The Art of Waiting (7 page)

‘You forget? Are there really so many . . . possibilities?'

‘I suppose there must be.' She laughed and raised her hand to her mouth in mock embarrassment. ‘It could be my husband, of course, although it would be difficult not to recognise his style. Or Pierino, or Vincenzo, or Alberto, or . . . what was his name? The Spanish one . . . I can't remember. I think he only came here once in the end. Such a shame.'

‘You're joking with me.'

‘Why would I be joking?' Her voice had lost a little of its playfulness. ‘Aldo, did you really think you were the only one? Do you think a married woman who brings someone she hardly knows to her room and pulls him into bed barely before asking his name isn't likely to have done the same thing before, probably many, many times?'

‘I hadn't really thought . . .'

‘Poor Tintoretto. You don't think much, do you? Did you think it was something more than that? Did you really think it could have anything to do with, I don't know, feelings, any of that old romantic stuff?'

‘No, but I thought perhaps you liked me.'

‘I do like you, you're very pleasant company, but that's not important. I do the same with people I don't like. I just wouldn't waste my time talking to them afterwards.'

‘But you must like them. At least a bit?'

‘Why? Are those the rules? They're not the ones I live by. You can't like everyone, Aldo. In a lot of them there's nothing much to like. They serve my purposes, then they go.'

‘And aren't you worried your husband will get to know?'

‘What makes you think he doesn't know already? And I know for a fact he does the same. He says he has to go to Rome on business, but half the time I'm sure he's tucked up with some little whore in Trastevere. He doesn't get away as much now as he used to, with the war and all that, but I'm sure he still takes every opportunity he gets.'

‘What's the point of it all, then?'

‘The point?'

‘In you being together.'

‘I don't know. There's no point, I suppose. It's certainly not love, that's for sure. In fact, I'll tell you a little secret. Remember when you were a kid and at Christmas you believed in
la befana
, and you were so sure she existed because you found the presents she left for you at the bottom of your bed? And then remember how you felt when you found out none of it was true, that it was all one big lie? Well, here's a truth for you, Aldo – love's just the same.'

‘What about the presents, though? They were there. Does it really matter if they weren't from the person you thought they were from?'

‘Of course it does. The present isn't really the thing. What they're really giving you is a piece of themselves. So of course it matters who's giving it.'

‘Strange you should say that. You don't seem too fussy who the gifts are from.'

‘Well, they're not really giving anything, are they? Why should I worry who I get nothing from? It all adds up to nothing.' She snapped her fingers. ‘Just like love, a fairytale, nothing more. We go for a walk in the woods, Aldo, and we find a house made from sweetness and cake, sunlight and air, and we can't believe our luck and we get carried away and eat so much of the walls that it makes us sick, and then the walls collapse because we've eaten them all away and we realise it was never really a house at all. Love doesn't exist, Aldo, believe me. It's just something people invent to describe feelings they can't put into any other category.'

‘Maybe that's what makes it love? It can't be described as anything else.'

‘Too clever by half. It's much simpler than that – it simply doesn't exist.'

‘Maybe that's because you don't want it to?'

‘You're right, I don't.'

‘But if you gave it a chance . . .'

‘Why should I give it a chance? I prefer life without it.'

‘But if you prefer life without it, you must have felt it once, I mean, to make the comparison, to know you prefer to be without it.'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘But it makes sense, you must have . . .'

‘Aldo, you know sometimes you can search so hard for an answer, and then you realise it just isn't there, that there is no answer, that nothing makes sense. Nothing makes sense, Aldo, nothing makes sense. Remember that, and you'll always be all right.' She stretched herself across him again. ‘So shall we try that position again? Or do you want me to show you a better one?'

It was late, nearly nine, when night became day and Aldo woke for the first time in his life in unfamiliar surroundings. Isabella's room was very different in daylight. The autumn sun lit up the room and the voices of the delivery men in the canal echoed up from below. Aldo could still sense Isabella's presence, the hint of her scent, but when he turned to her the bed was empty. He slowed his breathing and listened. The house was quiet. He had to leave straight away – Antonio would have been waiting for him at the boatyard since eight – but he was suddenly anxious as to who or what he would find on his way out. He got up and slipped on his clothes. He thought about leaving a note but could not think what to write. He picked up his boots and crept out of the room, down the passageway and onto the landing. The doors were all firmly closed. He leant closer to the one that had lain ajar the night before. He heard breathing, a sigh, and then a man's voice speaking in low insistent tones. He was just about to turn away when he heard another sound – a woman laughing. Or was it a sob? His hand moved towards the handle of the door, but then he withdrew and moved off down the stairs. The chandelier hung motionless and mute as Aldo passed beneath the
disapproving gaze of the portraits and down into the hall. It was only then that he remembered the gondola. He could not risk taking it out onto the canals in daylight, and he certainly couldn't take it back to the yard while Antonio was there. He would leave it where it was and come back for it later. He let himself out of the front door and into a small courtyard, wisteria climbing the walls, and walked quickly towards the arch that led into Calle degli Specchieri.

As he was about to disappear from view, something made him turn and look up. A figure was standing by a window, just far enough back for the face to be hidden from the light. Aldo turned quickly away and passed out of sight, troubled thoughts flocking around him as he waded through the pigeons on Piazza San Marco. Then a black dog snapped through the winged throng, sending the birds up into the air in a flurry of white feathers, and the white feathers floated down on Aldo like an early dusting of snow as he made his way towards Dorsoduro, Casa Luca and the boatyard.

When he got there, Antonio was in a rage. ‘Some fucker stole one of the gondolas last night. That damned Giuseppe, I bet.'

‘Giuseppe?' said Aldo. ‘Yes, I wouldn't be surprised. Not exactly trustworthy. What on earth was he thinking?'

‘Aldo, just you wait till I get my hands on the bastard! Just you wait and see!'

Aldo gulped, then went off to the kitchen to make Antonio his coffee.

Casa Luca

Venice, autumn 1941

Casa Luca lay just a short distance off the beaten track, only a street or two back into Dorsoduro from the bridge at Accademia, but it had never attracted the hordes of tourists who streamed over the Ponte di Rialto and in and out of the bars and restaurants along the Riva del Vin. This had never bothered Luca Gardini very much – those who valued simple Venetian cooking at sensible prices knew where to find him. Rich tourists and celebrities, having lost themselves in the backstreets on their way to the hotels and restaurants around San Marco, would sometimes glance by chance through the door, stare for a moment, mutter something incomprehensible and depart. Luca could tell by the tone of their voices, even if he did not understand their myriad languages, that they would instantly forget the dim little trattoria that had confused and perhaps offended their refined and delicate senses with its multitude of unfamiliar stimuli. A peculiarly fragrant sawdust spread out across the floorboards, collecting in great drifts in the backwaters of the floor, mingling with the detritus of discarded crusts of bread, empty mussel shells, fish heads, and the occasional bone from one of the wild ducks that thrived among the reedbeds of the lagoon. For years the sawdust had been fighting a losing battle against the steady tide of wine that fell from careless lips or was brushed by rough hands from the stained old bar top on which elbows, heavy with work, rested a while as their owners engaged in animated conversation about the progress – or otherwise – of the war, the elevated price of eels, mullet, and bream, the diminishing wildfowl in the marshes around Torcello, or the problem of sediment building up, as ever, in the less
frequented canals. Or perhaps they would simply prop themselves up and contemplate the coarse rosy-coloured wine, reminiscent of diluted blood, in their squat flat-bottomed glasses, rows of which Luca kept, like transparent headstones, on precarious shelves upon the facing wall.

Lunchtimes were always the most animated. Sometime after midday, the workers from the markets near the Ponte di Rialto cleared up for the day and made their way along the narrow alleys, sometimes bringing in old bags the fish they wanted Luca to prepare for them. There was no formal menu, just a hastily scribbled list of possibilities that was passed around the room as more hungry men arrived. As each dish ran out, it was crossed through until only one or two of the least popular choices remained for the late arrivals, perhaps meatballs in sauce or veal cutlet done in the Milanese style. And there was no price list at Casa Luca either. Unless you were a particular glutton, you paid the same as everyone else. Each meal would start with a dark green bottle of house wine, whether you wanted it or not, brought to the table freshly filled from the barrels in the back, and the customers would then choose from the handwritten list.

‘You want that, do you?' Luca would say. ‘Sorry. We haven't got it. Choose something else.'

‘But it's on the list.'

‘Yes, I know, but the list is wrong. The meatballs are very good today, though. Have those.'

‘Hey, Luca, what does this say here?' someone else would enquire, indicating something indecipherable on the little notepad.

Luca would take a look. ‘I don't know. I can't read that.'

‘But Luca, you wrote it.'

‘Yes, well, it's probably finished anyway.' And he would strike it through with a decisive flourish of his pen. ‘But the veal's great. Have some of that.'

‘Hey, Luca,' another voice, hoarse with cold and smoke, might call out from some dark corner of the room. ‘Can you stick this in a pan for me?'

And Luca would take the fish from the man and take it into the kitchen where his wife, Maria, would cut off the head and the fins and shovel out the guts and fry it up, and the man would be charged an especially insignificant sum, and the next time he came he might bring half a dozen fish and eat two and leave the rest to be added to what passed for a menu.

Luca would drift between the tables, or busy himself behind the bar and pretend not to notice Elena flirting with the better-looking customers as she took them their plates of food, and as the men finished their meals he would wander around dispensing small plates of homemade biscuits and cakes while filling stubby little glasses with
amaro
or
grappa
or
limoncello
.

‘How much are you going to give me today, then?' he would say.

‘Whatever you say, Luca.'

‘How about . . .'

And Luca would hazard a particularly round figure, conservative by any measure, and the cash would be handed over, and the taxman would only receive what Luca felt to be his fair share, which varied with the seasons and with his mood but was always significantly less than the fiscal authorities would have wished had the decision been their own.

By two-thirty the din would start to abate as one by one the fishermen, market workers, boat-builders and gondoliers drifted back to their respective occupations or wandered home to pass the afternoon in heavy-limbed slumber, and by three o'clock the place would be virtually empty. It was no coincidence that Fausto Pozzi rarely put in an appearance before then. Well endowed though he was with self-importance, he knew better than to turn up while the regulars were still around. On the few occasions that he seriously misjudged his time of arrival, the room would fall silent as his hulking silhouette hesitated in the doorway, blocking out the light. There would be a brief but significant pause, and the noise would then erupt again as abruptly as it had ceased, the renewed tumult masking the various colourful oaths that questioned Fausto's parentage, sexual prowess and nocturnal preferences. Thrusting out his ample
chest, Fausto would stride towards the bar as Luca took down the only tall-stemmed glass to be found on the premises, filled it with
pinot grigio
, then placed a plate of deep-fried whitebait, without lemon, next to it on the bar. A forced smile might be offered in welcome, which Fausto Pozzi would sometimes replicate, depending on the value of recent takings. Words would be exchanged, the conversation pregnant with brief and awkward silences. Often Aldo, on his lunch-break from the boatyard, would be busying himself behind the bar or ferrying plates of fish about the place, and Fausto would regard him with an odd mixture of pride and admiration which occasioned Luca to seriously contemplate Fausto's reputed sexual ambiguity.

‘That's a fine boy you have there,' Fausto said one afternoon, dabbing at his thick moustache after polishing off his whitebait. ‘He's got his mother's eyes . . . and his father's smile.' He grinned wickedly and Luca grimaced. ‘Hey, Aldo, come over here. Where are you playing this evening? Maybe I'll come along this time. Best young violinist in Venice, you know, Luca. Best young violinist in Venice.'

Fausto patted Aldo heartily on the shoulder and Aldo smiled in genuine youthful pleasure and then shifted uneasily as he sensed Luca's disapproval. Fausto withdrew his fat paw and looked at the floor. Recovering his composure, he began to quiz Luca on the week's takings. Aldo excused himself and went into the kitchen. His mother, sweat upon her brow, was tending to hot pans of spitting fish, conscious of the low monotone of Fausto's voice but mercifully unaware of the attention he had been paying to her son.

‘Fausto's here again, is he?' she asked.

‘Yes, he's talking to Dad about money again. Same old story.'

‘That bloody man! He's a blight on all our lives.'

She grabbed a lemon and placed it upon the chopping board and sliced it into rather more pieces than was strictly necessary.

‘He's all right,' Aldo said. ‘I don't know why you and Dad hate him so much. He's always nice to me. Who knows why, but he is.'

‘Yes, who knows why,' Maria would mutter.

Back by the bar, Luca would usually try to ignore Fausto's
unwelcome interest in his son, but occasionally his irritation would manifest itself in a few barbed words. Fausto invariably bit his tongue and let them pass. There'd be plenty of time for confrontation later if it really had to come to that. Instead, he would ask politely after Maria, drain his glass, and mention something about coming back at a more convenient time. Dozens of eyes would fix on his back as he made his exit. Back outside on the quay, he would loudly exhale his exasperation, anger and relief. Then he would take a deep breath, his proud chest would re-inflate and he would float away across the bridge at Accademia and on towards San Marco.

These were highly embarrassing episodes for someone of Fausto Pozzi's exaggerated yet fragile self-esteem. Usually, just as the last of the regular customers were leaving, he would lumber across Campo Santo Stefano, pausing on Ponte dell'Accademia to contemplate the majesty of Santa Maria della Salute a little way along the canal in the direction of San Marco, its two domes illuminated by the sun falling across the back of Dorsoduro. He would then steel himself, make his way down off the wooden bridge, and as he approached the door of Casa Luca his jaw would tighten and his chin jut forward. With a prime location like this, Casa Luca could be – should be – one of the finest and most expensive restaurants in Venice. Tourists should be flocking to sit and eat fine food while looking past the nodding heads of gondolas and across the lapping waters of the canal to the church of San Trovaso.

Five years before, Fausto and Luca had made a deal. It was quite simple. Luca had the relative youth, energy and desire to leave behind his fishing nets and start up a small restaurant. Fausto had the capital and the contacts to secure a fine location for the business, arrange a suitably long-term lease, and purchase the necessary furniture and other paraphernalia. He would then allow Luca to get on with the serious business of making enough money for both of their needs. They had agreed to share the profits equally. This had seemed a little unfair to Luca, as he would be doing all the work, but as Fausto frequently pointed out, he did not have a great deal of choice. There was no way Luca could have arranged and financed
any of this on his own and Fausto liked to think of it as a symbiotic relationship. The trattoria was now well known among the locals as a rare and valued place where basic fresh food could be had in down-to-earth surroundings at a price that reflected the spending power of the local working class rather than fancy-shoed, high-spending foreign visitors or more well-to-do Venetians. This was not quite what Fausto had had in mind at the outset. Of course he had been aware of Luca's obvious lack of ambition, but he trusted in human nature and felt sure that the younger man would sooner or later accede to the worldwide laws of business. The bottom line was king, however low you had to stoop to get your hands on it, or how vulnerable your posture while stooping.

Initially, Fausto allowed Luca to get on with organising the place as he wished. After all, it meant less work for him, and he had fulfilled his part of the bargain by arranging the finances and oiling the necessary cogs in the local political machinery. After a slow start, business picked up but profits never grew to the level Fausto had anticipated, and the onset of war had vastly reduced the number of foreign visitors. There had always been enough money to provide Luca with a little bit more than the bare necessities, which is all he really wanted, but Fausto needed considerably more than that. His other businesses did reasonably well, but a couple of shops in Cannaregio, an area frequented principally by locals, would never make him rich. Casa Luca was his one big hope, and as time passed and ever greater quantities of rough country wine flowed cheaply down the throats of Luca's friends and ex-workmates, it began to dawn on him that he had chosen the wrong man with whom to go into business.

At first he tried to persuade Luca through reasoned argument. A change of image, a refitted interior, a different menu, or indeed any menu at all, tables overlooking the canal with fine cloths and china, crystal flutes of
spumante
chiming away the early evening hours, waiters trained in the restaurants of Milan hovering attentively, perhaps the occasional violinist to serenade the honeymooners – these few simple alterations might change their fortunes forever.
Granted, Aldo could string together a cracking good tune on the violin, but rumbustuous drunken singing was decidedly not the ideal accompaniment to a romantic meal.

‘But why would I want all that?' Luca had asked. ‘I'm perfectly happy the way things are. I've got my house, my children are happy and well fed, and I enjoy my work. Why would I want to change anything?'

So Fausto resorted to implications of unpleasantness, and then to more direct threats, culminating in an attempt to dissolve the partnership and set up an alternative establishment, Antica Locanda Fausto, on the same premises. He had gone so far as to contract the signpainter to change the name above the door. Luca arrived one morning to find the poor workman perched precariously up a ladder, poised with his brush, having already painted over a part of the sign. Luca was a tall, broad-shouldered man, strong from years of manual work, and he had a Vesuvian temper when provoked. The unfortunate painter's equipment, ladder and all, was swiftly deposited in the canal, followed for good measure by the painter himself. Luca never bothered to have the sign repainted. Everyone knew where Casa Luca was and what it was called – it was only the uninformed who thought there was a dark little place, just a short distance from the bridge at Accademia, going under the name of Casa Lu.

Tipped off by his drenched and irate signpainter, Fausto had descended on Casa Luca somewhat earlier than was advisable. He paused outside, contemplating the view down the quay towards the Giudecca, picturing exotic visitors lining up to gild his pockets with their foreign gold. The noisy chatter from within was punctuated by a loud uninhibited belch, shattering his idyll. A couple of the regulars tumbled out, stinking of fish. Fausto Pozzi grizzled his nose and, although it was not yet one-thirty, walked decisively into the restaurant accompanied by his legal representative.