Alibi: A Novel (8 page)

“I want to go home with you.”

“Why? You can’t wait?”

“Not for that.” I stopped. “It’s not that.”

“What?”

I put my hand up to the side of her neck. “I don’t want to skip anything. I want to take you to dinner. Out, like this. I want to spend the night with you. See you sleep, what you look like. Wake up. Make coffee. All of it. Not skip anything.”

“Don’t say that,” she said softly, lowering her head. “I don’t want that.”

“Yes, you do. Everybody does.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t.”

“You mean, not with me.”

She looked up, then turned away. “It’s not enough for you? Just to—”

“What?”

“You know.”

I smiled. Something she couldn’t say, not even in the hotel, where anything was possible. A well-brought-up girl.

“Go to bed,” she said, still not saying it. “It’s not enough?”

“No.”

“Ha. Since when? You were happy enough to—”

I brushed back a lock of her hair. “Things change. I want to be with you. That’s all.”

“No, I can’t,” she said, moving my hand away. “I don’t want anybody. Oh, what a judge I am. I see you, I think, yes, nice-looking, American. They never stay. They go home. No problems.”

“You want me to leave?”

She looked down, biting her lip. “No. Oh, it’s difficult.”

“Explain it.”

“Explain it. So easy. Some little talk over a drink.” She met my eyes. “I don’t want anything more. It’s better for me.”

“How could it be better?”

“It’s better. Safer.” She hesitated. “Sometimes, do you know what I think you see? Another one of your cases, back in Germany. You want to make everything all right again. Maybe that’s why you want to be with me. You think you can change what happened. But do you know how it really was? When people think you’re going to die, you don’t exist for them anymore. You disappear, become nothing. That first train, none of them even looked. I thought, this is what it’s like, there’s nobody else. Then not even you. So you live here,” she said, pointing to her skin. “And here.” Her eyes. “Food, whatever makes you feel alive. Reminds you what it’s like. Even pain sometimes. Just to feel it. But not here.” Now her chest. “Nothing here. You have to stay safe.”

“From what?”

“The others. Everybody. They’ll leave you alone if you’re playing dead. You think you can get through the rest of it if you do that. But then it’s hard coming back, you can’t do it all at once. Just seeing things. Eating. Simple things, that’s all I can do. Not people.”

“It’s not like that anymore.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Anyway, how do you know? It didn’t happen to you.”

“No.”

“To know that everyone wants you dead.”

“Your friend didn’t.”

“No, he didn’t want me dead. He wanted—” She stopped, then breathed out, almost a snort. “People. You know what he wanted? He wanted me to like it. It wasn’t enough for him, just to do it. He wanted me to like it. To like him. What he could do to me. He wanted to hear it.”

“So you pretended.”

“Well, we can do that. Make sounds. It’s what they like. So.” She looked down. “And then sometimes it would happen. Even with him. I could feel it in me, beginning, and I couldn’t stop it. With that pig. I’d feel it anyway—you couldn’t take your mind far enough away, it would happen. And he knew. He wanted it like that. At first I was so ashamed, and then—then it was a way of being alive. So I let it happen. Maybe that’s worse. Knowing it can happen with anyone. Like animals. So what does it matter who? Does it matter where food comes from? It’s all the same.”

“It doesn’t feel the same to me.”

“No?”

“No. It’s not like with anyone else.”

“Ha, how many—”

“Don’t,” I said, stopping her. “I’m not him.”

“No? You think it’s so different? You want me to like it too.”

“Yes.”

“All right, I do. I like it with you. So you can be happy. Tell your friends in New York.”

“I’m not him,” I said again, holding her shoulders. “It’s different.”

She looked down. “But I’m not. I’m the same. I’m the same. In Fossoli.”

“No. What happened to you—”

“It’s still happening to me. All those feelings. The hate. At first you want to kill all of them, and you can’t even kill one. Not one. And then you know what happens, I think? You start killing yourself. You have to kill someone and there’s no one else.”

“Stop,” I said, placing my finger in front of her mouth without touching it.

“Yes, stop,” she said. “What’s the good of all this?” She twisted her mouth. “Not what you expected, is it? Such talk. A girl you met at a party.”

“You’re not just a girl at a party.”

“Yes, I am,” she said, pretending to be light, but I was shaking my head. “No? What happened to her?”

“Signora Montanari looked at her dress.”

She met my eyes, a little startled, then looked down. “My poor dress. So, what happened then?”

“I knew I was in love with you.”

“Oh,” she said, only a sound, her head bent. “You don’t mean that,” she said quietly. “You don’t even know me.”

“Yes I do. Everything about you. Right then.”

“Oh, all in one look. You’re being—”

“I know. All right, not everything. Just enough.”

“What does it mean, to say something like that?”

“What it always means. I want to be with you.” I lifted her head. “I’ll take Italian lessons.”

She smiled weakly, her eyes troubled. “No. Go to America. Your life is there. Not all this.” She spread her hand. “But thank you. To say that. The opera, even. I didn’t expect—” She leaned and kissed me on the cheek, a flutter of breath. “It’s a good time to stop. While it’s all still nice.”

I reached for her, but she put her hand on my chest again.

“No, go.”

“I can’t walk away from you.”

“No? All right. Me, then,” she said, her hand trembling. She looked up. “Don’t follow. I’m all right on my own,” she said, then turned and started walking.

“I don’t believe you,” I said to her back. “I don’t believe it’s all the same for you.” No answer but the click of her heels on the stone. “Tell me it was the same.”

“Yes, the same,” she said, not turning around, still walking. Then she stopped, her shoulders drooping. A long quiet. “No,” she said finally.

I stood for a minute, then started moving toward her gently, as if she were a bird that still might be scared off. I stepped around to face her, not saying anything. She looked up, her eyes still uneasy.

“Not the same?” I said softly.

“No,” she said, the word not much more than a breath.

“Then let’s go home,” I said, stepping closer, our faces almost touching.

“You’re so sure. How can you be so sure about this?”

“We can get a taxi at the Gritti,” I said, putting my arms around her, feeling her head fall against my shoulder. “Is that all right, a taxi?”

She nodded, resting against me. “To the gardens. Not to the house. Signora Bassi, the owner, she lives there too. The noise—”

We were quiet in the taxi, as if Signora Bassi were already listening. The room was plain, up a staircase at the side of the house, overlooking the small misty canal and a back calle full of clotheslines. We stayed quiet in the room, not making love, just holding each other in bed. I did get to see her asleep, hours later, in the predawn when I usually tried to make out the Redentore and wonder how I was going to spend the day. Now in the light from the window all I could make out was the sewing machine and a dressmaker’s dummy, her own shape standing straight and purposeful, the way she had at Bertie’s party, and in some wonderful way I saw there were two of them now—the public, tailored Claudia at the window and the one only I knew, who’d stepped out of the dummy to crawl into the warmth beside me.

T
he library ceiling was as beautiful as Gianni had promised.

“Early sixteenth century,” he said, not a boast, just placing it. “The carving is the best in Venice, I think. Of course today it’s difficult to see.”

The morning had been dismal, and even the long side windows were not much help—the library seemed barely lit. But the ceiling turned the patchy light to its advantage, forcing you to look at it carefully, follow its intricate lines into shadow. Only Venice could have a hospital like this, a converted
scuola grande
whose façade was crowded with trompe l’oeil and marble panels. The entrance hall was a soaring space with pillars, as damp and gloomy as an old church, filled with the ghosts of shivering consumptives, but beyond it the working hospital was bright and up-to-date with wards and nurses’ stations and X-ray rooms, what you’d see anywhere. And now the old medical library, which Gianni had saved for last, a special finale.

“Not as grand as the Sansovino staircase,” he was saying, “but I think more beautiful. The proportions.”

“It’s wonderful. Is it still used?”

“In theory. In practice, no. Now it’s—a treasure.”

“Locked away,” I said as he closed the door and we started down the stairs.

“Yes. Otherwise—” His voice drifted off in the drafty hall, where families had begun to arrive for visiting hours.

“I feel privileged.”

Gianni accepted this with a nod, then smiled. “Good. And now, are you hungry?”

“I don’t want to take you away from your work.”

“No, no, it’s all arranged. A restaurant very near. We can talk.”

About what, I wondered, but Gianni was all smiles and affability, clearly wanting to please.

“Quite a hospital,” I said, looking at the façade again as we came out.

“Well, the
scuola
was suppressed—I can’t remember why—and so there was a big public building to use. Not so practical, maybe, for modern times, but in Venice nothing is practical, so you adapt. The facilities are good. And of course it’s pleasant, every day to see it.” He pointed to one of the reliefs. “Saint Mark helping Antinus.”

“Who?”

“A beggar in Alexandria. The series is Saint Mark’s life. But I always think if you didn’t know, it could be a doctor helping the sick. Appropriate, yes? Who knows? Maybe Lombardo had a presentiment that it would be a hospital.” He smiled. “Anyway, it’s an idea.”

“What happened during the war? I mean, was it a military hospital?”

“No. It was never a war zone here. You know, behind the lines it’s a kind of peace. Things keep going. The hospital too. There was always food. In the south, with the fighting, it was different. Terrible shortages. Here at least no one starved, we could manage.” We were crossing a bridge out of the campo, and he indicated the houses on the other side of the canal with their running sores of fallen plaster. “But no paint, no wood, nothing like that. See there? No repairs, not for years. The city is falling apart. Of course the visitors, for them it’s always falling apart, they love the decay. Your mother thinks that. Don’t fix it, it’s all part of the charm. Well, maybe it’s lucky for me she thinks that way. At my age, I’m falling apart too.”

I laughed, the expected response.

“You know we have become good friends,” he said.

I kept walking, not sure how I was meant to answer.

“She has a gift for that, I think. A rare quality. To make people happy. Here we are.”

He turned toward a door. No getting out of it now. But what excuse could I have found?

The restaurant was in the little campo that faced Santa Maria dei Miracoli. In summer there would be tables outside, people writing postcards and looking up at the marble walls. Now it was a poky room with a bar in front and just enough space in back to be intimate without being noisy. Gianni was evidently a regular, known to the waiter.

“You like granchi?” Gianni said to me. “He says it’s the special today.”

“Yes, fine,” I said, toying with my fork, already uncomfortable.

“Wine? I can’t, but if you like—”

“No, water’s fine.”

For a minute or so we watched the waiter pour the mineral water.

“I’m glad we have the chance,” Gianni said, “to meet like this.” Leaning forward, opening.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, steering away. “For the ceiling especially. I never would have seen it otherwise. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask—who are the Montanaris?”

His forehead wrinkled for a second, then cleared. “Ah, in the box. Who are they? They made an impression on you?”

“The other way around. I don’t think they approved. They left early.”

Gianni laughed again. “They always leave early. They come for the interval, to see her friends. The music?” He brushed away the idea with his hand. “Ah, the crabs,” he said, leaning back for the waiter.

“I just wondered who—” I began, but he’d moved on from the Montanaris, speaking before I could finish.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said and then stopped. He sipped some water, hesitant, as if he were putting the words together in his head. “You know I admire your mother very much.”

I waited.

“Very much,” he said again. “We have a love for each other. This seems strange to you, maybe. At your age, I remember, it is impossible to think this happens after—what? Thirty? Forty? To have these feelings. But we do. Sometimes even more so. We can’t be so careless anymore, we know how valuable, to find someone. You’re embarrassed, that I’m talking this way to you?”

“It’s not that.”

“Yes, embarrassed, I think. It’s my English. What I want to say—”

“Look, the point is, you don’t have to say anything. If you and my mother—it’s none of my business.”

“But now, yes. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It is your business now. We want to marry.”

“What?” Blurting it out, as if I hadn’t heard properly.

“Yes, to marry. You’re surprised?”

“But why?” I said, another involuntary response, not even thinking.

“Why? Because we have a love for each other.”

“Yes, but—I mean, why not just go on as you are?” While it lasts.

“You don’t understand my feelings for her. Do you think I have no respect for her position?” Affronted, as if I’d stepped over some cultural divide.

“It hasn’t bothered you up to now.”

He raised his eyebrows, then softened. “That’s what you think—I take advantage. You know, we are not children. Maybe it was—a convenience for both. Now it’s something else.”