Those Who Walk Away (21 page)

Before seven, Ray was back on the mainland, trotting through the passage from the Zattere quay to Accademia, leaping over the arched bridge, down again into Campo Morosino, past San Maurizio church, on towards San Marco. He bought a handbag for Elisabetta in a reliable but rather expensive shop near San Marco. The bag was black, squarish, sturdy, and beautifully lined in beige kid. He walked to the Largo San Sebastiano and pressed Elisabetta’s bell. It was seven-thirty, and he hoped they were not at dinner.

He heard rapid footsteps descending a stairway, maybe Elisabetta herself. Then her voice:

“Who is it, please?”

“It’s me. Filipo,” Ray answered.

The door opened. Elisabetta looked at him with her large eyes wide, her lips slightly parted. Then she smiled. “It is you!”

“Yes. I have a present for you.” He extended the striped paper bag to her. “Because I’m leaving. I wanted to say good-bye.”

“You’ve been in Venice all this time?” she asked in a whisper, glancing behind her, but no one was coming.

“Yes. Take this, Elisabetta. Please. Or can you come out for a few minutes? For a cup of coffee?”

“I have maybe twenty minutes. Before supper. Wait!” And she closed the door again.

He waited in the street, delighted that she had a few minutes, and also that she trusted him enough to come out with him.

She came out with her coat on. Ray still carried the paper bag.

“Where would you like to go?” he asked.

“We don’t have to go anywhere.” She stared at him with round eyes. “Where were you? I saw your picture in the paper.”

“Sh-h. I was in Venice. We should have a coffee or a drink somewhere. Get out of this chill.”

They went, at Elisabetta’s suggestion, to a bar around two corners and down a little lane. Elisabetta wanted hot chocolate. Ray had a Scotch and water.

“I showed your picture to Signora Calliuoli,” Elisabetta said, whispering again, very nervous of the boy behind the counter whose attention she had already attracted. She cupped her hand beside her face. “I said, ‘That’s the American who was with you for a few days. You should tell the police.’ She kept saying she was not sure, but I know she was sure, it was that she did not want the police to know she had a tenant in her house.” Elisabetta giggled suddenly and repressed it. “Income tax.”

Ray smiled. “Just as well. I didn’t want myself reported.” This evening, the girl’s scent seemed much nicer than the evening he had taken her out to dinner, though it was the same scent. She looked altogether charming, her peachy complexion as fresh as ever, her hair light and clean.

“Why were you hiding?” She leaned across the little table, eager for his answer. “Why don’t you now tell me the truth?”

Ray put the paper bag on the table, so he could sit up closer, too. “It is true,” he said softly, “what I told you before. My father-in-law was trying to kill me. I had to hide—you see.” Not the whole story, but it hung together, he thought: he had been hiding for his own protection, lest Signora Calliuoli or Elisabetta herself disclose to the police, therefore to his father-in-law, where he was. “And also,” Ray continued, “I was feeling sad and full of guilt. It is quite true that my wife committed suicide.” His Italian was simple, even in these words perhaps not perfectly accurate, but he could see that Elisabetta understood and believed him.

“Why did she?”

“I don’t know. Really I don’t know.”

She looked at him steadily. “And now—?”

“I’m going to go to the police tomorrow,” Ray whispered. He was glad that the boy, out of courtesy perhaps, had stopped looking at them, since they obviously wanted to talk in private. “I’ll tell them I’m all right, but—”

“But?”

“I shall not tell them that my father-in-law tried to kill me.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no need. I don’t think he’ll try it again. He’s a man—crazy with grief, too, you see.”

She was quiet, but he supposed she saw.

“It is so pleasant to see you,” Ray said.

She smiled a little, uncertainly. Tonight her lipstick was a curious brownish-mauve. “Where have you been in the last days?”

“On Giudecca.”

“You look nice with a beard.”

“Thanks. You’d better take this. I don’t want to forget it.”

She took the bag, smiling like a child now. What is it? She pulled the handbag out of its tissue, and her mouth opened in surprise. “But it’s beautiful! Squis-s-sito!”

Ray was gratified. “I am glad you like it. That is to thank you for all you did for me.”

“But I did nothing.”

“Yes, you did. You did a lot. I had no friend in the city but you.” He looked at his watch. “I always have to watch the time for you.”

He paid and they left. On the street, they held hands, then locked their arms together and held hands. “I am sorry the walk is so short,” Ray said.

She laughed happily.

“Would you give me a kiss?”

She looked around at once, unhesitating, only looking for a little privacy somewhere. They stood in a doorway. She locked one arm around his neck and gave him a long kiss. He held her body tight to his, felt the start of great desire for her, as if he had known her before, known her a long while. And some lines of poetry came to his mind. They kissed a second time, almost as long as the first.

She pushed away and said, “I really must go home.”

They began to walk again.

“Do you know the lines,” he began. “Well, they’re in English, I don’t know any Italian translation. They go:

“The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none I think do there embrace.”

They’re by Andrew Marvell.”

She didn’t even know of Marvell, and he translated the lines for her, grief-stricken at having to botch them by his Italian.

“I have cheated the grave,” he said. “Not many people can do that!”

She understood that and laughed. “Will I see you again?” she asked at her door.

“I don’t know. I may leave tomorrow morning, you see, after I speak to the police.” He was whispering again, anxious about her family inside the house. “But if I am here—I will try to see you again.” He felt suddenly vague about it, and also as if it were of no importance. Their meeting had been perfect as it was, and that seemed now to be all that mattered.

“I hope so. Good night, Filipo—or whatever your name is. And a thousand thanks for the handbag.” She went in.

Ray then walked for an hour in an agreeable mental fog—a fog as far as his own problems were concerned, because he simply was not thinking about them, but not a fog as far as Venice was concerned, because he felt that he saw the city more sharply than ever before. The night was cold and clear, and every light stood out, sharp as the stars. And every view delighted him as if it were new to him, as things seem just after falling in love, Ray thought, but he knew he was not in love with Elisabetta. The sight of children, tiny ones that should have been in bed, playing beside a church that had stood since Marco Polo’s days, pleased him, and so did a trio of mangy cats hunched in an alley—which after a hundred yards turned out to be blind. He had dinner in a restaurant where he had never been before, and read one of his paperbacks that he had brought along in his pocket.

When he came out of the restaurant at half past ten, he realized he did not know in what neighbourhood he was, but he thought he was not far from the Rialto. He would walk, he thought, until he saw something recognizable, or until an arrow directed him to a vaporetto. It was when he decided to give up a certain unpromising looking street, and turned back, that he saw Coleman some thirty feet away. Coleman was looking at him, and Ray was sure had been following him. For an instant, Ray thought of approaching Coleman and telling him what he planned to do, go to the police tomorrow. But as before, in his instant of hesitation, Coleman turned round.

Annoyed, Ray turned back in his original direction down the unpromising street, and kept going. All streets led somewhere—to water eventually—and the edges of Venice had broad fondamenti where one could walk to a waterbus stop. After a minute, Ray looked back.

Coleman was following him.

Ray felt suddenly afraid. To right and left, lanes went off, dark alleys that would make it easy to give Coleman the slip. Ray went quickly into one on his right. There had been enough people on the street for him to hope Coleman had not noticed his turning, but Ray still took a left turn next, went under a
sottoporto
and found himself on a narrow pavement beside a canal. He paused, reluctant to go any farther, because the canal walk seemed to lead nowhere much, and the section was dark. Ray went cautiously back the way he had come, but stopped when he saw that Coleman was advancing. Ray returned to the canal and went left on its bank, running a little. He took the next lane left. A corner street-light ahead showed a right turning thirty yards on.

Coleman was coming after him. Ray could hear his trotting footsteps. The thing to do was get back to the larger street, Ray thought. Ray took the right turn, realizing he would have to go left to reach the larger street. He saw he had run into a blind alley, and started back again, running faster now.

Coleman came into the alley before Ray reached the corner. Ray clenched his fists, thinking at least to knock Coleman out of his way, if he put up resistance. Ray was attempting to dash past, when Coleman’s right arm swung in a fast arc, and something terrible hit Ray on the left side of the head; he heard a crack, then he sat down heavily on the stone ground. Coleman was trying to lift him from under the arms. And Ray, struggling not to pass out, felt that he struggled also against dying. Coleman was dragging him a long way. They were approaching the canal’s edge. Ray saw Coleman’s hand, with a rock in it, drawn back for another blow, and dived for Coleman’s ankles, or rather lurched against them, striking them with his shoulder. Coleman’s blow went wild. Ray circled Coleman’s legs, and pulled. Coleman toppled, Ray had a glimpse of Coleman’s hat in mid air, then he heard Coleman’s back thud, his head crack, as he struck the cement path. Ray seized the stone beside Coleman, staggered to his feet and hurled the stone at him. It hit Coleman in the neck, or the ear.

Ray stood swaying, panting, still dazed. His own breathing was the loudest thing around, and at last he closed his mouth. He became aware of a warm trickle of blood behind his left ear. Then his legs began to move by themselves, carried him staggering under the
sottoporto
. How quiet everything was, Ray thought. He turned left, heard a trickle of water somewhere on his right, and made out in the street-lamp’s light a small fountain and basin against a house wall. Ray went over and wet his handkerchief, and applied it clumsily to the side of his head. His head both stung and felt numb. His lip was also bleeding. While he was bent over the fountain, a man entered the street, walking quickly, but went on to a door flush with the house walls in the same street. He had only glanced at Ray. Ray wrung out his handkerchief, mopped as much blood as he could, and repeated this a few times, wiping his face also.

He walked on, shakily. He had not walked five minutes before he saw an arrow directing him to a vaporetto station. Here, Ray took a boat for the Riva degli Schiavoni, whence he could catch a boat for Giudecca. There were gondoliers available at Schiavoni, and Ray thought of taking one all the way home, through one of the canals that crossed Giudecca, but he had a dread of attracting further attention to himself, and so did not, though he realized he was perhaps not thinking clearly about the situation. Several people on the boat stared at him, and two people, both men, asked him with concern if he was all right, did he not want a doctor? Ray replied that he had only had a bad fall, “Un’ caduta.”

On Giudecca at last, he crossed the island on foot towards the Ciardi house, and let himself in with his key.

A wine party was of course in progress. A card game as well, Ray saw through the window as he approached the kitchen. He knocked, rather feebly, he felt.

Signor Ciardi opened the door, and the din subsided suddenly as the men looked at him. He sank into a chair and tried to answer the questions they were all putting to him. A cup of wine was lifted to his lips, and was replaced by a glass with brandy in it.

“Un’ caduta—caduta,” Ray kept repeating.

A doctor arrived.

The doctor shaved some hair away and stuck a needle in the side of his head. He put in some stitches. Then Ray was helped up to bed by many willing hands.

“I’ll send for Luigi,” Signor Ciardi assured him. “He will visit you tomorrow.”

The doctor also gave him a large pill for sleeping. Ray was grateful, for by now his head had begun to hurt, even through the doctor’s anaesthetic.

15

I
t was Luigi’s wife who arrived the next morning at nine o’clock and with a pot of beef broth. Signor Ciardi came with her into Ray’s room. Ray had been awake with the pain since 6 a.m., but since the household slept until after eight as a rule, he had not wanted to try to get an aspirin from Signor Ciardi or Giustina.

“You must take this while it is hot,” said the active Signora Lotto, uncovering a blue tin pot on a tray, pouring the broth into a wide bowl. “Even if it is morning, this will do you more good than caffé latte. I just heated it on Giustina’s stove.”

“Grazie, Signora Lotto,” Ray said. “And thank you, Signor Ciardi, for being so kind last night. You must tell me the doctor’s bill. Also, I would greatly appreciate an aspirin now.”

“Ah, si! Against pain! Subito!” He went out.

“And what happened, Signor Weelson?” Signora Lotto demanded, seating herself on a straight chair, bony hands on her knees. “My Luigi would be here, but he went off this morning at two—my God!—and he doesn’t know yet. We had the messenger from Paolo only at eight this morning. Your head! It is not broken, the bone?”

“Oh, no. I had a fall—down some stone steps.” He was glad Signora Lotto still called him John Wilson.

She looked wondering. “Not a fight? Not robbers?—That is good. You are not hurt anywhere else?”

“I think not.” Ray’s head pulsed: he imagined a demon with a hammer banging away at the same bloody spot. “Delicious broth! A thousand thanks.”