If Barbieri knew of anyone trying to sell the portrait, he would presumably have offered to negotiate-on commission-for Palewski to buy it. But he hadn’t offered; therefore, he knew nothing about it. And now, bizarrely, he was dead-just like the art dealer whose corpse Palewski had seen floating in the canal on the morning of his arrival.
It was a coincidence that two art dealers should die, in curious circumstances, within a week of each other.
At the back of his mind lay one uncomfortable thought: Was it possible that the coincidence extended to his own arrival in Venice?
The waiter delivered a plate of frutti di mare: oysters, clams, prawns, and a half lobster. Palewski downed the oysters hurriedly, relishing the tang of the sea and hoping they would help clear his mind.
He would have liked to speak to someone, thrash it out. He thought of Yashim, drumming his heels in Istanbul: how he wished Yashim were here now with him! It had all seemed pretty simple when they said goodbye. The Brett plan-the printed cards, the expeditions to tailors and hatters and bootmakers on La Grande Rue de Pera. Outwitting the Habsburg bureaucracy had seemed like the easiest, most satisfactory thing in the world. A few weeks in Venice; a few introductions; a deal, or not, as it might turn out-and basta! as the Italians say: home again.
Instead of which he’d had murders, the police, Compston and his friends, a bout of fever…
And, he thought, something else, too: a sense of being not quite in command of his own destiny. Like an actor in a play, speaking lines that were not, really, his own.
He grabbed the lobster and stabbed it with a fork to pull away the succulent white tail.
He had known nothing about the fellow in the canal: the man was already dead when he arrived.
He squeezed a wedge of lemon over the cold lobster.
As for Barbieri, they had met once, twice, allowing for the brief encounter at the contessa’s palazzo. If someone, for whatever reason, had tried to prevent Palewski from learning about the Bellini-well, that made no sense. Barbieri truly knew nothing, and who would want to keep him from making an offer on the painting? A painting that, he was increasingly certain, did not exist.
Which brought him back to his own position in the city. The boys from the Istanbul embassies were safe on the high seas. It would be a week, at least, before any of them could report to the Austrians in Istanbul, and another week before the information would reach the Austrian authorities in Venice. Maria and her courtesans he would simply have to trust. As for that commissario, Brunelli, it was hard to judge if-and of what quite-he was suspicious.
Two more weeks: he owed Yashim that much, at any rate. After that, it would be dangerous to remain in Venice. And if, by then, he had failed to turn up anything on Bellini, it might be said that the picture was not available or did not exist.
A man Palewski had never seen before dropped suddenly into a chair beside him.
“Signor Brett,” the stranger said. “I understand you are looking for a Bellini.”
Palewski started. “As a matter of fact, I am,” he said.
“In which case, signore, I may be able to help.”
43
“It is not any painting you seek, signore?”
“No,” Palewski admitted. “Not any painting.”
The man smiled. “But I wondered about that.” He fished into his breast pocket and withdrew a card. He glanced at it.
“Connoisseur: it means much.”
Palewski watched him. The card, he recognized, was his own.
“But also-nothing.” The man snapped the card down on the table.
Palewski’s expression did not change. He looked at the man: he was quite fat, with smooth jowls and small, wet lips. His eyes were large and black. His head was shaved clean.
“You have the advantage of me, Signor-?”
The heavyset man looked at him for a long time before he answered. “If you like, Alfredo. It’s not important, Signor Brett.”
There had been the slightest pause, as if he had glanced again at the card to check.
“Bellini went to Istanbul in 1479,” Palewski said. “He painted a portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror, which later disappeared.”
Alfredo sighed. “I am a very little man, Signor Brett. Please, I would like you to understand. I cannot sell you a painting. I have children. I have a wife. My parents live with us, and my father has gone blind.” He nodded, as if to acknowledge sympathy.
Palewski said nothing.
“I work for another, a very great man, Signor Brett. Many people in this city will show works by inferior artists. You can buy a Canaletto very cheap here.”
“I’m not interested in a cheap Canaletto,” Palewski said.
Alfredo clasped his hands. “Of course not. Otherwise, Signor Brett, we would not be talking. Let me tell you something about Venice. It looks poor, doesn’t it? Sad, and patched up, and gray, even on a beautiful day like this. A city without an income. But do not misjudge it. Venice is also a city of extraordinary wealth-as our friends from Vienna know all too well.”
He put his finger on the table and held it there.
“We are surrounded, Signor Brett, with considerable treasures. You know the Correr?”
“Yes.”
“What did you like there?”
The question surprised Palewski. “I liked the Carpaccio,” he said, after thinking. “The Courtesans.”
The man smiled. “I like it too, Signor Brett. I agree with your choice. Correr was a rich man, a man of taste and connections. Would it surprise you to know that he considered that painting a poor specimen of the master’s art? Relatively speaking, of course. Correr, you see, knew better-he had seen things that he could never put his finger on again.
“We know that for a thousand years, Venice has been plundering the world. With her wealth, she was able to produce her own masters, too. This city was never captured, never plundered. Three hundred families held the reins of power-and access to wealth-in all those years. Oh yes, the Corsican took things that belonged here-the bronze horses from St. Mark’s, the Veroneses and the Titians from the churches. Big, grand thefts-for what? To symbolize his mastery of the Veneto. A pagan triumph, nothing more. There was no stripping of the palazzi. Perhaps, had he been given more time-who knows? The Austrians-they try, here and there, to take artworks from the city. But the world is watching them. In the meantime, the old nobility have become clever.”
“Clever?”
“These sad old buildings”-Alfredo gestured vaguely toward the canal-”appear to be shuttered up, stripped out, half abandoned. A city in decay-of course.” He leaned forward. “But if you could see what really lies inside those walls, not even on display, but in an attic somewhere, under a Persian rug, or locked up in a shabby trunk- well, I need hardly say that you, Signor Brett, would go half mad with joy-and with desire.”
Palewski thought of the contessa’s palazzo. It had seemed bare, but perhaps it was just a facade, a cautious reaction to the dangers presented by foreign occupation. There were villages in Thrace and Macedonia, he recalled, that scarcely looked like villages at all: mere rubbish heaps. They were inhabited, he was reliably informed, by people who did all they could to disguise their wealth, the better to evade the state’s taxes.
“There are treasures in Venice that even their owners do not know exist,” he said, in a low tone of wonder. “But sometimes, Signor Brett, these treasures come to light.”
“Your patron knows about these hidden things?”
Alfredo shrugged, as if the matter were beyond dispute. “I would say more. A palazzo, dear signor, is not a shop. The old nobility of Venice are not shopkeepers, who ticket their goods for sale. And they have discretion. You
