by David Hewson
Somehow she was sure it was the answer she’d been given – the one put into her own mouth. Love.
‘Why did it hurt him quite so much?’ she asked, hoping to calm things a little. ‘Ruskin? Parents lose children all the time. It’s devastating but it’s a part of us too. Who we are. One tragedy among many. Most of us survive. Cope. We don’t react like that, with hatred and violence.’
‘If you’d seen what he’d seen. What I’ve seen . . .’
‘Please,’ she said.
‘Hear me out. He’d never fathered a child before. Neither have I. It’s part of our mutual condition, I think. Didn’t I mention that?’
He took a deep breath and seemed at that instant very old and tired.
‘What was it that English poet said? “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind”. Some diminish one rather less than others, of course. Either way, after a while there’s precious little left to diminish at all. And not much involvement in mankind as a consequence. Enough that he couldn’t shoot me that last night. I was touched by that.’
‘Yet you . . . ?’
‘I lack that poison. Also I am the most careful man you will ever meet. Careful to avoid relations that have consequences. Careful to keep myself to myself.’ He held out the bag again. ‘Believe it or not but it was a damaged sense of humanity that destroyed him. The false belief he might in some way be like everyone else. That’s not possible. We can help, nothing more. If we engage we damage. Ourselves, and others. That’s how it is. He knew that but he couldn’t stop himself, which is why I still mourn him, but only up to a point. Now . . .’
He was insistent. So Teresa took the bag and immediately deposited the thing in a tiny rubbish bin beneath the counter.
Arnaud sat there, a little hunched, clutching at the glass of spritz. Not miserable, she thought. Merely resigned.
‘It was foolish of me to expect you to understand,’ he said eventually. ‘Sofia’s tales about you were so compelling. So adoring. One creates a picture, an image, that can’t possibly be true.’
‘I can imagine. I don’t want to understand. Perhaps I would have once. Not now. This is your fault.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘In the end it’s the mystery that lasts and not the explanation. Is that a good enough excuse?’
‘Oh, dear,’ he said with a guilty grin. ‘You know you’re in trouble when people quote your aphorisms back at you. Sacheverell really did write that though.’
‘I know. I checked. It’s in a book. Just like everything else. You must be an avid reader.’
He raised his glass , toasting her, smiled and said nothing.
‘Arnaud. You need to come with me to the Questura. We have to clear up the rest of this mess. Who Michael Ruskin really was. There are so many questions.’
He went rigid with shock.
‘Oh no. Oh, definitely not. If I set foot in that place I’d never get out. I thought I’d made my position clear on that. I’m no one’s lab specimen. Nor do I wish to spend my final days wasting away in some prison clinic, surrounded by doctors shaking their heads in bewilderment and placing bets on who gets first crack at the autopsy.’
‘There’s the issue of his property for one thing,’ Teresa said, ignoring the bait. ‘His estate.’ She paused for a moment, wondering how he might take this. ‘From what Paola Boscolo tells me there’s quite a lot of money involved. It may be that some will be tied up in legal matters. There’ll be plenty left besides.’
‘Money?’ he cried, aghast. ‘You’re trying to tempt me with money?’
‘Someone’s got to have it.’
‘Find a charity then,’ he said, still mortified. ‘Do I look as if I’m on my uppers?’
She took in the crumpled, stained suit, the sandals and pink socks, the tropical hat scrunched up on the wooden counter of the bar.
‘Yes, frankly. You do. Talking to schoolchildren about paintings and The Golden Legend can’t pay much.’
‘Scarcely a cent! It’s fun. I love the young. I still remember when I was a child myself. Don’t you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘At least I try not to. I hated it.’
‘I’m sorry about that.’
He reached over and grasped her wrist. She was taken aback for a moment, then she saw what he was doing: checking the time on her watch. It was approaching seven.
‘Never carry one of the things myself,’ he said, letting go. ‘Seems pointless.’
‘Please . . . You won’t come to any harm. I guarantee it.’
His eyes fell to the floor. The dog was a tight white ball curled up at his feet next to the ebony cane with the silver handle.
‘There was a reason I chose that costume, you know. The Plague Doctor. A reason he forced it on the unfortunate Gabrielli too, I imagine. The thing sums up our position in a way. As quacks and frauds, hopeless spectators at a ceaseless banquet in which we can never fully participate. Had you been here a few centuries ago you would have found mountebanks and criminals wearing that long white nose. But decent men among them too. Ones who hoped to help. Who thought they might.’
He seemed briefly amused by some stray thought.
‘Not that they’d have seen the fleas, of course. And even if they could, the good men would still be there, wouldn’t they? Frittering away their time.’
With a couple of casual flicks he brushed his jacket to get rid of the breadcrumbs and odd lump of fish, the way a bachelor would.
Then he shook her hand briefly, smiled, looked into her face and said, ‘It’s time I was off. I’m honoured we met, Teresa Lupo. It’s a matter of continuing regret it was under such difficult circumstances. I’m relieved Sofia’s faith in her niece proved so well-founded. You are an extraordinary woman. It pains me we will never bump into one another again.’
This was happening too quickly.
‘Wait, wait,’ she said. ‘Why not? Where are you going?’
He finished the spritz and stared appreciatively at the glass. Then he picked up the cane and his hat and got his feet, stretching, glancing towards the door.
‘Every sane human being has to leave Venice after a while. Otherwise you never escape. I’ve a mind to go back to Penang. I’ve missed the asceticism of Islam of late. Or Istanbul. I have to say the Tanzimat period there was one of the more perilous interludes of my life, and Mahmud II a sultan I could never stomach. It takes a special breed of idiot to lose an entire country. Especially one like Greece. I ask you! But it was Constantinople back then, of course, a different place. Today . . .’
‘Arnaud! Arnaud!’
She was on her feet too, so close to him she could detect an old-fashioned scent, like sandalwood, could see how his skin, neatly shaven, without a single blemish, shone with a wan and weathered vitality. His pale blue eyes were the colour of the spring sky, clear and perceptive, purposeful and direct.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know. You don’t want to hear. That’s your prerogative, of course.’
He looked down. The dog uncurled itself and sat to attention in the erect, taut pose, ears pricked, eyes bright and expectant, that she recognized so well, from life and the canvas in the scuola round the corner.
‘I have a favour to ask,’ he added.
He reached into his pocket and took out a slender tan strip of leather, one so old the colour had faded to white in parts.
‘You only need this on the vaporetto, and that’s because of the damned regulations,’ he said, waving the lead in front of her. ‘On the street he’s a perfect lamb. His name is Vittore. I’ll leave you to work out the inspiration. I can’t possibly take him on my travels. He understands Occitan, Veneto and Italian, in that order. But I’m sure you can bring him round. He’s perfectly house-trained, aren’t you?’
The dog was staring at him affectionately, tail wagging, a little bemused by this conversation.
‘A saucer of warm milk, preferably from a coffee machine, is advisable around six thirty. Otherwise he
feels unloved. His diet apart from that is very routine. Dry food, plenty of water. On no account let him eat brassica however much he pesters. The results . . .’
‘Arnaud!’ She took his arm and for some inexplicable reason felt her eyes begin to well with tears. ‘I can’t possibly take your dog.’
‘He can’t come where I’m going. Besides, strictly speaking he’s not my dog. He was a stray. A rescue. I took him in for company when I came back. He was decent enough to accept me.’
She watched as he bent down and patted the little animal twice on the head, looked into those bright black eyes, then got up, stifling a cough.
‘He’s about six years old, I think. That gives him another eight or so if you’re fortunate.’
‘Please don’t do this . . .’
‘There’s a wisdom about dogs,’ he went on, ignoring her. ‘They’re not like us, trying to brush mortality aside in the hope it might simply disappear. For a dog the idea of death is nothing more than a ridiculous fleeting nightmare. He lives in the full knowledge his existence will never come to an end. So every day begins afresh, every moment has some unforeseen promise in it.’
He reached over and threw some money on the counter.
‘We can learn from this. We should. Some more than others.’
Arnaud, the Count of Saint-Germain – he would always bear that name – turned and stared at her, into her. At that moment he was the man from those strange stories, no one else, and Teresa had no idea what to do, to say or feel.
‘We watch them grow, from puppy to prime to feeble old age. All in such a short space of time, for us anyway. A man or woman with feelings, witnessing this passage, remembers they’re just like us. On the same journey. Merely one that happens to be a little shorter, with fewer opportunities perhaps, though full of all the same excitements and uncertainties, terrors and joys. The wisdom of dogs is to remind us of our own arrogance and stupidity in believing tomorrow may somehow prove more precious than today.’
His eyes never left her.
‘I envy them that sometimes, which is deeply foolish, but more than anything I’m grateful for such a simple, innocent truth. It’s been a source of comfort over the years. I tried to give the man you think of as Michael Ruskin a dog once but he never understood. Some people don’t. I pity them.’
He placed the leash on the counter.
‘Besides,’ he added, suddenly brighter, ‘Sofia once told me that lucky man of yours – Peroni? – adores animals as much as anyone, so I know he’s going to a loving home.’
A smile returned. He seemed distracted, lost in his own private world.
‘I tried to tell you a little of this in that very first story. In my own way. Somewhat cryptically, I imagine. Those were my words about dogs, not Sofia’s. I knew all along it would probably come to this . . .’ He pushed the lead towards her. ‘What other ending could there be? But don’t hate me for trying.’
‘No,’ she whispered, unable to think, to move.
‘Vittore.’ He crouched down, taking the animal’s small head in his hands. ‘She’s yours now. Take good care of her.’
With that he picked up his hat, doffed it once, said a brief goodbye then walked briskly through the door of the little bar, out into the soft, warm evening.
The place was silent, deserted. There was no sign of the barman. Nothing but this little animal at her feet, staring up at her, expectant, as if on tenterhooks.
Teresa Lupo sat down, looked around her, at the machines and the books, the abandoned and broken contraptions and devices that men and women placed around themselves seeking amusement, enlightenment, some sense or reason for the passing days.
Settled at the wooden counter, the dog a white triangle beneath her, she stared out of the dusty windows, transfixed by the radiant light there, remembering the painting from the scuola, an image very like this.
The cartellino, she thought.
The imperfect, the unfinished. A cryptic scrawl by a long-dead genius, a question mark for eternity, passed on to successive generations to puzzle over and hope to unravel.
She reached down and touched the dog, smiling, saying his name . . .
Vittore.
It was carefully chosen, like all the words used by the man who liked to pretend he was someone, something else. Or, in his own terms, was him. Is him.
Tenses.
They matter.
The resolution she had proposed in the Aula San Trovaso could encompass many similar predicaments if she wished to be generous.
Victor Carpathius Fingebat.
She knocked back the rest of the spritz, closed her eyes and started to laugh. It was all so stupidly obvious, even a child should have seen it. And perhaps they did, only to forget later when adulthood came upon them.
The dog and the cartellino were saying the same thing, making an identical heartfelt call to the stiff, introverted man at the window, imprisoned by his books and machines and knowledge.
Teresa Lupo gazed into the gentle sunlight streaming through the dusty panes of the Cason dei Sette Morti and heard the words in her head, spoken in the calm and rational – perhaps super-rational – tones of the man she would always think of as Arnaud, the Count of Saint-Germain.
What next, the dog said in its master’s voice.
What next?
Author’s Note
The Carpaccio paintings mentioned here can be viewed in the locations in the book, the delightful Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni in Castello and Room XX of the Accademia. Further information on the man known as the Count of Saint-Germain may also be found in the books referenced in the relevant chapters, from Pushkin to Historical Mysteries, the obscure memoir of Andrew Lang published in 1905.
Since this is a work of fiction I have taken severe liberties with some aspects of Venetian history and geography. The Casino degli Spiriti seen here is entirely imaginary, and nowhere near the building of the same name which is part of the Palazzo Contarini dal Zaffo in Cannaregio. The scratched outline of the murderous Turk holding a bleeding heart may in real life be found on the right-hand side of the main door of the Scuola Grande di San Marco, now the entrance to the hospital of Giovanni e Paolo. I’m grateful to Alberto Toso Fei’s Venetian Legends and Ghost Stories for this and other information. Research photos taken during the writing of this book, and many other titles, can be found at davidhewson.com.
D.H., Venice, December 2009 to September 2010
ENDNOTE
1. See The Lizard’s Bite.
Also by David Hewson
Nic Costa series
A SEASON FOR THE DEAD
THE VILLA OF MYSTERIES
THE SACRED CUT
THE LIZARD’S BITE
THE SEVENTH SACRAMENT
THE GARDEN OF EVIL
DANTE’S NUMBERS
THE BLUE DEMON
THE FALLEN ANGEL
Other titles
THE PROMISED LAND
THE CEMETERY OF SECRETS
(previously published as Lucifer’s Shadow)
DEATH IN SEVILLE
(previously published as Semana Santa)
First published 2012 by Macmillan
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Copyright © David Hewson 2012
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