A Man of Genius (19 page)

She had no idea how long she stayed out. The great wind huffed and puffed and promised a deluge, delivered lightning, but in the end paused, hurling only a few large drops on to the dust. She felt the storm still rumbling and lurking nearby but, for the moment, it hid. The stinking smell that had come with the clammy weather, the careless supervising of intricate canals and crumbling outlets, rose up between the buildings and along the waterways. It infiltrated every sack and pocket of unused air in the city. The sewer of the mind sent its filth through the body but was no match for this enveloping and clambering stench.

She couldn't return, not yet. She could cross the Canal again – perhaps to check if her passport had been signed. She knew the answer. But she would go none the less, for where else was there? She needed a purpose.

As she limped down behind San Zaccaria through the delta of narrow
calli
, in the distance she spied a man she was sure was Giancarlo Scrittori, in black mantle. She'd thought he too was out of the city. She must avoid him; he shouldn't see her like this. She could hardly speak to him through a muslin scarf and he'd know she was holding her ribs. She kept her eyes on him, hoping he would soon move away from her path.

But instead he was joined by another, shorter, fair-haired man. He embraced Giancarlo. The Italians were more tactile than the English, less bashful about endearments between men. But this embrace was something different, longer, more intense. She was glad she'd not been recognised. She could savour her envy alone. Then they pulled apart as they were briefly joined by another man. She saw only his back. He was tall, familiar perhaps – or was she eliding
differences in her damaged state? Was everyone except herself and Robert becoming images of each other?

She waited and at last all three moved off, the two shorter men arm-in-arm.

She went on her way, found the consular office closed as she'd expected. Then she loitered where she could before turning back towards the water and the crossing. She must return to the apartment – she had to, this was her life and her cross. The walking had made her mind a little less numb and she was thinking that, if she were not to kill herself or him, they must somehow live without this dreadful conflict.

That she hated him she knew perfectly well. It made no difference.

Best to stay with practicalities. Surely it would be only a few more days before she had her papers. If she didn't find more lodgings in another town before she left, perhaps Robert could simply go somewhere cheaper in Venice. He could ask Signor Balbi, who'd seemed to enjoy his friendship – though it was some time since Robert had mentioned him. But he was hardly speaking to her. Perhaps something out by the Arsenale or Sant'Elena might be found. It was said to be less costly around there. She didn't know how he would pay Signora Scorzeri but . . .

On her mind whizzed, countering hopelessness with hopeless plans, her eyes swelling black and purple underneath the muslin scarf. She even thought she might return with money, for in Paris she could reach Dean & Munday more easily, perhaps send them
Isabella; or, the Secrets of the Convent
which she could finish on the journey at stops on the way.

Yet all the while she could see no future, just a black tunnel which she would enter.

23

I
t was evening. She'd been out from after midday until dusk. She'd had no sleep the night before and little rest today. She'd sat for a while on the step of a humped bridge with no railings like a peasant woman come to town to sell her country wares, suddenly fatigued, impeding the way of more elegant walkers who nudged and almost kicked her as they passed.

Her body ached all over. Not only the damage but the pain of shrinking, of shame. She was wearing away, her ribs sticking out uncomfortably. There was a flatness, almost concave quality, to a belly where she'd once been perhaps plump, if not full. She knew the thinness for what it was – as a woman knew her state when in the first stages of pregnancy her body filled out just a little, but not enough for others to see or pry. A mind could do this. A mind impaired by lack of sleep.

She had to go back, she said to herself again. If she stayed out she would need to eat and she had little money with her. If she'd had more, she could perhaps stay a night in an inn and try to think. Maybe order a gondola to take her out on the lagoon and let her sit there. Or go to the Lido and . . . But for any move, anything at all, she needed to go back for money, for some things. She feared what she would see when she returned. But what worse could happen? What else
could
happen?

Well, she knew exactly. He could conclude the farce.

She crept in. She would get her money from the bag under the bed, then she would do what she would do – whatever it was.

As she mounted painfully to the top, she heard the Frenchmen going out of their apartment. They must have returned while she was out. They were speaking quietly and stifling laughs as they went down the steps and opened the outside door. She didn't hear it bang after them. Perhaps they were careless, as young men could be.

She reached the apartment and opened the door, leaving it ajar to let in some air. In the sitting room silence engulfed her.

There was no snoring from the bedroom or the little study, so Robert was not asleep; no moving, no breaking of things, no throwing of crockery or wooden bowls or books, nothing to suggest that other objects within the world beyond her body could staunch his anger. Nothing.

He could not be here. Her heart jumped. She could have a few minutes alone, perhaps hours. She could work out what to do in peace. And when he returned she would be gone or she would fake sleep and he would leave her be.

As her mind settled, she noted signs of him in the sitting room despite his absence. A chair was tottering against another as if he'd pushed it roughly out of his way while he moved from his study. He must have gone out and still not be back. But his Swiss gold watch lay on the table beside some breadcrumbs and a hungry procession of ants. His winter greatcoat, so little needed these broiling months, was on the floor. There'd never been anywhere to hang it properly, so there was nothing strange in that. She picked it up automatically, righted the chair and draped the coat over its back. She looked at the watch again. Why was it there?

The door of the study was closed and no light came through the crack. She could peep through as she often did but she would not invade his space. As she determined this, her fury rose. Was she of so very little account, so very contemptible that she didn't even dare to touch the man, to press open his door?

Through the crack she could see nothing. A new unpleasant smell, beyond unemptied chamber pots, assaulted her nose.

She pushed tentatively at the door and looked in.

He was hanging there with the girdle from his morning gown tied round the high ceiling beam. The face was towards her. It was mottled red, the tongue turned some terrible colour and sticking out. There was blood, dark blood, on the hands and on his shirt. The expression exaggerated what she'd seen before, the grimace, the devil, her devil. The breeches dirty.

On the floor by some broken quills, scattered as if thrown down rather than falling, she saw the knife they used for chopping fruit when they ate in their sitting room. It was covered in blood. She moved towards it, picked it up, looked at it briefly, unseeing, then brushed it against her light dress so that it was stained by the darkening blood. The knife was still dirty.

She laid it back down on the floor. Her hands were sticky. She was aware but did nothing to clean them. There was nothing clean on which to clean them.

Her eyes roamed away from the hanging thing but could not fix. Her throat was filled with phlegm. She squeezed it to stop herself from vomiting. She blinked several times. She was so very tired. Was this a nightmare? Would she wake?

Then her eyes found the papers on the floor, an oddly limp pile, some scattered, one caught on the high-backed chair, itself tumbled over. She picked up one sheet from the floor and looked at it. There was writing on it. It had been written by the living hand, the one that still kept its blood inside.

She stared at the words. Robert had written his name over and over again in capitals.

Her name, her name, must be there. It must be. Was she not part of him? But she looked down the page and on the other scattered sheets on the floor, now desperately. She was not there.

He has done this thing to get away from me, she said aloud. From me.

Her eyes swivelled to the stack of limp papers which she assumed had formed his book, his work, what he had written before the sun seemed to sear his brain and stop the flow. They were wet. That's
why they looked limp. A smell rose from them and assaulted her nose. She became aware of it. He had pissed on the pages.

He had stood there drunk on wine perhaps or fuddled with laudanum or whatever he had picked up in Venice to take him out of his right mind. Yes, she could see it. He had fumbled with the buttons on his breeches. Then he had pissed on his life's labour. She could as well hear the splash.

She went back into the sitting room. The door to the apartment was still open. She left it so and sat down.

A Voyage Home

24

R
obert was there. But not there. Present as he always was, bony but bulbous, now filthy, obscene, overpowering, powerless. Dripping and trickling.

She felt no conscious shock though her cheeks were wet as well as red and bruised.

She did not cut him down. She could not. Outside, the summer storm was rising again. That was why it was so very hot, so oppressive. It was about to thunder. This time it would rain as well.

Then Aksel Jakobsen was there.

‘I was passing,' he said.

How could he be?

‘I saw Signor James on the
fondamenta
not long ago. He was walking strangely. He seemed giddy, I thought he would fall into the canal, so I followed a little. Then I went off and returned, perhaps to be of help. I saw you enter. You screamed.'

‘I have not screamed. It's the wind outside, a storm is coming back.'

She was speaking lucidly. She could hear herself at a distance. So how had she not heard a scream, if there'd been one?

‘His wrists are slashed as well and his breast, there's blood. He must have tried other ways. Look, the kitchen knife on the floor. He bungled it, he failed. He did too much. He always does too much . . .' She was shaking as she babbled. The door to the study was ajar. Anyone could see inside.

‘Be quiet please,' said Aksel Jakobsen.

She could understand neither this man's words nor his tone.

‘Signora Scorzeri, she's out now but she will return. She comes back late from visiting her sister, with Rosa. She will think I did it or helped him do it. She will. I will be the murderess. She has heard things. She will know.' Her teeth rattled, as if they were someone else's, loud and metallic.

‘Know what, Ann?' Aksel Jakobsen asked. She heard him, heard him use her Christian name, so familiar, as if they were old friends or kin. But they were neither.

What was happening? What was he doing in the room?

‘Know it was I. She will know. She will think we quarrelled, then I stabbed him and strung him up to make it look different. She will think so.'

‘But you did not. Remember it. Whatever Robert James believed, thinking and doing are distinct. You did not do this. You are too weak.'

Again this naming. What was happening? What was she hearing? Why was this man so familiar with her?

Neither of them moved to cut the body down, to clear up the mess, to staunch the smell, to move the knife.

How did Aksel Jakobsen know what had happened? How did she? She looked back into the sitting room and saw Robert's gold watch still on the table. He'd taken it off to make the cuts on his wrist after he'd tried to stab himself. She could see his actions. She put her hand to her mouth to stop a cry.

‘You are right. It looks bad for you. Venetians love a scandal. You are a foreign woman, both of you connected with the Savelli. They are not popular with the Austrians. There'd be no appeal to passion or provocation. The
bocche del Leone
are abolished but there are other ways.'

There were no real flowing tears despite wetness on her cheeks. Why, when they were right and proper, were there no tears? How could it be?

‘What shall I do?'

Dazed, she looked at Aksel Jakobsen. He was much taller than she was. She registered mainly that fact. Also older.

‘Leave,' he said, ‘leave now.'

‘I was going to . . . I had prepared.'

‘I know. Your mother.' He paused only momentarily. ‘Come, I will accompany you. It is time I left this town. I must return home. It does not suit here.'

‘You? Why?'

‘A whim,' he said. ‘Come now.'

‘But people will ask after him. He had a friend, Signor Balbi, a traveller, even the Count Savelli . . .'

‘Nobody will miss him at once or care for long, except perhaps the Jews in the ghetto who lent him money.'

Too much to take in.

Aksel Jakobsen went on, allowing no time for response, ‘The Savelli will not grieve. The Contessa will be relieved. Only the authorities matter. Signor Scrittori will try to take care of them. He helps the Savelli. He is, I think, your supporter. He has influence with the foreigners. Come.'

She was too dazed for surprise. How did he know Giancarlo Scrittori, any of her life? Debts to Jews? Still, she registered that he mentioned no other woman. How pitiable . . . But no time for further thought.

The body was still – not swinging, just dripping its horrid waste, its appalling filth.

She shook her head. It hurt. But the action disturbed her mounting fear. ‘We must take him down, we must . . .'

She wouldn't look at the face, it would be red, yellow, white, dreadful. She'd imagined it many times, but never quite this – many times dead, but not ghastly. ‘Dead' had just been a word.

‘There's no time.'

‘I can't go.'

‘You can.' He spoke urgently or roughly, she couldn't judge. ‘Leave him. It will be some proof to those who cut him down.'

He said ‘him'. But there was no ‘him', just ‘it', ‘it'.

She looked below the face in the dim light. Something, a ray from the half-shuttered window, shone on the knots. ‘There are so many knots in the cord he tied. Why so many?'

Aksel Jakobsen allowed no irritation in his voice. ‘It pushes the head forward to make it snap. But the drop was not enough for any snap. The neck could not break. By then he was dying.'

While he spoke he was collecting together the clothes he thought useful from the sitting room and the bedchamber, a worn jacket of indeterminate colour, a faded blue scarf, a thin patterned shift, but not the heavy shawl he saw lying on the floor sodden with waste that had seeped from the body.

‘Get your bag, your things, papers. Anything. Quick. And wipe your hands.'

He had become so thin. Why the blood, why so much blood? Did he want the knife to work? Had it almost worked? That old blunt knife. Did he want her to be blamed? Was she so important to him after all? A kindness to implicate her or a final cruelty?

Mechanically, she walked to the bedchamber, knelt down and dragged a bundle from under the bed. The few things she'd planned to take to Paris. Then she fished out her hemp bag from further back. It held the little money she'd hoarded.

As she tugged at the bag, some of her writings tumbled out. ‘Isabella approached the horror with pale trembling fingers,' she couldn't avoid seeing. She tried to look away, but it was painful to swivel her eyes.

She crumpled the papers with the clothes and stuffed them into the hemp bag along with the money. She handed it to Aksel Jakobsen, who put in what he'd collected. He'd not said a word about her bruised face, though the muslin scarf had slipped.

She must go back into the study. She must force herself. She had to get one of the old passports which might still be with Robert in his writing desk. As she entered, again she registered the fallen high-backed chair. He had sat in it to write, using her old shawl as cushion. Or rather he had sat, got up, sat, then stood on it.

‘The chair fell over. Maybe he did not intend to succeed. It was just a message. Maybe for me.'

‘He would have kicked it,' said Aksel Jakobsen, who'd stepped into the room behind her. ‘He need not have kicked. Hurry and be quiet please. Or it will be too late.'

‘The smell. Why so . . .?'

‘Of course there is smell, look at his breeches.'

Tears welled up. ‘He would have hated this. He would not have wanted . . .'

Or did he know?

‘The wrists and breast failed, the hanging worked in the end. So he died in filth, but it would not have been quick,' said Aksel Jakobsen. He had said this before. She heard no expression in his level voice, only the words so clear, so measured, so cruel. ‘Who does not die so? I said, hurry!'

‘My papers, a passport.' But she could not approach the desk.

Aksel Jakobsen saw her flinch and hold back. Gently he guided her arm towards the desk. She need not touch the body. ‘You must. Any papers, even old ones, might be useful.'

Her hands trembled as she fumbled with the drawer. It was not locked but was hard to open. He saw what she was about and pulled it out for her. It stuck halfway but it was enough. She grabbed the old documents. Some unstamped were in her maiden name, some stamped in her ‘married', all false to the woman she now was.

She saw one underneath: in the name of Peter O'Neil. It stirred a vague memory. It had been carried here and must have been used somewhere or intended for use. This was no time to look further at what country it was for or where it might have served.

Aksel Jakobsen glanced at it. But Robert's past life could have no meaning for him.

He held open her bag as she stuffed into it all the documents that related to her. Robert's canvas satchel lay nearby. It would have been more sensible to take it since it was roomier. But that was impossible. She left the drawer as it was, half open. Then she skirted the body again and went back into the sitting room. She wiped her hands on a cloth sagging from the table. She grabbed the gold watch and pushed it down the side of her bag.

With no further look at the body, the rooms or their trunks, she followed Aksel Jakobsen through the door, out of the apartment and down the uneven, always damp stairs. Signora Scorzeri and little Rosa were still away visiting, the happy Frenchmen were out. Somewhere
in this or the next building she heard a girl lulling a whimpering baby.

Aksel Jakobsen propelled her over the wooden bridges towards Le Zitelle. Her ribs ached when she had to go fast. She'd almost forgotten the look of her ravaged face. Of course it hurt. But her body had been, for these past minutes, quite quiet. Clouds were scudding across the sky.

‘Wait,' he said as he went inside a scabbed, once yellow building behind the church. ‘Stay there.' He handed her the hemp bag. ‘Hold it over your stained clothes.'

She stood and watched the gulls behind a boat spilling rubbish.

Aksel Jakobsen returned with his own stout leather bag and a cloak, though there was no need of such a garment in these sweltering days. He also had a heavy tarpaulin, more useful since surely soon the wind would bring the rain so long promised. It would be a torrent. How was he ready so speedily? Did he know what would happen?

A question flashed through her mind – attached to no purpose or consequence: had he been there when it happened? Had he played a part? Had he . . .? Her mind raced wildly. What had this man to do with it all? If nothing, how did he know she was not guilty? How had she become ‘Ann'? The naming had been inadvertent, she was sure. It was unusual to use a Christian name so easily, especially between a man and a woman. What was he to her?

There was no time to untangle the threads. A numbness was invading her thoughts even as they dashed along. Her body, once quiet, was now desperate to shout while she kept her mouth tight shut.

She concentrated on her legs, making them move, further and further away from the apartment with its ghastly tenant.

That was all Aksel Jakobsen demanded of her. She must do what he wanted. He was in control and should be. She had no need to tell him of her still painful ribs or any other ailment. She put one finger to her face and felt the bulges under her eyes. Perhaps they would never settle. She would always address the world with bruises. And with the bloodstain on her hands.

‘We will go to the
squero
in San Trovaso. There are men there who hire fast boats and ask no questions. We cannot use gondoliers. We must hurry. Hold your bag higher.'

They were rowed away by boatmen who'd been lolling on the
fondamenta
in the twilight eager to avoid passengers until they saw what Aksel Jakobsen was offering. On the way, without especially looking at her, he whispered, ‘I pass as Signor Stamer, Aksel Stamer. That is my name. Remember it.'

They found the place in San Trovaso and the men who asked no questions and were paid handsomely for their silence. For a special price they would even try to ride the storm at night. It had not yet come in its full force.

They would take their passengers to Mestre or if possible to one of the swampy hamlets further south that served Venice. Aksel Stamer knew he could hire a carriage there. It was best to avoid places where people were well fed and curious.

‘Put the scarf round your head, cover your face.'

Why? she wondered. To help the bruises and the swelling – or because the sight irritated him. Or was it to prevent her being recognised – by herself or with him? But there could be no hue and cry yet. It was impossible. And it was dark or almost so. A single fisherman slouched over a rod on a small wooden jetty. He did not look up as the boat set off.

She wrapped the scarf round her face and head leaving enough of her eyes free to see, then held it tightly at her neck. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands and bit her lip to divert attention from the scenes passing through her head. But they remained as clear as ever, far clearer than anything her eyes could see outside. Her now bulky hemp bag was slung round her like a peasant's bundle, masking the stain on her clothes.

‘They will expect us to go north at once. So we are going across and down. We will take passage as soon as we can and leave Italy.'

‘They? You mean they will come after me, look for me especially?'

‘Of course. They love entertainment in Venice.'

They caught the high water and went towards the mainland on a tide, two men rowing. Salt water splashed her eyes though she sat in the cabin. The cheap ring on her hand had always been loose. She pulled it off now, leaned painfully from the cabin and threw it into the water.

They arrived in Mestre just as the storm struck, confusing water, land and sky. They could go no further south. It was no matter, for it was now dark. Beating rain sent people scurrying into doorways. Even the water rats abandoned a dead dog for their damp holes.

It was immense, overpowering. Ann and Aksel Stamer huddled together under his tarpaulin beneath the overhanging roof of an inn, closed like most places against the summer weather of stagnant heat and violent tempests.