The Gondola Scam

by Jonathan Gash

  I should have gone round to the Cosol office and steamed Giuseppe's garrulous mouth open, demanding all he had on Mrs. Norman's private planeloads of moviemakers, but I was tired and dozed off in one of the pews. Dozing is a mistake in Venice. The vibes of ancient life come out of the walls at you. Bound to, in a place like that. I dreamt of wading and drowning, woke in a cold sweat , when a drove of chattering children came pouring in to ' draw the orange, white, and black mosaics in their school exercise books. Then I realized my dream was true, except it wasn't me drowning. It was children. The lovely church which harvested Vivaldi's music and Tiepolo's magnificent artistry belonged to the foundation which reputedly harvested the newborn illegitimate babes thrown alive into the canals, to drown in the filth and darkness. To avoid scandal. What with the men of Venice away on the war galleys for so long, the Pietd did a roaring rescue service.

  The little bar on the Garibaldi was open. It's the only one in Venice without a big glass of colored water for you to drop tips in. Six o'clock and dark when finally I left the bar. Seven-thirty I was outside of another three pizzas and waiting for action at a table on the Zattere waterfront, watching the big ships thrash by. Never know why, but a ship entering harbor always looks reluctant, and one setting out looks eager. With me it's the other way about.

  This boat taxi picked me up exactly at eight.

  The water taxi man didn't have to ask my name. He simply walked up among the tables, tapped my shoulder, and led me to his boat. Shoddier than Cesare's, and the boatman wore the air of a part-timer, not an authentic Venetian taxi man.

  "Where are we going?" I asked chattily.

  "Talking not allowed." No information, but no secrecy either. I sat inside the cabin, able to see us head noisily away from the Zattere waterfront cafes.

  His crummy boat just about made it to the Giudecca, a long thin island which curves round Venice's bottom, forming a wide natural harbor. He dumped me quite illegally on an azienda waterbus jetty where the number eight stops near the Eufemia church and chugged off without waiting to be paid. An all-time Venetian first. It unnerved me more than any rip-off.

  Ten minutes later, wandering and wondering if Tonio and Placido had forgotten, I was collected by an equally decrepit but open boat steered by the hairiest boatman on earth, a real Cro-Magnon. He transferred me in the darkness to a more respectable cabin craft, an unnerving experience which left me shaking. They could have drowned me. A cheerful geezer hooded me with a bag thing. There were no lights. He tied my hands and sat me on a bunk in the cabin.

  "Look," I said in an appalled muffled falsetto. "What if we sink?"

  "We drown, signore," he said pleasantly. "I can't swim either. We Venetians have this superstition: Learn to swim and the lagoon thinks you distrust her."

  "She does?" I bleated, scared out of my wits.

  "And takes revenge. Especially at the time of the acqua alta."

  "High water?" That's what Tonio had warned Signora Norman about.

  "Signore, acqua alia is 110 centimeters above sea level. When the sirocco meets the north bora winds, it will rise twice that."

  "But Venice is only thirty inches above sea level as it is. You mean she could go four feet under?"

  I gave a bleat. He fell about at that, so much that the boat swung and I lost my sense of direction. I'd never met such poisonous hilarity before. Before that, I'd been sure we were heading in towards the Fusina channel. Portia had set out from there to defend her lover from the wrath of Shylock in the Merchant.

  I listened. For anything. That clonking lagoon bell. The long cacophony of bells the San Giorgio Maggiore sometimes stuns you with, warning women to keep away. Well, hormones and monasteries don't mix.

  "What's up?" I croaked inside my hood. The engine had cut. "Are we okay?"

  "I am." A guffaw, the sadistic pig.

  Then it dawned on me. You can detect the way a small boat is turning sometimes by its engine sound, depending where you are. The swimmer's trick in the water. Cut power, and a boat can bob in any direction. Bitterly I sat cursing the time I'd wasted memorizing that bloody massive map. We did the engine-cutting trick four times in the next hour. At the finish I didn't even care where we were, much less know, and nodded off in my hood.

  And screamed. The boat had touched something solid, immovable. Feet clumped, hands pulled me, and blokes talked quite casually. I tried kicking and holding on to the cabin door but was prised loose by a simple nudge. They shoved me, wailing inside my hood, onto the gunwale step and over the boat's side. Legs together in a panicky attempt to hit the water feet first, the jarring concrete nearly popped my head off. Land. I was on land. I'd nearly peed myself from fright. I vaguely remember tumbling over and lying shivering while everybody had a good laugh and a boat bumped small vibrations into the stone. Then I was tugged to my feet and hustled up some steps, me holding back and trying to foot-feel my way while they had a whale of a time hauling me along and telling me, "You're all right," as I stumbled and crashed behind my captors. My elbows kept being brushed, first this side, then that, and now and again my hood was scratched.

  "Duck," my merry boatman advised every few yards. I did, slow to realize it was another joke to make my blind antics all the more comical. I blundered on, pushed and pulled by anybody that felt like an ego trip. A born duck-egg, I decided the joke had gone too far and kept going without crouching—and brained myself on some low arch. You can imagine the jollity and all-round merriment as I was lifted and elbow-walked down two flights, eighteen steps each. Twenty-seven paces one direction, a right turn. Thirty paces, a door. Twenty more paces, another door.

  Hood off, and somebody untying my hands. Light so blinding my head felt lasered. Vision returned with some pain. The first person I saw was Tonio. The second was my boatman, still making everybody laugh, but this time acting out for Tonio's benefit my blind falls on the way from the boat.

  It was a massively wide brick-lined room, strip-lit. Huge. A ventilator hummed, but the place's scent was dankish, cool. A score or so men worked silently at easels, on wall benches, at desks. One chipped at a piece of masonry in a screened comer. Hardly a glance from the lot of them. Clearly a dedicated bunch. From a tall monastic-looking lectemed desk at the far end an old gray-haired bloke peered down at us. It was a factory.

  "Another scratcher, Luciano." Tonio gave me a bored jerk of his head to report. Luciano the expert, presumably foreman of all this faking industry. "And you can go, 'Carlo.”

  My friendly boatman and his two goons were actually at the door when I said casually, "Oh, Carlo. Sorry about your chart," and I headed for Luciano's desk.

  "Wait!" I paused agreeably at Tonio's command. "Chart? What chart?"

  "Eh? Oh, Carlo's." Tonio's pale stare worried Carlo. You could tell that from the way his smile had frozen.

  "I keep no chart, signore," Carlo said, his voice an echo of my own terror-stricken croaking.

  "It was an accident," I explained, ever so anxious to avoid misunderstanding. "I nudged him. Carlo said I'd spoil this chart he was keeping, if I wasn't careful." The two goons took a quiet step away from Carlo. Nobody was laughing now. I was really pleased at that. "But it wasn't mv fault, you see. I couldn't see a damned thing, for that hood."

  "Shut it, Lovejoy. You keep interesting secret charts. Carlo?"

  Carlo went gray. "He's lying. There are no charts."

  "I never actually saw it," I put in, so anxious. "Does it matter?"

  "Carlo." Tonio's reproachful voice was a sickly purr. I went cold. Carlo began to sweat.

  "Signore. I swear before God."

  "Find it, you two."

  The goons whisked him out of the door before I could grin and tell Carlo to mind his head. It would have been my little quip, but my throat had clogged. I still feel rotten about Carlo, God rest his soul. Not wanting to face Tonio's gaze I ambled down the factory towards Luciano, who had my skewered Elizabethan coaster on his high desk. He looked straight out of Dickens: tidy dark suit, if
you please, neat dark tie and white cuffs showing, even pebble specs.

  His voice was the quavering of a lamb in the next county. "What was all that about?"

  ''Dunno. Some chart or other."

  "Crummy piece of work, this, Lovejoy." His eyes bubbled at me through the thick lenses.

  "Never said it wasn't."

  That tickled him into twinkly humor. "Not had time to put the word round to see if you're any good as a faker, Lovejoy." The unyielding complaint of the disciplined serf.

  "Faker? Me? I'm an authentic antique dealer."

  An artist painting nearby overheard and snickered, a sound I heard with a glow of pleasure. As long as we were all being sensible.

  "You did a perfect sketch, I'm told," old Luciano said. "And burnt it."

  "Hardly perfect." I cleared my throat. "Yes. The signora was playing games."

  He harumphed, nodding, indicated the nearby artist. "Take a look. Tell me what you think."

  I went over, asking, "Where'd you get the photo?" The artist, a skeletal bearded geezer shoddied in smeared denim, took no notice, working steadily on at his canvas. It was laid horizontal on a trestle, first time I'd actually seen that trick used. As long as your paint's consistency is exactly right, once the canvas is dry enough you can lift it erect and judge the craquelure as it actually develops. This is great for artificial aging. I'd have to try that when I got a minute. A huge photograph was mounted on the wall, skillfully lit. "I thought cameras aren't allowed in the Correr."

  They're not," Luciano said.

  'Well done." The Correr Museum forbids cameras and handbags. It makes you deposit them in the ticket office anteroom at the head of the stairs, and that's the only permitted entrance. So a marvelous color of Carpaccio's La Visitazione spoke volumes about Tonio's powers of organization. "Isn't your photo a bit small though?" The canvas looked about right, four feet by four ten or so.

  "It's the way I work," the artist said.

  "Mmmm." Fakers sometimes do this, copy from smaller photographs because it prevents that telltale woodenness from creeping into the fake, the bane of all art forgers since the beginning of time. Don't try it when forging watercolors, incidentally. Doesn't work.

  He was "squaring." This means dividing the photo of the original into squares, and painting his repro square by square. Makes faking easier, but is a dead giveaway to seasoned connoisseurs—especially if they have an X-ray machine handy. Almost anybody can create a fake which will pass for original at a quick glance. It takes somebody like Keating or On to do class jobs. Or me, on a good day. This bloke was using a camera lucida to cast reflected lines onto his canvas. It saves drawing them and leaving telltale marks, and seems like a good idea. I raised my eyebrows. Luciano gave me a rueful shrug as I strolled back.

  "Is he careful enough, Luciano?"

  "He's not bad."

  "I can't see his reference lines." Forgers using squares from a camera lucida must have a standard measured square, because you have to adjust the damned thing when you switch it on at the start of every session. Most of us— er, I mean those nasty illegal fakers—nail a piece of card to the top rear of the canvas frame and focus in on it for accuracy.

  "Domenico does it by eye."

  'Two cheers for Domenico." A steady but faint thump-thump-thump came from behind the brick wall. Somebody must be forging the Great Pyramid with a steamhammer. As I listened, it faded into silence.

  "Decided, Luciano?" Tonio called.

  The old man quavered instantly, "Si, Tonio. Lovejoy can start helping Giovanni on the Doge's Palace stonework. We're behind with those."

  "Eh?"

  "Over there." Luciano pointed to the far corner with his quill, a real quill.

  "Me?" I said indignantly. "I'm only here to advise, you ignorant old sod."

  He shook with inaudible laughter. "I work too. Lovejoy. Look." He showed me what he was doing, a large Missa Solemnis on his high bench, faking away at a hell of a lick. He had black and red inks. It's a saying among forgers that a fake must be even better than the original. Well, grudgingly I had to admit his massive pages looked superb. The cunning old devil was even annotating the margins in a diluted ochrous brown as he went. Lovely work. "Get to it, Lovejoy," he scolded amiably. "Remember. Idleness was a capital offense among the Incas."

  "They're extinct, right?" I groused back, and ambled over towards the screens in the comer.

  Tonio saw and nodded. "You do exactly as Giovanni says, Lovejoy," he ordered. "We want our money's worth."

  "Cheek. What money?" I peered behind the screens. The comer space was rigged out exactly like a medieval stonemason's workshop. This thinnish bald bloke, presumably Giovanni, was chipping away at a supported capital.

  "The signore will explain." Tonio wasn't smiling, so presumably he meant it. "Get to work."

  "I already told him that," Luciano piped querulously.

  "Yes. Get to work," the stonemason said, not even bothering to look.

  "Coming, bazz," I greeted Giovanni cheerfully. "Call that carving? Shift over and give me a go." I'd made it. A worker in old Pinder's factory of forgers and fakers.

  22

  "Cocky bastard."

  That was Giovanni's greeting, almost all he said during that long working night.

  "Ducal Palace, eh?" I said chirpily, coming in and shedding my jacket while I gave his stone carving the onceover. "Name's Lovejoy. Why'd you choose the judgment of Solomon, Giovanni? You should have started with that lovely stuff by Bon."

  "Get to work."

  "It's from the capital next to the Basilica, isn't it?" I fondled the stone, checking its progress against the plaster-cast mold he had ledged on a chair. "Look, Giovanni, old pal. D'you really believe it's old Jacopo della Quercia's work? I mean to say, 1410 a.d. is a hell of a—"

  "Get to work."

  "Your Archangel Gabriel's head's too protuberant."

  I reached for the sander. Giovanni moved aside and called, "Ventilator's on, lads." I looked about inquiringly. The others all down the factory called fine, okay. Giovanni nodded, pushed down a boxed switch, and a hood above us hummed into action. The lazy blighter sat while I smoothed part of the angel's form. He also had his lunch from his sandwich box, offering me none. Lucky I'd stocked up with that bellyful of pizzas. He didn't offer to lend me his goggles, either.

  I slammed into the task of copying the plaster cast. Go to the comer of the Doge's Palace and look at the capital nearest the actual Basilica. These capitals are grand stuff as sculpture, but they're too grim for my liking. All with the same despondent message of mortality, and what a horrendous business life is. Not a smile anywhere.

  Still, I was happy, doing what comes naturally. Don't misunderstand. Forgery's not as bad as it's painted. Not even factory-sized.

  I mean, generations of collectors have enjoyed their "Canaletto" paintings sublimely unaware that the young William Henry Hunt actually painted many of them as copies in Doctor Monro's so-called academy (for "one shilling and sixpence the hour," Hunt's little fellow slogger John Linnell said bitterly). Some were sold as originals, as Linnell knew, but that doesn't really worry me. Why should it? The "Canaletto Secret" was to paint a series of color glazes over a monochrome painting. That extraordinary light effect he achieved in his natural-history pictures has given a zillion people pleasure. So if little William and John painted just as brilliantly, what the hell. And I don't mind that El Greco by 1585 had a cellarful of minions turning out titchy copies of his own efforts while he dined grandly upstairs—to the scrapings of a private orchestra in the twenty-four-room pad he'd hired from the Marques de Villena. The morals of fakery are the same by the ounce as the ton. Make a note of that.

  As I worked, I tried merry chat as a way of collecting some news. Giovanni was impervious. He chomped, swilled his vino. Then he sat, dozily coming to every few minutes to see how I was getting on.

  "How many of us are there, pal?" I tried. And, "How long you been at this game, eh?" And, "What's the goin
g rate, Gianni? Paid piece by piece, from the way you stick at it, I’ll bet!"

  Not a word. A Venetian's silence when the subject's money spoke volumes. Gossip is therefore forbidden, the penalties very, very heavy. I began to worry about that ashen look on Carlo's face. (Worried sick about being worried—now about the flaming enemy, I ask you!) I gave the somnolent Giovanni a friendly kick and told him to start roughing out the next stone capital.

  Luciano put his head through the screens at this point, smiled and nodded and moved on. Doing his rounds of the forgery factory to see we were all doing our stuff, I supposed. Whatever the rest were like, I was determined Lovejoy would be exemplary. I'd see I would do twice as well as these fakers. If they worked fast, I’d work faster. And I'd make their natural forgers' versatility look like the plod-dings of pedestrian hacks. I told Luciano not to interrupt the workers.

  All that long night we worked, and I learned nothing useful. A couple of odd details, though. One was that thump-thump-thump that recurred occasionally. Another was that Tonio disappeared once I'd got settled in and working. He was replaced by the two goons.

  And there were other oddities. For instance, I'd never seen a forger worth his salt simply stand aside and let another bloke take over his handiwork, because forgers consider themselves artists of a high order. Yet Giovanni, the slob, had let me take charge of his sculpture. And, at least as strange, nobody talked. Three times I went past the other busy forgers on my way to the loo, and paused to make a friendly comment. No avail. Even Domenico gave me the bent eye.

  The loo was a chemical can. No chance of flushing into the lagoon a message in a bottle, or a marker dye to trace. And no watches. No clocks. No radios. No apparent ventilation except the hood which hung suspended over Giovanni's masonry comer.

  The goons knocked off after about four hours, and were replaced by a bloke who whistled through his teeth and read a kid's color comic. Occasionally he chuckled, and sometimes read a difficult passage moving his lips with his forehead frowning in concentration.

  They took us away one by one about an hour after this neanderthal was replaced by our two originals. Home time. I was last to go, apart from Luciano.