We were silent again and I could feel the big question “What next?” hanging over us both. Then, as we crossed the little square behind the Fenice, he said, “So the best of luck.”
“Ah, yes, thanks.”
“I might as well tell you I don’t want to get any more involved.”
“No, of course not.” In fact I felt a sudden crashing disappointment. The thought of having an ally had greatly cheered me. But I knew I had no right to expect anything else.
“You see,” he went on, “I’ve satisfied my curiosity and I’ve appeased my conscience about the need or not to go to the police. That is what counts. For the rest, well, I can only say that in all matters to do with politics I have a sort of Swiss attitude of noninvolvement. I am a complete menefreghista.” (This word can only be translated by something like “a couldn’t-care-less-person.”) “At least I have been since about 1978. It seemed to be the safest thing to do at the time. It was either that or end up hurting people. Or being hurt.”
“I see,” I said. Then I added, “Not a complete one, or you wouldn’t have bothered to come looking for me.”
“Well, you know, the temptation just to forget about your visit to the university was very strong, but then…” He gave one of his quick jerky shrugs. “Well, let’s just say I had good reasons for not giving into this temptation.”
“Oh,” I said, and waited for him to go on. But he didn’t. So I went on myself, “Well, as I say, thanks for your—your help and, er—sometime you’ll have to tell me all about Scottish literature…”
“Start by reading Waverley; that’s all about the dangers of getting mixed up in other people’s business. So—so good-bye.” We’d come out into Campo Santo Stefano and that was as far as I’d said I’d accompany him, so his obligation to go on talking to me ended there: this was what his attitude seemed to say.
I said, “Right, I take your point. ’Bye then.” I put my hand out and he shook it in his village-pump fashion, gave me a last quick smile, and scuttered off.
* * *
It was a little after nine when I reached Rio Marin, the canal on which my hotel stood. The two fondamente on each side of the canal were empty and the canal lay still, the bridges forming almost perfect unwavering circles with their reflections. Only my footsteps echoed clickingly castanetlike on the cold pavement. I was looking forward to being in bed, far from all terrorists (well, and all carabinieri too). I would curl up in luxurious snugness and enjoy the end of my Dick Francis novel, with its pleasantly distant dangers and thrills (the only horses in Venice, after all, were of bronze or marble) and its guaranteed happy ending.
I was about ten yards from the hotel’s front door when two men came out of a sottoportico directly in front of me. There was no mistaking their intentions, not even for a second: one blocked me from the front and the other slipped around behind me. Something hard was jabbed into my back. My mouth opened—probably to scream—but no sound came out. The one in front then stepped to my side, his left hand firmly gripping my arm. He was taller than me, in a dark coat; a black beard and glasses were about all I took in of his facial appearance. The other one serpented round to my side as well: the gun scraped around my middle but was not withdrawn.
“Keep walking,” the one on the right said in Italian, “and don’t say a word.”
I kept walking. I suppose all that anyone would think on seeing the three of us was that I was being helped home by solicitous friends after a merry evening. I glanced at the man on the other side; smaller, also bearded, and with long fair hair. The gun was rammed in harder and the blond man whispered, “Look straight ahead.”
“What do you want with me?” I managed to get out at last. I was trying to work out whether they were policemen or terrorists; I was afraid they were the latter.
They said nothing. After just ten paces down the fondamenta, the man on my right, the one without the gun, released my arm and dropped into a boat that was loosely moored to a pole. The gun was pushed with even greater force into my side, as if to brand me. The man in the boat flicked the rope free and started up the outboard motor. The boat was entirely empty, with just bare wet boards.
At this point we heard a tune being whistled farther down the fondamenta. We all turned but there was no one in sight. The two men looked at each other and the one in the boat said, “Okay, let’s move.” The man with the gun prodded me and said, “Jump.”
I suddenly realized I recognized the tune: it was Celeste Aïda. I looked down the fondamenta again and at that moment Lucy came into sight from an alley off to the right. She had her hands in her pockets and was walking in our direction. Her air was that of one taking a casual evening stroll and she didn’t seem to be looking at us. I had one moment of desperate confusion. Was she in with these men? Was it she who’d led them to my hotel? But the two terrorists were now paying her no more than wary attention, and I realized that that tune could be a message only to me.
I halted at the very edge of the fondamenta; the gun was still pushing me, and the man moved in closer to hide it. “Jump,” he hissed. (The word does have an s in Italian.) The man in the boat, however, made a pacifying gesture with his hand and said quietly, “Wait.” He didn’t want any signs of struggling in front of a witness. He fiddled with the rope so as to give some kind of explanation for our frozen tableau on the edge of the fondamenta.
Lucy was now just a few feet away and I saw she had a cigarette in her hand. She was holding it a couple of inches from her mouth. She said in Italian to the man who was gripping me, “Have you got a light?”
He turned for just one half second, the gun withdrawing from the crater it had delved into my innards. I acted instantly, jerking away and jabbing my left elbow back hard. At almost the same moment Lucy must have struck him: I didn’t actually see this, but suddenly he was falling into the boat. I saw his colleague rearing back, his hand halfway inside his coat reaching for a gun. Then he was knocked overboard.
Even before the splash Lucy and I had started running. A couple of seconds later I heard the boat roar into life behind us, which presumably meant that the man who’d fallen into the boat was not bothering to rescue the man he’d knocked out of it. Well, if that was the way he treated his friend, getting caught by him seemed like a very bad idea. The engine noise grew louder, and the canal water swished and swirled against the banks and the moored vessels all creaked against their poles. Just as the boat came level with us we reached an alley off to the left and we turned into it, our shoes skidding and our hands grabbing at the stone angle to steady ourselves. Lucy was just two few paces ahead of me, and my hand momentarily touched hers on the wall. I glanced around and saw the man in the boat looking back down the canal to his friend. He put the boat in reverse, obviously deciding the chase wasn’t worth the while. I kept running, however.
“Let’s cross the canal,” Lucy gasped. She presumably meant crossing the Grand Canal by the bridge near the station.
“Why?” I said. Now we were slowing down to a side-clutching stagger—at least I was clutching and staggering; she was just slowing down.
“We can go to my hotel there.”
“And if they see us on the bridge?”
“They’ll be getting out of the area—won’t they?” The last two words were added with sudden doubt and a glance at me.
“All right, let’s hope so.”
We were both walking now. Ahead of us we could see the green dome of San Simeone Piccolo, the church that stands on the Grand Canal opposite the station. Neither of us spoke for a few seconds, we just panted. We thought of all the hundred things there were to say—and to ask.
Eventually I said, “I didn’t know you smoked.”
“You didn’t know I—” This slow sentence of disbelief turned into a sudden laugh. “Oh, Martin.”
I said, “Look, don’t think I’m not grateful—but as I expect you can imagine, I’m just a bit confused.”
“Nothing like as much as I am, I can assure you.”
“
But how did you come to be there?”
“And how did those two come to be there?” she came back.
“Oh, God, I can see we’ve got one hell of a question-and-answer session to come.”
“But you’re going to answer them, are you?” She was looking at me hard as she said this.
“Least I can do, I suppose.”
“Yes, I’d say it is.”
“Right.”
“Are you going to say anything else?” she said. She’d stopping walking and stood staring at me hard; her fists weren’t exactly set on her hips, but there was a general suggestion of the akimbo about her.
“Like what?”
“Like sorry.”
“Well, I don’t want to confuse a momentary feeling of gratitude with a feeling of repentance that’s not really there.”
Wham.
That was her open hand on my face. And it stung.
“Go on,” she said. “I’ve seen all the films. Now you smash me back.”
“Won’t be necessary,” I said, rubbing my cheek. My head was still reeling. “I probably deserved that. For phrasing things pompously, if nothing else.”
“Yes,” she said, “I won’t argue with that assessment of the state of affairs.”
I looked hard at her. “That, I imagine, is a parody.” There was even the hint of a smile, a rather twisted smile, at the corners of her mouth.
“You’ve got it.”
We started walking again. We came out on the Grand Canal. There were a few people around the brightly lit station and a vaporetto pulling away from the stop opposite us. But there was no sign of my would-be kidnappers’ boat. We walked briskly up and over the bridge, again not talking by unstated assent. When we were walking down the Lista di Spagna, we breathed more easily again and she said, “Right, you start, and first off I want a good reason why I shouldn’t—why we shouldn’t go to the police.”
There was going to be a touch of déjà entendu about this conversation, I felt—for me at any rate.
“Please,” I said, “just tell me how you came to be strolling along Rio Marin at this time of night.”
“Because I’m a bloody fool, I suppose. A bloody fool who believes in such things as—as old times’ sake.… No, this isn’t the right way to tell this story. Sorry, I’ll start again.”
“No hurry,” I said.
“All right. When I left that bar earlier, I was pretty annoyed. That’s putting things mildly. I was—I was—well, you can imagine, I suppose. That was the point, no doubt.”
She turned and stared hard at me. I gave a noncommittal shrug.
“But I was still worried,” she went on. “I’d seen that cut on your face and hand. I knew someone had come in to the school and attacked you—and I knew you were mixed up in something—something dangerous. All right, emotional logic told me I should just shrug my shoulders and say, well, if that’s his attitude let him get carved up, that’s his business.… But, well … I couldn’t convince myself that I cared that little.”
“Really,” I said.
“You’re a real swine,” she said at once.
“I just said really.”
“I know what you said. And I know what you meant. And—and.… Oh hell, I suppose you even have a point.”
I jerked around at this. She was staring straight ahead and refused to look at me.
She went on: “Let’s talk that through later. So when I left that bar I was furious, but scared for you, and I was really wondering whether I should be going to the police or something. I just couldn’t shake off the thought of how I’d feel if you got killed and I hadn’t lifted a finger. So I decided I’d go along to your hotel and at least see if you got safely back—and perhaps try and have another word—if—if it didn’t prove too demeaning for me. Luisa told me where you were staying. I went along. I wasn’t going to hang around in the streets all evening of course, but I felt I ought to make some kind of effort—maybe just for the sake of my conscience, I really don’t know. And then I discovered that there was a restaurant there which had a good view of the canal and fondamenta. So I ate there. I had nothing else to do.”
She took a breath here. We crossed the large square of San Geremia and a drunk hailed us from one corner. We ignored him and he shouted something about “foresti maledetti”—bloody foreigners—and went back to his bottle.
Lucy returned to her story as we crossed the high bridge over the Cannaregio Canal. “I had a table by the window. I’d been there about ten minutes when those two men came in and sat by the window too, and I noticed they were keeping an eye on the canal as well. So at this point I knew I just had to hang around. I thought of going to the police again, but then realized how stupid I could be made to look. I mean what could I say to them? So I played the part of a pretty gormless tourist and just ate and watched. I even got out my map of Venice to add to the effect. They left eventually, and I was pretty sure they hadn’t really noticed me. I saw them going to that boat and checking the rope or something, then they went into that alley by the hotel. Well, I had a look at my map, a real look this time, and I saw how I could go round to that alley by the back and so I did. I saw them there, just standing at the corner and watching, and obviously not wanting to be noticed. So I went to the other end of the fondamenta and waited in an alley there. About ten minutes later you came along.” She paused. “I was terrified.”
“I wasn’t too cool either,” I said.
She was obviously still thinking back. After a few seconds she said, “Since you’re interested, it wasn’t a cigarette, just a bit of paper wrapped round the top of a pen.”
“Well, that’s a relief. Lucy smoking, whatever next, I thought.”
“And you can say thank you again now,” she said.
“Thank you.” I’m not sure how I was intending it to sound. Polite but ungushing? Dry and ironic even? I was in fact generally confused about my own feelings, and this probably showed. She made no comment on my tone.
She had started walking down the side of the Cannaregio Canal. I was about to ask her where her hotel was when I heard a boat turn into the canal from the Grand Canal. I grabbed her hand and pulled her with me into a side alley. We stood there flat against the wall as the boat chugged on past. We saw it to be a taxi and our two breaths were let out in simultaneous explosion.
“Sorry about the panic,” I said.
“Quite understandable,” she said with a smile.
We both realized we were still holding hands. I made as if to withdraw mine, but she squeezed it hard and said, “You’re a stubborn bastard but—” and she moved around in front of me. I found my arms wrapping around her.
Some seconds later our mouths disengaged and she said, “This is very odd.”
“Yes,” I said.
“But nice.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I said again. “I suppose so.”
“Oh, Martin,” she said in her usual mock despair at my tone. Then she laughed. “This is definitely the last thing I thought the evening had in store for me.”
“Well, shared danger can have funny effects on one’s feelings.”
“You’re still trying to reason your way out of it, aren’t you?” Her lips closed in on mine again. My attempt to be cool and objective in my reaction lasted about a quarter of a second this time.
“Now,” she said about half a minute later, “go on, tell me what the psychological aberration behind that was.”
I gave as much of a shrug as our close-bound circumstances permitted. “I don’t know,” I said. “I need to think. Abstinence perhaps.”
“Well, you certainly don’t seem to have forgotten anything.”
“And the suggestion of the surroundings,” I said.
“Yes. It takes you back, doesn’t it? Kissing in side alleys, with one eye out for the other students or Derek Robin.”
“That’s the trouble with this city,” I said. “It just naturally soaks up memorie
s: you can’t do anything here without remembering other times, or other people doing it like Byron or Casanova or Fred Astaire.”
“Oh, Martin, don’t you go all gushy over Venice as well; is there any other city where people spend so much time talking rubbish about the place?”
“New York,” I said.
“Possibly,” she said. “But they’ve been talking rubbish about Venice for longer. So you’re going to say it was all because of the moonlight on the water and the gondolier singing in the distance, right?” She had stepped half a pace back and her hands were just loosely touching my sides now. Her eyes were still closely engaged, however.
“No,” I said. “Not entirely, but—well, Venice doesn’t inspire cool rationality, does she?”
“When people start calling Venice ‘she,’ I know all hope is lost. But look, don’t let’s get sidetracked, fun though it might be. You’ve got an explanation to give to me.”
“Let’s get moving,” I said. “I still feel a bit nervous out in the open.”
“Okay,” she said, “you can tell me the whole thing when we get to the hotel. I’ve got a bottle of wine we can open. And there’s a phone there if you decide to call the police.” She paused. “Or if I decide to.” She stepped out onto the fondamenta again and stretched her hand out to mine. I hung back for half a second, then took it. We walked in silence. There was no doubt that her hand in mine felt right—for the moment.
I hardly noticed where we were going—and then suddenly I realized we were in the square where the old Palazzo Sambon stood. I said, “Look, wait a moment.…”
“What?”
“Where are you taking me?”
“That’s the hotel,” she said, pointing to the building next to the palazzo.
“No,” I said, “no, I don’t—I don’t believe it.” I had dropped her hand. A hideous and quite illogical doubt had gripped me. “Why are you staying there?” I was looking around the square as I spoke. There was nobody in sight, not even a pigeon. The houses were all shuttered; even the hotel had no lights showing.
“Why shouldn’t I? What’s the matter with it?”
“It’s nothing, I just—I was just surprised.” Surprised and suspicious.
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