Every Picture Tells a Story

by Gregory Dowling

  I stepped into the first room on my right and turned on the light. It was Busetto’s shop.

  Or at least it was exclusively and oppressively furnished from the shop. And if anything, it was more cluttered than the shop. Here too everything was looping-the-loop rococo, from the chairs and sofas and sideboards to the picture frames and the china and the chandelier. But there was more than just clutter: there was positive disorder. On the marble floor there were fragments of shattered china and glass and powdery heaps of ash. One of the chairs was lying on its side. I had a look at some of the ash; amid its powder were some blackened flakes of canvas: ancient canvas with still-distinguishable blobs of color. I couldn’t of course recognize the style of the painter, but I thought I could that of the destroyer.

  By now I had one hell of a premonition. There was a thumping inside my rib cage as if something was trying to get out.

  I went behind the sofa and there he was.

  He was lying belly down on the floor. I was standing at his head, which was twisted away from me. I was glad of that. His arms were tied behind his back, thus pulling his shoulders straighter than they ever had been in life. The simplified rigidity of his figure, in a dark suit, made it a kind of stark fact, in sharp-cut contrast with the rococo extravagances of the rest of the room—like a black X inked on a color photo. There was something else that made this dark shape that much simpler and starker and I didn’t immediately realize what it was: then I realized, his hands had no fingers.

  And then I realized too what the stickiness was that I felt my shoes slipping in. It spread out from these mutilated stumps in glistening tentacles. A rococo touch, just a little less obvious than elsewhere in the room.

  “Jesus,” I said—and it was more of a prayer than an imprecation. My eyes roamed over the floor and located a little clump of objects that might at first glance have been taken for spilled cigarettes. I found my own fingers curling as if protectively inside the gloves. I stepped to the other side of the body, the side his head was twisted toward. His forehead was a bloody mess, but the face was Busetto’s. It had become too much of an object to talk of expression: all I can say is that his mouth and eyes were open and I found myself jerking back.

  I forced my mind to act rationally. From the fact the blood was still definitely sticky, though not flowing, he couldn’t have been dead for very long. The killers could even—and I suddenly looked round myself in alarm—they could even still be here.

  I quickly moved out of the room and glanced over the rest of the flat: kitchen, two bedrooms, and bathroom. All crazily cluttered, but without killers as far as I could see. A mere glance was enough to show me that Busetto lived alone—had lived alone: one of the bedrooms was clearly never used (like, I guessed, most of the furniture and ornaments in the place) and the kitchen table only had one chair drawn up to it—the only chair in the whole flat, in fact, that looked any good for sitting on.

  I went back to the sitting room and had another look at the disorder. Some of it could be explained by the idea of a struggle—the overturned chair, for example and perhaps some of the smashed glass. But the burned paintings suggested something else of course—and again I saw those obscene blank faces and the flickering of the cigarette-lighter flame. And those unflickering pale eyes. These people had wanted information from Busetto, and they had started trying to extract it by destroying his favorite objects. And then perhaps going on to his fingers. Unless the fingers had been a piece of bloody symbolism executed after death, as with the tongues.

  There was something throbbingly compulsive trying to attract my attention: I realized it was the crazy tom-tom of my heartbeats, getting louder and more urgent. I had to get out of this place. And then, when I was safely away, I could think of the best course to follow. Like whether to phone the police or not.

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  That was not my heart.

  “Polizia, aprite!”

  I glided out of the living room, with one last glance to check I hadn’t left anything, and ran on tiptoe to the kitchen, which had been the only room with no shutters on the window. I could hear a confused burble of voices outside the front door, and then heard the great crash of a body against the door. The whole flat shook.

  I opened the kitchen window and looked down. A canal. But a canal with a barge almost directly below me.

  Twenty feet below.

  I looked round the room, which vibrated with the shock of another great crash, then dashed into the first bedroom and pulled at the sheet.

  Crash!

  The sheet wouldn’t come: Busetto had obviously been one of those who like to feel really tucked in. Cursing, I freed it from under the mattress on my side and then ran round and pulled from the other side.

  Crash!

  The sheet came free and I went back into the kitchen rustling it into a bundle as I ran. I looked around the room, wondering what the strange babbling noise I could hear was, and then realizing it was myself, repeating in rapid succession three fervent obscenities. I firmly closed my mouth.

  Crash! And a nasty splintering noise too.

  I could see nothing better to tie the sheet to than the handle of the window itself, a brass knob. I took my gloves off and knotted one end of the sheet around the spindle of the knob, noticing how the knob rattled rather unpleasantly. But then so did everything else in the kitchen. I thrust the sheet out, and it dangled to within about ten feet of the boat. I tugged the sheet and the knob didn’t actually fly out, so I prepared myself for the descent. Then, on a last moment’s thought, I snatched up a meat cleaver from the sideboard, wrapped it in a tea towel, and dropped it into the boat. It didn’t smash straight through the bottom fortunately.

  I was on the windowsill when the front door gave way: another great crash followed by a confused clattering and a babble of victorious voices. This sudden irruption of voices almost sent me straight over the edge—of the sill and perhaps sanity too. I managed to get a grip on myself, and then on the sheet, and I launched myself out and started sliding down, hand over hand. It was unpleasantly greasy to the touch, and I wondered how often Busetto changed his bed linen. Had changed it.

  I was almost at the bottom when suddenly I was falling with the sheet coming after me: the knob or the knot had obviously given. I landed in the boat, which bucked wildly under the impact, and found myself staggering to one side, soaked in cold spray, and also fighting the sheet, which had wrapped itself around my head. I somehow managed to keep my balance, pulled the sheet off, and chucked it out of the boat; it could do with a wash after all. Then I grabbed the cleaver, freed it from the towel, and turned to the rope that tied the stern of the boat to a pole. I knew that there would be no time for fiddling with knots. It took me two sharp blows to free that end, and all the time I was listening to the open window above. The whole building in fact was buzzing with curious voices; fortunately no one as yet was looking out this way. All the same I pushed my scarf up to my nose, terrorist fashion. I ran unsteadily along the still-swaying boat to the pole at the prow. Three more blows and the barge was free.

  I snatched up an oar from the bottom of the boat. I wasn’t intending to row out into the lagoon or anything: not in a twenty-foot barge. I was making for an alleyway on the other side of the canal, and the oar was for pushing against the wall. I started by pushing with my hands, the oar tucked in my armpit, until the boat started moving sluggishly and still drunkenly out across the canal. Then, as the wall slipped out of reach, I used the oar. The boat was now drifting in a haphazard diagonal across the water.

  “Fermo o sparo!” Stop or I shoot. This came from the kitchen window. There was a carabiniere standing there raising his gun to his shoulder.

  I gave one more shove with the oar and then dropped it; I then ran along the wildly careering boat in a low crouching shuffle and leaped off the prow. As I leaped I heard the rattle of gunfire. I landed on the edge of the steps to the water and pitched forward out of sight. There was another burst of fire. Withou
t showing myself I shouted at the top of my voice, “Varemengo!”

  I didn’t do it for the mere hell of it. This was Venetian for “Get lost” or “Go to hell,” and I imagined that in the heat of the moment and at that distance nobody would notice an English accent in these four syllables.

  Then I picked myself up and started running down the alley, blessedly dark and narrow. I remembered being once told that the Venetians called the back streets le fodere—the coat linings—and I’d thought at the time what an inappropriately cozy-sounding name. It felt just right then. This coat lining came out into another alley at the end of which I could see the Fondamenta della Sensa. I slowed down to a brisk walking pace as I came out onto the fondamenta, where there were a few passersby. I took the first bridge over the canal and thus reached the Fondamenta della Misericordia. I was by no means so happy with the geography of this area of the city as I had been yesterday: these long fondamente left one very exposed. I could hear the siren of a police boat somewhere toward the Sacca della Misericordia, and the people along the fondamenta were all looking curiously in that direction. If the boat should come down this canal.…

  I tried to look curious rather than panic-stricken myself, making for the nearest bridge at the same time. I wanted more of those snuggly fodere. Before I reached the bridge I heard the boat enter the canal, and it came tearing down, gashing a frantic V of wash. I thought: if I go running over this bridge now, I only attract attention to myself. I forced myself to keep walking toward the boat. It had now slowed down to a more suitable speed, and the carabinieri were standing at the sides, with their machine guns cocked, staring at every person on the Fondamenta. Then, just before they reached me, they shouted to a bearded man on the point of entering an osteria: “Documenti!” He looked around and said in wild arm-throwing pantomime, for the benefit of friends inside the osteria I imagine, “Chi, mi?”

  I took advantage of the moment and went lightly, casually over the bridge. There was another shout of “Documenti!” which might have been for me, but I didn’t look. As soon as I was safely in the alley on the other side I started running again.

  * * *

  Four hours or so later I walked down toward Francesca’s shop. It was open. It had large windows, and my first impression was of looking into a greenhouse; big-leaved plants and creepers sprawled and snaked over most of the window space: then amid this vegetation I saw very stylized wooden statues, placed like fetishes in jungle clearings—fetishes of some tribe that worshiped anorexic hermaphrodites with a taste for brightly patterned dresses and shirts. There was nothing so vulgar as a price tag anywhere to be seen, and indeed nothing to indicate whether it was the plants, the statues, or the clothes that were on sale.

  I entered. “Spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was playing from hidden speakers and I half expected to see real birds flitting among the plants. It was warm enough for summer however. A girl dressed in improbably high heels and impossibly tight trousers gave me a big toothy smile from where she was hanging dresses on a rack. “Buongiorno.”

  “Buongiorno. Could I see Frances—er, la Signorina Sambon—S, that is.”

  Her smile switched off. “I don’t know if—”

  Francesca’s voice came from an inner room. “All right, Marina. I’m coming.”

  Marina returned to the rack of dresses with a slightly petulant swish of her behind. She bent to pick up a dress from a box and I watched with an interest that I have to confess was not purely technical to see whether her trousers would split.

  Francesca came through a bead curtain, and I swiveled before I could verify the point. She was wearing a dark blue skirt and a frilly blouse with a light blue cardigan; not the exotic colors of the clothes on the racks and on the tribal fetishes in the window, more those of the serious businesswoman. Indeed, even in the simple sentence she’d addressed to Marina I’d been able to identify the definite tones of the employer: nothing peremptory or authoritarian, just a certain cool assurance. Very different from the voice I’d heard on the boat last night. And now she came forward smiling that prosecco smile I remembered from our first meeting. “Ciao, how are you?” she said in English.

  “Fine thanks. And you?”

  “Well, better than yesterday night. Shall we go and have a coffee?”

  “That would be nice, but you’re sure I’m not interrupting anything?”

  “No, no.” She turned to Marina and said, “I’ll be back in ten minutes if anyone calls.” Marina gave a sniff or a hmmph or possibly even a snort of assent, and Francesca went back behind the bead curtain and came out again with her sheepskin coat. We stepped straight out into the cold air and I said, “A nice-looking shop.”

  “Thank you. I’m sorry if this morning Marina isn’t perhaps quite—quite so—” We started walking in the direction of the Fenice.

  “Well,” I said, “it’s probably difficult to keep smiling in those trousers. She did give me a nice smile when I came in.”

  “Oh, good. No, I am the one she’s annoyed with. Because of those trousers in fact. I had to speak to her about them. And the shoes.”

  “Oh.”

  She looked up at me with those serious dark eyes. “I know, it sounds silly and—and interfering. Well, yes, it would be if I was the manager of a grocer’s shop or a baker’s. But it’s one of those things I’ve always said, how can you expect that people buy your clothes—at least the kind we sell—if you yourself are dressed like a—like a—”

  I wondered whether to offer her the word she was looking for or whether she knew it but just didn’t want to say it. I said, “I get your point. Presumably Marina didn’t like this.”

  “Well, it’s difficult to criticize how someone dresses herself without offense. But it’s a question of professionalism. And no matter what else, a new business has to show itself professional. I made this clear to the girls when I employed them.”

  There was no doubting her professionalism; it came out in her tone of quiet but well-thought-out commitment. I knew I could never talk about my work in quite the same way.

  “She’ll get over it,” I said.

  “I hope so. She’s only on her trial period. But you didn’t come to talk about my shop.”

  “No, but I’m interested all the same.” I was in fact—and also I didn’t want to start straight in on the role of interrogator. I’d prefer her to start talking on her own account. It would make me look that much less of a bully—and would help me to avoid making slips like talking in the past tense about Busetto—or his fingers. I doubted that she had heard of the murder; even if she had seen or heard the lunchtime news, the chances were the facts hadn’t reached the studios yet. I went on in casual procrastination, “How’s it doing?”

  She put out her left hand, palm downward, and rocked it from side to side, as to say “so-so.” “Of course it’s early yet to say. We are only open since a few months. But I think the voice—the news is spreading.”

  “And what do your parents think?” I asked. “Are they proud?”

  She almost winced. “Well, they—they are not so against it now. They didn’t like the idea at first.”

  “Why not?”

  “You may have seen that my mother is—is a rather old-fashioned lady. She didn’t like the idea of me as a shopkeeper. Why don’t you study? Do economia e commercio at Ca’ Foscari, get a degree and a good job—but now they see I’m doing what I want to do, and what I’m good at. And”—she smiled—“I think they see it’s not so very socially degrading. They just thought of it as serving in a shop, but I’m really a dress designer, a fashion designer. In fact sooner or later I hope to be able to put on a sfilata—a fashion parade somewhere.”

  “In Palazzo Sambon?”

  She whistled, a rather surprising masculine whistle. “Ooh, that would be really—well, who knows? My mother might even like the idea after all.”

  I thought this quite possible. Fashion designers are definitely part of the new aristocracy in Italy.

 
; She went on: “As I say, they’re not against the shop now, and they’re even going to help me financially, which is a great relief.” She smiled as she said this. “So, who knows, le sfilate di Palazzo Sambon might not be such a ridiculous idea.”

  I said, “Well, I wouldn’t do swimsuits in that big hall, not for a few months anyway.”

  “No.” She gave a mock shiver. “Shall we have a coffee here?” We were at the Bar al Teatro, next to the Fenice.

  “Yes, of course.”

  I ordered a coffee and she a cappuccino; I thought of saying that I’d never before seen an Italian take one after midday, but then decided it would be silly to prolong the small talk. I went to the cash desk and paid—it was my turn. We were both silent for a moment. Then she said, “Sorry about last night.”

  “I’m sorry I intruded.”

  “No, no. It was natural you should ask. I—I was not myself.” She sipped her cappuccino, and put it down, a little line of froth clinging to her upper lip. “But how were you there?”

  “I was following Osgood. I wanted to see who he might meet.”

  “I see. And you didn’t expect me.”

  “No. I didn’t even know you knew him.”

  “I didn’t. It was another man I—”

  “Busetto.”

  “That’s right.” She looked up at me with definite curiosity in her eyes. She hadn’t heard of the murder, it was clear. Nor, it struck me only then, had she read the previous day’s Gazzettino. She went on: “I had heard of this man Busetto through my bro—through Toni. I have even met him, I think, at some dinner or something. But only once. And yesterday afternoon he phoned to our house and asked to speak to me. He said he had some news about Toni, but I must not tell anyone in the family. He would give me the news at Harry’s Bar.” She paused, and then said, “You know, it’s strange, I had never been there before.”