He gave her an “I’ll bet” look. “Anything here to see? I mean, you came out, and you knew the restaurant was closed.”
“The basilica is very old, eleventh century. The original was seventh,” Claudia said. “The mosaics are famous.” But she was losing them. They were already looking away, uninterested. “And, you know, for walks.”
“Right,” he said, nodding. “Walks.” A smile, just a trace of a leer. “And here we are, in the way.” He brushed off his trousers, standing up.
“But you don’t want to see inside?”
“Tell you what, you take a look for me. I never know what I’m looking at anyway. We’ll just go wait for the boat, let you be.”
“It’s a long wait.”
“Not in this sun. I could just soak it up, after Germany.” He grinned. “Fucking sunny Italy, huh?”
They took a photograph of us, then headed down the canal path to the pier, turning once to wave.
“So that’s who comes to Cipriani’s,” Claudia said, amused.
“Not usually,” I said, leaning back. A favorite of Bertie’s before the war. “I wonder how they heard about it.”
“Oh, how do people hear about anything? Somebody tells them.”
“Yes,” I said lazily, closing my eyes. “And who tells him?”
“Somebody else.”
“And him?” I said, playing.
“I don’t know. Maybe Cipriani.”
I smiled, letting the thought drift, then sat up, taking a cigarette out of my pocket. “So who told Gianni? I mean, how did he know?”
She looked at me blankly.
“Rosa said he wouldn’t know a partisan-somebody would have to tell him. Not the SS. If they already knew, why use him? Somebody else. Maybe I’ve been looking at this backwards.”
“How do you mean, backwards?”
“We’ve been tracking what happened after, and we’re getting nowhere. But what about before?” I bent over, lighting the cigarette, then saw her confused expression. “Look, the only one in that house who’d been in hospital was a man called Moretti. If there was a connection to Gianni, he’d be it. But he was discharged more than a week earlier. So where was Gianni all that time? There’s nothing to prove he was involved at all.”
“So maybe he wasn’t,” Claudia said calmly.
“No proof,” I said, not listening. “A few visits to Villa Raspelli. But if he did know about Moretti, how did he know? Maybe that’s what we should be looking for. The link before.”
“And if you don’t find that either?”
I exhaled some smoke. “Then we can’t prove he did anything.”
“He gave them my father.”
“But there’s no proof he did.”
“No,” she said, “only me.”
“I didn’t mean-”
“Just my word. And now he can’t answer. So how can you prove it? Maybe I made it up. The camp too. Maybe it’s all in my head.”
“I didn’t mean-” I said again.
But she was gathering things up, finished with it. “Let’s see the church.”
I put out my cigarette, still thinking, and followed her inside. Santa Maria Assunta had been built before churches became theaters-the walls were austere and the air was damp. We could see our breath in little streams. Venice was still primitive here, the island a mud bank with reeds again, the world full of mystery and fear. But then there were the mosaics at the end, cold and glittering, spreading over the chancel in an arch of colored light. People would have knelt here on the rough stone floors, dazed.
“You see the tear on her cheek?” Claudia said, pointing. “Mary crying. It’s unique.”
We studied the Apostles for a while, then walked slowly back to the west wall and the big mosaic of the Last Judgment, the afterlife arranged in tiers, a medieval sorting out, with hellfire on the bottom. Dying wasn’t enough for the early Christians-there had to be punishment too. Claudia stood before it with her arms folded across her chest, working her way down through the levels of grace to the figures on the lower right, engulfed in flames.
“So this is what happens after,” she said. “But they didn’t want the Jews to wait. They burned us here.”
The chill of the old stone followed us out into the piazza, not quite as sunny as before. We took one of the footpaths leading away from the canal, waving to the GIs, who were still waiting on the dock for the Burano boat. “Why are they laughing?”
“They think we’re going parking.”
“Parking?”
“Kissing. In a car. People drive somewhere to be alone.”
“America,” she said. “Everyone has a car.”
“Will you like that? You’ll have to learn to drive.” An unexpected thought, jarring, because I had never imagined us beyond Venice, anywhere outside her room.
“Drive,” she said, maybe jarred too. “Here, no one does.”
Except Gianni’s brother, I thought. Who had actually pushed him off the road? Maybe a connection. Something to ask Rosa.
We passed the farm with the dog, then turned onto a path that led down to the water, a cleared patch of dry land that looked back through the reeds to the campanile. In summer, lovers would come with picnics. Now we pulled our jackets tight against the wind.
It was only after his brother’s death that Gianni had made the house calls to Villa Raspelli. Younger, but head of the family, Father Luca had said. His brother’s keeper.
“So you’re thinking again,” she said. “Why is this so important to you?”
“I don’t want to be wrong.” I turned to her. “Then it’s just personal-something I did for myself.”
She stopped in the path. “He was trying to kill you.”
I looked over the reeds. His eyes, hesitating, about to stop, then the slippery stairs, my hand underneath, getting cold as I held him there, my breath ragged.
“What?” she said.
“No, I wanted to do it,” I said finally. “I wanted to do it.”
She came over to me. “You know what he was.”
“If he was. I was wrong about him and my mother. He was never after her money, never. Anyway, it turns out there isn’t any.”
“No?” she said, then started to smile, raising her hand to brush at my hair. “So it’s lucky I found the lace shop.”
“I was wrong,” I said, not letting go.
She brushed my hair again. “It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t change anything.”
“Of course it matters.”
“Why? So you can blame yourself? And then what? For you it’s like the mosaic.” She tossed her head toward the church. “Always a judgment. There is no judgment. No one is judging. No one is watching.” She stopped, dropping her hand. “No one is watching.”
“Then we have to,” I said.
“Oh, like he did,” she said, annoyed, moving away. “Play God. Of course, a doctor, they’re used to that, aren’t they? Then he plays it with my father. Bah.” She waved her hand. “But that’s not enough for you. How guilty does he have to be? Before it’s all right?”
She walked to the end of the clearing where it was sunny and faced the water, using her back to put an end to the conversation. I went over to her, not saying anything.
“That’s Jesolo,” she said, pointing, meaning nothing, not expecting a response.
I took out my cigarettes and offered her one, waiting for her lead. But she seemed to enjoy the silence, turning her face to the sun, then squatting down to test the ground for dampness, sitting, and lying back. I sat down next to her.
