Alibi: A Novel (3 page)

“No.”

“I thought everybody here knew everybody. He must be a monsignor or a cardinal. Something. I wish I knew the difference. You’re from Rome—can you tell by the colors?”

“I don’t know. I’m a Jew,” she said quietly.

“Oh,” I said, turning back to her.

“Is that a problem?”

“Why should it be a problem?”

“Jews are not so popular. Not in America either, I think.”

“So you don’t know,” I said, ignoring it, “if he’s a monsignor.”

“No. Don’t you? You’re not a Christian?”

“I’m not anything. Not a Catholic, anyway.”

“But not a Jew either.”

“Part. My grandfather.”

“Miller?”

“Muller. Changed. My father was a
mischling
.”

“One grandfather.”

“It was enough in Germany.”

She looked at me, then held out her hand. “Thank you for the English. I have to go. It’s already dark. Do you see Signor Howard?” She glanced around the room.

“He’s getting the Church a drink. Come on, no one will miss us.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I’m taking you home.”

“No, it’s far.”

“Nothing’s far in Venice.”

She laughed. “How well do you know it?”

My mother intercepted us at the door, glass in hand.

“Darling, you’re not going. Gianni will be here any—He’ll be sorry to miss you.”

“Not too much.”

“Of course he will. Don’t be silly. The army certainly hasn’t done very much for your manners.”

“You say hi for me,” I said, pecking her on the cheek. “I have to run. This is Miss—I’m sorry, I don’t know your last name.”

“Grassini. Claudia Grassini,” she said, nodding to my mother.

“How nice,” my mother said, shaking her hand. “Finding someone
new
at one of Bertie’s parties. You probably think we’re the waxworks.”

“We have to run,” I said.

“Perhaps you’d like to join—” my mother started, looking carefully at Claudia, assessing.

“Another time,” Claudia said.

“Of course,” my mother said, a pas de deux. “Did you say goodbye to Bertie?” she said to me.

“He’s in confession.”

She giggled. “Oh, Bertie and his priests. You have to admit, though, he’s the best-dressed person in the room. How did they manage, do you think? During the war. I mean, did they have coupons?”

But by this time we were out the door, walking down the stairs to the hall.

“What was that all about?” I said to Claudia. “That look between you?”

“She’s a mother. She wants to see if I’m all right. You know, like in the market. You feel the fruit.”

I laughed. “How did you come out?”

“She’s not sure. She’s a widow?”

“For years.”

“What did he do, your father?”

“Have fun, mostly. Then he got sick.”

“Fun?”

“It was a different world. People did that then—have fun.”

“These people,” she said, lifting her head toward the stairs, then turning to the maid who was holding her coat. “You don’t have to do this. It’s a long way. I can meet you at the Accademia if you’d really like that.”

“No, I want to see where a real Venetian lives.”

“A poor one, you mean.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, of course. Who lives like this now?” she said, looking up the staircase to the piano nobile. “Only foreigners.”

We were alone at the vaporetto station, huddling in the corner against the cold. The fog had come in, blocking out the opposite side of the canal, so dense you felt you could snatch it in handfuls.

“So what do you do here?” she said, hunching her shoulders, hands stuffed in her pockets.

“Walk. See the city. What does anyone do in Venice? Meet people.”

“At Signor Howard’s?”

“You disapprove?”

“No, no. It’s not for me—” She stopped, then turned away, stamping her feet for warmth. “Signor Howard helped me, at the Accademia.”

“Bertie likes doing that. Helping people. But you still don’t like his friends.”

She looked up at me with a half smile. “Do you?”

“Not anymore. I’m not sure why. I mean, I’ve known some of them for years. It’s just that everything seems different now.”

“For you. Not for them.”

“No, not for them. It’s the same party.”

“I used to see them in the windows, from the canal—all the parties.”

“And now you’re inside.”

“You think so? Ha,
brava
. The international set. But now it’s like you—it’s all different. I don’t care.”

“I’m glad you went to this one, anyway.”

“Well, for Signor Howard. It was hard to get work when I came back from Fossoli.”

“Where?”

“A camp. Near Modena. Where they put the Jews.”

“There were camps here?”

“You think it was only in Germany? Yes, here. Beautiful Italy. Not so beautiful then.”

“When was this?”

“Forty-four. The first roundups were in forty-three. At the end. But I went later. It was a holding camp. From there, they shipped people on.”

“To Poland?”

She nodded. “So you know that. No one here does. No one here talks about it.”

“You?” I said, involuntarily looking down at her sleeve, as if I could see through to the tattooed numbers.

“No, I stayed at Fossoli.”

“So you were lucky,” I said, thinking of the piled-up carts.

“Yes, lucky,” she said, turning to a bright light coming toward us on the water. “At last. It’s so cold.”

The boat, finally visible through the mist, slammed against the dock.

Inside, we found seats toward the back, the windows steamy with condensation, so that it seemed the fog had moved in with us. There were a few other passengers, tired people going home with string bags, teenagers smoking. In the harsh light of the cabin everything seemed public again, the easy intimacy outside somehow part of the dark. The boat moved slowly, following the cone of its headlight, the
motors groaning at the reduced speed, too loud for quiet conversation. But in the sudden warmth we were no longer hunched over. When Claudia sat back and crossed her legs, one came out of the coat, an unexpected flash of white, exposed.

“Do you live with your family?” I said, looking away from her leg.

“No, they’re dead. My mother years ago. My father just last year.”

“Oh,” I said, and then there was nothing to say, nothing worth saying over the engine anyway, drawing attention. Instead we sat quietly, suddenly awkward, rocking with the boat, the swaying movement pushing our bodies together so they barely met, then pulled back, like waves. It was a kind of dancing, a permission to touch in public, aware of each other, the warm skin under the coats.

The other passengers sat nodding to their own rhythm, looking up surprised when station lights suddenly appeared, then gathering their packages, unsteady on their feet until the ropes were tied. After San Marco the boat began to empty, until no one else was in the cabin but an old couple who appeared to be asleep. Outside, everything was still suspended in the fog, the lamps on the Riva just pinpricks of light.

“Where do we get off?” I said, leaning to her ear to say it, so that now there was the smell of her, wool and skin and the faint trace of some perfume she must have put on for Bertie’s.

“Soon. I told you it was far.”

“The Lido?” I said, an excuse to stay close to her face.

She smiled, turning to me. “Not that far. Two more stops,” she said. Then she was silenced by a foghorn off to our right on some invisible ship.

We got off at the public gardens, leaving the old couple to keep drifting out into the lagoon. After a dark stretch bordering the park, the calles took on the usual twists through small deserted campos lit by hooded single bulbs at each corner. This was the tag end of Venice, neglected and out of the way, soundless except for Claudia’s heels on the pavement and a few radios chattering behind shuttered windows. The fog was thinner than it had been on the water, so that even with only a few lights we could see the façades of the buildings, plaster peeling from some of them in large patches. Occasionally,
overhead, laundry still hung to dry in the damp air, as if someone had simply forgotten to bring it in.

“You see it’s not the Danieli,” she said as we walked along a misty canal. “But still, a water view. That’s San Isepo. I’m just there.” She pointed to one of the peeling houses. “Can you find your way back?”

“Is this where you lived before?”

“No. In Cannaregio. The ghetto. It’s a Venetian word, you know that? We all lived there, so it was easy to find us. And after, when I came back from Fossoli, I thought, no, anywhere but there. So I found this—the other end of the city. It’s far, but I like it here. At least I can’t hear it anymore, in my head.”

“Hear what?” I said, looking at her closely. We had stopped by the bridge just before her building.

“Nothing. A figure of speech. When I see the streets there, the ghetto, it reminds me. Of the sirens. Here it’s different, it
looks
different, so the memories aren’t like that.”

“What sirens?”

“For the air raids.”

“I thought Venice wasn’t bombed.”

“No, drills.” She looked away, then back at me. “You want to know? What it was like? They used the air raid sirens so nobody would hear. When they rounded us up. So late, all the screaming and the pounding on the doors, anybody would hear it. At the Casa di Riposo—how do you say, old people’s home—all the patients, so much noise. So they used the sirens to cover up the noise. So no one would hear.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, embarrassed to have said anything.

“They took all the patients. Even the ones too sick to move.” She turned away. “Well. Enough of that. Do you have a cigarette?”

I lit it for her, studying her face in the glow of the match. She leaned back against the wall of the bridge.

“So now you know all about me. Where I live, where I work. Now even my memories. I don’t go to Harry’s. I live here. Not Signor Howard’s Venice. Not yours, either.”

“No. Did they take you that night?”

“Later. In the fall.”

“And then what happened?”

“At Fossoli? You want to know that too? Everything?” She hesitated, then looked directly at me. “Yes, all right. Look how easy I say that. I told no one. Now some stranger at a rich party, and—” She stopped again. “Why was I lucky? One of the men who ran the camp raped me. Of course he didn’t call it rape. Only I thought that. Every time. So. Is there anything else you want to know?”

I said nothing. She drew on the cigarette, watching me, as if she were expecting me to turn away.

“No?”

“Yes. Why you wanted to meet me.”

She smiled a little. “That too? All right. I don’t know. Maybe I liked the look of you.”

I smiled back, surprised. “No one’s ever said that to me before. Are you always so—” I paused, not finding the word.

“You prefer the old Venice? The masks? The notes? I used to want that. How wonderful to look over your fan at La Fenice. So romantic. But now it’s what you say—everything’s different. I came back and it’s all different. So now I’m like this.”

“My mother came back because she thinks it’s all the same.”

She dropped the cigarette and ground it out with her shoe. “Good night,” she said. Then she looked up at me, studying my face. “Are we going to be lovers, do you think?”

I met her stare. “Yes.”

“You think so.”

“Don’t you?” I reached up my hand, but she stopped it with hers, letting our fingers touch.

“I don’t know yet. Maybe. But not the first meeting. I can’t do that.”

I leaned closer and lowered my face to hers. A tentative kiss, on the lips, a hint of salt water; then another, longer this time, our mouths slightly open; then more, taking our time until we were moving over each other, open and excited, and she broke away with a small gasp.

“Can I come in?”

“No, it’s too soon. Go home, think who I am. Then, if you still want to, we’ll—see each other.”

“Over fans at La Fenice.”

She smiled. “That’s right. Over fans. Do you know how to get back?”

“Walk toward the water.”

I waited while she put the key in the door.

“When will you know?” I said.

She made a teasing face. “When I know you better.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Just follow the canal—you’ll see the gardens.”

On the boat back, I stood at the deck rail. As we moved in and out of the fog, toward the lights, then away again, Venice seemed more than ever dreamlike, something not really there. But once there had been sirens and dogs. Think who I am. Not just another folder on my desk in Frankfurt. More disturbing than that, here, tasting a little of salt. At home, staring out the dark window, for the first time in weeks I didn’t sleep.

It took hours for the room to fill up with light, reflecting off the water, then moving along the walls in ripples. I opened the window, listening to the canal sloshing against the house. Too late for sleepwalking but too early for open shops, anything else. I dressed and headed for the Accademia, but it would be hours before the tall doors opened. I could walk out to the Dogana, my usual morning seat, but all that now seemed to have happened weeks ago, somewhere else. How could anyone just sit, looking? I started up the broad wooden steps of the bridge. Over to Santo Stefano. A coffee and a newspaper. But that was idling. Who could sit? The point was to keep going, now that I had somewhere to go.

The sun held all the way through San Marco and along the Riva, bouncing off the white marble and back against the water. I walked faster. Even the air, after weeks of mist and damp, was sharp and dry, as if it too had cleared its head and decided what to do. And then, like
a sudden shift of mood, it was over. The sky began to fill with clouds again, blown back in from the west, and by the time I reached the funfair at the far end of the Riva the shuttered caravans and children’s rides were as drab and dismal as they’d been all winter. The brick towers of the Arsenale, glowing like kilns a few minutes before, had turned gloomy.

I crossed the last bridge before the vaporetto stop suddenly feeling foolish, still hours early, the idea of coming here at all like something out of a song lyric, silly in the gray light. The sensible thing would be to catch the next boat back and go to the Accademia at lunch hour. Instead I waited, smoking on a bench near the floating dock, not willing to waste a morning. What time did the staff get to the Accademia? A few people were opening umbrellas. I felt a light drizzle on my face and took shelter inside the vaporetto station. So much for the expansive gesture, sunshine, and open arms. Now I was hunched over with a damp collar.