Through the window I could see a dim clutter of curlicued rococo shapes: there were chairs with arms of gilt wood that unfurled into floral fantasies, there were mirrors with trumpeting-cupid surrounds, there were vases with curling, looping handles, chandeliers with twirling, drooping pendants, and all around hulked statues in gilt wood of Negro torch-bearing contortionists.
And on a side wall there were two paintings by Zennaro: unmistakable—and unmissable. They were the only straight lines in the whole shop.
I entered and the door gave an old-fashioned tinkle. A man emerged from an inner room: he could only have been in his forties but he stooped noticeably—as if he were adapting himself to the whorled and coiled objects that formed his environment. His head pushed out toward me from his dusty gray jacket, like a tortoise’s from its shell, and he peered at me over half-moon glasses. He seemed to be trying to assume the respectable if delicate appearance of someone three times his age—again like many of the objects in the room, I suspected.
“Signor Busetto?” I said.
“Buongiorno, signore.” His voice had an infinite weariness in it. I wondered whether I should ask him to sit down. None of the chairs, however, looked very suitable.
“Tell me,” I said, “how much is that painting there?” I pointed to the larger Zennaro, about thirty inches by twenty. St. Mark’s and the Rialto Bridge superimposed and painted in green and purple with the help of a compass and a slide rule.
“Ah yes, quite amusing, isn’t it? Two hundred thousand lire.”
“Oh. That’s a little too much. And the other one?” Towers and domes and gondolas, in orange and pink and blue.
“One hundred and fifty thousand.”
“I see. They’re rather unexpected things to find here, aren’t they?”
“Well, yes, I suppose they are. But something unexpected in a shop isn’t a bad thing, I always think. It livens the place up a little. Ha-ha.” The laugh was about as lively as the creak of a disused door.
“Er, yes. Zennaro, aren’t they?”
“That’s right.” His head, which had been moving in its heavy reptile fashion from me to the painting and back again, stayed on me, and I could see curiosity in the lizard eyes. Although there were little labels on the paintings, presumably with the artist’s name, I was standing too far away to read them.
“I saw some of his works in London,” I explained. “I liked them and thought I’d look out for them when I came here. Is this the only place he exhibits?”
“I’m not sure. I hardly know him.”
“Oh. A pity. I’d rather like to get in touch with him.” And then, since no gallerist can expect to welcome a customer’s interest in the artist’s home address, I added, “I’m a journalist.” Not the BBC this time, I thought. “I work for the Evening Standard in London. We’re doing a few articles on contemporary art in Italy. All aspects, from commercial and tourist art to the more serious schools.” I thought it better not to try to pretend that I considered Zennaro the age’s Michelangelo.
“I see. Well, I’m sorry. I’m afraid I have no idea of his address. I don’t even know if he lives in Venice.”
“How do you happen to be exhibiting him?”
“I can’t—I can’t remember. I think it was through a friend of mine. Now, are you interested in the works or not?” He was suddenly almost brusque—and what was more surprising, brisk. He obviously wanted me out.
“Well, possibly. I’d have to think about it.” I walked over to one of the other more-to-be-expected paintings on the wall: an eighteenth-century landscape with cows and dancing peasants—or peasants and dancing cows; it was too obscured by dirt to see properly. “Zuccarelli?” I asked.
“School of.” His head followed me around without his body moving. But he was no doubt doing an internal dance of fury at my refusal to leave the shop.
“Amusing. Through friends, you say?” I turned from the painting. “Antonio Sambon, by any chance?”
“What?” This really caught him. His head jerked back as if he were going to close up shell. Then he said, recovering his slow dignity, “I have met Signor Sambon, and of course I know the contessa, but I would hardly say we were friends.”
“Oh. So you wouldn’t have any idea where he is now?”
“No. Why should I? Look, are you interested in buying anything? If not, I do have other things to do than answer your gossipy questions.”
“I see. I’m sorry if that’s what they seemed to you.” I tried to think of a good battuta (wisecrack) to go out on—one that would leave him cringing amid the curlicues in nervous apprehension—but none came to mind in Italian. Nor in English. “Arrivederla,” I said, and left.
I went back to the bar for another glass of wine and another think about what to do next. I could hardly keep watch on the shop all afternoon in the hope of seeing Toni drop by. And if I just went away, I would be leaving the only lead I’d had all afternoon.
I gazed out at the darkening street, watching the last rays of sunlight on the chimney pots, which rose from the tiles like miniature parodies of Tuscan hill towns, all tottering towers and spires and domes and chalice tops. I thought of such towns: Cortona and San Gimignano and Montepulciano—and I found myself thinking how simple and soothing it would be just to slip off and forget the whole business. I could take the next train down to Tuscany: that would be the perfect way to put the whole thing right out of my mind. Leave the slippery city and go pottering around steep stony streets, quaffing Chianti and studying frescoes, undisturbed by even the thought of terrorists or Cima da Conegliano.
The lights went off in Busetto’s shop. I looked at my watch. Just gone five. There were at least two hours until the usual closing time of shops. Busetto came out in an overcoat and pulled a metal shutter down over his window. He came down the alley in the direction of the bar. I turned away from the window and retreated a little. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him walk on past.
I paid the barman and stepped out into the street. I could see Busetto in the distance walking in the direction of Campo Santo Stefano. I started following him.
He was walking a little faster than one might have expected from seeing his shop manners. I stayed about twenty yards behind and he didn’t look back.
We came out into Campo Santo Stefano near the church and he crossed diagonally right. This was good. It meant he was probably going to take the alley that leads to St. Mark’s, which is always fairly busy; even if he were to look around, he probably wouldn’t spot me. Of course it also meant I would have to be careful that I didn’t lose sight of him.
When he reached Campo Santa Maria del Giglio, he turned sharp right. I knew the alley led only to a vaporetto stop on the Grand Canal—not a very busy stop either. There was no way I could follow him down there without being spotted.
I thought a little. He was presumably going to take the boat in the direction of St. Mark’s and the Lido; if he had been intending to go the other way, he would have walked from his shop to the Sant’Angelo stop. I started walking briskly—and then, a few seconds later, running—toward San Marco, the next vaporetto stop on this side of the Grand Canal.
Of course it was possible he was going to call on somebody in that alley and not get a boat at all: it was also possible he was going to get the boat but then get off it at the Salute, the very next stop on the other side of the canal. But you can’t cover every eventuality.
I came running down the Calle Vallaresso with my heart pounding and my lungs bursting. I reached the San Marco vaporetto stop and saw the boat on the other side of the Grand Canal, just pulling away from the Salute stop. It was of course impossible at that distance and in that light to see if he had got off there or not. I sat down, letting my breath get back to normal, and I listened in to a group of Americans who had obviously just come out of Harry’s Bar.
“I tell you it was Jackie Collins.”
“You reckon? And the guy with the beard?”
“I didn’t see no beard.”
“Oh, come on. The guy who ordered the Michelangelo or whatever it was.”
“Titian.”
“Yeah, that. Wasn’t he someone? I mean, you know, someone?”
“Like Hemingway, you mean?”
“No, I don’t mean. I know Hemingway’s dead.”
“No, I mean someone like him. Like a writer.”
“Like Jackie Collins.”
The boat pulled in, bumping up against the pontile. I moved with the rest of the people toward the chain barrier and peered into the dimly lit cabin. All I could see was that the boat was pretty full; the windows were too steamed up for any faces to be recognizable. I stepped on last and stayed outside, standing to the right of the driver’s cabin. There were no more stops on this side of the boat, so there was no reason why Busetto should see me here, and I would be able to peer around at the descending passengers fairly unobtrusively. The only risk was that of frostbite, I thought as the wind slashed into me, and I pulled my head down into my coat and shoved my hands deeper into my pockets; if Busetto wasn’t on the boat, or if he was going all the way to the Lido, by the time we got there I’d probably have coiled and congealed enough to be a suitable object for his shop.
We reached San Zaccaria and he didn’t get off; I hadn’t expected him to. One could just as quickly walk that far from Santo Stefano. We pulled out again toward the Arsenale. I watched the last daubs of a departed sunset over the Salute and tried to gather warmth from the sight, without much success. I thought how suitable it was that Venice’s public transport system should be named after a sneeze (ACTV, pronounced Atcheeteevoo). Busetto was not among those getting off at the Arsenale either.
The boat moved off again. It suddenly struck me that despite the cold, for the first time that day I was really feeling good. It was extremely satisfactory to be doing something. I knew in fact why I had refused at any point during the frustrations of the afternoon to take the easy option of saying “Screw Cima” and going off to Tuscany: because I knew I needed that sense of purpose. Without it despair would ambush me. Wherever I might be, in whatever Romanesque church of whatever picturesque hill town, the blues would come at me like a cosh-swinging mugger. Worse than the blues—the blank blank blanks of emptiness.
The boat moved in toward the Giardini stop, and as the engine noise changed a great crowd of people came out of the cabin. I saw Busetto among them, clutching the door with one saurian hand. The boat pulled in, I heard the iron swish of the railing being pulled back, and the crowd moved forward. Busetto was one of the last, which made things a little difficult for me. I waited till the descending passengers were all off and people had started to board, and then with a few scusis and permessos on my part and a few dialectal grunts on the boarders’ part, I elbowed my way off.
Like most of those who’d got off, Busetto was going down the tree-lined avenue that leads toward Via Garibaldi. Half of these people then took the first right; Busetto kept walking. I kept following. At the end of the avenue he passed to the right of the monument to Garibaldi; with fiendish deviousness I passed to the left. The little pond around the monument was covered in icy scum, and the lion at Garibaldi’s feet looked decidedly peaky under his mossy mane.
Via Garibaldi was as animated as ever, with people casually shopping and busily chatting. Busetto walked to the right, past the groups of men standing around outside the bars that seem to outnumber the shops at this, the market end of the street. Beyond the market Via Garibaldi effectively ends in a canal, with just two narrow fondamente continuing along either side of it. Busetto was now walking along the right-hand fondamenta and had just skirted the shoppers crowding around the vegetable barge moored at its very beginning. I hung back a little as the crowd thinned out here, and I saw Busetto in the distance turn and cross the second of the bridges over the canal. At this point I ran: it would be easy to lose him in this area, which I didn’t know at all well.
The bridge led into a narrowing alley on the other side of the canal and I reached it just in time to see Busetto take the first turning to the right. When I got to that turning, however, Busetto had disappeared.
This alley ended in the wide canal of San Pietro and there were no turnings off it, so he had obviously entered one of the houses. I walked back down, looking at the names on the doors. There was no Zennaro, which proved nothing. There were some bell pushes without names at all. I noted the name of the alley. Calle S. Ana (dialect spelling for S. Anna).
It would be impossible to keep a discreet watch anywhere in the alley, so I walked back over the bridge to the fondamenta and then proceeded up alongside the canal, looking at the houses opposite, in the vague hope of seeing Busetto in one of the windows. It was a long row of three-story houses rising straight (well, not so very straight) out of the water, with simple square windows at regular intervals and high square chimneys at irregular intervals. Occasional patches of flaking paintwork mottled the crumbling brickwork. Most of the windows had shutters across them. The houses ended where the fondamenta ended, in the canal of San Pietro.
A long wooden bridge supported on piles crossed to the island of San Pietro. I walked over it and then turned left. Just past a small group of houses was the entrance to a boat yard from which there was a perfect view across the canal of Calle S. Anna. A man was working by the light of a gas lamp shaving a plank of wood. I wondered if in this light I could convincingly say that I’d like to sketch the view.
Then at that moment I saw the light of a door opening onto the Calle opposite. Busetto’s unmistakable shape came out. The door looked about halfway down the Calle.
The man shaving the wood looked up at me and I moved away. I walked back to the wooden bridge feeling that I was probably getting somewhere, but first of all I had to get something warm inside me. I remembered noticing a pasticceria at the beginning of the fondamenta: I could do a little prebreak-fast research there.
As I put my hand to the glass door of the pasticceria I saw Busetto on the other side of it doing the same. I stepped back and let him out.
He came out onto the pavement and stared at me, obviously taken aback. Then he said, “You’ve followed me.”
“Why should I do that?” I said. Then: “My hotel’s just down at the end of the road.”
“Don’t lie to me.” It must have been the shock of the moment that was making him speak out so wildly. I was definitely onto something, I thought exultantly, and glanced across at the houses on the Rio S. Anna.
He caught this glance and said, “I order you to stop bothering me.” He almost drew up straight.
“I tell you, I happen to be staying in a hotel here. And anyway what have you been doing that you’re so scared of my knowing about?” This was the sentence I intended to say at any rate, but I got a bit confused toward the end and I think what I actually said was something like, “What have you done that comes so much fear to you about me?”
He said in a low venomous tone, “Leave me alone.” Low, because one or two interested faces were staring at us from the pasticceria by now. Venomous, because that’s the way he was.
“Yes, all right, but—” And foolishly I put a restraining hand on his arm as he made to leave me.
Only guilty panic can explain his next action: I didn’t think about such explanations, mind you, until quite some time later. I was rather too concerned with the immediate result.
He turned and shoved hard at my shoulder. We happened to be standing next to a flight of steps down to the water, and thus at the one point on the fondamenta where there was no railing. I just had enough sense to break off my yelp and close my mouth before I hit the water.
For a second or two nothing went through my brain but shock: physical and mental shock fused into one sudden explosion. Then the physical shock resolved itself into the intensest feeling of cold I’d ever experienced: I was lucidly aware that death was not an impossibility. My clothes all seemed to be on death’s side, particularly my shoes, and I felt myself to be in battle against t
hem as I struggled up to the surface. My shoulder bag was obviously out to throttle me; I was either too panic-stricken to think of shaking it off, or too farseeing to want to lose it (it had my wallet); it stayed around me. My head emerged and heard a great babble of voices—but about a mile away. I couldn’t take in a single word. Helping hands stretched down toward me.
I came up the steps, but I have no clear recollection how—whether pulled or pushed or carried. I know there was one moment when my foot slipped on the seaweed and I almost fell back, tugging a helper in with me. But some seconds later I was on the fondamenta, a dripping shaking huddle. The various obscenities that came to mind couldn’t get beyond their first consonants at my lips. I saw that three or four people were restraining Busetto, who was looking extremely flustered. I began to take in some of the voices. Everyone was talking in dialect of course, but I got the gist. Those closest were talking about the police, somebody near the bar was talking about an ambulance, and those at the periphery were explaining to those who had just arrived, and these then formed a new explanatory periphery for the next arrivals.
Nobody seemed quite sure what to do about me, until a barrel-bellied man ushered me into the pasticceria.
“’Na graspa,” my escort shouted.
“No, un brandy,” countermanded another.
“Un whisky,” a third voice put in.
Now was the time for me to put in a truly English request for a cup of tea. I didn’t. I took the first glass that came and swigged it gratefully. It was brandy, I think. Miles down in the frozen depths of my body something improved: the tip of a tiny stalactite thawed. I might not die then, I thought for the first time.
“Shall we call an ambulance?” an unshaven man asked me in dialect.
I somehow got out the word no. I drank some more of the brandy. Another stalactite snapped off. “I’m at the hotel down there,” I said, pointing. Every movement seemed to paste the icy clothes further into my skin. I was still shivering and it seemed unlikely I’d ever stop.
“But did you swallow the water?” someone else asked—and pointed at his open mouth with his finger in explanation. They’d gathered I was a foreigner.
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