The Bellini card yte-3

by Jason Goodwin

  As Yashim dropped down onto the mass of broken tiles, they began to slide.

  104

  He fell awkwardly, wrenching his leg as he rolled across the cords of wood.

  The tillerman gave a shout of surprise.

  Yashim snatched himself upright and turned to the man who was staring at him, dumbfounded.

  “It’s me!” Yashim cried. “The pasha!”

  A look of consternation swept across the tillerman’s face.

  “Tell them to keep rowing!”

  The tillerman glanced at the men forward. “Row on! Row on!” he barked. “You, you don’t look like the pasha,” he objected simply.

  Yashim scrambled to the front of the barge. His eyes swept the water. It was flat, oily, gleaming in the half dawn.

  He had the advantage now, surely? The barge was moving faster than a man could swim, and it was three hundred yards to the Palazzo d’Aspi.

  He peered at the shoreline, where the buildings dropped into the water. The buildings were clear, but there were freestanding mooring posts, too. Was the Tatar hiding somewhere among them?

  If he were hiding, then he must have seen Yashim jump.

  But he’d been swimming. He couldn’t have seen.

  Yashim glanced ahead, and that was when he saw a slight movement to his right. It was out of the corner of one eye, and when he looked again, there was nothing.

  Only the mouth of the empty canal and the low crenellations of the caisson he’d climbed an hour or so before.

  But the Tatar had slipped over it again. He’d seen him go.

  Or had he?

  Was it a faster way back to the Palazzo d’Aspi?

  Had the Tatar seen him coming?

  And if he jumped-and was wrong-would the contessa die?

  Yashim scuttled back to the man at the tiller. His foot throbbed.

  If he jumped, could he swim?

  The mouth of the canal was only fifteen yards ahead.

  Yashim stood up. He put both hands to his mouth and shouted, “Get down on deck!”

  The tillerman looked up, mouth agape.

  Yashim grabbed the tiller and swept it out of the man’s hands.

  Loaded with cords of beechwood from the foothills of the Dolomites, the barge heeled and swung right, driven by its own massive momentum. The portside rower staggered and vanished with a shout into the canal; his companion sprawled across the logs.

  For a moment it looked as if Yashim had made the turn too soon. As the bows swung around toward the edge of the palazzo, it seemed inevitable that they would crash into the masonry wall.

  But even as it tilted to the left, brushing its gunwales against the surface, the heavy barge was still making its way downstream.

  Over the still and silent waters of the Grand Canal, its solid keel cracked against the caisson like a rifle shot.

  The broad prow lifted out of the water, scraping up on the irregular jutting timbers, and Yashim and the tillerman were thrown forward.

  For a moment the barge seemed to hang at an unnatural angle. The impact had driven the stern so low that as it slewed to port it seemed to be pressing upon a scoop of water that would at any second rush back and overwhelm it.

  Clinging to the edge of the hold, Yashim glanced back. The water was like oil again-slow, gurgling, wreathing itself in coils and bubbles.

  Something cracked like a rifle bolt, and the barge lurched.

  The waters at the stern rushed in. They swept in beneath the rudder, picked up the barge and lifted it, and as the boat began to rise, a shudder swept its length.

  The central plank of the barrier snapped in two. The weight of the barge dropped suddenly a few inches. The crossbeam beneath curved, then popped from its rabbets, and as the prow of the barge dropped through the barrier, Yashim raised his head.

  He saw the Tatar, standing in the trench up to his knees, his hands in the water.

  He saw him staring upward, blankly, as water began to billow across the shattered caisson.

  The water jetted out on either side of the barge’s keel, like two green wings, scouring the walls and then curling inward, dragging with it shattered timber that smacked against the walls like weightless wickerwork and then swirled inward, smashing down onto the trench in a thundering plume of foam and mud.

  The boiling deluge rolled down to the far end of the canal, crashed against the caisson, and jetted up into the air.

  Yashim gripped the edge of his plank and held on for dear life.

  Very slowly, like a fat woman nudging herself into a bath, the barge creaked forward. As the backwash returned, it met a new wave of water and then, as if someone had lightly smacked its rump, the barge glided abruptly and harmlessly into the canal.

  The man at the prow stood up shakily.

  Yashim removed his fingers from the plank. When he looked around he saw the other rower in the water of the Grand Canal, clinging to his oar.

  The tillerman looked back and then at Yashim. He was white as a sheet.

  “Paolo,” he said, with an exasperated jerk of his head. “Always, he misses everything.”

  105

  Yashim found the contessa sleeping, still braided to her bed.

  He slipped the cords easily and she rolled over, still sleeping, gathering her hands to her chest. He lifted the sheets and laid them over her.

  Back in his room Yashim looked at himself in a mirror. The tillerman was right: he did not look like the pasha. He looked barely human. He had lost his turban and his hair was stiff with the mud that caked his face, his neck, and his clothes. His shirt was ripped to the waist. Blood had dried down one cheek, and his eyes looked unnaturally white.

  He stripped off his wet things and washed his face and hands in the bowl, turning the water a muddy gray. He wiped himself over with a damp towel, shivering, wishing that the Venetians among all their thefts and adoptions from Istanbul had chosen the hammam. He felt as though the rotting ooze of the canals had seeped into the pores of his skin, and cold, too. What he needed now was unlimited hot water and a man to knead him like fresh dough. He put on some fresh linen and dry clothes, and felt somewhat refreshed.

  Back in the salon he stood for a long time at the window, watching the traffic thicken on the canal, listening to the sound of bells and thinking about the man he had killed.

  106

  The bells of San Sebastiano were ringing when Signora Contarini sallied forth in her best bonnet. Her husband had willingly ceded his position on her arm to Stanislaw Palewski, who walked solemnly at her side. Behind them came Maria, holding the speechless young man by one hand and a small sister by the other. Her brother followed with two children.

  The Contarinis were going to Mass.

  “The mad boy should come,” the signora had decided. “Why not? He’s a Christian, isn’t he?”

  “How can you tell, signora?” Palewski replied. “He might be a Moor, like Yashim.”

  She shook her head vigorously. “Believe me, signore, he’s a Christian. As I hope you are, signore.”

  The man remained quiet until they reached the church, when he began to utter small cries, patting the doorway with his hands and nodding amiably. Some of the parishioners stared, but Signora Contarini kept her chin level and swept her entourage grandly inside, where they had some difficulty in pressing the man into a pew. He seemed to want to go around and around the walls, touching everything. Only when Father Andrea entered did the man grow still, his stubbly head cocked in wonder at the motions of the priest.

  As the Communion approached, the signora became a little agitated.

  “He must stay with the children,” she hissed.

  They shuffled forward to the altar rail. Palewski knelt between Signora Contarini and Maria to receive the host.

  “In nomine Patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti.”

  “Amen.”

  Palewski lifted the wafer to his mouth.

  Maria nudged him. The signora was putting the wafer in her mouth, and beyond her
knelt the speechless young man.

  Palewski glanced sideways. The man’s face was transfigured by an expression of-what, exactly? It was the expression worn by an apostle in a medieval Assumption. Amazement? Fear?

  Signora Contarini’s head jerked with impatience when she saw the man.

  “In nomine Patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti,” Father Andrea murmured, holding out the wafer.

  The man reached up. He took the priest’s hand in his and brought it to his cheek.

  Father Andrea murmured a blessing. He made to move on, but the man seemed unwilling to let him go.

  As he stooped to say something in the man’s ear, Palewski saw a look of confusion cross his face. Then the color drained from his cheeks.

  107

  Tousle — haired from sleep and looking lovelier than ever, Carla entered the salon to find Yashim asleep with his forehead against the windowpane.

  She gave a small cry of surprise, and Yashim opened his eyes. She was dressed in her nightgown, under a long embroidered coat whose sleeves were slashed to dangle at the elbows.

  “I thought you were dead,” she breathed.

  “That was another man,” Yashim answered, rubbing his eyes. “He came to kill you.”

  She took his hands. “Tell me what happened.”

  He told her, almost reluctantly, and when he had finished she said, “Yesterday I thought you had come to kill me, Yashim. Instead, you saved my life.”

  “Will you sell me the Bellini?”

  “You?”

  “The sultan.”

  She drew herself up to her full height. “The money, you understand. It’s not for me.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “No, of course not.” She bent forward and kissed him, softly, on the lips. “But I wanted you to be sure. In Venice, Yashim, honor is all that’s left.”

  Then the door opened, and two white-jacketed soldiers came in.

  Behind them followed Sergeant Vosper and finally, looking stout in his uniform, the stadtmeister himself.

  At the door he checked himself abruptly. “Contessa?”

  He bowed and clicked his heels.

  “I regret intruding upon you, Contessa, in this manner,” he said, “but it is a matter of urgency.”

  “Urgency?”

  “Indeed. You will be so kind as to give me the papers.”

  And he held out his hand, as if the contessa were holding them in hers.

  108

  “Nikola!”

  The young man gave a birdlike cry, and then he was gobbling, and grinning, and nodding his head in an ecstasy of pleasure, patting Father Andrea’s hand to his cheek.

  In the midst of his astonishment, Palewski still wondered what, exactly, was the liturgical form. Could Communion be interrupted? Father Andrea seemed to have little choice: the man-Nikola-was not going to be parted easily from him.

  In the end the priest solved the problem by lifting the altar rail and bringing Nikola to stand beside him like an acolyte. While he grinned and nodded, Father Andrea continued with the wafer and the wine, smiling broadly all the while.

  After the service the priest and the speechless man came back to the Contarini house together, hand in hand. Commissario Brunelli was there already, telling Signor Contarini about an extraordinary accident that had occurred on the Grand Canal only that morning.

  Over breakfast Nikola’s story emerged.

  “Nikola,” the priest explained, leaning back to look at him more carefully, “is my old friend. We were in Croatia together, Nikola and I. But one day, he disappeared.”

  The young man pulled a long face and solemnly shook his head.

  “No? Well, I expect we’ll learn something about that, by and by. Everyone searched for him. In the end, we discovered that he had been seen getting into a coach, with a stranger, bound for Trieste.”

  The young man, Nikola, nodded again, but this time he slid from his chair and began rifling through the pictures he had drawn. He found the one he wanted and laid it on the table.

  Everyone craned for a better look. It was a charcoal sketch of a man sitting in a hard chair. He was solidly built-a strong man gone to seed, one would have said-his eyes were cast down, almost modestly, looking at a picture or book on his lap.

  “Yes,” the priest said slowly. “That’s the man. I knew it! He called himself Spoletti. From Padua.”

  “It’s Alfredo!” Palewski cried.

  Brunelli leaned forward. “You’re both wrong,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s Popi Eletro.”

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  Carla gave a shaky laugh. “The papers? I don’t understand.”

  The stadtmeister curled his lip. “Please don’t joke with me, Contessa.”

  Carla’s chest lifted. She half turned her head. “I have nothing whatever that belongs to you, Stadtmeister. Nothing at all.”

  The stadtmeister’s eyes were like currants. “To me, no. But I will see to it that you get a receipt from the relevant authorities.”

  “Ah, the authorities.” Carla took a deep breath. “But what, exactly, do the authorities seek?”

  Finkel’s jaw was working. “We both know exactly what you need to produce. Let us not delude ourselves, Contessa. You have a note of hand, signed by the Duke of Naxos. You also have a proscribed artwork by Gentile Bellini.”

  “Proscribed? What does it mean?”

  “It means, Contessa, that the state has seen fit to confiscate the said work in its own interest. I hold a warrant, signed by Vienna. A certain compensation can be agreed,” he added.

  “A warrant! How alarming.” The contessa sounded less alarmed than furious. “And when did you receive this warrant?”

  The stadtmeister looked uncertain. “Receive it, Contessa? Why, I’m not sure. A week or so ago. Of course,” he added, running a gauntleted hand over his whiskers, “I shall be delighted to discuss the, ah, compensation due at any time that suits you. You will find the authorities can be I’m sure.”

  Yashim’s mind was racing ahead. His curious gift for self-concealment might just allow him to get out of the salon by the end door. Beyond, he imagined, there would be a staircase to the second floor. With luck, and time, he could then come down to the contessa’s room. Take the picture.

  It was the contessa herself, unfortunately, who broke the spell.

  “You are a witness to this insult, Yashim Pasha,” she said, switching to Italian.

  The stadtmeister’s eyes swiveled toward the window.

  “Der Teufel!” he muttered.

  Yashim inclined his head. “I am sure the stadtmeister has no intention of insulting you, Contessa. He has done his duty, as I have done mine.”

  He salaamed politely. “A thousand pardons, Herr Oberst, if my presence surprises you. Allow me to introduce myself. Yashim Pasha, of the sultan’s household, making a purely private visit to your city.”

  The stadtmeister clicked his heels, but he looked extremely wary.

  “A private visit? Where’s Brunelli? Vosper!”

  Sergeant Vosper shuffled his feet and said nothing.

  “The amiable commissario,” Yashim went on, “is a credit to your office.” He took a few steps into the room. “I regret that my understanding of German is only limited, but I think the contessa is mistaken if she thinks you have been insulting her. I am sure you mean nothing of the kind.”

  “No, no, of course not,” the stadtmeister replied, sounding nettled.

  “Forgive me, but it seemed to me that you were talking about a portrait-and a note.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But perhaps there has been some misunderstanding,” Yashim pressed on. “After all, it was for the sake of this same portrait, and the note, that I came to Venice.”

  The stadtmeister’s face darkened.

  “But that-that’s not possible,” he growled.

  “The contessa and I made the arrangements yesterday,” Yashim continued imperturbably. “At this moment, Herr Stadtmeister, the p
ortrait is on its way to Istanbul, via Corfu-the ship left Trieste last night. Of course, I will take the matter up on my return to Istanbul. I shall speak to Pappendorf myself. If there is any need to adjudicate a claim, then you will appreciate, sir, that the Ottoman government of Sultan Abdulmecid stands by its international treaties and obligations.”

  The stadtmeister opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again.

  “But the note!” His voice was almost a squeak.

  Yashim had certain ideas about the note, which did not include a fiction of having it shipped to Istanbul.

  “I had no difficulty in destroying it, Herr Stadtmeister. You may rest quite easy on that score.”

  The stadtmeister gaped. “Destroyed it! Der Teufel! ”

  It was Yashim’s turn to look surprised. “But surely, Herr Stadtmeister, it was to our mutual advantage that the note should cease to exist?”

  The stadtmeister merely gurgled.

  Without the slightest attempt at a bow, he turned on his heel and left the room. Vosper shuffled off after him. Only the two soldiers clicked their heels, shouldered their rifles, and with immaculate nods toward the beautiful contessa retreated backward through the door, closing it gently behind them.

  Carla turned to Yashim with an expression of amusement.

  “Very neat, Yashim Pasha. Very neat, indeed.”

  “Oh, it was nothing,” said Yashim carelessly. “I just followed the diagram, that’s all.”

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  He glanced through the window in time to see the stadtmeister sitting rigid in his gondola, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. Opposite sat Vosper, his shoulders hunched.

  The gondola moved off with a lazy flourish.

  Had Vosper been less downcast, or the stadtmeister less rigid in defeat, they might have seen another gondola sweep up to the steps of the Palazzo d’Aspi. They would not have recognized Palewski, but they would have known the man who sat beside him.