I made my way back to Via Garibaldi, noting the little old ladies and the bambini straggling into the churches on the way. (These two groups seem to make up ninety percent of Venice’s church-going population.) Would Lucy be going to one of them? I wondered. She was a Catholic (which was the main reason I’d never told my mother about her), though it had sometimes struck me that this was only to be noticed on a Sunday morning. And in England, where RCs can very rarely get much of an aesthetic kick from their church-going, it was hardly to be noticed at all.
I walked the full length of Via Garibaldi: very small children, dressed for the most part like Michelin men with their stubby arms almost at right angles to their bodies, were being paraded up and down by mothers in fur coats and fathers in greatcoats and scarves; how many fur coats, I wondered, would one see in, say, Stepney, which must be the social equivalent of this end of Venice?
I walked quickly past the pasticceria and nobody noticed me. I crossed the bridge and turned right into Calle Sant’Anna. The door I thought was the one Busetto had come out of had two bell pushes, and the top one had no name. That seemed my most likely bet. I was about to push it when I thought better. After all, whoever was there could simply refuse to let me into the building.
I looked at the lower bell: Trevisan. I took out my Dick Francis novel and wrote Piero Trevisan on the first page. I pushed the bell.
“Chi xè ’o?” a tinny female voice came from the grille.
“I found a book in the street, signora, with the name Trevisan.” I exaggerated my English accent as I said this in careful Italian.
“Cossa?”
“I found a book.”
“No go capìo gnente.” I haven’t understood anything. The door clicked open and I entered. The staircase was of stone and dimly lit. I started up it, and heard a door opening above and a woman repeating, “Chi xè ’o?”
She turned out to be extremely old and frail looking, and she spoke only dialect. I explained that I’d seen this book on a bench in the public gardens and because it was English had picked it up to have a look at it. I’d seen the name inside and someone had told me that a Trevisan lived here. She looked at the book and shook her head, “No, that’s not mine.”
“I see. I’m sorry, signora.”
“I only read Famiglia Cristiana and Il Gazzettino.”
“Then I’ll try somewhere else.”
“My niece lent me a book once. I didn’t like it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She knew I liked flowers, so she gave me this one: the something of the Rose—but not a flower in it. All about monks. And not good ones either. Try next door. The son’s at the university.”
I said I would and went on down. I opened the front door and closed it noisily—staying on the inside, however. I then tiptoed to the storeroom next to the staircase: it was a windowless room, full of bottles, old mattresses, cardboard boxes, and other junk. I waited there for a minute or so. My eyes got used to the gloom and I noticed a bottle of rat poison in a corner. I felt my back go goose-pimply—and then my legs. Perhaps the beasts were hanging around to see if my legs really were fixtures and suitable for gnawing. I hastily shifted them.
A radio was turned on above, presumably by the old lady. A recent hit of Duran Duran was being broadcast. I had intended to wait a couple of minutes until my brief intrusion had been completely forgotten about, but this cover was perfect. I started up the stairs, without even needing to tiptoe. As I passed the flat I heard the old lady humming along with Simon Le Bon.
I reached the top floor. There was a tiny landing that contained a broken chair and a bulging plastic bag full of rubbish, tied with string. Next to the flat’s front door there was a bell push made of transparent plastic that contained a piece of paper. A name was written there in faded ballpoint ink; in that dim light I had to screw up my eyes to read it.
Zennaro.
I felt a brief glow of triumph. I pressed the bell. There was no answer. I tried again. Still no answer.
So now what—shove off and come back later with another Dick Francis?
Downstairs the song ended and a disc jockey’s voice babbled away the usual hearty inanities and then gave way to a hearty folk song. I looked at the edge of the door. I could see the latch. I got my credit card out of my crinkled wallet. This was something I’d tried on my own (Jim’s) front door in London after locking myself out and in the end I’d had to break a window. (I’d shared a cell with a housebreaker for six months to little profit.) Should I? It would be my first definitely illicit action. But I felt so certain that I was onto something that I knew I couldn’t just turn around and go back downstairs.
I slid the card gently into the crack, fumbled, fiddled, twisted, prodded—and I was just remembering that if I snapped it I’d go without dinner that night when I felt the catch easing back.
Gently, gently, gently … The door suddenly swung open under the pressure of my left hand. I listened again down the stairs but could only hear the steady rhythmical thump of the radio. I stepped into the flat. I was in a tiny entrance-hall-cum-dining-room and there were three doors off it, all open. The one straight ahead was a tiny kitchen, and the nearest one on the left was a bedroom and the farthest an artist’s studio. I entered that. A rather stale but sweet smell hung over the room, swathing the more familiar smells of paint and turpentine. I didn’t bother to stand and sniff in the hope of identifying it, but started looking around at once. There was a window onto the canal with dirty net curtains that presumably filtered the midday sun. The other room with north-facing windows, the bedroom, was obviously too dark for painting in.
The immediate impression was of general confusion; the second impression was of total confusion. But very colorful confusion. Zennaro’s paintings, which were arranged all around the walls, assaulted the eyes: a raging battle of violent greens and oranges and purples and yellows and reds; the geometrical neatness of the pictures’ lines and designs merely looked ironic amid the room’s kaleidoscopic chaos. The floor was protected by old newspapers, which were now so paint-flecked they could be mistaken for works in progress. The walls were not so protected and were also flecked; the blobs of color took one’s attention off the patches of damp and the peeling plaster. There were dirty rags tossed everywhere, even on the two rush chairs in the corners of the room; next to the easel, in the center of the room, was a table, again covered with old newspapers. It held all the painting equipment: tubes of paint, mostly squeezed from the middle, and some with the paint oozing out onto the newsprint, as if eager to join in the room’s general riot. But the brushes, I noticed, had been washed properly and placed upright in jars and old tomato tins to dry.
I looked at the work on the easel; another geometrician’s opium dream of the city, in red and green and white this time. Most patriotic. The lines were all sketched in in pencil, and it was half-painted. He was using a good-quality canvas, and the paints and brushes were Winsor and Newton—not cheap. It was just the work that was, I thought. Then I added to myself, And listen to who’s talking.
In a corner of the room was an alcove, over which hung, by way of curtain, an old sheet. Everything here, it struck me, was makeshift and inexpensive except for the tools of the trade. Which was quite possibly as it had been in the young Titian’s studio. I pulled back the sheet. There were more paintings stacked here. I pulled one out. It was not by Zennaro. It showed St. Jerome beating his breast in the desert, with the lion from the Wizard of Oz for company. Seventeenth-century Veneto, I guessed. Rather too old and rather too good to be the sort of thing one bought in junk shops just in order to have a cheap canvas.
I pulled out the next one. A Sassoferrato-style Madonna, hands joined, sweet sad Bambi eyes: not my favorite kind of painting, but again not junk—from the financial point of view. There followed a Nativity of the Bassano school: shepherds kneeling around the manger, their dirty soles toward the spectator, and the whole scene lit by the Bambino’s own glow and an apparently exploding star
above. Then another saint in the wilderness, apparently by the same painter as the St. Jerome: this time a naked Mary Magdalen, with Valkyrien tresses in blush-sparing dishevelment; the rocks and trees and even the curious birds were the same. Only the lion was missing.
These paintings were all unframed, and mostly in need of a good clean—or even a transfer of canvas. A charitable explanation of their presence here was that Zennaro made a sideline of cleaning or restoring old paintings. That was not the explanation that came to my mind. I went back to the work on the easel and had a hard look at the canvas. The back of the canvas was obviously new, but squinting at the side, I could now see that this was a mere fresh skin added to the real painting surface as a disguise. The join was cleverly concealed with extra-thick paint, but the double layer couldn’t be hidden completely. He was clearly painting over an older work—just as I had heard of painters doing when they couldn’t afford new canvases—but they would presumably be using, say, nineteenth-century rubbish, cheap family portraits or sentimental landscapes that nobody in the world would ever miss.
I’d found out what I’d come to find out and there was no point in hanging around waiting to be collared as a trespasser. I just needed some proof. Could I take one of Zennaro’s smaller paintings with me? But there was no knowing that every one of his works hid another, rather better one. I screwed my eyes up protectively and had a look at the paintings along the wall—or more accurately at the canvases. Most of them seemed quite genuinely modern, but there were three clearly old ones, which hadn’t even had a fresh skin attached to their backs as disguise. They were, however, all too large to be taken out unobtrusively. My hands were damp as they handled the works, I realized, and my shirt was beginning to feel as it had done the night before, only warmer. I had better go before the thumping of my heart made itself heard over the thumping of the radio. I went over to the table for one last look, to see what he was using to protect the painting beneath.
“Ma!” A sudden exclamation from the doorway, and I did that Russian leap of mine—backward, away from the door.
There was a man of my age, or a little younger, standing there, his face writhing with a mixture of emotions I wasn’t cool enough to analyze just then. His right hand dived inside his shabby overcoat and produced an object, which with a sharp flick suddenly doubled in length; the new half glinted as he agitated it. I looked at the table to my side and couldn’t see anything of any obvious use as a weapon, so stepped back around the easel. He came forward slowly, crouching, holding the knife out before him and waving it menacingly. I was very much afraid, from film memories, that this was the professional knife fighter’s stance.
The trouble was that I didn’t know what the professional knife victim’s stance should be: I could only recall the words of my cellmate apropos of fights in general: “Get ’em before they get you.” But how to get him? He was now on the other side of the easel from me, and obviously at the first defensive twitch on my part he would leap. The knife hand alternated dead steadiness with sudden glinting slashes through the air.
Finally I spoke—and my voice came out raucous, which was at least better than trembling. I said in Italian, “If you jump, I’ll bring this picture down on you and you’ll cut that as well as me.” This could be the way to get him.
“Who are you?”
“Put the knife away and I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“Put it away.”
“Tell me.”
This dialogue was getting positively childish: but I was pleased to notice beads of sweat on his forehead and definite agitation in his eyes. He wasn’t as coolly professional as his stance suggested. “Look,” I said, raising my arms and opening my hands, “I am completely unarmed. Put—”
This had been a bit of a gamble, and as it turned out a rather unfortunate one. At that moment he leaped. I just saw the blade streaking up to my face and I hurled myself backward, crashing against the wall and immediately falling to one side. At least I think that’s what happened. I ended up on the floor at any rate. I rolled over as he threw himself down on top of me, and my right hand grabbed hold of a painting and swung it protectively. The blade went through this with a dull ripping sound and I felt him go suddenly rigid with shock; I profited by throwing him off me and again rolling away from him. Judging from his reaction it was the way to get him.
I grabbed another painting and pulled myself to my feet, holding it in both white-knuckled hands like a shield. “Okay,” I said, “put the knife down.”
He got to his feet and tossed the knife onto the table. “Stronzo,” he said with calm simplicity. “Who are you?”
“An investigator.”
“Investigator for whom? Are you the police?”
I wondered for just two seconds whether I could say yes, and whether there would be any advantage in so doing. But first, he probably wouldn’t believe me, and second, even if he did, he obviously wasn’t the sort in whom the very word would instill a sort of religious terror.
I was at last able to make a reasonably cool assessment of what sort he was. Well, he was certainly nothing like his sharp-cut strident pictures: faded seemed the best word to describe him—like a watercolor left too long in the sun. His coat and the jeans below it were shabby and colorless; his hair was long, but the reverse of luxuriant, weakly straggling around his neck and receding at the top. He was more than unshaven, but one wouldn’t have said that he had anything so definite as a beard. The only truly assertive note was a ring in his right ear, and this didn’t exactly make him into Errol Flynn. His expression was sullen and watchful; now that I could get a calm look at him I could see that he was obviously no muscle man—but I would keep an eye on the knife all the same. There was no point in forgetting that he did know the correct stance.
After this pause of assessment I said, “Not the police, don’t worry.”
“So who the hell are you?”
“It needn’t matter to you. I just want some information, and if you help me, you won’t get into any trouble.”
“Look, you broke into my flat, you’re the one who could get into trouble.”
“It’s no use,” I said gently. “I’ve seen what you’re up to.”
“What do you mean?” As he said this his eyes went straight to the alcove and the paintings I’d taken out of it.
“What you now have to say is, ‘I’m restoring them.’ And I then say, ‘What, like the one under your painting there?’” I pointed to the patriotically colored work on the easel.
He shrugged. “Prove it.”
“I could take this work along to be X-rayed. By the Sovrintendenza. Before it gets sent away to London. By Busetto.”
He blinked, no more. “And why should I let you take it away?”
“Look, you can see I know the whole traffic. Busetto gives you the paintings to be smuggled out. You paint your pictures on them. And off they go to the Blue Moon Gallery in London, where some clever restorer removes your work and hands over the painting to Osgood. Am I right?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know where they go in London.”
“So I’m right. I suppose works by living authors don’t need any permission from the Sovrintendenza to leave the country—or just get a quick check. And presumably it’s only one or two works in each batch that are actually hiding anything anyway. Of course there’s always the risk of an X-ray checkup. What do you do—use a lead-based varnish?”
“Busetto knows someone in the Sovrintendenza.” He obviously saw no point in further denials.
So his disguising of the works to be smuggled didn’t have to be foolproof—just good enough not to be obvious. “Where do these paintings come from?”
“I don’t know. I never ask. Busetto just tells me to come and pick them up at his shop. I go there with my boat. Look, who are you and why should I answer your questions?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not concerned with getting you into trouble. But just remember I could if I wanted. Yo
u say you don’t know where they come from, but someone somewhere will. How long have you been doing this?”
“About two years. But it’s only a sideline to my real work.”
Oh God, I thought with a sudden pang: these were the words I had always reassured myself with when doing those “foolish forgeries.” I should really be throwing my arm around this man and saying “Comrade.” Except … except … there was a difference, though I’d sound a self-righteous prig explaining it: I had never been removing works from circulation. (Just other people’s money, prosecuting counsel would riposte quickly here.) And, I added to myself unworthily but irrepressibly, my real work was rather better than his. I asked neutrally, “What started you?”
“I did some restoring and framing for Busetto. One thing led to another. He said he’d hang some of my works if I did a few little jobs for him.”
“And why did you want them hung in an antique shop?”
“I wanted them hung anywhere. Nobody would take them. And he told me he could get them sold in London too. And he has done. People are really buying them there, you know. I may go there in fact. Here you can’t even get a license to exhibit on the Riva degli Schiavoni. And you try doing it without a license. Your brother artists are the first to call for the vigili.”
He spoke with quick quiet bitterness, and it struck me that he must be entirely sincere in his vocation. Indeed, in the whole room—and as far as a quick glance had told me, in the whole flat—there was nothing that wasn’t related to the job. A Spartan existence, it seemed, dedicated to his art. No concessions to pleasure—unless.… And I realized that the smell I’d noticed on entering was hashish. Well, Zennaro probably needed a good deal of consoling. And I found it difficult to believe he could ever get it from looking at his works.
“So you had a rather hard time of it at first,” I said.
Every Picture Tells a Story Page 14