Thief of Venice

by Jane Langton

Lucia couldn’t stop laughing. “It’s too soon to tell. Experiments usually take longer.”

  They waded across the square together in the misty rain, her hand clasped in his, and crossed the bridge into the Ghetto Vecchio.

  Then he stopped walking and turned to her with another insane question. “What if I were to kiss you? I mean, right here in front of this good rabbi?”

  The rabbi raised his black hat and smiled.

  “You mean”—Lucia could hardly speak—“another experiment?”

  “Yes, yes, just an experiment.”

  She closed her eyes as his face came near. Gently, without holding her, he kissed her lips lightly, then withdrew and murmured, “Did it work?”

  “Oh, oh, I’m not quite sure.” Lucia kept her eyes closed, and he tried again, putting his hands on her shoulders, kissing her seriously.

  It was so lovely, so enchanting. Lucia stood perfectly still like a flower in the field, as he wrapped his arms around her and said softly, “I wasn’t sure I still knew how to kiss a girl.”

  “It’s like riding a bicycle,” she whispered. “It’s something you don’t forget.”

  “Oh, God, Lucia, Lucia.”

  It was beginning to rain in earnest. She took his hand and led him back over the bridge to her house. The door was unlocked. Lucia drew Sam inside and led the way upstairs, leaving the door open behind her. The rising water opened it farther still. It swayed on its hinges.

  Neither of these mature, highly educated and distinguished people cared that they had previously known each other for less than half an hour.

  Richard Henchard stood outside, shielding himself from the rain under a tree. His astonishing patient, so miraculously recovered, had led him straight to Lucia Costanza.

  What was the goddamn woman doing now? Well, naturally, she was about to go to bed with a famous scholar, Henchard’s prize example of a pancreatic carcinoma remission, Signor Samuele Bell, who now had a lifetime of delightful fuckings ahead of him. Goddamn his vanished cancer! Goddamn his healthy balls! And goddamn his perfect ears, which might now be listening eagerly to any goddamn thing the woman might feel like telling him, between fucking endearments and fucking embraces and goddamn fucking orgasms! Henchard groaned aloud. Oh, God, he had no time, he had no time!

  Then time opened out before him. The rain came down harder than ever, but someone rushed out of Signora Costanza’s door and hurried away under an umbrella. It was his patient, Samuele Bell.

  Had there been a lover’s quarrel already? Henchard grinned and reached in his pocket. His weapon was warm in his hand, but he kept it out of sight as he started for the door. Now, thanks be to God, he would find her alone, and then he could do with her whatever he wanted.

  CHAPTER 45

  Mary had known it would be miserably uncomfortable, but she had been unprepared for the extent of the wreckage. She had hit Homer hard. Recalling the glib bragging stories of her friends, she could not remember any tallying up of the costs. Had they been as terrible as this?

  She looked at her watch. It was three o’clock. She couldn’t go to bed and indulge in a fit of weeping. There was no time. She had to go out again, she had to take a vaporetto to Cannaregio and find her way back to the Rio della Sensa. She had to get back there before Richard took everything away. If she could get hold of one thing from that closet, just one many-branched candlestick or Passover plate, then she could take it to somebody—the polizia?—the carabinieri?—and they would believe her when she said that something next door to Tintoretto’s house smelled to high heaven.

  It would do no good to accuse someone called Visconti. She had once tried to call Doctor Richard Visconti at the hospital, but there had been nobody there by that name. In escorting her around the city he had obviously been two-timing his wife. Mary was no fool, she had figured it out, but she had managed not to care.

  Now she rummaged furiously in her dresser drawers, looking for the picture of Visconti. When she found it, she tore it in little pieces, but instead of throwing them in the wastebasket she opened the pages of the book she had bought in the Ghetto Nuovo and dropped them inside. Now the torn scraps of the photograph of Doctor Richard Visconti were folded between photographs of men and women who had been deported to death camps—

  SI RICERCA PAOLA SONINO

  ARRESTATA IL 28 GENNAIO 1944.

  CHI AVESSE NOTIZIE DI COLOMBO ANGELO

  È PREGATO DI DARE LE NOTIZIE

  ALLA COMUNITÀ ISRAELITICA.

  Then she washed the tears off her cheeks, stuffed her red umbrella into the side pocket of her bag, and pulled on her boots, because acqua alta had been bad enough this morning, and the radio predicted acqua altissima alle cinque. The worst was coming at five o’clock, the highest water yet.

  It took her an hour to get across the city. By four o’clock she was wading in deep water past the figure of the Moor on the corner and the second Moor beside Tintoretto’s house, and along the pavement inundated by the overflowing Rio della Sensa, to the door she had entered that morning in such a dizzy state of desire—could it really have been only this morning?

  She touched the handle of the door, her heart beating. To her surprise it opened easily, but before she could go inside, she was hailed by a shout from above. She looked up. A woman stared down at her from the window of the apartment.

  “Prego, signora, chi è lei?”

  The question was hostile, the face glowering.

  “Sono un’ americana, mi chiamo Mary Kelly. Dov’ è il Dottore?”

  It took her a little while to allay the suspicions of Giovanna, but at last she was permitted to come upstairs. Giovanna spoke no English, but Mary’s blatant lie in Italian soon mollified her. Thinking fast, Mary claimed to be the former tenant. On leaving the apartment this morning she had packed up something belonging to the dottore. “Ecco!” Mary pulled her notebook out of her bag. “Questo appartiene al dottore. Qual’ è il suo indirizzo?” What is his address?

  Giovanna beckoned her to the window and put out her plump pink arm. The nail of her pointing finger was enameled in silver. “Calle de la Madonna, vicino al Rio dei Gesuiti.” Looking down at the lake of water below the window, she made shooing motions with her hands. “Maledetta quest’ acqua alta!”

  But when Mary descended to ground level, the water was deeper than ever.

  She had come too late. Visconti had already removed his golden horde. The closet where it had lain, glittering and mysterious, was wide open, but it was empty. The sleeping bag on which they had made love had also been taken away, replaced by puffy comforters and pillows belonging to his girlfriend.

  The treasure was gone.

  CHAPTER 46

  He could do with her whatever he wanted.

  There was only one thing Henchard wanted to do with Lucia Costanza. The gun that had killed her husband was heavy in his pocket. Lorenzo Costanza’s death had been a mistake, but hers was a necessity. She was a rat gnawing at the edges of his treasure.

  That had been the trouble from the beginning, proliferating vermin. Now, shit! There were two of them, a couple of female rats, and both of them had seen what they shouldn’t have seen. Both of them knew about the gold plates and the gold scrolls and the gold candlesticks, both of them had seen the painting. Oh, Christ, the painting! The Titian, it had to be a Titian! A Titian worth a fabulous sum if he could figure out how to put it on the market.

  No, there was only one thing to do with the bloody woman. He couldn’t do it here. A couple of men were making a lot of noise on the ground floor, talking and arguing and shoving furniture around. If he did it here, Christ, they’d come barging up to find out what the hell was going on.

  Henchard walked up the stairs into Lucia’s apartment and took her away at gunpoint. She had no time to gather her wits, no time to write a message, no time to snatch up her umbrella or put on her boots. Poking the muzzle of the gun deep into the flesh of her back, he thrust her before him down the stairs and out into the rain. Then, through shal
low and deep water, he gripped her by the arm and marched her across a mile of Cannaregio to the very door of the flat from which he had so recently ousted Giovanna.

  It was a long way. Lucia was a tall strong woman, and at first she squirmed and tried to pull herself free, but he only hissed in her ear and held her tighter. Because of the rain and rising water there was no one on the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, or on the bridge leading out of the ghetto to the north, or on the Fondamenta della Misericordia, or on the narrow zigzagging ways beyond the end of the Rio de la Misericordia—no one to whom she could call for help, only a few dogged umbrellas held low over crouching unseen heads. On the bridge over the Rio di Felice she cried out to an elderly woman who was dragging a cart up the steps, and the old woman, startled, looked up at her and said, “Signora?”

  But at once Lucia was wrapped in a violent embrace and a hard mouth was crushed against hers, and the muzzle of the gun was jammed painfully into her side—it was the very same modello molto popolare with which Richard Henchard had murdered her husband, but Lucia did not know that.

  From then on she walked mechanically with streams of water running down her face and her clammy skirt sticking to her legs. She was tormented by the conviction that nothing mattered anyway, not anymore, because it was painfully obvious what had really happened. It had been Sam Bell himself who had betrayed her. He had not looked for her because he loved her, he had looked for her because for some insane reason he wanted to hand her over to this highly presentable thug. The logic was inescapable. Why had the thug appeared so soon after Sam had left her alone, pretending to be going out for wine?

  When Sam ran back to Lucia’s house with the bottle of wine, his rubber boots sloshed easily through the overflow from the surrounding canals. The door of the house was still ajar, nudged open by the push of the water.

  Behind the apartment door on the ground floor male voices were talking loudly, and there was a clatter and bump of furniture. He had to step aside as a couple of men came out with a sofa, grunting and sweating. He smiled at them and ran joyfully up the stairs. Lucia’s door was wide open. Walking in, he called, “Lucia!”

  There was no answer. He called her again, “Lucia, where are you?”

  Again there was only silence. For the next five minutes Sam walked from room to room, not believing she could be gone. But no Lucia emerged from the bathroom, fresh from the shower. No Lucia waited for him in the bedroom, holding out her arms.

  She was not in the apartment at all. Lucia was gone.

  He galloped downstairs and knocked loudly on the door of the ground-floor flat.

  Again there was only a vacant silence. Staring out into the square, he looked for the two men with the sofa, but they had vanished.

  There was only one wretched conclusion. Sam closed his eyes and leaned against the jamb of the door, perfectly understanding what had happened. He had been too outrageous. Lucia had come to her senses and run away.

  The rain had turned to mist, then rain again. Sam pulled the collar of his jacket up around his ears and started across the rising lake of water in the square, telling himself that his new lease on life was no good to him if there was nothing left to live for. Yesterday nothing had mattered. Today everything did. He could no longer be careless because he was no longer dying.

  “Upstairs,” Henchard told Lucia. “Go ahead. Get upstairs.”

  Unwillingly Lucia climbed. She wanted to turn around and shove him down the stairs, but she was afraid. What in hell did this man want with her? And who in God’s name was he? After a desperate half hour in his company she knew she had seen him fleetingly before, but when and where?

  At the top of the stairs Henchard reached around her and unlocked the door of the apartment. “Go ahead,” he said, “go in.”

  Lucia walked slowly into the room, avoiding a heap of plastic-wrapped objects in one corner. A gilt chair lay on its side. A bed had been stripped of its sheets. Beside the bed a wardrobe door hung open, displaying a tangle of empty hangers. The floor was littered with miscellaneous household trash, a pink wastebasket, a dirty lavender towel, a pair of pink panty hose, a broken hand mirror, a blow-dryer, a long strip of lavender toilet paper, a scattered deck of cards. Was this dreary room the last place she was ever to see?

  “Stand over there against the wall.”

  “I will not.” Cornered and terrified, Lucia lunged at Henchard. He staggered backward, regained his balance and fired, and at once she fell to the floor in an awkward crumpled heap, blood pooling under her body, soaking the scattered panty hose and staining bright red the jack of spades.

  Henchard stood over her, breathing hard. One rat down, one rat to go.

  God, that was the trouble. There was always one more. You chased a couple of vermin into a room and they scrambled around and darted into corners and disappeared under furniture, and when you trapped one of them, the other darted out the door. The goddamn lady professor from America, Mary Kelly, where in hell was she now? She was the second rat, and the room in which she was running free was the entire city of Venice. He had to find her. Now, right now! Because there was no time.

  Henchard stepped over Lucia as if she were a dead dog and went into the bathroom to relieve the pressure on his bladder. Afterward he looked in the mirror, slicked back his hair, and left the flat, locking the door behind him with extreme care.

  And then the missing rat ran straight into his hands. When Henchard flung open the street door, Mary Kelly was walking straight toward him along the narrow street, carrying a red umbrella.

  Listening upstairs, Lucia heard a shot ping against a wall. She sat up, feeling quite well. Her arm was bleeding, but the blood was only seeping out. She felt fine, amazingly fine, in fact nothing hurt at all.

  Just as a precaution she reached for the pair of panty hose and tied it above the place where the cartridge had creased her arm, using her teeth to tighten the pink nylon just enough to stop the seepage. Then she stood up shakily and looked at the heap of clumsy packages in the corner. They seemed to have no relation to the litter of household refuse on the floor. Lucia walked slowly across the room and got down on her knees. Feebly she tugged at the plastic knot of one of the bags and took out a thick object wrapped in yellowed newsprint and tied with string.

  The name of the newspaper was clearly visible under a layer of dust—

  GAZZETTA DIVENEZIA

  DOMENICA 5 DICEMBRE 1943

  CHAPTER 47

  Mary ran.

  Henchard ran faster.

  She ran into Campo Madonna, but he was right behind her.

  The skin of Mary’s back shuddered as she slopped into the square, but there were two or three people in Campo Madonna—surely it was not a place where a man with a gun would be so stupid as to fire a shot. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him pause and slip around the corner.

  For the moment he was gone, but of course he wasn’t really gone, because he must be planning to seize her when she moved out of Campo Madonna into the calle heading south, zigzagging out of Cannaregio in the direction of San Marco, because of course she had to go south, and the man she knew as Richard Visconti must surely know that she had to go south.

  So it was something like a miracle, the tall woman coming out of the little shop on the other side of the square, carrying a plastic sack heavy with oranges in one hand and holding a newspaper over her head with the other. Mary nearly ran into her, and for a moment, startled, they looked straight into each other’s eyes. Then without a word Mary thrust the red umbrella at her and ran past her into the shop.

  The rain was falling heavily now. Henchard was sick of it. He was sick of struggling through drizzle and cloudburst and high water to free himself from one dangerous woman after another. He was weary of being soaked to the skin, fed up with the watery cataracts that sheeted down his forehead and stuck his lashes together until he was nearly blind.

  But not blind enough to miss the red umbrella. When it passed him, moving south in the right direction, he
hurried after it.

  Only when it stopped to hail another umbrella, only when the two umbrellas came together amid a storm of jolly Venetian gossip, the two women talking loudly both at once, standing in water up to the ankles of their boots, did Henchard discover his mistake.

  But by this time Mary Kelly had found a way around him. For the moment she was in the clear. The rain had stopped. People in rubber boots were emerging into the narrow streets. Mary set a course for Saint Mark Square, heading south, ever south. She was lost only once, when she chose a dead end. Retracing her steps, she discovered a bridge across Rio di San Marina and plunged on in the right direction.

  But when she found herself once more in familiar territory, she was obviously too far to the east. Correcting her mistake, she hurried across the dry pavement of Campo San Zaccaria, heading for the Riva and the lagoon.

  But then she stopped short, her heart in her mouth. Henchard was there. He had found her again.

  “San Martino! San Martino!” Crash! Crash! Crash! Ursula marched at the end of the parade of children, clashing her pot lids and singing, “San Martino! San Martino!” Her father was dying! She had heard it on the telephone! She would not let him die! “San Martino! San Martino!”

  Sister Maddalena led the procession along a route where the streets were dry. When they met another parade of children Ursula abandoned Sister Maddalena’s because it was turning back. She didn’t want to go back. There was nothing for her at home but another scolding. The new parade was marching away from home, they were going the other way. Their pots and pans were noisier, CRASH! CRASH! Their singing was even louder, “SAN MARTINO! SAN MARTINO!”

  When she saw Mrs. Kelly hurrying toward her, Ursula also saw the man running behind her, and instantly she knew what to do. She stopped short. The girls behind her cannoned into her back, but she had made an opening, and Mrs. Kelly ran straight through it, gasping, “Grazie, Ursula.”