Acqua Alta

  ‘When?’

  ‘During the packing in the museum. It was all really very easy, far easier than we had anticipated. The little Japanese tried to object, but by then it was far too late.’ He stopped talking and gazed off into the distance, remembering. ‘I think it was then that I realized she would become a problem sooner or later.’ He smiled. ‘And how right I proved to be.’

  ‘And so she would have to be eliminated?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said quite simply. ‘I realized I’d have no choice in the matter.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Oh, she gave us some trouble here, and then when she got back to China, when you told her you thought some of the pieces were false, she wrote a letter to her parents asking them what to do. Of course, once she did that, I no longer had any choice: she had to be eliminated.’ He cocked his head to one side, a gesture that suggested he was going to reveal something to her. ‘I was, quite frankly, surprised at how easy it was. I had thought things would be more difficult to arrange in China.’ He shook his head slowly from side to side, lamenting yet another example of cultural pollution.

  ‘How do you know she wrote to them?’

  ‘Why, I read the letter,’ he explained simply, then paused, correcting himself for accuracy. ‘Actually, I read a translation of the letter.’

  ‘How did you get that?’

  ‘Why, all of your correspondence was opened and read.’ He spoke almost in reproach, as if she should have understood at least this much. ‘How did you get that letter to Semenzato?’ His curiosity was real.

  ‘I gave it to someone who was going to Hong Kong.’

  ‘Someone from the dig?’

  ‘No, a tourist I met in Xian. He was going to Hong Kong, and I asked him to mail it. I knew it would get there much sooner that way.’

  ‘Very clever, Dottoressa. Yes, very clever, indeed.’

  A wave of cold jolted through her body. She pulled her feet, long since grown numb, up from the marble floor and hooked them over the bottom rung of the chair. The rain had soaked through her sweater, and she felt herself trapped inside her frozen clothing. She was overcome by a wave of shivering and closed her eyes again, waiting for it to pass. The dull ache that had lurked in her jaw for days had turned into a fiery, burning flame.

  When she opened her eyes, the man was gone from beside her and was standing on the other side of the room, reaching out to take down another vase. ‘What are you going to do to me?’ she asked, fighting to keep her voice level and calm.

  He walked back across the room towards her, holding the low bowl carefully in two hands. ‘I think this is the most beautiful piece I have,’ he said, turning it slightly so that she could better follow the simple brushed line of the design around to the other side. ‘It comes from Ch’ing-hai Province, out by the end of the Great Wall. I’d venture it’s about five thousand years old, wouldn’t you say?’

  Brett looked dully up at him and saw a portly middle-aged man holding a painted brown bowl in his hands. ‘I asked you what you’re going to do with me,’ she repeated, interested only in that and not the bowl.

  ‘Hm?’ he asked vaguely, glancing down at her for a moment and then back at the bowl. ‘With you, Dottoressa?’ He took a short step to his left and placed the bowl on top of an empty pedestal. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t had time to think about that yet. I was so interested in having you see my collection.’

  ‘Why?’

  He stayed where he was, directly in front of her, occasionally reaching out delicately with a finger to turn the bowl a millimetre this way, then that way. ‘Because I have so many beautiful things and because I can’t show them to anyone,’ he said with sorrow so palpable it could not be feigned. He turned to her and offered a friendly smile of explanation. ‘Anyone who counts, that is. You see, if I show them to people who don’t know anything about ceramics, I can’t hope that they’ll appreciate the beauty or the rarity of what they see.’ He stopped there, hoping that she’d understand his dilemma.

  She did. ‘And if you show them to people who do know about Chinese art or ceramics, then they’ll know where the pieces came from?’

  ‘Oh, clever you,’ he said, lifting his hands apart in real delight at her quickness. His expression darkened. ‘It’s difficult, dealing with people who don’t understand. They see all these glorious things,’ and here he swept his right hand in front of him in a gesture that encompassed everything in the room, ‘as pots or bowls, but they have no idea of their beauty.’

  ‘That doesn’t stop them from getting them for you, does it?’ she asked, making no attempt to disguise her sarcasm.

  He took it as said and considered it equably. ‘No, it doesn’t. I tell them what to get, and they get it for me.’

  ‘Do you also tell them how to get it?’ Speech was beginning to cost her too much. She wanted this to end.

  ‘That depends on who’s working for me. Sometimes I have to be very explicit.’

  ‘Did you have to be “explicit” with the men you sent to me?’

  She saw him start to lie, but then he changed the subject. ‘What do you think of the collection, Dottoressa?’

  She had suddenly had enough. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of her chair. ‘I asked you what you think of the collection, Dottoressa,’ he repeated, voice raised minimally. Slowly, more from exhaustion than from obstinacy, Brett rolled her head from side to side, eyes closed.

  Backhanded and entirely casual, intended more as warning than punishment, his blow caught her on the side of the head at the level of her eyes. His hand did little more than glance off her face, but the force of it was enough to separate anew the healing bones of her jaw, which jolted back together with a flash of pain that exploded in her brain, driving away all thought, all consciousness.

  Brett slid to the floor and lay still. He looked down at her for a moment, then stepped back to the pedestal. He reached down, picked up the Plexiglas cover and placed it carefully over the low bowl, took another look at the woman lying unconscious on the floor and left the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  BRETT WAS IN China, in the tent set up at the dig for the archaeological staff. She was asleep, but the sleeping bag was badly placed, and the ground was hard beneath her. The gas heater had gone out again, and the bitter cold of the high-plateau steppe gnawed at her body. She had refused to go to the embassy in Beijing to have the encephalitis shot, so now she was sick with it, sick with the searing headache that was the first symptom, racked with the chills that came as the brain swelled with the infection that brought death. Matsuko had warned her about it, had had her own vaccination when she was in Tokyo.

  If she had another blanket, if Matsuko would bring her something for the pain in her head . . . She opened her eyes, expecting to find the canvas side of the tent. Instead, she saw grey stone under her arm, and then a wall, and then she remembered.

  She closed her eyes and lay still, listening to see if he was still in the room. She raised her head and judged that the pain was bearable. Her eyes confirmed what her ears had already told her: he was gone, and she was alone in this room with his collection.

  She pushed herself to her knees, then, using the chair to steady herself, got to her feet. Her head pounded, and the room swirled around her for a moment, but she stood and closed her eyes until things grew steady. Pain radiated out from beneath her ears, pushing its way into her skull.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that one wall was filled with windows covered with iron gratings. She forced herself to walk across the room to try the door, but it was locked. At first, the pain jolted with every step, but then she forced herself to relax the muscles of her jaw, and it abated minimally. She went back to the windows, pulled the chair over beneath them and very slowly climbed up on to it. Beyond the window, she saw the roof of the house on the opposite side of the calle. To the left, more roofs, and to the right, the Grand Canal.

  Beyond the window, the rain pounded dow
n, and she was suddenly conscious of her clothing, wet and clinging to her body. She climbed unsteadily down from the chair and looked around the room, searching for some source of heat, but there was none. She sat on the chair, wrapped her arms around her body, and tried to fight off the tremors of cold that racked her. She clutched her hands against her sides, and her hand felt something hard. The belt hook. Through the sodden cloth, she covered it, talisman-like, with her hand and pressed it tight against her body.

  A block of time passed; she had no idea how long. The light coming through the windows diminished, changing from the leaden dullness of day to the penumbra of approaching night. She knew there had to be lights in the room, but she lacked the strength to try to find them. Besides, light would change nothing; only warmth would help.

  At some point in all of this, she heard a key in the door, and then it opened, allowing the man who had hit her to enter. Behind him came the younger man who had led her up the steps, how long ago she couldn’t remember.

  ‘Professoressa,’ the older man said, and he smiled, ‘I hope we’ll be able to continue our conversation now.’ He turned and said something to the younger man, speaking in a dialect that she thought was Sicilian but that was so fluid and filled with elided sounds that she understood nothing. Together, they came across the room towards her, and Brett couldn’t resist the impulse to get up from the chair and put it between herself and them.

  The older man stopped near the case that held the low brown bowl and turned his attention to that. The younger man stopped beside him, his eyes flitting back and forth between him and Brett.

  Once again, with the delicacy of the connoisseur that characterized his every motion when handling the pieces from his collection, he removed the Plexiglas cover and lifted down the low bowl. Like a priest carrying an offering towards some distant altar, he came across the room to her, carrying it in both hands. ‘As I was saying before we were interrupted, I think it’s from Ch’ing-hai Province, though it might well come from Kansu. You understand why I can’t send it for an expert opinion.’

  Brett turned up her chin and looked at him, then shifted her glance to the younger man, who had appeared, an acolyte, at his side. She looked at the bowl, saw its beauty, and looked away, uninterested.

  ‘You can see, just here,’ he said, turning the bowl fractionally, ‘where the rings were sealed together. Strange, isn’t it, that it should look so much like a pot that was thrown on a wheel. And the design. I’ve always been interested in the way primitive people used geometric shapes, almost as if they somehow foresaw the future and knew we’d get back to them.’ He turned his attention, somewhat reluctantly, away from the bowl and glanced down at Brett. ‘As I said, it’s the most beautiful piece in my collection. Perhaps not the most precious, but it’s still the one I love the most.’ He chuckled under his breath, sharing a joke with a colleague. ‘And what I had to do in order to get it.’

  She wanted to close her eyes, her ears, and not listen to this lunacy. But she remembered the last time she had ignored him, and so looked up at him and made an inquisitive grunt, not able to risk speech for the pain that she knew it would bring.

  ‘A collector in Florence. An old man and very obstinate. I had met him because of some common business dealings, and when he learned that I had an interest in Chinese ceramics, he took me to his home to show me his collection. Well, when I saw this piece, I fell in love with it, knew I wouldn’t be happy until I had it.’

  He raised the bowl a bit higher and turned it again, studying the fine tracery of black lines that ran along its side and crawled up over the edge and into the centre of the bowl. ‘I asked him if he would sell it to me, but he refused, said he wasn’t interested in the money. I offered him more, made him an offer that was far more than the bowl was worth, and then I doubled the offer when he refused.’ He took his eyes from the bowl and looked down at her, attempting to reconstruct and thus explain his indignation. He shook his head and returned his attention to the bowl. ‘He still refused. So I had no choice. He simply left me no choice. I had made him an offer that was more than generous, but he wouldn’t take it. And so I had to use other methods.’

  He looked down at her, clearly willing her to ask him what he had been constrained to do. And as that verb passed through her mind, Brett suddenly realized that all of this was no script he had prepared to justify his actions; this was not a scene he was constructing in order to fool her into taking his part. He believed this. He had wanted something, it had been refused him, and so he had been constrained to take it. As simple as that. And in the same instant she saw where she was: standing in his way, impeding the freedom with which he might possess the ceramics he had gone to so much trouble and expense to take from the exhibition at the Ducal Palace. And she knew then that he was going to kill her, blot out her life as casually as he had struck out at her when she refused to answer his question. Involuntarily, she moaned, but he took it as a question and went on.

  ‘I wanted to arrange it to look like a simple robbery, but if the bowl had been taken, he would have known that I was involved. I thought of having it removed and then burning down his villa.’ He paused and sighed at the memory. ‘But then I just couldn’t. He had so many beautiful things there. I couldn’t see them destroyed.’ He lowered the bowl and showed her the inner surface. ‘Just look at that circle, and the way the lines swerve around it, emphasizing the pattern. How did they know how to do that?’ He stood upright and muttered, ‘Simply miraculous. Miraculous.’

  During all of this, the young man said nothing, standing at his side and listening to every word, following every gesture with his eyes, expressionless.

  The older man sighed again and then continued. ‘I made it clear that it was to be done when he was alone. I didn’t see any reason that his family should suffer. He was driving back from Siena one night, and . . .’ He paused here, seeking how most delicately to phrase this. ‘And he had an accident. Most unfortunate. He lost control of his car on the superstrada. It caught fire and burned at the side of the road. In the confusion of his death, it was some time before anyone noticed that the bowl was gone.’ His voice grew softer as he passed to the philosophic mode. ‘I wonder if that has anything to do with why I love this bowl so much, the fact that I had to go to so much trouble to get it?’ Then, more conversationally, ‘You can’t imagine how glad I am finally to be able to show it to someone who can appreciate it.’ With a glance at the young man, he added, ‘Everyone here tries to understand, to share my enthusiasm, but they haven’t devoted years of study to these things, the way I have. And the way you have, Professoressa.’

  His smile grew absolutely benign. ‘Would you like to hold it, Dottoressa? No one else has touched it since I, well, since I acquired it. But I’m certain you would appreciate the feel of it in your hands, the perfection of the curve on the bottom. You’ll be amazed at how light it is. I’m always so sorry that I don’t have the correct scientific resources. I’d like to check its composition with a spectroscope and see what it’s made of; maybe that could explain why it feels so light. Perhaps you’d be willing to tell me what you think?’

  He smiled again and held the bowl out towards her. She forced her stiffening body away from the wall and put out her hands to take the bowl he offered. Carefully, she took it in her two upturned palms and looked down into its centre. The black lines, painted by some graceful hand, dead now more than five millennia, swept across the bottom, swirling up apparently at random to encircle white spaces that enclosed small black circles, turning them into bulls’ eyes. The bowl all but vibrated with life, with the comic spirit of the potter. She saw that the lines did not run evenly spaced, that gaps and variations proclaimed the fallible humanity of the artist who had painted it. Through involuntary tears she saw the beauty of a world she was to join. She mourned her own death and the power of this man who still stood in front of her to possess beauty as perfect as this.

  ‘It’s fabulous, isn’t it?’ he asked.


  Brett looked up from the bowl and into his eyes. He’d snuff out her life as carelessly as he’d spit out a cherry stone. He’d do that and he’d live on, possessed of this beauty, happy in the full possession of this, his greatest joy. She took a small step back from him and raised her arms in a hieratic gesture that lifted the bowl to the level of her face. Then, very slowly, with conscious deliberation, she drew her hands apart and let the bowl fall to the marble floor, where it shattered, splashing fragments up against her feet and legs.

  The man lunged forward but not in time to save the bowl. When his foot landed on a fragment, shattering it into dust, he staggered backward, bumping into the younger man and grabbing at him for support. His face flushed red and then as quickly paled. He muttered something Brett didn’t understand, then turned quickly to face her. He pulled one hand free and stepped towards her, but the younger man moved up behind him and wrapped one arm around his chest, pulling him back. He spoke softly but fiercely into the older man’s ear, holding his arm tightly and preventing him from reaching Brett. ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Not with all your beautiful things.’ The older man snarled out an answer she didn’t hear. ‘I’ll take care of it,’ the young one said. ‘Downstairs.’

  While they spoke, voices growing louder and louder, Brett plunged her right hand into her pocket and wrapped it around the narrow end of the belt hook: the other end was pointed, and the edges were thin enough to cut. As she watched them and listened to them, their voices began to billow away and float back towards her. At the same time, Brett realized that she no longer felt the cold; quite the contrary, she was hot, burning with it. Yet they talked on and on, voices urgent and fast. She told herself to stand there, to hold the blade, but it was suddenly too much effort, and she lowered herself into the chair again. Her head dropped down and she saw the shattered wreckage on the floor without remembering what it was.

  After a long time, she heard the door open and slam shut, and when she looked up, only the younger man remained in the room. There was a gap in time, and then he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet. She went along with him, out of the door and down the stairs, pain exploding in her head at every step, and then down more stairs, across the open courtyard that still teemed with rain, and then to a wooden door that was set at the level of the courtyard.