“Who in turn could have told her brother-in-law.”
“It’s possible. And if he left immediately, he could have been here for nearly a week.”
“How certain—”
“Not at all. It was dusk, it was a momentary glimpse of the side of his face, and his body was mostly hidden by other passengers. He only caught my eye because the two of them looked so out of place, but he was already in the process of turning away.”
“Did he notice you?”
“I don’t see how he could have. My vaporetto was even more crowded than his—and it could as easily be pure imagination, since he’s been on my mind. But I did want to tell you, just in case.”
His steepled fingers tapped at his chin a few times, then he stood. “My appointment with Mr Porter is at noon. He wishes to challenge my violin skills, to see if I am up to his needs for the Saturday party.”
“Have fun, Holmes.” I followed the sounds of his dressing with half an ear, staring out over the busy waterway. Steamers coming and going, gondoliers shouting, laden boats of all shapes and sizes weaving comfortably along—and closer in, along this singular section of waterfront promenade, a cross-section of the world’s peoples.
For a thousand years, Venice was a cross-roads for commercial and military power. When it fell to Napoleon and became a pawn in the game of empires, the skills of that millennium did not die, but slipped beneath the surface. Its people, like any conquered group, learned to hide their true faces from rulers and clients alike. Outwardly welcoming, warm, and inclusive, in fact they were as insular and tribal as the inhabitants of any mountain fastness.
The gondolieri would take Holmes’ money, they would give him good value for it, but they would not mistake contractual arrangements for family loyalties. They would sell him truth, but an edited version of it, appropriate to an outsider.
Some questions were better asked directly, of a person whose reactions one could see.
I spent some time with my maps and guide-books, then dressed, pushing aside my bright new costumes in favour of the wardrobe’s more conservative contents. I added sensible shoes and a wide-brimmed hat and left the hotel—but rather than cross the Riva degli Schiavoni and hire one of the waiting boats, I joined the tide washing into the Piazza, and from there, into the shopping streets with the men out front waving bright goods and spraying us all with scent. I stopped in the place with the brightest window-decoration between the Piazza and the Rialto Bridge, and ordered three more beach costumes that I hoped Holmes would never have to see me in.
After that, I retreated into the nearest calle, to search out one of the clans of gondoliers that gathered along the inner canals.
The Venetian gondola was a form of transportation, yes—but by 1925, it was equally a Romance. Invariably, the more handsome the oarsman and the better his singing, the more substantial his tips from giggling visitors. My first congregation of men in the distinctive wide hat and blouse-like shirt of the gondolier was unsuccessful: every one of them eyed my approach with something resembling a leer, and despite my sensible dress, whistles followed my retreat down the fondamenta. The second such gathering was the same, underscored with a sotto voce joke that triggered male guffaws. At the third, I had to brace myself to walk in the direction of the half-dozen loitering figures—but then I saw my ideal: short, ugly, untidy, and built like a fire plug, with all his mass at the top.
He looked up in astonishment as I passed by his physical superiors to stop in front of him, assembling a question in hesitant Italian. “Parla inglese, Signore?”
“I spik some Englis’, Signorina.”
“Good. You look strong enough to row the lagoon, yes?”
“No problem, Signorina. I go to Lido, Burano, Mestre—Chioggia, even, with two.”
“You have a partner, then? Er, il compagno? For a second oar?”
“Si, si—Carlo, la signorina ha bisogno di un secondo.”
“Scusi, it’s Signora,” I told him.
“As, Signora, so young! Carlo and me, we take you far and fast.” Carlo was one of the less Adonis-like loiterers, young and tall but wiry rather than muscular.
“Not too far, and not that fast, but I’ll need you to wait. Um, aspettare? While I am talking to someone?”
“Si si, no problem. We go now?”
“We go now. And your name?”
“Madame, I am Giovanni Govesi, at your humble service.”
And with that noble declaration, he and his comrade-in-oars bowed me onto my cushions in his shiny black gondola, and we pulled away from a set of handsome faces wearing the sour expressions of men who realise they have missed out on something.
“You wan’ the Lido?”
“In that general direction,” I replied, unwilling to be specific while ears were still nearby. When we had wound our way out of the city “streets” and into the highway of the Grand Canal, I turned about in my seat to tell my driver where we were actually going.
“Signor Govesi, I would like—”
“Please, Signora: Giovanni. I am Giovanni.”
I inclined my head by way of acknowledgment. “Signor Giovanni, I need to go and speak with the people on San Clemente.”
The oars drifted to a halt.
“Is that a problem?”
Carlo and Giovanni exchanged a troubled look, then resumed their grip and their rhythm, with considerably less enthusiasm than before. I studied the older man’s face, then decided to ask. “Signor Giovanni, I know what is on the island, and I do not want to cause you distress. Dolore, yes?”
“No, Signora, is no problem. Is only, the island, it is a sad place, capite?”
“Yes, I understand. I won’t be there very long.”
“It is fine, Madame. Fine.”
I settled back into my seat, allowing the two men to get on with their rowing. As I’d hoped, my clearly demonstrated lack of their language encouraged them to talk easily together over my head. And although much of what they said was Venetian rather than Italian, there was enough of an overlap that I could make sense of portions.
“Do we really have to go there?” the younger, Carlo, asked.
“The pay will be good, think of that. And we’ll be gone before dark.”
“What if she is there?”
“Why would she be there, at the landing? Hot day like this, she’ll be inside, or under a tree in the garden. Just don’t tell her on Sunday that we came by without seeing her, it’ll be fine.”
I took care to keep all awareness from my face, staring off at the palazzos and waterborne craft.
“Just so he isn’t there.”
“When does he ever go to see her?”
In a chorus, both men hawked and spat over the side. I allowed my gaze to come up, with a vague smile, then went back to watching the movement around me.
But neither man continued with his thoughts about either the loathed him or the worrisome her. Instead they talked about one of their fellows who had been kicked out of his house by an irate wife when she’d discovered his second family—a story that gave me quite a few new vocabulary words and helpful insight into how a Venetian held secrets (namely, by storing them over on the mainland in Mestre) but which had nothing to do with San Clemente or its inmates.
The gondola skimmed past the Salute and across the San Marco Basin, ducking into the canal that crossed the Giudecca and into open water again, then straightening for a run at one of the larger islands ahead of us.
The Isola di San Clemente was (according to the maps) a teardrop-shaped piece of land with (according to the guide-book) a varied history: monastic community, pilgrim hospice, then quarantine island during various plagues, which supplied it with both hospital and burial grounds. After Napoleon, the island’s religious were kicked off to make room for a military garrison, until finally, the hospital was converted to a
place for the area’s lunatic women.
We put in among the marking pillars, and I let Carlo help me out. A man appeared from one of the buildings, bare-headed and jacket unbuttoned. His arm came up as if in friendly greeting—but a swift motion at the corner of my vision cut him off sharply. The upraised arm descended; the man came to a halt. As I approached, I saw him look doubtfully between me and the two gondolieri behind me.
“Buongiorno, Signora.”
I returned his greeting, established that he spoke enough English for my purposes, and continued in slow and simple phrases. “Signore, my name is Mrs Russell.”
“Amadeo Albanesi, Signora.” We shook hands.
“Signor Albanesi, I have a friend. She came to Venice in the last one or two weeks. She has spent time in a lunatic hospital in England. You understand?”
“Un manicomio, si.”
“Right, thank you. My friend travels with a woman, a nurse, who may be from here—from Venice, I mean—who is not quite so tall as me.” I held my hand up on my forehead to indicate Nurse Trevisan’s remembered height. “Brown hair, brown eyes, small…er, mole? Here?” I touched my jaw-bone.
“Il neo? Si. No, Signora, I have not seen one like that.”
“What about my friend? She is small.” Again the hand came out, this time at my chin. “Light hair.”
“Bianchi?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call—that is, I don’t know if it is white. Pale blonde.”
“Biondi? No, we have no new patient con i capelli biondi. Hairs of the blonde.”
“But you do have one with white hair? A new patient with white hairs—hair, I mean?”
“Six, seven days new, si. Not English. Or, maybe. Not…anything. Non parla, capisce?”
“Lei non parla affatto? Neanche un po’?”
Signor Albanesi looked relieved at this shift into something resembling his own tongue, and proceeded to inform me that although, yes, they had a new patient, she wasn’t blonde, but white-haired, and that they didn’t know if she was English or German or what, since she hadn’t spoken a word since she was brought in nearly a week ago.
I glanced at the doorway behind him. “Signore, may I be permitted to meet this patient?” I hurried on as I saw refusal on his face. “Or just to see her, for a moment. I could solve your problem, of who she is. Her family has money,” I offered.
His dark eyes studied mine, then looked behind me towards the lagoon and city beyond. I could see him consider my request—which offered not only the solution to a puzzle, but a possible relief of some financial burdens, institutional or personal. He seemed about to speak—and then his face shifted, drawing in with what looked like dread, or even fear. I started to turn, but before I could see what attracted him he grabbed my arm, dragging me out of the light and towards the depths of the building. “Venga, Signora—presto presto!”
His urgency was such that I went along with him. Once inside, he by-passed the first door to yank open the second, trying to shove me within. That I resisted. “Why? What is wrong?”
“Signora, please, cinque minuti only, maybe ten is all, of silence. Here. Then I will take you to see your friend. But per favore la prego, silenzio!”
The door shut in my face, but did not lock. I heard him scuttle into the adjoining office, then hurry out again. When I edged the door open, I saw him walking briskly down to the manicomio’s pier, adjusting his official hat and doing up the buttons of his uniform.
I also saw my two companions scrambling to row away before the fast-approaching motor-launch smashed their delicate craft into the boards.
At the sight of the man who stepped off the launch, I drew back my head like a threatened turtle.
It was—no, be honest: it might have been—one of the men from the vaporetto the previous evening. I had seen both men from the side, and this could have been either—or someone else entirely. In any case, the newcomer, too, wore black: black trousers, black belt, black shirt, and a black neck-tie—with incongruous splashes of white in the shape of spats on his fashionable two-toned shoes. Shiny buttons and glints of silver on his collar suggested this was an officer’s uniform, but he was hatless.
He must also have been hot in the sun, because he stormed impatiently past the island’s…guard? Greeter? Head nurse?—towards the shade. I retreated instantly, holding the door just a fraction clear of the jamb, my ear pressed to the crack.
The fairly one-sided discussion that followed was more comprehensible than that of my gondoliers, being Italian rather than Venetian, although portions of it were swallowed in the newcomer’s rapid-fire speech and his use of words I did not know. It seemed that his appearance here was a regular thing—daily, apparently—albeit one he liked as little as the island’s employee did.
His presence was due to a patient by the name of Dalso or Dalser, newly arrived and (according to Signor Albanesi) creating a tremendous uproar over being separated from her young son. “She screams, Capitano. All night and much of the day. There will be questions.”
“And you people cannot deal with questions? Bah, these are women, slap them and they shut up. Are you all——that you suckle at your mama’s tit?” I missed the word, but could tell it was a rude one.
“Capitano, I am married with three sons!” Ah: it meant homosexual. “But she is a woman, even if a mad one. She longs for her child. And I understand the boy is only ten years old.”
“It is being seen to,” the Captain snapped—at least, I thought that was what he said. In any event, it seemed to relieve Albanesi, who gave unctuous thanks—retreating thanks, as it turned out: the five minutes he had promised me were over. I just hoped my gondolieri hadn’t abandoned me entirely.
Albanesi stood more or less at attention until the motor-launch was halfway back to the Giudecca, at which point his shoulders slumped and he pulled off his hat to mop his brow with a handkerchief.
Returning inside, he gave me a sickly smile and dropped into the chair behind his desk.
I sat down across from him. “That man is a Capitano of the MVSN?”
He blew a puff of air over his sweating face. “The squadristi of Venizia are decent men, most of them. When we receive one from Roma, well…” His shrug was eloquent.
“I heard him say he brought a patient here? Signora Dalso?”
“Dalser,” he corrected, then stopped, the sickly look creeping back onto his broad features. “You did not hear that name, Signora. Onestamente, it will be better for you to forget that name.”
“Who is she?”
“Per favore, Signora Russell. La scongiuro.”
I tipped my head, which he could take as an agreement if he wanted. “So, tell me instead about this nameless pale-haired woman who came last week. May I see her?”
He was more than eager to substitute one wayward lunatic for the other, although it took some time to make an arrangement with the actual staff of the manicomio. While he went off to do so, I went out to check the docks, and was pleased to see my two gondoliers, stretched across the cushions, chatting and smoking.
At least I wouldn’t have to emulate Lord Byron’s swim across the lagoon.
After a bit, a nurse came to inform me that the nameless patient had taken her lunch and was being led to a bench beneath one of the trees in the garden, where I was invited to go and look at her. I asked if I might be permitted to speak to her, and although it was irregular, the nurse had to admit that since no one else had succeeded in making any contact with the woman, my attempt could not harm anything.
But it was not Vivian.
The garden was a patch of dry grass and spent flowers. A dozen women clustered in the shade beneath the trees, talking—with themselves or others—and reading or gazing out over the lagoon. Birds fluttered about in a tall cage, their chatter and squawks not quite drowning out the manic speech of a couple of women and some cries
from the windows overhead. The solitary figure the nurse led me to was, as the guard had suggested, white-haired rather than blonde. She was almost thirty years older than Vivian and with the looks of the Mediterranean—Iberian, I thought, rather than Middle Eastern. I settled onto the bench beside her, feeling her eyes flick up as far as my chin, then go back hurriedly to a study of her clasped hands. They were not the hands of a woman of the highest classes, and her teeth were in need of attention, but she felt to me like a person of a certain amount of education. I began with English. “Your family is wondering where you are.”
No reaction, although she did not seem to be deaf. So I repeated the phrase in German, then in Hebrew, and again in one language after another, stringing them together to make it sound like one friendly and conversational monologue. There was a slight twitch in her fingers when I recited it in Spanish, so after a couple more tries—Hindi, Latin, and a rough facsimile of Japanese—I said it in Portuguese.
I got no further than, “Sua família se pergunta—” when her head snapped up. To my surprise, she looked not relieved, but terrified.
I shot a glance around the garden, hoping the nurse wasn’t watching too closely, then hurried to reassure the woman in a mangled but apparently comprehensible attempt at her language. “Senhora, is there anything I can do for you? The nurses here, they don’t know who you are. They only want to help. I won’t tell them you’re Portuguese, if you don’t wish it.”
She went still after that last reassurance, her gaze eloquent with question. “All right,” I told her, “I won’t give you away. But do you wish me to get a message to someone outside?”