“Buon giorno,” I said as I returned into the kitchen.
“Oh, good morning, Adam,” said Crace.
“I thought we’d try something different today rather than brioche,” I said. “The pasticceria had the most lovely baicoli. Look.”
I slipped the little biscuits, named after the tiny lagoon fish that they were supposed to resemble, onto a plate and displayed them proudly before Crace.
“Quite adorable, yes. What a treat.”
I poured his coffee into a cup and made myself another instant.
“What’s wrong with you? Gone all prole on me now, have you?”
I laughed, looking at my cup.
“No, it’s just that we’re out of coffee. The pasticceria didn’t have the blend you like. Actually we’re down on most things. I’m going to have to do another big shop.”
“How can that be?” said Crace. “I thought we still had a cupboard full of provisions. Surely we don’t need more.”
I talked him through the list of what we needed, adding how awful it would be if we ran out of something essential during the long afternoons when all the local shops were closed. Would he really want me disappearing for hours at time searching for a shop, not knowing when I would return? Surely it would be better if I got everything we needed today.
“But you promise you won’t be very long?” he pleaded.
“I’ll try and be as quick as I can.”
“That’s no good,” he snapped. “You need to tell me exactly. You don’t understand—I have to know. I need to know when you are coming back.”
I looked at my watch. It was nine in the morning. The shopping usually took me an hour or so, but that day I planned on incorporating something else into my trip.
“Three hours?” I said.
Crace looked taken aback, almost as if I had insulted him.
“No, that’s far too long. An hour and a half.”
I felt like I was in an auction, competing in a bid for myself.
“Let’s compromise. Two hours.”
Crace paused before nodding his head.
“Very well—but not a minute longer.”
After breakfast, he shuffled into his study and came back with a handful of notes. Although he measured out his time, he was certainly more than generous with his money. I wondered where he kept what must be quite a considerable stash.
“Here is three hundred euros,” he said. “If there’s too much to carry, take a water taxi back to the bridge. And what you don’t spend, you may keep.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking the cash, feeling his finger linger just a moment too long on the palm of my hand.
“So I’ll see you back here at eleven,” said Crace as he closed the door and I walked across the bridge.
As soon as I was out of sight, I quickened my pace and took my guidebook from my rucksack. I flicked to the blue pages at the back. Getting Around. Resources A–Z—accommodation, banks and money, business, crime and safety… drugs… health and hospitals…internet and email. I worked out which of the internet cafés was nearest, found its location on the map and started to walk as quickly as I could. After the claustrophobia of being stuck inside Crace’s palazzo with only a wizened old man for company, I found walking through the crowds intensely enjoyable and liberating. I smiled at a couple of Italian shop girls as they walked by and even turned around to watch them strut down the street. I caught a whiff of coffee as I strode by a bar, and even though it was only 9:30 and I had plenty of time, I had to fight the urge to sit down at a table and just watch the world go by.
A few minutes later I found the street, past a bank, a fruit shop, two pasticcerias and another bar. I walked back up again. I began to panic. There was no sign of it. It must be here. I would simply have to ask. I walked into the bar. Five or six men stood at the marble counter enjoying their morning wine—un’ombra, “a shade,” Venetians called a glass of wine, because traditionally wine used to be stored in parts of the city that were not exposed to the sun; the digging of cellars, of course, was completely out of the question.
I bought a bottle of water and asked the barman—a man with a leathery, contour-lined face—about the location of the Network House.
“It’s next to the bank, down some stairs,” he said. “But it’s closed.”
“What time does it open?”
He puffed on a cigarette.
“It will not open,” he said. “Closed for good.”
“Are you sure?”
He inhaled again, as if that was answer enough, and turned away.
I retrieved my map from my bag and found another internet café—a twenty minutes’ walk away. I checked my watch. I would not have as much time as I had hoped, but it wouldn’t take me long to do the shopping. I downed my water, left some coins on the counter and walked toward Dorsoduro. As I snaked my way across the city, over the Accademia bridge and through the narrow calles, I tried to enjoy the two hours out of captivity. But with each snatched glimpse of a yet another church that housed spectacular art, I felt increasingly resentful and angry.
I arrived at the internet café feeling like I had bathed in a warm, sticky liquid. The physical relief on entering the air-conditioned space was immense, but I knew I hadn’t time to relax. I went to the reception desk, where I was assigned a computer, logged on and typed in the address of a search engine. I entered Crace’s name. Over five thousand hits. Why hadn’t I heard much about him before? I clicked on the first entry on the list.
The potted synopsis of his life told me that he had been born in 1931 in Edinburgh, where his father worked as a science master at a public school. He went to Oxford in 1949, where he read English, and graduated in 1952. Crace decided to follow his father into teaching and took a job at a little known fee-paying school in Dorset. It was while he was a teacher that he wrote his first novel, The Debating Society, published in 1962. “A clever conceit that rises above the drive for mere novelty, The Debating Society un-masks the pretence of our so-called modern civilised society to reveal the darkness lurking beneath,” was how a critic from the Times had described it. I wondered how the teachers and the parents of the boys at Crace’s school had reacted to one of the masters writing such a novel. The report also said the book, to date, had sold over three million copies. But although there were reports that Crace was at work on another novel, he never published anything else. In 1967 he told a journalist, “I am giving up writing because I have nothing relevant left to say. I have enjoyed enormous success with my first novel, and I thank all my readers for their support and encouragement. However, I am sure they would not thank me if I carried on publishing. Why spoil such a perfect, beautiful relationship?”
I clicked back to the five thousand hits and scanned down the list for clues. More bibliographies, more potted outlines of Crace’s life, but nothing deeper, nothing more detailed. What about that woman, Mrs. M. Shaw? A surge of adrenaline flowed through me as I tapped in her name and Crace’s in the search engine. I bit into my left thumbnail as I waited for the results. I was sure I was onto something. The tiny circular computer icon whizzed around the screen for what seemed like several seconds too long before it flashed up the message, “No search results.” I repeated the process using the surnames only but just got some useless genealogical information about a family in Fort Worth that happened to have the two names in their conjoined history. I was about to tap in Lavinia Maddon’s name when I looked at the clock at the top right-hand corner of the screen. It read 10:14 AM. I only had three-quarters of an hour to do the shopping and get back to the palazzo.
Just before I was about to end my session, I clicked back to my initial search results and scrolled down one more time. Buried amidst all the extraneous material—the duplicate entries, the posted discussions about the merits of the film versus the book, and gossip about various cast members of the movie—was one entry that began with the words, “Writer Gordon Crace finds tenant dead—suicide.” I double-clicked on it, my heart beginnin
g to beat faster. The details were sketchy, but it was obvious someone had posted the information culled from a newspaper report back in August 1967. I scanned the story for a name of the dead person, but nothing came up. I terminated my internet session, paid at reception and rushed out. Thankfully, Billa, one of the few proper supermarkets in the whole of Venice, was nearby in Zattere.
I shopped manically, throwing groceries—fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, olive oil, coffee, cold meats and cheese—and more cleaning materials into the trolley as I steered my way through the supermarket. After queuing up and paying for the shopping, I realized that I still had enough money left to get a water taxi back to the palazzo—I would have to as it was already 10:45. Using my mobile, I called the central water taxi office, but I was told they didn’t have one free for another half hour, which was far too late for me. The longer I waited at Zattere, gazing across the waters at the Mulino Stucky building on Giudecca, the more anxious I became. Every one of the little speedboats that motored past was full, and my attempts to hail one were dismissed by their drivers with arrogant turns of the hand and supercilious expressions. Just as I was about to give up hope, a vaporetto surrounded by clouds of fumes chugged down the Canale di Fusina and stopped. It was an 82, which would take me to San Zaccaria. I didn’t have time to get a ticket, but would have to risk it. The journey down the canal, between the two islands and past the baroque splendor of Santa Maria della Salute, was probably one of the most sublime experiences in the world, yet I paid no attention to the famous sights; I was too worried about what I would say to Crace when I got back. It was as if traces of guilt were smeared across my face and I was sure he would see them.
At San Zaccaria I found—just as it was too late to really make a difference, of course—a free water taxi. After negotiating the price, the driver, a handsome muscular man with a tanned face, took hold of the shopping and helped me into the boat. It was clear he was friendly and wanted to chat; as he guided the taxi through the narrow canals toward Castello, he kept turning around and smiling, but I wasn’t in the mood. No matter how much I told myself not to worry, that I had done nothing wrong, the more uneasy I became. As we approached the side canal that led to Crace’s palazzo, I saw a flotilla of gondolas bobbing up and down in the dark water. What was it that Crace had said the other night about gondolas? “‘Like coffins clapt in a canoe’—Byron,” he said. It was an old observation, now something of a cliché, but the image had unsettled me.
I arrived back at the palazzo at 11:30. I crossed the bridge and let myself in. It was quiet.
“Gordon? Gordon?” I shouted as I opened the door. “Sorry I’m so late. You wouldn’t believe it—I couldn’t find a water taxi anywhere.”
There was no response.
I walked into the drawing room, but Crace wasn’t there, nor was he in the kitchen. I knocked on the door of his bedroom.
“Gordon? Are you there?”
I opened the door and saw him lying on his bed. Was he asleep? The parquet floor creaked as I walked toward him.
“Don’t come near me,” he said, still with his eyes closed.
“Sorry?”
“You promised you’d be back by eleven. And look what time it is. It’s just unacceptable behavior. Completely unacceptable.”
“But it was just impossible to find a water taxi. At Zattere—”
“So what did you come back in? What was it that dropped you off down there—a giant water rat?”
Crace had obviously been watching from a window and had seen me get out.
“Yes, I did get one—finally—but not until San Zaccaria. Honestly, Gordon, I—”
“You’ll find an excuse, but it’s no use.” The rhyme sounded odd, sinister even.
I realized there was no point in arguing. “I’ll let you calm down a little and then perhaps we can talk,” I said, turning to go.
Crace slowly eased himself up on the bed and opened his eyes. “It’s just that you know I simply cannot bear it.”
“What?”
I waited for an explanation.
“I cannot endure it, being left like that. You’ve no idea how much it pains me.”
I didn’t say any more, hoping my silence would prompt some further insight into his peculiar character, but none was forthcoming.
“I know I’ve made you promise before and it didn’t make much difference,” he said, pursing his lips. “But you must tell me now whether you are prepared to do what I say. Otherwise I will have to let you go just like I did with that other unfortunate boy.”
“The one before me?”
“Indeed.”
“What happened to him?”
“He reneged on his promises and he had to be dismissed.” I sensed that Crace’s anger was subsiding. “But I really would rather not go through the whole process of finding another.”
He obviously needed me. I could understand why my predecessor did not last long in Crace’s employment, but I realized I needed Crace too.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get back in time. But it was completely out of my hands. I probably should have set out sooner, but honestly I didn’t do it on purpose. And yes, I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Very well. Very well.” He paused. “So what’s for lunch?”
I cannot say how—or exactly when—the idea first occurred to me. It was one of those thoughts that seemed like it had been floating at the back of my brain for days, just waiting to take shape.
Crace’s biography. I was going to write it.
I was the perfect person. I had the access—the subject was under my nose. I had the time. And I doubted whether the novel I was planning would ever take shape. Surely it was better to make my name with this project—an in-depth portrait of a once-successful author, now so reclusive that he hadn’t stepped out of his crumbling palazzo for the last twenty years—and then present the publisher with my novel. I was certain that his was an extraordinary story, one I was sure I could make work. Why should some stranger—this Lavinia Maddon—cash in on Crace? For all her vestiges of seriousness, her New Yorker bylines and her flashy address, she had no inside knowledge of the man. She didn’t know him as I did.
I realized that it would probably be quite impossible to publish the book while Crace was alive. But surely it was only a matter of time before he keeled over and died. Even though he was not yet seventy, from my own eyes I could tell he was not in good health. He was as frail as an old, starved dog. I would do the research, get as close to him as I possibly could, and then publish as soon as reasonably possible after his death. And although Crace had said he loathed the idea of biography and biographers—nothing but “publishing scoundrels” he called them—I was sure that he would appreciate such a tribute to his life. It was only fitting that it should be done by someone who understood him, someone who cared.
In search of more letters from Lavinia Maddon, I tackled the pile of correspondence once again. But now, inspired by my new plan, I looked for anything of interest—snippets of biographical detail, postcards from old acquaintances, publishing returns. If a letter intrigued me, I either set it to one side to read later or copied it down into a new notebook I had bought for the purpose. To Crace, who sometimes walked in as I worked, it looked as though I was doing a particularly thorough job. He stood behind me, laying a hand lightly on my shoulder, uttered a couple of approving phrases and then shuffled out.
One of the first letters I came across in my quest for the heart and soul of Crace was the original approach from Lavinia Maddon, dated 12 February. My God, she was good. You had to admire her determination, her seductive way with words. No wonder she had attracted so much praise. The note was charm itself, shrouding her real intention—to expose and exploit her subject—with fancy phrasing and elegant expressions. She did not want to cause offense; she had Crace’s best interests at heart; if he agreed, she promised to show him his quotes for approval; she was not concerned so much with biographical fact as with literary form
. Reading it almost persuaded me that she was the best person for the job. I slipped the letter into the sleeve at the back of my notebook; I would deal with her later.
That morning I also finally came across a couple of royalty checks. It was incredible that Crace’s novel was not only still in print, but that it sold in more than respectable quantities. I thought I’d present Crace with the checks over lunch. It would be interesting to see his reaction. After all, everything now was research.
Just after preparing a lunch of bread, Parma ham, figs and cheese, I told Crace to close his eyes.
“For what purpose, may I ask?”
“I’ve got something to show you”
“What?”
“Wait and see,” I said.
“It seems extremely tiresome. Why can’t you show me now?”
He pretended to be irritated, but I could tell he was as excited as a schoolboy faced with the prospect of an unexpected gift.
“Come on now.”
“Oh, very well.”
As the thinning skin drooped down over his lids, I imagined him dead and placing two coins on his eyes.
“Hold out your hands.”
He reached toward me, his hands cupped like a supplicant. I placed the two statements from his publishers into his palms.
“You can open up now.”
Crace blinked and looked down, his weak eyes first twinkling in anticipation and then recoiling in horror. He dropped the statements. His throat quivered, a gobbet of spit appeared at the corner of his mouth.
“What? What’s wrong?”
He was so perplexed he couldn’t talk.
“I thought you’d be pleased to see them—they’re your checks. You’re still selling quite well.”
Crace struggled to catch his breath as he reached out for his glass of water.
“The title—” he spat out. “Get rid of the name.”
“Sorry?”
“On that statement…I don’t want to see it. I can’t bear to. I thought I’d told you—no mention, no mention at all.”
The Lying Tongue Page 6
