“This is better. All week in the shop, never any sun,” she said.
I stretched out, leaning on my elbow to prop up my head as I looked at her.
“You don’t have to work there,” I said, going along. “I mean, with your English. They’re always looking for translators. Joe would hire you in a second.”
“For the army? No, not even yours. Not carabinieri either. Or police. No uniforms.” She glanced over. “I don’t work for the police. One of us is enough.”
I turned and lay on my back, squinting at the bright sky. In the distance was the faint sound of a boat’s motor, maybe the GIs’ vaporetto. “What’s wrong?” I said. “All week. It’s not Cavallini, not really. What?”
“I don’t know.” She paused. “I’m worried.”
“About what? I’m telling you, they don’t know.”
She shook her head. “Not that. It’s different between us. At first, it made us closer. And now, already we’re quarreling.” She turned to me. “You can’t change it. What it is. You want to make it better. Nothing makes it better.”
“I know.”
“But you keep thinking, maybe. It’s in your head.” She lay on her back again.
“Nothing’s different between us. I just want to know about him, that’s all. It’s important.”
She closed her eyes, another way of turning her back, and said nothing for a few minutes, then sighed, not much louder than the moving reeds.
“They have sun in Georgia?” she said. “Where that soldier lives?”
“Nothing but.”
“So he’s happy there. But not you,” she said, thinking aloud. “You don’t want to go home.”
“I’m happy here.”
“No. Something else. Those men on the ship-in the film, remember? So excited. It’s over for them.” She turned, opening her eyes. “But not for you.”
I said nothing, remembering Rosa wagging her finger between us, both of us still with files.
“Maybe it takes an ocean, and then it’s gone,” she said. “Oh, I want-”
I looked over at her. “What?”
“What? What do I want?” she said to herself. “I want to be Joyce. The girl in the picture. Make curtains. Wait for the ship. Feed the baby.” She stopped, her voice drifting off. “Think how wonderful, not to know about any of it. Not any of it.”
“And that’s the life you want,” I said, teasing. “Joyce.”
“No.” She turned. “Anyway, I can’t. No babies. So that’s something you should know,” she said, her voice tentative, waiting for a response.
“Oh,” I said finally, trying to sound easy.
“Do you mind about that?”
“No.”
“No?”
Another pause, this time waiting for her.
“I got rid of it myself, in the camp. I knew that if he found out, he’d send me. And there was no one to help, so I did it myself. That’s why.”
I looked at her for a minute, not saying anything. Then she moved to brush off a blade of grass, pushing at her sleeve, and for an instant I saw Rosa’s arm again with its jagged patch of white. Visible scars, reminders. But what about the others, the ones you couldn’t see? Years of them, nobody unblemished now.
I reached over and touched her hand. “I don’t want Joyce.”
“So it’s lucky for me.” She closed her eyes. “But now there’s this. Maybe you enjoy it, being police. But it’s both of us they’ll catch. Why do you have to know?”
“I held him under, Claudia. Me. What if-?”
For a minute she didn’t say anything. Then she took a breath. “When it happened, I thought you did it for me. So they wouldn’t take me. I thought my heart would stop. Imagine, someone doing that for me. Everyone else wanted me dead, and you-” She moved her hand away and sat up. “But now it has to be something else, I don’t even know what. You can’t change what happened, whatever he was. Say you did it for me. Isn’t that enough?”
“Yes,” I said quietly.
“But you still want to know.”
I sat up, looking straight at her. “I saw the body. What he looked like after. I can’t explain-it’s different when you see what it really means.” I dropped my head. “It won’t take long. Nobody suspects.” I ran my hand over the grass. “How else are we going to live with this?”
She smiled slightly, giving up, a movement of the lips, not really a smile at all. “Oh, how. You can live with anything. Anything.”
“What was Paolo like?”
“Paolo? A puppy,” Bertie said. “Why Paolo all of a sudden?”
We were having coffee in Santo Stefano, a chance meeting on my way to Ca’ Maglione, where Giulia was waiting with Gianni’s papers. The sun was bright enough for umbrellas at the cafe tables, but the air was still cool. Bertie was wearing a three-piece oyster-colored suit, perfectly pitched, like the weather, somewhere between winter and summer.
“I don’t know about him. About any of Gianni’s family, for that matter.”
“ Now you want to know?”
“It might help.”
“Who? Your friends at the Questura? I hear you’re thick as thieves. Is this an official visit?” he said, his voice rising slightly, like an arched eyebrow.
I smiled. “I’m just trying to help. It was Giulia’s idea.”
“Oh, Giulia’s idea. The fair Giulia.” He looked over at me, then tilted his head, his eyes beginning to twinkle. “No, it’s too penny dreadful. Still.”
“Having fun?”
“I admit it’s a little novelettish, but think how suitable.”
“Well, don’t.”
“And Grace the dogaressa after all.” He giggled.
“Bertie.”
“Oh, I know, I know. Very bad. It’s just a thought. Anyway, you’re otherwise attached. As we know. There’d be that to contend with, wouldn’t there?” His voice casual, Claudia still an inappropriate affair to him, unaware we were joined by blood now, our hands streaked with it.
“Yes, there would.” I leaned forward, serious. “Bertie, tell me something. What happened at the Accademia?”
“Me? Why ask me?”
“Because you know.”
“I don’t always, you know. Better not to. Venice is a very small town. You don’t want to be telling tales out of school-people don’t like it.”
“Tell this one.”
He looked at me, then nodded. “I don’t want any reactions, please. It’s not perfect, the world, not even here.” He glanced around the sunny campo, the terra-cotta planters sprouting bits of white, the first spring flowers. “Some attitudes-not very nice, but they just don’t go away overnight, either. And at first, of course, no one thought to ask. There’d never been any, you know, not in the curatorial department.” He let it hang, awkward, and took a sip of coffee.
“Are you trying to tell me they fired her because she’s Jewish?”
“I didn’t say that,” Bertie said quickly. “And I don’t want you saying it either. I merely said they didn’t think she was-suitable.”
I thought of the Montanaris. Just a look.
“Who didn’t?”
“Oh, what does it matter? All right, old Buccati, if you must know. He’s nearly ninety. At that age, all you’ve
