Brotherhood of the Tomb

by Daniel Easterman

  There was, however, a third possibility: that Migliau’s disappearance was in some way connected with Passover. If that was true, it could mean that fear of exposure had panicked the Brotherhood into bringing the date forward. For all Patrick knew, Passover could be starting at this very moment.

  He walked on, wetting his feet from time to time in unseen puddles. People were at home, watching television, eating. He felt hungry, but he wanted to get this over before it grew much later. The calle through which he was walking seemed familiar. The house was not far now. But the closer he got, the slower his steps became. He looked round nervously, as though expecting to see Francesca tailing him. These were her streets. If her ghost walked anywhere, it walked here.

  The house faced onto the Rio delle Meneghette, but the land entrance was at the end of the Calle Molin. The Contarinis had bought the palazzo in 1740, when the last of the Grimani-Calerghis died without issue. It was by no means the largest or the finest of the many palazzi in which different branches of the Contarinis had lived over the centuries. But it was the last of them and, in some ways, the closest to the family’s heart - the closest, even, to the secret they had kept alive for generation after generation.

  Seen from the back or the side, like all Venetian mansions, it was unprepossessing. An old street lamp cast a baleful glow over a low wall from which the plaster had fallen away. Behind the wall, Patrick knew, there lay a courtyard, and beyond that the rear of the palazzo itself lay draped in a cloak of shadows. Here, leading onto the street, was a rickety door from which the paint had peeled, exposing the wood beneath. A corroded knocker shaped like a Moor’s head hung crookedly in its centre.

  Patrick grasped the knocker tightly and banged several times. Hollow echoes rang along the calle. Footsteps sounded further back, then a door closed with a loud crash. But in the Palazzo Contarini, all was silent and dark. He raised the knocker and banged again, three times. A church bell rang in the distance, as though in mockery.

  All at once he heard the sound of bolts being drawn deep within, and a door opening, and slow feet limping across the flagged courtyard. He pictured it, its blue and black and yellow tiles worn down with age, the ancient well-head carved with lions and a leaping unicorn. The footsteps reached the outer door and stopped.

  ‘Chi e? Che diavolo volete a quest’ ora?!’ The voice was that of an old woman, thin and petulant, speaking in the lugubrious accent of the Veneto.

  ‘My name is Canavan. I want to see Alessandro Contarini. I want to speak with him.’

  ‘Allessandro Contarini e morto. Dead! Please go away!’

  ‘Tell him I have to speak with him. He will remember my name. Canavan. Tell him my name is Patrick Canavan. He knows who I am. He will know what I have come to speak about.’

  ‘I tell you the Count is dead! There’s no one here. No one at all. Go away.’

  Suddenly, a light went on in an upper window. He saw a shadowed face against the glass, then a hand throwing the window open.

  ‘Chi e, Maria? Che cosa vogliono? What do they want?’ A man’s voice this time, old and tired, but aristocratic.

  ‘He says his name is Canavan. He is asking for the Count.’

  There was a long pause. Then the man at the window called again.

  ‘Tell him the Count is dead. There is nothing for him here.’

  Patrick cupped his hands round his mouth. ‘I’ve come to talk about Francesca! You owe me this. Your family owe me an answer!’

  There was a longer pause. In the alleyway, a crippled dog went past, dragging its hind legs. Patrick felt the rotting and the paralysis all about him, pervading the city. Death and decay, and a terrible stillness of the will that had lapsed into inertia.

  ‘Let him come up,’ the man replied at last. ‘I’ll speak with him.’

  The window closed heavily. Patrick waited by the door. The dog had dragged itself into a space between two houses and lay down whimpering. Was it in pain? Patrick had no strength for compassion; there were no empty spaces left inside him. He heard a key turning in a heavy lock.

  The old woman swung the door open, stepping aside to let Patrick through. She carried a hurricane lamp in one hand, but her face was turned away, shrouded in a raddled weave of shadows. She held back until he had passed, then closed and locked the door.

  A shaft of yellow light fell across the courtyard from the window on the second floor. Patrick’s eye followed it up to the window itself. He could just make out the indistinct shape of someone standing near the glass, peering down into the courtyard.

  The old woman slipped the key into her pocket and stepped in front of Patrick. As she did so, light from the lamp slanted across her face, revealing a little of her features to him. A sliver of memory scraped his flesh.

  ‘Maria? Is that you, Maria? It’s me, Patrick Canavan. Didn’t you know my name? I used to come here with Francesca. All those years ago - do you remember?’

  ‘Non mi ricordo di lei. I don’t remember you. No one came here with the Lady Francesca. The Lady Francesca is dead.’

  But she did remember: he could hear it in her voice, sense it in the way she held back from him, as though afraid. What was she frightened of? The past?

  They entered the palazzo through a low doorway on the ground floor. Generations ago, this had been where the family stored merchandise and laid their gondolas to rest through the long winter months. Not many years ago, when Patrick had last been here, there had still been boats and oars and curiosities from the Contarini past: the marble heads of Doges, three plaster angels, cracked and wound with string, great seals of state bearing the motto Pax Tibi Marce, several candelabra, each filled with a thousand candles of yellow wax, the remains of a fifteenth-century altarpiece, glittering with gold and lapis lazuli, a gaming table from the Ridotto casino, puppets dressed in faded Commedia dell’ Arte costumes, and a miniature theatre in which they could perform. He had gone there several times with

  Francesca, to make the puppets dance and sing, to sit in a chair in which the last Doge of Venice had sat, and to make love silently, away from the sharp eyes of her ever-watchful family.

  Now the long rooms stood cold and empty. As Patrick followed Maria to the staircase, something small and grey scurried past, fleeing the light. There was a noise of scampering, then silence again.

  The stairs led to the mezzanino, once the floor on which the Contarinis, like all rich merchants of the Serenissima, had conducted their business. Even in Francesca’s day, there had been busy offices here. But now, like the floor beneath, it was hollow and echoing, and smelled terribly of neglect. Patrick thought of the weed-choked mausoleum on San Michele. He could not understand what was going on. What had happened to the Contarinis in such a short space of time? Had they suddenly lost their wealth? Or had some other, less material calamity overtaken them?

  Finally, they arrived at the piano nobile, formerly the heart of the house, where the family had slept and eaten and entertained their many guests. Maria opened wide the curiously carved door that led into the great central room, stretching the length of the floor and fronting the canal outside.

  The room was lit by three weak electric bulbs suspended from a cobwebbed ceiling. In the centre, the old electric chandelier hung dull and unlit, festooned with long strands of web and choked with dust. On every side, the ravages of long neglect were apparent: chairs and sofas, ottomans and tabourets, their fabric damp and rotting; unpolished tables and sideboards on which the bodies of dead cockroaches lay in shiny carapaces; broken ornaments heaped together on an uncarpeted floor.

  But something else caught Patrick’s eye. When he had last been here, the rear wall had been hung with a great Gobelins tapestry sequence, almost as long as the room itself. The tapestry was no longer there, but in its place a mural had been revealed. Patrick could make out few details, but the general theme was clear. The mural was divided into panels, each depicting a scene from the life and ministry of Jesus. Something in the style reminded him of the work of T
iepolo; certainly, the fresco dated from the eighteenth century, no earlier. The figures were lightly drawn, turning pigment to light and story to form with great skill.

  Clad in the damask robes and jewelled turbans of Ottoman Turks, the Wise Men laid tribute at the feet of the Infant Jesus. In the next panel, Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt while, in the background, Herod’s soldiers smashed the skulls of the newly born against marble pavements and pillars of brass.

  Towards the centre of the mural, the artist had woven the Stations of the Cross into a continuous narrative sequence: the flagellation, the first faltering steps on the Via Dolorosa, the first fall, the nailing to the cross, the deposition. And finally, the scene at the Tomb, as the disciples bring Christ’s mutilated body to be buried.

  Patrick faltered, recognizing in this last scene the original for the representation on the door of the Contarini mausoleum. And at last he saw what he had missed on San Michele. It was obvious and simple, and it took his breath away. In most versions of the Entombment, there are four besides the crucified Christ: Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the two Marys. Here, there are ten disciples and no women. But it is the figure of Christ that fills Patrick with horror. For in this painting, Jesus is alive and bound and struggling as they carry him to his grave.

  THIRTY

  ‘The artist was Tiepolo. Not Giambattista, but his older son Domenico. The style’s a little lighter, less allegorical. He painted it in 1758, just after he finished work on the Villa Valmarana. That was a few years after his father came back from Germany, of course: my grandfather used to say Giambattista helped him with some of the larger figures.’

  The voice was that of the man who had called to Patrick from the window. He was seated at the far end of the room on a high-backed chair. The electric light made him look drained. He seemed smaller than Patrick remembered. His hands were white against the arms of the chair.

  ‘What happened to the tapestries?’ Patrick asked.

  Alessandro Contarini smiled.

  ‘They were sold. I believe they fetched a lot of money. More than you can imagine. Much more than even I could afford. I think you will find them gracing the walls of a bank somewhere in Texas. Or is it California?’ He smiled again and looked directly at Patrick, as though the location of the tapestries were a confidence between friends.

  ‘Tell me,’ he went on, ‘do you think that is possible? Will the walls of a bank in Texas become more graceful simply because they have been covered by antique tapestries?’ He paused, folding his hands sweetly on his lap, like a well-behaved child. ‘Perhaps not. Perhaps not.’

  He lifted one hand as though to admonish the thought of grace in such an alien and uncultured place, then beckoned, a nervous gesture, more Asiatic than Italian. So soft and so deliberate.

  ‘Please, Signor Canavan, come closer, let me see you better.’ He made a faint, dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘Leave us, Maria. We wish to be alone.’

  Patrick heard the door close behind him with a muted click. He took several steps towards the count, approaching within a few feet of him.

  ‘Basta! That’s far enough, Signor Canavan. I can see you well from there. You’ll find a chair near you - please sit down.’

  The chair was grimy but fairly dry. Patrick brushed it gingerly before seating himself on the edge.

  Alessandro Contarini had aged dramatically in the past twenty-one years. Patrick remembered him as a handsome man in his late fifties, with smooth grey hair brushed back from his forehead, exquisite clothes, and skin that was still almost without wrinkles. Now he looked like a desiccated replica of his old self: his skin was grey and mottled, his cheeks hollow, his eyes sunken and haunted. Thin white hair straggled untidily down to his neck. The exquisite clothes were stained and torn, the polished white teeth that had once smiled so patronizingly had turned yellow or disintegrated to blackened stumps.

  ‘I’m sorry you do not find the palazzo as you last saw it,’ he said. His voice was strained and hesitant, with a tight, wheezing note; yet beneath the surface, Patrick could detect something of the old hauteur.

  Patrick said nothing. The image from the fresco had embedded itself in his mind: a group of hooded figures circling about their helpless victim, dragging him towards a stone sarcophagus in a dark tomb set about with vines.

  ‘It was something of a shock to see you standing there tonight,’ the old man went on. ‘Did you know that someone was here this morning asking about you? No, I can see from your face that you know nothing about it. That is very curious, is it not? How long is it now? Twenty years?’

  Who came here?’ Patrick asked. ‘What did they want to know?’ He was frightened. Who the hell could have known so quickly that he was in Venice?

  The count ignored his questions. ‘It must be more than twenty,’ he said. ‘And now you come to my attention twice in one day. You aren’t famous, are you, Signor Canavan? You haven’t won a lottery or killed a president? No? And yet important people come here asking questions. They wanted to know about the past, about your friendship with my daughter. And now the past turns up on my doorstep howling demands into the night, “You owe me an answer!”’

  The old man paused.

  ‘Is that all you think I owe you? I seem to remember that, when we last met, I offered you money. That was immodest of me -I apologize. Perhaps we understand one another better now. You were a child then, little older than my son, Guido. And yet your grief was real, not a child’s grief at all. I am sorry you were hurt, sorry you were made to suffer. Please forgive me.’ He sighed, passing a long white hand over his cheeks.

  ‘At my age, nothing is left but forgiveness. So many things left unsaid, undone. And so much said and done that I regret. It will come to you in time, Patrick Canavan.’

  ‘Where is Francesca?’ Patrick asked softly.

  ‘Francesca is sleeping. Francesca is dead.’

  Patrick shook his head.

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ he said. He wondered why he was so calm, why his voice had fallen to little more than a whisper. ‘There’s no need to lie any longer. Just tell me where she is, that’s all I want to know.’

  ‘You speak as though she were alive.’

  ‘I’ve been to the tomb on San Michele. There’s nothing there. And I have a photograph.’

  He took the crumpled picture from his pocket and passed it to the count. Contarini looked at it for a long time.

  ‘Where did you find this?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  The old man shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps not. Well - what is it you want?’

  ‘An explanation.’

  ‘There are no explanations that would make sense to you.’

  ‘Suppose you let me be the judge of that.’ Patrick hesitated. He leaned forward, softening his voice. ‘Signor Contarini, I don’t think you understand. I loved your daughter once. I believe she loved me. Twenty-one years ago, she was taken from me. Someone, for reasons I cannot even guess at, pretended she was dead. I was summoned here by you and made to go through a mock funeral. I saw no reason to ask questions then. I left when you asked me to leave. But I will not leave tonight without answers.’

  Contarini handed the photograph back to Patrick. His hand was shaking, and Patrick noticed tears at the corners of his eyes.

  ‘Signor Canavan, please believe me: Francesca loved you as much as you thought, and maybe more.’ He looked up. His face bore a look of infinite, irredeemable sadness. ‘I think...’ He faltered. ‘I think she still loves you. Or at least your memory.’

  The count straightened and looked directly at Patrick.

  ‘Do not try to find her, Signor Canavan. She can never come back to you, never return to the world you inhabit. For you and your world, it is as though she had died. Don’t try to change it. Leave things as they are.’

  Patrick took a deep breath. Contarini’s words were like a finger tearing back a scab, exposing an ancient wound. He had thought the pain of Francesca’s
loss something wasted and bereft of strength, but in a moment it had returned with renewed vigour, like a blunt knife suddenly sharpened, cutting his flesh.

  ‘Why?’ he whispered. ‘Why?’

  The count did not reply at once. He sat in his high-backed chair like a faded Renaissance prince whose court has deserted him.

  ‘Signor Canavan,’ he began, ‘there have been Contarinis almost as long as there has been a city called Venice. Eight Doges of the Republic bore our name. We owned palaces and ships, warehouses and trading houses here and throughout the Mediterranean. From the beginning we sat on the Great Council and the Senate and the Council of Ten. Now there is only myself, an old man waiting to die in a house that is already a ruin. Nothing you can do or say now can hurt me or help me.

  ‘But you want the truth, and the truth is precisely what I cannot give you. It is, I suppose, too shocking. Not for me, perhaps; but others would find it so. And in their rage, they would do what the many-headed crowd has always done: destroy what they do not understand.’

  The old man paused again. His pale eyes scanned the dimly-lit room as though seeing it for the first time.

  ‘There are ghosts here,’ he said. ‘This room is full of them. Some of them I can see, others only hear. Perhaps they are not literal ghosts: I do not think they could harm us, at least not in any physical sense. But they are real all the same. Listen, Signor Canavan, let me tell you about them.

  ‘Centuries ago, when Venice was still a vassal of Byzantium, a group of merchants defied the Emperor’s ban on trade with Egypt and sailed to Alexandria. They filled ten ships with spices, silks, and carpets and came home rich men. One of them was my ancestor, Pietro Contarini. Two years later, he and another man returned to Alexandria; but this time they had not come for spices or cloth. They stole the mummified remains of Saint Mark and smuggled them back to Venice. The mummy was laid to rest beneath the High Altar in the Basilica - and Venice became a great pilgrimage centre.’