“Ah, si? Benone. Later then.”
In the Italian ambience of that evening, everything seemed possible to Ray.
19
Elisabetta, coming out of her house door, gasped at the sight of his bandage.
“It is not as serious as it looks,” said Ray, who had prepared this sentence beforehand.
She looked right and left before she closed the door and came out. They walked quickly to the right, the direction Elisabetta had always taken with him. “I have just seen your picture in the paper,” she said. “Just now, after dinner. I didn’t say anything to my parents and they didn’t notice the picture. They would not have let me see you tonight. Or the last time either, I think. But a fight with your father-in-law!”
“Where are we going? Let’s go somewhere beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” she asked, as if nothing in Venice was.
Ray smiled. “Maybe on the Piazza? Quadri’s?”
She nodded, smiling, too. “All right. The police are not looking for you?”
He laughed. “I’ve made a complete statement to the police. This morning. You have read that. The police know where to find me. On Giudecca.”
“Ah, you have been on Giudecca!”
“Yes. And maybe we can talk about other things tonight.” Ray tried, by asking her how was Alfonso, the young man in the Bar Dino. But she did not want to talk about Alfonso.
“It is true, your wife was a suicide?” she asked, whispering, with a kind of awe, or horror.
“Yes,” Ray replied.
“And it’s true, that your father-in-law pushed you into the lagoon?”
“Yes. And it is true that I am an art dealer. Or at least starting to be one. You see, some of the things I told you are quite true.”
She said nothing, but he felt that she believed him.
“But—and this is very important—I did not tell the police anything about the lagoon. You are one of only—two people who know. So if by any chance you have to speak to the police—” He immediately regretted that. “You will not have to. There is no reason why you should have to. But I do not want you to tell anyone that my father-in law pushed me into the lagoon.”
“Why not?”
“Because he is a very angry man, and he cannot help it.”
“He tried to kill you.”
“Oh, yes.”
“He is angry because of his daughter?”
They were in the Piazza now.
“That is exactly right. But I could not help what his daughter—what she did. And if you will, Elisabetta, I cannot talk about that tonight. I wanted to see you, because with you I do not have to think about any of that. I can just remember the early morning I first saw you—and remember the way you smiled when you were showing me the way to Signora Calliuoli’s house the evening of the same day.”
That pleased her, and it was so easy to say, because it was true.
They sat indoors at Quadri’s. Elisabetta did not want champagne, so Ray suggested a posse-café. He had a brandy. And for nearly half an hour, mostly thanks to Elisabetta, they managed to talk pleasantly about things of no importance. Elisabetta asked him what kind of house he was staying in on Giudecca, and Ray was able to tell her a great deal about it and about Giustina and his red tile stove without mentioning Signor Ciardi’s name, which Elisabetta was not curious about. She pronounced her posse-café ‘Strong,’ then said:
“You are the strangest man I’ve ever met.”
“I? I’m extremely ordinary. You are the strangest girl I’ve ever met.”
Now she laughed, leaning back in her chair. “I know what a dull life I lead!”
That didn’t make her dull to be with, Ray thought now. It was the freshness, the generosity of her face that he liked so much. And perhaps she would be delightful to go to bed with, and then perhaps not. It was a little strange to feel such joy in being with her, and yet to think it was really a matter of indifference to him whether they ever made love or not, and that he would certainly never want to marry Elisabetta. But he was as happy now with her as if he meant to propose to her, or as if she had said ‘Yes’ when he had. He wanted the pleasure to last a long while. “What time must you be back tonight?”
“You see?” She smiled at him. “No one else in the world asks me questions like that—Eleven, I think. I told my mother I was going to see my friend Natalie.” Elisabetta giggled.
The posse-café was indeed strong, Ray thought. “You are very safe, because I have to be home a little before.” It pleased him to say ‘home,’ and to be expected there, too.
“You have another appointment?” she asked.
“Yes,” Ray said, still feasting on her with his eyes, though now and again he looked away at the ornate decor of the old coffee-house, at the upholstered benches, so that the Venetian Elisabetta would have a proper setting in his memory.
She did not want another posse-café.
They walked slowly back towards her house, as if neither of them wanted to arrive there. Ray thought of asking her to join him tonight with Signor Ciardi and Luigi, if he came, but it was not the lateness that made it impossible, it was that he did not want to share her with anyone. He would have to explain how he met her, or she might mention Signora Calliuoli. It was all too complicated. Ray wanted Elisabetta like a small enamel portrait that he carried in his pocket and showed to no one. And he felt that after tonight, he would never see her again, although there was no reason to feel that if he was going to be in Venice two or three days more.
“Good night, Elisabetta,” he said at her door.
She looked at him a little sadly. “Good night—Rayburn,” she said, pronouncing it Rye-burn, and gave him a kiss on the lips, a kiss that he barely had time to reciprocate, then turned to her door.
Ray walked away, glanced back to see if she had gone in, and saw the disappearing tail of her coat, heard faintly the solid door closing. Not as stirring a kiss as the other two, he thought, and yet somehow much more real. At least, Rayburn Garrett had received it. She had called him Filipo the last time he had seen her. Ray walked slowly, as he had with Elisabetta, in a pleasant trance, heedless now of the people who looked at his bandage. Suddenly it seemed to him that love—erotic and romantic love—was nothing but a form or various forms of ego. Therefore the right thing to do was to direct one’s ego to recipients other than people, or to people from whom one expected nothing. Love could be pure, but pure only if it was unselfish.
He stopped walking for a moment, and tried to think more precisely. It was an idea from the age of chivalry.
It was important that the objects of love be nothing but recipients, he thought again. Love was an outgoing thing, a gift that one should not expect to be returned. Stendhal must have said that, Proust certainly, using other words: a piece of wisdom his eyes had passed over in reading, yet which he had not applied to Peggy, he felt. Not that a specific had arisen with Peggy to which this might have been applied, but Ray thought he would have been wiser, even omniscient, if he had only thought of this abstract recipient-object when he had been with Peggy.
He went on, still in the beatific trance, towards Signor Ciardi’s house.
It was ten past eleven when he got there. Luigi had not arrived, but was expected. And Signor Ciardi had a message for Ray which had been delivered by a police officer. It was a piece of folded yellow paper with an illegible signature:
Would you please telephone office of police 759651.
He hated doing it at that moment. “I must telephone the police,” he said to Signor Ciardi.
Ray walked again to the bar-caffé.
Capitano Dell’ Isola was not there, and Ray was passed on to another man. “The Signora Schneider is very worried. She wants us to make sure you are still where you said. You are at the house of Ciardi?”
“Yes.”
“She spoke about a Signor Antonio Santini. You know him?”
“Yes,” Ray answered, somewhat reluctantly.
“She has spok
en with him,” the voice said enigmatically. “The Signora Schneider is worried that you did harm to her friend Signor Col-e-man.” The voice gave this information as impersonally as if it were a weather bulletin. “She wishes us to report back where you are. That is all. Signor Garrett. Thank you.”
Ray hung up as the police officer did. Antonio adding his bit now? That was a sour note. Or Inez might be simply ‘worried.’ But it seemed that Antonio had done nothing to calm her. Ray walked back to Signor Ciardi’s, wishing he had not to make the call. He tried to think of Elisabetta, as he had thought of her after leaving her, but the magic was gone.
“Rye-burn!” cried a voice behind him. “A-oul! Ho!”
It was Luigi, trotting towards him.
“Hello, Luigi!” Ray answered. “How goes it?”
“I saw your bandage a kilometre away!” Luigi said, banging Ray on the shoulder. “How are you feeling?”
“Very well, thank you. I hope the doctor will remove this bandage tomorrow. To put on a smaller one, at least. People look at me as if I were Lazarus!” Ray said, in a sudden good spirits. “Like Lazarus of the grave!”
Luigi roared companionably. He pulled from under his arm a newspaper-wrapped bottle. “A good Valpolicella for us.”
They rang Signor Ciardi’s bell, or Luigi did, though Ray had his key. Giustina admitted them.
“Hey, I hope you gave that Col-e-man a good…” Luigi said as they crossed the courtyard.
Ray was glad of Luigi’s happy acceptance of story, fact, counter-story, counter-fact. “I did. He was almost unconscious.”
“Good. Where is he?” Luigi asked, as if Ray were certain to know.
“I don’t know. He’s hiding somewhere.”
In the kitchen all was merry and rather celebratory for five or ten minutes. Luigi’s daughter’s baby was due within a week. They had to drink to that in advance. But Luigi had not finished his questioning of Ray. How had the fight started? Why did Col-e-man hate Ray so much? Luigi sympathized with Ray over the suicide of his young wife, crossed himself, and made a wish, or prayed, that the Virgin Mary might forgive her, and that her soul might rest in peace. Just where was the fight, exactly? How big a man was Col-e-man? Was he crazy?
And with a cautious glance at Signor Ciardi, who was listening as attentively as if the story were all new to him, Luigi asked, “And the night we encountered each other, you had not been with Col-e-man?”
Ray slowly shook his head, with a slight frown at Luigi, which he hoped conveyed that he did not want to talk about that. “I’d been with friends,” Ray said, and drank from his glass.
“Friends!” Luigi said with a smile, and his short body bent suddenly at the waist, as it did a thousand times a day at his rowing, and he seized his green packet of Nazionale cigarettes on the scrubbed wooden table. His fingers looked huge, extracting a cigarette from the packet. His blunt head and utilitarian features suggested the ruggedness of a tree-stump. But his eyes twinkled warmly at Ray, and Ray remembered that this man had saved his life. Ray had asked Luigi not to tell anyone the lagoon story, and had even paid him not to tell, in a way. He had given Luigi fifteen thousand lire of the money Luigi changed for him. But Ray knew that Luigi would not keep the story much longer, maybe not even all of tonight, after a few more glasses, because what was the purpose now of keeping it?
“Why did you want to hide, dear Rye-burn?” asked Luigi Lotto through a cloud of smoke.
“I needed to be alone. To forget who I was. And I did—almost.”
“You were not afraid of Col-e-man?”
Luigi was convinced, Ray realized, that Coleman had pushed him off a boat into the lagoon. And indeed why shouldn’t Luigi think he had? “I was not afraid of him,” Ray answered.
Signor Ciardi, back in his comfortable sweater again, watched Ray as he spoke.
Luigi looked puzzled, but what might have been a sense of courtesy or a respect for Ray’s privacy kept him from saying anything else. “Life is a confusion, is it not, Paolo?”
Signor Ciardi ignored this, which he must have heard from Luigi many times before. He lifted a finger to Ray. “The police. What did they want?” An automatic resistance to police, and strength like a fortress, showed in his heavy frown.
“They just wanted to know if I came back here,” Ray said.
Luigi was drinking his Valpolicella with relish. “Dica, Rye-burn, you didn’t give Signor Col-e-man too good a…, did you?”
Again the word Ray didn’t know. “Certainly I didn’t kill him,” Ray said, smiling. He looked at Signor Ciardi then and saw, in his lifted eyebrows, in his teeth that bit his under-lip, a hint of doubt at this, though no unfriendliness at all towards Ray. “But of course the police may think so until he is found. Tomorrow I shall go to Chioggia to look for him,” Ray said.
“Chioggia?” Luigi asked.
Ray explained why he was going, because Coleman had gone fishing there once.
“Who is the Signora who is the friend of Col-e-man?” Luigi asked. From his black blouse, he pulled a bent newspaper and looked for the item.
“Inez,” Ray said. “Inez Schneider.”
“You know her?”
“Slightly.” Ray wished they would get off the subject. He sensed that they could never completely understand; with their different temperaments, they would have done things quite differently from the way he had. He sensed also that because he did not talk at great length, they thought he was concealing something. He was, of course. The lagoon story. Ray debated. Luigi was studying him, smiling a little, and Ray looked away from his eyes. If Luigi told it, if Signor Ciardi heard it, it might get at once to the police. The police might very likely pay a visit to Signor Ciardi, and perhaps they had this afternoon. “Signor Ciardi, I hope the police did not disturb you today. With the message for me. Did they ask you any questions?”
“No, no. It was only one policeman. He asked me if I was Signor Ciardi and if you were staying here.” Signor Ciardi shrugged and smiled. “Drink, Signor Garrett! Sit down!”
Ray sat down uneasily on a straight chair beside the table. He was thinking that Inez must have been told the lagoon story by Coleman absolutely as it had happened, if Coleman had told her he had killed him. Of course, Inez wouldn’t ever tell that to the police. Ray suddenly thought that Coleman had probably told Inez this after he had seen him, Ray, in the doorway of Harry’s Bar. It would be like Coleman to boast about a thing like that which wasn’t true. There was a kind of wild Colemanian humour about it. Ray smiled a little.
“That is better! He smiles!” Luigi said, watching him. Dica, Rye-burn—why do you protect Signor Col-e-man?” Luigi looked at him with an intense curiosity, his head tilted. “You say you go to Chioggia tomorrow to find him. You should find him and kill him!” he finished with a laugh.
“Oh, no, no. Too dangerous. Do you think this is Sicily?” said Signor Ciardi, making the conversation even funnier to Ray, because Signor Ciardi took Luigi seriously.
“You’re right, Luigi. Why do I protect him? Luigi, have you told Signor Ciardi about the night you found me in the lagoon?”
“Ah, no, signor! You asked me to keep that a secret!” Luigi clutched his shirt-front with emotion. “Did you want me to tell him?”
“I don’t care new if you tell him,” Ray said. “I just don’t want the police to knew. I thank you for not telling anyone until now, Luigi.”
His word of thanks was lost on Luigi, who was gathering himself for a splendid dramatic effort. He narrated the story in the swiftest Italian, with gestures, in his dialect which Signor Ciardi understood perfectly, though Ray caught only a quarter of it.
Signor Ciardi nodded, laughed, sobered, became anxious, then gave a chuckle and a wondering headshake as Luigi’s story poured forth.
“Then three or four nights later,” Luigi went on, and he told now of the nocturnal visit of Ray to his house on Giudecca. “The miracle of this! To see him suddenly stand before me again—at my house! He stayed with us that night
…My daughter’s baby to come…We sent a messenger to you, dear Paolo…”
Luigi managed to talk for another two or three minutes.
Signor Ciardi’s mouth hung appropriately open with wondering attention.
“And now this man,” Luigi wound up, extending an arm in Ray’s direction, “persecuted by the same Col-e-man—Were you alone with him on the lagoon that night?” he asked Ray.
“Yes. In a motor-boat,” Ray said.
“You see? Now this man”—with another fling of arm—“defends this man who twice tried to kill him! Why? Just because he is your father-in-law?” Luigi demanded of Ray.
And Ray thought of the gunshot in Rome, too, but he wasn’t going to bring that up. “No, no. He is angry because his daughter killed herself. He is like a man insane,” Ray said, with a feeling of futility, yet he felt he owed it to Luigi and Signor Ciardi to explain as best he could. “And I myself was full of grief because of the death of my wife. Maybe too much grief to feel hate against Coleman. Yes, perhaps that was it.” He was staring at the scrubbed wood of the table as he spoke, then he looked up. It was easy to say it in Italian, the simple words that did not sound emotional or false, only like the simple truth. But his audience did not completely understand. “Anyway, it’s all understood now, all known—” His Italian suddenly slipped away from him. “I am sorry. I am not speaking clearly.”
“No, no, no,” Signor Ciardi assured him, patting the table gently near Ray’s forearm. “I understand you.”
“I’ll help you look for Signor Col-e-man tomorrow,” Luigi said.
Ray smiled. “Thank you, Luigi, but you have your own work to do.”
Luigi came forward, holding out his square right hand, though not for a handshake. “We’re friends, no? If you have a job, I help you. At what time tomorrow do you want to go?”
Ray saw there would be no putting him off. And maybe it was not so much because Luigi was devoted to him as because the job fascinated him. “At nine? Ten?”
“Nine o’clock. You come to my house. It’s on the way. I know a boat.”