Thief of Venice

by Jane Langton

  But there was a more significant difference. Here there was no sinister aura, no sense of suffering, no terror. It was merely a museum of beautiful sacred objects.

  Mary went back downstairs and bought a book in the museum shop, attracted by the picture on the cover. It was a photograph of a crowd of people on a sunny street surrounding a man who was carrying a Torah. All the men were wearing hats, some of the women held babies. It was surely an important occasion. Somehow the picture struck a blow.

  Oh, God, she was tired. She wanted to go home.

  Which way to the vaporetto stop? Many plodded across another bridge and walked under a sign, GHETTO VECCHIO. It was the wrong way. She had been here before. It was not the way home. This little street led straight back to a synagogue. Last time there had been men going in and out, boys on the doorstep. Today there was no one. The synagogue was closed.

  Then, tired as she was, Mary stopped short and gasped with recognition, because it was the church portal in her photograph. It was the one Sam was looking for. When they had pored over pictures of scores of Venetian churches, they had been making a simple mistake. It wasn’t a church at all. The imposing building in the background of Mary’s accidental photograph of Lucia Costanza was not a Christian church, it was a synagogue.

  In the vaporetto on the way home Mary took out the book she had bought in the Museo Ebraico and read the title, Gli Ebrei a Venezia, 1938–1945. As the boat chugged around the bend of the Grand Canal she turned the pages, slowly deciphering the Italian words, aware that the answer to the puzzle was beginning to reveal itself. The sense of horror emanating from the golden treasure in Visconti’s closet was not a hallucination. The horror was real.

  CHAPTER 38

  The place where Giovanna had been installed by Riccardo ’Enciard—Giovanna couldn’t pronounce his English name—wasn’t exactly what she would have liked, a pretty apartment in a place where she could go shopping with her friends. This part of Cannaregio was a long way from any fashionable neighborhood.

  The only people on the street were small children, middleaged women, and laborers taking up the pavement and putting it down again. The only sounds were the harsh scraping of the shovels of the muratori and the silly shouts of the children. There were no elegant shops. It was true that Riccardo sometimes gave her expensive presents, but this time he had been estremamente spilorcio, really stingy. She had a TV set, but he kept forgetting to arrange for a telephone. How did he expect her to get along without a phone?

  “This place is closer to the hospital,” that was his excuse. “So I can drop in on you at lunchtime.”

  But it had been weeks since he had dropped in at all. And yet she was supposed to be there for him at noon every day, just in case! It wasn’t fair. It meant that she couldn’t spend an entire day with Minetta or go shopping in Mestre with Serena. She couldn’t even chat on the phone or arrange a meeting.

  Giovanna spent much of her time in bed, wearing one of the pretty nightgowns Riccardo had given her. At first she took a shower every day and powdered and perfumed herself and painted her face and shaved her legs and did her nails and arranged her hair in front of the mirror, just in case he might drop by. But now that he came so seldom it was a waste of time. So Giovanna often didn’t bother to get up. She lay in bed, not always very clean, eating sweets and playing solitaire or mending the lace edging on her underwear, while the television screen jiggled and bounced across the room because it was company.

  So it was a shock when he suddenly appeared and told her imperiously that she had to move out. “Right now, Giovanna. Subito! I’ve found you another place.” His arms were full of lumpy plastic bags.

  She reared up in bed. “But, Riccardo!”

  “Now! Ascolta! I said right now.” He set his bags down on the floor, then strode across the room to her wardrobe. “Here, put this on.”

  “But why?” She got out of bed, reached for the dress, and looked at him slyly. “It’s your wife, isn’t it? Your wife is coming.”

  “Yes, yes, my wife. Come on. Andiamo!”

  On the television screen the commercial for a carpet-cleaning service came to an end and a newswoman appeared, a gorgeous creature with a cascade of golden hair. Briskly she announced the day’s headlines. While Giovanna bustled around, Riccardo ran down the stairs again and came back with a clumsy armful wrapped in a tarpaulin. It tinkled and jingled. This too he put down on the floor.

  “What’s all this stuff?” said Giovanna, fumbling behind her back with her bra.

  “It’s none of your fucking business.”

  Giovanna sniffled, and he ran downstairs again. By the time she finished dressing he had made two more trips up and down. The corner of the room was cluttered with mysterious bulky objects in plastic bags—squarish, roundish, and flattish—and a few long objects clumsily wrapped in the tarp.

  Giovanna was intensely inquisitive. When Riccardo ran downstairs for the last time she poked under the tarp and saw a glint of gold. Hastily she covered it up as he thundered up the stairs again. “Okay,” he said brusquely. “Avan!.”

  Giovanna couldn’t believe it. “But what about my things?” She waved her arm dramatically at the bed with its cozy comforter and flurry pillows, her ruffled curtains, her dressing table, the wardrobe full of her clothes, and the chaise on which they had so often made love.

  “Later. I’ll have everything sent over later. Giovanna, I have an appointment! Come on!”

  “But, Riccardo! My television! I can’t do without my television set!”

  Then for a moment they both turned to look at it. The blond beauty from Rome had vanished, and it was the turn of a ripe peach from Venice to relay the latest information on a Venetian murder investigation. “There has been no movement in the Costanza murder case,” said the ripe peach. “The principal suspect, Dottoressa Lucia Costanza, the murdered man’s runaway wife, is rumored to be in Vicenza. This snapshot of Dottoressa Costanza is a television first. It was taken last year by her neighbor, Signora Maria Adelberti. If any viewer has seen this woman, please call this station.”

  And there she was, Dottoressa Lucia Costanza, a handsome woman in an old shirt, trimming a rosebush.

  Henchard cried, “Shit! Fucking shit!” and sank down on the bed.

  “What is it, Riccardo?” said Giovanna, dumbfounded.

  Oh, Christ, it was his own fault. He had seen her, she had been right there on the fondamenta beside the apartment on the Rio della Sensa. He had jumped to a conclusion, too fast, too fast! He had assumed she was just somebody’s girlfriend. He should have seen at once that a woman with her bearing couldn’t possibly be a common whore like Giovanna. Oh, God forgive him, he had made a gruesome mistake.

  Henchard ground his teeth and covered his face with his hands, trying to think. He ran his memory back to the day in the agenzia with Signorina Pastora. She had turned away from him to talk on the telephone, he remembered that, and he had picked up from her desk the lease signed by the other client, and read the name and address.

  Oh, Christ, had it been S.re L. Costanza, meaning the husband, Lorenzo Costanza, or Sig ra L. Costanza, meaning the wife, Lucia Costanza? Fucking Christ, he Had assumed it was the husband! He had matched the whole thing to his own life, to his own rental of the apartment for a girlfriend, his own discovery of the treasure in the closet. He had assumed the wretched Costanza had discovered it. He had assumed that the woman at the door was merely his girlfriend, when she was really his wife.

  She was Lucia Costanza herself. It was Lucia Costanza who had tried to rent the apartment because she was leaving her husband, and therefore Lucia Costanza must have seen what was in the closet. Her husband, that poor fucking sod, had been killed by mistake. Jesus Christ!

  Viciously Henchard jerked the cord of the television out of the wall and told himself miserably that there were now two women who knew about his treasure—that goddamn American woman Mary Kelly and the goddamn female procurator of San Marco, Lucia Costanza.

 
Thank God, he had moved quickly. The treasure was here, not there. They might know that it existed, but they didn’t know where, and they would never, never find it. In this anonymous apartment, one of a thousand in this part of town, it was perfectly safe.

  CHAPTER 39

  There was so much to tell Homer. Mary labored up the stairs of the house on Salizada del Pignater, painfully realizing that she would have to explain everything. Not just some of it, all of it.

  Mary and Homer had been married a long time, not always comfortably. But there had been so many times when Mary had felt a warm wifely tenderness, critical moments when Homer had been nothing less than magnificent. Oh, once in a while he could be infuriating and impulsive, and sometimes he drifted off into otherworldly states, like now. But there had also been amazing occasions when he had gathered his wits and called upon his crazy transcendental intuition and then, bang, things would begin to happen. He was like a violinist who hits all the wrong notes but drives forward, ever forward, miraculously keeping up, arriving at the final chord with a triumphant sweep of his bow.

  When she walked into the apartment Mary found Homer grubbing around in the kitchen, looking for something to eat. She led him to a chair and kissed him, then seized a loaf of bread and began slicing it, waving the knife dangerously in the air as she talked, sawing the loaf into pulverized pieces. “Homer, tell me what you know about the fate of the Jews in Venice during World War II.”

  Homer looked dazed. “Nothing much, I’m afraid. Are you about to tell me it was bad?”

  “It was horrible. I bought a book. Wait a minute.” Mary put down her knife and plucked the book out of her bag. “Here it is, the story of Venetian Jews from 1938 to 1945.” She dropped it in Homer’s lap and went back to her loaf of bread. “The deportation of Venetian Jews began in September 1943.” The loaf of bread under Mary’s knife disintegrated. She found another loaf and sliced it savagely in half. “It went on through 1944. Men, women, and children, old people, sick people. More than two hundred people went to death camps. Only four or five came back.”

  “My God.” Homer got up and took Mary’s knife. “Here, let me.”

  He began cutting clumsy slices while Mary threw open the refrigerator door. She took out a plate of prosciutto, slapped it on the table, and went on talking. “A few people hid themselves away in dark corners for years, like Anne Frank’s family in Amsterdam. And in some of the synagogues they were afraid the Nazis would steal their Torah scrolls and Passover plates, so they hid them from the Germans for the duration. And then when the war was over they brought them out of hiding.”

  She began making sandwiches, not looking at Homer. He watched her, listening soberly. “I saw one of the hiding places. It’s just been discovered. I mean, I saw what was in it.” She snatched up a tray and began to gabble, because the hard part of the story was coming.

  “And the things were made of gold, Homer, they were all made of gold, and there was a painting too, and some other things. And, oh, Homer, I forgot, we’ve got to call Sam. You know that picture I took, the one with the church we haven’t been able to identify? The picture that shows the woman who’s missing, the woman he’s so anxious to find? Well, it’s not a church, it’s a synagogue. I was in the Ghetto Vecchio today and I recognized it, because that’s where it is. Lucia Costanza was right there in front of the synagogue when I took the picture. Not now of course. I mean, I took the picture weeks ago.” Mary scrabbled at the telephone on the wall. “I’ve got to call Sam.”

  Homer came up behind her and removed her hand from the phone and put his arm around her shoulders and made her sit down. His face was grave. “Mary, stop. Now tell me. Just slow down and tell me exactly how you happened to see what you saw. Come on now, start at the beginning. I’ve known for a while that something isn’t right. Go ahead, my dear, just tell me.”

  She sat down, her heart throbbing, and began.

  Later on in the privacy of the sitting room, while Mary sat in the kitchen staring miserably at the plate of uneaten sandwiches, Homer wrote a few words on a piece of paper. It was like a letter to a stranger named Homer Kelly, from another stranger of the same name—

  It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

  He mailed the letter by dropping it carefully on the hearth, lighting it with a match, and standing with lowered head to watch it burn.

  CHAPTER 40

  Homer was dumb with grief. As he left the house on Salizada del Pignater he glanced up at the top-floor window and saw Mary’s pale face looking down. He was too shattered to wave. He trudged on, nodding politely at the men who were smoking and talking in front of the bar. They were all wearing boots, and he remembered the warning about high water. He had no boots, but what the hell.

  The street was still dry, but when he came out on the Riva, water was lapping over the edge of the pavement. All the gondolas were smartly covered with blue canvas. The gondoliers were nowhere in sight. Across the water, San Giorgio Maggiore was a dreamlike half-ghostly shape. In the air there was a thin drizzle of mist and he had no umbrella. Homer didn’t give a shit for an umbrella.

  The first of the high-water duckboards began in front of the Church of Santa Maria della Pietà. Homer crossed a bridge, stepped off on the wooden platform, and tramped in the direction of the Piazzetta, stepping off to ascend another bridge, stepping off on another platform. He was one of an endless line of people moving forward, keeping to the right, everyone trying not to interfere with those coming the other way. The boards were barely wide enough for two to pass in single file. Homer’s big frame was a problem. He had to walk crabwise, dangerously close to the edge.

  The misting weather, the rising water, the ragged shreds of cloud hanging low overhead, everything matched the heaviness of his heart. But when he slopped into the Marciana his misery was distracted by the organized confusion. Someone was shouting directions. Volumes from the rare book room were being carried up the stairs to the safety of the primo piano. Kids from the university who had come to the library to study and take notes had been drafted to pile chairs on tables and heave heavy books from the bottom shelves.

  Some of Homer’s normal response to an emergency came back when the official dragon shot out of her glass cage and shouted at him to help, “Professore! Aiuto!”

  “Sì, sì, I’ll be right back,” promised Homer. “Ritorno immediatamente.” As he started up the stairs, someone thrust a pile of encyclopedias into his arms. Glancing back into the reading room he was amused to see the stone figure of Petrarch clutching his own book to his breast.

  The office belonging to Dottor Samuele Bell, the curator of rare books, had become a control center. Signora Pino was on the phone, but she waved Homer into Sam’s office. He pushed through a crowd of uniformed men from the Vigili Urbani who were awaiting orders. His friend Sam was almost invisible, sitting at his desk, bowed over a plan of the building.

  He looked up and said, “Un momento, Homer,” and gave a final order. “Non dimenticate! Le prese elettriche, dovete ispezionarle, se vanno sottacqua.”

  “Sì, sì,” said the sergeant in charge, and at once the crowd of young soldiers turned away and started down the stairs.

  “What was that all about?” said Homer. “Prese elettriche, what’s that?”

  “Electric”—Sam flapped his hands—“holes? Connections? You know, Homer, this thing right here.” He pointed at the baseboard behind his desk.

  “Ah,” said Homer, “you mean outlets, electrical outlets. Of course, I can see that water would mess up your entire electrical system.”

  Sam leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “We thought we were ready,” he told Homer, “but we weren’t. We have a plan with four teams, each with its own sector to take care of, but in this emergency some people can’t get here, so we’ve had to scrubble up more manpower at the last minute. Is that the right word? Scrubble? Scrobble?”

  “Scrabble?” suggested Homer. “Sam, look.” He reached under his damp jacket, extracted the photog
raph of Lucia Costanza from his breast pocket, and handed it to Sam. “The building in the background isn’t a church, it’s a synagogue.”

  Sam took the picture and whooped. “A synagogue, of course! That’s why we couldn’t find it by looking at pictures of churches. My God, look at it! Those are Hebrew words over the door. Which synagogue is it?”

  “It’s in the Ghetto Vecchio. Is there more than one synagogue?”

  “Of course, but it doesn’t matter. Homer, the Ghetto Vecchio! That’s where she is!”

  “Well, maybe she is and maybe she isn’t. It doesn’t mean she lives there.”

  “But it means we can look for her there. Homer, it’s a place to start.”

  Homer’s heartsickness returned. His friend Sam was on the verge of finding the woman he loved at the very moment Homer was losing his. He turned abruptly away and drifted downstairs to help with the fetching and carrying, while the water rose on the Piazzetta and washed around the bases of the columns of Saint Theodore and the lion of Saint Mark and reached the top step of the long arcaded gallery of the Marciana.

  Sam had done all he could. He slammed out of his office and told Signora Pino that he was going out for an hour or two.

  “Ma, Dottore,” objected Signora Pino, “il suo programma!” She held up her copy of Sam’s schedule. There were appointments with the chief of the polizia and a brigadiere capo from the carabinieri.

  “Glian nulli,” said Sam gaily, tossing his hand in the air. “Cancel them. Tell them the truth. Say I am ill.”

  “Ill? But, Dottore! You surely won’t forget the appointment at three o’clock!”

  “Oh, that.” Sam ran out of Signora Pino’s office while she called after him, “Donor Bell!” and flapped her appointment book.