Stone Virgin (36 page)

‘I want you to go back with me,’ she said. ‘You know, to help me to explain what happened, why I couldn’t go back last night. He would have been waiting for the boat, you see, but of course it was too dangerous.’

He looked at her in surprise. Her face was pale and bore the defenceless, unprepared look of early morning. While he watched she passed her right hand slowly down her left arm from shoulder to wrist in the curiously narcissistic gesture he remembered, self-protecting and self-loving. It came to him that she was frightened of Litsov.

‘But you phoned,’ he said. ‘You phoned from Burano. He knew you weren’t coming back.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is so, of course, but it will help if you come with me. Please, Simon.’

‘I don’t mind,’ he said, ‘if that is what you want.’

‘I can meet you in an hour – less.’

‘It won’t take that long to pay the bill, will it?’

‘I paid the bill last night. Since I had no luggage, it seemed better. No, I am going to have breakfast here.’

For some reason Raikes was completely taken aback by this. He stared at her without speaking.

‘That is the normal thing to do,’ she said, almost primly. ‘In this situation one must do what is normal.’

Was this the burning creature of the night?

‘I’ll wait for you outside, then,’ he said.

‘Well, not quite, perhaps. Wait at the entrance to the Ospedale. It’s just round the corner. No, just a moment. You’d better go back to your apartment first. Have your coffee there, as usual. I’ll telephone you later. You must go now, please.’

To his enormous relief reception desk and lobby were deserted. He heard a clatter of dishes from the dining room but as far as he could tell no one saw him leave. Dishevelled, strangely demoralized, he stepped out into the opal light of morning.

It was not until he was back in his apartment, sitting with his coffee, that he remembered the letter. It was still there in his inside pocket. The single sheet of notepaper had been folded twice. Slowly, almost absent-mindedly, he smoothed it out and began to read Chiara’s large, angular writing. She had not bothered to translate the formal opening:

All’Illustrissimo Signor Conte Maffeo di Rovereto
.

Fear not any displeasure on my part or from the Council in response to your intercessions. In my eyes and theirs it stands to your credit and to the credit of your noble name that you should express thus your sense of the obligations all of us owe to those who in any way depend on us. In this you show your right feeling and the dues imposed on all who are inscribed in the Rolls, and these moreover are dues which keep together the fabric of our State and preserve the Signoria. Moreover I well understand the feelings of your lady wife and her sympathy with any from her native place. Know that the Bernardoni family stands high with us and we would do much to mark this respect.

However in this matter I am powerless to help. The Council view the case with severity. What you say concerning the character of the girl is true and should act in some mitigation but the Council take the view that this is becoming too prevalent now, this disregard for life among the people, and so there is need for exemplary punishments. Therefore I can do nothing in this matter though wishful to please you in all ways in my power.

Believe me to be, Illustrissimo Signor Conte, now and always at your service.

Federico Fornarini

Raikes sat for some time puzzling over this, obscurely disappointed – in spite of Chiara’s words he had been expecting something more obviously significant. The letter was dated 19th October 1432 and had clearly been written in reply to some request for favour, probably a plea for the girl, who seemed to be mixed up in some crime or other, perhaps murder.

He looked again at the names: di Rovereto, Bernardoni. They meant nothing at all to him. Suddenly he remembered Wiseman, that cherubic knowledge about the patrician families of Venice the day they had lunched together in the sunshine on the Riva degli Schiavoni – it seemed half a lifetime ago now, his meeting with Chiara had distanced all else before. It was not nine o’clock yet: possibly Wiseman would not have left for his office.

He went quickly downstairs to the telephone, feeling a certain frailty along the insides of his thighs as he did so, reminder of the night past. He found the number in his diary, dialled hastily and was relieved to hear Wiseman’s gentle, equable voice at the other end.

‘Di Rovereto, Bernardoni … No, I can’t tell you off-hand, dear boy. Not very important families, I fancy. The first sounds Venetian. I can find out of course. No trouble at all. Leave it to uncle Alex.’

Chiara’s call came at half-past nine. They met on the Fondamenta Nuova at the Burano boat stage. During the trip back they stood close together, not speaking much. Her face was very pale. He put his arm round her shouders and felt the tension in her body. She would not be looking forward to facing Litsov; he was not looking forward to it himself.

The boat lay as they had left it, hull wet with the deposits of the mist. This was thinning now, yielding place to sunlight, as they nosed out of the little harbour and turned eastwards, the great tower of Torcello on their left, rising clear into a softly livid sky.

It was a journey that was becoming familiar to Raikes. As they drew near to the island, he noted again, in spite of his nervousness, the silvering of light on the meshes of fish traps staked in the distant shallows, the gleams of broken water beyond, where sandbanks lay just below the surface. Over all the scene, to Raikes’s view at least, there lay a sort of moving, shimmering presence, as if some being of immortal lightness and inscrutable purpose were moving over the water, displacing the mist here and there, admitting the sun in arbitrary patches, sudden transforming glitters of light.

Crouched on the little wooden jetty, helping to tie up the boat, he noticed fronds of dark-green seaweed groping in the shallow water. Small crabs moved languidly against the black moss at the foot of the wall.

Silence lay over the house as they approached. The door was unlocked. As they walked down the passage Chiara called her husband’s name, twice, but there was no reply. ‘He’ll be working, I expect,’ she said. ‘I’ll go over to the studio. You wait here.’

When she had gone, Raikes stood for a moment or two in the passage. Then he opened the door on to the main living room and passed inside. The curtains were still drawn in here. There was an oil lamp on the table, still burning, though the flame was flickering, almost spent. In this light, and the daylight filtering through the curtains, the bronze sculptures emitted shifting gleams, as if uncertainly signalling. A faint smell of paraffin hung on the air.

He had blown the flame out and was moving to draw the curtains when he heard her quick steps in the passage. He turned and saw her framed in the doorway. ‘He forgot to put the lamp out,’ he said.

‘He’s not there,’ Chiara said. ‘He’s nowhere in the house at all.’

She made no move to come further into the room. Raikes hesitated for some moments. ‘He must be somewhere,’ he said. He had the feeling that she was waiting for him, that she did not want to be alone any longer. ‘Of course he might have got a boat somehow,’ he said. ‘Last night, I mean, later on. Must have been quite a bit later, well after dark, anyway. He could have phoned someone he knows.’

‘Litsov doesn’t like telephones,’ she said. ‘Still, if he was really determined to go …’

‘Funny he should have left the lamp on. We’d better have a look round the island, I think – he may still be here somewhere.’

But there was so sign of Litsov anywhere. He was not among the pine trees, nor the tangle of shrubs and bushes, nor the old foundations and ruined walls of former houses that led down to the shore on the north side of the island.

They covered the ground together, Chiara several times calling Litsov’s name. ‘Something is wrong,’ she said, and he noticed that she had begun trembling. ‘If he had gone to Mestre, he would have left a note.’

‘But if he was angry with you?’

‘All the more reason. I know him. He would have wanted to show me that he didn’t need me, that he had gone in spite of me.’

‘Well, he is not here,’ Raikes said, rather helplessly.

Nevertheless they began again, picking their way among low walls grown over with briony and ivy, scrambling through hollows where the old foundations had subsided, poking into thickets clogged with the bleached debris of old tides.

‘Do you think he could be hiding somewhere, deliberately not answering?’ Raikes said, as they once more emerged on to the rocks of the foreshore.

‘As a game you mean? No, he is not like that.’

Patches of mist still hung above the surface of the water, shot through with sunlight. Some disturbance must have occurred out in the Lagoon, though they heard and saw nothing, perhaps the passage of a large boat: it had its faint aftermath here, small eddies and ripples among the stones of the shore, a whole series of kissing, lapping noises. Some few feet out from the edge a dark mass of kelp simmered very slowly, occasionally breaking the surface into shivers of light. Beyond this, in deeper water, were a few leaning, half-rotted stakes – markers for a navigation channel long disused. Moss glistened dark emerald on them where the falling tide exposed it.

There were a number of largish boulders on the shore and for no particular reason Raikes scrambled up on to one. Had he not done so he would probably have noticed nothing until the water was lower. Now, however, at first casually, then with increasing attention, he found himself looking from this eminence at a small glimmering shape out there among the dilapidated stakes, something that reflected the misty sunlight striking the surface of the water. With a distinct feeling of absurdity Raikes sat down on the rock and began to take his shoes and socks off.

‘What are you doing?’ Chiara said.

‘There is something …’ Raikes said vaguely. He began to wade out, stepping gingerly through the thin ooze of mud and the squirming seaweed. As he approached the stakes the water rose above his knees, soaking his rolled-up trouser bottoms. By this time he knew what he was going to find.

Litsov’s body lay submerged in two feet of water. He was trapped among the stakes, looking up at the light that broke through on to his face – only a few inches separated his slightly open mouth from the air. He was puffy-looking, but he had a certain nobility, staring up, the long hair lifting round his head. The jacket of his suit was still buttoned, the tie still neatly knotted. Even the blue handkerchief in his breast pocket was still in place. Only his left sleeve, riding up his arm a little, detracted from the smartness of his turn-out.

There was time, in this terrible exchange of glances, for Raikes to remember the other face gazed at through clear water, time for him to feel the strangeness of the coincidence. Then he had taken Litsov by his sodden shoulders, raised him clear, begun to drag him towards the shore. Unsure of his footing, he stumbled and floundered, ducking the drowned man yet again. As he heaved Litsov out on to the shore, the splash and scrape of the heavy body, his own groaning breath, Chiara’s sounds of distress, all merged and became indistinguishable.

He did not yet look at her. Doggedly, knowing it was hopeless, he worked to revive Litsov. He noticed a deep gash, washed livid, on the drowned man’s forehead, above the staring right eye.

Behind him he could hear her crying. ‘
Non avrei dovuto lasciarlo
,’ she said, over and over again. ‘
Non avrei dovuto lasciarlo
.’

‘
Non era colpa tua
,’ he said. He got up from Litsov and went to her. ‘You couldn’t have known,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘
Il dottore mi aveva avvertito
. Vittorini told me to watch for signs of an attack.’

‘Attack?’ he said. ‘Did you say Vittorini?’

She raised a face from which all trace of colour had gone. ‘I told you Litsov was an invalid,’ she said. ‘He was an epileptic.’

4

THE SHOCK OF
this was still in his mind while they waited for the police, remained during the days that followed, softening gradually to a sense of irreconcilable elements, some obscure failure of logic or natural correspondence. As he continued to work on the Madonna, he sought for something, some link which might explain this feeling of discrepancy. Possibly, of course, it was no more than an instinctive repudiation on his part of any too close parallel between himself and the dead man. Litsov, it seemed, had been an epileptic. This was what he, Raikes, was too, or so Chiara had stated, while they drank brandy in the kitchen and he tried to dry his clothes and tried not to think of Litsov reclining in sodden state on the shingle. His own attacks were milder – Litsov had sometimes fallen down and lost consciousness – though attacks could get more severe, she had said, dry-eyed and firmer-voiced now, after the brandy, though her hands were shaking still. Especially if, like Litsov, one omitted to take the pills regularly. Raikes had not told her that he had not yet taken any pills at all. Vittorini had prescribed phenobarbitone for them both, he had been dismayed to discover.

‘They don’t use the term so much nowadays,’ Chiara had said, pausing and breathing deeply with a visible effort of control. ‘I thought it was that when you told me about those things, those visions of yours. But after what Vittorini said to you I’m sure of it.’

The same, self-protective obstinacy he had displayed before the doctor made him doubtful of this; but he had admired her courage, the reserves of fortitude that enabled her to bear up in this way, after such hideous events, that floundering recovery of her husband’s body from the sea, the useless attempts at revival.

He was working on the Madonna’s face now, area of utmost delicacy and danger. In spite of his now considerable experience with the quartz-cutter, he was still afraid of making some false move that would damage her irreparably; there might be room for error in the draperies, there was certainly none in the face. The mouth bothered him a good deal: there were encrustations of diseased stone between the lips and in the slight concavity above them; leprous deposits which had thickened and coarsened the whole mouth, totally obscuring its expression. He was working now, with utmost care and concentration, on the lower lip.