Every Picture Tells a Story

by Gregory Dowling

  I didn’t have the energy to worry about this aspect of my condition as well, even though I knew this was one of the most putrid canals in the city: walking past it earlier, I’d noticed how the mere rocking movement of the vegetable boat wafted up a wave of sewage stink.

  There was a bustle at the door and Busetto was pushed and pulled in. A man with an authoritarian-looking gray mustache was flapping an identity card: “I’ve got his name.”

  “Bravo, Gianni.” The barrel-bellied man told me, “Gianni was a vigile.”

  I was glad about the past tense. Then I heard somebody say, “Let’s call the police.”

  I spoke up. “It was an accident.” The last thing I wanted was to end up in front of the police, on whichever side of the law.

  “I saw it,” protested a young man with an earring. “Wham!” and he mimed the shoving action.

  “I slipped,” Busetto said.

  This was greeted with general contempt.

  “Shall we slip this time—with you at the edge?” The young man with the earring again. There was an approving murmur at this, and Busetto looked around desperately.

  I’d have happily done the shoving myself if it hadn’t been for that tiny still-reasoning part of my brain that told me that the less public trouble there was, the better. And an act of clemency might give me a hold over him later. It was a pity I was in no condition to use the advantage now. I said, “Let him go. It was an accident.”

  The man with the earring obviously didn’t like the idea of the affair ending so tamely. This might be all the excitement that Saturday night was going to offer Via Garibaldi. “And if you die?” he said to me. “You’ll want him arrested, won’t you?”

  “I won’t die if I just get back to my hotel and change clothes. Quickly. Forget about him.” I don’t know how much of this chattering rush of words they understood, but my desire to get away was clear enough.

  “Poisoning. That water would kill anyone.”

  General agreement was expressed with this. The barrel-bellied man had his remedy. “Another grappa. That kills the germs.”

  I took it gratefully enough. It was in fact brandy again. Busetto said, “Excuse me,” and pushed his way out; I think he wanted to look coldly dignified, but his stoop was against him; he unmistakably slunk. A mutter of contempt mixed with disappointment followed him. This was one pasticceria he wasn’t likely to return to.

  I put my hand toward my shoulder bag to get my soaked wallet out, but the barman put up an imperious hand. “Thank you,” I said. It was a kind gesture on his part—though possibly he just didn’t want sewage-soaked bank notes in his till.

  I left the bar with everybody continuing to inform me about the various diseases I could have caught. The ex-vigile seemed to be on the point of asking me for my identity card, but then obviously thought better of it. Four or five people accompanied me down Via Garibaldi, vying with each other in the telling of horrific hospital cases they’d heard of. When we got to the hotel, the man with the earring came in with me, reassuring me that if I did die they’d make my assailant pay for it. He started to explain things to the man at the desk, whom he obviously knew, and I went upstairs with my key, leaving them to it. “What, Rio Sant’Ana?” I heard the deskman say. “Che schifo!” How horrible.

  9

  A LITTLE under an hour later I left my room and locked its door with great care: my money was hanging over the edge of the chair near the radiator to dry, together with a notebook and—though I had little hope for them—my Lorenzetti guide and the Henry James volume. My skin shone a scrubbed pink and my hair ponged of apple shampoo. I was wearing just about all my spare clothes and was at last feeling fairly confident that I wasn’t going to die—of cold at any rate. I’d have preferred to stay crouched next to the radiator for another nine or ten hours, but that would have meant spending Sunday without a coat, so I had eventually forced myself to my feet. I had about forty minutes to get my coat before the shops closed, but probably only about five before my bloodstream stopped moving. And I had to find a laundry too. All my sodden clothes were in my rucksack, which I was now holding adangle from my left hand: I didn’t want them pasted onto my back again.

  I burbled an apology to the lady I found busily cleaning the staircase which I’d turned into a momentary extension of the Rio Sant’Anna, and she waved a cheerily dismissive hand at me, as if nothing else was to be expected on a Saturday night.

  I bought an anorak and a scarf in a shop that accepted credit cards, almost opposite the hotel. They weren’t elegant, but they weren’t expensive either—and they weren’t, I thought, noticeably inelegant; I wanted nothing about me that was noticeable. The shopkeeper of course knew all about the “accident.” Well, he had probably seen my dripping and escorted arrival at the hotel.

  The laundry was off Via Garibaldi, but the man there expressed no surprise as he took the clammy bundle from me. I wondered how many bridges the news had crossed by now. He made out a little ticket for me while the clothes dripped and oozed over his counter. It struck me that they looked exactly how I’d felt a few nights before in London.

  Things had changed since then, I told myself as I walked down the Riva degli Schiavoni, huddled in my cuddly new anorak and scarf: I’d got my Purpose and I was getting places. Tomorrow I was going to go to that house in Calle Sant’Anna (I couldn’t do anything like that this evening—not down that end of Via Garibaldi) and I was going to catch whoever was there doing whatever he was doing. So long as the aliens in my guts didn’t get to me first.

  I realized I was near the Church of San Giovanni in Bragora. There was a chance it might still be open.

  It was. I entered and breathed its familiar charm. Nothing spiky or even soaring about its Gothic architecture: a “homely” Gothic almost. There was just one very small old lady cleaning a candle stand. I went up to the high altar and dropped a coin into the light machine: the Cima Baptism of Christ appeared out of the gloom, in all its glowing serenity: the calm figures, the calm landscape with its hills and towers, the river, the boat, and the ducks, Melinda’s ducks. I stood and gazed. The afternoon’s frustrations and worries dropped from me. And then the years. I was twenty and had never been to prison.

  “Hello,” said a quiet voice behind me.

  I heard the voice but didn’t leap. It almost seemed inevitable. I turned around and saw Lucy. “Hello,” I said.

  “I just knew it had to be you,” she said. “No one else looks at paintings so restlessly.”

  “Was I? I was feeling really calm.”

  “You kept moving up and down, to and fro.”

  “Oh, yes.” I suppose I had been. That’s how I look at paintings—big ones anyway. I had felt still, however. Warm even.

  The light on the painting went out.

  “Let me,” she said. She walked past me and dropped a coin in. She hadn’t changed, I thought. The same long straight hair, the same long gray coat even. And when she turned around, the same natural laughing eyes and lips.

  She looked at me too. “You look well,” she said.

  “So do you.”

  We were both standing about a yard from each other and we were both, I think, aware of the fact that we’d made no move to kiss—not even a formal cheek peck. She turned to the painting. “I suppose if I was going to bump into you, here was as likely a place as any.”

  “Yes?” And I’d been thinking, of all the churches in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

  “I remember your talk on Cima,” she said.

  “Don’t tell me: the ducks.”

  “What? Oh, yes, aren’t they lovely. No, I was remembering how you finished, ‘Cima is the tops.’ I’ve only realized now it’s a bilingual pun.”

  “Yes, well, trust me for a smart-ass punch line.”

  “At the time we all thought it really strange. Everyone went round saying, Tintoretto is the tops, vino rosso is the tops.…”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Well, maybe it wa
sn’t so hilarious.”

  We were both silent for a few seconds and the light machine ticked away. The old lady bustled up from the back, jangling what I guessed were keys. We didn’t turn around, both determined to get our money’s worth of aesthetic delight.

  “And you said Bellini copied it.”

  “Took some suggestions from it,” I said. “Not a bad testimonial for Cima.”

  “Si chiude.” The little old lady was standing be- hind us.

  “Ci scusi, signora,” Lucy said, “andiamo via subito.”

  “You’ve learned Italian,” I said as we left the church.

  “A little,” she said.

  We stood outside as the lady pushed the door to behind us and turned a hefty-sounding key. Neither of us made a move across the square. I wanted to finish the conversation, rush off, and drink away my confusion. Surely now was the time to bring out my “Miss Althwaites” and formal bows? But no, that would be too ridiculous.

  “Isn’t this stupid?” Lucy said suddenly. “Both of us making careful comments about Renaissance art.”

  “What do you propose as a topic?” I said.

  She gazed at me, her eyes widening and a laugh getting ready to explode. “What do I what? Oh, Martin.” The laugh came—one quick burst. She squeezed my arm affectionately. “You don’t change.”

  “You really don’t think so?”

  She looked at me hard. “Maybe that was silly of me. I expect you have.”

  “Yes, I expect so.”

  “Come and have a drink,” she said. “Then we can find out just how much we’ve each changed.”

  “Well, I—I really ought—”

  “Oh, come on, Martin.”

  This wasn’t going on at all as I’d imagined (let alone planned) our first meeting would—or should—go. Where was my cold dignity? And where her lowered eyes and shuffling feet?” “A quick one,” I said.

  “Let’s go to that place by the Arsenale. You remember?”

  “Yes.” Maybe she wanted me to start humming Celeste Aïda. We’d had our first long chat there—about the third week of the course—which was then followed by that entwined walk up to Verdi’s bust. We’d talked about Renaissance art on that occasion too—as a starter.

  “The tramezzini are still great,” she said. She started out of the square with that quick impulsiveness I remembered so well.

  I followed. “So what were you doing in the church?” I asked, keeping things safely on the Renaissance.

  “I’d just come to check a hotel booking at La Residenza for one of the lecturers, and then I remembered the painting—remembered your lecture in fact.”

  “Thank you. Down to its last punch line.”

  “Yes. We never saw the church together, did we?”

  “No.”

  “The painting I most remember seeing with you is the Bellini in San Zaccaria. You said it was the one painting that could make you feel you wanted to go off and join a monastery or something. But that only seemed to last until you stopped looking at it.”

  “I don’t think I’m likely to feel that anymore.”

  “Had enough of cells.” She said this straight out, turning and smiling at me.

  “Yes.”

  We walked down the narrow bending alley toward the Arsenale in sudden silence. As we crossed the bridge she said, “Was it awful?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  We reached the bar on the corner of the Campo dell’Arsenale. I’d been through the square the previous evening but in too much of a huddled fuddle to take much notice. So now I greeted the place properly; I looked up at the massive Renaissance entrance with its posturing statues (some overkeen souvenir hunter has pinched Neptune’s trident), and I said hello again to the four stone lions on guard outside; they range in size and dignity from the regal to the merely cuddly—the last one could be a baa-lamb. Up above the gateway St. Mark’s lion shows off his wings and snarls sneeringly down at his earthbound colleagues.

  “Why do all the guidebooks say his book’s closed?” Lucy said, pointing to the winged lion. “The all do—all of them.”

  “Do they? Well, I suppose guidebooks copy guidebooks.”

  “Well, they only have to look at the thing,” she said.

  “It’s quicker to copy,” I said.

  She looked at me as if about to say something—perhaps along the lines of “Is that your philosophy in life?” But she held back. That irritated me—probably more than the quip would have done.

  We entered the bar and Lucy said, “Ciao, Livio” to the barman, who answered “Ciao, Lucy” back. I don’t suppose she’d been there more often than I had. She turned and said, “Let me guess—a prosecco?”

  “No. Tea. Un tè con latte,” I said to Livio.

  “You have changed,” she said. She ordered a spritz with Aperol for herself.

  “I need something warm,” I said. “I’ve not gone dry.” I thought of the afternoon’s main event and added, “Far from it.”

  There was a pause as our drinks were prepared and handed over to us. Then she said, “Derek told me you were here.”

  “Who?”

  “Derek—Derek Robin.”

  “Oh, yes. He told me you were too.”

  “Ah.”

  “I hadn’t known you would be,” I said.

  “No. I suppose—” She stopped. “How are the paintings? We heard from Professor Perkins you were having an exhibition.”

  “It’s off. I had a fire.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, flames, heat, whoosh.” I made quick quivering skyward motions with my hands. “They all got destroyed.”

  “Oh, my God.” She put her drink down and stared at me, her eyes widening. “How on earth—”

  “Forget about it. That’s what I’m here trying to do.”

  “The Derek Robin course instead of the Foreign Legion.”

  “Well, Venice. Derek Robin only for the pennies.” I changed the subject. “I’m going to have a sandwich.”

  “Me too,” she said. “They’re still the best in Venice.”

  We both took a tramezzino with tuna fish and mayonnaise: the bar’s own homemade mayonnaise, I’d once been told. Like all good tramezzini, it swelled plumply with the filling, and two or three paper napkins were needed to hold it.

  “So what are you doing here?” I said after a few oozing mouthfuls.

  “Do you mean, ‘Why haven’t you got a serious job?’”

  “I just asked.”

  “I’m sorry. I do get that, particularly from my brother.”

  Her brother was an accountant. We’d never got on. I went on quickly: “Tell me then, how did you end up with this job?”

  “I hope I haven’t quite ‘ended up,’” she said. “It’s temporary, until, until—”

  “They offer you a starring role in East Enders.”

  She smiled. “I’ve chucked in the whole acting idea. To the great relief of one and all at home.”

  “Why? I mean why have you chucked it in?”

  “I was obviously no good.”

  “Oh.” I’d been expecting the usual actor’s spiel about the impossibility of breaking through the theater Mafia. I wondered if I was supposed to slap her on the back and say, “Oh, come on, Lucy.…” Instead I said, “So you got in touch with Mr. Robin.”

  “Well, you probably remember that my father knows him. That was how I came to be doing the course in the first place.”

  “Of course. Daddy.”

  She looked at me sharply, then said simply, “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Give him my regards—or perhaps better not.”

  “I will, if you want me to.”

  “Well, it might be kinder to let him think I’m still safely locked away.”

  “Oh, Martin. Why do you—” She broke off with a shrug.

  I looked at my watch. “Look, sorry, Lucy. I really ought to be going. I’m—I’m meeting someone.”

  “Oh.”


  “So I can’t stand here nattering on about the past. After all, it’s kind of pointless, don’t you agree?”

  She said, “Well, if that’s how you feel, I suppose it is.”

  “It is.”

  “Okay. Let me pay here.”

  I was about to refuse when I suddenly realized I had nothing but my credit card. I didn’t want to say that next time it would be on me, so instead said, “As it happens I’m cashless, so thanks. I’ll pay you back on Monday.”

  “Don’t be so stupid.”

  “It’s tidier that way,” I said.

  She said, “You bloody try paying me back. Just try it.”

  She was laughing, but I knew she was angry too. I knew all her moods still. I said, “See you on Monday then, ’bye.”

  I left abruptly and walked to the wooden bridge across the Rio dell’Arsenale. This was of course opposite to the way I’d been going earlier, but it was also opposite to the way she’d probably be going. I felt more or less pleased with the way I’d brought the conversation to a close. More or less.

  I found a restaurant in between Via Garibaldi and Sant’-Isepo, where I had an excellent fish dinner and read a Dick Francis novel. And in between chapters I thought about Cima da Conegliano, not about Lucy. And if I did think about Lucy again, it was only because a tune on the radio reminded me of Celeste Aïda. I put her straight out of my mind again.

  10

  NEXT morning I discovered that my bank notes, though crinkled, were satisfactorily crisp to the touch. Lorenzetti and Henry James, however, remained thick wudges of indivisible sludge. It looked as if Dick Francis would have to be my daytime reading as well.

  I dressed and went downstairs. The cleaning lady was at work on the stairs again. She looked up at me and said, “How do you feel?”

  “Fine, fine, thanks.”

  Well, I’d soon test this out with my breakfast. The first question to decide was whether I should go to that pasticceria and try its cakes. But I soon decided I preferred to consume cream cakes in the comfort of anonymity, so I found a place in the Salizzada dei Greci where I had a rum baba, a meringue, and a cappuccino, and nobody looked twice at me. There were no protests from the murky depths either—just from my conscience.