Carnival for the Dead

by David Hewson

  They took turns calling in the intervening days. Teresa skipped work on a rather clumsy pretext, trying to track down Sofia while keeping the peace in Frascati. The previous evening she contacted the Venice Questura. The duty officer was curt and unhelpful. He knew nothing about a woman called Sofia Bianchi and had not the slightest intention of checking the apartment to see if anything was amiss. Sofia’s name had yet to be entered into whatever system the Questura possessed. At the end of this terse conversation Teresa called her deputy in Rome and told him she had pressing personal business to deal with which meant she had to extend her absence by a day or two. Ignoring his protests she then bought a ticket for the first fast train from Rome to Venice. To her surprise, and perhaps disappointment, her mother had decided to join her. There was, Teresa tried to convince herself, no need for alarm. Sofia was a grown woman, one with bohemian ways. This was not the first time she had taken herself off at short notice. Usually the spur turned out to be a man, one who didn’t stick around for long.

  It was not a good time to take leave from her job as head of the forensic department with the state police in the centro storico. February was a busy spell for much-hated paperwork: reviews, reports, not real work at all in her opinion. They would have to wait. Nor were there family ties. Her partner and colleague Gianni Peroni was in Sicily with his boss, the inspector Leo Falcone, and his sovrintendente Nic Costa, seemingly chasing mobsters on an assignment they couldn’t talk about with anyone, even her.

  All that stood between her and the Venetian lagoon at that moment was a flood of pointless documents and tedious meetings to do with ephemeral issues such as strategies and budgets. They would be furious with her for abandoning them. They could live with it.

  ‘Well,’ Chiara said, prodding the door with a gloved finger. ‘Open it. Let’s see.’

  Her mother, normally indomitable to the point of insensitivity, seemed strangely nervous.

  ‘Is there something you’ve never told me?’ Teresa asked, taking out the keys.

  ‘Millions of things,’ her mother replied mournfully. ‘We’re a family. Confessions are for priests.’

  Teresa sighed and fumbled with the lock.

  ‘I meant about Sofia,’ she said. ‘You didn’t need to come. You make me nervous. We both know she’s probably gone off skiing with a man.’

  Chiara blinked. There were tears beginning to form in her eyes.

  ‘Open the door, will you? Let’s get this over with.’

  Her voice seemed to be breaking.

  It was a heavy, old-fashioned lock that required several turns. After four attempts, Teresa managed to prise the thing open though the door was still sufficiently stiff to require a hefty push from her shoulder before it would move.

  The green cracked paint shifted under her weight half a step then stopped again. Something heavy and solid behind stood in the way.

  Teresa Lupo’s profession revolved around death. Suicides and worse. So many over the years. It was understandable, given her mother’s strangely depressed mood, that those memories should wish to flood her head, even if there was no rational reason for them, no cause to believe anything was truly wrong.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ she told her mother, who was now shivering beneath her ancient fur coat.

  Teresa pushed harder until the object on the other side moved again, resisting still, unseen, silent.

  A damp and musty smell emerged from behind the door. Her brief glimpse of the room beyond showed that it was dark. The bright, naked bulb in the hall did little to illuminate what lay there.

  She was not a small woman, though a little slimmer than she had been before Peroni came into her life. One more heave and there was the sound of something shifting behind the door. The wood moved swiftly, falling back as whatever blocked it was forced out of the way.

  She couldn’t stop herself tumbling forward, half-falling into the apartment, shoving the door wide open so that what lay beyond tipped over sideways and became visible in the light from the stairwell.

  Her mother was screaming, a high, sharp howl, one that Teresa Lupo had never heard before. It hadn’t occurred to her to associate fear with either of her parents. They seemed above such emotions. Stoic, resolute, never brave, because that would have required a conscious attitude on their part, not a simple acceptance of fate, of the passing of time, of age and all that it brought.

  One brisk step forward prevented Teresa’s fall. Fumbling anxiously at the wall she found an old-fashioned light switch, circular Bakelite, a simple up-and-down, on-off device with a lever that fell easily beneath her fingers.

  What looked like a large and dusty Murano chandelier came slowly to life ahead of them. Her mother cast a frightened glance at the shape on the floor and screamed again, kept screaming until Teresa turned, took her bulky form in her arms, gripped the warm fox-fur coat, kissed her once on the cheek and held her, saying nothing, simply guiding her, letting her see, begin to comprehend enough for the terror to abate.

  ‘It’s not Sofia,’ she said quietly, taking them further into the room. ‘It’s not anyone.’

  Chiara removed her hand from her face and looked first at the figure on the threadbare Persian carpet, then at the gloomy interior in front of them.

  Fear turned to outrage. She stormed across to the windows and threw open the heavy velour curtains.

  The radiant light of the lagoon day streamed through the glass. The apartment was a mess, a jumble of paper and clothes and belongings scattered around the floor, the sideboard, over the rickety furniture, the misshapen cushions of a well-worn sofa. On a large shiny dining table, next to a dusty glass vase containing plastic flowers, stood a battered old laptop and next to it a copy of Il Gazzettino, the Venice daily. Teresa walked over and picked up the paper. It was six days old and looked as if it had never been read. Clothes, paper, paintings and magazines were strewn everywhere. A pack of tarot cards and a crystal ball – fortune-telling was another of Sofia’s idiosyncratic pastimes – stood in a little pile to one side near the computer. A small hand-operated sewing machine stood on the sideboard next to a crystal carafe and some unfashionable goblet glasses. By the window a cabinet full of old pottery teetered against the wall: cups and plates, too fragile, too ancient to be used. On the top was a large case containing a stuffed golden pheasant, trapped in a pose of outraged fear amidst dry, brittle grass with a badly painted view of the lagoon behind. The place reminded her of a wayward child’s bedroom, one that hadn’t been disturbed in fifty years.

  It was much too warm.

  ‘Sofia!’ Chiara declared, as if she were scolding her younger sister directly. Then, more quietly, ‘This is her.’ And after a moment, ‘This was her.’

  ‘Oh please,’ Teresa said softly. ‘Stop being so . . . so very . . .’

  What? Her mother knew something, something she had concealed.

  Teresa went back and looked at the object that had been blocking the door then set it upright. The thing was a tailor’s mannequin clothed in an elegant costume, unfinished, judging by the needles and thread that lay over the fabric. Stitch-work and embroidery? Were these two more of Sofia’s diverse and unfocused talents? She couldn’t recall. Over the dummy’s shoulders hung a long gown of sky-blue silk, a shade that seemed old, primitive even. The dress was ankle-length, she guessed, though the hem had yet to be fixed by stitching. Rich gold brocade patterned the slashed halter neck and the waist. A generous scarlet cloak, again in silk, was cast around its shoulders, loosely pinned. A slender circlet crown of gold and pearls was attached to the head with tape. The costume looked as if it belonged on the stage or in some historical pageant.

  Carnival, Teresa thought as she pulled the whole thing upright onto its three curved wooden legs.

  She crossed to the corridor that led off from the living area. There was a bathroom that looked as if it hadn’t been painted in decades. The ancient tub was cracked and the gas water heater above it grumbled like a tin beast afflicted with indigestion. Two bedr
ooms followed, one full of junk, the other with a double bed, unmade, with clothes, everyday ones, scattered everywhere. Beyond was a kitchen and the oldest stove she’d ever seen. Packets of tea – oriental and American brands, nothing Italian – stood next to it.

  There was an old tin kettle, distinctly worse for wear. She filled it with water and set it to boil. Small, routine activities, mindless but comforting somehow. Then she went to the window. It stood directly over the narrow alley at the front of the building. She could see the Giudecca canal again and, in the clear, bright distance, the coast.

  Terraferma to the Venetians. Solid land, not mud and tree trunks dug into the lagoon bed. Another country. Another world.

  As she stood there trying to gather her thoughts the vast shape of a second cruise ship hove into view. The floor began to tremble. Cups and plates in the small kitchen cabinet next to the window rattled in concert to the thrumming of the distant vessel’s engines.

  A small central-heating boiler, relatively modern, was set on the wall. Teresa examined the thermostat and the timer. The former had been set to twenty degrees. The timer was disengaged. The gas had been running nonstop since the last person touched these controls. For days perhaps. A week even.

  ‘Where in God’s name are you?’ she muttered then set about making some very strange tea.

  She was comfortable throwing awkward questions at strangers. Trying to ask them of her own mother was difficult. Wrong somehow. So they tidied away Sofia’s mountain of strewn papers and sat on the lumpy, patched armchairs, struggling in vain for the right words. When the fractured, meandering conversation became more than she could bear Teresa got up and sorted through the documents on the table. Bills mainly, unopened. And a diary, a local one with a picture of carnival costumes on the cover, the days in the strange language she recognized as Veneto.

  There had been no entry since the turn of the month. January had a few in the early weeks, perhaps engagements with tourists since they all seemed to begin at familiar haunts in the city, the Rialto, the Accademia, the Piazza San Marco.

  On the last four days for which there were entries she saw only one single line.

  It read: Il Gobbo!

  Someone called Gobbo? But then why was it Il Gobbo? The hunchback or the goblin, a figure from myth, whose hump a child might stroke hoping for good luck. It could mean anything. A person. Some unfathomable reminder that only Sofia might understand.

  Since then . . . nothing.

  Teresa turned on the laptop. It was so old she could barely remember how to operate the thing. There was no wireless connection, no Internet. Nothing but a word processor as far as she could see, and a folder with ten or so documents.

  ‘She thought she’d write a book one day,’ her mother said, as if writing was the province of fools.

  ‘I know.’

  Teresa pulled up the dates on the files. The newest was a few weeks old and appeared to be some notes on various tourist destinations. Everything else dated back to the early part of the previous year. Sofia hadn’t arrived in Venice, from England it seemed, until the beginning of November. She’d written nothing much of any substance since she came here. Not on this machine anyway.

  Her mother got up and peered at a watercolour on an easel near the window.

  ‘She thought she could paint too,’ she said.

  It was a view of the canal near the Zattere vaporetto stop. A pretty picture, with bright colours and a radiant sun. Sofia must have worked on it from a photograph or her imagination. The light here was so local, so particular. It varied from one hour of the morning to the next. This was not winter.

  ‘Did Sofia live here once before? In Venice, I mean?’ Teresa asked.

  Her mother closed her eyes for a moment then stared at the picture again.

  ‘She used to sell these things when she needed money. In London. In Rome. In Paris when she lived there.’

  ‘I didn’t know she lived in Paris.’

  ‘She’d approach anyone.’ A bitter pang of self-reproach crossed her face and Teresa felt her own heart begin to ache. ‘Any stranger. The idea that trust was to be earned, to be tested, never occurred to her.’

  ‘So she lived in Paris once? In Venice too? And I never knew?’

  ‘You were at university! You looked ready to find a life of your own! At least. After all the trouble . . .’

  ‘This is about Sofia. Not me.’

  ‘You asked why I never told you! Because I was too frightened. You two were so close. If you knew what was going on . . .’ Chiara’s eyes turned to the glistening waters of the canal beyond the window. ‘I saw it all in my own head as clearly as if it was real. You’d give up medicine. You’d run to her.’

  ‘Did she need me then?’

  Chiara placed a hand on the painting, traced the outline of the canal with her fingers. It was the kind of work a tourist would buy, Teresa thought. Simple, pretty, lacking in wit and observation. A photograph reduced to paint, just to raise a little money. Sofia could do better than that if she wanted.

  Her mother left the window, came and took both of Teresa’s hands quickly, held them, two quick squeezes. Familiarity, as much as it ever happened.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘This tea is almost cold. And I quite like it. I never knew where Sofia got her ideas from. Her friends.’

  Chiara stared at her daughter and smiled for a moment.

  ‘More of a child to me than you. More of a sister to you than me. That’s what your father always said.’

  ‘Not when I was around,’ Teresa complained.

  ‘Oh no. Neither of us would dare do that.’

  It was clear. Whatever it was that Teresa Lupo was about to hear was a burden that had hung heavily on her mother for many years. A constant weight she’d borne, uncomplaining. She would be glad to be rid of it.

  Teresa took the cups into the kitchen and made more tea. It tasted of fennel and strange herbs.

  Then she came back and sat opposite her mother, amidst the newspapers and the unopened bills, the scraps of paper with pencil sketches on them, the detritus of the missing Sofia Bianchi scattered across the living room of this strange apartment beneath the glassy gaze of the long-dead pheasant.

  ‘A nightmare must end before you try to make sense of it,’ Chiara said. She shrugged. ‘Even then that’s all you do. Try. Forgive me.’

  Teresa could still recall that summer, sixteen years before. Her own life hung in the balance too. It was the time of crucial exams at college, the pivotal point on which her future turned, would either allow her entrance into the wide, beckoning world of medicine or damn her with failure to a lost fate she couldn’t imagine.

  Nothing had mattered during those few hectic months except study, revision and success. She was living in a cheap, run-down student house in San Giovanni, working from eight in the morning till midnight trying to catch up on every scrap of learning she might have missed. Later she would discover that she had won the highest marks of any of her peers, an event that would lead to a riotous night in the Campo dei Fiori, a triumphant laurel wreath around her neck. Until the moment she saw the results on the college noticeboard she had been convinced she would be lucky to scrape through, to avoid the embarrassment of being sent down for a year or ejected from college altogether.

  From this distance she could so easily understand why her mother never told her what had happened to Sofia. In her heart she knew she ought to be grateful. Had the news reached her nothing would have stopped Teresa abandoning Rome for Venice immediately, regardless of the consequences and any personal cost.

  It was an interminable few months throughout Italy, a time of drought and lethargy. Sofia’s first husband, an American banker named Bardin, had died in a car accident near their home in New Jersey four years before. A variety of men, of different addresses around Europe, had followed. By the time Teresa was in touch with her again Sofia was in London, briefly married once more to a British artist who treated her so despicably that she had walk
ed out after a year and returned to Rome to teach in a language school for a while. Then, within twelve months, she was gone again, this time travelling in Asia.

  Thinking back Teresa could pinpoint the lacunae in her aunt’s life around that time. With the revealing yet ultimately hollow benefit of hindsight they stood out like underexposed blemishes on a photograph, a patch of emptiness in the midst of a life so apparently glittering the darker parts were never cast into relief.

  She listened very carefully to what her mother said then asked, ‘You seriously believe Sofia tried to kill herself?’

  It seemed impossible.

  Chiara clasped her own hands tightly, as if seeking reassurance.

  ‘You weren’t there. I was. Sitting in that hospital by the water, the one near Fondamenta Nove. Opposite that strange island where they bury people. Listening to the doctors. Sofia barely willing to speak, as pale as a ghost.’

  She put a hand to her mouth and shook her head. The tears were there again, more real than ever.

  ‘They didn’t think she’d live at first. She didn’t want to. The drugs . . .’

  ‘What drugs?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Sleeping pills. Barbiturates or something.’

  ‘From where? Was Sofia prescribed them? Was she suffering from insomnia?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  Sixteen years. The records would probably be gone by now, not that Teresa had the slightest right to see them.

  ‘Had she ever tried to harm herself before?’

  Chiara frowned and said, ‘Not that I’m aware. She’s spent more of her life outside Rome, outside Italy, than here. How would any of us know?’

  We would, Teresa thought to herself. Somehow.

  ‘What did she say? When she wanted to speak?’

  ‘Nothing. Except that she wanted to go back to Rome. She said she had no recollection of what had happened.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what? That was it! A lie. A concoction. I could see it in her eyes. She didn’t want me to know the truth.’