by David Hewson
But Nonno Paolo, the grandfather I adored, had set me a task. So instead I got myself a can of chinotto, walked up the long stone stairs to my shuttered room, settled on my single bed and turned on the lamp.
THE WOMAN IN THE LAGOON
Tuesday, November the thirtieth, 1943.
She came out of the leaden winter water just after eight in the morning, bare, bruised arms, battered face white and waxy, stocky frame wreathed in seaweed, twisted like a dying saint in one of the many martyrdoms that adorned the church walls.
Above the fading morning mist gulls squawked hungrily, sensing food. Paolo Uccello didn’t look too closely but it appeared the fish had been there already. A hard winter sun was struggling to burn through the fog. Its efforts set the faintest shadow of the campanile tower of San Pietro across the scene on the mud and pebbles. He was coming to hate the cries of the seabirds. They followed him everywhere.
The war seemed endless and worse now since the Germans had come to occupy the city the previous September, the same day the king, Victor Emmanuel, had announced an armistice with the invading Allies and fled Rome for Brindisi with his provisional government. Italy was in agony, cut in two, the bloody dividing line contested all the way across the middle, slowly moving north. The invaders had dug in along the German defensive lines that straddled the country from Campania to Abruzzo. A new ‘republic’ had been born, nominally under the control of Mussolini, though everyone understood it was Berlin that called the tune. Il Duce, hidden away in Salò across the country in Lombardy, was little more than Hitler’s puppet, not that any dared say it. Italian soldiers, confused as any about who to follow, had either fallen in with whichever side was nearest, or been rounded up by the Germans and, in some cases, slaughtered. More and more were simply laying down their weapons, slinking off into the countryside to try to find a way home, risking immediate execution if they were caught.
Most of this Paolo Uccello tried to ignore. Politics were like the world at large, best avoided. Just turned eighteen, shy and skinny, he was alone now his parents were dead, a teenage hermit spending his days and nights in the old family weaving workshop hidden away at the very edge of Castello close to the Arsenale. Still, he had to venture out for food, on this occasion to join the queue for a dry, flavourless loaf from the bakers in via Garibaldi. It was on the way home that he encountered the commotion by the waterside on the church green. Men he recognized from the boatyard round the corner, cursing and weeping as they waded into the pebble shallows where a corpse floated, pecked at by the occasional gull until they shooed them off.
It was impossible not to stare. The miserable, drenched creature emerging from the filthy waters of the tiny harbour wore a tattered red dress, sleeveless, ripped at the front and the hem, which clung to her hefty, short body like a gaudy shroud. He didn’t want to look too much at her face, not when he realized he recognized her of old.
Father Filippo Garzone stood on the bank, his face the picture of misery. Next to him was Chiara Vecchi, the woman who’d worked the Uccello family looms for as long as Paolo could remember. A widow though not yet thirty, her husband had died somewhere in the fighting. Perhaps for the partisans or as a deserter from his unit. Paolo wasn’t sure and didn’t dare ask.
The priest and Chiara watched in silence, which was for the best since, next to them, three German soldiers and a stern-faced man in a dark overcoat were seated on the benches by the path, the troops cradling their rifles, the civilian smoking a cigarette. Their interest in the corpse seemed minimal.
‘I told you … I said … It’s Isabella!’ cried one of the boat builders dragging the sorry, sodden shape on to the mud. ‘Oh, for the love of God …’
The rescuers were clucking over the corpse, one of them trying to cover her bare limbs between making the sign of the cross over his fisherman’s sweater.
Isabella Finzi. A fierce and argumentative spinster who’d run a vegetable stall in the Salizada Santa Giustina until the police closed her down. A Jew. They could only sell to their own kind these days and Isabella Finzi would have no truck with that, even if she could afford it. As Paolo watched, the civilian got up from the seat, showed an ID to the men and spoke to them in rapid Venetian. A local, a cop he guessed, or what passed for one these days, judging by the chilly reception he received. The man had an easy, confident air about him and a hard and vulpine face that ran from smile to scowl and back again in seconds. He said something, then went back to his seat.
The Finzi woman had been a presence in Castello for as long as Paolo could remember, one his parents tried to avoid as much as was possible. It was unwise to fraternize with Jews, especially one with a temper. He could recall her yelling at him when he had the temerity to squeeze an orange once. Perhaps he was seven or eight, and in any case his mother bought the fruit immediately. Money always quelled arguments with that kind, she said.
The time before the war seemed so distant, as was the memory he had of the Uccello family then, back when they were halfway affluent. Mother, father, son, working away at the small business of hand weaving in their little workshop in the Giardino degli Angeli, just across the bridge from San Pietro on the way to the Arsenale. A private haven, itself only accessible by a tiny wooden bridge across the rio that led to a door in a high, red-brick wall. Thinking back, it was as if they were different people living in a very different world. Now, barely old enough to sign legal papers, he found himself the owner of the company and its little home, an outbuilding in the ruins of what was once the palace of a fine Venetian family. Little more than a child, certainly in the eyes of the locals who’d shunned the Uccello mostly over the years. Except for Chiara Vecchi, a kindly woman who was doing her best to take the place of Paolo’s dead mother. Treating him like a child. Which he wasn’t, not that she seemed to notice.
Since they shut down Isabella Finzi’s market stall after the Nazis arrived, the woman had taken to buying cheap wine, wandering the streets, bottle in hand, yelling abuse at Germans and any Italian Fascists she came across. On occasion he thought he’d heard her bellowing in the alley across from the bridge. A dangerous habit in these perilous times. Surely someone – Father Filippo, perhaps, always keen to guard his parishioners, even the Jews – must have warned her. Not that she was the kind of woman to heed advice, however earnestly it was offered.
Chiara Vecchi stood on the bank, arms folded, rocking to and fro on her heels, her broad face stern and angry, looking as she always did to Paolo, older than her years. Next to her the priest in all his dark robes was shaking his head as he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer. The men heaved the body up from the shore on to the grassy bank, as tearful as they appeared furious. On the bench one of the soldiers yawned and stared at his watch.
A tall, elderly man, stiff-backed and serious, strode up to join the mournful group around the body. Paolo’s mother adored old paintings and had passed that love on to her son. At weekends she’d taken him round the city to the galleries and the churches, showing him all the many canvases, some famous, some barely known. Now he could only wonder which artist might have best captured the scene in front of him. Bellini, perhaps, or the living and the dead before him could all be players in one of those striking, realistic depictions of grief-stricken locals that Tintoretto produced for altars everywhere.
The newcomer took the priest’s arm, squeezed it and said, in a loud voice that all could hear, ‘I’m so sorry, my friend.’
‘Aldo,’ Garzone murmured, wiping at his face, then shook the fellow’s hand, which brought a caustic, obscene curse from the police officer.
Paolo knew who Aldo Diamante was and understood why the cop would disapprove of any Venetian who gave him the time of day. When he was small and quiet and seemingly sickly his mother had taken him to the hospital of Giovanni e Paolo. There Diamante, wearing a white physician’s coat, a stethoscope round his neck, had given him a piece of candy, sat him on a bench, removed his shirt and run the cold metal disc over his chest. It was a long
examination, and the doctor had apologized for the pain Paolo had felt when he’d taken some blood. But a few days later they were called back to his office where Paolo was placed firmly on a seat and told to eat his greens and take more exercise. He was, Diamante had declared, a sensitive child, not sick, merely tall for his age which had expended some of his natural strength and left him a touch fragile. This was a rare and perhaps unwanted condition in Castello, a place for physical labour, not the lazy pastimes of the fey aristocrats of San Marco and Dorsoduro. But it was nothing that time, physical activity and a good diet could not cure.
The old doctor’s days in Giovanni e Paolo were over. Mussolini’s Racial Laws dictated that a Jewish physician could treat only Jews, just as a Jewish stallholder like Isabella Finzi must serve none but their own. Paolo had heard that Hebrews were even barred from having their names in the phone book, which must have made the work of a man known for answering emergencies at any time of the night or day quite impossible. In place of a doctor’s coat the Fascist authorities called the Black Brigades – or more likely the Germans behind them – had intervened and forced Diamante to become president of the city’s Jewish community, a role that was vacant since they’d placed the incumbent rabbi in custody on the Lido ahead of his deportation to a fate none could guess.
All of this came from Chiara, naturally, in whispers between sessions at their two working looms. They were not, she said, matters to talk about beyond the walls of the workshop. Gossip was dangerous; there was always someone ready to pass on idle criticism of the Fascists or the Nazis to the authorities in return for money, preferment, or simply the closure of an old grudge. Though quite why she gave Paolo this warning he didn’t know; he didn’t mix with anyone if he could help it. Nor had his parents. Most of the locals seem to ignore the Uccello. They were outsiders, once well-off, to them anyway, now on hard times and no use to a soul. If he tried very hard, closeted inside the Giardino degli Angeli, he could almost fool himself the war barely existed.
But not now.
Chiara marched over and took Paolo’s arm.
‘You don’t need to see this,’ she said in a voice so low the Germans wouldn’t hear. ‘It’s not a sight to remember. We have that job to finish, don’t we?’
‘Three banners. We can do it.’
‘It’s work, Paolo. I know you’ve been grieving but you should have told me earlier. We’re short of time.’
He didn’t want this discussion.
‘I recognize her. The dead woman.’
‘We all do.’ She scowled at the uniformed figures on the bench. ‘Please. Let me take you out of here.’
‘I’m eighteen, not a child,’ he said and didn’t move.
Diamante had crouched down over the sad corpse on the grass. Isabella Finzi’s arms were wrapped around her chest. There were bruises, purple and red, livid, everywhere on her bare skin. As if she’d been beaten. Tortured even, a thought that made Paolo want to look even less. He’d heard that went on when the Black Brigades or the SS thought they had hold of someone who possessed some secrets. Though it was hard to believe a deranged woman fell into that category. It would be sensible to do Chiara’s bidding and return to the workshop and his little house, a quiet, safe place away from the city and an anxious, strife-torn world he couldn’t begin to comprehend.
He didn’t like to be close to the dead either. A month earlier, when they brought his parents back in coffins after the Allied air raid that caught them in Verona, he’d been forced to identify their mangled corpses. Paolo wept all night afterwards, alone in his room at the water’s edge, behind the conservatory workshop where the three of them had lived and worked. Sometimes, in dreams, his mother’s dead and damaged face still came back to haunt him. He’d begged them not to go to Verona. Travel was always perilous and their home, hidden away at the edge of San Pietro, as safe a place as any in Venice. But they had to leave, his father insisted, as a pair, the way they always worked. The customer was from Turin, visiting Verona only briefly and demanded a personal meeting. It was an important and valuable commission, one they needed since work and money were so short.
Chiara tugged at his arm.
‘In a minute,’ he snapped.
They were buried in the public cemetery in Mestre the day a letter turned up confirming the commission they’d been seeking: three small banners of handwoven fabric to a specific design, with a deposit paid through a bank in Turin. His father had been right; they were short of commissions. Still, it wasn’t worth dying for in smoke and rubble and fire the night American bombers rained their deadly cargo on the Veneto, mistaking a civilian street for a military encampment.
Just a moment or two. This he had to see, not that he quite knew why.
‘Alberti.’ Diamante spoke in a firm, loud voice, the same he’d used in the hospital talking to a skinny young weakling called Paolo Uccello. The man he was addressing was a sour-faced fellow in the kind of dark and heavy overcoat locals preferred in midwinter. ‘Come here, please.’
The chap grunted something foul in rough Venetian, stamped out his cigarette beneath his boot, then wandered over to the group arranged around the broken shape on San Pietro’s thin winter grass. Isabella Finzi must have been forty or so, a strong woman with fierce eyes and a hawk nose. Some of the men used to chase her, his mother said, but not for long. Her fury and her madness soon saw them off.
‘What do you want?’ Alberti demanded.
Paolo recognized the name. Chiara had warned him to steer clear if ever he should hear he was in the vicinity. A former local Carabinieri officer who’d been moved to the new National Guard Mussolini had invented to replace the military police force of old. The man had a reputation even when he wore the dark blue uniform of the Carabinieri. Always happy to gossip while they worked, she reckoned he was as crooked as those he sought to catch, well-known for demanding bribes from storekeepers, money, fish, meat, cheese, anything he fancied. Favours from the ladies he wanted too.
‘This woman has been beaten. There are abrasions on her arm. A contusion on her forehead. My opinion is she was attacked and thrown into the water to die. Raped possibly. If you take her in for examination …’
The man barely glanced at the wounds, the bruises, the cuts, the injuries the physician was indicating.
‘Who are you to say?’ the fellow replied. ‘You’re no doctor any more. This crazy bitch … we all knew her. Yelling at people in the street. Drunk as a whore. Wandering round at night.’
He walked forward, stared at the corpse, then spat at the muddy beach.
‘My finding is she was out here full of wine, fell in and drowned. That will go down on my report. An accident. Jews rarely kill themselves.’
‘Balls!’ Diamante yelled.
The priest took his arm and tried to shush him.
‘Balls! Look at her, man. You’re a Venetian. One of us. You grew up here, Alberti. I treated your sister—’
‘Not any more. Those are the rules. We don’t let Jews get their sweaty fingers on our folk now.’
‘Rules. Rules.’ Father Filippo was trying to push the old doctor back. ‘What rules say you ignore a woman violated in the night? Her life snuffed out like it didn’t matter? Do you not know your duty?’
The cop simply laughed.
‘My duty?’
‘Please, Aldo.’ The priest begged as he stood between them. ‘This serves no purpose. We must deal with poor Isabella.’
‘My duty?’ Alberti repeated, pushing Garzone out of the way. He was a good head shorter than Diamante, with the build and the attitude of a street bully. ‘My duty is to keep Mussolini’s law. Which says …’ He turned and grinned at the Germans. ‘You don’t count. Not now. So shut your Jew mouth and go home.’ He nodded at the body on the shingle. ‘And take this piece of shit with you.’
‘Luca!’ the priest cried. ‘Think of what you say.’
‘Oh, I think of it, Father. We’ve been told. All of us. This country’s going to be cleansed. You
mark my words. Once we have public order under control. And the terrorists up against a wall. Now, Diamante. Remove this Jewish whore of yours. I don’t care what you do with her.’ He turned again and winked at the Germans who were already getting ready to leave. ‘We’ve better things to do.’
With that the four of them marched off. When they were almost out of sight one of the men who’d dragged Isabella Finzi from the earth aimed an imaginary pistol at their backs and fired three imaginary shots.
‘Bang,’ he murmured.
Bang.
Bang.
‘Stinking Crucchi.’
Crucchi. It was an insult for the Germans that was never said within earshot. ‘That treacherous bastard Alberti … he’ll get it one day too.’
Paolo recognized the man: Rocco Trevisan, owner of a small boat he used to fetch and carry cargo around the city, on occasion goods for the looms when they were busy. A quick-tempered individual from the tenements close to the shuttered pavilions of the Biennale, strong-willed, bossy. A communist, Chiara said, not that he understood what that really meant. There were little bars around via Garibaldi where men like him drank and argued and occasionally fought of an evening. Places those seeking a safer life always avoided.
‘You got an undertaker who can deal with her?’ the fellow next to Trevisan asked.
‘Of course,’ Diamante replied.
The chap frowned.
‘Crazy old Jew but what the hell?’
‘She was a Venetian,’ Paolo cried. He couldn’t help himself. ‘They shouldn’t treat us like … like we don’t matter.’
Trevisan glared at him and called for a boat.
‘Paolo.’ Chiara Vecchi’s stern gaze was on him. ‘I asked you not to witness this. Now you make these outbursts. It’s not wise.’
There was a heat in him he barely recognized.
‘I know what’s right and what’s wrong.’
