“Now we’re going to make you look all pretty.” He dropped the bonnet over her head and tied it around her chin. “We’re going to walk downstairs and out the door and if you make one move, one sound, I’m going to stick this blade between your ribs. One shove, and I twist it around, carissima.”
She was aware of going downstairs. One arm was behind her back and the pain as they jolted down the steps made her want to cry out. She wanted to sob, but her lungs felt paralyzed. She pressed her lips together and they passed out into the night.
Another man joined them at the corner.
“A little information,” scar-face said. “But right now she doesn’t speak our language too well. I think I can change that.”
The newcomer grunted. “Place clean? The man says it’s got to be clean.”
“Just this one piece of dirt,” scar-face said. “But we’ve taken it out.”
The man undid his bandanna. Scar-face used it to blindfold Maria, removing and replacing her bonnet.
“Let’s go. And you, cara — remember what I said. Keep your head down.”
They walked, or stumbled on, for a few minutes: Maria lost all sense of direction. Once the man holding her pulled her back so roughly she almost fell, her leg crumpling under her; she felt the heel snap off her shoe. The man pulled her upright by the hair at the back of her neck. She supposed that they were avoiding passersby, but she couldn’t call out. Eventually they crossed some rough ground, and she could hear something scraping; then the stench of mold, as if they were in a cellar, and the air was damp and fetid.
Her hands were tied behind her back and she was shoved violently forward. A sharp edge caught her on the shin and she tripped, turning her head to avoid smashing her face onto the stone floor.
A door slammed.
Maria was alone.
Slowly she began to scrape her way across the floor. She found a wall and huddled up against it, her knees drawn up to her chin. The cold seeped through her thin muslin dress in a moment, and she began to shiver uncontrollably.
48
Palewski skirted carefully around the dark bundle of rags crammed up against the step and wall of the last bridge, and looked ahead to see if the restaurant was still open.
By the faint street light he saw a couple, with another man beside them, walking up the narrow calle. The man looked drunk.
Inside the restaurant he took off his coat and ordered a bottle of wine. The place was almost empty, and he asked the waiter for something easy, something quick. He didn’t want to keep them up.
The waiter smiled. “We await your pleasure, Signor Brett. What you want to eat, you may eat. Please.”
He ordered a dish of calves’ liver.
“A few minutes, signore. Your wine.”
Palewski ate hurriedly, his thoughts returning to the letters of credit that Yashim had provided. As soon as he finished, he placed some coins on the table and returned to his apartment, where he lit a candle and rummaged in his portmanteau for five thick and heavily folded sheets of paper, of the finest legal grade.
The money, he noticed, to be drawn in Trieste rather than Venice, on two separate banks.
He raised an ironical eyebrow at that. Venice, where the very business of credit had been invented, could no longer furnish a traveler with funds. Alfredo was right: it was a city with capital, of a sort, and no income.
Selling off its heritage, bit by bit.
He undressed, climbed into bed, and reached for the Vasari he’d left on the table with his afternoon nap. His fingers closed on thin air, and he looked around, surprised. It was as if the book had jumped from his grasp to lie a few inches farther off.
The mattress creaked as he leaned across.
Vasari! Again!
He changed his mind, blew out the candle, and in a few minutes he was asleep.
49
Swarms of beggars were retreating from their pitches as night fell.
Some were carried away by charitable friends, but the famous legless beggar of San Marco, using nothing more than his fingertips, wheeled himself up a side alley where he was released from the wheeled board by a faithful servant and slowly and painfully stood up, cracking his joints.
A furious German soldier, reddened by false piety and wine, stumped off on a wooden leg to one of the more forlorn wineshops of the city. A wraithlike woman, preternaturally skinny, and clutching to her breast a tiny, malnourished baby in a shift, stuffed the baby headfirst into a bag. It was only made of wax and wood, and she scuttled away to prepare dinner for her husband and five children.
All over Venice, under cover of darkness, tiny miracles were being performed. All over the city people found tongues, limbs, parents, and appetites. The halt walked; the weak took up their beds; the idiots and the insane, with looks of innocent cunning, counted their takings and found their way to a mug of wine or a dish of polenta.
On Palewski’s bridge, the bundle of rags stirred, too. What emerged from its nest was, at least, a man; he had sores on his shaved skull and a dirty yellow beard. He pissed into the canal, then made his way painfully up the alley, clutching a few kreuzers in a grimy hand.
Nobody passed him. Across the next bridge, he spotted something pretty on the ground and stooped to pick it up.
It was a little pointed object made of hard red leather and for a few moments he held it to his eye as if assessing its value. But even in Venice, among the poorest of the poor, a heel is worth nothing without its shoe; the beggar spat and passed on.
Later, having eaten half a slab of polenta, with the other half tucked away, he returned to his bridge.
He snuggled deep into his bed of rags and pondered, dreamily, the comings and goings on the street.
50
It was not until the evening that Alfredo called on Signor Brett.
“The viewing is arranged,” he said.
“Very well,” Palewski replied. “Tomorrow then. Eleven o’clock?”
Alfredo nodded slowly. “Signor Brett, one thing I must explain,” he said, with a wince. “It is very Venetian, I’m sorry about it. The owner would like us to look at the portrait tonight, if possible. If you want some time to dress, it is no problem. I can wait. Afterward, we can take a gondola.”
Palewski sucked his teeth. “To be frank, Alfredo, I’d like to see the painting by daylight. At eight it will be almost dark.”
“Of course, signore, I understand.” Alfredo had his hat in his hand, and he began to turn it by the brim. “I think it will still be a very good opportunity to see the painting tonight. I would say, you can spend more time with it-alone, also, if you would like. It would be no problem. If you prefer for now, signore, I can wait for you downstairs.”
He got to his feet and gave a little bow.
Palewski blinked a couple of times and said, “Is something wrong?”
“No, signore,” Alfredo said emphatically. He spread out his hands. “I shall wait for you outside?”
