The Girl From Venice

by Martin Cruz Smith

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He had been wondering when she would find the words.

  “When do you think we can go?”

  “The sooner the better.” That didn’t sound exactly the way he wanted.

  She said, “You must be eager to get me off your hands.”

  “It would be better for all concerned.”

  “The less you know . . .”

  “That would be better too.”

  He could feel her searching for a neutral topic. For his part, he considered fish, boats, Mercurochrome.

  “What do you do when you go to a bar?” she asked.

  “Drink.”

  “Besides going to the bar, what else do you do?”

  “Mend nets.”

  “So, when you meet your friends, what do you talk about?”

  “The weather. Weather is important to a fisherman.”

  “Do you mind if I sleep a little?”

  “No.”

  “We will have a pact of silence,” she said.

  “Agreed.”

  She spread out on the new blankets. He could tell that she wasn’t sleeping, only excusing herself and him from the burden of conversation.

  “Personally, I hate the poetry of D’Annunzio,” she blurted out.

  He wondered where that came from.

  He did some calculations. She spoke French, English, and Italian. Italian education was more concerned with basic literacy than foreign languages, and there might be instruction in a second language at a private school. But to master three languages? That smacked of a private tutor. And if her family had retreated behind garden walls when the racial laws were instituted in 1938 and gone into hiding when the roundup of the Jews actively began in 1943, she had been sheltered for the better part of five years. That would explain her reticence. And was that perhaps why she acted and looked so much like a young girl? As if she had not been allowed to grow.

  • • •

  Sometimes it was anchovies or bream that ran. Tonight it was cuttlefish that swam under the Fatima as soon as the boat sailed away from the shack. Cenzo thought a man with a large enough lamp could lead them like an orchestra conductor. Above, the nightly British bombing had begun, the engines of the planes sparking and throbbing on their way to Turin or Milan.

  “Do they ever bomb fishing boats?” Giulia asked.

  “Sometimes. If you see any fighters approach, stay low.”

  She stayed defiantly upright. “You have some decent books in your footlocker and some nice folk art.”

  “Those paintings are not folk art and I’m not illiterate. Please don’t go in there again.”

  “Did I tell you about Byron?”

  “You told me. Was he a good fisherman?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So we’re even.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Byron was a poet.”

  “You must be getting tired.”

  “Of what?”

  “Talking.”

  She recited, “ ‘He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, / Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d and unknown.’”

  “That’s cheery,” he said.

  Cenzo did not want to hear poetry; he simply wanted to hand her over like any other contraband smuggled on the black market. If he could unload her tonight, he would do it. As long as Eusebio Russo was at his usual stall at the Rialto fish market, the transfer should be simple. Russo was an accomplished smuggler, a master of sleight of hand whether it came to Spam or cigarettes. And if Russo couldn’t do it, he’d know who could.

  The sea was calm, reflecting a three-quarter moon that lured fish and fishing boats from the ports of Pellestrina, Malamocco, and Burano. Each boat had its territory and black stakes led the way to rows of shellfish ready to be plucked.

  “Remember, I can swim,” she whispered.

  “And hold your breath and play dead. Can you do that again?”

  “Why?”

  “We may run into Germans again and they will be suspicious if a fishing boat doesn’t have any fish.”

  “So?”

  “So we’re going to catch some fish.”

  “How?”

  “Can you hold the lamp steady?”

  He had her hold the oil lamp low enough for its glow to filter through brackish water full of floating matter, the tiny particulates of life. A spiral net brimmed with sardines as bright and blue as knife blades swimming round and round. Cenzo swung the net out of the water and poured fish into the boat.

  “It’s your job to cover them with sailcloth to keep them wet.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.” It was like towing Cleopatra on a barge, he thought.

  “That’s it? That’s all there is to fishing?”

  “Pretty much, as long as you know where the fish are. So, tonight you are a fisherman.” He scooped up mud and dirtied her face. He didn’t want her pale cheeks giving them away.

  Fishing was more a matter of tending nets than hooking a fish. For Cenzo, hours in a boat always passed quickly. He had enjoyed the work ever since he had been a putto di mare born to the sea. His father had hoped for three putti, but the Allies had gunned down one son and fame had seduced another. Now there was only Cenzo.

  That the girl regarded fishing as low or demeaning hardly bothered him. He thought fish were mysterious, more a race than a species, and an invitation to another world. If she didn’t see it that way, it was her loss.

  The girl was a brief interruption in his life and the less he knew about her, the better.

  “It’s not like it used to be,” he said. “The curfew has shut down a lot of restaurants, but it keeps us busy, doesn’t it? All right.” He motioned Giulia to take cover as they approached the market.

  Venice was shaped like a fish and the Rialto fish market was its gullet. Although the city was in blackout, lights and waterborne jostling grew as boats maneuvered for the approach to the dock. He motioned Giulia to take cover. A second wave of bombers passed overhead on their nighttime run, regular as celestial clockwork.

  Suddenly, market stalls appeared ahead. They were hung with enough lamps to display not only cuttlefish but translucent squid, silvery anchovies, cockeyed sole, lobsters green as jade, and ruby-red slabs of tuna, everything that the sea could give birth to.

  Marble columns stood between heaps of whelks and cockles. Transactions were carried out on stone pavers shining with slime.

  With a single long oar Cenzo punted the Fatima against the dock. “Stay under the sails,” he told Giulia.

  “Am I safe?”

  “If you can stand being quiet.”

  Above, dawn turned clouds into puffs of color.

  Cenzo found his friend Russo’s stall but Eusebio Russo was gone. His stall was empty, pasted over with a stencil of Mussolini and the message “Be Loyal!”

  Like a man desperately shuffling cards, Cenzo considered other possibilities. As soon as he sold his catch, he moved the Fatima into the shadow of the Rialto and entered the church of San Giacometto.

  The confessional of the church kept fisherman’s hours. As Cenzo stepped into the box, he felt weight shift on the other side of the curtain and smelled cigarette smoke.

  “What happened to the fishmonger Russo?” he asked.

  “He was a troublemaker. A communist. Are you a friend of his?”

  “He owes me money.”

  “I doubt you’ll see it.”

  It had been a while between confessions for Cenzo, but, as he remembered, a priest usually began by asking how long it had been since a person’s last confession. Just by its smell, Cenzo could tell that the priest smoked a “Juno,” a paper tube half filled with raw tobacco. Cenzo remembered the advertisement: “Berlin Smokes Junos!” He slipped out of the booth and
made room for an old woman who looked eager to recite a litany of sins.

  Daylight began to slide down the top floors of palazzos. The Rialto revealed itself in a crepuscular fashion from ghostly to real. A priest rushed out the church doors and scanned traffic in each direction but was confused by the constant interweaving of fishing boats, fireboats, gondolas, ferries, and barges of coal while Cenzo, standing in the Fatima, rowed cross-handed with two oars under the bridge into the golden dawn of the Grand Canal.

  6

  Cenzo felt that some people, like the Count of Monte Cristo, had the good fortune to be imprisoned with a benefactor. Giulia, obviously, was marooned with an idiot. He tried to think of anyone besides Russo able to smuggle a girl out of Venice. Unfortunately, smugglers were not trustworthy individuals. He had heard about partisans leading downed Allied pilots to safety. Except for Russo, the partisans who Cenzo knew tended to be chicken thieves.

  In the meantime, Giulia curled up in a corner of the shack and refused to eat or drink. She was skinny to begin with and now she seemed determined to waste away from disappointment.

  “I’m sorry my friend wasn’t there,” he said. “It seems like he was arrested by the Fascists before we got to the market. Bad luck.”

  Daytime was sleep time for fishermen, but Cenzo stayed awake in case the girl threw herself overboard. He felt the cool breath of rain on its way; he had a built-in barometer when it came to the weather. A light patter on the roof of the hut might be perfect company for a nap, but it was not a luxury he and the girl could afford, not both at the same time.

  “You go to sleep,” Cenzo said. “I’ll let you know if anyone is coming.”

  “Would anyone come?”

  “Not really.”

  Cenzo cupped his cigarette and watched through an open slat as rows of whitecaps marched across the lagoon. People drowned. His younger brother Hugo never learned how to swim. Some fishermen were like that, as if knowing how to swim invited the necessity.

  A few fishing boats headed to the dock for new nets or a change of gear. Some fishermen he knew by their sails, like Scarpa’s Barking Dog, Zennaro’s Panther, and Busetto’s Unicorn. He saw no pleasure boats at all. To fishermen, people with yachts barely scratched the surface of the water. Fishermen were rough-and-tumble. Rich boys posed. He could imagine Giulia on the fashionable end of the Lido among the hotel cabanas and Hollywood movie stars. Waiters carried cool drinks across the beach and small planes towed banners celebrating Cinzano. Not now, of course. Movie stars didn’t come to the Lido anymore.

  Death was fickle. Although the Germans must have found Lieutenant Hoff’s body by now, they had not taken the customary Italian lives in return. At the same time, Russo had been plucked out of the fish market and replaced by a poster of Il Duce. Nets were more predictable. Every net, no matter what size or configuration, ended in what fishermen called a “death chamber.” This was the place of no escape, where fish swam round and round and went nowhere.

  He sat against the wall and closed his eyes.

  How did the girl get so far into the lagoon? That was where her story didn’t add up. If she was so wealthy, why hadn’t her family bought their way out of Venice? If her father was so smart, why did he wait so long? She herself was thoroughly brave. Cenzo gave her that much.

  He was startled awake by the sound of heavy pounding and moved to the window. The rain had become a squall that turned the lagoon black and made the hut shudder on its legs. As the storm gathered in intensity, wind whistled through the floor planks. The Fatima was tied to pilings under the hut fore and aft. Craft at sea would head into the wind. In a fisherman’s hut there was nothing to do but listen to the boards twist and groan. The girl still slept; that was the gift of youth. He looked at the girl’s hands and saw how delicate they were. His hands would end up looking like claws shaped by the constant pulling on oars and wrestling with lines. No wonder he was such a crude example of mankind.

  For a moment there was an eerie silence and then a soft thud as the boat nudged the hut. The second thud was harder. He went out onto the deck of the shack and stopped. The anchor line had snapped and the Fatima had moved ninety degrees away from the ladder. As the wind picked up, the boat gathered strength and swung with more abandon into the pilings that supported the hut. This was not as God intended, Cenzo thought. Boxes and gear shot like shuttlecocks around the Fatima’s deck and left no space to jump to. He needed to get on board, but every time he prepared to jump, the boat pitched and boxes slammed against the mast.

  A newly bought oar was on the deck of the fishing hut. He used it to slow the boat’s momentum but the blade broke off and flew into the air. Cenzo plunged into water that was waist-high one moment and over his head the next, dragging him one way and then the other.

  He looked up to see, like an apparition of the Virgin, Giulia on the deck of the shack. When she disappeared he assumed that she had been swept away. Between the waves and rain, he could barely stay afloat. Just when he thought she was lost, she reappeared with a rope. One end she tied to the rail, then tossed the other in his direction so it uncoiled as it flew. He caught the rope, tied it to the boat’s forward cleat, half swam and half waded with it to the nearest channel marker, and tied the rope to that, first slackly and then tight.

  Giulia heaved another rope high into the wind so that it carried to the second marker. He tied up that line and released the first, which he carried to the third marker, in essence walking the boat around the hut to the leeward side, where it was sheltered, not beaten by the wind.

  And then the storm was over. It moved on like a black locomotive headed to another station. He climbed the ladder and found Giulia in the shack, devouring polenta.

  • • •

  “In my first storm at sea, I was petrified,” Cenzo said. “The waves were so high I thought the sea was upside down. I was six years old.”

  “That young?”

  “I wanted a shirt. I didn’t have one and my father said I would have to earn it. That was the day I started to work on his boat. Not this one but a bigger one. Cleaning the deck, mending nets, fetching cigarettes and coffee. He never explained anything. He would just do and I would watch. He was king. From one end of the lagoon to the other, he knew more good places to set a net. Other men wanted to work for him because he always found fish. He used to wake up first and open the sails and kids would come tumbling out. My family name is Vianello but my brothers and I were called putti di mare.”

  “What a beautiful way to wake up. Like a fairy tale.”

  “It sounds that way, doesn’t it?”

  In a loose shirt and pants she looked like an underfed boy, although she stuffed herself with polenta and ham and gulped water from a bottle wrapped in straw. It had taken them hours to sort out the boat. They had not been aware when night fell and now only the faint light of a hanging lamp lapped the interior of the shack.

  She wiped a crumb from her chin.

  He asked, “How did you know how to turn the boat like that?”

  “I used to sail.”

  “Sailing, swimming, poetry. Not bad.” As Nido would say, the girl was as cool as a clam on ice. “But escaping our predicament will take more information. I don’t know anything about you or your family. Your father knew upper-class society, people with cabin cruisers and villas, that sort of thing. If he was a successful businessman, he belonged to financial clubs. If your mother was in society, she was probably involved with charities and good deeds. Your family must have known influential people.”

  “My father said you never know who your friends are until you need them.”

  “Well, I’m sure he had more friends than I do. We just have to reach them.” He could picture her taking music lessons on a grand piano with family photographs in silver frames. “Tell me about your mother and father.”

  She said that her father was Vittorio Silber, the founder of a me
dical supply company based in Venice. He was a patriot who had served in the Great War, a generous donor to medical research and former head of the Vivaldi Musical Society. Adèle Silber, Vittorio’s wife, hosted the most sophisticated parties on the Lido during opera season, and during the film festival she set up a tent on the beach. No one could believe with Vittorio Silber’s connections that he would ever be threatened by Italy’s new race laws. Neither parent was observant but they were both Jews. Or, to put it another way, no Jews were more assimilated into Italian society than the Silbers.

  “The doctors at San Clemente took in a lot of us. Someone there must have told the SS, because when they raided the hospital they had our names. Father hid me in a laundry chute and denied I was ever with them, but the SS had a list. Then the SS marched my parents and the other Jews out of the building.”

  “Did you recognize any of the SS?” he asked.

  “Only the officer you threw down the well.”

  “No uncles or aunts?”

  “No. Our friends were taken with my parents. Where do you think they went? Probably just put in prison, right?”

  “Probably.”

  “You’re kind. I know they’re all dead. I see them in my dreams.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, do you have a family?”

  He was caught off stride. “Hard to say.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that my younger brother is dead, my father is dead, and my mother tries to run my life. That’s it in a nutshell.”

  He hoped that was it, but she asked, “How come you’re not married?”

  “I am. I mean, I was. She’s dead. She died in an air raid.”

  “In Venice?”

  “In Milan.”

  “Do you have any children?”

  “No.”

  “Why was she there?”

  “She was on a movie set.”

  “Why?”

  “She was an actress.”

  “On film?”

  “Yes.”

  Giulia as good as sniffed. “You can hardly call that acting. I’d say ‘mimicry.’”

  “You know, you’re just a little bit of a snob.”