by David Hewson
There was no need to say more.
‘Christ.’ Garzone crossed himself and slumped back against the stained brick wall of the underground passage that led back to the bridge, to the city beyond, to some kind of safety. ‘Why?’
‘I imagine he saw no other way out.’
He took hold of the man and turned him round, pushed him back into the deeper shadows.
Garzone dug in his heels and glared at him. There were tears in his eyes.
‘I just lost a dear friend because of crooks like you. I want to see him. I want to mourn when they bury him.’
‘No, you don’t. You don’t want to be around this place at all. It only gets worse from now on. If you know any Jews out there tell them to hide—’
‘Hide where, Alberti? This is where they live. All that surrounds us is sea and sky.’
‘Go, you fool! Leave while you can.’
Back in the campo the uniforms had emerged from the apartment. They were carrying bags and cases, things they’d stolen. Diamante’s corpse they’d leave to the Jews. That, to them, was nothing.
‘I pity you,’ Garzone said, tears clear and deep in his eyes, of anger as much as grief, Alberti felt sure. ‘I pity you and one day I must find it in my heart to forgive you too.’
He turned then and walked back towards the end of the sotoportego. A patch of brightness beyond the realm of the Jews. Alberti watched him cross the bridge, waited to make sure he didn’t turn back.
A minute he stayed there. By the time he returned to the campo the soldiers were in the old people’s home on the far side of the square. A couple of them were dragging out a sick-looking man in a wheelchair.
In the window of an apartment opposite a young lad, thirteen, maybe a year or two more, around the age of his own son, was staring in his direction.
The kid raised a toy gun and fired an imaginary bullet straight across the square.
‘You before me, sonny,’ Alberti muttered as he strode over to join the troops. ‘You before me.’
By the time Paolo Uccello got back to the Giardini degli Angeli, Chiara and Vanni were hard at work. The basic work on the commission would be as good as done before midday. The final task of cutting and finishing them he’d leave to Chiara. But by one at the latest they’d be ready.
Now that the banners were real, not punch holes on cards or drawings on paper, it was easier to see them for what they were: rampant lions, furious gaping mouths, militaristic boasts. Paolo had guessed all along these were for the Nazis or the Fascists. Why else would they be delivered to Ca’ Loretti? Now they were something he could look at closely and touch he despised the things and wished his father had never sought the job, however much they’d needed it. Once you took their money they believed you were theirs. Perhaps, Paolo thought, they were right.
The day was bright for now, the sky with the wash of winter blue, the horizon smeared with the promise of fog. Chiara had baked a simple lemon cake to celebrate. Around ten they took a short break. Mika came and joined them as they ate outside the conservatory in the winter sun, away from the breeze, feeling the warmth on their faces.
This felt like the lull before the storm, but it was welcome in any case. The last few days had been anxious, full of doubts and thoughts he hadn’t wanted to entertain. About the future. About who he was and how he felt when Vanni was around. Love and sex were never discussed while his parents were there. It was as if matters like that occurred out of nowhere, like the weather, and were accepted much the same. He assumed the day would come when he’d marry, have children, introduce them into the workings of the Uccello family of weavers. Though how that might happen, and whether it was something he really wanted, he’d never much considered. Until that week. Now he knew he didn’t see any of it in his future at all. He was different and they’d known all along.
Vanni and Mika made small talk, chatting about their childhood in Turin. It seemed a very different kind of upbringing to the sort most received in Venice: liberal, carefree, outgoing. Their father had taken them to Paris once, a city that enchanted them. Paolo had only once travelled across the bridge to terraferma, on the train to Verona as part of a school trip. The city on the water was a world in itself, a universe in some way. There never was the need to look elsewhere, except for work and money and that was always left to his parents. While for Chiara, who’d grown up in the island village of Burano, the bustle and noise of Venice was, she said, quite enough. She’d never set foot outside the lagoon in her life, nor wanted to.
As they packed away the food and the Artoms returned to the house Chiara took him to one side.
‘People are asking questions, Paolo.’
Chiara didn’t look scared. It was hard even to imagine that. But she did seem puzzled.
‘What people?’
‘Well. One anyway. An ignorant old bastard I take food to for the church. He was one of Il Duce’s foot soldiers back before the war. Crippled now. Seems to think he can fight his corner from bed. Asking around. Poking his nose in.’
‘What did he say?’
She stared straight at him.
‘That the Crucchi and the police are out looking for two young Jewish terrorists hiding out somewhere. Brother and sister. The man’s been hurt in the leg. They’re going to shoot them and anyone who hides them.’
‘Oh …’
She waited. He got up and went to his loom, the one at the far end.
Chiara wandered over.
‘When I get paid this afternoon,’ Paolo said, checking the tautness of the thread. ‘I’ll come straight round and give you half the money.’
‘I’m an employee. I get a wage. Not half.’
‘I’m the boss. What I say goes.’
She kept quiet and gave him the kind of look he used to get from his mother. One that said, Don’t argue.
‘Please,’ he begged.
‘I don’t need your money. I’ve got family on Burano. They can feed me. You’ve got no one.’
‘I want you to stay away from here. Go back home maybe. Be with your people.’
‘You think you’re going to be with him?’
No. He didn’t. Mika and Vanni Artom were like the migrating birds who passed through the garden, headed north or south depending on the season. Perhaps they were unsure of their destination but they surely knew it was elsewhere.
‘I doubt that. Chiara … I’m grateful for everything you’ve done. I don’t need looking after anymore.’
‘So you seem to think,’ she said, checking over her own loom.
Then they went to work.
Soon the glasshouse rang to the familiar rhythm of the goldcrest’s song.
Si-dah-si-dah-si-dah-sichi-si-piu.
Vanni had picked up the ways of the Jacquard loom faster than anyone Paolo had ever seen. By eleven the three banners were finished on the looms. Then Chiara took out her scissors and an eyeglass, told them to get out of her way while she set about checking each thread, cutting and mending as needed.
Mika came out with rough hacked local bread, cheese and ham, and placed it on the frail wooden table in the garden. He wondered why they were eating pork. But then he knew nothing of Jews, all the different kinds. Perhaps the two of them only thought of themselves as Jewish in terms of their oppression, not so much their identity. It was hard to tell and he didn’t wish to ask.
Chiara picked up her panino and said, ‘You make good food, young lady.’
‘Thank you, signora. You’re very kind.’
She smiled then, easily, freely and he saw a different person, the one Mika Artom would have been if it wasn’t for war. Ordinary, happy, nothing special though perhaps that was a kind of special in itself. A young woman looking towards the future with bright and optimistic eyes. A job in a hospital. Or a country doctor going on her rounds in a little Fiat car. Somehow he knew that was never going to happen. She probably did too.
‘Have you finished?’ Mika asked. ‘The three of you? Is it done?’
Chiara went back into the house and returned carrying three gilt boxes from the cellar. The words ‘Uccello, Fine Weavers, Venice’ were stencilled in silver on the top. When she removed the lids and the wrapping they could see the banners, red and gold, swaddled in tissue and folded very precisely.
‘They’re beautiful,’ Vanni observed and no one said a word as Chiara folded them back into their paper wrapping.
‘They’re for a Fascist,’ she said as she replaced the lids. ‘I know you’re taking them to Ca’ Loretti, Paolo. Who else could it be for?’
It was, he said as calmly as he could, a commission. One his parents had died winning. Not that there was any relevance to that. It was only a way of trying to shut her up.
‘Things,’ said Mika, patting the lid of the nearest, ‘may be beautiful and ugly at the same time. Sometimes the beauty lies in what they are and sometimes the ugliness in who owns them. Half the art in Italy was bought by the purses of monsters and tyrants.’ She tapped the box. ‘I suppose we need to learn to appreciate the object, not the owner.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Paolo said. ‘I don’t like the way it looks. The way it … crows. Like them. Like we’re under their thumb.’
‘But we are,’ Chiara said. ‘Best not forget it.’ She checked her watch. ‘If you’ve finished with me I need to go. Mouths to feed. Prayers to say.’
Mika came over and kissed her on the cheek. Chiara smiled at her and said, ‘I wish we’d met in different times. Happier ones. I never talked to anyone from Turin before. I bet you’ve got more stories—’
‘Plenty,’ Vanni replied as his sister rushed inside for some reason.
They waited. She emerged with the grappa bottle and four small glasses and poured a toast on the tabletop next to the cardboard boxes for the banners.
‘To us,’ she said, beaming. ‘All of us. To meeting here after the war’s over. When the Germans are gone. When Italy’s a better place and all of us can just … live our lives.’
‘To us,’ Chiara repeated, then tipped hers back in one go. People from Burano didn’t like to linger.
No one could think of a thing to say after that.
Two o’clock in Ca’ Loretti. Gulls cawed and clamoured beyond the windows but there was no sound from the downstairs interrogation cells, no one in the small garden where the paving stones so often ran with blood and the red-brick wall bore innumerable bullet marks from executions. Business at the hub of the intelligence and security forces who held the reins of Venice was at a halt.
This was supposed to be the great day. The moment the heads of German units across the north got together with the leading lights of the Black Brigades and marked the coming capture of every last Jew in Venice. The final sign that the once-independent republic was truly a part of Hitler’s empire, a new colony of Berlin stretching from the Adriatic to the Ligurian and, in the occupied north, the Tyrrhenian seas. That, Alberti believed, was the real point of the glittering reception planned for the ballroom of the Gioconda that evening. Every last semblance of resistance, of identity, would be surrendered there. The uneasy atmosphere that had gripped the city ever since the Crucchi took control the previous September would give way to total submission. The hotels and ballrooms, the theatres and opera house, the bordellos and the beach resorts along the Lido, now belonged to the Nazis. If Hitler had his way they always would, part of a German empire that embraced the whole of Europe.
A small chorus had been press-ganged from the local choirs to sing Fascist anthems, German, Italian, Venetian. From what the kitchen staff of the Gioconda said the food would be grander, richer than anything even the wealthiest of Venetians had seen for years. Some of it, he was told, came in the self-same goods wagons from France via Milan that would be used for transporting captured Jews back to the camps in the north.
Yet Diamante’s suicide had cast a shadow over the day, as the old doctor had surely wanted. It was easy enough rounding up Jews who still chose to live in the ghetto. The rest were scattered throughout the city and the Lido, often anonymous, invisible among their gentile neighbours. News of the coming declaration from Salò was leaking out all over the north. Some areas had begun the round-up already. In Ferrara a convoy of wagons, packed to the gills with families seized overnight, was on its way to Milan. Venice, as always, seemed slow to catch up. A mere seventeen pensioners had been seized from the old people’s home in the ghetto that morning, then herded into a warehouse near the station. All their papers, money and possessions went into the hands of the Black Brigades, supposedly for examination and storage, but still it seemed small beer.
Sachs and Sander marched round angrily cursing Jews, Venetians, foreigners everywhere, swearing, when Oberg was out of the room, that they wished they’d been posted somewhere that had a backbone, not the delicate, old whore of the Adriatic that deemed itself too precious and too proud to face the task in hand. This was all bluster, naturally. Neither of them had shone when in the field, which was precisely why they’d been dispatched to the less-demanding role of security in Venice.
Alberti watched all this in silence. On the way back from Diamante’s he’d stopped by the Marino bar and got a couple of shots of grappa from Beppe, the terrified kid behind the counter. A part of him wanted to stay half-drunk most of the time. It felt better that way. Unlike some, he was a man that booze made less talkative, more thoughtful. More inclined to watch and wait to see what the Crucchi and their creatures would do next.
Oberg marched back in carrying a folder of papers. Sachs and Sander fell silent. Their courage didn’t extend to arguing with the boss. Salvatore Bruno followed, a peacock, all false smiles and camaraderie.
‘The terrorists from Turin. The Artoms,’ Oberg said, stopping by Alberti’s desk. ‘The ones you’ve been hunting with no success.’
‘Sir.’
‘Have you received any information to indicate they’re here?’
‘None whatsoever.’ He was expecting this interrogation so he pulled out a list of all the calls he’d made, the informants he’d threatened. ‘I’m out of options. Sorry.’
‘Not very good, are you?’ Bruno noted with a sarcastic grin.
Watch your tongue, Alberti thought to himself.
‘I’ve worked this city as a cop for fifteen years, friend. One thing I’ve learned in all that time is that if Venice wants to hide something it’s damned good at it. Back when we ran this place on our own maybe I could have got people to talk. Now … it’s not so easy.’
‘Excuses,’ Bruno muttered.
‘No. Realities. Maybe they’re not even here. There are a lot of other places to hide. Treviso. The marshes. In San Donà pretty much half the town’s turned partisan from what I hear. The Artoms are Jews. You’re the hunter. You go find them.’
‘Perhaps I will,’ Bruno said with a smile.
Alberti realized he didn’t simply dislike this man. He hated him. There was something cruel and sinister about him, a darkness that could only come from fear.
‘Sir,’ he said, looking at Oberg, puzzled. Something had gone on here, something he didn’t know about. ‘Give me my orders. Tell me what you want me to do. I can keep on asking but I’m beating up all the same people. Unless someone else has leads we can work on …’ He shrugged. ‘We’re kind of stuck. I don’t think any of those ancients we pulled out of the home this morning have got any tales to tell.’
‘Do you have any idea who we’re hosting here tonight?’ Oberg asked.
‘No.’ It was a stupid question. ‘No one’s told me. It’s all been cooked up above my head. I’m not psychic. This job would be a sight easier if I was.’
And there, he thought, was the grappa rising. Too fast, too snappy, without a second thought.
‘Pretty much every senior officer, German and Italian, from the Veneto will be in the Gioconda tonight,’ Oberg went on. ‘We will have a ceremony.’ He nodded at Bruno. ‘A bond will be sealed. Between you. Between us. Between our helpful friend here.’
‘Goo
d,’ Alberti said with a nod. ‘Do you believe they know? The partisans?’
Oberg didn’t take his eyes off him when he asked, ‘What do you think?’
‘I think you should assume so. You can’t bring in all this … stuff. The food. The singers. The staff who are going to work that room. You can’t do it without people working out something big’s going on. Venice knows a lot about throwing parties. Fair bit about gate-crashing them too.’ He folded his arms and leaned on the desk. ‘If you want me to take a look at the security …’
Sander laughed at that and so, on cue, did Sachs.
Salvatore Bruno loomed over him, smirking in his sharp suit.
‘Is there something I should know?’ Alberti asked.
‘No.’ The Jew tapped his shoulder. ‘It’s taken care of.’ He sniffed very visibly. ‘Don’t hit the booze too hard, pal. You need a clear straight head. We’ve a memorable night to come.’
Time to leave for the Gioconda. Vanni had insisted he change clothes, from his rough work jacket and old trousers into a suit he picked for Paolo from the wardrobe. Dark, a little tight now, made by a tailor in San Marco two years before. The last time he’d worn it was for his parents’ funeral in Mestre. He stood stiff and a little embarrassed as Vanni chose a shirt, went into the kitchen to iron it, then a silk tie from his father’s collection.
‘When you collect money you must be smart,’ Vanni said, examining him up close as he put the tie on. ‘Especially with Fascists. They like their clothes. They like their uniforms.’
‘It’s just money.’
‘Money’s good, friend. Money’s something we all need.’
‘You look the part,’ Mika said from the door. ‘How about me?’
She was back in the scarlet dress, hair perfect, powder on her face, red lipstick again. From his mother’s bedside drawer she said.
‘Very nice,’ her brother said. ‘And—’
He stopped. There was a bell attached to the distant bridge door by a pulley on a nearby tree. Now it was ringing.
‘We’ll make ourselves scarce,’ Vanni said. ‘Come on.’
He grabbed his sister’s hand, moved aside the carpet, opened the trap door, then the two of them raced down the steps. Paolo covered it after them. It was a good hiding place, as the priest Garzone had spotted. So few people in Venice had cellars. The city was built on mud and timber.
