Strangers in Venice

by A W Hartoin

  “What did he steal?” asked Stella as if she didn’t know.

  “A boat,” they said together and went on to describe pretty accurately what happened. There was some passing mention of Peiper chasing someone that they supposed were the Americans, but they were forgiven since the German wrecked at least two boats and was firing a gun.

  “Did anyone get hurt?” she asked.

  They thought not. The captain of the first boat, the one being chased, got what they called a roughing up and a dunk in the canal, but he was okay. Their feeling was that a man who let his boat get taken deserved what he got.

  Stella thanked them for their help and left with the tiniest sense of relief. The captain really was fine and nobody wanted to help Peiper. She must be grateful for that and that her list was done. No more hotels. She was supposed to start on the telegraph offices, but it was getting late and she promised to go to Dr. Spooner for Rosa. She hadn’t been near his office or the Bella Luna all afternoon and she wasn’t close then either, but she had to go.

  She turned around and returned to the Gritti Palace. The clerks were gossiping and smiled to see her. She asked for the nearest telegraph office, saying she needed to send word that she hadn’t found their cousins. They gave her directions and said to hurry because they would be closing soon. She hadn’t thought of that and rushed out into the night.

  The telegraph office was closed and no amount of banging on the door got them to open up. Stella supposed they couldn’t stay open all the time, but it was annoying just the same. She turned around, took off her glasses, and went back to the Grand Canal. There was a vaporetto stop there and she hoped they were still running. She’d spent too much on taxis and, after paying Dr. Davide, her lira was getting low.

  The vaporetto pulled up and this time she bought a ticket, using her Italian accent, just to see how it would go over. The man didn’t question it and, if she understood him correctly, he liked her green coat. She went to the back of the bus and stood under a light to check her dictionary. He did like her coat.

  She went through the handy phrases at the back as the vaporetto churned through the waves, stopping at stop after stop. She swayed with the other passengers and no one paid her any mind, other than a few looks from the men boarding. They didn’t approach her, thankfully, but it might be good to have a wedding ring to guard against such things. As soon as she thought that, she felt terribly guilty about Nicky. She hadn’t thought she needed a ring because she was married. She needed a ring to use as protection, a disguise. This wasn’t a good thing, not that it would stop her. Later she could worry about the niceties. Right then it was important to get where she was going.

  The vaporetto, at long last, pulled up at the San Silvestro stop. Things always take forever when you’re in a hurry and Stella was in a hurry to get her miserable task over with. She should’ve gone earlier, but she’d given herself excuses. None of the hotels on the list were nearby. Dr. Spooner would be with a patient or at the hotel attending a guest. The real reason was that she dreaded facing him and wouldn’t have done it, if it weren’t for Rosa.

  Now she regretted her excuses. She should’ve gone first thing and gotten it over with, even though he was bound to say no. The hotels had taken nearly six hours. Stella hadn’t realized it until the sun started to go down and by then she was nowhere near San Polo. Karolina would think she’d forgotten or didn’t care. She did care and she rushed through the streets as fast as the water would let her.

  Dr. Spooner had a little map printed on the back of his card and she followed it to number forty-two on a little street covered with wrought-iron balconies and vines growing up the walls. The doctor’s door was a faded blue, set in stone with a Moorish peak at the top and a brass knob in the middle. There wasn’t a knocker or bell that Stella could see, but there was a small brass plate confirming she had the right place.

  Dr. Irving Spooner

  Doctor and Surgeon

  Stella took a breath and steeled herself for what Dr. Spooner would say or, perhaps worse, what his wife would say. She’d seen what interrogations looked like and her eyes filled when she thought about the doctor and his kindness to her.

  It was no use waiting. Waiting wouldn’t heal him or change it. She knocked on the rough old paint and a minute later a miniature door in the door opened at eye level and a woman about Dr. Spooner’s age looked out at her with large brown, inquisitive eyes.

  “Buonasera, signorina. Posso aiutarla?”

  “Buonasera, signora.” Stella checked her dictionary. “Il dottore è qui?”

  The lady frowned. “Non sei italiano?”

  Stella couldn’t think. It was basically no and Italian. She didn’t speak Italian?

  “I’m sorry. Do you speak English?” she asked.

  The lady smiled. “Yes, of course. You are not Italian?”

  Stella frowned and a thrill of fear went through her. “Was my Italian that bad?”

  “No, no. The accent, it was perfect. It was only that you looked down to read it. I was confused. Are you a patient of the doctor?”

  “Yes, I am,” said Stella, relief washed over her but was quickly replaced with fear. “Is he here? Is he okay?”

  She frowned. “Yes. My husband is here. You have an appointment. I was not aware of this.”

  “No. I don’t, but I only need a moment of his time.”

  “Your name?”

  Stella hesitated. If she gave her name, he might not see her and she wouldn’t blame him. But what else could she do? “It’s Eulalie Myna.”

  The lady closed the little door and Stella waited, not so patiently, watching the water drip off the points of her umbrella.

  Then the door opened and the lady welcomed her in with a wide smile. “Please come in, Mrs. Myna. The doctor is in his office and he will be happy to see you.”

  “Really?”

  She frowned again. “Yes. You are surprised?”

  “Well, it’s late and he must be tired,” Stella said quickly.

  “It is not late for a doctor,” she said. “I am his wife, Gloria. May I take your coat, hat, and umbrella?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Gloria helped her out of her coat and admired her hat pin. “This is beautiful. A, how do you say, family…”

  “It’s an heirloom,” said Stella. “My great grandmother’s.”

  “This pin was made in Italy, I think.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Gloria smiled. “It is beautiful and strong like Italian women and this mark here.” She pointed at a tiny mark in the silver next to the pearl, “it is from Florence.”

  “It’s my good luck charm,” said Stella. “But it hasn’t worked so well here.”

  “Maybe it has and you don’t see the luck.” Gloria put her hat with the pin on a side table next to the coat rack. “Come this way.”

  They walked over glossy wood floors through a maze of interconnected rooms to the back of the house. Stella caught the scent of a pipe as Gloria stopped at a room and knocked on the door.

  “Sì?” asked Dr. Spooner and Gloria answered him in Italian.

  The door flew open and Dr. Spooner stood there, astonished, in his shirtsleeves with a pipe clamped between his teeth. His nose was swollen and badly bruised. There was a touch of blood in his nostrils and the side of his face was purple.

  “Mrs. Myna would like to speak to you.” Gloria looked back and forth between them and a different kind of frown came over her face. “What is this? What is wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m just surprised. I didn’t expect you, Mrs. Myna.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I promised a friend that I’d come talk to you. I know you probably can’t help her, but I said I’d try.”

  “Come in, please.” Dr. Spooner waved her in to a chair in front of his desk. “I hope I can help.”

  Stella sat down and Gloria asked, “May I offer you a drink? Aperitif? Wine?”

  “Thank you, but I shouldn’t.�
��

  “It is the correct time of day and I have Montepulciano. You will like,” she said.

  “I’m sure I would, but I haven’t eaten since—”

  Gloria threw up her hands. “You are hungry. I will get you something.”

  “No, no,” said Stella to no avail. Gloria rushed off and Dr. Spooner sat down behind his desk. “Now you’ve done it.”

  “I was trying to be polite.”

  “You’ve told an Italian grandmother that you are hungry. It is like” —he snapped his fingers— “this rain. She will feed you. She is unstoppable.”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Hurry. Tell me why you are here. Gloria is unstoppable with food and also fast. Are you all right? Your husband?”

  “We’re fine. What about you? Your face.”

  He waved the question away. “Never mind me. Go on.”

  “There’s another patient, like I said. She’s very ill and her sister wants a second opinion. I told her I would ask you to come see her. I understand if you can’t.”

  “Who was the first opinion?” he asked.

  “Dr. Davide. He says there’s nothing he can do, but he was drunk today.”

  He nodded and said nothing.

  Stella sat back. She expected a refusal, but it would be hard to tell the ladies. Karolina loved Rosa so very much. “I understand.”

  “I will come, but I must be careful. Since the Leggi Razziali were passed, the carabinieri have been getting more and more difficult.”

  Stella braced herself. “But are you okay?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Dr. Davide told me that Bartali visited you.”

  He touched his nose. “That man is desperate to get at Davide and through him, Dr. Salvatore.”

  “How bad was it?” she asked.

  “Why do you keep looking at my hands?”

  Stella shook her head. “No reason. Please tell me.”

  Gloria marched in the room and plunked down a wine bottle and a trio of glasses. “Yes. Tell her about that stronzino Bartali. I want to hear this.”

  “Gloria, my love, I—”

  “Basta!” She uncorked the wine and tossed the cork over her shoulder. “I know you did not walk into a door. People do not walk into doors. You walk into a fist.”

  “It’s not what you think,” he said, turning red to the tips of his ears.

  Gloria poured the wine in big heavy glugs. “Who are these people you ask my husband to help? Jews? Always with the Jews.”

  “I…”

  “You are not a Jew,” said Gloria. It wasn’t a question.

  “No. How did you know?” Stella asked.

  She pointed at the beet red doctor. “He knows better than to tell a Jew to come here.” She tried to hand Stella a glass, but she refused.

  “You are against the Jews?” she asked, trying to contain her anger and frustration. How could this lovely woman hate people she didn’t even know?

  “I am against my husband getting smacked in the face,” said Gloria. “Let Salvatore take care of his people.”

  “He can’t do what needs to be done,” said Dr. Spooner.

  Gloria sputtered. “Birth certificates, baptisms! It is all lies. People should be who they are.”

  “They can’t.” He gulped down half his glass. “You see what is happening.”

  “I see it will happen to us.”

  “It won’t.”

  Gloria poured him more wine. “It will. I know you treat the Jews. You think I don’t know. I know.” She turned on Stella. “You know this is illegal. Why you ask this of him?”

  Stella leaned back as far as she could get from the doctor’s enraged wife. “I’m sorry.”

  “You lie to me.”

  “Me?” she said in astonishment.

  “You lie. You say you are his patient. You come here to make him criminal. He will be arrested. Do you want this to happen?”

  Dr. Spooner stood up and carried his wine glass around the desk. “Of course, she doesn’t. She is my patient.”

  Gloria threw up her hands. “You think I am stupid. You have the nose, the bruises on your face. What does this girl have? Not even a cold.”

  He gave Stella a look and she pulled off one of her galoshes to reveal her fat foot with the bandages sticking out of the sock. “Dr. Spooner treated my feet.”

  Gloria crossed her arms. “What happened to your feet? You stub your toe?”

  “Actually” —Stella sighed. She might as well say it— “I have frostbite and the flood water got on them. I don’t know. It did something to them.”

  She remained unconvinced. “A pretty girl like you has frostbite?”

  “Pretty has nothing to do with it.”

  Gloria gave her husband a sideways glance. “Pretty always has something to do with it.”

  The doctor flushed again and took a drink of wine before squatting in front of Stella. His knees popped and cracked, but he took no notice of Stella’s wincing. “May I?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

  He took off the sock and unwound the bandage, showing off all the ugly lumpy skin and the healing splits. Gloria jolted to her feet. “Mio Dio!”

  Stella held out her foot and admired it. “Actually, it looks a lot better. I think I can wear normal shoes soon.”

  “This is better?”

  The doctor crackled and popped his way to standing again. “It is. Believe it or not. She’s a fast healer.”

  Gloria forced a wine glass into Stella’s hands. “You drink this now. You need wine.”

  “Um…well, I still haven’t—”

  “Food. Yes. You are hungry.” Gloria ran out and Stella obediently drank. It was very good and she did like it.

  Dr. Spooner went to the door and peeked out. “All right. Quick. Where is this woman?”

  Stella hesitated.

  “You have to tell me or I can’t come see her.”

  “What about Gloria?”

  He looked out again. “I’ll come tomorrow after I check in at Bella Luna when I’m seeing my other patients.”

  “Hotel al Ponte Vittoria.”

  He smiled. “Sofia’s hotel. I should’ve guessed. Bartali knows you’re there?”

  “Unfortunately. He’s been accusing us of being Jews and of not being Jews. I don’t know which he’d prefer. He’s crazy.” She started to rebandage her foot, but he insisted on soaking them.

  “Bartali doesn’t care what you are as long as you give him Davide, Salvatore, and even better me.” Dr. Spooner unwrapped Stella’s other foot and examined it. Then he got a basin and filled it with water as he explained the situation. The new laws had some exemptions. If a person had converted by a certain date, they weren’t subject to the new laws, for instance. The exemption Gloria referred to was about babies. If a child was born and baptized before the laws took effect, they weren’t Jewish and thus protected. Parents, desperate to keep their children from being barred from schools and jobs in the future were having their children baptized. Father Girotti and Father Giuseppe were giving people fake baptismal certificates. Dr. Davide and Dr. Salvatore were backdating new births to before the cutoff so parents could take advantage of the exception.

  “What’s that got to do with you?” asked Stella, wincing as he lowered her feet into the hot water.

  “I’ve changed a few of the certificates. Usually for the Catholic mothers when the father is Jewish, but sometimes I see patients that I’m not allowed to treat anymore, but I’m their doctor. I have always been their doctor.”

  “And Gloria doesn’t want you to do it?”

  “She doesn’t want any trouble.”

  “But you do it anyway?”

  He shrugged. “A man has to do what a man has to do.”

  Stella patted his hand. “And women, too.”

  “Does your father know you aren’t coming home?” he asked.

  “I didn’t get a chance to telegram him, but I will.”

  He
swirled the water with his finger. “I hope so. I’m a father. I know how worried a father can get.”

  “It’s not my father I’m worried about. He’ll be fine. My mother, on the other hand, is a different story. She used to be quite wild as a girl, but you’d never know it now. She’s the only Bled known for being quiet, calm, and never ever putting a foot wrong. I was supposed to behave myself and follow the rules. I didn’t and here I am. She’s probably in hysterics.”

  “Another reason to go home immediately.” Dr. Spooner lifted her foot out of the water.

  “I will.”

  “When?”

  Stella laughed. “You are a father, aren’t you? I will when I’ve done what I came to do.”

  Gloria bustled in with a tray piled high with salads, a risotto, and thick hunks of bread. Stella was planning on refusing, but she couldn’t. The smell of the risotto made her mouth water. She ate while Dr. Spooner coated her feet in a new kind of liniment and bandaged them.

  After drinking her glass of very nice wine, she insisted on leaving. The doctor said he had to work on some patient notes and Gloria walked her to the door.

  “I heard you talking about your mother,” she said. “She is worried about you.”

  “She is, but worrying is practically her profession. I think she enjoys it.”

  “My husband wants you to go home to America.”

  “He does and I will.”

  Gloria got her coat and hat, helping her on with them before she paused at the door, holding her umbrella hostage. “Don’t come here again. My husband’s heart, it is too big. He won’t refuse you and he cannot be arrested. He’s not as strong as he seems.”

  “I don’t think I’ll have to,” said Stella.

  Gloria held her arm tightly, her large eyes afraid. “You should go home to your mother. Telegram her so she will not worry. Think of your mother.”

  “I am. Believe me.”

  She didn’t believe her. Stella could tell.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing?” Stella ran down the hall and hooked Nicky’s arm over her shoulders. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”