This was really stupid, I suddenly told myself. It was certainly not the way to forward my purpose: Okay, Venice might not be the best place for forward thinking—even the vaporetti sometimes seem to go backward—but there was no need for me to aid and abet the city by wallowing in its mushy memories, and getting rheumatism in addition. I got up and made firmly back down the Riva.
I caught a number-five boat and was taken through the Arsenale to the Fondamente Nuove, and from there made my way to a small square nearby, where the Britannia School was situated. The school occupied a fair-sized palazzo with a Gothic frontage. It was originally just a private English-language school for the citizens of Venice, one of the many in the city, and then one year Mr. Robin, its director, conceived the idea of hosting an art course for English students on his premises as well.
The courses took off well. Indeed, it was owing to their success that he was able to move his school from what by all accounts had been a very run-down building at the other end of Cannareggio to this rather impressive four-story Gothic palazzo. The language school occupied the damp, sometimes even flooded, ground floor and second floor, while the pre-university course (generally referred to as the Derek Robin Course) occupied the more imposing first floor: the piano nobile. The third floor was Mr. Robin’s own flat—an inviolable sanctuary.
It was to the piano nobile that I now made my way. I entered the large reception room from the staircase at the side and looked around its marbled magnificence—polished floor, decorated oak beams, faded bucolic frescoes. The furniture was a bit of a letdown, consisting as it did of rows of lightweight gray chairs, all facing a white hanging screen on the end wall. There was no one around. I crossed the room and tapped on the door marked “Segreteria.” A voice said, “AVANTI,” and I entered. The school secretary was sitting at the other side of a huge desk, which was mostly occupied by the Venetian newspaper, Il Gazzettino. She recognized me immediately: “Mr. Pheeps!”
“Ciao, Luisa.”
We went through a long-time-no-see routine, by the end of which I had taken in the following facts: she had put on weight, she still hadn’t married her long-standing fidanzato, she knew all about my Fall. All of these facts I had deduced from visual evidence. She hadn’t asked me a single question about the last two years other than how I had been keeping, but there was a whole flood of them waiting to burst through the dam of her decorum. I concluded our little reunion with the question “Mr. Robin in?”
“He’s upstairs in his flat.”
“Oh. I’ll just pop up and knock on the door—”
“Well, no,” she said immediately.
“Just joking, Luisa.” Mr. Robin had never been known to invite anyone in, even for a cup of coffee. I suppose he wanted to make sure that his flat didn’t turn into the school canteen, but it led to speculation among the staff about opium fumes, lurid tapestries, naked concubines … or perhaps just china ducks on the wall.
She lifted the internal phone and buzzed him. He was down in half a minute, his usual elegant self. I always hoped one day to catch him out with some tiny imperfection in his appearance—say, the loops of his shoelaces not exactly equal circles, or one bristle outside the ruler-drawn borders of his beard—but as ever I was disappointed: he was dressed with immaculate geometrical precision. He wasn’t even allowing any of his undoubted puzzlement to crease his brow.
“Ah, Martin. Very good to see you.”
“And you. Yes, I’m out again.”
He nodded. “Ah yes, I see.”
I said, “And I’ve come to Venice for a holiday. But I thought I’d drop in and see how the course is going.”
“Oh, just fine, just fine. Er, where are you staying?”
He was probably worried that I’d come looking for a job—and if so, he was right. I’d known that there would have been no chance of his offering me a post if I’d simply telephoned plaintively from London, but by turning up in person, I thought I might be able to win him over: at least it would be clear that I wasn’t expecting my airfare to be paid. I was prepared to negotiate over the hotel too. “Little place on Via Garibaldi,” I said. “Um, I was wondering if you, er…”
“We’ve got a very full course this year, you know,” he broke in, as if apropos of nothing. “Some excellent teachers. We’re doing quite a bit on architecture as well, with tours round some of the villas on the mainland. That’s where all the students are this afternoon.”
“Ah. So there wouldn’t be any chance of my doing my usual stint?”
“Well, nothing’s been programmed,” he said. I remembered now that nothing really existed for Mr. Robin unless it was first on paper: he lived his life by programs and schedules and timetables, probably visiting the loo only after official self-notification in triplicate. He was probably the only inhabitant of Italy who took any of the state’s spaghettilike entanglement of red tape seriously. “And of course,” he went on, “you have to remember that the course has, em, a…” He tailed off in an uncharacteristically hesitant way.
“I know. A reputation to keep up.”
“Em—well, precisely.”
“I wasn’t sent to jail for white slavery, you know.”
“No, but…” And he nodded significantly as if that “but” said it all.
“Look, didn’t I always go down well with the students?”
“Yes, and I’m sure you would now. It’s the parents I have to think of.”
“Well, there you are, I’m not on the program, so why should they know anything?”
He frowned. I think the idea of getting a few extra lessons on the cheap probably appealed to him, but he was just naturally averse to anything improvised.
I persisted. “I’ve brought my slides, you know.” There may have been a certain lack of dignity in my position but, hell, I needed the money. “And I’ll slot in whenever you like.”
Luisa, who followed English well enough, spoke up in Italian: “Remember that Signor Jones has had to cancel his lessons.”
“Ah yes.”
“If it would make you any easier,” I said, “I’ll call myself Mr. Jones.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment, as if seriously considering the advantages of this both from the bureaucratic point of view and that of reputation. He said, “Well, we won’t alter the program officially, but we’ll slip you in there and explain to the students in person.”
For him, agreeing to do something unofficial must have been like putting on an unironed shirt. I said, “Thanks. That’s really kind.”
“Not at all. Mr. Jones was to talk on Venetian choral music.”
“Well, I’ll stick to pictures, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Yes, yes.” He seemed to feel that it was all concluded. He probably wanted me to discuss all other arrangements now with Luisa; after all, as I had accepted an unofficial status, I no longer existed as far as he was concerned. He said, “Well, I now have some paperwork to see to.”
“Yes, well, thanks for bending things for me.”
He almost winced. “Glad to have been of help,” he said. He made for the door, but as he reached it he turned and said, “You said you’re in a hotel?”
“What? Oh, yes, yes.” Great, I thought, here comes the offer to pay the bill.
“Well, please remember, if you should move into any private accommodation, to register at once with the Questura.”
“Oh, er, yes, of course.”
“I make this clear to everyone every year, as you know,” he said.
He did. You’d think he had shares with the stationers supplying the Questura.
“But this year,” he went on, “we must be extra-careful. On account of these murders.”
“These what?”
“Do you mean to say you haven’t heard?”
“Remember I’ve only just arrived here.”
“Well, Luisa will fill you in,” he said, as if murders were a detail that went along with the timetable and the pay sheet.
“Oh, right
.”
“One other thing, Martin.”
“Yes?”
“Please remember that you are here unofficially and try not to call attention to your presence.”
“What, no sandwich boards?”
He considered this remark and obviously filed it away under the heading Irrelevant. “I mean, try and maintain standards of decorum, whether in or outside the school.”
“Are you thinking of any specific slobbish episodes in my past?” I said, a little offended—well, quite a lot offended actually.
“I would just be happier if you avoided contact with the students outside your lessons.”
Here was definitely the point to say in a cold and dignified way that if he was as worried as all that about my corrupting influence, I would do him a favor and withdraw my offer of lessons.
But I needed the money. So I said, “I see”—in a cold and dignified way of course.
“After all,” he said, “they are only just out of school, you know.”
“Would you like me to put my talks on tape so they don’t even have to see me?”
“Well, no. We needn’t go as far as that. Good-bye Martin.”
He left me alone with Luisa: he must have decided she could look after herself.
I said, “Please tell me he’s said the same thing to everyone.”
She smiled and shook her head. “But you mustn’t take him too seriously. He has to be careful. You know, last year a girl got pregnant.”
“I have an unbreakable alibi,” I said. I wondered whether it was only my criminal record that worried Mr. Robin. Could he, despite all our discretion at the time, have heard of my unteacherly relationship with Lucy? Some of the other students clearly had (witness Melinda), and word might have got back.
“Yes, it was a Venetian boy.”
“And these murders,” I said. “Was it Mr. Robin avenging the honor of his course?”
She laughed but then looked serious. “No, these murders are something horrible. The papers here have talked of nothing else.” She pushed her Gazzettino over the table and I saw the headline: NO DEVELOPMENT IN RED KILLINGS. It had to be serious for a lack of developments to make the front page. Or else there was no other news.
“Who got killed?”
“There have been two killings, one in Castello and one in Mestre. They were both terroristi pentiti.” That meant literally “penitent terrorists.” But since the law was passed awarding significant reductions in jail sentences to terrorists (and then to mafiosi) who collaborated with the law, the word pentito has come to mean little more than “informer.” “They were shot. But the horrible thing was that in both cases their tongues had been torn out.”
“Oh, God, how sick. It’s like something the Mafia does.”
“Yes. That’s what all the newspapers said.”
“So who was it?”
“The BR, you know,” she said.
I remembered that the first time I saw these initials in an Italian newspaper I’d wondered how British Rail had got involved in assassination—and then I’d thought of what Red Brigades would be in Italian. “So is that why there are carabinieri everywhere?”
“I expect so,” she said.
“I thought the BR were all in jail now—or had all become social workers or ecologists.”
“Yes, well, they think they’re just a small group of irreducibili.” The opposite of the pentiti—the hard-liner or psychopathic ones.
“I see. Small, but nasty. When were these murders?”
“One after Christmas, and one a week ago. In fact, only one was a real pentito, the other was just a man who’d given some information at a trial but who had never been accused of anything himself.”
“I see. So an easy target.”
We fell silent for a moment and I found my tongue was pushing up against my teeth, as if to remind me that it was still there. I said with forced brightness, “Well, what about the timetable then?”
She told me my hours—in the afternoon from five to six starting next Monday—and then we passed on to a little gossip about the other teachers, who were nearly all old friends or acquaintances, people who had gotten onto this freebie and had no intention of ever getting off it. Eventually she said, “Well, I must finish some accounts.”
“I’ll just go out and find a student to rape.”
“Oh, Marteen.” She shook her head. “You mustn’t think too much about what Mr. Robin says. Ever since last year he’s been very worried about the reputation of the course. This year, in fact, he has a—well, he calls her a nanny.” She used the English word.
“A what?”
“Oh, a lady who is there to look after the girls.” On an afterthought she added, “And the boys. Just to be on hand if they have, you know, emotional problems or things like that. Maybe you know her. She did this course some years ago.”
“How many years ago?”
“Two or three.”
“She’ll be a kind of young nanny, won’t she?”
“Well, she was a little older than the other students then. I think she’s about twenty-seven or twenty-eight now. Her name’s Lucy.”
“Lucy Althwaite.”
“Yes.”
“Well, Mr. Robin can feel secure. I’m sure the students will be protected tooth and nail.”
7
I GOT out of the building and into the fog. It was drifting lazily and heavily around the square—and around my mind. I was full of hazy indefinable thoughts and feelings, about Lucy and about murderers. Just one thing was clear: Mr. Robin couldn’t have heard of Lucy and me; he would hardly have offered her the job if he had. I started walking toward the Rialto; it was the natural direction to drift at that time of the evening. Venetians meet and chat in the square at the foot of the Rialto Bridge, Campo San Bartolomeo (or San Bortolomio, as I always take smug and knowing care to call it). On the way I bought a Gazzettino. When I reached Campo San Bartolomeo, full of young people contributing to the fog with their chatter in impenetrable dialect, I propped myself up against the railing around the statue of Goldoni and read the article through properly.
The investigations were in the hands of Giudice Menegazzi, I read. The note claiming responsibility for the second murder was undergoing analysis; although the investigators were taking seriously the claim that a new and more ferocious terrorist group called Il Nuovo Fronte del Proletariato was behind the murders, they had not yet discarded the idea that they might simply have been the work of embittered ex-compagni. In general the opinion seemed to be that the “years of lead,” as the violent seventies were often called, were not making a comeback: these murders were the work of a violent and dangerous group of people, but they obviously had no chance of a popular following. Communism was not exactly di moda at the moment. And even the terrorists in prison, with the exception of one or two irreducibili, had declared their revulsion at the crimes.
Inside I found an article about the funeral of Gianni Boscolo, the second victim, which had taken place in the Church of San Francesco della Vigna that day. A photograph showed a wreath against a wall near where his body had been found: it looked like a piece of waste ground. The caption said it was near San Francesco.
I folded the paper and walked slowly up the bridge, my mind no clearer than before. I reached the top and went to the edge to stare out into the clammy blur that had replaced the customary view of the Grand Canal. I perched on the damp parapet. Another Lucy memory—are there any lovers in the world who have visited Venice without perching there? Well, there were none there that evening. Everybody was hurrying past, buried deep in coats or holding scarves across their mouths.
I got up off the parapet, the damp beginning to seep through to my skin. I started walking down the bridge. Celeste bloody Aïda had started up as a mental sottofondo. It had obviously been foolish of me to expect anything simple from this city; Venice might have been in origin a product of mercantile hardheadedness and shrewdness, but for foreigners the sole aim of the old charme
r seems to be that of messing them up emotionally. She’d got me drifting in her natural tidal tug toward the past again, and I’d have to paddle damned hard to keep steady.
And right now where was I going in fact? My feet seemed to be taking me down the other side of the bridge, toward the market. Probably because there was a bar down there where Lucy and I had often gone at this time of the evening. (Casanova had too.) I switched off Celeste Aïda firmly, pulled myself to a stop, and turned around. Wherever I ate tonight it would be far from Lucy memories—geographically at any rate. So why not San Francesco della Vigna? Right on the other side of the city, an area I’d never visited with her. There was a good pizzeria near the church where I’d occasionally eaten on my own. And it would be a way of proving to myself that I was getting down to serious business. I’d go and have a look at that waste ground. A glance at the scene of the crime seemed a logical way to start investigations: if only to prove to myself that the murder in fact had nothing to do with me and Cima.
After all, why should it? The only link I could think of was the fact that the murders were apparently acts of left-wing terrorism, and the two thugs the other night had used leftist-type jargon. This was not exactly hard evidence. Not like, say, finding spare tongues in their coat pockets.
But—and I remembered the short man’s calm, flat voice and his unblinking pale eyes as he fired my canvases, or watched “Alfredo” doing so—I could easily imagine them tearing out someone’s tongue. Very easily. Probably with some explanation about the extreme efficiency of the process.
I had a nasty feeling that I was going to find myself involved with these murders.
I crossed the city in my usual haphazard way, pretending that I knew the way perfectly, while Venice snickered up her damp sleeves at my presumption and proved to me yet again that progress wasn’t her specialty. I kept getting entangled in dead ends and backward-twisting alleys, finding myself at the edge of black uncrossable canals, and coming out into dank courtyards where cats stared at me from wellheads. This of course would have all been very sinister in the drifting fog, if I hadn’t known what a very low street-crime rate the city really has.
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