by user
After downing an espresso, he felt restless, not at all hungry for the lunch that everyone around him seemed to be hurrying toward. He called his office, to be told that Signore Padovani had called and left a name and address for him. No message, just the name: Clemenza Santina; and the address: Corte Mosca, Giudecca.
* * * *
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The island of the Giudecca was a part of Venice Brunetti seldom visited. Visible from Piazza San Marco, visible, in fact, from the entire back flank of the island, in places no more than a hundred meters away, it nevertheless lived in strange isolation from the rest of the city. The grisly stories that appeared in the paper with embarrassing frequency, of children being bitten by rats or people found dead of overdoses, always seemed to take place on the Giudecca. Even the presence of a dethroned monarch and a fading movie star of the fifties couldn’t redeem it in the popular consciousness as a sinister, backward place where nasty things happened.
Brunetti, along with a large part of the city, usually went there in July, during the Feast of the Redeemer, which celebrated the cessation of the plague of 1576. For two days, a pontoon bridge joined the Giudecca with the main island, allowing the faithful to walk across the water to the Church of the Redeemer, there to give thanks for yet another instance of the divine intervention that seemed so frequently to have saved or spared the city.
As the number 8 boat slapped its way across the choppy waters, he stood on the deck and looked off in the distance at the industrial inferno of Marghera, where smokestacks tossed up fluffy clouds of smoke that would gradually sneak across the laguna to dine on Venice’s white Istrian marble. He wondered what divine intercession could save the city from the oil slick, this modern plague that covered the waters of the laguna and had already destroyed millions of the crabs that had crawled through the nightmares of his childhood. What Redeemer could come and save the city from the pall of greenish smoke that was slowly turning marble to meringue? A man of limited faith, he could imagine no salvation, either divine or human.
He got off at the Zittele stop, turned to the left, and walked along the water, searching for the entrance to Corte Mosca. Back across the water lay the city, glittering in the weak winter sunlight. He passed the church, closed now for God’s afternoon siesta, and saw, just beyond it, the entrance to the courtyard. Narrow and low, the heavily shadowed passageway stank of cat.
At the end of the stone tunnel, he found himself at the edge of a rank garden that grew rampant at the center of the inner courtyard. To one side, something that might have been a cat was gnawing at a feathered thing. At the sound of his footsteps, the cat backed under a rosebush, pulling with it the thing it had been eating. On the opposite side of the courtyard stood a warped wooden door. He went across, occasionally freeing himself from a clinging thorn, to knock, then pound, on it.
After minutes, the door was pulled back a handsbreadth, and two eyes looked out at him. He explained that he was looking for Signora Santina. The eyes studied him, squinting in confusion, then retreated a bit into the complete darkness of the house. In deference to the infirmities of age, he repeated his question, this time almost shouting. At that, a small hole opened up under the two eyes, and a man’s voice told him that the signora lived over there, at the opposite side of the courtyard.
Brunetti turned and looked back across the garden. Near the tunnel entrance, but almost hidden by a pile of decomposing grass and branches, was another low door. As he turned around to express his thanks, the door slammed shut in his face. Careful, he crossed the garden and knocked on the other door.
He had to wait even longer this time. When the door opened, he saw a pair of eyes at the same height as the others, and he wondered if this creature had somehow managed to run from one side of the building to the other. But closer examination showed him that these eyes were lighter and the surrounding face was clearly that of a woman, though it was as scored by wrinkles and pinched by cold as the first one had been.
‘Yes?’ she asked, looking up at him. She was a little pile of a woman, wrapped tight in layers of sweaters and scarves. From the bottom of the lowest skirt hung what appeared to be the hem of a flannel nightgown. She wore a pair of thick woolen slippers like those his grandmother had worn. Over everything, a man’s overcoat, unbuttoned, hung open.
‘Signora Santina?’
‘What do you want?’ The voice was high and sharp with age, making it difficult for him to believe that it belonged to one of the great singers of the prewar era. In that voice, too, he heard all the suspicion of authority that was instinctive to Italians, especially the old. That suspicion had taught him to delay as long as possible telling anyone who he was.
‘Signora,’ he said, leaning forward and speaking in a clear, loud voice, ‘I’d like to speak to you about Maestro Helmut Wellauer.’
Her face registered nothing that indicated she had heard about his death. ‘You don’t have lo shout. I’m not deaf. What are you, a journalist? Like that other one?’
‘No, Signora. I’m not. But I would like to speak to you about the Maestro.’ He spoke carefully now, intent upon his effect. ‘I know that you sang with him. In the days of your glory.’ At this word, her eyes shot up to his, and some trace of softness slipped into them.
She studied him, looking for the musician behind the conservative blue tie. ‘Yes, I sang with him. But that was long ago.’
‘Yes, Signora, I know that. But I would be honored if you would talk about your career.’
‘So long as it’s my career with him, you mean?’ He saw the very instant when she realized who, or what, he was.
‘You’re police, aren’t you?’ she asked, as though the news had come to her as a smell, not an idea. She pulled the overcoat closed in front of her, crossing her arms over her chest.
‘Yes, Signora, I am, but I’ve always been an admirer of yours.’
‘Then why haven’t I seen you here before? Liar.’ She said it in description, not in anger. ‘But I’ll talk to you. If I don’t, you’ll come back with papers.’ She turned abruptly and stepped back into darkness. ‘Come in, come in. I can’t afford to heat the whole courtyard.’
He went in behind her and was immediately assailed by cold and damp. He didn’t know if it was the effect of being so suddenly cut off from the sun, but the apartment seemed far colder than the open courtyard had been. She brushed past him and pushed the door closed, cutting off entirely the light and the memory of warmth. With her foot, she pushed a thick roll of flannel into place against the narrow opening under the door. Then she locked the door, slipping its bolts home. With a policeman inside, she double-locked the door.
‘This way,’ she muttered, and set off down a long corridor. Brunetti was forced to wait until his eyes adjusted to the dimness before he followed her along the dank passageway and into a small, dark kitchen, in the middle of which was an antique kerosene heater. The lowest of flames flickered at its base; a heavy armchair, as layered with blankets as the old woman was with sweaters, was pulled up close to it.
‘I suppose you want coffee,’ she said as she closed the door to the kitchen, again kicking rolled rags against the crack beneath the door.
‘That would be very kind of you, Signora,’ he said.
She pointed to a straight-backed chair that faced hers, and Brunetti moved to sit in it, though not before noticing that the woven wicker seat was worn, or chewed, through in a number of places. He sat down carefully and looked around the room. He saw the signs of desperate poverty: the cement sink with only one faucet, the lack of refrigerator or stove, the moldy patches on the walls. He smelled, more than he saw, the poverty, smelled it in the fetid air, the stink of sewer common on the ground floors of Venice, of the salami and cheese left open and unrefrigerated on the counter, and smelled it from the raw, unwashed odor that seeped across to him from the blankets and shawls heaped on the old woman’s chair.
With motions grown circumscribed by age and lack of space, she poured coffe
e from an espresso pot into a low saucepan and walked haltingly toward the kerosene stove, on top of which she placed the pan. Slowly she made her way back to the cement counter beside the sink and returned to place two chipped cups on the table beside her chair. Then back again, this time to return with a small crystal sugar bowl that held a mound of grubby, solidified sugar in its center. Sticking her finger into the saucepan and judging the temperature correct, she poured its contents into the two cups, one of which she shoved roughly toward him. She licked her finger clean.
She stooped to pull back the covers on her chair and then, like a person about to slip into bed, lowered herself into the chair. Automatically, as if after long training, the covers slipped down from the back and arms of the chair to cover her.
She reached beside her to take her cup from the table, and he noticed that her hands were knobbed and deformed with arthritis, so much so that the left had become a sort of hook from which protruded a thumb. He realized that the same disease caused her slowness. And then, as the cold and damp continued to lay siege to his body, he considered what it must be like for her to live in this apartment.
Neither of them had said a thing during the preparation of the coffee. Now they sat in an almost congenial silence until she leaned forward and said, ‘Have some sugar.’
She made no move to unwrap herself, so Brunetti picked up the single spoon and chipped away a piece of sugar. ‘Allow me, Signora,’ he said, and dropped it into her cup, using the spoon to move it around. He chopped off another piece of sugar and put it into his own cup, where it lay, solid and undissolvable. The liquid he sipped was thick, lukewarm, and lethal. A lump of sugar banged against his teeth, having done nothing to fight the acrid taste of the coffee. He took another sip, then set it down on the table. Signora Santina left her own untouched.
He sat back in his chair and, making no attempt to disguise his curiosity, looked around the room. If he had expected to find any evidence of a career as meteoric as it was brief, he was mistaken. No poster of past opening nights hung upon these walls, no photos of the singer in costume. The only object that might have been a sign from her past was a large portrait photo in a silver frame that stood on top of a chipped wooden bureau. Arranged in a formal, artificial V, three young women, girls really, sat and smiled at the camera.
Still ignoring the cup at her side, she asked abruptly, ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Is it true that you sang with him, Signora?’
‘Yes. The season of 1937. But not here.’
‘Where?’
‘Munich.’
‘And what opera, Signora?’
‘Don Giovanni The Germans were always mad for their own. And the Austrians. So we gave them Mozart.’ She added, with a small snort of contempt, ‘And Wagner. Of course he gave them Wagner. He loved Wagner.’
‘Who? Wellauer?’
‘No. L’imbianchino,’ she said, using the word for house-painter and, with it, conveying the sentiments that had cost countless people their lives.
‘And the Maestro, did he like Wagner as well?’
‘He liked anything the other one liked,’ she said with contempt she made no effort to disguise. ‘But he liked him on his own, liked Wagner. They all do. It’s the brooding and pain. It appeals to them. I think they like suffering. Their own or others’.’
Ignoring this, he asked, ‘Did you know the Maestro well, Signora?’
She looked away from Brunetti, over toward the photo, then down at her hands, which she held carefully separated, as if even the most casual contact could cause them pain. ‘Yes, I knew him well,’ she finally said.
After what seemed a long time, he asked, ‘What can you tell me about him, Signora?’
‘He was vain,’ she finally said. ‘But with reason. He was the greatest conductor I ever worked with. I didn’t sing with them all; my career was too short. But of those I sang with, he was the best. I don’t know how he did it, but he could take any music, no matter how familiar it was, and he could make it seem new, as if it had never been played, or heard, before. Musicians didn’t like him, usually, but they respected him. He could make them play like angels.’
‘You said your career was too snort. What caused it to end?’
She looked at him then, but she didn’t ask how anyone who said he was a fan of hers could fail to know the story. After all, he was a policeman, and they always lied. About everything. ‘I refused to sing for II Duce. It was in Rome, at the opening night of the 1938 season. Norma. The general manager came backstage just before the curtain and told me that we had the honor of having Mussolini in the audience that night. And . . .’ Her voice trailed off, seeking a way to explain this. ‘And I was young and brave, and I said I wouldn’t sing. I was young and I was famous, and I thought that I could do something like that, that my fame would protect me. I thought that Italians loved art and music enough to allow me to do that and be safe.’ She shook her head at the thought.
‘What happened, Signora?’
‘I didn’t sing. I didn’t sing that night, and I didn’t sing in public again. He couldn’t kill me for that, for not singing, but he could arrest me. I stayed in my home in Rome until the end of the war, and when it was over, when it was over, I didn’t sing anymore.’ She shifted around in her chair. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘About the Maestro, then. Is there anything else you can remember about him?’ Though neither of them had mentioned his death, both of them spoke of him as among the dead.
‘No, nothing.’
‘Is it true, Signora, that you had personal difficulties with him?’
‘I knew him fifty years ago.’ She sighed. ‘How can that be important?’
‘Signora, I want only to get an idea of the man. All I know about him is his music, which is beautiful, and his body, which I saw and which was not. The more I know about him, the more I might be able to understand how he died.’
‘It was poison, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ There was no malice, no venom in her voice. She could have been remarking on a passage of music or a meal, for all the enthusiasm she showed. He noticed that her hands were joined together now, fingers nervously weaving in and out. ‘But I’m sorry someone killed him.’ Which was it? he asked himself. ‘Because I would have liked it to be suicide, so he would damn his soul as well as die.’ Her tone remained level, dispassionate.
Brunetti shivered; his teeth started to chatter. Almost involuntarily, he got up from his seat and began to walk around in an effort to bring some warmth back into his limbs. At the bureau, he stopped in front of the photo and studied it. The three girls wore the exaggerated fashions of the thirties: long lace dresses trailing to the floor, open-toed shoes with immense heels. All three had the same dark, bow-shaped lips and razor-thin eyebrows. Under the makeup and marcelled hair, he could see that they were very young. They were arranged in descending order of age, the oldest to the left. She might have been in her early twenties, the middle one a few years younger. The last seemed little more than a child, perhaps in her early teens.
‘Which one are you, Signora?’
‘In the center. I was the middle one.’
‘And the other two?’
‘Clara. She was older. And Camilla. She was the baby. We were a good Italian family. My mother had six children in twelve years, three girls and three boys.’
‘Did your sisters sing too?’
She sighed, then gave a small snort of disbelief. ‘There was a time when everyone in Italy knew the three Santina sisters, the Three C’s. But that was a long time ago, so there is no reason that you should know.’ He saw the way she looked at the photo and wondered if they were still, to her, the way they were in that photo, young and beautiful.
‘We began singing in the music halls, after the films. There was little money in our family, so we sang, the daughters, and we made some money. Arid then we began to be recognized, so there was more money. Somehow I discovered
that I had a real voice, so I started singing in the theaters, but Camilla and Clara continued to sing in the music halls.’ She stopped talking and picked up her coffee, drank it down in three quick swallows, then hid her hands under the warmth of the blankets.
‘Did your trouble with him involve your sisters, Signora?’
Her voice was suddenly tired and old. ‘That was too long ago. Does it matter?’
‘Did it involve your sisters, Signora?’
Her voice shot up into the soprano register. ‘Why do you want to know? What does it matter? He’s dead. They’re dead. They’re all dead.’ She pulled the loose covers more tightly around her, protecting herself from the cold and from the cold sound of his voice. He waited for her to continue, but all he heard was the low puff and hiss of the kerosene heater giving voice to its futile attempt to keep the killing chill from the room.