these things happen, even in Venice. I hope you will not allow such an unpleasantness to spoil your stay.”
“Nothing of the kind,” Brett assured him.
“I admire your choice of season, Signor Brett. I often think Venice is at her loveliest at this time of year. The warmth. The light. Carnevale? Far too cold.” He took a sip of champagne. It was very good. “But you will know that already, perhaps.”
“The Carnival? No. I was never in Venice before, I regret to say.”
“You are from New York?”
“Based in the city, yes.”
“In Venice we are a little crazy about the past. Com’era, dov’era — as it was, where it was. A very Venetian saying-and said rather too often, I think. I would like to visit your country one day. A young country. We tend to forget that Venice was once a series of muddy little islands, inhabited by refugees from the mainland.” He gestured to the window. “Like you today, Signor Brett, we had to build up all this, little by little.”
“I’d be proud if we made New York half as beautiful,” Brett said.
“Who knows, Signor Brett? It will be another kind of beauty, I imagine. The beauty of the machine age.”
“Founded on commerce.”
“Of course.” Barbieri smiled. “Trade is a very pure expression of human energy. Modern Venice is listless and poor, and produces no art. Why? Because there’s no art without a patron. And one is not enough. It takes a wealthy and energetic commercial city to spawn rich men, who then vie with each other to call out what is beautiful.” He touched the scar on his lip with his tongue. “Are there rich men in New York?”
“More every day,” Brett said.
“So it was in Venice once. Spices, maybe, were your furs.” He laughed. “Forgive me, I have tumbled into my own trap-thinking, like any Venetian, of the past.”
“I think about it, too,” Brett said.
“Of course.” Barbieri nodded his head seriously. “One could draw the comparisons too close, and yet-” He put up his hands, as if he were grasping a balloon. “I do not think Venice would have become what it became without men like us.”
“Like us?”
He nodded. “We mined, in our time, the treasures that others had stored up. A lion from Patras, for the Arsenale. A column from Acre-to the Piazetta! Even the body of St. Mark-we took it from Alexandria. Go to the church of St. Mark’s, and what will you find? A gazetteer. A wild, encrusted guidebook to the cities of the ancient world. Precious marbles, enigmatic statues-and all embedded in a building that echoes the tossing of the waves. We hauled back the treasures of the East, and with them, slowly and cautiously, we forged our style.”
He gestured to the window.
“But we took it, mostly, from Istanbul. Constantinople, as it was. We sacked and scoured a city that had never been won by force of arms for eight hundred years.”
“You, at least, preserved what was carried off,” Brett said. “Lysippos’s bronze horses, for example.”
“And the bones of saints, and the reliquaries, and the gold. We took glass made in Antioch, and icons painted by the companions of Christ. Before we had been magpies, Signor Brett, snatching whatever was available, and beautiful, and bright. In 1204 we took a whole reference library.”
Brett nodded.
Barbieri smiled. “You, Signor Brett, are the Venetian now. And Venice, of course, is Istanbul.” He paused. “Tell me, how can I help you?”
Brett poured some more champagne.
“You’re a cynic at heart, Count Barbieri.”
“Not at all. Perhaps the Barbieri have at last produced an optimist.”
“A realist?”
Barbieri smiled. “It is the same thing.”
17
He ordered the deaths without emotion. He had not known that they would die. Even when the killer arrived, unable to speak, handing him written instructions, he had pretended to himself that it would be something else.
But of course when Boschini was found in the canal, dead, he could no longer pretend.
He could adapt.
That’s how it had to be in this city. You adapt, or you die.
And the man was good at that. It’s what he did, the way he lived.
So he told himself that the people who died deserved to die.
18
Palewski twisted the wire, and the cork popped out into his hand.
“Brillat-Savarin,” Count Barbieri said.
Palewski knew exactly what the count meant.
Brillat-Savarin, the French gastronome, had established a sensational fact, which flew in the face of all recognized wisdom.
After the battle of Waterloo, British regiments stationed around Champagne had plundered the wineries. Bottles were popped, quaffed, and tossed into the hedges; old vintages vanished indiscriminately with the latest crop. When order was restored, the champagne houses were left with shattered cellars.
“The champagne makers thought the British had ruined them,” Palewski began. “Until every club in London-”
“Ordered another twelve dozen cases!” Barbieri beamed. “The champagne houses made their fortune.”
“You truly are an optimist, Count Barbieri.”
“A realist, Signor Brett.”
Palewski clasped his hands under his chin.
“I am looking for a Bellini,” he said.
Gianfranco Barbieri came from a long line of Venetian aristocrats who had been trained, like aristocrats everywhere, not to reveal his feelings easily. He opened his eyes wide and gave a whistle.
“Bellini! No. Bassano, yes. Longhi, Ricci. Guardi-it would not be too much of a problem. But Bellini? That would be a miracle.” He blew on his fingertips and laughed. “You would have to steal it,” he added.
“It is what America wants,” Palewski explained. “Something utterly first class. Better one work by a master like Bellini than a whole gallery of lesser paintings.”
“No, no. You must begin slowly. Like us.”
Palewski knelt on the window seat and contemplated the Grand Canal.
“Count Barbieri,” he began, “I wonder-if, by some stroke of fortune, someone in Venice was in a position to offer a Bellini on the market-it’s a hypothetical suggestion-you would know about it, I suppose?”
The count shrugged. “If it were to be offered through the usual channels, then yes, I would know of it. But for such a painting-well. This is Venice, Signor Brett. Not all traffic passes down the Grand Canal.”
“I understand,” the American said.
Barbieri set down his glass. “I am expected at the opera, Signor Brett. There’s no reason to be disappointed. If a Bellini should suddenly appear… In the meantime, I can show you at least three works that would delight you. They would cause a stir if they were exhibited in London or Paris. A fourth, I think, would interest you also.”
They shook hands at the door. “Your neighbor is an old friend of mine. Carla d’Aspi d’Istria. She’s having a little gathering tomorrow night. Do drop her your card, I’m sure she’d be delighted to meet you.”
Later, Signor Brett did take a few steps along the alley to a large green door, where he delivered his card to
