Every Picture Tells a Story

by Gregory Dowling

  I reminded myself of this fact constantly.

  I crossed the bridge toward the ex-Church of Santa Giustina with its pigeon-spattered Baroque facade, and for the first time in my walk there was no one at all around. I was now in the parish of San Francesco. I turned into the calle itself, at the far end of which the church’s Palladian facade hung as a white haze in the fog: St. Francis of the Vineyard. The city’s gasworks seem to have replaced the vineyards now; I could dimly see the skeletal metal shapes high above me to my left. And then on my right I saw an area of rubble-strewn waste ground.

  I stopped and stared. I had never noticed—or had completely forgotten about—this patch of ground. The place was so desolate, with its indistinct masses of rubble, its bony bushes, its creeping wraiths of mist, that I half expected to see the corpse still there. I saw the wreath, slouching against the wall, like any other piece of litter. I picked my way over to it.

  There was just the victim’s name, Gianni Boscolo, hanging loose like a luggage label. Nothing about the manner of death. I put the wreath down again, and while I was still bending, somebody tapped me on the shoulder.

  I did something like a leap from a Russian folk dance, which carried me forward, whipped me around, and straightened me up all in one. Very spectacular. Then the whole effect was spoiled by the fact that I landed on an uneven stone, slipped, and fell backward.

  “I scared you, did I?” the shoulder tapper said in a thick Venetian voice. He was a tiny old man, in a long raincoat and a battered gray hat; he peered down at me with curiosity rather than solicitude.

  “Surprised me.” I got up, rubbing myself.

  “Are you a journalist?” he asked. He said it first in dialect and then at once, as if suddenly taking in the fact that I was a foreigner, repeated it in Italian.

  “Why?”

  “Been a lot of journalists along here. They’ve all interviewed me. And the police. I live over there.” He pointed to a house with windows overlooking the waste ground. “I found the body.”

  “Ah.”

  “Foreigner, aren’t you?” Again he asked it first in dialect, then “corrected” himself with Italian.

  “Yes. I’m English.”

  “From the BBC then.”

  “Um, er, yes, that’s right.” Well, why not?

  “The RAI interviewed me, you know. I was on the news on RAI one and RAI two, lunchtime and evening. My grandson’s got it on one of those video things. And then in all the papers. My photograph in the Gazzettino and La Nuova. And Gente.”

  “Oh, really. Would you like to tell me about it too?”

  “Where’s your camera?”

  “Well, maybe I’ll come back tomorrow and take some pictures. In the daytime, you know.”

  “All right. Well, I woke up at my usual time, around six-thirty.” His voice suddenly fell into a kind of singsong recital, all in careful Italian, with only occasional slips into dialect. “And I looked out of my window as I was making my coffee and thought, That’s funny, someone’s left an old coat out there. So I came out to look at it—not for me, you understand, I’ve got plenty of good coats—but just to see. And I saw it was a body. I turned him over and there was blood everywhere. You’ve never seen so much blood. His face was lying in a pool of it. Only it was all dried up. And his mouth was sort of caked up with it—”

  “Yes, yes,” I said quickly. “I get the point.”

  “So I guessed there was something wrong then. So I went back in and I told my wife. And she went out and had a look. And she screamed. My God, how she screamed.” He chuckled at the memory. “Well, you know women, don’t you? So then we phoned the police. And they asked us lots of questions. Had we heard anything during the night. And I said no, but then my wife said that was funny they should ask, because around about four o’clock she’d got up—she often has to get up in the night—you know, got a bit of a problem, only she didn’t tell them that, I did, I mean they like to have things accurate—so she got up and she thought she heard people running down the alley to the canal. She had a peek through the bathroom window and just saw one man in the distance. I mean, there were probably several men, but she could just see the one, running away. And she saw him from the back only. And then she heard a boat going off. The police think they killed him in the boat and dropped him here, and then went off again. They didn’t kill him here because we’d have heard the shots—and the yells perhaps—but they can’t have killed him too far away because then he wouldn’t have been bleeding so much when they dropped him. And he did bleed a lot. God, you should have seen it.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Did you know him?”

  “Well, not know him. But he lived near here, you know. At Celestia. He’d hidden guns for some terrorists in his flat and he gave evidence about it. Bad people at Celestia, you know. As bad as the Muranesi. He was buried today. I went to the church. A lot of journalists again. But they didn’t seem to see me.”

  I asked, “When was the murder exactly?” This was, I suppose, a pretty odd thing for a journalist not to know, but he didn’t seem to be a suspecting sort.

  “Five days ago. Or six? Sunday night anyway.”

  And he was still looking out of his window for journalists. Well, these golden memories were probably going to have to keep him going for the rest of his days.

  “I see,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Giuseppe Pavan,” he said. “That’s the name. Born in 1915. Always lived here. Worked as a caretaker at the Morosini school until I retired. You’ll mention that, won’t you? People like to know these things. So you’ll pass by tomorrow to take some photos?”

  “Yes, yes, if possible.”

  “If I’m not at home, try the bar in Salizzada Santa Giustina. Just ask for Bepi. They’ve got the Gazzettino photo framed, you know. There on the wall.”

  “Ah.”

  “Oh—and I found the tongue too. Didn’t mention that, did I? Thrown over there it was.” He pointed to a black clump of bushes. “Found it before the police got here. I suggested a picture of me holding it but nobody wanted to. And anyway the police had taken it.”

  I decided to change the subject. “You say your wife saw one of them from the back. Did she notice anything of any use?”

  “No,” he said contemptuously. “I mean, she wouldn’t. If it had been me…”

  “Oh. A pity.”

  “They kept asking her, but he was right in the distance, and it was dark of course.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  We were silent for a moment. Then he said, “Actually she did say one thing to me, but I told her to shut up about it, or they’d think she was crazy or something.”

  “What was that?”

  “Well, it was really stupid. She said this bloke just turned around once, to look back, and it was like he didn’t have a face.”

  “What?”

  “Just nothing. No face. An empty white head, was what she said. I told her she couldn’t have been seeing properly and told her not to say anything so stupid to the police, so of course she didn’t.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “I mean, I wouldn’t want people going around saying I’m married to a madwoman. You won’t say anything about this, will you?” he added in sudden alarm.

  “No, of course not, if you don’t want. She probably imagined it.”

  “Just wasn’t looking properly. I mean, you know what women are like. Can’t see a thing if it’s staring them in the face. She’d have never seen that tongue, like I did. It was just lying over there, and I spotted it and picked it up, it was kind of dry by then—”

  “Yes, yes. I understand.”

  “Well, I’d better get back. My wife gets nervous on her own.”

  “Of course, good-bye.”

  I stood there for a few seconds after he’d gone, and stared down the alley. I found I could imagine all too clearly the running figure, turning around and displaying its empty white face.

  And no doubt its pale eyes. Like the
man in the white mask who’d invaded my flat, roughed me up, and burned my paintings.

  Once in the restaurant I didn’t read the Henry James novel I’d brought with me—I’ve brought it to Venice with me now five or six times and never yet started it. Instead I took the line of least resistance and drank enough wine with my pizza to make my stumbling bumbling walk back to the hotel through the empty streets and alleys of Castello comical rather than sinister. And enough, I hoped, to ensure a dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  It worked. I woke up the next day at about nine-thirty. The weather had decided to lend a hand as well: when I opened the shutters I felt a wind like a scalpel slicing down the alley; my slight throb of a hangover was cleaned out at once and I found myself feeling ready for anything. Once I’d stepped out of the hotel I found that every last clinging cobweb of mist had been swept away as well and the air was left as bright and clean and cold as a Canaletto painting. I walked toward the Riva and saw the city spread out before me, flaunting her newly washed palaces and domes in a long lazy curve between dazzling sky and water. Delicious was the word that came to mind: the Church of the Salute, for example, looked positively edible—crisp and buoyant in the sunshine, a marble meringue. And the golden angel of St. Mark’s perched on the cool mint-chip peak of the chocolate Campanile. (I was feeling hungry too.)

  I stopped for a cake and cappuccino in a place just off the Riva; I had decided not to have the hotel breakfast but day by day work my way through all the pasticcerie in the city—just as I had, in younger, more fervent days, worked my way through all the churches. As well as being a good start to the day, it was one way of feeling a little less cut off from my family, since the pasticcerie were the only thing I could think of in Venice that my mother would really approve of. A pity one couldn’t take the meringues home.

  The place had a phone and phone book, I saw as I licked the last blob of zabajone off one finger’s end. I got some phone tokens from the lady behind the bar and stickily flicked through the book’s pages.

  I phoned the Cipriani Hotel. No Mr. Osgood was expected. I phoned the Gritti Palace. He wasn’t expected there either. Then the Danieli. He was expected there the next evening. Did I wish to leave my name or any message? I didn’t. I put the phone down. Well, that was one thing established. I’d guessed that if Osgood was going to stay in a hotel, it wouldn’t be any poxy four-star dive.

  The arrival time of Osgood came as a bit of a blow. The idea behind my trip had been that I would seek out Toni Sambon before Osgood got here and I’d persuade him to desist from selling the painting to Osgood. Something along those lines anyway. I’d thought I would have at least a week: easily enough time to flush out anybody in the city. Well, it was not to be.

  I scrabbled through the phone book with extra urgency, looking up the name Zennaro. There were five columns of them. And I knew nothing but the surname and the occupation. A glance showed me that none of the names was advertising itself as a painter.

  I tried Sambon. There was just one: Marino Sambon. I made a note of the phone number and the address. The address, however, was the particularly unhelpful Venetian kind: just the name of the sestiere, S. Polo, and the number—a four-figure one. I could spend all day going up and down the alleys of S. Polo before I found it.

  As I left the pasticceria and strolled on down the Riva I pulled out of my shoulder bag my Lorenzetti guide to Venice, now a much battered and bescribbled volume. On the off chance I looked up the name Sambon in the index—or rather one of the indexes—and discovered there were two palazzi of that name. It was by no means likely that either was still occupied by anybody called Sambon, but neither was it impossible. It would be worth going to see because the kind of questions I wanted to ask were obviously better asked face-to-face than over a phone. I looked through the book to study the details of the two buildings, having to use both frozen hands as the pages flipped and flapped in the wind. Lorenzetti, of course, gave no such prosaic details as who lived in the buildings now: he confined himself to architectural descriptions and dates of construction. One was a Renaissance building in the style of Coducci (frescoes of the school of Tiepolo inside) in the sestiere of Cannaregio, not far from the Ghetto, and the other was a Baroque building, attributed to Longhena (frescoes by Guarana and followers) in the sestiere of S. Polo—not far from Campo S. Polo in fact. Remembering the address in the phone book as I did, this latter clearly seemed the more logical one to try.

  But even if I couldn’t actually conduct my interrogation over the phone, I could at least save myself a totally pointless journey. There was a phone next to the boat stop of the Arsenale. I rang Marino Sambon’s number.

  A female voice replied, “Pronto.”

  “Signora Sambon?”

  “Sono io.” The calm emphasis of the word io sounded habitual.

  “Good morning. My name is, er…” For a second or two I wondered whether I should give a false name, and then wondered why I wondered it. Then I realized that whatever name I gave, uncertainty about it was not going to help my credibility. I finished hastily, “Martin Phipps. I’m doing research into the painter Guarana and I understand that in your palazzo there are some rather important frescoes by the artist.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Now, I know you must get so many requests to see them but I was wondering whether—”

  “When would you like to come?”

  “Well, as soon as is convenient.”

  “Today at twelve-thirty.” It wasn’t an offer or a question; more like a command.

  “Thank you, thank you. That would be fine.”

  “Good-bye then.” She’d put the phone down before I had time to ask where exactly the palazzo was.

  I looked at my watch: it was now eight minutes past ten. A vaporetto was just approaching the stop bound for San Marco. I bought a ticket and boarded. Again I sat outside, and reached San Zaccaria feeling as if my face had been flayed with a honed icicle. I got off there and made toward the Marciana Library. I read up on Guarana for half an hour; unfortunately the book I’d ordered referred only in passing to the frescoes of Palazzo Sambon. I also looked up the name Sambon in the general indexes of the library but could only find references to the palazzi of that name. The family had obviously never been in the Golden Book and had done nothing of any historical significance. I ordered a book on the palazzi of the city. There I discovered that each of the two Sambon palazzi was known as “Palazzo Sambon, già,” some other name, which meant the Sambon family had bought them from some other decaying Venetian family. The one in Cannaregio was apparently unoccupied and in disrepair—nothing strange for Venice. The description of the one in S. Polo merely mentioned the Guarana frescoes, without even saying what their subject was, and then talked about the other art treasures preserved there, among which were two paintings by Francesco Guardi. If only I’d read this before phoning, I’d have been saved a lot of bluffing, because I really did know about Guardi. Oh, well, at least I’d ask to see them before I left the palazzo.

  By now it was getting on for a quarter to twelve, so I set out, not knowing how long it might take me to find the building. According to the topological information given in the guidebook, which was not exactly of military precision, it was somewhere between S. Polo and Sant’Aponal, an area I’d never really got sorted out. Neither, I discovered when I was reduced to looking at the map (the shame, the shame), had the cartographers: they had made only the most impressionistic of attempts to reproduce the crosshatch of back streets and back canals; I felt it would have been more honest on their part to have drawn dragons or griffins there and left it at that.

  I got to Campo S. Polo at five past twelve and it took me another twenty minutes to find the building—or at least to find the entrance. At one point I found myself staring right at it, recognizing all the architectural details described by Lorenzetti—but across a canal. Grotesque stone faces leered down from the coping above the water entrance, one even poking its tongue out at
me. I got the point.

  I eventually found the entrance, a Gothic doorway at the end of a dark alleyway—a marked contrast with the arrogant Baroque facade I’d seen earlier. The doorbell, a white button held in the green teeth of a bronze lion face, had the name Sambon written above it.

  I pressed it, wondering if the teeth were designed to snap shut if one rang for too long. The door was opened by a maid—a definite maid. She was even dressed as one.

  “Buongiorno,” I said, “I have an appointment to see over the palazzo.”

  She said, “Ah sì?” as one might say “Oh yeah?” and then asked my name. I told her my name and she shrugged her shoulders and motioned me in. We went through a courtyard with a well into a marble-paved hall with a watergate at the far end, and then up the sort of staircase beloved by Hollywood for acrobatic swordfights or for floating processions of drapery-linked chorus girls. We entered a room the size of a tennis court, with eighteenth-century chairs perched around the edge as if for fastidious linesmen. Fleshy gods and goddesses cavorted on presumably robust clouds in fresco above, and an enormous colored chandelier, like several upturned cornucopias of glass, hung from the center of the ceiling.

  “Momento,” said the maid, and left me.

  I gazed around respectfully. At the far end of the room, where a vast array of arched windows gave onto the canal, reflected sunlight did an elegant gavotte on the ceiling, and the parts of the fresco thus tremulously touched took on something of the ethereality one guessed the painter had been trying for. I strolled down to see the view—and perhaps because drawn by the sunshine. The marble floor was like ice under my feet and my breath made little ephemeral imitations of the god-supporting clouds above. I felt quite sorry for the gods, who were somewhat scantily clad.