Carnival for the Dead

by David Hewson

  The building shook once more as it passed.

  What was it Saint-Germain had said? She couldn’t check the exact words any more. The Questura had taken them and in her astonishment she’d forgotten to ask for a copy for herself.

  It was something about the stones of Venice.

  ‘Never forget those,’ she said out loud. ‘They are your world now. They enclose everything that matters.’

  She finished the tea, dimly remembering something. Then she went back to the computer. It took just a couple of minutes to track down, and when she did she wanted to scream.

  The reason she missed the clue was that, unlike everything else Saint-Germain had told her, it was so very literal. The stones of Venice. Or, more accurately, The Stones of Venice. A book, by one of the most famous Englishmen ever to visit La Serenissima. His drawings, his words, his love for some aspects of the city and loathing for others, had electrified Victorian England and helped spread the fame of Venice to the world.

  Teresa knew the name vaguely, and associated it with academic works about art and architecture. Not tragedy and madness, though when she looked more closely that was there too.

  As she read about what had happened here a century and a half before she felt a grim sense of dread proximity to this strange and brilliant Englishman. Once he had lived no more than a few short steps beyond the Ponte agli Incurabili, in the Pensione Calcina, now a hotel to which, she’d promised herself earlier, she would return during the summer to take tea on the private wooden jetty over the lagoon, enjoying the view and, by then, the weather.

  His books here were concerned with hard fact: the complex, shifting face of the city and how it might be interpreted. Behind this famous façade lay a tragedy so personal, so disturbing that its existence seemed to have been scrubbed from the public consciousness.

  His name was John Ruskin and in 1858 he met a deeply religious Irish girl called Rose La Touche. A brilliant scholar and polymath, he was famed for his literary criticism, his commentaries on painting and architecture, and his precise and meticulous documentation, with his own highly detailed illustrations of the physical form of Venice. Every last portico, every quatrefoil, each window and stone and statue on the faces of the great buildings, from the Basilica San Marco to the distant reaches of the cathedral in Castello, had come to the punctilious attention of Ruskin’s pens and pencils.

  So taken was he with Rose La Touche that shortly after they met he declared his absolute, unshakeable love for her, a devotion that he regarded as sacred, as blessed by God, intended by the Almighty. No small promise to someone as religious as Rose.

  She was eleven years old. He was forty-four.

  When she turned seventeen Ruskin proposed and was turned down. A decade on she died, insane and hysterical. Mad with grief, Ruskin returned to the Adriatic to live in the Pensione Calcina, trying to find solace in the city where he won fame for the long and detailed illustrated chronicle that became The Stones of Venice.

  There was none. At some point during his stay he visited the Accademia and walked into Room XX, surrounding himself with the panoramic imagination of Carpaccio, transfixed by the stern faces, dead, but not entirely so as they stared down at him from the walls of the Ursula cycle.

  No contemporary account existed of what happened that day. Ruskin never wrote about it, and scarcely spoke a comprehensible word on the subject during his madness or later. Before seeing the Carpaccio canvases he was one more miserable, broken individual, mourning the loss of a loved one who had rejected him. When he walked out he was a man deep in the tempest of insanity, racked by an obsessive belief, rooted in the portraits of Ursula, that would shatter his ability to write, to think, to deal with the world outside for years.

  Teresa broke off at this point and tried to calm herself. These ghosts were so close they seemed to walk the same narrow alleys she’d followed herself in pursuit of Sofia. Just as obsessively as Ruskin had, and without much in the way of solid, well-founded reason.

  The room closed in on her for a moment. All the details – the scattered collections of bills and books, of clothes and sewing material, the medieval gown by the door, still on its dummy, crown perched on the pale wooden head, hidden beneath the grubby cover of the sofa – spoke of chaos, the disorder of an irrational mind. That was why she had never looked too closely. It offended some inner judgemental, narrow-minded sense of propriety.

  She thought of Saint-Germain and went back to the computer to read the rest.

  After visiting the Accademia Ruskin became convinced that Rose La Touche was somehow a universal spirit, a creation of God existing outside the bounds of time. That she had lived in Venice centuries before, and it was her likeness that Carpaccio had captured from life in the face and figure of Ursula in the paintings on the wall of the Accademia. For several long months he’d laboured in Venice, crazed, delirious, captivated by the paintings, kept alive only by the loving support of friends. Then the first in a series of absolute breakdowns ensued and he was taken back to England by those same admirers, to begin a slow and uncertain recovery.

  Away from Venice, from the calm, beautiful face of Carpaccio’s Ursula, he began to improve.

  Teresa called up some images of the paintings from the Accademia website. They did the original no justice. The detail was lacking, as was the tormenting intensity of the players in what was meant to be a sweeping universal drama.

  Seen this way the differences between the Ursula cycle and the Carpaccio she’d first met, the canvas in the scuola, with St Augustine, the small dog and the strange cartellino, were even more marked. The Ursula paintings were vast and expansive. They sought to describe and contain an entire world, and a great tragedy within it. The painting of Augustine, which she much preferred, was about one man’s doubt, his inability to interpret something just beyond reach. A single question left both unanswered and imperfectly, cryptically framed, perhaps by nothing more than a single small dog and some words on a painted note.

  Thinking, imagining, alone in the front room of Sofia’s ramshackle flat, she felt, finally, that Saint-Germain’s enigmatic tales were becoming a little clearer. The man she sought was a player in the greater story around them, an actor, the archer with his taut bow and arrow, moved and defined by events. Someone who appeared on the surface ordinary but contained within him an imperfection like Saint-Germain’s own aberrant gene, a sport within the blood that required only the right catalyst, the correct trigger, to become active.

  A mannequin clothed and made real by coincidence, by fate, by chance.

  She was meant to play the role of Augustine. Solitary, bewildered, focused entirely on seeking enlightenment. Unable to reach a conclusion because, as the cartellino intimated, this strange, small personal odyssey was a work in progress, still in motion.

  ‘Victor Carpathius Fingebat,’ she murmured. A painter’s enigmatic boast: Vittore Carpaccio was creating this . . . Teresa recalled the remnants of a line she felt Saint-Germain had spoken thereabouts in the story.

  ‘Incomplete, unfinished. The state we all live in, without knowing it. Die in too.’

  Dammit, Arnaud, she thought. If you are real and we ever meet I will give you such a tongue-lashing for these riddles.

  She looked around and realized she’d spoken out loud. Talking to a ghost. Or not even that perhaps.

  If Peroni or Falcone or Nic had been here they would have seen the point immediately. A wise man learns more from his mistakes than his successes. Revelation sometimes comes more from what’s uncertain than from what is known.

  She felt, once more, a fool. Why had her inquisitiveness never strayed into such a speculative area before? Because, a lone voice answered, you are what you are. A scientist. Literal. Used to seeking answers only in the light. Afraid, in a way, of anything that can only be found in darkness.

  ‘Enough,’ she said, and got up for her coat, grabbing her phone, reaching for Alberto Tosi’s number which was now so used it sat on speed dial.

&
nbsp; They could not possibly be relations. She’d established that already on the web. But the name on the bell for the empty apartment upstairs was that of Michael Ruskin. The owner of the block. Someone who rarely appeared and seemed almost unknown to Strozzi and Camilla. A rich man who travelled freely.

  She did not believe in coincidences, any more than she believed in ghosts or God.

  The weather was turning from squall to storm. Some streets were beginning to resemble acqua alta, when the lagoon rose so high that the city flooded in its lowest parts and wellington boots became everyday wear.

  Camilla Dushku took the fast vaporetto to the Rialto carrying the precious masks in six bags, three on each arm. Struggling beneath a flimsy umbrella, she fought her way against the wind as she crossed the bridge then stumbled down into the arcades beyond.

  The café she was looking for lay beyond the markets which were now deserted, with just a few bedraggled men and women soaking in their costumes and masks, hiding in the arcades, forlornly sipping at drinks. It took her a minute or two to locate but finally she found the narrow salizada, and then the sotoportego and the sign: Do Spade. Two swords.

  It was closed. Another burst of freezing rain flew down from the sky, filling the dark arch where she stood. She put down the carriers for a moment, in the driest spot she could see, and started to take out her phone.

  A man in blue overalls came out of the empty space by the corner. He smiled at her and nodded towards the bags.

  ‘I won’t pay if they’re damaged,’ he said in an odd and artificial accent.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The masks? You’re bringing them for me.’

  She wasn’t best pleased.

  ‘The café. You said to meet you there. And it’s––’

  ‘Closed. Sorry. Venetians. What can you do? Listen. Let’s dump these things off in the shop. Then I’ll buy you a cappuccino and a frittella. You could use something warm inside you.’

  Camilla Dushku did not like the look of this man. She had an idea she recognized him from somewhere, which was surely impossible.

  ‘I’ll just leave you with the masks,’ she said and picked up the bags, offering them to him.

  ‘Happy to carry,’ he said with a smile. ‘But the money’s in the shop.’ He leaned forward and looked at her. ‘You’re Croatian, aren’t you? I can tell from the accent. Beautiful country. Shame it’s so . . .’

  He winced.

  ‘You know. Screwed.’

  She walked with him back to the arcade by the bridge. He kept close to her beneath the umbrella but he didn’t carry the bags. On the eastern side, by some tourist stalls that were closing because of the gale, he guided her into the shadows with his arm.

  ‘Filippo told me your shop was across the bridge in San Marco,’ she said.

  ‘Got lots of shops. Lots of money. Places all around the world. But don’t tell the tax people, huh? We all know what they want.’ He nudged her arm. ‘I don’t need to tell you that, do I?’

  After a minute or so they were in a deserted blind alley with a single store just visible, dimly lit at the end. It was off the main arcade. She didn’t understand how anyone could run a business from a place like this. No one would find their way here accidentally. It was too dark, too hidden. The wind and rain were blowing damp newspapers and trash into the cul-de-sac. The gutters overran with black filthy water. There was that rarest thing in Venice, a real and noxious stench of bad drains.

  The man kept walking and she felt she had to keep up. Finally he stopped outside the shop door and began fiddling with a set of keys. Quickly, anxiously, he pressed the button for the electric security shutter. As it rose it revealed a plate glass door. She looked through into the interior. The stock was limited from what she could see, but expensive, authentic. All the characters of the carnival, and the Commedia dell’Arte too. Harlequin and the female servant Colombina. The Captain and the pot-bellied villain Pulcinella.

  And the Plague Doctor. Three of the last, though the costumes were all identical. The white mask with its beak, unadorned, the way purists liked. The dark gown, the broad, buckled hat. A ruffed collar, two black, one starched and white.

  ‘Everybody likes him,’ the man said, catching the direction of her gaze. ‘Don’t they? Inquisitive little bastard if you ask me. Sticking that long nose where it’s not wanted. Still, the drones enjoy a little . . .’ He leaned close to her and she caught the smell of tobacco on his breath. ‘ . . . terror, eh?’

  The costumes looked dusty and so did the faces of the mannequins wearing them.

  She’d packed the masks herself. They were all female, small, easy to carry.

  ‘If they’re so popular why didn’t you ask for the Plague Doctor?’ she said, staring at the grubby glass and the faded and featureless plastic dummies behind.

  He’d got the door open and was beckoning her inside. Camilla Dushku was frightened and she didn’t know why.

  ‘You ask a hell of a lot of questions,’ the man in the blue overalls told her. ‘Do you want the money or not?’

  She dropped the bags on the damp ground, in the filth and the trash, and turned to run. But he was on her so quickly, and the place they were in was so remote, so hidden.

  There was no chance to scream, no opportunity to fight. He’d dragged her inside the shop before she knew it. Then he struck her once in the face, knocking her to the hard, cold floor. While she floundered there he got a rag out of his pocket, tied it round her mouth, rolled her onto her front, legs kicking, arms flailing, and hit her a couple of times till she was still.

  She was barely conscious. Just enough to see him go back to the door and close it, bringing down the shutters.

  After that he set to work.

  When Filippo Strozzi eventually answered the door he looked flustered.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Teresa asked.

  ‘Not really. We had an order from someone.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

  The big scruffy man in the wheelchair frowned. He wore a voluminous sweater, faded blue, threadbare, with holes at the elbows.

  ‘I suppose. Camilla’s gone to deliver it. The man who called . . .’ He looked guilty. ‘He said he was an old customer. I can’t find any trace of a company called L’Arciere. I don’t understand . . .’

  She blinked, felt cold. He didn’t know the details about what had happened the previous night. About the archer. Even that she’d been involved. The police hadn’t released much more than the news of the murder to the media.

  ‘Michael Ruskin,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He uses you as a kind of caretaker?’

  Strozzi glanced at the wheelchair.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You keep the keys, Filippo. Spares for whoever rents the apartments here?’

  ‘True,’ he agreed.

  The phone was in his lap, as if he was expecting a call.

  ‘Do you have them for his apartment too?’

  His dark eyebrows rose.

  ‘There’s a window open or something up there,’ she said quickly. ‘If I can go in I can close it.’

  ‘Has anyone ever told you you’re a terrible liar?’

  ‘Lots of people. It’s important. For Sofa.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Ruskin’s not the kind of man who’d like people poking round,’ Strozzi said.

  She held out her hand.

  ‘He’s involved,’ Teresa said. ‘Don’t ask me how exactly. But I know.’

  Strozzi thought for a second then whirred over to a sideboard covered in half-finished masks. From the top drawer he took out a hefty key ring, handed it over, pointed out the right ones.

  ‘When did you last see him?’ Teresa asked.

  ‘November. December. I can’t remember.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t live here. Just uses it from time to time. There’s a staircase at the back. It leads down to the litt
le lane that goes round to Salute. He used to come in that way.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  Strozzi frowned.

  ‘I don’t really know. I’ve lived here ten years or so. Never see him much. He’s got places in London. New York. Australia. All over, I think. I suspect this isn’t the only house in Venice. We pay our rent. If there’s something needs doing to the building I just take it out of the same bank account. It’s easy. It works. He’s the best landlord I’ve ever had. Ten years here. No trouble. No bother.’

  I bet, she thought.

  ‘I never really know when he’s here or not,’ Strozzi added. ‘As I said. He can come and go through the back. Someone’s been there lately. I pay the electricity bills. You can tell. Whether it’s him or someone he’s let in there . . .’

  Strozzi stared at her and asked, ‘You really think this is something to do with Michael Ruskin?’

  She waved the keys.

  ‘Later. I need to talk to you, Alberto and Camilla. Not in the café either. Let’s meet here. Half an hour. Can you phone her?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Whether she’ll back in time . . .’

  She set off up the stone staircase, calling Tosi on the way. He was in San Marco already, with a friend, and could be there in minutes.

  This was the first time she’d been to the top floor. The door was polished oak with a brass handle. Heavier, more expensive than the rest. There was a painting there of a centaur, half-man, half-horse, with something in his arms. A bow.

  The picture jogged a series of unpleasant memories.

  She returned to Sofia’s apartment and picked out the sharpest knife she could find in the kitchen, a short and well-worn Sabatier. When she ran her finger across the edge it felt anxious to cut into her skin.