Those Who Walk Away (27 page)

Ray gave Giustina a nod of thanks before he drank. The wine was good. “Signor Ciardi, if you wish, I can go to an hotel now with my own passport. If you don’t wish, I can stay just a day or so more—” There was something nice about not having a telephone at Signor Ciardi’s. A certain quietude would be ended at an hotel.

Signor Ciardi spread his hands in protest. “No question of my not wishing! Of course I wish that you stay. But we now call you Signor Garrett, yes?—You are an art dealer, Signor Garrett?”

“I intend to open a place of exposition in New York. Signor Ciardi—if I may go out to make a telephone call—”

“Ah, si, I regret that I have no telephone,” said Signor Ciardi, who probably did not regret it at all, since there were always small boys in the neighbourhood to run messages.

“I don’t,” said Ray, smiling. “I’ll be back in five minutes.

Ray ran out, without his overcoat. He wanted to ring Elisabetta. The caffé where she worked was called the Bar Dino, and he hoped it had a telephone listing. He found it after some searching, and by then it was three minutes to six.

A man answered, and then Elisabetta was summoned.

“This is Filipo,” Ray said in Italian, expecting any kind of reaction to that—her hanging up, or a polite statement that she had had enough of wild newspaper stories and did not want to see him again.

But she answered in a calm tone, “Ah, Filipo! How are you?”

“Very well, thanks. I am wondering if I can see you this evening? Maybe after dinner? Or I would be very happy if you are free for dinner.”

“I should not go out for dinner, not tonight,” she replied. “Perhaps after dinner?”

“At eight-thirty? Nine?”

They made an appointment for nine.

She had evidently not seen the paper, Ray thought. He would take a paper along with him tonight when he saw her, and if she hadn’t seen one by then, she might be amused. There had been some truth in the stories he had told her, anyway!

An orologia shop window caught Ray’s eye as he walked homeward. An electric clock for the kitchen would make a nice present for Signor Ciardi and Giustina, he thought. Giustina had complained more than once about the old alarm clock on the kitchen sideboard which ran too slowly, and which Signor Ciardi frequently carried to some other room of the house. Ray bought a fancy cream-coloured clock with a gold-and-black face for eight thousand three hundred lire. It was pleasant to be able to use Traveller’s Cheques again, and Ray remembered also that he was due to send two cheques for a hundred dollars each to his painter friends in New York. He usually sent the cheques on the fifteenth of the month. The painters, a young man named Usher in the village, and an old man, who lived on the edge of Harlem, preferred the cheques by the month instead of in one lump for the year, as it helped them to economize.

Ray presented the box to Giustina when he returned to the kitchen of the Ciardi house. A present for the house, Ray said.

Giustina was enchanted with the clock. Signor Ciardi pronounced it magnifico. A place on the wall was decided upon. But they must wait for Gugliemo, one of Signor Ciardi’s friends who was a carpenter, to put it up, as it had to be fixed to the wall properly.

Signor Ciardi, Ray said, “may I invite you to dinner tonight? It would give me great pleasure.”

“Ah—” Signor Ciardi thought, looked at Giustina, then said, “Si, why not? With much pleasure, I accept. Giustina, I know you have veal cutlets, but cutlets can wait. Or have two yourself. If you allow me, Signor Garrett, to touch my face,” he added, gesturing to the two-or three-day beard. “Have another glass. I’ll just be a moment. Giustina, if anyone comes, I am back a little after nine, maybe. Va bene, Signor Garrett?”

Ray made a gesture as if that, or anything else, were quite all right with him, and went off to get his overcoat.

Signor Ciardi was ready in a very short time, and even had on a shirt and tie.

“One thing,” Ray said as they walked out, “Let us not discuss problems tonight. Life, maybe, but not problems.”

Signor Ciardi seemed cheerfully of accord. “And later we will see Luigi. I feel sure he will come.”

“Much later. I have an appointment at nine with a young lady.”

“Ah, si? Benone. Later then.”

In the Italian ambience of that evening, everything seemed possible to Ray.

19

E
lisabetta, coming out of her house door, gasped at the sight of his bandage.

“It is not as serious as it looks,” said Ray, who had prepared this sentence beforehand.

She looked right and left before she closed the door and came out. They walked quickly to the right, the direction Elisabetta had always taken with him. “I have just seen your picture in the paper,” she said. “Just now, after dinner. I didn’t say anything to my parents and they didn’t notice the picture. They would not have let me see you tonight. Or the last time either, I think. But a fight with your father-in-law!”

“Where are we going? Let’s go somewhere beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” she asked, as if nothing in Venice was.

Ray smiled. “Maybe on the Piazza? Quadri’s?”

She nodded, smiling, too. “All right. The police are not looking for you?”

He laughed. “I’ve made a complete statement to the police. This morning. You have read that. The police know where to find me. On Giudecca.”

“Ah, you have been on Giudecca!”

“Yes. And maybe we can talk about other things tonight.” Ray tried, by asking her how was Alfonso, the young man in the Bar Dino. But she did not want to talk about Alfonso.

“It is true, your wife was a suicide?” she asked, whispering, with a kind of awe, or horror.

“Yes,” Ray replied.

“And it’s true, that your father-in-law pushed you into the lagoon?”

“Yes. And it is true that I am an art dealer. Or at least starting to be one. You see, some of the things I told you are quite true.”

She said nothing, but he felt that she believed him.

“But—and this is very important—I did not tell the police anything about the lagoon. You are one of only—two people who know. So if by any chance you have to speak to the police—” He immediately regretted that. “You will not have to. There is no reason why you should have to. But I do not want you to tell anyone that my father-in law pushed me into the lagoon.”

“Why not?”

“Because he is a very angry man, and he cannot help it.”

“He tried to kill you.”

“Oh, yes.”

“He is angry because of his daughter?”

They were in the Piazza now.

“That is exactly right. But I could not help what his daughter—what she did. And if you will, Elisabetta, I cannot talk about that tonight. I wanted to see you, because with you I do not have to think about any of that. I can just remember the early morning I first saw you—and remember the way you smiled when you were showing me the way to Signora Calliuoli’s house the evening of the same day.”

That pleased her, and it was so easy to say, because it was true.

They sat indoors at Quadri’s. Elisabetta did not want champagne, so Ray suggested a posse-café. He had a brandy. And for nearly half an hour, mostly thanks to Elisabetta, they managed to talk pleasantly about things of no importance. Elisabetta asked him what kind of house he was staying in on Giudecca, and Ray was able to tell her a great deal about it and about Giustina and his red tile stove without mentioning Signor Ciardi’s name, which Elisabetta was not curious about. She pronounced her posse-café ‘Strong,’ then said:

“You are the strangest man I’ve ever met.”

“I? I’m extremely ordinary. You are the strangest girl I’ve ever met.”

Now she laughed, leaning back in her chair. “I know what a dull life I lead!”

That didn’t make her dull to be with, Ray thought now. It was the freshness, the generosity of her face that he liked so much. And perhaps she would be delightful to go to bed with, and then perhaps not. It was a little strange to feel such joy in being with her, and yet to think it was really a matter of indifference to him whether they ever made love or not, and that he would certainly never want to marry Elisabetta. But he was as happy now with her as if he meant to propose to her, or as if she had said ‘Yes’ when he had. He wanted the pleasure to last a long while. “What time must you be back tonight?”

“You see?” She smiled at him. “No one else in the world asks me questions like that—Eleven, I think. I told my mother I was going to see my friend Natalie.” Elisabetta giggled.

The posse-café was indeed strong, Ray thought. “You are very safe, because I have to be home a little before.” It pleased him to say ‘home,’ and to be expected there, too.

“You have another appointment?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ray said, still feasting on her with his eyes, though now and again he looked away at the ornate decor of the old coffee-house, at the upholstered benches, so that the Venetian Elisabetta would have a proper setting in his memory.

She did not want another posse-café.

They walked slowly back towards her house, as if neither of them wanted to arrive there. Ray thought of asking her to join him tonight with Signor Ciardi and Luigi, if he came, but it was not the lateness that made it impossible, it was that he did not want to share her with anyone. He would have to explain how he met her, or she might mention Signora Calliuoli. It was all too complicated. Ray wanted Elisabetta like a small enamel portrait that he carried in his pocket and showed to no one. And he felt that after tonight, he would never see her again, although there was no reason to feel that if he was going to be in Venice two or three days more.

“Good night, Elisabetta,” he said at her door.

She looked at him a little sadly. “Good night—Rayburn,” she said, pronouncing it Rye-burn, and gave him a kiss on the lips, a kiss that he barely had time to reciprocate, then turned to her door.

Ray walked away, glanced back to see if she had gone in, and saw the disappearing tail of her coat, heard faintly the solid door closing. Not as stirring a kiss as the other two, he thought, and yet somehow much more real. At least, Rayburn Garrett had received it. She had called him Filipo the last time he had seen her. Ray walked slowly, as he had with Elisabetta, in a pleasant trance, heedless now of the people who looked at his bandage. Suddenly it seemed to him that love—erotic and romantic love—was nothing but a form or various forms of ego. Therefore the right thing to do was to direct one’s ego to recipients other than people, or to people from whom one expected nothing. Love could be pure, but pure only if it was unselfish.

He stopped walking for a moment, and tried to think more precisely. It was an idea from the age of chivalry.

It was important that the objects of love be nothing but recipients, he thought again. Love was an outgoing thing, a gift that one should not expect to be returned. Stendhal must have said that, Proust certainly, using other words: a piece of wisdom his eyes had passed over in reading, yet which he had not applied to Peggy, he felt. Not that a specific had arisen with Peggy to which this might have been applied, but Ray thought he would have been wiser, even omniscient, if he had only thought of this abstract recipient-object when he had been with Peggy.

He went on, still in the beatific trance, towards Signor Ciardi’s house.

It was ten past eleven when he got there. Luigi had not arrived, but was expected. And Signor Ciardi had a message for Ray which had been delivered by a police officer. It was a piece of folded yellow paper with an illegible signature:

Would you please telephone office of police 759651.

He hated doing it at that moment. “I must telephone the police,” he said to Signor Ciardi.

Ray walked again to the bar-caffé.

Capitano Dell’ Isola was not there, and Ray was passed on to another man. “The Signora Schneider is very worried. She wants us to make sure you are still where you said. You are at the house of Ciardi?”

“Yes.”

“She spoke about a Signor Antonio Santini. You know him?”

“Yes,” Ray answered, somewhat reluctantly.

“She has spoken with him,” the voice said enigmatically. “The Signora Schneider is worried that you did harm to her friend Signor Col-e-man.” The voice gave this information as impersonally as if it were a weather bulletin. “She wishes us to report back where you are. That is all. Signor Garrett. Thank you.”

Ray hung up as the police officer did. Antonio adding his bit now? That was a sour note. Or Inez might be simply ‘worried.’ But it seemed that Antonio had done nothing to calm her. Ray walked back to Signor Ciardi’s, wishing he had not to make the call. He tried to think of Elisabetta, as he had thought of her after leaving her, but the magic was gone.

“Rye-burn!” cried a voice behind him. “A-oul! Ho!”

It was Luigi, trotting towards him.

“Hello, Luigi!” Ray answered. “How goes it?”

“I saw your bandage a kilometre away!” Luigi said, banging Ray on the shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

“Very well, thank you. I hope the doctor will remove this bandage tomorrow. To put on a smaller one, at least. People look at me as if I were Lazarus!” Ray said, in a sudden good spirits. “Like Lazarus of the grave!”

Luigi roared companionably. He pulled from under his arm a newspaper-wrapped bottle. “A good Valpolicella for us.”

They rang Signor Ciardi’s bell, or Luigi did, though Ray had his key. Giustina admitted them.

“Hey, I hope you gave that Col-e-man a good…” Luigi said as they crossed the courtyard.

Ray was glad of Luigi’s happy acceptance of story, fact, counter-story, counter-fact. “I did. He was almost unconscious.”

“Good. Where is he?” Luigi asked, as if Ray were certain to know.

“I don’t know. He’s hiding somewhere.”

In the kitchen all was merry and rather celebratory for five or ten minutes. Luigi’s daughter’s baby was due within a week. They had to drink to that in advance. But Luigi had not finished his questioning of Ray. How had the fight started? Why did Col-e-man hate Ray so much? Luigi sympathized with Ray over the suicide of his young wife, crossed himself, and made a wish, or prayed, that the Virgin Mary might forgive her, and that her soul might rest in peace. Just where was the fight, exactly? How big a man was Col-e-man? Was he crazy?