Strangers in Venice

by A W Hartoin

  Karolina thanked her profusely to the point that Stella was embarrassed, knowing it was probably pointless.

  Rosa raised a weak and shaking hand. She whispered something, but Stella wasn’t sure any words came out.

  Karolina bent over her, putting her ear close.

  “Oh yes.” She smiled at Stella and seemed to find something happy in that room filled with illness and fear. “My sister would like to show you something she thinks that you will appreciate.”

  “A book?” asked Stella. “I think you must have all the good ones.”

  “We do, but it’s not exactly a book,” Karolina whispered.

  “You’ve piqued my interest. My father is a collector of many things, mainly art, but rare editions are favorites, too.”

  “This is the rarest edition.” Karolina held out her hand and, with Stella’s help, she got down on her knees to dig around under the bed. She pulled out boxes of books until she found a heavy, rectangular box made of oak and filled with less interesting books, like reading primers and tattered music books.

  Stella couldn’t imagine why the ladies lugged those to Italy, unless they were purely sentimental. Karolina passed the ordinary books to Stella and she stacked them on a pile of Thomas Mann’s work, including the one about Venice.

  “Here it is,” said Karolina as she pulled another box out of the first box. This one was fine and made of rosewood with inlaid flowers, dragons, birds, and vines. She handed the box up to Stella and hoisted herself up to her feet. Rosa held out her hands as much as she was able. Karolina put the box on her lap and helped her to open the lid. Stella couldn’t see what was inside, but the ladies were clearly enthralled. “This was my husband’s prize possession.”

  “Max?” asked Stella.

  “Yes. Max was my husband. He was Rosa’s brother.”

  Rosa tapped the box and Karolina lifted a thick roll out. It was wrapped in fine, white linen and it took a minute or so to unwrap. When Karolina revealed Max’s prize possession, Stella couldn’t speak. It looked like…but it couldn’t be.

  “Do you know what it is?” asked Karolina. “We thought maybe you would. You have that look about you.”

  “Do I?” whispered Stella. “What look is that?’

  “That you have seen treasures and love them dearly.”

  She nodded. “Is that…a Ripley Scroll?”

  The ladies smiled broadly, even Rosa, who barely had the energy to blink.

  “Yes, it is. Would you like to see it?” asked Karolina.

  “Very much. My father showed me pictures once, but I’ve never seen a real one.”

  “I am not surprised,” she said. “There are only twenty-four scrolls in existence.” Karolina explained that Max’s grandfather had purchased the scroll in the last century while visiting England and it was, other than Gutenberg’s diary, the most wondrous thing Stella had ever seen. She and Karolina unrolled it but not to its full length, which she said was over twelve feet. It was the illustrated version of George Ripley’s work, a noted alchemist, and gave instructions on making the elixir of life.

  “It’s done on vellum and painted by Leonard Smethley in around 1620.”

  Stella had to hold herself back from touching the fantastic images of dragons, a creature half-human half-lizard, nude men, along with the confusing instructions that had something to do with a magical toad, the sun, and a bird with a human head. The colors were wonderfully bright and the whole thing preserved like it had rarely seen the light of day, which Stella imagined it hadn’t.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “It’s wonderful.”

  Rosa lifted her hand and Stella kissed it.

  Karolina began rolling it back up carefully, the vellum making little snaps and cracks.

  “I’m afraid I have to go, although I hate to,” said Stella. “I have so many questions. I assume Max studied it.”

  “He did. It was in many ways his life’s work.” Karolina wrapped the scroll back in its linen. “But you go now, give Douglas his soup, it will be here when you have more time.”

  Rosa whispered something and Karolina went over to listen. “She wants to know when you are leaving Venice and where you will go when you leave.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why it’s important. Do you mind saying?”

  “Not at all. I think we may leave as early as tomorrow and Douglas wants to go straight to New York, but I don’t know what we’ll do.”

  Rosa touched Karolina’s hand and the ladies whispered back and forth. Rosa got more agitated than Stella though she was capable of.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing, dear,” said Karolina. “She’s just very tired.”

  That didn’t look accurate to Stella from the frown on Rosa’s pale face, but she let it go and excused herself. She went into the hall, bumping right into Mr. Bast, lumbering down the passage with his typewriter and a stack of files.

  “You look like the cat that got the cream,” he said jovially, but then paused. “Perhaps it was bad cream.”

  “No, Mr. Bast. It’s fine. Excuse me.” She kept the book pressed to her chest and hurried off down the hall. He was watching her, that odd Mr. Leonard Bast, and, for the first time, she didn’t like it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ONCE NICKY HAD eaten his soup, Stella slipped out. He wouldn’t be happy, but it had to happen. He’d regained his normal coloring and was healing remarkably fast. Only Dr. Davide’s shot of Eukadol kept him in bed. Stella would be lucky to get another day of rest out of him.

  The first hotel was a bust and the second and the eighth. On the way to the ninth, a swanky affair off St. Mark’s Square, Stella passed a little shop selling glasses. On a whim, she went in just as they were trying to close. A smile and a flash of cash got her through the door. So far her accents had been going off without a hitch, but she did look the same every time. Glasses could change that. Through a bit of back and forth, she got the confused clerk to sell her a pair with plain glass lenses he had sitting in the window for display. She said it was a joke she was playing on her husband. The clerk’s response indicated she was too pretty for glasses and she wondered what she was supposed to do if she actually couldn’t see. Be blind?

  He sold them to her for a discount and asked her where she was from in Ireland. Stella picked Dublin since she was using Mavis’s accent, but she could’ve said Cork or Belfast. He wouldn’t have known the difference. He was too busy looking at her décolletage. But it occurred to her that broadening her Irish accents could be helpful. She knew Mavis so well; her accent was easy. Michael, the boy that delivered from the green grocer, was Irish. His accent was different. Mavis turned up her nose at him, saying he was shanty Irish, whatever that meant.

  The clerk opened the door for Stella quietly asking if she would like a coffee. She said that she wished she could but had to get back to her hotel. He didn’t press and gave her a little bag with her glasses, ushering her out into the darkening street. The rain pounded on her umbrella and she splashed into St. Mark’s Square to get her bearings. The square was wide awake and alive with people. Stella hadn’t encountered so many tourists since they’d arrived. Probably because most of them were there. People were actually sitting at Caffè Florian, sipping overpriced coffee under the gallery with water up around their ankles. Stella had to give it to them. They weren’t letting the rain beat them, but it was beating her. There’d been a lot of walking and her feet were aching, her coat was damp, and, worse of all, she had nothing to show for it. Stella was starting to think it was pointless. The Sorkines probably had more sense than she did and had left Venice.

  Stella walked across the flooded square on a wooden walkway that was just above the water line and found the street to the next hotel, Hotel Barocci. That hotel was so swanky they had a walkway built off the one on the square that led right to their door. A double layer of sandbags was piled up in a half moon to protect the ornate entrance which was entirely dry.

  She put on her new glas
ses as she approached and felt instantly unattractive. They were not good-looking glasses, if that even existed. These were particularly bad in heavy, black, round frames that were so close to her eyes that her lashes knocked against the lenses every time she blinked. But they did make her look different. They were the kind of glasses that took over a face, which was exactly what she needed.

  She stepped down off the walkway with the help of the doorman. He asked if he could help her in Italian. She could now understand that question, she’d heard it so many times, and she responded in her English accent, saying she just needed to go to the front desk to ask about a guest. He opened the door for her and she went into the grand atrium of a former palace with a double staircase that couldn’t have been more overdone if it tried. Two clerks stood directly across from her at a desk that made Napoleon’s tomb look humble. They greeted her simultaneously with polite smiles.

  Stella asked them if a couple named Sorkine had been in looking for anyone in the last three days. She couldn’t say they were looking for Bleds or Lawrences since the carabinieri were looking for them. The last thing she needed was for someone to put those puzzle pieces together. And by now, she had the description down pat, French, middle-aged, and well-dressed, but not wealthy and that worked for every hotel so far.

  As Stella expected, they said no and when pressed they did call the manager, who also said no.

  “Who are these people?” asked the woman.

  It wasn’t an unusual question and Stella had a quick response that they were friends of the family that they were supposed to meet at St. Mark’s, but they hadn’t shown up. She knew their hotel was right off the square and she thought that might be the one.

  Both clerks nodded and apologized, but the manager got a little squinty. He was thinking and Stella didn’t like it.

  “I’ll leave you to it then. Sorry to disturb,” she said.

  “You don’t have a son, do you?” he asked as she turned.

  Stella laughed. “Do I look old enough to have a son?”

  The woman blushed and quickly said, “We are not asking your age, ma’am.”

  “I should hope not. One never asks a lady’s age.”

  The manager was undaunted by the embarrassed look the woman gave him. “What was the name of these people again?”

  “Sorkine.”

  He frowned. “They are French you said.”

  “May I ask what you are thinking?” asked Stella, trying to stay calm.

  “Do you have a younger brother here perhaps?”

  She didn’t know what made her say it, but she replied, “I have a cousin. Why?”

  “There was a boy asking for a couple earlier today, but he was German and he said the name differently.”

  “That would be Hans,” she said as calmly as possible. Her heart was thumping and she could hear it in her ears. “He’s helping us look for them. How did he say the name?”

  He imitated the boy’s accent and he said the name the German way. The boy pronounced every letter, making it a three-syllable name where the French way was two. The endings were totally different. If you didn’t know it was the same name…

  Stella laughed. “I told him how to say it, but he doesn’t listen.”

  The clerks smiled and the manager said, “Boys have their own minds. He, also, said that some Americans were looking for the French couple and wanted to know if they had been here, but that is not you.” He squinted at her again.

  Stella thought her heart stopped beating for a few seconds. “Our other cousins are looking as well. They are American. Have they been here?”

  He looked at the clerks and they shook their heads. “I think not.”

  “Perhaps our cousins decided not to come, on account of the rain,” said Stella.

  “The rain will stop tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure,” she said. “I apologize for troubling you twice.”

  The clerks urged her not to worry and she left, feeling awkward as she walked away. Every step felt stiff and unnatural. She had to get out and breathe. Get out and think.

  The doorman opened the door and helped her back onto the platform. She turned automatically to the Gritti Palace, her last stop, and whipped off her glasses, stuffing them in her handbag. That boy looking for the Sorkines had to be Peiper’s boy. Peiper had wised up. He sent the boy, a less threatening person, if you didn’t know him as Stella did.

  “I suppose it had to happen,” she said to herself as she reached a piazza at the end of the walkway. She stepped off, down into the flood without a care to the splashing and got the hem of her coat wet. So Peiper had figured out why they’d come to Venice. She should’ve expected that. He wasn’t stupid. Then she smiled. Or maybe he was. That fool still believed they had the book and that the Sorkines’ presence in Venice confirmed it. It would never occur to him they’d be looking for Abel’s family to protect them and that the ultimate prize was long gone. Yes. He was a fool. He thought they were clever enough to evade him, but not to change the plan. If they hadn’t run into the Boulards, they could’ve mailed the book to someone while they were in Paris or simply gotten off the train in Milan or Verona and done it.

  She went to the end of the piazza and looked for a taxi in the small canal, but it wasn’t that well-traveled and all she found was a gondolier, dejectedly puffing on a cigarette under an enormous umbrella that covered both him and the cushioned seat. Gondola wasn’t exactly a speedy way to travel, but it was easier on the feet.

  “Buonasera!” she called out and he jumped in surprise.

  “Buonasera, bellissima,” he said and then a jumble of Italian she was too tired to understand.

  She used her English accent to ask for the Gritti Palace and he helped her aboard after a small negotiation for the price. Stella got him down to half, using a combination of batting eyes and pleas of poverty. He gave her the enormous umbrella and closed hers before guiding the gondola under the low bridge. Thankfully, he didn’t sing. Her mind couldn’t have stood it. She had to decide what to do next beyond the Gritti Palace. She had no faith that she’d get lucky this time and Peiper’s boy was in the neighborhood. If there was a lead to be found, he might’ve gotten it first. The two of them must’ve been missing each other all day. She didn’t know what she would’ve done if she’d come face to face with that brat again. There were always canals nearby, but she wasn’t sure she would be given another chance to push him in. Who was he anyway, this boy of Peiper’s? Surely not his son. What kind of man would take his child to hunt people and give him a gun no less? No. He couldn’t be Peiper’s son. That was too low, even for a Nazi.

  The gondolier turned them onto another small canal and Stella thought about Nicky. Peiper was getting closer and he’d want to leave immediately. What would Peiper do, if they left? He was exceptionally good at tracking them. Would he follow? No, she thought he wouldn’t. Since he knew the Sorkines were there, he’d think they’d handed off the book and go after the Sorkines with everything he had. If Peiper didn’t nab them, the Sorkines would eventually end up at the Bella Luna. Maybe Daniel would give them her message or maybe he wouldn’t and someone would say Vienna to them. It would all be for nothing. Peiper would chase the Sorkines the way he chased them. Relentless. She couldn’t think what to do. All the options were ridiculously bad.

  They left the calm small canal and merged with the Grand Canal, nearly at the mouth where it met the sea. The waves were high and slopped over the side of the gondola, rocking them violently side to side and Stella began to think she ought to have walked, her feet be damned. But it was only a few minutes, and they banged against a dock made specially for gondolas. The gondolier leapt onto the dock and looped a length of rope around a pylon before helping her out. They exchanged umbrellas and she paid him with a hefty tip for keeping them upright. He kissed her hand and was back in the gondola in less than thirty seconds, poling away from her.

  She turned around and found the palace’s wide street completely empty. When Stel
la had been there before it teemed with people. Sidewalk cafes were packed and vendors sang and sold postcards and other bric-a-brac. Now it was a ghost town and it made Stella nervous after the buzz of St. Mark’s.

  She waded through the water to the surprisingly discreet entrance, put on her glasses, and opened it herself. Inside, it was much the same as the last hotel and two almost identical clerks smiled at her from behind yet another atrocious desk. She went through the same questions and answers, but this time she asked if her cousin, Hans, had been by. She pronounced Sorkine as he would, but they hadn’t seen Peiper’s boy, and no one had come by looking for anyone, except the carabinieri. The word carabinieri got just the slightest hint of a frown. The clerks were well-trained, but they didn’t like officials coming in and, without a doubt, making obnoxious demands. They didn’t mention Peiper so he’d learned he wasn’t helpful in the search and her heart smiled at the frustration that must cause him.

  “Who were they looking for?” Stella asked in her Irish lilt.

  “Americans.” That got a bit of a sneer, too. “They think rich Americans are hiding here after they stole a taxi. They have no sense, only fists.”

  “I wouldn’t think that if they could stay here, they’d need to steal.”

  The clerks laughed and the man leaned over the desk conspiratorially. “I think they are asking for the German.”

  “There’s a German looking for Americans?” Stella’s eyes went wide with wonder and curiosity.

  “They say the Americans steal from the German. What would they steal? Ugly clothes? Bad food? Stupid.”

  “That is very odd.”

  The other clerk leaned over, too. “They let the German out of the jail so he can look for the Americans. I heard one of the carabinieri, a Colonello Costa, talk of it. Fools. The German is the one who steals.”