The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) (32 page)

I had a dream last night. I dreamed that I was in bed awake and someone came into the room. It was a woman. She was wearing a long white gown. Her hair was covered with some sort of veil. I couldn’t see anything of her face but from the way that she walked, I was sure it was Silke. She went to the window and climbed up on to the sill. She looked out on to the Grand Canal. She didn’t seem to know I was in the room behind her.

I sat up and I called to her. I called quietly. I didn’t want to startle her. She didn’t seem to hear. So I called a little louder.

‘Yes, yes,’ she said in her accented English. ‘Don’t worry. You won’t be alone for long.’

Then she uncurled from her resting place on the wide stone windowsill. She put a bare foot on to the floor and lowered herself down. She turned to walk towards me and as she walked she took off her veil. But beneath the delicate lace wasn’t my dear friend Silke at all. The girl behind the veil . . . she looked like you.

And when I woke up this morning, I reread your perfect email and I could hear it in your voice and in Silke’s voice too. I knew by the time I had finished reading that you were right. It is time to finish the story. So I’m coming to Berlin to see Silke’s grave and I want you to be there with me too.

I wrote back at once, telling Marco that the moment he touched down in the city I would be beside him and I would stay with him for as long as he needed me.

‘I think I might need you for a very long time,’ he wrote.

‘That’s perfectly all right by me.’

Marco was coming to Berlin. Everything was going to be OK.

Chapter 41

After that, Marco and I emailed every day. Our correspondence fell back into the easy pattern of those early days in the library, when he was the first person with whom I shared the news of my day-to-day. I told Marco everything about Gerd’s story, of course. Marco sent me some roses to cheer me up on the day of Gerd’s funeral, though it wasn’t the gloomy affair I had imagined. Gerd’s sister Helga had gone on to have four children. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren were innumerable. Far from being sent off with a shout of ‘good riddance’, Gerd was very well-mourned.

Though Marco’s own tale was very different, there were some parallels between the two. Just like Gerd with Otto, Marco had taken the decision to punish himself for Silke’s death by swearing he would not allow himself to be happy, even though it was clear to me from having met Gerd’s family that they had long since stopped blaming him for his brother’s untimely end. But unlike Gerd, Marco still had a chance to recover that happiness. He still had time to be in love again. Perhaps to marry and have a family. Perhaps to be with me.

Still, I felt as though I was holding my breath until he finally booked the plane for his trip to Germany. It took a while for him to sort out the logistics. One email ran:

My passport has run out. I didn’t even think about that complication. I guess it’s to be expected since I haven’t left the house in five years let alone the country.

He was making light of it, but I wondered how he would feel when the time came for him to get a passport photo. He answered the question.

‘I had to leave the house for that. Fortunately, it was a cold day and I was able to wrap a scarf round the bottom of my face. Add that to a hat pulled down low. I was pretty well disguised for my trip to the photo booth.’

I told him I had been worried for him. It was, after all, his first time away from the Palazzo Donato since his father’s death.

‘It was strange,’ he admitted. ‘I walked past the café where Gianni and I always used to meet for coffee. I half expected to see him there, in his usual seat at one of the tables outside. But of course, he wasn’t there. I looked him up on the Internet today. These days he is living in New York. His corporate photograph shows he has aged pretty well. He has a wife and two daughters.’

My heart ached a little to read that and I wondered if it had hurt Marco at all to find out. Gianni had a family. It was proof that life had gone on as though Marco had never existed. His friends were leading extraordinarily ordinary lives. And the city? How had he found his beloved home town?

‘People always say that Venice never changes, but believe me, I was astonished by how much was different. Shops and cafés had changed hands, of course, and gained sparkling new façades. There were new hotels. Even a new museum. The faces had changed too. Once upon a time, I knew most of the
gondolieri
and they knew me and my friends. They made it their business to know us – we were all of us big tippers. But I recognised hardly any of the men hanging out by the Bacino Orseolo. Then again, I don’t suppose they would have recognised me.’

‘How long did you stay out of the house?’ I asked.

‘I walked quite a way,’ Marco told me. ‘I went as far as the Cannaregio. I walked past our friend Luciana’s house. Once I was away from the palazzo’s four walls, I was surprised at how good it felt. That long walk made the blood sing around my body. I suppose I would describe the feeling as suddenly being very much alive.’

‘I’m glad,’ I wrote. ‘That lifts my heart.’

Every day after that, Marco would venture out of the palazzo for a while. He said it was easier than he’d thought to be anonymous in the small city. He told me one day that he went to the Peggy Guggenheim museum. It had been expanded during his years of self-imposed exile. He found the carved marble bench that I had admired when I visited back in the summer.

‘Savor kindness for cruelty is always possible later,’ was the message carved upon it.

‘I felt close to you when I saw it,’ he told me. ‘Thinking of you reading those words back in July.’

I told him that I wished I had been with him when he saw them for the first time. As he slowly came back to the world, walking a little further every day, I wished I could be there to hold his hand. But I knew in some way that it was important for him to make these early forays without me. That way he could make them entirely at his own pace.

But, oh, the pace seemed all too slow to me! I couldn’t wait to see him.

At last he announced that he would be arriving in the middle of December. He had hired a private jet. It was the one concession to his condition he’d allowed his wealth to buy him. That week saw the first snow of the year. Just a few flurries. It didn’t settle; but the city was beginning to prepare itself for Christmas. All the Christmas markets had been running since the end of November. The smell of
Glühwein
was in the air. My colleagues at the university were in high spirits. There were parties every night.

It was a wonderful time to be a tourist in the city. But Marco was not coming to Berlin as a tourist. I was reminded of that when he told me that Silke’s sister had sent instructions on how to find Silke’s grave.

Of course, Silke’s sister was Anna, my favourite student. It all fitted together. The song. The voice. Her fascination with the power of appearances. I had gently coaxed the story out of her. Her face, when I told her about Marco, was a picture of distress, but she had agreed to let me put him in touch with her and he had asked me to let her read the diary. I had to help her. From Italian, to English, to German.

‘To understanding,’ said Anna.

I hoped so.

The night before Marco’s scheduled arrival in the city, I couldn’t sleep. I had worked hard to convince myself that he would come but now my optimism was waning. On the one hand, the journey from Venice to Berlin was not so onerous; just a couple of hours on the plane, and both airports were close to the cities they served. But, as he had pointed out when he told me about his passport, Marco had not left the Palazzo Donato in five years. He had not left Venice since he arrived back in the city direct from the hospital where I had tried to chivvy him back to health. On top of all this, to make a flight to a city that held such strong and difficult memories for him could not be easy. And I wondered how the wider world would seem to him. Of course, he had not been entirely out of touch and it wasn’t as though he would be travelling easyJet. But what would he find to be different about Germany? Would anything scare him?

When he arranged the trip I had suggested, tentatively, that it might be a good idea to have Silvio accompany him. Marco had insisted that he would be coming alone and that Silvio deserved a holiday after all these years.

‘And I am not afraid of the outside world,’ Marco assured me. ‘I have merely been sparing it the embarrassment of having to look upon me.’

I worried how he would feel when the world did look upon him. Would he be ready for the stares? Would he pretend not to notice them, as Silke had once done?

Would I pretend not to notice them too?

On the day itself, I woke early. I drank three cups of tea in quick succession, hoping it might calm my nerves. Marco sent me a text message to say that his plane was on time. He reiterated that I didn’t have to meet him – a limousine to his hotel was all part of the service the private-jet company provided – but I told him there was no way I wanted to miss a second in his company. I would be at the airport the moment he arrived.

‘In that case,’ Marco texted me, ‘please let me send a car for you.’

An hour later, a limousine appeared on the Hufelandstrasse and I settled into the deep leather seats for the drive out to Schönefeld. I spent half the journey trying not to cry through nerves.

Marco had also arranged for me to be admitted to the private terminal to wait for him there. My heart was in my mouth as I watched the aeroplane touch down. After all, it contained such precious cargo. It seemed like an age until the plane taxied to its allotted berth. Then another age while the doors were opened before finally, finally, Marco emerged into the blustery Berlin day.

I felt a surge of love as Marco carefully descended the stairs. He was wearing a scarf wrapped round the bottom half of his face and a knitted cap over his head. He was carrying his own bag.

I suppose I might have hoped for a more intimate setting for our second proper meeting, but the terminal staff were very discreet. Having opened the doors to let Marco into the building, the hostess disappeared, leaving us alone in the smart airport lounge.

I smiled. Marco pulled down his scarf and smiled back at me. He set down his bag and opened up his arms. I’m afraid I burst into tears as we finally embraced.

‘Sarah, my angel,’ he called me.

I just carried on crying into the side of his neck until Marco started laughing.

‘My love,’ he said. ‘This is supposed to be a happy moment.’

Finally, I pulled away from him and wiped my eyes. Then Marco wiped a tear away with his thumb and kissed me, for the first time ever, on the mouth.

I wasn’t ready for it. He took me by surprise. But oh, it was wonderful! I felt like Kitty Hazleton, kissed by Otto outside the Hotel Frankfort. It was a kiss you could write home about. I saw stars and I heard the fireworks. Feeling me begin to wilt in his embrace, Marco put his arm round my back and pulled me closer to him. I immediately felt safe in his arms.

It felt as though the world had melted away around us but, alas, that wasn’t the case.

The limousine driver was waiting to take us back into the city. Marco let the driver take his bag and held on to my hand. We sat side by side in the back of the car, saying nothing though there was so much to say. For now, we just looked into one another’s eyes.

Chapter 42

On his first day in Berlin, I did not see much of my love. The limousine took us straight to the Hotel Adlon. Marco had taken the hotel’s most expensive suite, the Royal Suite, with its orange-painted living room like something out of a stately home. It also had a book-lined office that reminded me of the library back in Venice. It was hard to believe the hotel had only existed in its current incarnation since 1997.

I had not presumed that Marco would want me to stay with him and so I left while the butler was still hanging his clothes in the wardrobe. We would see each other later on. I claimed that I had work to do. He had already he told me that he had to make a visit to Silke’s family before he could think about doing anything else. Anna had put Marco in touch with her mother and he had written a long letter explaining everything that had happened since the accident in which their daughter died. Silke’s mother had responded kindly. The years had mellowed her attitude towards the young man who had been there at her daughter’s death. She said she had spent many years thinking about the accident and the events leading up to it and had finally come to the conclusion that Marco could have done nothing differently. Silke had been at the wheel. And young love makes fools of everyone. Which of us hasn’t done something foolish in a rush of passion?

She agreed to see Marco as soon as he arrived.

While Marco was with Silke’s family, I went into my office but I found it hard to concentrate on anything. I imagined the conversation he might be having. Who would be there? Silke’s parents were already divorced when she died. Would they come back together for this moment of reconciliation and forgiveness? I knew Anna would be there. I imagined how interested she would be to hear a firsthand account of the girl she had idolised. What would her parents have to tell Marco? Would they show him photographs of Silke as a younger girl? Would they tell him stories that he hadn’t heard before? Would he love her even more as a result?