The Pigeon Project

by Irving Wallace

  The next and last was the most difficult part—securing the paper slip to one of the pigeon’s legs—but he applied himself to it with grim concentration. He managed to roll the paper around the pigeon’s leg without dropping the rubber band. Then he got the elastic around it, doubling it up and twisting it until it looped tighter and tighter around the paper and the pigeon’s thin leg. At last, the message held fast.

  For a fleeting second, MacDonald contemplated his handiwork. He now had a carrier pigeon. He prayed it was a San Marco pigeon. But would anyone in a million years—let alone two days—notice it, retrieve it, act on it? The odds mocked him. It was the most futile endeavor he had ever undertaken. But one thought buoyed his spirit. Minutes before, the world had been blind and deaf to knowledge of his discovery and incarceration. With this winged creature, the word would go out of his cell for the first, the last, the only time.

  Gripping the squirming bird, MacDonald strode back to the window. He held the pigeon high, then pushed it out between the bars, preparing to cast if off into the free air. From the corner of an eye, he saw a movement on the ground below. It came from one of the khaki-clad carabinieri guards. The guard was lifting his rifle.

  MacDonald’s heart hammered. With a gasp, he threw his arm forward in a pitching motion, opening his hand, releasing the pigeon. The bird dipped, flapped its wings, rose, and was airborne to the northwest. Below, the guard had whipped his rifle to his shoulder, was aiming, training his gun on the lofting pigeon.

  The rifle rang out.

  Almost simultaneously, the pigeon seemed to have exploded in midair, a flurry of feathers and wings. The bird shuddered, wobbled, began to sink, beating its wings weakly. It was dropping fast when it disappeared from MacDonald’s sight.

  MacDonald looked down at the guard once more. The Italian was waving what was first a triumphant and then a threatening fist at him.

  Sick with grief and defeat, MacDonald turned away, trudged back to his chair, and clumped down into it, eyes on the door, waiting for them to come and board up his window.

  After that, there would be only darkness.

  II

  For Tim Jordan, the first woman of revival (after a bad night, and his nights were gradually getting worse) usually came when he walked out of the Hotel Danieli Royal Excelsior into the glaring sunlight of Venice and faced the beginning of a new day.

  The spell of the city almost always worked for him, and it was working right now as he stood unsteadily before the hotel entrance in the teeming Riva degli Schiavoni. Ahead of him, a jam-packed vaporetto had just arrived, bumping against the floating wooden landing and rocking it. The water bus was disgorging a stream of passengers—Venetians, German and French and American tourists. Moored on either side of the shaky landing were several motorboats for rent, and a motoscafo was taking on the last guests of the Danieli who were seeking the pleasures of the Hotel Excelsior beach on Lido island before the lunch hiatus.

  While this was for Tim Jordan the beginning of a day, he knew that the day had awakened long hours ago. When he could, especially when he had been drinking the night before, he slept late, not joining the life of the city until noon and not getting to his desk until one o’clock. This was one of his noon days, because he had stayed up late the night before, drinking and brooding in solitude, sleeping hard and straight through, and he had not been able to get out of bed until less than an hour ago. Now, outside at last, he felt the thin, quivering band of a hangover behind his forehead, and his brain felt mussed and his legs were rubbery.

  He had spent some time, late this morning, after shaving, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, and he had not liked what he had seen. He could remember himself at the time of his marriage six years ago—his youthful appearance had been frozen in the wedding picture Claire had always kept on her dressing table—when he had stood a lean, athletic five feet eleven. In the time since her death, but especially during the nearly two years past in Venice, his body had changed, become a little hunched and paunchy and soft. And not only his body, but his face also. What a ruthless biographer the human face was! The bathroom mirror had read the story of his latest years to him. His hair was still black, neatly parted at one side, and his facial features were still narrow and angular, but the rest of what had happened reflected three years of sorrow, self-pity, ennui, and dissipation. The brown eyes this morning had been bloodshot and puffy, the forehead creased, the cheeks blotched and sagging (or so they seemed), the full chin less firm. And to add to this Dorian Gray disintegration, he had cut himself while shaving.

  Now he held his hands up before him. They were still unsteady. It was a sad condition for a man just turned thirty-eight, he thought. But seven cognacs last night and three years without commitment before that had worked their creeping erosions. He wanted to tell his employers, the directors of the Venice Must Live Committee, “Gentlemen, change your priorities and make your first one: Tim Jordan Must Live.” Save Jordan before the tides sweep him under, save your secretly sinking public relations representative.

  He smiled wryly at this nonsense, gave his head a shake to rid it of cobwebs, and started on his daily walk. It had been his habit, ever since he had moved to Venice two years—actually, twenty-one months—ago, to take a leisurely stroll around the area, a half hour or so, winding up at a café in the Piazza San Marco for breakfast, before going to his office. Even when it rained or he was too hung over to stand up straight, he never missed the walk. It always had a salutary effect on him. He never tired of viewing the ancient Byzantine buildings and medieval monuments, or mingling with the bustling crowds of sightseers in zigzag streets, of exchanging gossip with many lively Venetians whom he now counted as friends. It was life-generating and important. It was also exercise.

  He climbed the arched Ponte della Paglio, jostled by perpetual hordes of people coming and going; observed the tourists with their cameras at the stone railing photographing the enclosed overhead passageway—known as the Bridge of Sighs—which connected the Doges’ Palace with the dungeons. He pushed his way down toward the Piazzetta, the small square with its twin columns celebrating a protector of Venice and one of its patron saints.

  On his way, Jordan looked at the cluster of black gondolas roped to poles in the lagoon under a red banner reading, SERVIZIO GONDOLE, searching to see if Luigi Cipolate, his favorite gondolier and bar companion, was about. He spotted Luigi just as the gondolier saw him. Jordan waved and called out, “Strigheta!”—Luigi’s nickname, meaning Little Witch, because his long nose and curved chin seemed to come together like those of a witch.

  “Timothy!” the gondolier called back. “Good to see you so early!”

  Jordan grinned and considered detouring for a short chat with his friend. It was tempting. Luigi was one of the more interesting, independent, traditional gondoliers. Only half the gondoliers owned their own boats, and Luigi was one of them. It had cost him about 5,000,000 lire—around $6,000—to buy the boat; its stainless steel, aluminum, and brass fittings; its chairs, cushions, rug. Luigi owned his own apartment, too, decorated by a wife and son, in the Dorsoduro quarter near the recently restored old church of San Nicolò dei Mendicoli. He was one of the few gondoliers who continued to wear the regulation costume of straw hat, white cotton sailor shirt over a striped T-shirt, and blue trousers. He was also one of the few who sang for his clients as his oar pushed the sleek gondola through the canals. His repertoire consisted of “O Sole Mio,”

  “Santa Lucia,” and “Ciao Venezia.”

  About to join Luigi, Jordan glimpsed the time on the clock tower and decided that any protracted conversation now would make him too late for work. He waved to Luigi again and headed for the Piazza San Marco. Passing between the Libreria Vecchia, with its shops and the Gran’ Caffé Chioggia beneath, and the shimmering white Doges’ Palace, he tried not to be distracted. Soon he was in the shadow of the towering Campanile, and at once the Piazza San Marco lay before him.

  The sight was awesome, and never fai
led to inspire him with wonder. The vast outdoor square, surrounded by the golden Basilica and three colonnaded buildings on its four sides, no billboards or vehicles visible, the enclosure filled with three cafés, three orchestras, animated groups of visitors, numerous vendors, and pigeons everywhere.

  Feeling better, Tim Jordan moved forward, pigeons fluttering out of his path, until he reached the dark, narrow, crowded Mercerie, the main shopping street of Venice which led from the Piazza into the city proper. Pushing along slowly, head swiveling to see what new merchandise the shopwindows were displaying, Jordan reached the first corner, where he barely avoided bumping into the priest who had emerged from the side street.

  “Don Pietro,” Jordan greeted him with warmth. Pietro Vianello—the “Don” was a courtesy title for priests—was one of Jordan’s favorite conversational companions. “What are you doing so far from home?” Don Pietro had a church in the San Giacomo quarter of Venice, near the railroad station, at the far end of the city.

  The priest, bald except for a fringe of wispy hair, cherubic and rotund, scowled uncharacteristically and removed a rolled newspaper from a fold of his black cassock. “I have come to San Marco to see if any of Venice is left for us,” he said with mock anger. He held up his copy of Il Gazzettino. “Have you seen the new municipal tax that Accardi and his gang of Communist thugs are trying to impose on gift items? If he has his way, it’ll be the end of tourism, and the death of Venice. If those Communist thugs don’t sink Venice, then the snails on your Venice Must Live Committee will manage it.”

  These were two of Don Pietro’s pet subjects. A Christian Democrat, he distrusted the Socialists and detested the Communists. A native Venetian, he also feared the destruction of his city by the annual winter floods.

  “I can do nothing about the Communists,” said Jordan patiently. “After all, your parishioners elected them.”

  “Not my parishioners,” said Don Pietro.

  “Well, somebody elected them.”

  “Nobody elected them,” argued the priest. “They stole the election. That is my suspicion.”

  “As for our Venice Must Live Committee,” said Jordan good-naturedly, having been over this ground before with his clerical friend, “they may be snaillike, but they are moving. They installed the Pirelli dam across the Lido entrance to the sea last winter—”

  “They did not use it to keep out the tides. We were flooded in January.”

  “It wasn’t ready yet—installed, but not ready. It should be all set to use this winter.”

  “I hope I live to see the day.”

  “You will, I promise,” said Jordan. “Now I’d better get to work.”

  The priest’s scowl disappeared. “I have missed you. Come by for tea some afternoon soon. We can have a real argument.”

  Jordan left him. He was still not in the mood for work. He decided he would walk a little farther, at least as far as Nurikhan’s Glass Shop, before turning back for breakfast. Sembut Nurikhan’s modernized glassware store was a short distance, just off Ramo San Zulian in the small square called Campo San Zulian. The Armenian proprietor was perhaps Jordan’s oldest friend in Venice. Shortly after Jordan’s arrival in Venice, when he had still been interested in the showy Murano glass and eager for a reliable place where he could buy gifts for his sister and her husband in Chicago and an elderly aunt in Los Angeles for whom he had affection, Nurikhan’s Glass Shop had been recommended to him. Although the store’s owner, Sembut Nurikhan, a smallish, somewhat professorial and dapper man in his fifties, had seemed remote on first meeting, Jordan had been drawn to him. He was that rarity, an honest and forthright being, and in the months that followed, Jordan had dropped in on him more frequently, eventually dined with him and his attractive Egyptian wife once a month, and the relationship had become closer.

  Jordan had arrived at the shop, with its two front windows trimmed in aluminum. On display in the windows, dramatized by overhead spotlights, were pieces of glass sculpture by Seguso and Nason resting on slabs of black Swedish marble. Jordan went to the doorway and looked inside. The store was filled with customers, and under a baroque Venetian chandelier stood the proprietor surrounded by a circle of Japanese tourists. All that Jordan could see of Nurikhan was his finely etched gray-haired head, gold-rimmed glasses on his thin nose, and the oversized polka-dot bow tie.

  “Sembut,” Jordan hailed him. “Just wanted to say hello.”

  The glass store owner materialized from between two customers. “Tim, five minutes and I’ll be free.”

  “No time today. Got to get to work. How’s everything?”

  “Personally, fine. My brother, not so good. Come back for lunch when you can.”

  Jordan nodded his promise and started away to retrace his steps to the Piazza San Marco.

  It was a quarter to one when Jordan returned to the Piazza. He picked up the International Herald Tribune from Gino, the shabby vendor at the portable newsstand, then crossed into the sunlight, going past the outdoor Caffé Lavena, continuing onward to the next outdoor café, which was Quadri’s, nearer the center of the Piazza. About a third of the small circular gray tables were occupied by tourists, but the ones in the front row were empty.

  Jordan pulled back a yellow wicker chair at the nearest table and sat down to enjoy the sun and some breakfast. A waiter in the aisle came over quickly and welcomed him with familiarity. “The same as usual, Signor Jordan?”

  “The same, except today I’ll have some orange juice. Then the hot tea, no lemon, rolls and butter.”

  With the waiter gone, Jordan settled back, crossed his legs, and unfolded his newspaper. The lead story on the front page announced that the Pope had elevated Cardinal Bacci to head a new council for the propagation of the faith that would police and oversee those elements of the clergy that were straying too far from the orthodox line. Bad news for the liberals. Cardinal Bacci was characterized as a flinty modern-day Savonarola, an extreme zealot. Jordan shifted his attention to a story at the bottom of the page. A Chicago White Sox pitcher, in his rookie year, had last night hurled a no-hitter against the New York Yankees.

  Jordan heard his name and looked up. Approaching him was a lean, blond young man with sensitive, delicate features. He had the odd but not uncommon Venetian name of Memo—Oreste Memo—and he played the violin in the Quadri orchestra. He and Jordan had refreshments together about once a week. When the orchestra took its break, he would come down from the bandstand, remove his light summer jacket, and sit with Jordan. The last time they had been together, Jordan remembered, Memo had told him he was composing the score of a speculative musical on Eleonora Duse for which a friend of his in Milan had already written the book.

  “Hi, Oreste,” Jordan called back. “Want to join me for some tea?”

  “Wish I could,” said Memo breathlessly, “but I’m almost two hours late and I don’t want the boss to fire me. Heavy date last night, all night—one of your American college girls, very acrobatic. I was so exhausted I overslept. Supposed to begin fiddling away at eleven, you know, so this isn’t going to make the old man happy. Be seeing you.”

  He hastened up the aisle toward the bandstand, where the other musicians were assembled.

  The waiter was setting down Jordan’s breakfast. Jordan folded his newspaper, laid it on the next chair, and drank his orange juice.

  Presently, he was buttering his rolls, and doing so transported him to another time and place. It was something Claire had always done for him at breakfast—buttered his rolls or toast as she chattered away. She had been doing that very thing the fateful morning that continually came to his mind. He could close his eyes and picture her unblurred: honey-colored hair, blue eyes, tilted nose, sweet lips, clever, insecure, filled with love and the need for love. And on that morning, three months pregnant. They had both been entertaining high hopes. They had plans to leave the rented apartment in Chicago and buy a house in the suburbs. They had a hundred dreams about the child, children. They had talked about Jordan’s
doing what he wanted to do. He had been an engineer for a large Chicago firm, which bored him, and he had begun to write popular science articles on weekends, which did not bore him, and one day he would do full time what he enjoyed.

  He had gone to work, and an hour later, had received the call from the police. Claire had been standing on a corner of Michigan Avenue waiting for the traffic light to change. A car had swerved out of control, jumped the curb, smashed into her, killed her instantly. Just like that. Pointless. Madness. Claire was dead.

  For almost all purposes, he was dead too.

  He sat here now, in the sun of the Piazza San Marco, absently staring at the pigeons, the tourists feeding them, munching at his rolls, drinking his tea, not wanting to remember the months of despair and mourning that had followed.

  Still, his Claire-less life unreeled in memory. He had quit the engineering firm. He had moved to New York, not wanted to drink, did drink, not wanted to write, did write. His science articles had appeared, were liked, gave him an erratic livelihood. He had been half alive, without ambition or goal, when he had gone apathetically to a charity party on the mezzanine of The Plaza, accompanied some single woman as her escort, gone to the party sponsored by something called the Venice Must Live Committee. He had not been to Venice, or anywhere, had not known it was dying. He had been only partially attentive to the celebrity entertainers, and the committee director who had spoken about the beauties of Venice that might soon be lost to civilization, about how Venice was sinking into the sea even as its monuments were eroding. He had been introduced to someone, a Dr. Rinaldo, who had recognized his name from his published by-line and had been impressed. The man had asked him some probing questions about his career, and he had answered them unseriously, with self-deprecation and cynicism. Dr. Rinaldo had suddenly asked, “How would you like to come to Venice and work for us? We need a communications or press officer, and we have the funding for such a job. You seen to possess all the qualifications. Imagine being paid to live in Venice! Try it for three months. You’ll love it.”