“To the gondolas, my friends!”
They walked to the landing stage, the young Englishmen flushed and animated; even Karolyi’s eyes were bright, as he cast them at Palewski’s escort.
“Maria,” Palewski said, when the two of them were settled in the leading boat. Venice, he realized, had one advantage over Istanbul, at least. “Maria, I will drop you at the Rialto.”
She gave a disappointed pout.
“But I want you to come along in an hour or so.”
“I see.”
“With a couple of your friends.”
“My friends?” She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“Maria, my dear. I am asking you to arrange a simple, traditional Venetian orgy.”
38
Pop! Pop! Corks flew. The boys were in ecstasies.
“I say, Palewski!” Compston’s eyes shone. “I say!”
“To Venice,” Palewski proposed.
They drank again. Palewski filled their glasses.
“And what is Venice, gentlemen? The city of pleasure. Masques, balls, the Arabian nights reborn-a place of love and squalor, of high art-and low desire.”
The young men tittered.
“I daresay you’ve been to the Doges’ Palace? To the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni? And the Accademia? Of course, of course. To art, gentlemen! To the glory of Bellini, and Tiepolo, and Titian!”
“To art!” they chorused enthusiastically.
“Tell the truth,” said Compston, “I’ve seen about as much art as I could want.”
Fizerly nodded. “Writing it all up for the ladies at home, too. Bit grueling, Palewski.”
“Karolyi?”
But Count Karolyi, too, seemed to have flagged beneath the deluge of Venetian art. “It is all very old,” he said. “Nothing new.”
Palewski nodded. “You are right. It’s all old. Wonderful but frozen. To frozen Venice!”
They drank.
“‘S’all very well for you, Palewski,” Compston declared with a wink.
“I think you are right, Mr. Compston,” Karolyi said. “Count Palewski’s Venice does not appear to be all frozen.” He gave his host a thin-lipped smile.
“To which end, gentlemen, I have arranged for you to meet some charming young friends of mine,” Palewski continued smoothly. “I believe I hear them now on the stairs.”
He went to the door and pulled it open.
“Here they are. Please consider my home as your own.”
He stepped out onto the landing. Maria tapped him with her fan and smiled.
The three young men stood, unsteadily, as Maria and her friends entered the room, laughing.
Avanti, sorelle!”
39
It was shortly before eight o’clock that Palewski returned to his apartment from the hotel where he had spent the night.
He found three puffy-faced young men already struggling into their underwear.
“Got to get back to the consul,” Compston croaked, shading his eyes. “To get our things.” He fished up a pocket watch and stared at it, a look of horror spreading across his flushed features. “Oh my God! Fizerly! We’ve only got half an hour left!”
“All taken care of,” Palewski said crisply. “I had everything sent to the ship.”
Compston’s eyes filled with tears. “Palewski, old man. I–I don’t know what to say. You’re the most capital fellow I ever met.”
40
The stadtmeister shuddered. A head on a plate? A drifting gondola with a severed trunk inside? It was outlandish, warped-like everything in this dreadful town, wreathed in mist, drifting on its horrible flat lagoon. Ach, for the mountains, where the water was clear and you tramped the forests with proper rock under your feet! And where a former stadtmeister in the service of the emperor was a figure of respect and awe.
He frowned and pulled back his shoulders slightly.
“I have not lived among these Latins for so many years, Herr Vosper, without gaining some useful insights into the Venetian mind.”
Vosper drew his heels together and gave a short nod that might have been a bow.
“It is, I think I may say without fear of contradiction, a degenerate mind. Here and there one finds representatives of the old type, but they are unfortunately rare.” He placed his fingertips together and contemplated the ceiling.
“In the aim of understanding the representative characteristics of a people, what are the preliminary indices that must be established, Herr Vosper?”
“I beg your pardon, Stadtmeister,” Vosper replied, shuffling his feet. “I am afraid I don’t understand the question.”
The stadtmeister sighed. “What is the most important influence?”
“Climate, sir.”
“Because people from the north are tall and fair, like birch trees, yes. They work hard, in teams. Ice demands unremitting teamwork. People from the south are dark and short. They are more indolent, also.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We can observe this phenomenon operating both on the large and the small scale, Herr Vosper. The Nordic type and the Mediterranean type. On a smaller scale, it is true to a lesser degree that the southern Italian peninsula is chiefly associated with indolence and dishonesty, while the northerly regions-of which Venice is a member-are more hardworking and upright. Do you follow?”
Vosper nodded. He could have given the speech himself.
“But we must allow for the interplay between large and small scale, as between the movement of men and history. We must-and do-allow for this!”
He leaned forward. His face was growing red.
“This is what the anticlimatic idiots will not try to understand! Science is a subtle system, Herr Vosper. Subtle but irrefutable, when the evidence is allowed.” He balled his fists and pressed them together over his leather- topped desk. “Interplay is a crucial element in the system. How else can men change?”
He paused to consider his own rhetorical question.
“For as long as Venetians represented the northern type within their own, smaller world, they were unmatched for acumen and fair dealing. But for several centuries they have been drawn farther into the orbit of the great northern landmass that is Europe. They have become, in this sense, southerners. Am I correct?”
“Quite correct, Stadtmeister.”
“So one observes the corruption of the Venetian mind as a matter of course. We cannot entirely blame them
