Carla jerked her head back as if she had been bitten.
“I think your son is in Venice.”
She slipped from his arms, sinking to her knees. At the side of the bed her hands went out, almost in prayer, toward Yashim.
“If you are playing with me,” she said, her face contorted and in a voice that rose from her throat, “I will kill you.”
Yashim shook his head. “Your son,” he said, “would not hurt a fly. You will find him-” He paused. “Not com’era, dov’era. Not what he was, but as he is. And I can show you where.”
112
Maria slipped her arm through Palewski’s.
“I hope you get back to your wolves and sleighs,” she said.
“One day, perhaps.” Palewski squeezed her arm.
A light breeze ruffled the waters of the Giudecca.
“I’ll write,” he said.
She shook her head. “Don’t. I’ll think of you as-as the wind. You won’t be back, will you?”
“No.” He coughed. “I won’t be back. But I’m glad I came, Maria. I met a beautiful Venetian girl who was very brave and very generous.”
He tilted back her bonnet and kissed her.
“I shan’t forget.” He put a little box between her hands. In it was a diamond brooch and a note from a bank in Trieste. “For your trousseau, Maria.” He turned and walked up the gangplank. Yashim was waiting on the deck.
Together they leaned over the rail. The shoremen cast off. The foresail banged in the wind before the sailors aloft made it fast. Then it went taut, the ship creaked, and they began to move away from the dock.
As the gap widened, they saluted their friends. Carla was standing by Father Andrea, who had Nikola by the hand. Commissario Brunelli stood a little apart, but as they watched he offered Maria his arm; her bonnet barely reached his shoulder.
A cloud slid from the sun’s face, lighting the polychrome walls of the Doges’ Palace, the marble columns of the piazza. The Clock Tower across the square glowed.
Palewski raised his hand, and the dwindling figures on the riva waved back.
“Final curtain,” he announced. The ship heeled around. They saw the mouth of the Grand Canal and the calm bulk of Santa Maria della Salute, and the wind from the mainland was in their face.
“Will you miss it?” Yashim asked at last, as the great church of San Giorgio slipped past on the starboard bow.
“Miss it?” Palewski was silent for a while. “Regret it, perhaps, a little. The way one regrets one’s youth and what’s passed. For a moment Venice brought it back.”
He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair.
“I missed tea,” he said. “And our Thursday dinners, Yash. I missed the muezzins, too. Venice would be better with muezzins.”
“Yes. Perhaps.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing Marta again.”
“She will be happy to see you back.”
Palewski bit his lip. “The Bellini was only an idea, Yashim. We’ll have another.”
“The Bellini…”
“You’re not listening, Yashim.”
Yashim nodded. “Yes,” he said.
113
For several days Yashim kept to his cabin, but on the morning of the fourth day, as they began to thread a course between the islands of the Aegean, Palewski found him on deck.
He looked pale.
Palewski sat down beside his old friend.
“Two more days, and we’ll be home.” He paused. “Come on, Yashim. It was only a painting.”
“It’s not the painting,” Yashim said.
“What, then? You rescued Maria. Saved the contessa. Young Nikola would have died without you. And your disguise-it was terrific.” He peered at his friend and sighed. “But I don’t know why they didn’t just send you, Yashim.”
Yashim was about to reply when his eye was caught by a movement on the water. “Look!” he said, pointing. “Porpoises.”
There were three of them, scudding through the bright water, turning their bodies in the sunlight.
“They’re watching us,” Palewski exclaimed in delight.
Yashim smiled. “Strange, isn’t it? These interlocking lines. Our own lives. It’s in the diagram, I suppose. Com’era, dov’era. Nothing, in the end, moves out of the square.”
“The diagram? You’re speaking in riddles, Yashim.”
“The Sand-Reckoner’s diagram. Everyone’s face is turned inward, you see, but they adopt a different background as they move. It’s like a shadow sliding across a building. Com’era, dov’era describes a sort of ideal moment before the dance begins. Before things change.”
“When someone-or something-shifts its position, it changes, too? Is that what you mean?”
“Nothing is still. Nothing remains the same-except the pattern that lies underneath.”
“Hier ist die Rose, hier tanze!” Palewski murmured. He crinkled his nose. “Hegel.”
Yashim went on: “Everyone belongs in the diagram. Maria, Ruggerio, Barbieri, Carla, and you. Even me.” Yashim laid his thumb and forefinger on the rail. “Take Maria. She’s linked to Ruggerio-it’s Ruggerio who puts her in your bed. That provides you with an alibi when Barbieri turns up dead. I don’t know how close you were to getting arrested then.”
He put another finger down. “Alfredo, now. Taking Maria was his big mistake, but he had to find out who you were.” Another finger. “Alfredo becomes Eletro, as it were. Eletro, dead. But Eletro is linked to the boy, Nikola. That’s five intersections. Now it goes back to Maria. She takes Nikola to church, where he recognizes the priest.”
He put his other thumb down on the rail. “Which is not the end of the story: you connect Nikola to the contessa.”
“And she’s linked to Ruggerio and Eletro by the game of cards in the Fondaco dei Turchi.”
“Yes. Everyone’s placed. Except the Austrian.”
“Finkel?”
“He’s the one who has no obvious connection.”
He stared out over the rail. They were among the Cyclades, a group of Orthodox islands that had fallen to Venice after the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Three hundred years later, with some relief, the islands’ Greek inhabitants had welcomed the Ottomans. Here and there, on the horizon, the islands’ outlines shimmered in the sunlight.
Something gathered at the back of Yashim’s mind.
Venice and the Ottomans: two empires locked together in trade and war, moving to a pattern reproduced all across the Mediterranean. Venetians taking possession of Byzantine strongholds. The Ottomans snapping at their heels. In the tiny Cyclades, as in mighty Cyprus.
“Patterns aren’t measurements,” Yashim said finally. “I’ve seen the Sand-Reckoner’s diagram on a sheet of
