Outside, there was confusion. People loitered on the steps, waiting for a cue. Were we supposed to follow out to San Michele? I remembered my father’s funeral, the long line of black cars, lights kept on, heading slowly toward Long Island. Here they would be gondolas, another ordinary ritual made fantastical by water. Or was the burial private, by invitation? Everyone looked at the daughter, climbing now into a gondola, away from the boat with the casket. Thin, her face still indistinct behind a veil, but perfectly erect, a girl from a good convent school. Her gondola headed up the canal toward Ca’ Maglione.
Cavallini came up to us and took my mother’s hand in a silent condolence, then nodded to Claudia, standing at her side-exactly what I’d wanted him to see.
“Is there a burial?” I asked, looking toward the hearse gondola.
“Yes, but not here. The country house. They’ll take him there, and then tomorrow the family-” He let the rest explain itself. “Today, it’s for Venice.”
“The country house?”
“Yes, on the Brenta. It’s very well known. For the Giorgiones.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “He never mentioned it.”
“Yes, he did, darling,” my mother said, her voice flat. “You just didn’t listen.” She had turned to Cavallini. “Thank you so much. You’ve been kind again.” About what?
“They were not, you know, evidence. And of course Giulia agreed.”
“After you asked.”
“No, no, she agreed. She has them for you.” He looked at me. “Photographs. Of sentimental value, for your mother.”
Not evidence. But something he’d looked over, going through Gianni’s things, already on the case.
“Grace.” A gloved hand appeared out of nowhere, along with Celia de Betancourt’s eager voice. “How awful for you.” She nodded toward the logjam of boats at the bottom of the stairs. “You’re not going back to the house?” she said, somehow making it ordinary, a dusty ranch, not a palazzo on the Grand Canal.
“Yes. His daughter’s there.”
“You don’t mind if I take a rain check, do you? All this.” She waved her hand to the church behind us. “I feel done in.” She paused, catching up. “His daughter. You’ve made up?”
“There’s nothing to make up. She’s been at school.”
“That’s not what Bertie says. He says she-”
I looked up, curious, but my mother was patting her hand, stopping her.
“Celia, I can’t. Not today.” She looked down. “Not today.”
“Oh, sugar,” Celia said, distressed. “This mouth. I don’t mean anything by it. You know I wouldn’t-”
“I know,” my mother said, patting her hand again.
“Not for the world.”
“You’re old friends,” Cavallini said, a polite intervention.
“Since the Bronze Age,” Celia said, herself again, glancing at him. She hugged my mother. “Don’t mind me. I just get funny in church. Everybody being so good. You know.”
“Signora Miller,” Cavallini said. “He’s waving to you. It’s your boat?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“So you took down the gondola,” Cavallini said to me.
“No, it’s hired. The marchesa doesn’t want us to use hers.”
“Just the other boat.”
“Maybe,” I said. “When the weather’s better.” Making a point of it, consistent, but Cavallini seemed not to have heard, busy now with Celia.
“May I offer you a ride somewhere?” he said, courtly, making Celia smile.
“God, would you? Just across. I’m going to swim to Harry’s if I don’t get a drink soon.”
“A long morning,” he said, his voice pleasant but his eyes, just for a second, flecked with disapproval. I looked around for his wife, but she seemed to have gone ahead on her own, leaving Cavallini to the foreigners. “You permit?” he said, taking Celia’s elbow, suggestive, but I saw that the point for him was the flirtation itself, nothing more, a game to distract. There hadn’t been a girl in Maestre either. And he’d already gone through Gianni’s papers.
“What did she mean about Giulia?” I said to my mother.
“Nothing. Just some idea of Bertie’s. About the engagement.”
“You mean she didn’t approve?”
“I didn’t say that. She just didn’t come to the party. A cardinal sin in Bertie’s book, of course. You can imagine.”
“But didn’t she?”
“Darling, ask her. Gianni never said so. You were the one he was worried about.” She stopped on the stairs, lifting her veil and staring for a minute across the water. “You know, children never like things to change. But they do.”
We joined the flotilla of boats heading up the canal to Gianni’s house, Claudia fidgeting beside me, restive, wanting it to be over. The sun had come out, the early Venetian spring that had eluded Mimi, making the buildings shine, scrubbed fresh by the rain. At Ca’ Maglione footmen lifted us onto a floating dock between striped mooring poles, like Mimi’s ball again, without the umbrellas. A long staircase lined with candelabra led up to the piano nobile, the usual Venetian layout. The ballroom was not as pretty as Mimi’s but just as large, done in red damask and heavy gilt chairs, like a version of La Fenice. Everything gleamed, spotless. How large a staff did it take to keep it going?
“I thought you said he had no money,” Claudia whispered to me, looking around.
“I didn’t say broke.” But in fact the room made me uneasy. It was not what I’d expected. No frayed upholstery, no chipped pieces. Nothing needed repair. The war might never have happened.
A long table had been set out with plates of biscotti, coffee cups, and thin glasses for vin santo-spare but appropriate, a reception, not a party. People spoke softly. Near one end Giulia was being kissed by an old man, just a movement to the cheek, hands placed over hers. When he moved back, she turned to the next in line, so that her face was toward us. I stopped. She had the kind of delicate features that went with the convent school posture, but her face, soft and composed, was slightly long, the one trace of her mother’s family. Otherwise, she looked exactly like Gianni, the same wavy hair, broad-set eyes. She was wearing a black dress with a small white bow at the neck, and for one awkward second I saw Gianni in his cutaway, arriving to take my mother to the ball, even the same quizzical look in his eyes. The look, at least, was real. I realized I must be staring and turned away.
“There’s Giulia,” my mother said. “Come and meet her.”
“Later,” I said. “I want some coffee. You go.”
“There’s nothing wrong, is there? You look all white.”
“No, I just need some coffee.” Eager now for her to leave.
“You’ll be nice,” she said, looking at me, a question. “You know you were almost brother and sister.”
“Yes, almost.”
“What’s wrong?” Claudia said to me when my mother left.
“She looks just like him.”
Claudia peered down the table at her. She was greeting my mother now, not with a kiss, but polite. “The eyes, a little.”
“All his features.”
“No, I don’t see that. The eyes, yes. His eyes were like that.” She looked away, then reached over and picked up a coffee cup. “What a pair we are. Standing here talking about his eyes, a man we-” She took a sip of coffee, still looking down.
“I’ll have to say something to her.”
She was leading my mother out of the room.
I looked around. “Who are they? Do you know any of these people?”
“From the newspapers. Il bel mondo.” Claudia said.
“What did the eulogy say?”
“A humanitarian. A savior of men.”
“Christ.”
