stupida ragazza Giovanna, because he couldn’t get rid of her, she was always threatening to tell Vittoria. The new place he had found for Giovanna was far too expensive for a mere slut, but naturally he couldn’t let her move into the first one on the Rio della Sensa because of the fortune hidden in the closet.
No, women were a bore. What truly engaged Henchard’s interest was his medical practice. The patients who came to his office in the Ospedale Civile suffered from fascinating melano mas and other malignancies, and occasionally he ran across a truly remarkable metastatic sarcoma. How could a mere female compare?
And yet the American woman was different. Henchard was captivated by her majestic attractiveness, her clear-eyed calm. He had never known a woman like Mary Kelly. At first he had thought of her as a promising fish, one to be caught with only the most delicate tugs on the line, but now he was letting the line run free. He could see only a day ahead. The quest was thrilling, but it called for patience, for a sedate and old-fashioned kind of wooing. This woman was not about to be fucked against a wall.
But somehow, and sooner rather than later, he would net his fish.
On the day the golden reliquary from the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista arrived under guard at Sam Bell’s house in the sestiere of Castello, Richard Henchard walked out of his own house on Campo San Salvador near Piazza San Marco with a rolled-up sleeping bag under his arm.
Of course Vittoria was as sharp-eyed as ever. “Riccardo, what are you going to do with that thing?”
“One of the interns is going camping,” said Henchard smoothly. He patted her backside and kissed her. “Ciao, cara.”
She leaned against the doorway, watching him go, helplessly enamored in spite of their furious verbal battles. That strong cleft chin of his, those little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes!
In the apartment where his treasure lay, Henchard put the bedroll down in the corner and undid the padlock on the closet door. He wanted to ogle his treasure.
Thank Christ he had come along in time to witness the foolish thievery of that young spazzino. Thank God he had seen him standing there with his head through the hole and a gold platter in his hand. The poor ragazzo wouldn’t have known what to do with it. He would have told his mother and his girlfriend. He might even have gone straight to the editorial offices of Il Gazzettino. And then what would have happened? Everybody would have put in their nose.
That bitch in the agenzia, Signorina Pastora, she would have fought for the stuff like a cat. The absentee landlord in Milan didn’t need the money, but by God he’d put in a powerful claim. And in the end who would get it all, every single thing, every precious piece of Henchard’s wonderful discovery? The city of Venice would purloin it as part of its glorious historic heritage. So the wretched spazzino would have got nothing. He didn’t count.
Nor did Signorina Pastora’s client Lorenzo Costanza, Henchard’s competitor for possession of the treasure, the fool who had wanted the apartment for his elegant girlfriend. He didn’t count either, not anymore. He had been taken care of, and the blame had fallen on his wife. It had been a stroke of luck, the discovery of the weapon in the drawer with her underwear, the little nine-millimeter handgun that was so exactly like his own.
Signora Costanza had run away. Her husband was gone. The spazzino was gone. Henchard’s treasure was safe.
He knelt within the open door of the closet and looked at the magnificent painting and the gold plates and candlesticks and the odd little castles with their tiny doors. Very carefully he unrolled one of the scrolls. The parchment was covered with handwritten words in another language. What was it? Greek? Hebrew?
Hebrew, that was it. Henchard remembered now. The scrolls were Torah scrolls, inscribed with the first five books of the Bible.
At last, tired of squatting on his knees, he stood up and felt for the padlock, his attention diverted by a new question—
What Jew had put them there?
There was a commotion on the fondamenta below. Quickly Henchard strode across the room, slammed the door to the stairway, and threw the bolt across. Only then did he look out the window.
It was only the same crew of men who had been shoveling mud out of the canal for weeks. They were yanking out the corrugated iron barriers at both ends. There were shrieks of metal on metal, shouts and curses. One of the men hopped up and down and flapped his hand. Blood flew. Henchard watched until the man stopped hopping and guffawed and wiped his hand on his shirt. He was all right.
The others kept jerking on the barriers. Water began flowing into the drained canal, rushing faster and faster through the gaps in seething waterfalls. At last one of the men pulled out the last of the metal plates and lifted it over his head with a triumphant shout.
Amused, Henchard left the apartment, forgetting to snap the hasp of the padlock into the staple on the frame of the closet door.
CHAPTER 28
Sam had been telling himself once again that it didn’t matter what happened to him a
nymore. Why didn’t he say farewell to all care and just walk away from the library? Why didn’t he abandon his unhappy little daughter and his impossible mother-in-law and fly off to Monte Carlo, or Madrid, or Buenos Aires, or the South Pole? Or perhaps the North Pole? Was the North Pole more congenial than the South Pole? Or why didn’t he race across to the mainland and hire a cab and tell the driver to set off at once and find Dottoressa Lucia Costanza? Subito! Immediatamente!
But it wasn’t working, this cavalier way of thinking. He didn’t want to gamble for high stakes in a casino at Monte Carlo. Nor did he want to do any other crazy thing. And there was no omniscient limousine driver in the world who could say, “Sí, signore,” and rev up his engine and take off in the right direction to find the missing dottoressa.
No, there was nothing to do but go on with what he was doing, handling the problems that came up in the library, which were sometimes grievous—since the exhibition some of the Aldine incunabula were suffering from a new infestation of woodworm—and examining the relics loaned to him through the good offices of Father Urbano.
But now, staring at the smashed remains of the vandalized reliquary, Sam felt the last vestiges of his happy-go-lucky unconcern fall away. This disaster could not be shrugged off. There’d be hell to pay for sure.
Despairing, he pulled up a chair to the desk where the reliquary lay and sank his head in his hands. It didn’t matter any longer what happened to him, but it did matter what happened to the kindly priest who had entrusted him with all these holy objects. Father Urbano’s career as a rising man in the church would come to a crashing halt. He’d never be a monsignor or a cardinal patriarch, he’d never ascend to whatever pinnacle of ambition a healthy middle-aged priest might aspire.
But Sam had four weeks’ grace. The reliquary from the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista had been loaned to him for a month. Not that it mattered. What good would it do to postpone his awful revelation? The shock and the horrified accusations would be the same.