Tomorrow

by Damian Dibben

  At sunset, clouds start to mass, and the sky turns the colour of gunmetal. For a while, there comes a taut silence over the lagoon, before the sea whips into rolling waves and the boats along the quay bounce furiously to the incessant strum of rope on mast. Knowing a storm is coming, people begin to hurry, all wind-blown hair, tailcoats and skirt hems, dancing bonnet ribbons and laughter—the adventure of weather. On the other side of the Grand Canal, a hotel awning flaps and a wall of scaffolding that fronts a building groans.

  At once there’s a collective gasp and Venetians take off as a wave licks up and crashes across the pavement, almost to the cathedral steps. There’s a beat of thunder, lightning zigzags the sky and for a split second it’s coruscating white. Rain starts to fall, first in a thick, gouty patter, then lashing curtains that set the weathervane spinning. My master loved storms and I wonder if that’s a sign. In the distance, over the sea on the Giudecca, cypress trees sway crazily and a slash of phosphorescence rends the sky. I retreat to the shelter of my den, eyes fixed on the steps as the downpour bombards the city. Soon I seem to be the only creature left in it.

  Later that night, when the tempest has finally passed, the church has closed and the quayside is a battleground of puddles, Sporco returns. ‘The rain, huh?’ He see-saws his head and saucers his eyes. ‘Catastrophe, isn’t it?’ His preposterous ears split in different directions as he waits for a reply. He hovers by my den, but I don’t speak, don’t even ask him how he found his way back from the opera house. A dark thought is stumbling around in my head: what if my master has another dog at his side? Perhaps they came to the cathedral early this morning and sat on the steps. This other dog may have wondered what they were doing there. It would be a younger animal, compact, one of those little hunting terriers he was always petting in the street, a dog full of tricks, not shy or sullen, like I became sometimes—when once I had been the dog that always smiled. Maybe he just happened to be passing through Venice and thought he might as well see the old church. I lost a dog here once, he might have thought, a good animal, but untraceable now. He’d remember me for a few moments before departing with his new partner. I stay up all night, my eyes riveted to the spot where he told me to wait.

  Five days after I thought he’d returned, I enter the church and go back to the side chapel. Within it, on a bench, a man is slumped, comatose, a reek of brandy and sweet tobacco about him. He wears an old-fashioned frock coat, the type of gilded, over-embroidered garment that dandies sported decades ago, but never seen any more. He looks old from behind, but his hair is thick and dark. Usually I have nothing but compassion for the dispossessed, but I resent him being there, sleeping off drunkenness in this hallowed place. I have half a mind to nudge him awake to send him on his way, when I notice some valuables have fallen from his pocket on to the floor: a silver timepiece, a handkerchief and a miniature portrait, the type that humans carry sometimes. It’s half hidden under the handkerchief, but the watch looks fine and I wonder if it truly belongs to him or if he’s stolen it. Then I notice the insignia in the centre of the dial—and my breath catches in my throat.

  Three towers beneath a crescent moon.

  The inside of the cathedral spins in silence and bile inches up my throat. I examine the man afresh: clothes that belong to another era, which no one wears any more, the kind I’ve not seen in a half a century, soiled by journeying certainly, but of a high quality. I paw the handkerchief to one side and a fresh shock jolts me. It’s a miniature portrait of my master, younger than as I remember him, elegant and rested. After more than a century, after all the excitement of today, he comes back as a picture! In token form. His eyes stare up from the floor, vivid nuggets of cobalt blue, unaware that I, his champion, his beloved, his partner in all things, stand before them. There’s a rasp of phlegm, the sleeping man wakes, sits up and I dart behind a pillar. Blood bangs around my brain as I try to comprehend.

  It is the fiend. Our nemesis. The man who surely took my master from me. He has lasted as I have.

  Vilder.

  5

  THE MAN FROM THE PAST

  Venice, May 1815

  He’s altered beyond recognition. His face, which once seemed bathed in a Mediterranean glow, is a pale outcrop of quartz, a face on which sunlight, or any light, has not shone in generations. His eyes, treasures of tourmaline before, are rounds of discontent, sinkholes into the unknown. His legs are skinny, his upper body stout, all his athleticism gone. Only his ringlets of inky black have vigour still. A lunatic thought occurs to me: that it was he, not my master, who I sensed all along, that I detected his presence in the city and it was so startling that it played a trick on my mind.

  He reaches inside his pocket, retrieves a little bottle, and half turning his back, takes a swig, before pocketing it again. His shoulders loosen and his pupils swim and I recall how he acted in Whitehall, when he drank the ‘tonic’ my master made for him. Then I knew little of the world, and had no sense of what it meant to be so charmed by opiates as to be addicted to them. Particularly during the last hundred years I’ve witnessed it ravage lives first-hand.

  Vilder realizes his things have dropped to the floor and scoops them up, mumbling. He puts the watch, coins and handkerchief into his coat pocket, but keeps hold of the portrait. He pushes himself to his feet, using the wall to balance and—the once legend that glided over the frozen Thames—shambles over and stares up at the painting of the slayed giant. When a priest comes, Vilder collars him and shows him the miniature.

  ‘Conosci quest’uomo? Do you know this man?’ His voice is gravelled, like the low notes of a church organ. ‘Have you seen him?’

  The priest glances primly at Vilder, who impatiently taps his finger against the frame. The priest shrugs. ‘No.’

  ‘Idiot,’ Vilder growls at the priest as trots away. ‘You think all this will bring you an afterlife? It will not.’ He spies a trio of young choristers and intercepts them, this time forcing a friendlier tone. ‘Mi scusi, ragazzi, do you recognize this gentlemen in the picture? Have you seen him about the cathedral?’ He takes a gold coin from his pocket and holds it to the light. ‘For whoever can help me.’ This captures the boys’ attention and they study the painting keenly.

  ‘Un Veneziano?’ asks one.

  ‘Quando era qui?’ another.

  ‘Credo che lo conosco. Lui è un avvocato,’ says a third.

  ‘Never mind.’ Vilder tuts, indicating with a sweep of his hand that the negotiation is over. He crosses the transept and they follow until he turns and hisses them away. He halts a few more people, showing them the portrait, but receiving no information, he makes for the door.

  Just as I come from my hiding place he turns and is about to see me when a beam of sunlight—surely the same shaft, through the same window, that blinded my master on the day he disappeared—falls upon his face. He tosses his head as if to shake the light off, before continuing, lurching out of the church. My heart pulses in slow, palpable bangs.

  From the top of the steps I watch him weave through the crowds: sailors embarking, cabals of fast-talking merchants, customs men, porters with barrows. Occupying the whole south section of the harbour, platoons of infantrymen perch on kits, playing cards and dice, waiting to board the troop ship that docked the morning I came from the opera house. Vilder passes amongst them, eyeing up every face before alighting on a sergeant, showing him the miniature and starting up a conversation. The sergeant studies it distractedly, before shaking his head. Vilder shuffles on, showing the picture to anyone who has time to look. I shadow at a distance, not wanting to lose sight of him, but wary of getting too close and being recognized.

  Some time later, when he’s all but given up and slumped on a window ledge of the customs house, a young soldier goes up to him and asks to see the likeness. ‘Ja,’ the man says with a certainty that makes Vilder get to his feet. ‘I’ve seen him.’

  ‘Really? When? Where?’
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br />   ‘Five or six days ago.’ The soldier points across the sea. ‘In Mestre.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. He came to the field hospital and asked if he could help. I remember because it was strange. He was good for nothing this man.’

  ‘Good for nothing?’ says Vilder and the soldier does a mime drawing in his cheeks and showing the whites of his eyes.

  ‘In no state to help.’

  Vilder bristles at this. ‘What happened to him?’

  The man shrugs. ‘We came here. I didn’t see him again.’

  Vilder pushes some money into his palms, and sets off. He’s so distracted, he forgets his hat and comes back for it. There comes a twang of rope from the ship in front of me, followed by a chorus of cries. A crate unravels from its fastening, drops and shatters. A cloud of vivid lemon-yellow powder mushrooms up, followed by billows of lapis blue. The crowd freezes in unison, dazzled, some clapping. ‘It’ll be taken from your salary’ a man calls out, making his fellow workers laugh. I half think the city’s dissolving, like a painting dropped in water—before realizing that the smashed crate contains pigments. Clouds of colour drift out to sea, a rainbow mist, before the whole place becomes frenetic again, as boats begin to depart in rapid succession. For a moment, I lose Vilder in the chaos, before spotting him on the troop ship, slipping some money to the sergeant.

  Without thinking, I make a dash for the gangplank, but stop, terrified. ‘If we lose one another, my champion, wait for me on the steps. Just here, by the door.’ I have not left Venice in a hundred and twenty-seven years. But the soldier pointed across the sea. ‘He came to the field hospital,’ he said. I wonder if it’s safe to board a ship with Vilder, or if I should take another. No, I don’t wish to lose sight of him. He is all I have of my master.

  I wait for the way to clear, before darting up the gangplank, leaping aboard, skirting the rim of the bulwark and hiding under a tarpaulin at the prow. I inch my head up over the parapet. The deck keels. Vilder skulks like a giant crow amongst the troops and once more smuggles his bottle of tonic from his pocket, takes a sip and puts it back. Behind him the cathedral dome looms. My cathedral. Every part of me, every muscle, tendon and hair, tingles with uncertainty, but I stay my ground. I’m aware of a sashay of hair sweeping up the ramp, and there comes a roguish bark.

  ‘Where are you?’ Sporco has followed me on board, the oaf. They’ll find me out straight away. ‘Where are you?’ he calls again. I put my head up, furious. He races over. ‘Hiding, huh?’ He spins round idiotically, trying to catch his tail.

  ‘Get off.’ I punch his snout with my paw. ‘Off with you. Now.’

  ‘I like boats I do. I slept in one once. Cosy, cosy.’

  ‘Off with you.’ Vilder has turned his ear, hearing dogs. If it weren’t for the pair of infantrymen standing in his way, he’d see us. Sporco burrows under the tarpaulin, snaking round until only his head sticks out, like the cartoon of a dog in a bonnet. ‘Off with you!’

  It’s too late: the boatswain calls out and the ship lurches from the quay and banks of oars start cutting through the water. Vilder stumbles.

  Sporco rolls out his tongue. ‘Setting sail, huh? Where we going? Adventures, huh?’

  I push my weight against him to make him keep quiet, and the boat picks up speed. As soon as we arrive at a port, I shall put him on the first transport back. Dozens of them ferry back and forth daily. The water is choppy and Vilder keeps losing his balance. ‘You can sit?’ a soldier says to him, motioning towards a space on a bench at the side of the deckhouse.

  ‘I am fine,’ Vilder replies. He teeters towards us and I duck, before he turns the other way and goes to the prow instead, where he holds on to the rail, looking towards the mainland. I do not take my eyes off him for one moment.

  ‘Who is he?’ Sporco asks, before he realizes something and gasps. ‘It’s not, is it? Is it him?’ He pivots his head from Vilder to me, to Vilder and back to me again. ‘Your master?’ he barks.

  ‘Sssh!’ I bash him. ‘Stay down.’ It was not long after Sporco came to live in my quarter and noticed how closely I watched men disembarking from ships that I told him I was waiting for someone. ‘He’s coming back, but I don’t know when,’ I said then, and many times since, and he’s always nodded knowingly. ‘Your master, that’s right,’ he’d say, as if, in fact, I was deluded.

  ‘No,’ I tell him now. ‘He is not my master. But he is a former companion of his.’

  ‘Really?’ Sporco studies Vilder with exaggerated interest, which makes me wonder if he still thinks I’m imagining things. ‘He must be important for you to get on a ship and go.’

  I don’t reply, just peer back at Venice, at the shrinking lineaments of her domes and bell towers and a primal panic prickles all over me: I have left my city.

  * * *

  Little more than an hour later, we approach the mainland, the cream-coloured port of Mestre. A melody comes from the harbour, not the music I admire, but banal army jingles, marching pipes and bugles. The sergeant gives an order and the troops assemble at the bow, blank faces and rounded shoulders, like sacks waiting to be unloaded. Even in his decrepit state, Vilder is an exotic amongst them, a haughty parrot to their drab pigeons. The frigate bumps the sea wall, everyone jolts forward and the gangplank is lowered. Vilder goes first.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say, vaulting the balustrade on to dry land, Sporco coming after me. When we see what’s there, we freeze, our tails disappearing under our bellies in unison. The harbour teems with soldiers, thousands of them. The world of men—the lowly, the lofty, nervy cadets, seasoned professionals, swaggerers and drunkards—and their smells too: tobacco, gin, flax, saltpetre, steel and sweat. Everywhere the hubbub that came to background my life: the click and rattle of muskets, shearing of metal, buckle of armour and the low burr of camaraderie and exhaustion. I follow Vilder with my eyes as he pushes through the battalions, studying faces.

  Sporco’s hackles go up as a brace of horses clip by. He’s never seen such creatures before, for there are none in our city. The odd cart mule maybe, but not beasts this size with colossal skulls and oiled flanks. He barks at a passing coach, having lived only in a toy world of gondolas and rowing boats. In truth, though I once spent my life jostling up and down on hard carriage floors, I’m taken aback too. For more than a century I’ve not heard the din of traffic or the grind of wheels on cobbles, and never so much of it then as now.

  Vilder has gone over to a group of cavalry officers lunching at a table and is showing them the picture. Most of them ignore him, whilst others reply with shrugs. When he shambles on, in his outmoded frock coat, grimacing and talking to himself, they snigger at his expense. Despite everything, I can’t help but feel indignation on his behalf. I’ve always found cavalry the vainest soldiers. They’d have no notion of the immensity of Vilder’s life, the voyages he must have taken, as I have, from the Atlantic to the Pontic Seas, and the great men and women he would doubtless have known. No, if these cavalry officers with their boastful lives knew even half of what Vilder and I have had to necessarily learn, they’d surely be kinder human beings.

  There’s a blare of pipes, a cumulative shouting of orders and all the soldiers littering the quays press on to troop carts and the vehicles muster into lines. They begin filing out of the square, and Vilder speeds up his search for a while before giving in. He comes back towards us at the edge of the water, moving with such purpose I fear he’s spotted me, but he alights instead upon a carriage waiting at a nearby jetty. I’d been so engrossed with his movements, I hadn’t noticed it. And even then, it takes me some moments to recognize.

  Vilder’s old carriage.

  I have not seen it in almost two centuries, not since Amsterdam, when he arrived in it with his dreadful cargo. Then it had been so glorious—like a vast precious stone of dark brown magicked from the night, the colour and lustre of smoky quartz—it had
made me bashful. Now, like its owner, it’s worn and unloved. Its wheels, which were elegantly high and as fine as spider’s legs, have been replaced by the fatter, more modern variety, which don’t suit it. Its mud-splattered hull is scratched all over and its windows spored with mould and clouded with age as to be virtually opaque. One of the doors is open and legs stick out.

  Vilder kicks them. ‘Wake up, you oaf.’ Another kick. ‘Braune.’ The man gets to his feet, straightening his driver’s livery, putting on his cap. ‘Is this what I pay you for? Have you seen him?’

  ‘No, sire.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t when you’re sleeping.’ Vilder smacks him across the cheek, undaunted by the fact Braune is at least a head taller than he, and built well.

  ‘Forgive me, sire.’

  ‘“Forgive me, sire.” Imbecile. Fetch me a drink.’

  The lad takes a flagon from the perch, uncorks it and passes it to him. After one sip, Vilder spits it out. ‘Not water. A drink! Never mind.’ He reaches into the carriage and snatches a decanter from a shelf—those clever ledges held up with little silver hands—and slugs it down. Neat brandy. ‘Follow the army.’

  ‘Where do they go, sire?’

  ‘Does it matter where they go? Follow them.’ He gets into the compartment and slams the door, before falling back out of sight.

  Braune mounts his perch, takes up his whip and sets off, joining the stream of vehicles draining from the harbour front. Now I must deal with Sporco.

  ‘No time to lose,’ I say, motioning him over to where some civilian ships are moored. There’s a barge with its sails strung up on the point of departure. It’s Venetian; I can tell from the escutcheon of a winged lion on its prow. ‘This ship will take you home. Stay down and you’ll not be discovered.’ Pause, deep breath, a scintilla of remorse. ‘Goodbye then.’ Sporco’s outsize ears shift in a curious ballet as he tries to grasp my meaning. ‘I have a long journey. So I say goodbye, my friend.’