if somebody had seen? Any contradiction would be suspicious. Two things to explain.
“It’s very fine, this one,” Cavallini said, pointing to the gondola. “Old.”
I looked down at his foot, almost touching the tarp. “It came with the house,” I said. “Of course, the lucky thing about Venice is that you don’t really need a boat. You can walk anywhere.”
He nodded, distracted, lifting up the edge of the tarp, used to looking over a room. “Yes, so many boats at Ca’ Maglione, and yet he chooses to walk.”
“Maybe they were put up for the winter too,” I said, raising my eyes to the gondola.
“No, no, all in use.” So he’d already checked. “Many boats,” he said, taking pride in it, a tour guide praising a landmark. “I’ve seen them. My wife, you see, was a cousin of his wife.”
“Oh,” I said, not knowing what to say, what connection he felt this gave him. The endless genealogy of Venice. He was running his hand over the paving stones.
“Yes, a very old family.”
“Everyone in Venice seems to come from an old family,” I said, still looking at the stones. Where was the police boat?
“Well, not all. My family, you know, were simple people. Still, Venetians, educated. But not Magliones.”
And then he had been counting the boats in Gianni’s garage, an in-law invited for tea. I saw him for a second as he must have been-young, the curious eyes over the mustache, smiling at the long-faced girl, moving up.
“You’re making some repairs?” he said, letting the tarp fall back.
“The owner. We lease the house.”
“You see those stairs?” He pointed to the water’s edge. I turned my head slowly, almost expecting to see a streak of blood. “How the sides are weak? You should make the repairs soon. In Venice-”
“I’ll tell the owner.”
“Yes, of course, the owner,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. “Excuse me, I forgot you would be leaving.” I looked at him blankly. “After the wedding.”
The police launch had a motor so loud that we would have had to shout over it, so we made the trip without talking, backtracking up the Rio dei Greci to the Questura, then out past Santa Giustina to the open lagoon. San Michele, the cemetery island, was the first thing you could see from this side, just across the water from the hospital-hadn’t Gianni joked about that? — the low brick mausoleums lined with dark cypresses. We were met at the dock by some of Cavallini’s men, who steered us away from the graveyard paths to the morgue. I pushed my feet one after the other, as if we were wading. There seemed to be no sounds, not even birds, a funeral quiet.
Inside, it could have been any hospital building, white plaster and tile, except for the smell, so heavy and cloying that not even disinfectant took it away. We were led down a corridor by a man in a white coat with a clipboard. He stopped at a heavy double door and said something in Italian to Cavallini.
“He wants to know if you’ve seen a dead body before.”
“Yes.” How many now? Stacked in piles, left in fields by the side of the road, just left, waiting for someone to cart them away. Mouths open, limbs missing. At first you stared, shocked, and then you stopped looking. Five years ago it had been possible never to have seen the dead-a grandfather maybe, lying on a bier. Now you couldn’t count how many.
“You know, for some it’s difficult.”
We paused just inside the door, stopped by the cold. The body was on a gurney, covered with a sheet. His feet were sticking out, not tagged as they were in the movies, just naked and exposed. What would he look like after a day in the water? Eyes still open, staring at me? But it was Cavallini’s eyes that would be open, watching every move. Just walk over to the table. Now.
An attendant pulled back the sheet, drawing it down, and for a terrible second I thought he would keep going, until we saw all of him, his genitals, like an unwelcome glimpse in the shower, without a towel. They had removed his clothes, so there was only skin, pasty and bloated from the water, the hair on his chest matted like bits of seaweed. Someone had closed his eyes, or maybe it was part of the general swelling, the puffy blur of a face, not peaceful, just inert. Pale lips. That gray that only the dead have, not even a color, a warning not to touch. I took a shallow breath, trying to ignore the chemical smell in the room. Gray, awful skin, pouching at the sides.
“You can identify him?” Cavallini said.
I nodded.
“You must say, for the record. This is Giancarlo Maglione?”
“Yes.”
“And you must sign a statement.”
But for a second I couldn’t move. I stared at the body, not Gianni anymore, just a body, utterly still, separate now, something left behind, like molted skin. We always forget what it means, becoming nothing. How long had it taken? A minute, two, water displacing air, and now irretrievable. How did the workers here stand it, day after day, seeing the gray bodies, the terrible reminders? All that we left. The frightened Egyptians thought we’d come back for our bodies if we kept them ready, with pots of barley and hunting scenes painted on walls.
“Signor Miller?” Cavallini said, touching my elbow.
But we never come back. This was all there was, gray skin and fluids to drain. I’d taken the rest. And then gone to a party. But hadn’t he done the same? How many times? Except he never had to see them afterward.
“Signor?” the doctor said.
“Yes,” I said, raising my head. “It’s Gianni.”
“You would sign over here?”
He was leading me away, signaling to the attendant to cover Gianni’s face. We went over to a desk, where he handed me a clipboard and a pen. A long form, as elaborate and unwieldy as lira notes.
“Now what?” I said to Cavallini as I signed.
“Now they make the autopsy. For the cause of death.”
“I thought he was hit on the head.”
“Another formality. In the case of a crime. To be precise, you know, it wasn’t this,” he said, tapping the back of his head. “The doctor says drowning. But now he has to say officially.”
“Drowning? Why would he say that?”
“The water in the lungs. If he had already been dead-”
“You mean someone put him into the lagoon alive?” I said, appalled, forgetting the bubbles now, imagining him struggling in the tarp, fighting his way out.
“They may have thought he was already dead. You know, basta.” He hit his palm with his fist, a hard smack. “Then in the lagoon. But it was the water that killed him. Of course, to the law it will make no difference. Are you all right?”
“Maybe a little air,” I said.
Outside, warmer than in the morgue, I lit a cigarette. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually squeamish. It’s different when it’s somebody you know.”
“Yes, it’s not pleasant for you, I know. Still, a great service to me.”
“Anybody could have-”
“Yes, but since it’s you, now there can be no question about an investigation.”
I looked at him, trying to make this out.
“No question of an accident,” he said, taking out a cigarette of his own.
“But it wasn’t. You said.”
“No. You saw the skull in the back? Not a fall. But how much better for everyone if it had been. So, maybe a temptation.”
“To whom?”
He shrugged. “Poor Venice. The war, finally it’s over, and they start coming back. The visitors. Not soldiers- your mother, her friends. It’s good for Venice. You look at the buildings and we-well, maybe we look at you a little. But no one comes if they’re afraid, if there is crime. A murder? Not in Venice. But now look who identifies the body-one of the visitors. Who sees it’s not an accident. So I have my investigation.”
I drew on my cigarette, my stomach sliding again.
“But surely you would have-”
“Yes, but now I can be certain. Something that involves the international community? The Questura will want to act. To solve it. Men, whatever I need. And we will solve it.”
