She nodded, uninterested. “Mine is Elisabetta.”
“Piacere.”
“You want it for how many nights?” The girl walked quickly.
“Three, four. Say a week, if the signora prefers.”
They turned a corner, the wind blew straight at them, and Ray shuddered. Suddenly the girl stopped, and rang a bell in a narrow doorway directly on the street. Ray looked to right and left, then up at a five-storey house, narrower than it was high. He saw no canal near by.
“Who is it?” called a voice from an upstairs window.
“Elisabetta.” There followed a longish sentence which Ray could not understand at all.
A buzz opened the door. They went in, and met the woman who was descending the stairs. She beckoned Ray to come up and see the room. To Ray’s relief, the girl came with them, exchanging conversation or gossip with the woman.
Ray was shown a square, medium-sized room with a red-and-yellow flowered counterpane on a lumpy looking three-quarter-sized bed. A tall wardrobe was the closet, and there were pictures on the wall. But it was clean.
“You understand? Eight hundred lire per day with breakfast,” Elisabetta said.
“Very good,” Ray said. “Benone, I shall take it,” he said to Signora Calliuoli.
Signora Calliuoli smiled, and deep, friendly creases formed on either side of her mouth. She wore black. “The bath is downstairs. One floor. The toilet”—she pointed—“one up.”
“Grazie.”
“Va bene?” said Elisabetta, smiling also.
Ray wanted to embrace her. “Thank you so much,” he said in English. “Grazie tanto.”
“Your valise?” asked Signora Calliuoli.
“I’ll fetch that tomorrow,” said Ray casually, and pulled out his wallet. He produced a five-thousand-lire note. “I shall pay you for five nights, anyway, if that is satisfactory. I am sorry not to have change now.”
The woman took the note. “Thank you, sir. I shall bring you mille lire.” She went off.
Ray stood aside for the girl to precede him out of the room. They went downstairs. Ray had an impulse to ask her to have dinner with him, to ask if he could call for her at eight o’clock, but he thought he had better not.
Signora Calliuoli met them downstairs with his change. “Grazie, Signor Gordon. You are going out now?”
“Just for a few moments,” Ray said.
“There is someone always here. You won’t need a key.”
Ray nodded, hardly listening. A curtain of unreality had come down between him and the world. Ray felt energetic, happy, courteous and optimistic. The girl looked at him oddly on the street, and Ray said:
“I thought I would accompany you home.”
“I live right here.” She had stopped suddenly, her hand on the knob of another door like the one they had just left, but this door had a circular knocker of braided metal.
“Thank you once more for finding the room for me,” Ray said.
“Prego,” said the girl, and now she looked a little puzzled, perhaps suspicious of him. She was groping in her purse for a key.
Ray took a step back and smiled. “Good evening, Signorina Elisabetta.”
This brought a small smile. “Good evening,” she said, and turned to put her key in the lock.
Ray went back to his new house and his room. He meant to lie down for only a few moments, but fell asleep and did not awaken until half past eight. The tiny pinkish reading lamp was on. He had dreamed about an earthquake, about schoolchildren swimming adeptly through canals made by the earthquake, and climbing on to the land like otters. He had held a frustrating conversation with a couple of girls who sat on a high wall while he stood below, knee-deep in mud, trying to make them hear him. They had snubbed him. Fallen and damaged buildings were everywhere in the dream. Ray took two more of his pills. His fever was worse. He should have some hot soup somewhere and go straight back to bed, he thought.
He put on the blue shirt he had removed for his sleep, and made himself as presentable as possible with his limited wardrobe. A good brace of drinks, he thought, before his soup. He went to a bar and had a couple of Scotches, then walked towards the Rialto and the Graspo di Ua. He might as well have a good bowl of soup, if that was all he was eating, and the Graspo di Ua was an excellent restaurant. The walk tired him, but he reflected that he could take a vaporetto back, and that the Giglio stop should be the closest to the Largo San Sebastiano.
Ray opened the door of the Graspo di Ua and went in, grateful for the warmth that enveloped him at his first step. Ahead of him, a little to the right, Coleman faced him, laughing and talking to Inez, whose back was to Ray. Ray stared at him. Coleman’s mouth was open, his spoon lifted, though his voice was lost in clatter and brouhaha.
“How many, sir?” asked the headwaiter.
“No. No, thank you,” Ray replied in Italian, and went out again. He turned automatically in the direction he had come from, then reversed and walked towards the Ponte di Rialto, the nearest place from which to catch a vaporetto. Inez, too, had been laughing, he thought. What did Inez think? What did Coleman think about whether he was alive or not? Had Coleman telephoned the Seguso? Hadn’t he, without Inez knowing? Now Ray thought perhaps he hadn’t. Somehow it was a shattering, dumbfounding thought. Ray concentrated on reaching the Rialto and the waterbus stop.
The Seguso would pack up his suitcase by tomorrow, probably, and keep it somewhere downstairs. Would they notify the police or the American Consulate? Ray doubted if they would be in a hurry to do that. Surely whimsical guests had before departed suddenly for somewhere, and had written days later for their luggage to be sent on.
Coleman laughing.
Of course, Coleman wouldn’t have said anything to Inez, except that he had let Ray off on the Zattere quay. If Inez remarked that Ray hadn’t rung them, Coleman would say, “Oh, he’s probably gone on to Paris. Why should he tell us?” Inez might remember she had asked him to ring her before he left. But then what would she do?
Ray felt suddenly weak and very ill. His nose was running. He went back to the house in the Large San Sebastiano, was let in by a plain adolescent girl he had not seen before, climbed the stairs to his room and went to bed after taking two pills.
He dreamed of fire, and of pink, dancing bodies, slender, naked, sexless, in a place that was neither heaven nor hell. He woke up hot, his chest and back sleek with sweat, and was happy because he believed the fever was breaking. God bless the pills, he thought sleepily, and put his head down again on the damp pillow. He awakened at a knock on the door.
The plain-faced girl brought in his breakfast tray. Ray pulled the covers over his naked shoulders.
“The signora asks are you sick?” the girl said.
“Better now, thank you.” His voice was hoarse.
The girl looked at him. “You have a cold?”
“Yes, but it’s better,” Ray said.
The girl withdrew.
He took two more of the pills. He had eight more to go.
For the first hour he was awake, he did not try to think or plan. He treated himself gently, like one still balanced between sickness and health, even life and death, grateful to feel more well than ill. He would buy a sweater today, and another pair of shoes, possibly a suitcase, a nice one, if he had enough money. He thought he had seventy or eighty thousand lire in his wallet. He would have to think about how to get more, using his Traveller’s Cheques without a passport, but he would worry about that later. At some point today, he might go to the bar-caffé where Elisabetta worked, and invite her to dinner.
Ray bought a razor, shaving soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, and a pair of shoes. He took these things home and made use of the razor, shaving around the growing beard. It was now nearly one. He went out and walked in the direction of the Campo Manin. On the way, he encountered Elisabetta, evidently going home for her lunch.
“Buon’ giorno,” Ray said to her.
“Buon’ giorno.” She stopped. “You ar
e feeling better.”
“Yes. Why?”
They walked in the direction the girl had been walking.
“Because yesterday I thought you were sick.”
“Just a cold. I’m better, yes.”
“I saw Signora Calliuoli last night in the bar on our corner. She said you looked sick and went to bed early.”
“Yes, I did. I was very cold two nights ago. Caught a cold.” He did not know the word for chill.
“Venice can be very cold.”
“Very.”
“Excuse me, I must buy bread.” She disappeared into a bakery shop.
Ray waited in the street for her. The shop was full of women and housemaids, buying bread for lunch. He mustn’t look like an ass, tagging after her, Ray thought, and stood up straighter as she came out. I was wondering, he said, if you might have dinner with me tonight. I would like to invite you to say thank you. His limited Italian came to an abrupt stop at the end of this sentence. He had spoken solemnly and stiffly, like a formal old man, he felt. And as soon as he thought this, the girl’s attraction, which had been formidable a second before, disappeared as if a fire had gone out. Yet he depended terribly on what her answer would be.
“I can’t tonight; my aunt is coming for dinner,” the girl said rather carelessly as she began to walk on. “Thank you.”
“I am sorry. Tomorrow night?”
She looked sideways at him—she was not much shorter than he—and her smile was lovely, quick, amused. “Oh. I can see you tonight. My aunt comes every Saturday.”
“Very good! At what time? Eight? Seven-thirty?”
They had arrived at her house door.
“Seven-thirty. I must not be too late. The bottom bell.” She indicated without pushing it. “Arrivederci.”
At seven-thirty precisely, Ray pressed the bottom bell. He had a new shirt, new tie and new shoes. And he had made a reservation (in the name of Gordon) at the Graspo di Ua, since he thought it unlikely that Coleman and Inez would dine there two nights in a row.
Elisabetta opened the door. She wore a pale blue dress, lighter than her work smock. The colour became her. “Buona sera. Come upstairs. I will be ready in a moment.”
Ray went upstairs and met her parents and her aunt, who were drinking glasses of red wine in the dining-room, where an oval table was set for four. Soup bowls stood ready on plates. The aunt and the father resembled each other. The mother was large and blonde like Elisabetta, and smiled easily, but Ray could see that she was looking him over carefully.
Ray was not asked to sit down, and after she had introduced them Elisabetta reappeared almost at once in her coat.
“I am staying next door with Signora Calliuoli,” Ray said—he was sure unnecessarily—to Elisabetta’s mother.
“Ah, si. Are you here for a long time?”
“For a few days.”
“You should be home by eleven, Elisabetta,” said her father.
“Don’t I know I have to get up with the pigeons!” said Elisabetta.
“Where are you going to have dinner?” asked her mother.
Ray cleared his throat, which was still husky. “I thought at the Graspo di Ua.”
“Ah, very good,” remarked her aunt, unsmiling.
“Yes, I think it is quite good,” said Ray.
“Let’s go,” Elisabetta said. “Good night, Aunt Rosalia.” She embraced her aunt’s shoulder and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
6
Elisabetta—her last name was Stefano—was pleased by the restaurant. That Ray could see as they went in.
And there was no Coleman in sight.
Ray ordered a Scotch, the girl a Cinzano. She was perhaps twenty-four or—five, Ray thought. He felt still far from well, was vaguely shaky and full of aches, but he tried to conceal this by a slow and formal manner, and made conversation with such questions as, “Have you always lived in Venice?”
Elisabetta had been born in Venice, and so had her mother, but her father was from a town south of Florence which Ray had not heard of. Her father was manager of a leather goods shop near the Ponte di Rialto. “Are you a police agent?” Elisabetta asked, looking at him with a smiling earnestness across the table.
“Dio mio, no! What made you think that?”
“Or a spy?” she said, giggling nervously.
“Much of her glamour dropped away then. Not a spy either.” But she had a lovely complexion, a really spectacular complexion. “If I were a spy,” he began carefully, “my government would give me all I needed—a passport, a name, an hotel.”
She hung her pocketbook on a hook provided by the waiter. The hook rested on a disc flat on the table and curved over the edge. “Did you tell me your real name?”
“Yes. Philip Gordon. You wonder why I’m not in an hotel. I shall tell you why. I am trying to avoid some friends for a few days. American friends.”
She frowned, sceptical. “Really? Why?”
“Because they want me to go back to Rome with them. They are going on from Rome to London. If I went to an hotel, they would find me, because they did not believe me when I said I was leaving for America. You understand?” It sounded unconvincing and he felt it was made vaguer, rather than more straightforward, by his rather simple Italian. He could see that she didn’t believe him, that she was uneasy because of this. He looked at his wrist-watch. “You must help me watch the time, if you have to be back by eleven. It is five past eight now.”
Her lips spread in a smile then. “Oh, they are not so severe.”
She had large white teeth, a full, generous mouth. She would be lovely in bed, Ray thought, and wondered if she could possibly be a virgin? If she was twenty-five, or maybe only twenty-two? He sought to bolster his story, but the waiter arrived.
“My friends are all young men,” Ray said when the waiter had taken their order. “Old college friends. A little rough. When I said I was not going back to Rome with them, they threw me into the water. Two nights ago. That is why I had a cold yesterday.”
“The water where?” asked Elisabetta with alarm.
“Oh, one of the canals. I got out right away, but it was cold, you know. I had a long walk home. To my hotel. I told my friends I was leaving, and I packed, but—”
“Did they apologize?”
“Oh, yes, in a way.” Ray smiled. “But I know they did not believe I was leaving. I checked my valise at the railway station. I thought it would be nice to be free for a few days.”
The girl’s first course arrived, and she picked up her fork with an anticipatory smile. “I do not believe you. Not any of it.”
“Why do you not believe me?”
“What work do you do in the United States?”
“I have an art gallery,” Ray replied.
Elisabetta giggled again. “I think you tell one lie after another.” She looked to right and left of her, then said softly, “I think you have done something wrong and you are hiding.”
Ray also looked around him, but only for Coleman. “I think you want to insult me,” he said with a smile, and began on his soup.
“I am so tired of Venice,” she said with a sigh.
“Why?”
“It is always the same. Cold in the winter, crowded with tourists in the summer. But always the same people. Not the tourists, the people I am with.” She rambled on in this vein for two or three minutes, not looking at Ray, her face childlike with petulant dissatisfaction, with boredom, with—Ray saw to his dismay—a lack of intelligence.
Ray listened politely. There was only one thing to suggest to such girls, he thought, and that was to get married, to exchange one kind of boredom for another, perhaps, but with a different scene and a different person. At last he said, “Can’t you take a trip somewhere? Or go to another city to work? Like Florence?”
“Ah, Florence. I was there once,” said Elisabetta without enthusiasm.
There was nothing left but marriage, so Ray said, “Do you want to marry?”
“Oh, some day. I am i
n no hurry. But I am already twenty-two. That is not old though, is it? Do I look twenty-two?”
“No. I suppose you look twenty,” Ray said.
This pleased her. She drank her wine, and he poured more. “That boy in the bar, Alfonso,” she said, “he wants to marry me. But he is not very interesting.”
Ray supposed it was the husky young man he had seen coming on duty as Elisabetta left last evening. He felt that she was talking to him as she might to another man, or to another girl, even, which gave a sudden feeling of flatness to the evening. On the other hand, in the last few minutes, the girl’s sexual attraction had disappeared for him. Her body might be very nice, but what she said bored him and killed his desire.
Now she talked about her parents, their small quarrels about everything. Her mother was interested in investing more and more money. Stocks. Her father wanted to buy a farm near Chioggia to retire to, and he wanted to start buying it now. She had no brothers or sisters. She did not know which side she was on, her father’s or her mother’s, and she said their quarrels were tearing her apart. She gave half her salary to her parents, and she let them quarrel over what they did with it. Now her Aunt Rosalia was a lot more sensible, but the trouble was she had no influence—no influenza—on either of her parents.
They reached the dessert. The girl wanted something with ice cream. Ray poured the last of the wine for himself, as the girl’s glass was nearly full.
“Shall I tell you the truth about myself?” Ray asked in a moment of silence.
“Yes.” Elisabetta looked at him with serious eyes, sobered by the recounting of her own life.
“My father-in-law is in Venice and he wants to kill me. My wife died a month ago. It was my father-in-law who pushed me into the water. The water between the Lido and the land.”
“In the lagoon.” Elisabetta’s eyes seemed to retreat as she stared at him. Her full lips were solemn. “Your wife died?”
“She was a suicide,” Ray said, “and her father thinks I am to blame. I—I don’t think I am. But he wants to kill me, so I must hide to protect myself.”