Every Picture Tells a Story

by Gregory Dowling

  “What about it?”

  “Well, it’s rather—rather nice.”

  He said yes, without any particular intonation. Then, with a touch more warmth: “There’s some cretin of a Frenchman working on bird symbolism in altar paintings, but he’s apparently completely ignored my work on the subject. You know I wrote a paper in ’76.…” I blanked out his voice again. It struck me I couldn’t remember him ever saying anything that showed he actually liked a painting, not even one by Lorenzo Lotto.

  After another minute or so I said, “Well, I think I’ll be off.”

  “Well, I suppose I might as well too. This man sounds as if he could go on for ages.” He was referring to the priest who was preaching at that point.

  We stepped out into the sunshine again. He said, “Are you lecturing then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought you were having an exhibition in London.”

  “I was.” I remembered that he knew Adrian—or Adrian knew him. Adrian knew most people. “But my paintings got burned.”

  “Ah.” He thought this over for one and a half seconds and then said, “Do you know of any good restaurants round this area?”

  “What? Oh, well, yes. There’s one on the Fondamenta Ormesini.”

  “Right. That’s over there, isn’t it?” he said, indicating the bridge.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, see you sometime, I suppose.” He didn’t ask me if I wanted to go and have lunch with him, and I didn’t suggest it.

  “Yes,” I said, “I think I’ll go to Burano for the day.”

  “What do you want to go there for?”

  I gathered there were no Burlington controversies about paintings on Burano at the moment. “I don’t know—it’s picturesque.”

  He hmmphed and said good-bye. I watched him make his wheezing way over the bridge, and then I set off down the fondamenta. I had decided only that very moment that I’d like to go to Burano; a trip across the lagoon seemed like a good way to put things into perspective and stay cool.

  I got off the boat at Mazzorbo about fifty minutes later and had lunch at a restaurant there, feeling the peaceful self-satisfaction of a tourist definitely leaving the beaten track. I thought as little about terrorists as possible, and a fair degree about Cima, wondering how I’d feel if I managed to save the painting and it was then put for safekeeping into a museum run by someone like Professor Perkins.

  I took the next boat to Torcello. The cold seemed to have deterred most people from this usually popular Sunday-afternoon jaunt. A few young couples got off at Torcello with me, the girls huddled in their furs or sheepskins, the boys holding tiny transistors to their ears to hear the football commentary. The more reverent ones turned the radios off before entering the basilica. From there I crossed to Burano, which was as picturesque as ever: it’s always a surprise when you hear the inhabitants speaking to each other instead of bursting into operatic choruses (well, in fact, their dialect is more singsong than in Venice).

  My last visit to the island had been with Lucy, I now remembered. As I walked down one of the fondamente gazing at the brightly colored houses, flaunting their washing, I remembered how she had asked me, “Why don’t you paint it?” We had just passed an English husband and wife, each doing an earnest little watercolor view. I had said, “It’s too picturesque,” and she had accused me of visual inverted snobbery. “I can see you love it as much as I do,” she had said. “This painting of rubbish dumps and gasworks is a gimmick really, isn’t it? Just a way of proving you’re not an amateur dauber like them.” She had been joking, but I think she realized how this thrust got home. She had at once changed the subject, suggesting a drink.

  The sun was going down now and the air was getting chilly. I made my way back to the imbarcadero. On the way I stopped at a souvenir shop and bought a couple of lace doilies for my mother, trying to remember whether I’d bought her the same thing last time. I felt my usual twinge of guilt at not being able to think of anything else, apart from cream cakes, that she might like.

  At the same shop I found a postcard with a reproduction of a nineteenth-century painting of the place. I bought it, thinking I could send it to Adrian, telling him this was the style I had now decided to model myself on, and thus throw him into a complete panic. I then continued on my way, refusing to think anymore about painting. It was a bit depressing when I couldn’t even look at a picturesque view without starting to worry about my ability to make a picture of it. I repeated to myself that I was at least better than Zennaro.

  And it was a bit worrying when I could only cheer myself up by comparing myself with hacks and daubers.

  I hoped the sunset wasn’t going to be too beautiful.

  * * *

  When I got out at the Fondamente Nuove it was already dark—and damn cold again. I made my way to Busetto’s house. Still no answer. I went on to the station and picked up my luggage. I walked out of the station, pushing my way through the home-going crowds. I crossed the bridge over the Grand Canal and walked along to a hotel on the Rio Marin. I suppose I went there as a sort of act of reparation to Henry James, as I remembered someone telling me that The Aspern Papers (which I had dropped splatch into the rubbish bin) is set in a palazzo on that canal. I took a single room without a bath—and without breakfast of course: there was a whole new area of pasticcerie to explore here. From a nearby bar I rang the Danieli Hotel and was told that yes, il Signor Osgood had arrived, would I like to speak to him? No, thank you, I would call around in person.

  Twenty-five minutes later I got out of the number two at the San Zaccaria stop—directly in front of the Danieli Hotel. I was a bit disconcerted to see that there were two carabinieri on guard outside the place, holding machine guns. But I recalled that this was in fact quite a common sight, merely meaning that some politician or other was staying the night; the carabinieri were there to let the terrorists know where to attack.

  I looked at my watch. It had just gone seven. This was about the time you might expect to see Osgood sauntering out for dinner, or at least a predinner drink, if he hadn’t already. Well, I could lose nothing by hanging around for a few minutes to see.

  I took a seat inside the imbarcadero, from where I could see the hotel’s revolving doors. The minutes passed and each one seemed to drag the temperature down a few degrees. I looked at the sea gulls bobbing on the water’s surface and took the same meager consolation that I had done with regard to Zennaro as an artist, that at least I wasn’t them.

  I was on the point of leaving when I saw Osgood squeezing through the revolving doors. He was dressed in a cream-colored suit and an open shirt, with no coat; the only concession he made to the weather was a rather flamboyant red scarf: either he was one of those who think that Italy never gets cold, or winter was just never long enough for the cold to get through to his bones. He set off down the Riva in the direction of the Piazzetta.

  Well, no great skill was going to be needed in following him. I could probably do it by putting my ear to the ground—and he wasn’t likely to slip away down a back alley since he wouldn’t fit down most of them.

  He walked on past the Piazzetta and along the front by the little Public Gardens, where the souvenir stalls were all closed up for the night. At the end he turned right and I could just see him turning again into the first doorway. Well, of course: Harry’s Bar. Where else could he order a Bellini in a loud voice without the Sovrintendenza at once jumping on him?

  So now the usual question: what next? Was I going to beard him here? If not, what had I followed him for? This place at least had the advantage of not being guarded by carabinieri. But- … but … it was quite possible that he was merely going to take an aperitif here and go on to dinner somewhere else. If he was in fact going to dine in the restaurant part upstairs, there was no hurry for me to barge in. And if he was going to move on, I might as well see where, and who with. After all, there was no knowing: he might have fixed up to meet Toni Sambon on his very first evening.

>   I walked about halfway down the Calle Vallaresso and there stopped and looked idly at the theater posters and at the shop windows. At that distance and in that light, I thought, I would be unrecognizable—though he of course would not be. I was looking in at a shirt shop and thinking that the prices weren’t too bad when I suddenly recognized, in the window’s reflection, the shape of somebody passing behind me: Busetto. I didn’t move and he walked on past, obviously without having recognized me. I saw him enter Harry’s Bar.

  Harry’s Bar certainly didn’t seem his natural ambience; it must have been Osgood who’d decided on the rendezvous.

  So now what? I definitely knew enough to make my side of any conversation we might have interesting enough to them, so maybe it was time to move in. But there was still the chance that they were going to move on somewhere else—to another rendezvous with Toni.

  I decided to wait a little longer, firmly squashing the little voice that accused me of merely wanting to put off an embarrassing scene. I went back to my study of the shirts—and realized I’d missed a zero in my reading of the prices. I moved on to the next shop, my hands plunged deeper into my coat, and my feet beginning to curl up protectively in my insufficient shoes.

  I suddenly asked myself whether I would recognize Toni if he should enter the alley from the far end, from the vaporetto stop. I started staring hard at the people as they turned into the alley—and then I saw a girl turn and put her hand rather hesitantly to the door of Harry’s bar. She glanced down the alley in my direction but obviously didn’t recognize me. She entered. I had recognized her, however: there was no mistaking that small upright figure. It was Toni’s sister, Francesca.

  I felt suddenly as if I’d been clobbered. Could this just be a pure coincidence? Well, of course it could—but the chances were that it wasn’t. So just what could she be up to? Was she acting as a go-between for her brother? If so, all that anxiety she had shown for him must have been faked. I remembered those steady but troubled dark eyes: I couldn’t believe it. That would make her a better actress than Meryl Streep. She had really been worried for him, I was sure.

  I walked down toward the bar, but kept on past it, merely glancing at the irritating frosted glass panes of the door. I entered the imbarcadero. I’d get the story off her the next day. I was too cold and too tired to think properly—and too hungry. I’d catch a boat now and go and eat in a restaurant I knew over by San Giacomo dell’Orio, not too far from my hotel. I could take the number two and get off at Piazzale Roma. I sat down on one of the benches in the shelter and rubbed my hands together in a sort of self-exhortatory gesture. The nagging doubt remained that maybe I was walking away just when things were going to get interesting—but that doubt would probably remain even if I tagged along after them until they went to bed. I put it out of my mind.

  A few minutes later the number two, the diretto, pulled up to the imbarcadero, and I, along with three or four of the other people waiting, boarded. At the last moment, just as the sailor was about to flick the rope free someone came running up the gangway of the imbarcadero and the sailor called to the driver, “’Speta, Gianni,” and pulled back the railing. I was on the way down the steps into the comparative warmth of the cabin and so didn’t see who it was until the boat had moved out into the Grand Canal and I had taken the one free seat next to the door. Through the dirty pane I saw her come down the steps, and put her hand to the door, but then she obviously thought better of it and moved to the small sheltered alcove next to the steps. She didn’t sit down, which would have meant facing into the cabin, but stood with her back to us and her face to the window. I saw her hand go up to her face in a gesture of weariness or even despair, which she managed to turn into a mere retidying of her long dark hair.

  I got up and stepped out of the cabin. I said, “Francesca—” and she turned around, startled. Her face was dead white in the gloom and her eyes desperate. I noticed her “petiteness” in this fragile state: there was something of the frightened child in the way she looked up at me.

  “Oh,” she said. “Sei tu.”

  “Yes.” I couldn’t pretend not to notice her state, so said, “What’s the matter?” I spoke in Italian—I suppose because she had done so and also because it seemed gentler.

  “Nothing, nothing.” She had flicked her head so that her hair came down protectively over her eyes.

  “Sorry, I don’t want to—to interfere.…” I couldn’t think of a word for intrude. “But is it anything to do with Osgood?”

  Her face swung up in surprise, so that I saw her eyes darkly glimmering with tears. “What do you know about—” She stopped and switched to her slightly stilted English. “Please, it is nothing. Leave me.”

  “It’s obviously not nothing. Please, I’d like to help.”

  “At the moment I am confused, that’s all.”

  “Is it to do with Toni?”

  “Yes, but—oh, I can’t explain. That man—that fat man—he said such a thing.…”

  There was disgust as well as despair in her voice. I said prosaically, “What?” but she simply repeated, “Leave me,” and turned away from me, with her hands to her face.

  I said, “Can I accompany you home?”

  She said, still looking away from me, “No. I need to think. I get off at the Accademia.”

  “Okay.” I said. Then, after a pause, “Do they know where Toni is?”

  “No. They want to know. And they think I know. It is so very much complicated. I—I … Please, leave me now.”

  The boat was approaching the Accademia Bridge now. I said, “All right. But can I—”

  She pushed past me to go up the steps. The boat wouldn’t reach the stop for another twenty seconds or so, but she obviously wanted to cut short the conversation. At the second step she turned back to me, perhaps feeling a little more in command now that she was more or less the same height, and said, “Sorry, excuse me this—this confusion. Come to my shop tomorrow. I will try to explain.” Then she went nimbly on up. I saw her hand go up to her face again, but only to hold her hair in the wind. I went back into the cabin.

  12

  FRANCESCA’S shop turned out to be fairly easy to find. I reached it, after my usual sticky breakfast, at around ten o’clock. It was between St. Mark’s and the Fenice. I saw its big hanging sign with the simple legend FRANCESCA’S from the far end of the street. But it also turned out to be closed, with shutters over the windows. Then I remembered that a lot of shops are closed on Monday mornings.

  I made my way to Busetto’s shop since it was fairly near. That too was closed. It looked as if I’d done everything wrong this morning. (Even the cake I’d chosen—a thing called a cannolo, a tube of flaky pastry with cream oozing at each end—had turned out to be the classic fraud with a hollow middle.) I should have got up at dawn and gone for a run and then hung around outside the Danieli in order to follow Osgood’s movements. By now I’d probably missed him. Well, I could always try phoning the hotel.

  I did so from one of the phones outside the post office at the Bocca di Piazza. I was told that il Signor Osgood had gone to Asolo for the day, and would not return till that evening; he had given instructions that any urgent message could be left at the Cipriani at Asolo, where he would be taking lunch and tea.

  I put the phone down. Would there be any point in my going to Asolo and watching him have lunch—apart from the physical fascination of the spectacle? The only way I could do it would be to go straight to Piazzale Roma now and hire a car, since public transport would never get me there and back for my lecture. But car hiring was pretty expensive and the whole thing was likely to be a waste of time since I was fairly sure that he wasn’t meeting Toni there. I had no well-founded reason for being sure of this, but it just seemed an unlikely place for him or Toni to choose: the Cipriani, for an ex-terrorist smuggler?

  The only other move that came to mind was to try again at Busetto’s home address. I started toward Cannaregio. Whatever else, these few days were proving
marvelous exercise. When I rang his doorbell thirty-five minutes later, Busetto didn’t reply.

  The way things were going I’d have been surprised if he had.

  Then I noticed the front door wasn’t closed properly. It was just slightly ajar. I pushed it and it swung open. The hall revealed was unusually bright and new looking for Venice. I stepped inside. If anyone were to see me, I could just say that I’d found the door open, so I thought I’d run straight on up to my friend’s flat. I pushed the door to but the latch was stiff; I didn’t bother to give it the extra shove it needed, being nervous of the noise it might make. I started up the stairs. From the position of his bell outside I guessed that Busetto was on the second floor.

  The staircase was new too. The whole place had clearly been recently restored. I reached the second floor, and there was Busetto’s name on the door to the right. The flat opposite bore the name De Marchi. I approached Busetto’s door. Was I really going to try to fiddle its lock with my credit card? Here, on a landing where people passed? And if not, why had I come on up? I knocked—but not so loudly that the De Marchis would hear. There was no answer of course. I knocked just a little louder—and the door swung a few degrees under my knuckles. I stared, then pushed it open and stepped in.

  I was in darkness. The shutters were all closed. I gently pulled the front door shut behind me and stood still for a few seconds waiting for my eyes to adjust. The place was very warm. Then I thought, Why be in darkness? and I stretched my hand out to the wall beside the door. But before I touched it I stopped short, put my hand into my anorak pocket, and took out a pair of gloves and put them on. I was quite unaware of any specific premonition; this just seemed an appropriate precaution. My gloved fingers found the light switch. I turned it on—and at once drew in my breath in a sharp yelp.

  There was a naked black man brandishing a club immediately in front of me.

  Of course it was a candelabra—and he was brandishing a torch, not a club. Nonetheless, it was a rather threatening object to keep in one’s hallway. I had a look at the door to see if the lock was broken. It didn’t seem to be; again I just had to presume that it hadn’t been pulled or pushed hard enough by the last person to go out or in. Out, I hoped. It crossed my mind that that person might have been nervous of making a noise too.