“Oh, money couldn’t make Peggy happy. She’s always had money,” Coleman said tersely.
And Ray knew he had said the wrong thing, used the wrong comparison, because Coleman resented his having money, though he would never have let his daughter marry anyone who hadn’t it. “Of course it wasn’t merely money. I’m trying to describe the atmosphere. I tried many times to talk to Peggy. I wanted us to move to Paris for a while, take an apartment there. That would’ve been a step towards reality. The climate’s worse, there’s noise and people and—and there’s a calendar and a clock to watch in Paris.”
“What’s all this nonsense about reality?” Coleman demanded, puffing on the cigar between his teeth. His eyes were a little bloodshot now.
Ray realized it was hopeless, as Inez had told him. And during his silence, Ray saw Coleman’s anger harden again, as he had seen it do in Mallorca. Coleman sat back in his chair with an air of finality, of dignity in his bereavement. Peggy had been the reason for his existence, his only true source of pride, Peggy whom he had begotten and raised single-handed—or at least since she had been four or five—a paragon of beauty, grace and good manners. Ray could see all this going through Coleman’s mind, and no explanation, apology, atonement from him would ever change it. Ray realized now that he could never do it on paper, either, Coleman’s eyes as well as his ears were closed.
“I am utterly sick of discussing it,” Coleman said, “so let’s take off.” He looked swimmingly, absently about as if for a waiter. “And let bygones be bygones,” he mumbled.
That was not a phrase of reconciliation, as Coleman said it, and Ray did not take it as such. He got his trench-coat and followed Coleman out. Neither had tried to do anything about paying for the last brandy. Ray fumbled in the left pocket of his trench-coat, checking to see if he had his lighter. He pulled out his Seguso key, which he thought he had left at the desk, and with it came the folded scarf. He pushed the scarf back with the key, but Coleman had seen the scarf.
“What’s that?” Coleman asked.
They were walking into the lobby.
“My hotel key.”
“The scarf. The handkerchief.”
Ray’s hand was in his pocket, and he pulled it out again, with the scarf. “A scarf.”
“That’s Peggy’s. I’ll take that, if you don’t mind.”
Coleman’s voice was audible to the man behind the Excelsior’s desk and to the young bellhop by the door. Coleman’s hand was out. Ray hesitated an instant—he had a right to the scarf—then rather than have an argument, he gave the scarf to Coleman. “Take it.”
Coleman let the scarf drop from a corner, as they went through the hotel’s doors, looked at it, and said, “Just like Peggy. Thank you.” On the pavement, he said, “After all, you gave away her clothes in Mallorca.” He pushed the scarf into his overcoat pocket.
“I didn’t think you wanted any,” Ray replied. “After all, you took all her work—her paintings and drawings.” He was sorry that his bitterness was audible. But the scarf was phoney, in a way, and this gave him a rather nasty satisfaction.
Their steps crunched again on the gritty road with the rhythm of the night in Rome, three nights ago. Ray was watchful for a sudden move from Coleman, a draw of the gun, perhaps—Coleman thought his life worthless—so he walked some two feet to one side of Coleman. Coleman wanted him to know he considered his life worthless, Ray realized. It was part of Coleman’s punishing him. They passed only two people, two men walking separately, in the walk across the island.
“I don’t have to go back with you,” Ray said. “I’m sure there’s a vaporetto.”
Coleman seemed to shrug slowly. Then he said, “No trouble. Same direction. Here it is. The ‘Marianna number two.’” He walked towards a group of three motor-boats, moored against the dock which turned at right angles from Ray and Coleman.
On the stern of one of the boats, Ray saw MARIANNA II. None of the boats had a canvas cover.
Coleman looked around. Only three or four young Italian boys were in view, huddled in their coats, not far from the ticket-booth of the vaporetto, twenty yards away. The ticket-booth was closed, Ray had noticed. He looked out at the lagoon for an approaching vaporetto, but saw none. It was 1.20 a.m.
“Damn Corrado. He’s probably gone home,” Coleman mumbled. “Well, let’s go. We don’t need him, anyway.”
Coleman stooped on the wharf, went down a short ladder and got himself awkwardly on board, into the pit at the stem.
Coleman was going to drive it. Ray recoiled at once, sought for an excuse, a good excuse to get out of going, and, realizing both the difficulty and the absurdity of having to invent an excuse to protect his life, he smiled with amusement and felt blank. “You’re going to drive it?” he asked Coleman.
“Sure. I drove it all day. Corrado just comes along for the ride. He lives on the Lido, but I don’t know where.” Coleman was fishing keys out of his pocket. “Come on.”
I can stand up to him, Ray thought. Coleman wouldn’t catch him a second time by surprise. If Coleman tried, he might have the pleasure of hitting Coleman, at least, of knocking him out. Anyway, retreating now would be blatant cowardice, and Coleman would gloat. Ray stepped aboard. A low brass rail ran around the stem, and the boat had a covered cabin where the controls were.
Coleman started the motor and backed out cautiously. Then the boat turned, and they picked up speed. The noise of the motor was unpleasant. Ray turned his trench-coat collar up and buttoned the top button.
“I’ll head for the Giudecca Canal! Put you off somewhere on Zattere!” Coleman yelled at him.
“Schiavoni’s okay!” Ray yelled back at him. He was sitting in the stern on the low seat. It was certainly fast transport, but it was cold. Ray started into the cabin for shelter, just as Coleman turned from the controls and moved towards him.
“Got the wheel set!” Coleman said, jerking a thumb behind him towards the motor.
Ray nodded, keeping his hand on the cabin door-top for balance. The boat was bouncing about. In view of the buoys around, not to mention possibly other boats, Ray did not think it very safe to set the controls. He looked ahead anxiously, but saw nothing between them and the bobbing lights of the mainland of Venice. Coleman bent and turned sideways to Ray to relight his cigar. Ray started into the cabin again, and Coleman came towards him, so that Ray had to step back, but Ray still kept his hand on the cabin top. Then Coleman, with the cigar between his teeth, lunged against Ray with his whole weight bent low, catching Ray in the stomach. Ray fell half over the gunwale, but his right hand caught the slender brass rail. Coleman hit him in the face with his fist, and shoved a foot in his chest. Ray’s right arm was bent awkwardly, and his grip was broken as his weight swung over the side.
Ray had a sickening backward fall for a second, then he was in, wet, sinking. When he had struggled up to the surface, the boat was many yards away, its buzzing motor faint in his water-clogged ears. His shoes and his trench-coat were pulling him down. The water was icy on his body, and already he could feel the approach of numbness. He cursed himself. It’s what you deserve, you ass! But his body, like an animal’s body, fought to keep afloat, to gasp for air. He tried to remove a shoe, but couldn’t without his head going under. He concentrated on keeping afloat, on finding a boat to hail. The water was outrageously rough, as if the sea itself had taken up Coleman’s cause. He saw no boats anywhere. Venice looked farther away than it had from the boat, but the Lido was still farther, Ray knew. One of his ears popped and cleared of water, and then he heard a bell faintly. A buoy’s bell. For several seconds, he could not tell its direction—or see its lights, if it had any—but he decided it was on his left, away from Venice, and he bent his efforts in that direction. His progress could not have been called swimming. It was a series of jerks of legs and body and arms, and these he made with caution, not wanting to exhaust himself. He was a fair swimmer, only fair, and clothed and in icy water he was a rotten swimmer. He realized, very prof
oundly, that he was probably not going to make it.
“Help!” he yelled. Then, “Aiuto!” wasting valuable breath. The bell sounded closer, but his strength was going faster than the bell was coming. Ray rested, anxious about cramp. He felt it in his left calf, but he could still move the leg. Then he saw the buoy, a light grey blob, closer than he had dared hope. It had no light. The wind was blowing the sound away from him, and Ray hoped blowing the water towards the buoy. Now Ray stayed afloat, and tried only to steer himself, progressing by inches.
The buoy rose like a smooth teardrop that had half fallen into the water. He saw no handhold, and the top—a mess of bars enclosing the bell—was too high out of the water to be leapt for. Ray touched the buoy with his finger-tips, at last felt its fat, slippery body with the palm of one hand. It took energy to cling to it, arms outspread, but it was immensely encouraging to his morale to have reached it. It warns ships away from it, Ray thought, and found a macabre amusement in that fact. He groped hopefully with his feet for some kind of hold, and didn’t find any. The water was at his neck. The metal bars were twelve inches above his finger-tips when he reached for them. With one hand—the other pressed gently against the inward sloping buoy—he loosened his tie, removed it, and tried to fling one end of it across a bar. The bars were nearly vertical, but bowed out slightly. He tried from a direction in which the wind would help him. On the fourth or fifth try, one end of the tie went through, and Ray jiggled it patiently. When the two ends were even, he leapt for it, and it held. Cautiously, he put his weight on it, letting himself be borne as much as possible by the water, then grabbed for the metal bar and missed, released the tie so as not to break it, and went under. He struggled up, waited for a few seconds, to recover his breath, then tried again. Using knees against the buoy and careful tugs on the tie, he lunged again for the bar and this time caught it. He half knelt against the buoy and locked both arms around the bar.
Now, he supposed, it would be a test of muscular strength, a test of how long he could stand the cold before fainting or freezing or falling asleep or whatever people did, but at least he was out of the water, and he was also in a better position to see a ship.
He saw one, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, a boat that looked like a cargo barge with a motor at its stem.
“Aiuto!” Ray shouted. “Soccorso!—Soccorso!”
The boat did not change its course.
He yelled again. But it was evident whoever was aboard did not hear him.
It was a disappointment to Ray, because he felt that this was the only boat destined to pass him. He also had a strange feeling that he did not very much care, not as much as he would have cared five minutes ago, when he had been in the water. But he supposed that now he was just as much in danger of dying. The idea of removing his trench-coat and somehow tying himself with it to the metal bars was too complicated to consider. But the barge’s oblivious progress away from him seemed a blatant rejection, a shameless (because there was no need for the barge to have shame) denial of his right to live. For several seconds, he felt drowsy, bowed his head against the wind, but set his arms hard to hold himself. The ache of cold in his ears grew worse, the bell’s clangour fainter to him.
Ray lifted his head and looked around again, saw what he thought was a bobbing light far away over his left shoulder, then it disappeared. He kept his eyes on the spot, however, and the light reappeared.
He gathered himself and shouted: “Hello-o!”
He got no answer, but at least he heard no motor, which was a fact in favour of his being heard. Or was this a buoy with a light instead of a bell? Now, far behind the light, something that looked like a vaporetto was moving in the Lido’s direction, but for hailing purposes, it might as well have been a million miles away.
“Hello—o! Soccorso!” he yelled toward the light. He was sure it was moving now. Ray’s lightless buoy swung and banged its bell, warning boats away. He could not tell in which direction the light was moving, obliquely towards or from him. “Soccorso!” His throat felt raw from cold and salt.
“Ah-ool!” a voice answered from the light’s direction. It was a gondolier’s cry. “Somebody there?”
Ray did not know the word for buoy. “The bell! Sulla campana! Veni, per favore!”
“La campana!” came the firm, corroborative reply.
Ray realized that he was saved. His arms felt instantly twice as tired. The man was rowing. It could take easily another ten minutes. He did not want to watch the slow approach, and kept his head sunk on his chest.
“Ah-ool!” It was like an automatic cry, a natural sound like a cat’s miaow, an owl’s hoot, a horse’s whinny.
Ray heard a plash as the gondolier made a bad stroke or a wave exposed his oar. “Qua,” Ray said, much more feebly, hoarse now.
“Vengo, vengo,” replied the deep voice, sounding very close.
Ray looked and saw him behind his bow light, standing and rowing at the stern of his bobbing boat.
“Ai!—What happened? Did you fall off a boat?”
It was in such dialect, Ray barely understood. “I was pushed.” It was what Ray had planned to say, that he was pushed off by joking friends. But he had no strength for talking, dangled a limp foot over the side of the gondola, let himself drop, and was dragged aboard by the Italian’s strong arms. Ray rolled helplessly on to the gondola’s floor. The hard ribs of the boat felt delicious, like solid earth.
The Italian bent over him, invoked the names of a few saints, and said, “You were pushed? How long were you there?”
“Oh—” Ray’s teeth rattled, and the syllable was falsetto. “Maybe ten minutes. It is cold.”
“Ah, si! Un momento!” The Italian stepped deftly past Ray, opened the locker in the prow of his boat, swiftly produced a folded blanket, then a bottle. The Italian’s shoe brushed Ray’s nose as he turned, stooped. “Here. Drink from the bottle. Cognac!”
Ray held the bottle, a wine bottle, to his open mouth, keeping his teeth clear of the glass. One big swallow, and his stomach heaved, but the drink stayed down. It was bad and watered brandy.
“You go inside,” said the Italian, then seeing that Ray could not move, he took the bottle from him, corked it and laid it on the boat’s floor, then caught Ray under the arms and dragged him into the covered part of the gondola, on to the bench seat made to hold two people. Ray sprawled, quite without strength, felt vaguely apologetic, and realized that his right hand, which lay flat on the carpeted seat, felt nothing at all and might have been dead flesh.
“Santa Maria, what friends! On a night like this!” The Italian held the bottle again for Ray. He had draped the thick blanket over him. “Where do you want to go? To San Marco? You have an hotel?”
“San Marco,” Ray said, unable to think.
“You have a hotel?”
Ray did not answer.
The Italian, a wiry figure clad in black, his head small and squarish, was framed for a moment in the low grey door of the gondola. Then he went away, scrambled towards the stern of the boat. A rattle of the oar, and then Ray became aware of the forward movement of the boat. Ray wiped his face and hair with a corner of the blanket. He felt colder as his strength returned. He should have told the man Accademia, he thought. On the other hand, San Marco was closer, and there he could find a bar, an hotel lobby, in which to get warm. A vaporetto crossed their bow, looking like a furnace of warmth with all its lights, full of calm, comfortable people facing forward.
“Have you a hotel? I’ll take you to your hotel,” said the gondolier.
He must give him a tremendous tip, Ray thought, and his numb hand moved towards his inside jacket pocket, could not open his trench-coat buttons, pressed the side of his coat, and Ray thought but was not sure that the wallet was still there. “It’s in the vicinity of San Marco,” Ray said. “I think I can walk, thank you.”
Swish—swish went the gondola, attacking the distance with soft lunges. The wind whipped past the open front of the cabin, but Ray no lo
nger felt the brunt of it. It was probably the most unromantic gondola ride anyone ever had, Ray thought. He wrung out the ends of his trench-coat, then trouser cuffs. San Marco was drawing nearer. They were headed for the Piazzetta, between the Ducal Palace and the tall column of the campanile. “I am sorry to have wet your gondola,” Ray said.
“Ah, Rosita is not a…boat. Not now. Anyway in the winter she carries oil and vegetables. It is more profitable than tourists when there aren’t any.”
Ray could not understand every word. “You’re finishing—” he began hoarsely, “finishing work this late?”
A laugh. “No, I start. I go to the railroad station. I sleep a little in the boat, then we start around five-thirty, six.”
Ray stamped his feet, assessing his strength. Perhaps he could make it to the Hotel Luna from San Marco.
“A fine joke, your friends. Americans, too?”
“Yes,” Ray said. The land was very near. “Anywhere here. I am very grateful. You saved my life.”
“Ah, another boat would have come along,” said the Italian. “You should have a hot bath, lots of cognac, otherwise you…”
The rest was lost on Ray, but he supposed that he would catch his death.
The gondola’s gold-combed prow, after heading dangerously for the stern of a large excursion boat, swerved and slid neatly into a slit between striped poles. The gondola braked, the prow kissed the pier gently, bobbing. The Italian grabbed something on the pier, braced his legs and turned the boat sideways, made it go forward, and steps appeared on their left, Ray stood up on shaking legs, then on all fours debarked, placing hands on the stone steps before he climbed. A fine sight for the doges!
The Italian laughed, worried. Is everything all right? Maybe I should walk with you.
Ray did not want that. He stood up on hard, flat stone, feet apart for balance. “Thank you infinitely.” He struggled desperately with trench-coat buttons, pulled out the wallet. Vaguely, he realized he had some twenty notes folded in squares, and he pulled out about half of them. “With my thanks. For another bottle of cognac.”