by David Hewson
“Oh, Daniel. Do you know what I see when I look at you?”
“No. Nor do I care.”
“I see an honest young man. An innocent young man. One who has become trapped in some world he finds exciting—up to a point, perhaps. But frightening too. And I ask myself why. What frightens you, Daniel?”
“Nothing you would understand. I have this concert in my head. It is a responsibility.”
“Ah! The concert. You see, there you puzzle me too. Where does this music come from, Daniel? Please tell me. I’m interested, as a listener, not merely a police officer.”
He clapped his hands, drawing the interview to a close. “That, Captain, is enough. If you have anything else to say to me, kindly ask me to the police station. The same goes for Scacchi.”
“You can tell him if you like. Of our little talks.”
Daniel swore mildly, then turned on his heels and went back into the church. He was grateful, and a little surprised, that she did not follow him.
The concert, at least, seemed on track. The transcription work was done. Fabozzi cooed over the final product. There was every sign that the première would be a considerable success. Daniel had given interviews to several journalists from the international press, flown in at Massiter’s expense and kept in luxury at the Cipriani. He made it plain in these brief, vague conversations that there would be no more work from his pen in the foreseeable future. This did not prevent word of the surprising nature and quality of the work leaking beyond La Pietà into the world at large, with Massiter’s encouragement, ensuring the night would be a sellout, and followed soon by performances in greater concert halls elsewhere. The risk of discovery was surely small and predictable. Giulia Morelli suspected much but knew nothing. Yet Daniel was troubled by a distant, intangible feeling that all was not as it should be. Nor was this concern self-centred. It was the Scacchi household which worried him. Each one of them seemed to be living in a pleasant daydream set firmly on the border of hubris. Irrational as he knew this to be, it was impossible to shake from his head the idea that another catastrophe, of a different nature, might lie around the corner.
The following morning, Sunday, found them on the jetty at San Stae, waiting for the Sophia to crawl down the Grand Canal and pick them up. It had the makings of a hot, dry, sunny day. Scacchi wore a dark jacket, pale trousers, and an old-fashioned trilby hat. Paul was in jeans, a denim shirt, and a baseball cap. Laura chose plain, cheap slacks—the kind, Daniel thought, they sold on market stalls—and a simple cheesecloth top. He and Paul had helped her carry the supplies: baskets of panini, sausage, ham and cheese, a selection of fruit, and a brown paper bag of tiny leaves of rocket, chicory, dandelion, and lettuce which, covered in Parmesan, seemed to grace every meal. There was drink too: bottles of white wine safe inside a vast cooler with bags of ice, three litres of Campari, and two of sparkling mineral water. More than sufficient, Daniel judged, to keep six adults in a comfortable state for an entire day.
Scacchi and Paul sat together on a bench. He stood with Laura, watching the traffic on the canal. Vaporetti vied with delivery barges and refuse-collection vessels, each dodging the low black shapes of the gondolas ferrying locals across to the traghetto stop by the city casino. Laura had been to the hairdresser’s and now sported a short, practical cut which curled in at the neck. Daniel had come to believe she dyed her hair yet never once wore a speck of make-up. Perhaps because it suited her, he thought, cursing himself. Sometimes he sought roundabout explanations when simpler answers stared him in the face.
“He comes!” Laura cried. “Daniel! Look!”
The low blue form of the Sophia cut a steady, straight line through the canal traffic, the large bulk of Piero upright at the tiller in the rear. At the prow Xerxes stood smugly erect, nose in the air, mouth open, pink tongue lolling lazily to one side. Daniel was grateful to find himself gripped by a sudden fit of the giggles.
“What’s so funny?” Laura demanded.
“I was wondering what Amy will make of all this. It will be a little different from our trip with Massiter.”
“Amy must take us as she finds us.”
Daniel gave her a sharp look. “You’ll behave, won’t you? She’s our star violinist.”
She seemed taken aback. “I always behave!”
He did not reply. The Sophia was making a sharp cut into the jetty. Xerxes eyed the planking, chose his moment, then leapt with precise timing onto land and began to sniff at the picnic baskets.
“Rope!” Piero yelled. Laura caught the end before Daniel began to realise what was needed, tethered the boat, then helped Scacchi and Paul on board. Xerxes watched the humans clamber onto the Sophia with their customary lack of elegance, eyeing this escapade with disparaging canine bewilderment, then sprang in at the last moment. Within the space of five minutes, they were in place, with provisions, turned round in the canal, and setting back towards San Marco, where Amy would be picked up as previously arranged. They had assumed—automatically, it seemed—the same positions they had on that first trip from the airport: Paul and Scacchi together in the prow, Daniel next to Laura on the left-hand side of the boat. Xerxes seemed more interested in the food baskets than the tiller at this moment, but soon abandoned them to be petted by Paul.
They entered the long bend of the canal which the locals called simply the volta. The curious mansion Laura had pointed out emerged on the right.
“There’s your palace,” Daniel said, pointing.
“It’s not my palace,” she objected.
Scacchi overheard. “Explain, Laura. I didn’t know you were familiar with Ca’ Dario.”
“I’m not. Daniel makes up fairy stories.”
“But you told me—!”
“I said,” she interrupted, “that it was just the foolish fancy of a child.”
“Out with it!” Scacchi ordered. “Let’s probe your psyche, dear.”
She glared at Daniel, blaming him for this turn of conversation. “There’s precious little to tell. I was a child. It was the day of my confirmation. I was dressed in white and it was carnival, so everyone was in costume too. The vaporetto went past that place and I looked up, seeing in a second-floor window”—she pointed very deliberately—“that one, a face. Which frightened the stupid little girl I was then.”
“Ah,” Scacchi announced triumphantly. “A carnival figure? The plague doctor, no doubt. Don’t be ashamed, Laura. That long nose and those white cheeks scare us all. That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“It wasn’t the plague doctor. Or any of the others. It was something else.” She fell silent.
“Well?” Scacchi probed.
“It was a man. With his hands and his face covered in blood. He was staring through the window, looking straight at our boat, seemingly straight at me, screaming. As if he had just witnessed the most terrible thing in the world.”
Scacchi raised an eyebrow. “Your confirmation dress wasn’t that bad, surely? I know the Venetian ladies like to adorn their little darlings, but...”
Laura reached into one of the hampers, withdrew a croissant, and launched it through the air. Before it could strike the intended target, Xerxes leapt skywards from Paul’s lap with infallible accuracy, caught it in his jaws, and began to devour the pastry greedily. The occupants of the moto topo Sophia were reduced to an immediate bout of laughter, ended only by Scacchi’s weak cry of “Spritz! For the love of God. Spritz!”
“No,” Laura replied curtly. “It’s too early. And you’ve been wicked.”
“As you see fit,” he murmured, and was content when she handed out glasses of mineral water with the admonishment “I don’t want Daniel’s friend to believe we’re a bunch of drunks.”
Daniel saw she wished to change the subject, but he wanted one last question answered. “So what do you think you saw, Laura?”
She thought about her reply. “Some carnival nonsense. Or perhaps it was some kind of hallucination. I was a child, Daniel, as I continue to remind you. My mother
never saw anything, nor did anyone else on the boat. All they knew was that they suddenly had a screaming girl in their midst.”
“Of course.” He hesitated. She never spoke of her past. He knew nothing about her life outside Ca’ Scacchi at all, it occurred to him. “What did she do, your mother?”
The sharp green eyes flared. “Work.”
“And your father?”
“Drink. When he was still alive.”
The two men in the prow watched them, seeming uncomfortable, then fell into a low conversation of their own.
“I see,” Daniel said.
“Do you?”
“No. I...I’m sorry, Laura. I didn’t mean to pry. I just wondered who you are when you’re not looking after us.”
“I’m just a simple, boring servant, Daniel, who is both lucky and cursed by the fact that my masters appear to be my children too. My past is as dull as the water in this canal.”
“And your future?” He felt as if he were pressing her too much, but insisted in any case.
“The present is full of enough cares, don’t you think?”
He was about to answer when she pointed to the jetty. They were fast approaching San Marco, and the Sophia was headed directly for the landing stage where they had joined Massiter’s boat. Amy stood there, not yet seeing them. She wore, Daniel was dismayed to see, a cream silk dress and a floppy white hat to keep off the sun. She looked as if she were prepared to be a guest at a society wedding, not spend a few hours on the grubby planks of the Sophia, then disembark to deal with whatever bucolic pleasures Piero had arranged on Sant’ Erasmo.
“Oh, dear,” he sighed.
She slapped him hard on the knee. “And you ask if I’ll behave! You will be an English gentleman, my boy, or I’ll want to know why.”
“This wasn’t my idea,” he muttered, then stood up, broke into a broad smile, and greeted Amy from the low-slung Sophia as it hacked towards the jetty. Scacchi rose, too, and announced to everyone, including the tourists who lounged by the jetty, “It’s Amy Hartston, the famous American violinist. Behold! Applause!” And smacked his leathery hands together until a fair number of those in the vicinity joined in.
Amy’s tanned cheeks turned a darker shade. Daniel wished he could see her eyes. She wore large sunglasses of the Italian kind. They did not suit her. He held out his hand and let her step, very gingerly, into the boat, then take a seat opposite Laura, amid the introductions.
“Spritz!” Scacchi declared. “Spritz!”
Laura remained seated, wearing a wry grin, and lightly pushed Daniel in the chest as he lowered himself to join her. A single flash of her eyes gave him the message. He crossed the boat and sat next to Amy, who daintily arranged the silk hem of her dress around her legs, watched by the puzzled Xerxes. Drinks were duly served.
“Where are we going?” Amy asked eventually.
“To paradise,” Piero replied, turning up the little diesel engine until it coughed like an asthmatic donkey. “Away from this festering sore of iniquity and these hard-assed city bastards.”
Laura waved at him. “Poppycock. You worked in the city when you were younger, Piero.”
“Yes,” he admitted, “but only in the morgue. Therefore, I dealt with dead people who were, to a man and a woman, very decent and unobjectionable. The living, on the other hand— Hey! Pisquano!”
A water taxi roared away from the neighbouring jetty, sending up a swell which tipped the Sophia to near forty-five degrees. They clutched for handholds. Xerxes barked angrily. Amy’s drink spilled down the front of her elegant dress.
“Shit!” she hissed with a sudden vehemence.
Laura reached into her bag, crossed the boat, and motioned for Daniel to return to the other side. Then she set about dabbing at the fabric with a damp tissue, clucking all the while. It did not work. The dress now possessed a long, broad stain, the colour of bright blood, running from Amy’s navel to her knees.
Daniel saw the sullen fury in her face and watched the way she let Laura, who had so quickly assumed the role of servant, try to help. La Pietà moved slowly past behind him. Sant’ Erasmo lay on the horizon, a long, low finger of green.
He finished his drink and, for no reason at all, found he could not shake from his head the image of Giulia Morelli and her incessant questions. Daniel took the pack out of Laura’s bag and, for the first time in his life, began to smoke a cigarette.
32
In the eaves of the ark
THE BELLS OF SAN GIROLAMO MARKED TWELVE AS WE slipped back into the ghetto. The Jews must retire early. There was scarcely a light in any window and not a sound in the building as we climbed the stairs. Jacopo was out on his rounds, ever the busy physician. The night remained passably hot. Rebecca threw her cloak onto the chair by the fireplace, then took my own, gripped my hands tightly, and looked into my eyes.
“Lorenzo,” she said. “Where do you think this God is that has nothing better to do with His time but peer down upon us like some base spy? In every church? In every bedroom? Watching us now? Is this all He is? Some servant of the state with wings and all-seeing eyes?”
“Of course not.”
“Then what? Some divine thorn to prick our consciences and make us ever aware of our own shortcomings?”
“You mock me. I think I should go.”
She continued to cling to me. “If you like, Lorenzo. But I had something to show you. One of the oldest gods of all, and I hoped that if you saw Him for what He truly was, perhaps we’d both be the better for it.”
I said nothing. Rebecca wore the black dress of the concert musician, with a circular neckline and a slender silver chain around her throat. Her face was more serious than I had ever known. She had the benefit of just six years over me, but at that moment I felt like a child in the company of an elder.
“Come,” she said, and took my hand. “Be brave. Don’t look down. You won’t fall to hell, but you will go six floors down to the ground and you won’t much notice the difference.”
I followed her to the large sash window at the side of the room. This gave onto the corner of the square, the jumble of buildings surmounted by the wooden ark of the synagogue which she had pointed out to me on an earlier occasion.
“Be as quiet as you can so none shall hear us. And mind your footing. Follow me all the way.”
With that, she threw open the window, lifted a leg, and was out of the house onto a tiny, flat tiled roof no bigger than a balcony. I followed and stood there, with nothing to hold but her arm, and we swayed, just for a moment, in front of the great black maw of space an arm’s length in front of us.
“Be calm,” she whispered in my ear, and then reached round for a handhold, found it, and beckoned me to follow.
This cannot have been the first time Rebecca had made this journey. On some occasion during the day, she must have sat in the square, stared at this shambling collection of gutters and roofs, and even, at one point, a small external ladder—used, I assume, for maintenance— marking down each point, fixing the route she would take when she decided to tackle this queer little peak, like a mountain goat consumed by curiosity. Tentatively, not once looking down, I came on behind, trying not to clutch for her hand too often, slipping once or twice, then seeing her anxious face, alabaster in the light of the moon, peering at me from above.
After two or three minutes which seemed, in all truth, as long as an entire evening, I dragged myself up and found her sitting on a tiny wooden balcony close to the peak of the wooden ark. There was a small leaded window. Through it came the yellow, waxy light of distant candles.
Rebecca put a finger to my mouth and said, “Shush. There are men inside. But they won’t be there long.”
We waited until we heard the sound of a door closing, then she slipped open the window and we prised ourselves through, half falling into a corridor that seemed to squeeze itself beneath the eaves of the building. There was a narrow walkway on the wall side. Opposite was a line of plain wooden benches, and, in f
ront of them, large shutters running almost the length of the floor, which opened onto the room beyond, much like those of La Pietà behind which the musicians hide. The “nave” of the synagogue, though, was one floor below us, as I discovered when I opened the nearest shutter and stuck my head through into the central hall. It was like being thrust into the kind of fantasy one finds in dreams where dimensions are quite out of joint. I felt at one moment like a child peering into some rich, ornate doll’s house, and the next a pygmy who had crawled upon the roof of some hidden cathedral, bare wood on the outside, full of golden riches beneath the skin.
“This is where you worship?” I asked Rebecca, who sat on the bench, arms folded, awaiting my reaction.
“Where they worship,” she replied. “Women are not allowed. We must wait up here, watching through the shutters, unseen, not worthy of their thoughts. The Hebrew God is a busy one, Lorenzo, at least for the Ashkenazim. Don’t ask me if it’s the same for everyone else. He has only time to talk to men, and prefers a bearded rabbi above all others.”
I looked at the place. It was beautiful, but so different from anything I had seen elsewhere in Venice. Then it struck me. “There are no paintings, Rebecca. Where are all the glorious martyrdoms? Titian and Veronese would starve if they were born into a Jewish state. What would they do?”
“False idols, Lorenzo. We must allow no graven images in our temples. There are a few paintings if you look, though. And I gather that’s unusual.”
I craned my neck and saw she was right. Around the walls was a collection of small landscapes.
“There,” she said, pointing to one. “Moses leading his tribe through the Red Sea.”
I screwed up my eyes to follow her finger. “But there’s no one in it.”
“I told you. It isn’t allowed. Also, we mustn’t depict God, either. Or utter His proper name—which is Yahweh, in case you’re interested. There. I said it.”
I felt quite baffled. The place was so unlike any Christian church I had ever entered. Yet it did feel holy, and I couldn’t help wondering if one might find the same air of sanctity in a mosque or the temples where the Hindu worship. Could it be that holiness comes not from God but us? Do we make Him after the image we would have of ourselves?