The Venetian Affair

  It was. He would no longer feel like an idiot parading through Venice with plaid swimming trunks dangling from one hand. “Do you always think of everything?” he asked. She had possibly been right about the man in the brown suit: he had left his chair, at least, and was sauntering down the hall toward the porter’s desk.

  “I wish I could.” Fleetingly, the strained look of worry appeared on her face; just as quickly, she banished it, and resumed that calm, oblivious-to-everything exterior.

  He took her hand as they approached the large, ornate back door of the Vittoria. It was his way of saying he was sorry. She looked up in surprise, and smiled. He had chased some of the worry away, at least. “I wasn’t much help to you there,” he admitted. “Was I?”

  She laughed in her relief. “You did let me get my own way,” she reminded him. Kicking and screaming, she thought. What had made him so ornery all of a sudden?

  “Do you get your way with every damned man you meet?”

  The large grey eyes widened. The pink lips, parted as if to speak, closed in a firm line.

  “I am sorry,” he said, ashamed of the resentment that had slipped out into the open and betrayed him. She was Carlson’s girl. He kept forgetting that. He had forgotten it at dinner last night. He had forgotten it on the terrace high above the Grand Canal. But now they had come down to the ground floor, and he was being reminded of Carlson constantly. The hell of it was, he liked Carlson. If he didn’t like him, it would all be simpler. “I am sorry,” he said again. “I guess things just seem out of control.” And that is not the way I like them, he thought, not one bit.

  They were passing through the small courtyard that lay at the back of the hotel, a square of worn paving stones surrounded by the tall walls of other houses. He noted the chipping plaster, the streaked colours, under the heavy ropes of wisteria. Board shutters, unpainted, bleached into greenish brown, closed the silent windows away from the world as the buildings themselves enclosed this courtyard. The only exit was by a narrow crevasse at one corner, dark even by daylight, leading them between more high shuttered houses. “I never knew a place that could be so crowded and yet so private,” Claire was saying. She looked around her, and upward, as if measuring the safety of this alley, and halted. She spoke in a low quick murmur. Fenner bent his head to catch what she was saying. Here we go again, he thought, as he slipped his arm around the soft, yet firm waist. And I wish to heaven she wouldn’t use that perfume, either.

  Claire was saying, “When I went back to my room, I telephoned Neill. He has given me a number where I could check with him if necessary. But he hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “He may have stayed in the Rome section of the train. Perhaps he is flying here this evening,” Fenner said, to drive away the frown of anxiety over her eyes.

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps he had someone to see in Milan. Anyhow, I wrote a note for Chris and asked him for some advice. We’ll leave the note at a camera shop. It’s quite near—”

  “Are you sure of that camera shop?” It seemed an additional risk to Fenner.

  “Rosie gave me that address for any emergencies.”

  “You think we have an emergency on our hands?” He was startled. But grave.

  “I don’t like the rooms we’ve been given. Perhaps Rosie arranged them, but I don’t think so. I just want to be sure we aren’t sitting in a pretty little trap.”

  His arm tightened around her. Someone had just stepped from the courtyard into this dark passage. The footsteps faltered, stopped. “This might be the time to drop a nice, brotherly kiss on your brow,” he suggested. And did it.

  “And I can laugh coyly, like this.” She had a very pretty laugh, even when it was pretence. She hates this as much as I do, he thought suddenly, and felt an enormous relief. She drew away, raised her voice back to normal. “Darling, not here! Someone will see us—” She looked around, as women do.

  “Just a man lighting his cigarette,” Fenner said with male nonchalance. They walked on, close together, their shoulders almost brushing the house walls on either side of them, much to the relief of the man in the brown suit who seemed to be having so much trouble with his matches. Claire was pointing out a wrought-iron decoration around the lamp on the wall overhead. That was what she loved about Venice: the small ordinary things made into little works of art, tucked away in hidden corners, not even demanding attention, just there to be seen by accident. Behind them, Fenner heard the slow footsteps begin again.

  Abruptly, the narrow alley ended. They were beside a canal, walking under a sotto portico for a short distance, then out into the open. Ahead of them was a busy Venetian street that crossed the canal by a gentle slope of bridge, a main thoroughfare all of twelve feet in width, lined with shops, above which flower boxes and shuttered windows rose to three or four tight stories. There was a feeling of lightheartedness, of gaiety, in this stretch of sunlight and movement. And the only sounds in the city street were those of voices, of lightly pacing feet. “At this moment,” Fenner told Claire, “your anti-candle man is planning to introduce a fleet of Vespas. What’s a street without gasoline fumes and the roar of exhausts?”

  “Only Vespas?” She dropped her voice. “We go across the bridge, Bill.”

  The brown suit was very close to them now. Fenner went on talking. “Oh, that’s just the thin edge. Once he conditions people to being pushed to the walls, he can bring in cars—small cars, at first, of course—and people can retreat to the roofs. It’s the technique of gradualism. Accustom people to retreating, and you can not only push them to the walls, but they’ll even begin to believe that climbing across the roofs is really much better than strolling along a street.”

  She was amused until she thought about it. “That really isn’t a joke,” she said gravely.

  “Not when you think of the Communists.” Let’s give Brown Suit a bolt and a jolt, he thought. “They really are much cleverer than the Nazis. Hitler’s patience was too easily exhausted. He wanted everything all at once: a thousand-year Reich in ten years. But the Communists think of politics as the art of the impossible: just take everything in thin slices, little by little.”

  “The art of the impossible...” She repeated slowly. “Like getting away with bomb tests while you sit at a disarmament conference. You know, Bill, I wish I could listen in to your interviews tomorrow. What do you expect from your neutralists—a retreat to the wall?”

  “They are already up on the tiles.”

  “Will they give you a real interview, or will they just hum a little song to themselves?”

  “They’ll play it safe by putting on a performance, the holier-than-thou act, black is white and white is black, and grey isn’t tattletale. After all, they’re the kind who are always polishing their Public Image. Do you think they would pass up a chance to get free advertisement in the Chronicle?”

  “They may wish they had,” she murmured, “once you get through with them.”

  “If any interviews get published,” he said as he remembered that they were entirely the brain children of Rosie. He had forgotten that. Here he was, discussing two ambitious, second-rate politicians as if the Chronicle wanted to publish their polished clichés. Well, he thought, when Rosie picks a cover for me, he picks a good one: he has even got me believing in it. He began to laugh.

  “That’s a good sound,” Claire said. They had halted on the crest of the bridge. From here, they could look right down the narrow strip of water, edged with houses, all the way to the Grand Canal. Just below them was a mooring place for gondolas, where their owners polished and scoured their black, gleaming craft from sharp Viking prow to curved stern, talking in hoarse, amiable shouts as they worked. “Can you see the man in the brown suit at all?”

  The gondoliers had certainly seen them. “Gondola, gondola?”

  “No thanks,” Fenner called back. “He passed us when we were discussing Communists,” he told her.

  “And now he is waiting for us to pass him?”

  “Shouldn’t b
e surprised. He is fascinated by a camera shop just across the bridge.”

  “Oh dear!” Claire said, keeping her eyes fixed on the distant sliver of the Grand Canal.

  “Gondola, gondola?” came the renewed invitation. One of the gondoliers was even waving his arms wildly, in hopeful enthusiasm, looking at Claire with a wide smile.

  “No!” Fenner hoped he sounded definite enough this time. “Our shop?” he asked Claire.

  “It would have to be, wouldn’t it?”

  “I have a feeling you can cope,” he told her, smiling. “I won’t even offer a suggestion.”

  She said quickly, “You’ll have to take full charge later. But at present—well, there was so little time before we left Paris—while Rosie was talking with you, Neill was briefing me. That’s the only reason—well, you see how it is?”

  She was so anxious for him to understand that he felt—pleased, relieved, reassured? There was a strange mixture of emotions, certainly, in his reaction. He smiled, mostly at himself, and nodded. “By the way, what made you so interested in Sir Felix Tarns?”

  “Chris Holland will tell you about him.”

  “I’ll be meeting Holland?”

  “That’s the idea of our message.” She glanced casually towards the camera shop. “He is still there. We’ll just have to risk it. Let’s—”

  “La biondina! La biondina!” the gondolier shouted, waving his arms still more wildly.

  Claire halted and looked back at him.

  “La biondina!” he called up to her, with absolute certainty.

  “Zorzi!” Claire said, and waved back.

  “Well, well,” said Fenner, “and did Giorgio teach you that ripe Venetian accent?”

  “Gondola, gondola?” The appeal was directed to Fenner as keeper of the purse.

  “Later,” Fenner told the broadly smiling hawk-face looking up at him.

  “Tonight? When the moon is up?” Giorgio shouted. “I wait here. What time?”

  Fenner looked at Claire. “Ten o’clock?”

  She nodded. She was as delighted as if he had given her a Christmas present all wrapped in shining paper and bright ribbons. She looked nine years old at this moment.

  “Ten o’clock,” Fenner called down.

  “I wait here,” Giorgio shouted back, and saluted nonchalantly.

  “And so he will,” Claire said as they left the bridge. “We had better keep that promise.” She was still very much Alice-in-Wonderland. “Imagine! Imagine Zorzi remembering me! It’s three years since I was here.”

  “What really astounds me is the fact that you remembered him.”

  “Would you forget that old sea raider’s face?”

  Perhaps not. But it wasn’t the answer Fenner had gone fishing for. “Old? He’s younger than I am, I bet. He hasn’t reached the age of discussing rheumatism, has he?”

  “Only the first twinges.” She may have guessed Fenner’s feelings, for she smiled and said, “I hired him for a week, last time I was here.”

  “Opulent.”

  “It was the cheapest and quickest way to explore the little canals and back waterways. I was sketching all the decorations—windows, balconies, doorways, lanterns—that caught my eye. There was a Venetian phase in Grand Rapids, that year. My first assignment abroad. Zorzi thought I was crazy at first. Then he began to think I was really in earnest. That pleased him. He’s a true Venetian.”

  “Remembering some of those smaller canals, I’d say you really suffer for the sake of your art.”

  “Oh, I had some luck with cool weather. And a large bottle of Eau de Cologne helped.” She was smiling at the memory. Quietly she said, “Remind me to buy some film, will you, Bill?”

  “And after that, I shut up. Right? No suggestions, I promise.” The brown suit seemed glued to the Kodachrome window. “He is going to have a front-row seat for the next act. Want to postpone it?”

  “We haven’t the time. Let’s show him what innocent travellers we are. Don’t worry, Bill”—she was really encouraging herself—“it will be simple enough if we just follow the rules.”

  They almost passed the display windows. Fenner stopped, catching her arm. “What about that film you need?”

  “Why, Bill—I nearly forgot.”

  They brushed past the waiting man and entered the shop.

  16

  Neat Italian cursive over the shop’s entrance told them it was owned by V Arnaldi. It was small, dark, but authentic. On either side were two glass-topped counters, displaying filters and light meters in considerable profusion. There were shelves of Leicas and Rolleiflexes, all bargains at the cheap Venetian price; stacks of varied film; many excellent photographs showing how you could do it, too, if you got up at six in the morning or lived in a city without people. There was one assistant, very young and very martyred, who obviously disapproved of the prominent notice in four languages stating that this shop was open for business every day, all day. For this was a bright, warm Sunday, when reasonable places were either firmly closed or at least putting up their shutters for a pleasant three-hour lunch.

  “I need some thirty-five-millimetre colour film,” Claire said in English. “Seven rolls of K 135-38.”

  The boy stared at her blankly. Fenner sympathised with him. Claire had asked for a film with thirty-eight exposures, and there was just no such thing.

  “Uno momento,” the boy said, jolted out of his apathy. (He wasn’t stupid, Fenner decided; just bored.) Quickly he went to a curtained door at the back of the shop. A chair scraped, a limping step dragged on the wooden floor; and a white-haired man appeared, wiping his mouth from an interrupted dinner. His movements were slow, deliberate, calm.

  “Mr. Arnaldi?” Claire asked.

  The proprietor nodded, his eyes as blank as the boy’s had been. Outside, a second man had halted beside the brown suit, to look at the window’s display.

  Claire repeated her request, with a slight emphasis on the seven. Arnaldi listened placidly, but he had noted the tightening of Fenner’s lips as he watched the street. The man in the brown suit was moving on; it was the other, a thin man, much younger, who was coming into the shop.

  “Certainly,” Arnaldi said as the man entered, and selected three boxes of standard K135-36 film from the shelf behind him. He placed them in a neat pyramid on the counter in front of Claire. “Anything else today, signorina?”

  “No thank you. That’s perfect.” Claire relaxed visibly as she looked at the three boxes. So Arnaldi was the right man to deal with, Fenner decided, quickly changing his mind about mistakes. “I think I’ll load the camera here,” she said, holding out her hand for it, smiling reassuringly.

  Fenner gave it to her, tried to pay no attention to the strange man who had walked over to the stand beside them instead of choosing the other counter. Perhaps he was lonely, wanted company, the Coney Island-Brighton Beach type. Why wasn’t he out at the Lido? That would suit him perfectly. “Need any help?” Fenner asked.

  “Have you ever used a Stereo-Realist?”

  “No,” he lied gallantly.

  Claire began examining the camera’s back. “I ought to have brought that book of directions,” she said, half to herself.

  Mr. Arnaldi was trying to serve the newcomer, but the man was in no hurry. He wanted a yellow filter; he needed time to choose one. He looked down, vaguely, at the boxes displayed near Claire. He liked to work close, this fellow: he was missing nothing.

  “A filter for what camera?” Arnaldi was asking patiently.

  The stranger hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Leica,” he said briefly. His eyes flickered over the three boxes of film that Claire had bought, still lying on the counter. “And I want some of these.” He picked them up.

  “Here!” began Fenner, ready to put on an act of indignation. But Claire was unworried. She was much more preoccupied with the back of her camera, which seemed to have stuck.

  Arnaldi took quick command. “That film is not made for a Leica,” he told the man. “Y
ou need—”

  “I have other cameras.”

  Arnaldi’s expression did not change. He merely reached to the shelf for three more yellow boxes, and stacked them into another pyramid before Claire. He drew out a pencil, opened a drawer for a piece of paper, and began calculating the cost. “I shall be with you shortly,” he told the man. “My son will help you meanwhile. Luigi! Show this gentleman the yellow filters.” He pointed his pencil at the other counter.

  Luigi’s boredom vanished. “Over here,” he insisted, and led the way quickly. The man hesitated, looking down at the filters beside Claire. “Not for a Leica,” Luigi told him firmly, and drew him, still holding his prize of three boxes, to the other counter.

  Claire said, “This has got stuck again. I had it fixed only last week. Can you help?” She handed over the camera to Mr. Arnaldi, who placed it flat on the counter, lifted its back just enough to extract a folded slip of paper, which disappeared into the open drawer. He had the camera closed and locked even as he pushed the drawer shut.

  “I am sorry,” Arnaldi was saying all through this small operation, “the back of your camera is not working properly. I am afraid you will not be able to load it here.” He shook his head.

  “Let me try again,” Claire said, taking it from him. “Imagine walking through Venice with an empty camera.”

  “Frustrating,” Fenner agreed.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Claire said to the stranger, who had come back to the stand beside her. “Am I in your way?” Then she laughed delightedly. “Look, I’ve managed it!” she told Fenner, freeing the back of the camera, holding it up in triumph.

  “Next time, you’d better carry a hammer as well as a book of directions.” He reached for his wallet—he was good for that, at least—while Claire started to load the camera right under the stranger’s inquiring nose. The man’s suspicions were dying down. He watched Claire’s fingers, his interest shifting to gadgetry.