Those Who Walk Away (7 page)

“
Ah-ool!
” a voice answered from the light’s direction. It was a gondolier’s cry. “Somebody there?”

Ray did not know the word for buoy. “
The bell! Sulla campana! Veni, per favore!
”

“
La campana!
” came the firm, corroborative reply.

Ray realized that he was saved. His arms felt instantly twice as tired. The man was rowing. It could take easily another ten minutes. He did not want to watch the slow approach, and kept his head sunk on his chest.

“
Ah-ool!
” It was like an automatic cry, a natural sound like a cat’s miaow, an owl’s hoot, a horse’s whinny.

Ray heard a plash as the gondolier made a bad stroke or a wave exposed his oar. “Qua,” Ray said, much more feebly, hoarse now.

“Vengo, vengo,” replied the deep voice, sounding very close.

Ray looked and saw him behind his bow light, standing and rowing at the stern of his bobbing boat.

“Ai!—What happened? Did you fall off a boat?”

It was in such dialect, Ray barely understood. “I was pushed.” It was what Ray had planned to say, that he was pushed off by joking friends. But he had no strength for talking, dangled a limp foot over the side of the gondola, let himself drop, and was dragged aboard by the Italian’s strong arms. Ray rolled helplessly on to the gondola’s floor. The hard ribs of the boat felt delicious, like solid earth.

The Italian bent over him, invoked the names of a few saints, and said, “You were pushed? How long were you there?”

“Oh—” Ray’s teeth rattled, and the syllable was falsetto. “Maybe ten minutes. It is cold.”

“Ah, si! Un momento!” The Italian stepped deftly past Ray, opened the locker in the prow of his boat, swiftly produced a folded blanket, then a bottle. The Italian’s shoe brushed Ray’s nose as he turned, stooped. “Here. Drink from the bottle. Cognac!”

Ray held the bottle, a wine bottle, to his open mouth, keeping his teeth clear of the glass. One big swallow, and his stomach heaved, but the drink stayed down. It was bad and watered brandy.

“You go inside,” said the Italian, then seeing that Ray could not move, he took the bottle from him, corked it and laid it on the boat’s floor, then caught Ray under the arms and dragged him into the covered part of the gondola, on to the bench seat made to hold two people. Ray sprawled, quite without strength, felt vaguely apologetic, and realized that his right hand, which lay flat on the carpeted seat, felt nothing at all and might have been dead flesh.

“Santa Maria, what friends! On a night like this!” The Italian held the bottle again for Ray. He had draped the thick blanket over him. “Where do you want to go? To San Marco? You have an hotel?”

“San Marco,” Ray said, unable to think.

“You have a hotel?”

Ray did not answer.

The Italian, a wiry figure clad in black, his head small and squarish, was framed for a moment in the low grey door of the gondola. Then he went away, scrambled towards the stern of the boat. A rattle of the oar, and then Ray became aware of the forward movement of the boat. Ray wiped his face and hair with a corner of the blanket. He felt colder as his strength returned. He should have told the man Accademia, he thought. On the other hand, San Marco was closer, and there he could find a bar, an hotel lobby, in which to get warm. A vaporetto crossed their bow, looking like a furnace of warmth with all its lights, full of calm, comfortable people facing forward.

“Have you a hotel? I’ll take you to your hotel,” said the gondolier.

He must give him a tremendous tip, Ray thought, and his numb hand moved towards his inside jacket pocket, could not open his trench-coat buttons, pressed the side of his coat, and Ray thought but was not sure that the wallet was still there. “It’s in the vicinity of San Marco,” Ray said. “I think I can walk, thank you.”

Swish—swish
went the gondola, attacking the distance with soft lunges. The wind whipped past the open front of the cabin, but Ray no longer felt the brunt of it. It was probably the most unromantic gondola ride anyone ever had, Ray thought. He wrung out the ends of his trench-coat, then trouser cuffs. San Marco was drawing nearer. They were headed for the Piazzetta, between the Ducal Palace and the tall column of the campanile. “I am sorry to have wet your gondola,” Ray said.

“Ah,
Rosita
is not a…boat. Not now. Anyway in the winter she carries oil and vegetables. It is more profitable than tourists when there aren’t any.”

Ray could not understand every word. “You’re finishing—” he began hoarsely, “finishing work this late?”

A laugh. “No, I start. I go to the railroad station. I sleep a little in the boat, then we start around five-thirty, six.”

Ray stamped his feet, assessing his strength. Perhaps he could make it to the Hotel Luna from San Marco.

“A fine joke, your friends. Americans, too?”

“Yes,” Ray said. The land was very near. “Anywhere here. I am very grateful. You saved my life.”

“Ah, another boat would have come along,” said the Italian. “You should have a hot bath, lots of cognac, otherwise you…”

The rest was lost on Ray, but he supposed that he would catch his death.

The gondola’s gold-combed prow, after heading dangerously for the stern of a large excursion boat, swerved and slid neatly into a slit between striped poles. The gondola braked, the prow kissed the pier gently, bobbing. The Italian grabbed something on the pier, braced his legs and turned the boat sideways, made it go forward, and steps appeared on their left, Ray stood up on shaking legs, then on all fours debarked, placing hands on the stone steps before he climbed. A fine sight for the doges!

The Italian laughed, worried. Is everything all right? Maybe I should walk with you.

Ray did not want that. He stood up on hard, flat stone, feet apart for balance. “Thank you infinitely.” He struggled desperately with trench-coat buttons, pulled out the wallet. Vaguely, he realized he had some twenty notes folded in squares, and he pulled out about half of them. “With my thanks. For another bottle of cognac.”

“Ah, signor, è troppo!” A wave of the hand, a laugh, but he accepted the money, and his face widened with his smile. He had a stubble of grey beard.

“It is not enough. A thousand thanks. Addio.”

“Addio, signor.” He shook Ray’s hand hard. “I wish you health.”

Ray turned and walked away, aware that two men paused briefly to stare at him. Ray did not look at them. He walked slowly, shook his clothes so they would not cling, and shivered violently. Everything looked shut. San Marco’s showed only two or three lights of places that were closed and cleaning up. Ray turned right, making for the Luna. But the Luna lobby was too big and open, Ray remembered; he would be noticed, asked his business. Ray veered suddenly into a small bar-caffé. There was a counter. He stood and asked for a cappuccino and a cognac. The cognac the boy poured was Stock. Ray did not like it, but was in no state to protest. While he waited for his coffee, a sudden hostility against Coleman rushed through him, as if the perilous events of the past hour or so had somehow held his emotions back. The sensation lasted only a few seconds, and ebbed as his strength had ebbed. He cupped his hand around the hot cup. The hollow-eyed boy behind the counter looked at him from time to time. Ray pulled the collar of his trench-coat straighter. It was a new trench-coat, waterproof, and it was beginning to look presentable. Only his shoes and trouser cuffs were a mess. Ray decided to go to a small hotel near by that might not insist on his passport, because his passport was at the Seguso. He had another cappuccino, another cognac, and bought cigarettes and matches. The iron door of the bar came down with a rattle and a bang. There was a smaller door in it through which he could get out, and a ring of keys dangled from its lock. Ray paid and left.

He saw the kind of hotel he wanted a minute later in a narrow lane, a blue-lit sign over its short, filigree marquee saying Albergo Internazionale or something like that. The decor of the lobby was imitation old-Venetian. At the bar to the left of the lobby, two Italians sat talking.

“You wish, sir?” The white-jacketed barman had come to the unattended desk.

“A room for one tonight?” Ray asked.

“With bath, sir?”

“Yes. Is the water hot?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

A few moments later, he was in a small room by himself, empty-handed, without luggage. What had the boy said?
You can register tomorrow morning. The manager has locked up the desk
. He had given Ray the white card that hotel guests had to fill out for the police. Ray turned on the hot water in the tub, and smiled at the sight of steam rising. He undressed and eased himself into the water, which he had been careful to make not too hot. He began to feel sleepy, or faint, so he got out and dried himself as briskly as he could with a smallish towel. There was an enormous towel hanging folded on a rod, but Ray had not the energy to deal with it. Then he hung up his clothes with some care, slowly because he was exhausted, and got naked between the sheets. His throat was already sore, and he did not know what he was in for.

In the morning, he sat up, blinked, and realized where he was. He had slept with the light on. He turned it off. His throat was fiery now, his head light and empty as if he might faint. He was frightened, and not merely because he might have pneumonia. It was a nameless, vague fear that he had, combined with a sense of shame. His trousers were still wet. He looked at his wrist-watch—still running because it was waterproof-and saw that it was 9.20. A small plan came to him, so small he felt moronic for finding pleasure in it: he would order breakfast, have his suit pressed, and try to sleep again while they were pressing it. He put on his trench-coat, which was only slightly damp in its lining, and picked up the telephone and ordered. He felt a lump inside his coat, up on the right, and recalled that his book of Traveller’s Cheques was in the buttoned pocket there. He pulled them out. What luck that he’d put them there, left them there, rather, after buying them in Palma. Two thousand dollars’ worth of hundred-dollar bills. There was a smaller book of Traveller’s Cheques in his pensione, left over from Xanuanx days, only a few hundred in it, Ray thought. He flattened the book of cheques out. He had signed them in India ink with his fountain-drawing-pen, so the signatures were intact, but the pages were stuck together. He laid the book on the four-barred radiator.

His breakfast tray arrived, and Ray sent the girl away with his damp suit and also his shirt. She looked a little surprised, but said nothing.

After his breakfast, he filled out the card with a made-up name and passport number, because he felt for some reason ashamed to write his own.

He was awakened at eleven, when his suit was brought back. He hung the suit in the closet and went back to bed, thinking to wake up around one, leave the hotel, and have a good lunch somewhere. He awakened at a quarter to one, and got dressed. He had no tie and he could use a shave, but those things could be easily remedied. Ray stood at his window, which looked out on to tile roofs and a few tree-tops and vines in people’s gardens, a view that might have been Florence or several other Italian towns, and again he felt the nameless, paralysing fear, a sense of helplessness and defeat.
You might have been dead. How is it you’re alive?
Ray squirmed under his jacket. He had almost heard the voice. And once more, Coleman probably thought he was dead. Once more, Coleman didn’t give a damn, wasn’t very interested in whether he was alive or not.
Because you simply don’t matter
. Ray forced himself to think what he had to do next. Pay the bill here. He didn’t want to go back to the Seguso. That was it. Play dead for a few days. See what Coleman would do. The thought brought a curious relief. It was a kind of plan.

Downstairs at the desk, he asked for his bill. Number eight-four. The name, Thompson. Ray handed in his card. He paid the four thousand, six hundred and sixty lire. No passport was asked for. Ray went out the hotel doors and was immediately aware of the fact he did not want to run into Coleman. Or Inez, or Antonio. He regretted not having looked out through the glass doors before going out, and now he walked stiffly and glanced at people so frequently that a few eyes were attracted to him, so he made himself stop that. The shops were beginning to close for the long midday break. Ray went into a shop and bought a pale blue shirt and a blue-and-red striped tie. There was a cubicle for trying on clothes, and he put on the new shirt and tie in there.

Warily, Ray walked into the street the Hotel Bauer-Gruenwald was on, and turned left, away from the hotel. No Coleman, no Inez, only streams of strangers who paid him no attention. Ray went to a trattoria called Citta di Vittorio, too modest a place for Inez and Coleman to go to, he thought, but still he looked around as he opened the door. He had bought a newspaper. Ray had a slow lunch, ate all he could, but failed to finish what he had ordered. His cheeks felt hot, and his face had been pink in the mirror at the haberdasher’s. Unfortunately, he was about to be ill. It was curious to think that he might now have something that would prove to be fatal, Coleman’s follow-up blow. He debated going to a doctor for a shot of penicillin.
I fell into a canal last night and
…

Ray went to a doctor about four o’clock, in a dusty old building in the Calle Fiubera behind the Clock Tower. The doctor took his temperature, said he had a fever, would not give him penicillin, but gave him an envelope of large white pills and told him to go home and to bed.

The day was grey and cold, but it did not rain. Ray walked to the tailor’s shop where he had left his overcoat to be repaired, and picked the coat up. It seemed a strange transaction like one life invading another, or a bridge between two existences, the overcoat. But Coleman’s bullet-holes were gone, erased, the overcoat was like new, and he put it on. It was a good silk-lined coat from Paris. He went into a bar for a caffé and a cigarette. He had to think what to do, because the night would come soon. With a glass of water, he took two of the huge pills, tilting his head back to get them down. He remembered being ill once in Paris, when he was a child, being given a large pill to swallow, and asking the doctor in French, Why is this so big? “So the nurses won’t drop them,” the doctor had said, as if it were self-evident, and Ray still recalled his shock and sense of injustice that a nurse’s fingers should be thought of before his own throat. The doctor here had told him six per day. With the delicious, inspiring caffé, Ray felt full of ideas and anything seemed possible. He might strike up an acquaintance with a girl, tell her an interesting story, be invited to her flat, be allowed to stay, especially if he gave her some money. Or he could pick up some Americans, tell them he was hiding from a girl, an Italian girl who was inquiring at every hotel in Venice for him. But he realized the difficulty of finding Americans who
(a)
had a flat or a house in Venice and
(b)
would be Bohemian enough to take in a stranger. Ray thought again, and tried to be more logical. For the third time, the peach-faced girl in the bar-caffé north of the piazza came to his mind. A nice girl, that was evident. He would have to tell her a decent story. The nearest to the truth was best, or so he had always heard. He could ask her a perfectly honourable question: did she know of any place, any family, any person who would take him in for a few days, if he paid them rent? Private houses would not ask for his passport, because they did not report their income from lodgers.