The Bellini Card (12 page)

Popi took the room in the Ghetto. They had lived there together for six months.

Popi had learned then what made the Croat tick. His simple pleasures.

And the seagulls cried in just the same way.

P
ALEWSKI
had scarcely finished his breakfast when the maid introduced a liveried servant, asking if he would care to drink coffee with the Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria.

“What, now?”

The footman bowed. “If it is convenient, signore. The Palazzo d’Aspi is just next door.”

The Ca’ d’Aspi had been built by the contessa’s sixteenth-century forebear, the hero of a naval engagement with the Ottoman fleet who had become very rich importing mastic from the island of Chios. It was a medium-sized palazzo, with five exuberant Gothic windows on each floor and a liberal sprinkling of colored marble embedded, like nuts in nougat, in the façade. It contained a great deal of martial trompe l’oeil decoration, a ceiling by a pupil of Tiepolo and, beyond the grand piano nobile apartments where the contessa entertained, barely a stick of furniture.

The contessa had inherited, along with the palazzo, almost a thousand acres of farmland on the mainland and a Palladian villa near Padua, but the land had not recovered from successive invasions of French and Austrian troops, who slaughtered the livestock and allowed the complex system of dikes and sluices to collapse. The villa lacked a roof.

The footman led Palewski up the stairs into a small vestibule decorated with frescoes of cupids pouring cornucopias of fruit into the laps of languid women.

“I shall inform the contessa of your arrival, Signor Brett.”

He was forestalled by the arrival of the contessa herself, flinging back the door.

Palewski’s first impression was of a Tiepolo sprung to life, Beauty herself, perhaps, descending from her cloud. She was wearing a brown riding skirt, a well-fitted white blouse, and a man’s jacket. Her feet were bare and her hand was on her hip. In her hand she held a foil. She was breathing hard.

“Signor Brett?” She saluted him with the foil and smiled. “Carla d’Aspi d’Istria. How kind of you to come.”

Palewski stammered a greeting.

The contessa was tall and slim shouldered, even in a man’s jacket; her waist was slender. She had the soft complexion of a much younger woman, beneath a heap of long blond curls for which, one summer after another, she had sat on the roof with her hair drenched in lemon juice and a brim to keep the sun off her skin. This morning she wore her hair tied back with a black ribbon, but some stray curls had escaped, and one was plastered damply to her forehead. She looked flushed, and her blue eyes sparkled beneath dark lids. Although her fair hair and blue eyes belonged to the classic canon of Venetian beauty, she had the straight, well-defined nose, and the full upper lip, of a Greek, reminding Palewski of certain lovely women produced by the Phanariots of Istanbul, the old Greek aristocracy. Only her mouth was perhaps too wide: it suggested—well, Palewski wasn’t sure what it suggested. And when she smiled, he thought, it was perfect.

She was smiling now. “Come through, signore. As you see, I was practicing my art. I fence—does it surprise you?”

‘I think everything about you surprises me, madame.”

She laughed. “How so?”

Palewski followed her into the salon. It was a huge, high-ceilinged room with four long windows looking onto the canal and a floor of shimmering colored marble.

“I expected the contessa to be an old lady with a lorgnette and lots of tiny spoons,” Palewski said.

Carla shook her head. “Not the Aspi style at all.” She flicked the point of her foil and held it to his chest. “We die young.”

Palewski took the foil by the button on its tip. “Not fighting, I hope.”

She shrugged and flipped the foil out of his fingers.

She pointed to the far wall, where a display of weapons was ranged above a large canopied fireplace: glinting scimitars cocked like eyebrows, two splayed fans constructed of long old-fashioned muskets, and a triumphal tableau of pikes and spears and small bossed shields. A stout gilded pole rose from the almost baroque array of weaponry, topped by a curious arrangement of three brass balls, one above the other in order of size.

“A Janissary standard!” Palewski exclaimed in surprise.

She looked at him curiously. “We took those in the Peloponnese. An ancestor of mine, who fought with Morosini.”

Palewski nodded absently. Long ago, as a boy, he had spent hours playing with just such weapons in the big house in Cracow: martial souvenirs seized from the Turks at Vienna in 1683.

“Now you have surprised me,” she said. “I didn’t think you would be an expert in Ottoman weaponry, Signor Brett.”

Palewski gave a gesture of demurral. “I’ve been in Istanbul, that’s all,” he replied.

“I was born there,” Carla said.

“Touché, madame,” Palewski said.

Carla cocked her head to one side, regarding him critically. “Do you fence, signore?”

Palewski smiled. “A long time ago.”

“Very good,” she said. She indicated a trolley that held a collection of foils, masks, and plastrons.

“No, no, madame.” Palewski laughed. “I haven’t fought for thirty years. You’d overpower me.”

“You don’t really think that, Signor Brett.”

Palewski blinked: it was another point to the contessa. He didn’t think she would overpower him, but he was less sure now.

“Best of five points, signore. A friendly bout.”

“I—I was never much on foil, madame.”

“Indulge me, Signor Brett. A practice round. Five points. Then we can have coffee.”

Palewski took off his coat and slung it over the trolley. He put on the half plastron, buckled it at the side, and selected a foil.

You are a fool, he told himself. An old fool.

He had the blade in the air before he noticed it had no button on the tip.

The contessa slipped a mask over her head.

Palewski chose another blade, checked the button, and felt its weight. He put on his own mask.

Carla backed from him, left hand up, foil in sixte, her bare right foot pointing forward. She glanced down and tamped her left heel on the marble floor.

She stood motionless, awaiting her opponent.

Palewski went to meet her, and as soon as their foils touched he took his stand.

He acknowledged immediately that he was not in condition. He lacked the suppleness of the younger woman, who was turned at the waist to present him the narrowest target. It had the effect of emphasizing her figure, and Palewski frowned.

He put up his left hand.

In the wrist, he thought: all in the wrist.

“In guardia,”
Carla murmured.

They crossed swords. Palewski made a feint to quarte, Carla parried in sixte, he returned and she counterdisengaged, following the movement with a swift step forward and a simple thrust in quarte.

She stepped back.
“In guardia.”

Palewski compressed his lips. The attack had been a mistake. This time he allowed her to develop it, trusting to his parries and solidifying his defense while he tried to get used to the feel of the sword.

It had been a long time, as he had said.

This time it took her four attempts to touch.

Better. “In guardia.”

The action was all in the wrist, but Carla moved lightly, too, gaining and breaking ground with speed and confidence. Twice Palewski was able to parry a feint to sixte.

He took her lunge to quarte on the hilt and pushed hard: her arm flew up and she sprang away. Palewski heard her laugh.

“So, a hussar!”

Palewski ground his teeth and said nothing.

She opened in octave, made a feint to sixte—her favorite—and then followed it up with a low attack in septime, which Palewski managed—only just—to parry, returning to octave before she parried in octave and took the point of his foil wide.

She made a flèche and won the point.

The bout was hers.

Palewski, with nothing to lose, found himself relaxed. He’d lost, what of it?

“In guardia.”

She opened her attack with the feint to sixte, but this time Palewski was ready for her. He parried with an indirect riposte that went home and struck her chest.

“Touché, madame,” he muttered.

Carla arched her body and eased her hands along her outstretched leg, to the floor.

Palewski put up his foil.

“In guardia.”

Carla’s foil flipped into guard: she stamped and stepped forward with a feint to octave.

Palewski had anticipated the feint—and she had guessed he would. Now she took him by surprise by executing a beat to his blade. With a delicate disengage she placed the point of her foil neatly into the center of Palewski’s chest.

She held the blade there, curved, for a fraction longer.

Then she pulled off her mask, undid the ribbon, and tossed her hair over her shoulders. “Fencing—it’s like conversation, don’t you agree?”

Her blue eyes were full of mischief.

“What did you learn about me, Signor Brett?”

Palewski took a deep breath and nodded. “You didn’t give much away, madame—neither points nor traits.”

“There must be something. Or am I too cold?”

“Cold? I think you’re controlled. Very sure of yourself. A little dangerous maybe—to yourself and others.”

He was looking at the pattern of pink, green, and gray marble laid out on the floor.

“To myself? I’m not sure I understand.”

Palewski looked thoughtful. Most people, he reflected, shy from pain, but he could hardly tell the contessa what he had sensed about her, even if it were true.

“Perhaps if I knew why the d’Aspis die young, madame?”

“Ha!” She considered him in silence for a moment. “As for you, Signor Brett, New York is not where you learned to fence. Or would it be better to say, where you learned to wield a sword?” She paused, long enough to gauge his reaction. “I practice for an hour every day—and you won a point off me. But just now you wanted to fight saber, I’m sure of it.”

Palewski gave a shrug. “I’ve picked up some bad habits. It was a long time ago.”

She ran a fingertip along the line of her cheek. “An American sabreur,” she said thoughtfully. “The War of 1812, perhaps? Cavalry action along the Canadian border.” The irony was inescapable.

Palewski looked down at the floor. “This pattern—you use it, don’t you? To fence.”

He felt her watching him. After a moment she said, “You’re very perceptive, Signor Brett. Yes, I use it: it helps me to concentrate. To keep control, as you put it.”

He nodded. The pattern made an endless knot, woven from four triangles in a square.

“Is it Venetian?”

“You don’t recognize it?”

Palewski shook his head. “It’s very beautiful.”

“Yes.” She rang a bell, for coffee. “And also a grappa, Antonio, for Signor Brett.”

She smiled. “I always imagine that hussars drink grappa—but there, Signor Brett, I’m making you cross.” She half lowered her eyelids. “Forgive me.”

“The hussars—are boors,” he explained. “I hope you don’t find me too boorish.”

She gave a peal of laughter and covered her mouth with her hand. “I was being—complimentary. Don’t the hussars say that they always make the people run—the men away, and the women into their arms?”

Palewski gave a weak smile. “Whatever they say, madame, it was true only of the lancers.”

She gave him an almost tender look. “The lancers.”

“You were telling me about the pattern on the floor,” he said uncomfortably.

“The Sand-Reckoner’s diagram,” Carla said. “It has other names—this one, from Archimedes’ effort to calculate the size of the universe.” She smiled. “Now you know—and here’s your coffee.”

Palewski took the grappa, downed it, and replaced the glass on the tray. He drank the coffee standing, as she did. There was barely a stick of furniture in the salon.

“Barbieri told me you were hunting in Venice for something rare.”

I found you, Palewski thought. Aloud he said, “Yes. I mentioned Bellini, and he laughed at me, just about. Said we’d have to steal it.”

“Steal it? A respectable man like Count Barbieri?”

“It sounded like a joke.”

She gave a wan smile. “I didn’t know the count was capable of a joke where money was involved. But Bellini? I admire your ambition, signore—but I doubt you will succeed.”

“Perhaps not. It was just a rumor. I was acting on impulse.”

“Yes, Signor Brett. That I can believe.”

“You divined as much from my fencing, madame.”

“Perhaps before. It was the way you accepted my challenge. After all, you came here expecting to have coffee with an old lady,” she added with a laugh. “I’m glad you gave me a bout. It was—gallant of you. I hope you will come back. I practice every morning, at this time.”

Palewski bowed.

“But come tonight, as well,” she said, holding out her hand. Palewski brought it to his lips. “Seven o’clock. And Count Barbieri will be here. You never know, signore, he may have stolen you a Bellini already.”