family is Venetian, Nando was brought up in Pavia, and he’s never forgotten how the people there made fun of his accent. Anyway, his proposals were turned down, so he promptly resigned along with Saoner and a few others and formed his own breakaway group.’
‘And do they really want to resurrect the Venetian Republic?’
Cristiana nodded.
‘“Our past is our future, our future is our past.” That’s one of Nando’s slogans. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? But he really believes it. He isn’t a charlatan, like so many politicians. He believes everything he says.’
She pushed her half-eaten pizza away.
‘Anyway, that’s enough about him!’
She sized up Zen with her eyes for a moment.
‘You’re married too, aren’t you?’
He shrugged.
‘Legally, yes. But that’s all in the past. And my past is certainly not my future. Not if I’ve got anything to do with it, anyway.’
Cristiana laughed.
‘Children?’ she asked.
Zen shook his head.
‘Although I sometimes feel as though there’s another me that’s still married to Luisella and is probably a father by now.’
He looked at her.
‘Do you ever feel that? That every time you come to a crossroads in your life, there’s a ghostly double which splits off and goes the other way, the route you didn’t take. I know exactly what he’s like, my married version. I might as well be him. I could easily be. It just so happens that I’m not.’
He smiled wryly and got out his cigarettes.
‘Listen to the pizzeria philosopher! Sorry, I’m talking nonsense.’
The bevy of teenage girls passed by their table on the way out.
‘Ciao, Cristiana.’
‘ Ciao, Gabriella.’
Swathed in smirks and giggles, the group sallied forth into the night. With their departure, the room seemed to contract, becoming a smaller and more intimate space.
‘Do you ever think about coming home?’ asked Cristiana lightly.
‘Home?’
‘To live, I mean.’
When Zen did not reply, she added, ‘But perhaps you have a reason for wanting to stay in Rome. Something, or someone.’
He shook his head slowly.
‘Only my job.’
‘But you could get a transfer here if you wanted.’
‘Probably. But I haven’t had a reason for coming back here. Not so far.’
He looked at her.
‘It’s your home,’ said Cristiana. ‘Isn’t that reason enough?’
Zen shrugged.
‘It’s more often seemed a reason for staying away. Those ghostly doubles I was talking about are thicker on the ground here than anywhere else.’
There was a brief silence between them.
‘Speaking of ghosts, Ada Zulian described one of her intruders to me this evening,’ Zen murmured, as though to himself. ‘She said it had a large hook nose, a fixed grin and gaping eyes and wore a loose-fitting costume in black and white check, like a harlequin. The other had pale flawless features, neither male nor female, and was dressed in a cloak of gold and scarlet.’
Cristiana sniffed dismissively.
‘Sounds like carnival.’
Zen nodded.
‘Exactly what occurred to me. But where could Ada have seen carnival costumes? She hardly ever leaves the house, and then only to go to the local shops. You don’t see people dressed up like that in this area. She doesn’t have a television and never reads the papers.’
‘Perhaps she remembers it from when she was a child.’
Zen drained off the last of his beer and clicked his fingers to summon the waiter.
‘When Ada was a child, the carnival didn’t exist. The children got dressed up as bunnies or cowboys or pirates, and there was a dance for the parents if the weather was good, but that was all. The chichi spectacle they put on these days, with all the jet setters from Milan and Rome dolled up in fantastic costumes which cost the earth, that’s all a recent invention. I’m willing to bet that Ada Zulian has never seen a “traditional” Venetian carnival outfit in her life.’
‘She must have done,’ retorted Cristiana, standing to put on her coat. ‘Otherwise how could she describe it?’
Outside, a fine drizzle had started to fall. They walked home through the deserted streets and over the darkened waterways as though they owned them, as though the whole city were their private domain. The knowledge that they were a subject of gossip lent a nimbus of glamour to what in different circumstances might have seemed a fairly homely outing.
They also laughed a lot. Cristiana Morosini had a mordant, malicious sense of humour which Zen found refreshingly direct after months of feminist earnestness. In principle he agreed with Tania’s views — or at least did not disagree with them enough to argue — but they were relentlessly correct and offered no scope for heartless humour. As Cristiana recounted a succession of decidely unsisterly anecdotes about a mutual acquaintance, Zen found himself responding with a warmth and freedom he had not felt for a very long time.
When they reached their houses, they stopped, suddenly awkward.
‘Well, good night,’ said Zen. ‘Thank you for coming along. I really enjoyed myself.’
‘So did I.’
She took a card from her purse and handed it to him.
‘This is where I work. The fax and phone numbers are on it. Give me a ring and I’ll tell you whether anything has arrived.’
Zen watched her walk to her door and unlock it. She looked round and waved, and only then did he turn away.
By morning, a dense fog had settled on the city. When a combination of high tides and strong onshore winds flooded the streets with the dreaded aqua alta, the council posted maps showing the zones affected and the routes on higher ground which remained open, but the fog respected no limits. It ebbed and flowed according to its own laws, blossoming here, thinning there, blurring outlines, abolishing distinctions and making the familiar strange and unlikely.
‘What the…!’
‘For the love of…!’
‘Watch where you’re going!’
‘You think you own the street?’
Catching sight of a dishevelled elderly man with a dog at his heels, Zen hastily slipped back into the enshrouding obscurity of the fog before he got entangled in another episode of Daniele Trevisan’s vaporous reminiscences. But he had not gone much further before another collision occurred.
‘Excuse me!’
‘Oh!’
‘Rosalba?’
‘Ah, if it isn’t Casanova himself!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘“I’m just going over to see Wanda,” she tells me last night. That’s Wanda Dal Maschio, Nando’s sister,
