I went into the kitchen and switched on my Nespresso coffee machine. While it was spitting and gurgling, I weighed up the two brass door keys in the palm of my hand. I couldn’t believe how much of a rush I felt. I had always wanted to visit Venice, and now I was not only going to visit Venice, but get back with Kate again, too.
I sat down at my keyboard and played The One-Handed Clock, deliberately out of key. Whatever happened in Venice, I had no illusions that it was going to be easy; and there was every possibility that whoever the Cesarettis were, I was going to experience some very disturbing visions of them. But up until now, none of my visions had done me any physical harm, had they, no matter how terrifying they might have been? And maybe I would finally find out what had happened to all of Kate’s friends, and where Victor and Kate’s lost baby fit into the picture.
I called Margot. There was a whole lot of clanking and banging going on in the background. “Brad’s here and I’m making pancakes,” she said. “You can come on over and help us to eat them if you like. There’s far too many for two.”
“Hey, I don’t want to be the ghost at the breakfast. Besides, I have to pack. Believe it or not, Kate’s been back in touch. I haven’t spoken to her yet, but she’s invited me to Venice.”
“So you two are back together again? That’s good news, I hope. I just hope this trip doesn’t turn out as Scooby-Doo as the last one.”
“I don’t know. I think it might. But she needs me, Margot, and she’s made it pretty clear that I’m the only person who can help her.”
“If she needs you, she has a funny way of showing it, walking out on you like that.”
“She was worried that she was expecting too much of me, that’s all. This has something to do with the baby she lost, although I don’t exactly know what.”
“Really? What does she want you to do—father another one?”
“Hey, come on, Margot. I don’t think it’s anything like that. Whatever it is, though, I’m not going to push her into telling me, not until she’s ready. She needs my help, and my support, and I love her, and that’s why she’s going to get them.”
“Well, it’s all très bizarre, if you ask me. But if you love her, and she loves you, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
“Thanks, Margot.”
“What are you thanking me for?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think of anybody else who would have put up with all of my moping and all of my miserable music, the way that you did.”
“That’s what friends are for, Lalo. Brad—stop stuffing so much into your mouth at once, will you? You look like a goddamned chipmunk.”
* * *
I was on my way out of the house to do some shopping at Sushila’s when a taxi stopped at the curb, and Victor and the red-haired woman climbed out. The red-haired woman was laughing loudly, and Victor had a self-satisfied grin on his face.
“God, you’re such a scream!” said the red-haired woman. “‘Which part did you get?’ I’m telling you!”
“Hey, Gideon,” said Victor. “How’s our in-house musical genius?”
“Good, thanks.”
“Me and Monica, we haven’t been disturbing you, have we? I haven’t formally introduced you to Monica yet, have I? Monica—Gideon—Gideon—Monica.”
“So nice to meet you, Gideon,” said Monica, holding out her hand as if she expected me to kiss it. She had false chisel-shaped nails, painted dark crimson. “I’ve heard you playing a few times, late at night. You play so romantic.”
“I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”
“There’s worse ways of being disturbed, believe you me.” With that, she gave Victor a dig in the ribs with her elbow, and laughed out loud. “Just kidding, lover.”
I was thinking of asking Victor where Kate was, just to see what his reaction would be. I would have liked to talk to her about this Venice trip before I actually flew there. I would also have liked to talk to her about her lost baby. But I wasn’t at all sure that it was a good idea for me to show any interest in Kate. Victor might already be suspicious that she was seeing another man, and I didn’t want to confirm his suspicions—especially since I had been warned how bad-tempered he could be. I was also beginning to think that if the baby was somehow involved in what had happened to the Westerlunds and the Philipses, then maybe Victor was, too.
“You take care, Gideon,” said Victor, squeezing my arm. “We’re having a party next weekend, and you’re invited. Bring a friend, why don’t you? Maybe you can tinkle out some tunes for us.”
“Sure. There’s nothing I like better than tinkling out tunes.”
They went into their apartment and closed the door. I heard Monica screaming with laughter, and I couldn’t help wondering whether she was laughing at me.
* * *
It was sunny when I walked out of Marco Polo airport, but the temperature wasn’t much higher than fifty degrees, and there was a fresh, chilly wind blowing from the Alps.
I could have reached the city by bus, but Hazel McCall, my agent, had urged me to take the water taxi, even though it was expensive. She was right. I sat in the back of the little motor launch as it made its way southwestward across the lagoon, and gradually the spires and domes of Venice rose from the horizon, like a drowned city in a fairy tale.
We puttered slowly along the Grand Canal. I felt like I was traveling through some medieval painting, with balconied palaces and colorful houses on either side, reds and yellows and greens. The waterway was teeming with gondolas and vaporetti crowded with tourists. We passed under the Rialto bridge, and after a few minutes we turned into a narrow canal between tall, russet-painted buildings.
We moored up against a sheer green-stained wall. The water taxi was dipping up and down, and I almost stumbled, but the driver held my elbow and helped me to balance my way onto a steep stone staircase.
“Grazie, signore,” he said, grinning at me with tobacco-stained teeth, and I realized that a twenty-euro tip was probably far too much. “Faccia attenzione. A Venezia potete non fidarsi mai di qualcuno.”
“Sure, you too,” I told him. I climbed up to the top of the steps and found myself in a small paved garden, with a dried-up marble fountain and decorative urns that must have been filled with geraniums during the summer, but contained nothing now but trailing brown weeds.
I looked up. The palazzetto was four stories high, painted a pale tangerine, with elegantly pillared windows, although all the windows facing the canal had their shutters closed. I crossed the garden to an arched doorway, with a black-painted door. There were four bell pushes, but none of them had name cards next to them, only Roman numerals, I, II, III and IV.
The water taxi driver was still turning his launch around, and for a moment I was tempted to call out to him, and ask him to take me back to the airport. There was something I seriously didn’t like about the Palazzetto Di Nerezza, something secretive and very forbidding. But I hesitated too long, and the water taxi burbled back toward the Grand Canal, and I was left with the black-painted door and the key to open it.
The levers in the lock opened with a series of arthritic clicks, and when I pushed open the door itself, it let out a great shuddering groan.
I stepped into a grand hallway with a marble floor, a chandelier and an elaborate gilded mirror with candle holders on either side of it. On the right, there was a curving staircase with stone banisters and a polished marble handrail.
On my left stood a life-size marble statue of a nude woman, holding up a headless dove. The poor bird had probably had its head knocked off centuries ago. Beyond her, there was another wide door, in natural oak. I guessed this was the Cesaretti apartment.
I knocked and waited and knocked again, but there was no reply. Somewhere upstairs I could faintly hear a television, with what sounded like football scores. “Genoa, tre . . . Udinese Calcio, zero . . .”
I took out the second key and unlocked the door. Inside, I found myself in a long gallery, with a dark paneled ceiling,
and a row of windows with pale yellow glass in them. There were paintings hanging all the way along it, most of them landscapes, with somber skies and shadowy forests.
On either side stood six or seven armchairs, each of them heaped with cushions in red and green tapestry, and the floor was covered in assorted Venetian rugs.
I closed the door and walked along the gallery. Through the yellow glass windows I could dimly make out a very large square, which must have been the Campo San Polo. It was crowded with hundreds of shadowy figures, as if an army of ghosts had recently arrived.
I thought that I could hear somebody walking very close behind me, but when I turned around, I saw that there was nobody there, and that it must have been an echo.
At the end of the gallery I reached an enormous drawing room, with a high decorated ceiling and a pale woodblock floor. It was lavishly furnished with rococo chairs and sofas, and the drapes were patterned with flowers and leaves and songbirds. In the far corner stood a fine antique piano, with a bust of Verdi on top of it.
I looked up. Suspended high above me, from the vaulted ceiling, hung a huge multibranched chandelier, carved and gilded, more like a giant golden spider than a light fitting.
I put down my bag. The apartment was utterly silent. It smelled of old wood and potpourri and faintly of cigarettes, and there was another smell, too, of damp plaster.
I was still standing there, wondering what I should do next, when I heard a sharp snoring sound, and I almost yelped out loud. I walked cautiously across the room, and found a man sleeping in one of the high-backed armchairs. He was almost completely bald, but he was only about forty-five years old, with a round face and a pointed nose and a sallow suntan. He was wearing an expensive light gray suit, and dark blue velvet slippers. In his right hand he was holding a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles.
I coughed, and he flinched, but he didn’t wake up, so I coughed again, much louder this time.
He stirred, and opened his eyes, and stared at me, unfocused.
“Chi sono voi?” he snapped. “Che cose state facendo qui?”
“Hey—I’m sorry if I woke you. My name’s Gideon Lake. Kate Solway invited me here.”
The man put on his spectacles and peered at me more closely. “Ah yes, Gideon Lake. We have been expecting you. I apologize if I was sleeping. I had a very long night at the hospital.”
He stood up and held out his hand. He was very precise in his gestures, very neat. “Enrico Cesaretti. Welcome to Venice. Is this your first time?”
“It is, yes. I always wanted to come here but I never quite managed to make it before now. It’s a pretty amazing place, isn’t it?”
“Well, I would prefer it without so many tourists, but I suppose we Venetians have to make a crust of bread somehow.”
“Do you know when Kate’s going to get here?” I asked him.
“Oh, she is here already. She has gone out shopping with my wife.”
“Have you known Kate long?”
Enrico pointed to my bag. “You must be tired. I can show you to your room, then perhaps you would care for a cup of coffee?”
“Oh—great, thanks.”
He led me through a door at the far end of the drawing room and along a corridor. This side of the apartment was much less formal, with fitted carpets and framed prints on the walls.
“Here—this is the bathroom if you need it—and this is the room you will share with Kate.”
He opened up the door for me, and ushered me into a huge bedroom with an emperor-size bed and a carved pine wardrobe that a family of five could have lived in. Outside the windows, through the fine net curtains, I could see a narrow balcony that overlooked the canal, with two cast-iron chairs on it, and a cast-iron table.
“It’s real generous of you to have me here, Enrico. You don’t mind if I call you Enrico?”
“Of course.” he smiled. “I expect only my staff and my patients to call me ‘professore.’ And the generosity is yours. These days, not so many people are prepared to give up their time so unselfishly.”
I didn’t really know what he meant, but I shrugged and smiled as if I did.
“Come,” he said. “Please refresh yourself and we can have some coffee and you must tell me all about your music.”
“Oh . . . Kate’s told you already.”
“Of course. She considers you to be molto speciale. Very special.”
“Well, I think she is, too.”
“Yes,” he said. He took off his spectacles, and nodded. “To try so hard to make amends for the unforgivable sins of others, that is almost holy.”
“I’m not too sure that I follow you.”
“Please—if there is anything you need. Anything at all, just ask.”
He left me to unpack. Quite suddenly, I felt exhausted, and I would happily have climbed into that enormous bed, pulled the quilt up over my head, and gone to sleep for the rest of the day.
After I had stowed away my sweaters and my jeans in that cavernous wardrobe, I took my toiletries bag and went into the bathroom. It was tiled from floor to ceiling in gleaming white, and fitted with a monstrous washbasin with old-fashioned faucets, an antiquated shower stall and a massive bathtub on lion’s-claw feet, surrounded by a white plastic curtain.
I splashed my face with cold water and reached for a hand towel. As I dried myself, I looked in the mirror. What the hell are you doing here, dude? Pursuing some hopeless fantasy that you and Kate will ever get together as a real couple? Looking for an answer when you don’t even know what the question is? Are you some kind of masochist, or just a fool?
In my bones, though, I knew I was here for a reason, even if I didn’t understand what it was. This was no time for giving up. Kate had almost given up, back in New York, but she had clearly changed her mind. Otherwise she wouldn’t have given me the keys to the Cesarettis’ apartment, and shelled out over seven thousand dollars for me to fly here.
As I stood there, I became conscious that the bathtub faucet was dripping. It made a flat plip, plip, plip as if the bath were full of water. I finished drying my face and then I went over and drew back the curtain. The tub was brimming, right up to the overflow.
But more than that, there was a distorted pink shape lying on the bottom. A naked woman, with her dark hair completely covering her face. I was so shocked that I yanked at the curtain, and pulled out some of the curtain rings.
I took hold of the chain and pulled out the bath plug. Then I plunged my hands into the water and tried to lift the woman out. The water was freezing and she was so slippery that I could hardly get a grip on her. I managed to lift her head above the surface, and pull some of her hair away from her face.
She was a young woman. Her lips were blue and she wasn’t breathing. Her brown eyes were wide-open and she was staring at me as if she were trying to convince me that any attempt to save her would be useless. I tried to heave her farther out of the tub but she was so heavy and floppy and the sides of the bath were so high that it was difficult for me to get any leverage.
“Enrico!” I shouted. “Enrico, help me! There’s a woman drowned in here!”
By now, with a lascivious gurgle, the last of the water was draining out of the bath. I managed to maneuver the woman so that she was lying on her side, and water poured out of her nose and mouth. But she still wasn’t breathing, and when I felt her neck, there was no sign of any pulse.
“Enrico! I need some help in here! Enrico!”
Still no response. The walls of the palazzetto were so thick that he probably hadn’t heard me, so I went out into the corridor and shouted out again.
“Enrico!”
Enrico appeared almost at once, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. “Gideon? Is something wrong?”
“There’s a woman in the bathtub . . . I think she’s dead.”
“What?”
He came hurrying along the corridor, and followed me into the bathroom.
“The curtain was drawn . . . I didn’t see her at first.”<
br />
I looked into the bath. It was empty. Not only was it empty, it was dry. Enrico frowned at me, and said, “Ciò è uno scherzo, si? This is a joke?”
I didn’t know what to say. I could only think: not again. Not more hallucinations, and people who aren’t really there.
“I was sure,” I told him. “I pulled back the curtain and there she was.”
Enrico looked down at the broken curtain rings with undisguised displeasure. “Pah,” he said.
“Look, I realize you don’t believe me, Enrico, but check my sleeves out. They’re soaking.”
He didn’t even bother to look. “I expect you are tired,” he said. “But you must understand that what you have said is in very poor taste.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was absolutely convinced that I saw what I saw. It wasn’t a joke, I promise you.”
“Very well,” he said. “Now, coffee is ready, if you are.”
Twenty-two
When I was seventeen, I told Heidi Becker’s mother that sauerkraut was the most vomitous vegetable on the planet, just before she served up a Reuben casserole (sauerkraut and corned beef, if you’ve never had the misfortune to eat one). But the discomfort I felt that day at Heidi Becker’s house was nothing compared with the following hour I spent with Enrico Cesaretti.
Enrico was courteous to a fault, and told me in great detail about the transplant surgery he performed at the Ospedale SS Giovanni-e-Paolo. But he didn’t leave me in any doubt at all that my “joke” in the bathroom had deeply upset him, and he asked me nothing about myself or my music or my relationship with Kate. He half smoked a cigarette, and crushed it out in his saucer.
A little after three o’clock, I was relieved to hear the front door opening, and Kate calling out, “Hello there! Anybody home?”
A soon as I heard her voice, I stood up and called out, “Kate? Kate—we’re in here!” I had never felt so excited in my life. But before I said anything else, I turned back to Enrico. “Listen, Enrico. What happened in the bathroom . . . I had absolutely no intention of giving you any grief.”
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