Thief of Venice

by Jane Langton

  Reason One

  and

  Reason Two.

  The letter was strictly formal:

  Dottor Samuele Bell

  Biblioteca Marciana

  San Marco 7

  30124 Venezia

  Gentilissimo Dottor Bell,

  Enclosed is a copy of a letter I have sent to His Excellency, Pietro Caravello, Cardinal Patriarch of the Basilica of San Marco. As you see, it is a formal request for his cooperation in your study of the authenticity of the relics in the Treasury.

  Also included is his official response, agreeing to the project under very specific terms, which are as follows:

  For every loan there will be documents requiring your signature. No more than fifteen objects at a time may be borrowed from the Treasury. Transport will require the presence of one carabiniere, both going and coming. Each object may remain in your possession for only thirty days.

  The only slightly personal note in the letter was a final warning—

  As the caretaker of precious volumes in the Marciana you will understand the necessity of absolute promptness in the return of every relic. None may be kept out “overdue.”

  Distinti saluti

  Dottoressa Lucia Costanza,

  Procuratore di San Marco

  Sam was overjoyed. He sat at his desk savoring the letter and its enclosures, delighted not only with the opportunity for debunking superstition, but also with the fact that he now had a reason for speaking to the dottoressa again.

  He called her office at once.

  “Pronto?” The voice was loud and masculine.

  “This is Dottor Samuele Bell. May I speak with Dottoressa Costanza?”

  There was a slight pause. “Perhaps you have not read the paper,” said Lucia’s assistant, whose name, Sam remembered, was Bernardi.

  “The paper! No! What’s happened?”

  “Signora Costanza’s husband has been murdered, and the signora is missing.”

  “What!”

  “And I regret to say,” continued Bernardi mercilessly, “an object from her desk is missing as well, a certain very precious statuette.” Bernardi fingered the heavy lump in the pocket of his trousers. The statuette was a seventeenth-century bronze centaur, as valuable as it was charming.

  Sam tried to speak, but Bernardi interrupted. “In her absence I am acting as procurator, although my permanent appointment will of course be delayed. And I must say, Signor Bell, on reviewing her recent letter to you concerning various sacred relics, I think Signora Costanza’s rash decision must be reconsidered.”

  “Dottoressa Costanza,” said Sam sharply, almost beside himself, “she is a dottoressa,” and he slammed down the phone.

  It was a little while before he could recover himself enough to go out for a paper. And then when he stumbled down two flights of stairs to the entry hall, he saw out of the corner of his eye the imposing figure of a museum director from Hong Kong. The man was darting forward to cut him off.

  Sam grinned at him with all his teeth and made a clumsy dash for the door. Outside in the arcade he almost collided with a gigantic African scholar in a green robe, gold sandals, and white socks. “Mi displace,” cried Sam in apology, and hurried away around the corner.

  The Molo was thick with tourists. He moved against the tide, heading for the newsstand at the vaporetto stop, where one of the vaporetti was just pulling up, grinding against the floating dock. Tourists poured out and moved eagerly toward the Piazetta as Sam paid for two local papers and unfolded the first with nervous fingers.

  Oh, God, yes, there was the story on the front page of Il Gazzettino—

  PROCURATORE COSTANZA UN’ OMICIDA?

  Below the brutal headline was a dim photograph of the murdered husband, Signor Lorenzo Costanza.

  Sam fumbled his way across the moving crowd of jolly tourists, jolly couples taking pictures of each other, jolly mamas pushing jolly baby buggies, and sat down on the stone wall at the edge of the water. Gondole, gondole, sang out a jolly gondolier in a striped shirt, drumming up trade. The gondolas lay rocking below the barrier, their brass fittings glinting joyfully in the sun.

  The writer of the article seemed to regard himself as un giornalista investigativo. With obvious delight he listed the sordid elements of the story:

  1. The murdered husband

  2. The vanished wife, una donna eminente

  3. The discovery in the bushes of a handgun with the wife’s fingerprints

  4. The apparent haste of her departure

  5. The previous removal of her entire savings from the Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia

  Sam understood at once the heavy implication of the word previous. The violent act must have been premeditated.

  The story was continued on page 3. Sam’s fingers couldn’t find page 3. They kept turning to page 5, with its forecast of extremely high water in Venice in November, or to the report on page 7 from Padua, where fifteen thousand turkeys had been asphyxiated overnight.

  At last his fingers trembled open the right page, and there at the bottom was another article, an interview with a woman who had been Lucia’s neighbor in the sestiere of San Polo. It was headed LA VECCHIA STORIA. Sam read it with disgust.

  It was the old, old story (tearfully reported Signora Adelberti). SHE was ambitious, HE was a man with a poetic nature. The dottoressa was too busy with her important career to nurture him in his loneliness, to comfort him in his sad state of unemployment, and thus he was forced into the arms of others.

  With gravely careful fingers Sam refolded his Gazzettino and walked back to work. He did not examine the rest of the paper. He failed to see the item on page 16, a tiny paragraph with the modest heading Spazzino Smarrito.

  The fact that a young trash collector employed by the Nettezza Urbana had disappeared, as well as the distinguished woman who was a newly appointed procurator of San Marco, rang no bells in Sam’s mind at all.

  CHAPTER 14

  The confessional in the north aisle of the Basilica of San Marco was a magnificent piece of baroque woodcarving, but behind the rosy curtain the space was as dark and intimate as if it were an ordinary clumsy box in a country church. Father Urbano’s comfortable bulk nearly filled it.

  Today he had his ear against the curtain, but still he could barely hear the hoarse whispering of the man kneeling outside. Perhaps it was the accent that obscured his words. Was he British perhaps? Or American? He was confessing an unspecified mortal sin, yet at the same time he seemed to expect automatic absolution. It was apparent that he did not understand the sacrament of confession at all.

  “My son, you must name your sin.”

  “Name my sin! For Christ’s sake, Father, just tell me my penance.”

  Father Urbano looked up over the red curtain of the confessional to the golden dome of the Pentecost. All the apostles sat around it in a ring with tongues of fire descending on their heads. The mighty wind that rushed upon them from heaven had not rumpled a single robe nor tossed a single strand of apostolic whisker, but every one of them now possessed the gift of speaking in tongues.

  For a moment Father Urbano’s own tongue was tied. Then he spoke in his usual way about the certainty of God’s mercy and God’s love, and cautioned that there could be no penance nor absolution until the sin was told. “My son,” he said again, “you must name your sin.”

  In reply there was a long silence. At last Father Urbano parted the curtain and looked out. The man was gone. But someone else had taken his place. A child was looking up at him expectantly.

  “My dear,” said Father Urbano, “what do you want?”

  She said nothing, but she got down on her fat little knees, as if in imitation of the man who had just hurried away.

  “Little one,” said Father Urbano, “you are very young. Have you been prepared for your first confession?”

  She shook her head. Then a woman appeared suddenly, snatched the child’s hand, pulled her to her feet, and scolded her in English. “Ursula, what on ea
rth do you think you’re doing?” With a baleful glance at Father Urbano she rushed the little girl away.

  He was left standing in the aisle, feeling at a loss. He should have helped, he should have said something encouraging. The poor child, somehow he had failed her.

  CHAPTER 15

  Mary got up early and prepared for another day of exploration. She stuck her folding umbrella in her bag along with her guidebook, her pocket dictionary, a sandwich, and a mirror and comb. Tucked into her billfold were her Venetian phone card, a slip entitling her to one more visit to the toilet near San Marco, and her abbonamento, the ticket that allowed her freedom of travel on the Grand Canal, anywhere, any time, by vaporetto.

  First stop, the Accademia, because Venice was a city of painters. Here Mary would find them all assembled—the three Bellinis, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Veronese, Lotto, Guardi, Canaletto! There was no end to the supply of great Venetian painters. They had set each other off, one skyrocket igniting another.

  But when she stepped down from the vaporetto, she was too early for the Accademia. It would not open for hours. Listlessly she bought a paper at the kiosk and sat down on a bench. Newspaper Italian was easy to guess at. There was a murder on the front page, but it meant nothing to Mary Kelly. Gloomily she tossed the paper in a trash basket, and looked mournfully at the palaces across the Grand Canal.

  Church bells were bonging. From somewhere came the piping bark of a dog. A gull floated in and out of the sunlight. She was homesick.

  Oh, it was so stupid. Here she was in this most ravishing of all cities, and yet she was languishing for her own kitchen back home, her own daily round, her own view of Fairhaven Bay, her own car, her own free life, her own cozy office in the Yard. She longed to find herself in the library in Concord, looking up at the familiar busts of Bronson Alcott and Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar. She hungered for the morning news on the radio. She was ashamed to admit even to herself that she missed watching her favorite television programs, propped up on pillows beside Homer in their comfortable bed.

  It was just a momentary silliness. Mary had been through it before. It was merely the heavy imprinting of habit on body and brain. She remembered a scornful joke of Emerson’s about the poor blockheads in Paris who had to do the best they could, even though they had never seen Bateman’s Pond or Nine Acre Corner or Becky Stow’s swamp.

  Homesickness was the worst kind of provincial chauvinism. What, all you’ve got are a hundred magnificent churches and a thousand painted masterpieces and scores of pretty bridges and a fleet of charming gondolas on canals the color of jade? Where are your muskrats? Where’s your purple loosestrife? Where’s VanderHoof’s Hardware Store?

  It would pass. Mary knew it would pass. The delight in this extraordinary place would return. It was like being seasick for a few days on a ship.

  The vaporetto was coming. It was a lumbering water-bus, churning up to the Accademia stop and crashing into the floating dock. She waited with the others for the passengers to disembark, then hurried aboard, slid open the door to the seating compartment, and found a place beside a window.

  Sitting with her canvas bag between her knees, she extracted her map of the city and decided to get off at the Rialto and follow her nose, obeying her maxim to take pictures of everything. Push the button, push the button.

  In the meantime there was the whole panorama of the Grand Canal to gawk at, with its changing parade of palaces. Mary glanced back and forth between her map and the view, and held her camera up to the window, taking pictures of one palace after another—Loredan, Rezzonico, Foscari, Papadopoli. Then she transferred her attention to the lively craft on the water—the vaporetti going and coming and the working boats bringing everything necessary for life from the mainland. One carried bottles of acqua minerale gassata, another a load of plastic chairs. The men at the tillers hailed each other and raised clenched fists in greeting. Quick, push the button. Then she turned her camera lens on a floating pile driver that was smashing thick poles into the water with heavy hammer blows. A red speedboat of the Vigili del Fuoco came along, throwing up a bow wave, and then a blue one of the polizia, roaring by in the other direction.

  But it was the gondolas that were the most delectable subjects, as though they had survived from ages past merely to have their pictures taken. Mary could see that they were no good as transporters of human cargo from place to place, certainly not in competition with this clumsy water-bus. You didn’t hire a gondola to get somewhere. It was strictly an aesthetic experience.

  They were irresistible. Mary took picture after picture through the window of the vaporetto, trying to capture the grace of the gondoliers as they stood in the stern, shifting gently from one foot to the other, rocking slightly forward and back.

  She was almost too late to get off at her stop. The Rialto Bridge loomed up before she was ready. The vaporetto was already scraping the floating dock.

  Mary jumped out of her seat and crowded forward, just managing to get off before the next crowd of passengers surged on board. The floating dock swiveled and rocked. Mary staggered and collided with a dignified-looking man. “O, mi displace, signore,” she gasped, recovering her balance.

  What news on the Rialto? That was from The Merchant of Venice. And it was what Henry Thoreau had called the Milldam, “Concord’s Rialto,” where the old men sat gossiping outside the shops, where Henry had to run the gauntlet. The word meant busy, it meant commercial, it meant this bustle of people going and coming. It meant cries of Gondole, gondole from gondoliers in straw hats, it meant tourists dragging baggage up the long ascent of the bridge, it meant places for cashing traveler’s checks, it meant scarves and fanciful carnival masks for sale, and kiosks selling postcards and T-shirts and Il Gazzettino and La Gazzetta dello Sport.

  There was another paper with a heavy black headline about a wife who had killed her husband and run away. Her name caught Mary’s eye, Dottoressa Lucia Costanza. Wasn’t that the woman Homer had written to? Surely not! It couldn’t possibly be their dottoressa, the distinguished woman who had written back such a courteous letter, expressing her welcome in almost perfect English, with only an occasional charming mistake.

  Which way now? Should she cross the bridge into the sestiere of San Polo? No, she would leave that for another day. Instead she turned right in a flood of tourists, then left, then right again. Soon she was lost, but she didn’t care. After all, she had sworn to follow her nose.

  For the rest of the day she wandered without direction, photographing church after church, square after square, rejoicing in side streets where laundry was suspended high overhead, rosy sheets like canopies of heaven, dangling aprons with fluttering strings. When a pulley creaked, she was just in time to catch a hand reaching out to pin a white cloth on the line.

  Homesickness was forgotten. Entranced, she drifted north, then west into the sestiere of Cannaregio. What was this church? It didn’t matter. It was festooned with gesturing sculpture, frenzies of white marble against the sky. Push the button. She crossed bridges and found herself in dead ends, then fumbled her way into a broad street full of shoppers. There was a noisy murmur of talk and fragrant whiffs of bread, cigarettes, vanilla, chewing gum. Grapes and pears were arranged in front of a shop like works of art. So were samples of dry pasta in a window—green tagliatelle agli spinaci, black pasta al new di seppia, brown pasta al cacao.

  Heading north again she followed a long fondamenta beside the Rio de la Misericordia. By now it was late afternoon, and the tide was rising. Water slopped over the rim of the canal. Mary edged her way along the fondamenta, keeping close to the housefronts. When she came to another bridge she crossed it, and found herself in the Ghetto Nuovo, where the pavement was dry.

  Yes, of course. This was it, the original ghetto. She had read about the history of the Jews in Venice. It was a long and cruel story. As members of a despised race they had been confined to this little island, an abandoned iron foundry called the Ghetto, and permitted o
ut only at certain hours.

  Mary wandered across the square to a wall covered with bronze reliefs, rugged images of cattle cars and crematories. Had Jews been herded into death camps from this city too? Appalled, she murmured it aloud, “Not here too?”

  “Sì, sì,” said a voice close behind her.

  She turned to see a big man in an old-fashioned black hat. He had a full black beard, crisp and curling. “Anche qui,” he said. “Here too.”

  Mary looked back at the cattle cars, and said simply, “How many? Quanti?”

  The rabbi frowned, and said nothing for a moment. But he was only translating Italian numbers into English. “Two hundred,” he said, and his scowl deepened as he mumbled to himself, “Quaranta sei:” Then with a triumphant smile he put it all together. “Two hundred and forty!” Turning away he lifted his hat and added, “Six.”

  Feebly Mary said, “Grazie.” She backed up and lifted her camera and took a picture of the cattle cars.

  It was the last shot. The film buzzed backward. She put in new film. She was hungry and exhausted. She wandered across another bridge into the Ghetto Vecchio, took a few more pictures, and gave up. Oh, God, it was a long way back!

  Beyond the Ghetto Vecchio the water began again. The tide had risen. There was nothing to do but wade. But the main shopping street was dry and full of people coming and going. At San Marcuola Mary boarded a downstream vaporetto and sank into a seat. At once she rummaged in her bag for her notebook and tried to make a list of everything she had seen, all the pictures she had taken.

  It was no use. She didn’t know where she had been because she had been following her nose, obeying every impulsive whim to go this way rather than that, attracted by the vista from a bridge, or a view of another bridge, or a campanile, or a hand flinging open a shutter. There was no way to make a list. It was all a jumble.