“It’s a small city. We know each other maybe too well. Ah, here’s your drink.”
The martini was strong and I felt the heat of it right away, pleasant, like the warm light of the room. Bertie had waved, the others who vaguely knew us had noticed, and now we could retreat to ourselves. I felt lightheaded, wanting to grin, still thinking about the afternoon. And there’d be tomorrow, another room. Then another. Afternoons of pure pleasure. In Germany there had been an army nurse drunk at a party, and one German girl, who had asked for tinned meat afterward, both times sad, furtive, closed off, like the country itself now. Here everything was pleasure-sex and buildings glimmering on the water, even Harry’s green olives. I realized-was it only the martini? — that I was happy.
“You look like the cat who swallowed the canary,” my mother said. “What are you thinking about?”
“Just how nice this all is.”
“You’re enjoying Venice, then?” Gianni said.
“Yes, very much. Doesn’t everybody?”
“Most, yes, I think. Even we do sometimes,” he said.
“Does it bother you, all the visitors?”
“No, it’s important for us. How else could we live? Of course you cannot choose your visitors. The Wehrmacht loved us, for their holidays. In the spring all the tables in San Marco, nothing but uniforms. Their city. So that was difficult.”
“Awful,” my mother said automatically.
“You have been in Germany, Grace said?”
I nodded. “What’s left of it.”
“The bombs, you mean.”
“The cities are gone. Flat.”
“So that’s how it ended for them. You see how lucky we are. Imagine Venice-” He shuddered. “How long will you stay?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“He’s been looking at art,” my mother said wryly.
“Yes? Then you will never leave. There is always more art in Venice. Where have you been? The Accademia?”
I nodded. “No one’s there this time of year. You can look at The House of Levi for hours and not have to move.”
“Really,” my mother said, surprised.
Dr. Maglione smiled in agreement. “Veronese. Maybe the finest of them. Tintoretto, it’s too much sometimes. You must see San Sebastiano, Veronese’s church.”
“Yes, off the Zattere. Before the maritime station.”
My mother was now looking at me in real surprise, aware suddenly that my time here was unknown to her, something I did between meals.
“So you know it. I can see you don’t need me for a guide,” he said pleasantly. “Now Grace-” He smiled at her.
“He thinks I’m hopeless,” my mother said.
“Hopeless, no.”
“I follow those yellow signs with the arrows and I still have no idea where I am. They always say Per Rialto and I never want to go there.”
“No, especially not there,” Dr. Maglione said, laughing.
A look passed between them, so intimate that I went back to my martini, feeling in the way. Even with my skin still flushed with it, I couldn’t make the leap from the damp sheets of my own afternoon to whatever time they were remembering. I had not imagined anything beyond friendship, a way to pass the time. And yet there must have been sex, maybe even with sweat and gasps, open mouths. I looked at him, now lighting a cigarette. Thinning gray hair brushed back at the temples, intelligent eyes. But what did she see? He caught my glance, meeting my eyes through the smoke in a question.
“Turned up at last, has he?” Behind me, Bertie had put a hand on my shoulder.
“Hello, Bertie,” I said. “Where’s your princess?”
“In the loo. So I thought I’d say hello. I hate staring at an empty table, don’t you?”
“Join us,” Dr. Maglione said.
“No, no, she’s quick as a bunny usually. I don’t know how you do it,” he said to my mother. “All those layers.”
My mother laughed.
“And where did you get to last night?” Bertie said to me. “Now you see him, now you don’t.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt. You were about to go into confession.”
“And so should you, once in a while. I know I don’t want to be caught unawares. Between the old stirrup and the ground.” He looked at me. “You haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you? Heathen. A fine job you’ve done, Grace.”
“Still, he went to the Accademia,” Gianni said. “So maybe that was his church today.”
“Did you?” Bertie said, looking at me, letting the phrase hang in the air.
“Would you join us for dinner?” Gianni said, polite. Or was he already beginning to tire, seeing the evening before us in our odd triangle, idling talking about Veronese but looking at one another, wary, pretending to be a family?
“ Molto gentile, but you’d never forgive me. The boredom of her. Old hunting days in the Piedmont. You don’t want to hear it, I promise you.”
“What about you?” my mother said, laughing.
“Well, I have to. One of life’s little crosses. The husband was a peach, you know. Funny how people find-oh, look sharp, the Inquisition. Been up to anything?”
I turned to find a thickset man in a natty suit coming toward the table. Neatly trimmed mustache and shiny face, a man who might just have come from the barber’s. Gianni stood up, frowning.
“ Dottore,” the man said to him. Then a stream of Italian, obviously friendly. He put his hand on Bertie’s arm. “And Signor Howard. I’m sorry, don’t let me interrupt.”
“No, no. My friend Mrs. Miller. Her son Adam. Grace, Inspector Cavallini.”
Cavallini bowed, a stage gesture.
“Inspector?” my mother said. “Police inspector?”
“Yes. Have you done anything wrong?”
“Do people tell you?”
He smiled. “No, usually I have to catch them.” He nodded and touched my hand halfheartedly, glancing at Dr. Maglione.
“And he does. Always,” Bertie said.
“Here? At Harry’s?” my mother said.
“No, here I take Prosecco. Off-duty.” He was enjoying my mother. “You don’t think it would disturb the customers?”
“I think it would make their night.”
He laughed, then said something in Italian to Gianni that I took to be a word of approval, and bowed a leavetaking to the rest of us. “Signora, a great pleasure. Signor Howard, you are behaving yourself?” He wagged his forefinger teasingly.
“Me? I’m one of the good. As you know. Practically Caesar’s wife.”
Cavallini smiled. “Yes, practically,” he said, and headed for the frosted glass door.
“Bertie, give,” my mother said, interested. “How on earth do you know him?”
“I’m a foreign national, you know. We had to report during the war.”
“Report? I thought they locked you up.”
“Irish passport, lovey. Thanks to me dad. So there’s that to be said for him anyway. Convenient being a neutral just then.”
“But weren’t you both?”
“Not here. Green as a clover. Had to be. Otherwise, you know, I’d have had to leave. My pictures, my house.
