The Thief of Venice (8 page)

Beyond the Ghetto Vecchio the water began again. The tide had risen. There was nothing to do but wade. But the main shopping street was dry and full of people coming and going. At San Marcuola Mary boarded a downstream vaporetto and sank into a seat. At once she rummaged in her bag for her notebook and tried to make a list of everything she had seen, all the pictures she had taken.

It was no use. She didn't know where she had been because she had been following her nose, obeying every impulsive whim to go this way rather than that, attracted by the vista from a bridge, or a view of another bridge, or a campanile, or a hand flinging open a shutter. There was no way to make a list. It was all a jumble.
 

While the water rose and rose, Dorothea Wellesley had been out shopping. Now she lay on her bed, her galoshes draining on the hot-air register. She was talking on the phone, complaining to an old school friend in Boston. "It's perfectly disgraceful. After a thousand years, wouldn't you think this city would know how to deal with the water of the Adriatic? And the predictions for November are simply appalling."

"But, Dottie, why don't you come home?" Francie's voice was perfectly clear, having whizzed up from Mount Vernon Street to a satellite poised over the Atlantic, then ricocheted down to the Salizada del Pignater. "Now that dear Giorgio is gone, why should you stay in Italy a moment longer?"

"Oh, Francie, you don't understand. I have a sacred trust. Dear Henrietta's poor child, little Ursula. She's a disobedient, fractious and willful little girl, thoroughly spoiled by her father. She needs my loving discipline. And what's more"—Dorothea's voice sank to a melodramatic whisper, faithfully transmitted by the satellite—"who knows, Francie, what might go on in this house, if I were not here to preserve a wholesome family atmosphere?"

She could hear Francie's horrified intake of breath. "Oh, Dottie, you don't mean that your son-in-law—?"

"I do indeed," said Dorothea.
 

*16*

Homer enjoyed the company of Samuele Bell. He sensed in Sam a nature severer than his own. Sam was at the same time amused, self-effacing, and contemptuous. The contempt wasn't out of malice. It was disappointment in a world that should have been better, that knew perfectly well how to be better, but stubbornly refused to improve. The only way to survive in such a world was to laugh at it, and Sam did.

But it was odd about Sam. In some mysterious way he was different from the man Homer had met in Massachusetts, more reckless and impulsive. Well, it took one to know one. Homer was reckless and impulsive himself.

It was clear that Sam's recklessness was increasing. Lately, just for the last few days, there had been a crescendo of wild wit in his talk, as though he were throwing up a dazzling mist over something pent-up and excruciating. A powerful set of pincers was wrenching at Sam's gizzard, but what it might be, Homer didn't have a clue.

They were relaxing in Sam's beautiful sitting room after an exhausting day of listening to scholarly papers by conference participants. "I've got two lists," said Sam, leaning back in his chair, sipping orange juice. "A list of Bores—that's Bores with a capital B—and a list of bastards."

Homer's orange juice had gin in it. "Bastards! Also with a capital B? Would you like suggestions for new members? "

They settled down to a discussion of candidates. Some of the conference participants came immediately to mind. There were various levels of bores, Sam explained, including Bores Third Class, Second Class, and First Class, and then a pinnacle class at the top, the Supreme Bore of the World.

"What about bastards?" said Homer. "Are they in categories too? "

"Not yet.
Bastardi
are—what do you call it?—generic. They're all ghastly to the same degree."

"What about Professor Himmelfahrt?" suggested Homer. "Oh, God, Sam, I could have told you to turn his paper down. I know him of old. Talk about bores."

Sam gazed at the ceiling and narrowed his eyes and considered. "I'd rate him Bore First Class, I think, no more."

"We ought to hand out certificates on the last day of the conference," said Homer, pouring himself another drink.

At that moment the door opened and Mrs. Wellesley walked in. She smiled brilliantly at Homer and extended her hand. There was something grandiose in the gesture, as if she expected him to kiss it. He shook it clumsily. "Oh, Professor Kelly, what do you think of my new work? It's just been delivered by the frame shop." She giggled. "I suppose you think it's quite horrible."

"Your new work?" Homer looked at the new picture on the wall. It certainly was horrible. It was an insult to the old maps and the painting by Paolo Veneziano on the opposite wall. Mrs. Wellesley had cut a photograph of a French cathedral into pieces, and then she had pasted the pieces on a square of canvas in an exploding pattern, adding painted streaks of orange fire.

Sam jumped into the breach and rescued Homer. "Oh, yes, Dorothea, it's very good. What cathedral is that? It's not—?"

"Chartres? Of course it is. I cut it all to pieces. Kaboom!"

The Supreme Bore of the World went on and on, pointing to this feature and that, while Homer listened politely and made vague remarks of appreciation—
Yes, I see, mmm, yes, how nice, yes, yes, very nice.

He was careful not to meet Sam's eye.
 

*17*

There was no longer much of a problem with high water. The moon had drifted away from its direct lineup with the sun, and therefore Venice enjoyed a respite. But everyone knew there was no way of stopping it from waxing to a dangerous state of perfect fullness in two weeks' time, and then of course the tides would rise again.

"Experts warn that
acqua alta
will be far worse next time," said the handsome weather reporter, staring gloomily at the camera in one of the television studios in Palazzo Labia.

The future rise and fall of
acqua alta
in the city of Venice did not matter to the speakers and participants in Sam Bell's great conference. They were all leaving, one by one and in clusters. The last to depart were a couple of art historians from Boston University. Sam conducted them to the water taxi that would carry them to the airport on the mainland.

"Oh, God, I don't want to go," said Art Historian Number One, abandoning the dignity of his status as president of five learned societies.

"It's such a gorgeous—well, you know," said Art Historian Number Two, normally a sober and phlegmatic man. "I mean, it's like a dream."

Sam couldn't blame them. Their last moments in the city were smack in the middle of the most famous postcard view in Venice, the Piazzetta with the Ducal Palace on one side, the Marciana on the other, and the tall columns of Saint Theodore and the lion of Saint Mark rising in the middle, while a flotilla of gondolas bobbed gently in the water below the Molo. Another flood of excited tourists meandered beside the garden, buying trinkets at the souvenir stands and taking pictures of each other against the noble spread of the lagoon.

Art Historian Number One bought a shiny pillow stamped with a view of San Marco, Art Historian Number Two a small plastic gondola. Then, regretfully, they stepped into the water taxi. Sam lifted down their baggage and paid the man at the wheel, hoping the enormous sum would look acceptable on the list of conference expenses.

It was over. The splendid Venetian conference in the Biblioteca Marciana dedicated to the manuscripts of Cardinal Bessarion and the printed books of Aldus Manutius was now part of history. Thank God, the conference proceedings would be edited by someone else. The books would remain on exhibition for another six weeks. Sam's work was done.

Slowly and a little painfully, he made his way back to the Marciana. In the entry he had to adjust his dazzled eyes to the darkness. He smiled at Signora Di Stefano, the dragon in her lair, and trudged up the two flights to his office.

"You look tired," said his secretary, looking at him with concern. "Well, no wonder." Signora Pino was an elderly woman, chosen long ago to ward off the jealousy of his late wife, whose ears and eyes had been ever alert for treachery. Now that Sam was a widower he could have hired the prettiest of pretty young girls to ornament his office, but he liked Signora Pino, and her job was secure.

"Yes," said Sam. "I think I'll take the rest of the day off."

"Of course. It's only right. I'll take care of things. Have a good rest.
Sogni d'oro!
Dreams of gold!"

She watched him go.
Povero ragazzo!
He looked so thin and stooped. The incessant demands of the conference had worn him out.

But at home there was a surprise. The first package of relics from the Treasury of San Marco was waiting for him.

"There was an armed guard," exclaimed his mother-in-law. "He made me sign for it. He wanted to stay until you came home. I was insulted! Did he think I was going to make off with his precious package? I told him he had another think coming. I asked him what was in it, and, do you know, he wouldn't tell me? I told him you were my son-in-law and that we had no secrets from each other, no secrets whatsoever, but he wouldn't say a word. I insisted that he leave my house, and he made a
dreadful
scene, but at last I literally
pushed
him out."

Sam smiled wearily. He could imagine the cowardice of the guard in the face of his bullying mother-in-law.

He went to his study and put the box on his desk. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, and the knots in the string had been fastened with sealing wax. And yet the package had a disheveled look, as though someone had tried to undo the wrapping without untying the string. Perhaps his mother-in-law in her wounded pride and everlasting inquisitiveness had tried to unwrap it and failed.

Well, no matter. Sam cut the string, removed the wrapping, and opened the box. The relics from San Marco were in numbered packets, each one enclosed in tissue paper. He set them down carefully on a big piece of drawing paper and gently withdrew one of the relics from its packet. It was a piece of sacred wood. All together there were five fragments supposed to have come from the True Cross and ten pieces of unidentified bone.

Had they ever been looked at critically before? For how many hundreds or even thousands of years had they been objects of veneration? How many tragic appeals had been whispered to them, how many agonized prayers? It struck Sam with sudden force that his irreverent hands, picking up and testing these most sacred of Christian relics, were the hands of an infidel. He had to remind himself that it was high time these pieces of bone and fragments of
sacro legno
were looked at with a clear and objective eye.

The questions he would put to them were obvious. Were the bones human? And how old were the pieces of wood? Only if they had existed for nearly two thousand years could they have any claim to authenticity.

The determination of age would require carbon dating, and that was beyond his power. But at least he could determine whether or not the pieces of the cross were all from the same kind of tree. Were they oak or pine or cedar of Lebanon? His microscope could at least tell him that. And what if they were from trees that never existed in that part of the world at all? They would be exposed at last as frauds.

He gazed at the sacred fragments, smiling to himself. If he proved that they were not from the original cross, in other words that they had not been discovered by Saint Helena and distributed all over the believing world, what would people say? Well, of course they would be outraged by the sacrilege.

Putting his head down on his arms, he told himself sleepily that it didn't matter now. In fact it was liberating, in a way, not to care anymore. Sam closed his eyes and began thinking about the Crucifixion.

It had really happened. There was no doubt about that. It had been a genuine historical incident. The man called Jesus had been convicted and brought to a place of execution and crucified. None of the Gospel writers had seen it, but all of them had described the horrible succession of events as though repeating the account of an eyewitness.

Sam fell asleep imagining the cross itself, a few pieces of timber hammered together and stuck in the ground, leaning to one side until shored up by leftover scraps of lumber, and stained over the years with the blood of many a crucified wretch. Perhaps it was true that there had been not one cross but three, in that place called Golgotha. They had lasted for years, the three crosses, looming objects as familiar to passersby as the gallows at a country crossroad—built to endure and exterminate many a filthy beggar to come.

He was awakened by the loud voice of his mother-in-law, chastising Ursula. A moment later there was a soft knock at the door. When he opened it, his daughter wrapped herself around his waist.

He picked her up and sat down and settled her on his lap. "Papa," she said, leaning against him. "Papa?"

"What is it, little one?"

"What are those things?"

He explained. She listened, then reached out to touch one of the small pieces of wood, but he caught her hand. "No, no, Ursula, you mustn't touch. I promised that no one would handle them but me."