"Come on. Don't sulk." She was still laughing, silly bitch. "We're all full of different theories about you. You know Tom and George are running a book? Dave Vidal's got six-to-four you're an antiquarian down on his luck."
"Oh, he has, has he?" I said bitterly, thinking that I was bloody well born that. "What's favorite?"
"Agnes and Doris put ten dollars even you're an actor practicing different roles."
"And you, Nancy?"
She quietened. Her smile vanished. "Me, Lovejoy? I can't quite make up my mind between some sort of policeman—"
'They don't work this nard, either." I pinched the rest of her carafe and asked if her budget would run to a slab of nosh.
"Maybe," she said, still grave. "If you'll tell me what drives a man harder than hunters and hunted."
It was bloody difficult, but I forced a buoyant smile. "Ifs a deal." I pulled her to her feet and helped her to sweep her books together. "Come on. I'll introduce you to polenta in a boatman's nosh bar in a calle around the comer. You'll love it."
She started smiling again and found her coat.
I kept a weather eye out for Cosima all the way to the little bridge caff by the San Zaccaria. Not that I was worried. I just didn't want her getting ideas.
Then I nicked this gondola.
13
Love's supposed to be the great pacifier. It is nothing of the sort. It's a torment, a stirrer, the ultimate hellraiser. Really great.
Oddly, Nancy and me were friendly, not at all like the usual carry-on with savage undertones, riotous misunderstandings, bitterness, and suchlike. It only rarely happens. I found it very strange, almost weird, to be lying awake in Nancy's single bed, hardly knowing who she was yet actually liking her. And not a scar on either of us. The mayhem was missing. A very disturbing sign, this. I was worried. It might be the way serfdom starts.
She was in the bathroom when I got dressed and slipped out. Luckily we were on different floors, so I was able to nip downstairs quite legitimately. Nobody was about. The phone in my room started ringing as I collected my map. That would be Nancy looking for me and ready to play hell. I didn't even pause. The reception-counter clock said three-thirty, almost too late to embark on a night prowl.
Turn right along the Riva degli Schiavoni in the mist under the line of waterfront lamps. Right at the Doge's Palace. Cross St. Mark's Square obliquely left, avoiding the famous Clock Arch. Do a quick double dogleg, and you are at a small canal basin between a hotel, a tiny pavement, and a couple of side calli. A few bored gondoliers usually chat there in preseason slackness, not really hoping for custom. Seven or eight gondolas are always aligned in the basin, the tarpaulin covers mostly left on.
Nobody on guard. No signs of life. No wonder, since there's nowhere you can go in a Venetian gondola except Venice. I took the end gondola with ease. No way of locking one, hence my brilliant choice of vehicle. Its cover was murder to shift, and twice I nearly fell in. As a sign of good faith in case I got nabbed, I took pains to fold the damned thing, and finally made a wobbly cast off.
Living in the estuaries of East Anglia, I'm not too bad on a boat, though they've minds of their own; but a gondola's the queerest craft I've ever tried to handle. For a start, it's deliberately built off balance. I mean it really is asymmetrical, with its bum leaning over more one side than the other. You propel it by this one stem oar. Easy enough, yet you have to keep guessing how much space you have over the toothy fcrro thing at the front. Add to that the bridges which try to brain you every few yards, and you get the idea it's not plain sailing. It is so low down, especially in a night mist with the damp house walls rising into the night on either side.
There was only me afloat at this godforsaken hour. I poled out of the basin, turned a shaky left mostly by scrabbling along the canal's wet walls. Three bridges later, left again for two. Then three split fingernails, a few muttered oaths and two head thumps, and I doglegged out of the Rio di Fenice to see the Grand Canal in the gloom straight ahead.
So far, nobody on the bridges or in the calli as far as I could tell. I pushed wearily into the thinner rio at the back of the great Venice Theater, and a waterbus swished across about a hundred yards away, frightening me to death. From the vantage point of a gondola, it looked like the Queen Mary, all lights and motion. The best about these little side canals is they get no tidal wave to speak of, so I was able to shove the gondola across the rio and ride out the minuscule disturbance. I'd no idea the wretched things ran at night.
Which meant that leaving the safety of the narrow rio was out of the question. That worried me even more.
I shoved the lopsided craft nervously forward beneath the bridge from which I'd examined the side of the Palazzo Malcontento. A few more strokes and I would be alongside that tunnel-like archway I'd seen, so thoughtfully barred against furtive intruders like me.
A silent Renaissance building, tiers of rectangular shuttered windows. Seen close to and from the water level, Venice is alarmingly tattered and patched. Even by the poor rio lights I could see that the palazzo was in the same state as the rest. I gave my gondola one more push and glided along the wall.
The barred archway allowed a head space of about four feet. I had no torch—me being stupid again—but beyond the bars, which seemed to be sort of padlocked double-hinged doors, there was a stretch of water about fifteen feet long running underneath the house. I had the idea I could make out a couple of wet steps and a kind of cellar space. Of course, there'd be no other way to move furniture in or out, there being simply no streets. This kind of entrance must be the Venetian equivalent of driving up to the front door.
Assuming I could somehow get past the barred entrance without springing some alarm, it was a way in. It was possibly wired top to bottom. But it only needed one— one —late-night bridge stroller to happen by, and there'd be a hue and cry at a stray gondola poised outside a respectable palazzo in a distinguished part of the city. Too chancy.
Depressed, I handwalked the gondola back up the rio to the bridge. A small fondamenta pavement makes it easy to land there. I tethered the gondola, left a note under the tarpaulin, and strolled nonchalantly off in the direction of St. Mark's. I'd never felt so utterly down.
Lesson: Venetian catburglary using a gondola is simply not on. I'd have to think of another way, and fairly soon. I was running out of options.
I sat on my balcony overlooking the lagoon lights. I'd tried dialing Nancy's number, but the phone maintained a sulky silence, so I gave that up. Some convenient lie would spring to my rescue when I saw her in the morning.
A big cargo ship was coming in, slowly threshing the night westwards between us and the San Giorgio. Soon she would turn leftish to avoid the Grand Canal by passing between the long shallow curve of the Giudecca island and the Zattere. Who would think that some of the most efficient docks in Europe lay beyond those beautiful churches and elegant rooftops?
By the time the ship's lights passed into the darkness, I was pondering the curious spin-off problem of David's little group. Talking with Nancy while, erm, resting in her bed, I'd learned nothing. But what was wrong with being in Venice "on assignment"? Their business, not mine. I should forget this side problem and concentrate on my main hassle of Mr. Pinder and his lunatic scheme to nick Venice. I fell asleep trying to work out how you could fold up Venice and stuff it into a single palazzo.
When I woke from my doze, stiff as a plank and damp from the dawn mist on the balcony, I had at least one answer. If you can't gain entry into a lady's house by dishonest means like good old reliable burglary, you just have to resort to honesty. That's really underhand. Hard, but there it is. Nothing for it.
Plan X.
Incredibly, next day was free of incoming flights. All Cosima and I had to do was see off one taxi load. After that nothing. I tried being my usual pleasant unassuming self to Cesare, but he was more sullen than ever and hardly responded. Maybe I'd absent-mindedly said a wrong declension or something.
Cosima was st
anding beside me on the Riva as our boat slewed into the Canale dell' Arsenale with the departing tourists. Cesare would be at least an hour away.
"What now, love?"
"You handle the first flight arriving tomorrow, Lovejoy. The rest of today is yours."
Neither of us moved. It was blowing gently. Cosima had on one of those plain headscarves which even the tiniest Venetian girls wear to match their little sober brown boots in March. I could have eaten her.
"I, er, look, Cosima—"
"Yes?"
"I'll understand if you say no, but are you doing anything, well, particular today?"
"Well, no. Not really."
That might have been untrue. Every day she was becoming more stylish. Today she would outshine the most elegant bunch of tourists. In fact I was a bit embarrassed just being with her, because I look a scruff at the best of times. Vaguely I wondered who the bloke was, though it didn't matter. If she had a couple of hours to spare she could help Plan X along its thorny road.
"Would you show me the bits of Venice you like?"
She hesitated at that and I hurried to reassure her. "I've a clean shirt I can put on. I've no other shoes but—"
"No," she said quickly. "Don't. It wouldn't be you, dressed up."
I didn't know how to take that. It narked me, really. Everybody has their own twists. I admit I'm not exactly Savile Row, but I'm clean underneath. In fact my old gran had this perennial nightmare I'd get knocked down and be carried into the doctor's surgery where All Would Be Revealed, and she labored for years to pass on this paranoiac delusion to me, so it's second nature by now to de-filth daily. But some people can look stylish as anything, like Cosima, and others like me just can't, so it's no use us bothering.
She was looking at her foot. "I must call at the office first. Then I'll be free."
"You mean you'll come? With me?"
She took my arm. It made me tingle. "With pleasure, Lovejoy."
Our office—I didn't know we had one—was near the San Giorgio dei Greci church, its tower inevitably leaning at an alarming angle over the canal. I only hope the people living nearby got danger money, at least a rent rebate. You get used to Venice's leaning campaniles, but at first you go about hoping you'll escape before they topple. They all look scarily out of true, and I do mean a terrible angle. Pisa's got one sloper. Venice has a forest of them. You could plonk Pisa's Leaning Tower in Venice and nobody would notice.
Cosima insisted I come in with her. Cosol Tours, Inc., seen close to was less than munificent. One small office heaped with forms, a small computer thing with its flex unconnected, a couple of phones, and Giuseppe Fusi. Our big wheel. He was homely, portly, comfortable, and proudly showed me photos of his numerous offspring while Cosima delved irritably among the dust.
"Any tourist problem, Lovejoy," Signor Fusi announced grandly, "I solve instantly!"
"Giuseppe, that charter special manifest," Cosima said.
'Think of my office as the hub of the Cosol Tours empire!"
"Great," I said uneasily, thinking, God Almighty.
"Giuseppe," Cosima said, endless patience in her voice.
Giuseppe's shoulders slumped. Work called. "Yes, Cosima?"
While Cosima gave him a drubbing over the tourist manifests I had a quiet smile. Giuseppe was obviously one of those blokes who love gossip and a glass. Everything else was death. He must look forward to Cosima's visits like the end of the tax year.
The canal below the window, wider than most, ran straight to enter the lagoon where Vivaldi's la Pieta church stands on the Riva. Lovely, strikingly unique Venice. It really does warm you. I looked round to find somewhere to perch and enjoy the view while I waited. Smiling to keep out of her firing line, I gently moved a pile of papers and sat on the desk edge to watch a small motorized mini-barge amble up the rio. These craft carry everything from soft drinks to groceries, and are steered with skilled recklessness by young blokes in overalls—
Norman? One of the papers I'd just moved had Signora Norman's name on it.
"Ready, Lovejoy!"
I nodded, eagerly watching the barge go below the window. "A minute, love, please. I want to see how he shoots the ponte. He might go left."
"Ah, Lovejoy!" Giuseppe swiftly sensed a chat. "No. He will go straight ahead, because the angle is too acute. Now, let me explain. If he wanted to make deliveries near the Palazzo Priuli, he would always come up the Rio del Vin, to meet this rio at a point below the Rio dei Greci. And why? Because—"
"Giuseppe," Cosima said, too practiced to waste a minute, bless her heart. "This Geneva flight. . ."
Giuseppe's only satisfaction was that the barge went straight on. Mine was that, turning to tell Giuseppe that he had been proved right, I accidentally knocked over some of the desk papers. It took us a full minute to restore the heap to its original shambles. I of course was very apologetic, and took particular care the papers were all in order.
We left with Cosima happily calling exhortations up the stairs and Giuseppe shouting endless devotion-to-duty down. Cosima and I were laughing about Giuseppe as we crossed the bridge, but all the way along the narrow Fondamenta dell' Osmarin all I could see was Signora Norman's name. It had been on an invoice, address the Malcontento house. Mr. D. Vidal and Mrs. N. Waterson had flown at her expense. I came to with Cosima shaking my arm.
"You've not been listening, Lovejoy. I said where to?"
"Sorry, love." I went all misty. "I was just thinking how happy I am, being with you like this." Her arm seemed so natural linked with mine. "You're showing me what Venice is up to, remember? Lead on."
We combed Venice, exhilarated. Of course, I was constantly looking for something different from what Cosima was showing me. As the bridges came and went in a confusion of buildings, elegant facades, canals, and alleys, Cosima blossomed. Her rather guarded anxiety vanished and we walked with what can only be called merriment. She astonished me with a zillion odd facts.
"Galileo's house," she'd say. "He showed our Doge his new invention at the top of the Campanile," and you would know she meant the Galileo, his new invention being the telescope and his demonstration that business in 1609. No accident that the Flanders spectacle makers zipped to Venice with their improved magnifying lenses, spying practically being a Venetian patent. Galileo just happened to hear of these lenses there.
'That place was Napoleon's," she'd say, not even bothering to look. "Your Lord Byron lived over there; a lady threw herself into that canal for love of him." And occasionally her dear little face would frown with intensity as she asked a question to check that she was not leaving me behind. "Casanova was born in that calle. You know Casanova?"
"Yes," I'd say gravely, as if he were still around.
"Good," she'd say, all serious, and her animated smile would return. "That palazzo is Cristoforo Moro's. Your Shakespeare changed his name to Othello—you know, Othello? —but Shylock lived across there—you know. Shylock .. . ?"
Soon she was eagerly urging me along, anxious to show me her favorite spots and prattling all the time.
"Hitler toured Venice on his own at night—at a fast trot" was one of her gems, supposed to be encouragement. "Didn't stay long, though."
She had a collection of entertaining sights as well. One of her favorites was the rubbish collection. Household rubbish is collected at the lagoon-side entrance of each canal about half past nine each morning. The brown cardboard boxes and black plastic bags are lifted into a long bargelike boat of military gray and black by the steersman's two blue-overalled shore-based helpers. They actually sweep up after themselves. Incredible. I couldn't get over it.
As we walked, I realized there's this great trick Venetians have of pretending people from antiquity are still knocking about. We have a similar knack in East Anglia, but don't take things quite so personally. She showed me Vivaldi's la Pieta church, which old Mr. Pinder had practically wept over. I thought it beautiful, clean, chill, and excessively neat. "So different from the Red Priest himse
lf," I mused as we gaped at Piazzetta's Visitation painting. 'T wonder if that soprano Vivaldi shacked up with was as attractive as her sister, and which of them he really loved?"
Cosima disapproved and quickly pulled me out of the side entrance. "Father Vivaldi's troubles were of his own making," she said sternly. "If he'd paid more attention to his church and less to ... to his music, he wouldn't have been defrocked."
"Falling for the lady was perfectly natural, Cosima."
She drew away, appalled. "You're not advocating free love?"
"Is there any other kind?" I was a picture of innocence.
"It's Father Vivaldi's business, not ours."
That's how I came to learn the Great Venetian Trick. Antonio Vivaldi—1678-1741—you must speak and think as if he were still concertmaster at the girls' school on the Riva degli Schiavoni. You give the same courtesy to other Venetians. You can mention Marco Polo, but not that he came from China to knock on his own door and got himself detained because nobody recognized him after a score of years. You can praise Veronese's masterpieces to the skies, but not his shameful trial before the Inquisition about his Feast in the House of Levi. The Great Venetian Trick operates at all times. You can speak about Italians and all others any way you choose, but Venetians are respectable.
I wish now I'd thought about the implications, but it's no good crying over spilt milk. Especially when the spilt milk turned out to be Cosima.
The market near the Rialto Bridge was another of her favorites. ("Not the gaudy shops on the bridge itself, Lovejoy. They should never have been allowed there in the first place," she said severely, criticizing the practice which began in 1592.) The Erberia vegetable market is everything women love to look at—raw grub in all its horrible pristine state of execution. Cosima dived in like a footballer, hauling me after her and yapping indignantly of the price of onions, greens, fruit, artichokes ("Look! A scandal! And Venice the fountain of all artichokes!"), until she noticed I was pale about the gills and asked what was wrong.
The Gondola Scam Page 9