He fetches Ada’s coat and leads her downstairs. But when they reach the andron he leaves her and walks over to the massive door at the end giving on to the canal. And there the key is, of course, attached to the wall by a nail. When the man lifts it off, a rusty silhouette remains behind on the plaster. The throbbing of the launch makes the whole entrance vibrate.
He inserts the key into the lock, which turns smoothly. The door swings open under its own weight without a sound. The tide is high enough for the ambulance to be roped in against the watersteps. One of the attendants jumps ashore while the other manoeuvres a gangplank on to the paving of the hallway. Aurelio Battista is shouting instructions to the other man, who nods earnestly. Something about what is to be done with her once they reach the hospital. With a sinking feeling, Ada acknowledges that matters are slipping out of her control. She has tried so hard, but now it is suddenly all too much. She starts to scream, to struggle, then subsides to the paving and lets them have their way with her. There is a flurry of movement, a clink of instruments, a sting in her arm, and then everything tactfully recedes.
He almost didn’t go home. If it hadn’t been for the carving knife, which he’d wrapped in newspaper in a crude attempt to preserve any fingerprints, he would probably have wandered off looking for a suitable place to eat. As it was he went home first, and that changed everything.
Approaching the house up the long wedge of the campo, he noticed that the lights were on. He knew he hadn’t left them on himself. His mother had lectured him too often as a child about the shameful waste of leaving lights burning in an empty room, as well as the danger of a fire if a burning electric bulb — it was impossible to explain to her that there was no actual flame — were left unattended.
For a moment, he thought twice about entering the house. What had happened to Ada Zulian had shocked him more than he had allowed himself to reveal. Even if her injuries were self-inflicted, and the balance of probability had to lie in that direction, this new development was very disturbing. A degree more pressure on the knife blade would have been sufficient to sever the artery. Such had been the implied message of those shallow cuts on Ada’s wrist. For some reason Zen felt it to be directed at him, at his presence in the city, his intrusion into whatever was going on.
Putting aside these fancies, he opened the front door as quietly as possible and made his way upstairs. Long before he reached the landing, he could already hear noises from the living room. His only weapon was Ada’s knife. Grasping the handle through the newspaper wrapping, he crept across the landing and stood listening by the door. There was no question that someone was moving about in there.
Footsteps approached the door on the other side. Zen stood there, clutching the knife. The knob turned and a woman appeared silhouetted in the doorway. Zen lowered the knife.
‘Good evening,’ he said, as though the whole situation were perfectly normal.
Cristiana Morosini gestured awkwardly.
‘I thought you’d gone out to dinner,’ she said. ‘My mother’s feather duster is missing. She thought she might have left it over here. I used the key you left with her to get in.’
Zen nodded and walked past her into the living room.
‘Ada Zulian phoned,’ he said.
He set the wrapped knife down on the table.
‘How is she?’
‘How is she?’ Zen repeated, a hysterical edge creeping into his voice. ‘Not so good. Not so good at all. She tried to kill herself, or make it look as though she had.’
Cristiana Morosini rolled her eyes.
‘Not again!’
Zen glanced at her sharply.
‘It’s happened before?’
Cristiana nodded.
‘A couple of years ago. She slashed her wrists with a kitchen knife. Fortunately one of her nephews found her in time, and they managed to patch her up. But Mamma’s right, you know. This is a case for the doctors.’
Zen shrugged.
‘Well, the doctors have got her now. I packed her off to the hospital.’
‘Were her injuries that serious?’
He shook his head.
‘It’s just to keep her under observation, really. I want to make sure she’s not left alone until I have a chance to think the whole thing over and decide what to do.’
This neutral topic exhausted, they stood awkwardly eyeing each other. Zen glanced at his watch.
‘Would you like to have dinner with me?’ he demanded abruptly.
Cristiana shrugged.
‘I’ve already eaten. Mamma made sopa de pesse.’
‘Come and keep me company anyway. As an old friend of the family. I’m lonely, Cristiana. This place gives me the creeps. I don’t know why I’ve come. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I need someone to talk to. I also need a fax machine. Do you have a fax machine, Cristiana? If so you could satisfy all my needs.’
They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Cristiana smiled and started to button up her coat.
‘There’s one at the office where I work. As for eating, the places round here aren’t up to much, but there’s a pizzeria which isn’t bad. We could go there if you like.’
Zen luxuriated for a moment under her intense lambent gaze.
‘I’m in your hands,’ he said.
‘Oh God, there’s Gabriella Rosteghin,’ exclaimed Cristiana with a gleeful laugh. ‘That means this’ll be all over the neighbourhood tomorrow morning.’
‘What will?’ murmured Zen.
‘You and I, of course.’
Zen looked over at the giggling group of teenage girls casting glances in their direction from the other end of the pizzeria.
‘We haven’t done anything yet,’ he said mildly.
‘So much the better! Gabriella prefers it that way. It gives her more scope. She doesn’t need to worry about fitting in with the facts.’
Zen sipped his beer.
‘Tell me about this Nuova Repubblica Veneta business,’ he said. ‘What’s it all about? How did it get started?’
Cristiana sighed and shook her head.
‘About four years ago, Nando joined the Lega Veneta, which had just been formed. I told him at the time that he was making a mistake. Politics draws you in, little by little, until you forget everything else. Mind you, no one had any inkling how popular the League would prove to be. Even Bossi thought it would take at least a decade to convince people that there was a viable alternative to the traditional parties. In the event, of course, the thing was a runaway success from the start. Everyone began to scent the possibility of power. That’s when the trouble started.’
The pizzas they had ordered arrived, Cristiana having decided that she could after all manage something, and for a while they turned their attention to eating.
‘I saw Tommaso Saoner today,’ Zen said, pausing to gulp some beer. ‘I didn’t recognize him at all. It might have been a different person, the way he was talking.’
Cristiana nodded vigorously.
‘That’s just what happened to Nando. He’s changed completely, just as I predicted. He used to be easygoing, and such fun! But the moment he got involved in politics he turned into a total fanatic. It’s a drug. It gets into your blood and you become a different person.’
They ate in silence for a while.
‘That’s what caused the split with Bossi,’ Cristiana went on. ‘Nando wanted the Lega Veneta to take its distance from the Northern Leagues, which he claimed were too dominated by Lombardy. Although the Dal Maschio
