The Remedy (45 page)
He contemplates the unlikely scenario that Pevenche has taken to her kidnapper like a calf to the teat, that she rejoices in her company.
No, Pevenche is never well disposed to female strangers. Or men for that matter. When she’s a little older something drastic will need to be done to find her a husband.
He laughs wryly at himself. Pevenche—married?
The girl hasn’t the titter of a wit about her. She knows as much about being charming as a pig does about a clean shirt. She’s not behind the door when it comes to telling people disagreeable things about themselves. She has not the kind of nature that dreams of love.
And her size!
Most men would be like a pimple on a hill to her.
It does not bear thinking about, Pevenche undressed for love, all those laps and dewlaps trapping moisture. He realizes that she’s
probably never been touched, never charmed a hug out of Tom since she was a baby never seems to want one from anyone else. Perhaps she’s embarrassed at her size. Perhaps no one may hug Pevenche or they’ll embarrass her by discovering her topography.
He promises,
When I see her again, I myself will be giving the girl a proper hug. It’s not her fault.
People always use Pevenche for their own motives. Both Tom and the actress took her up to serve themselves, not for her own sake or out of any love for her.
Is it any wonder that the girl is awkward?
He will gather them both to himself soon enough. But the agony of impatience is upon him and he needs a distraction.
His brain is bruised with thinking about the kidnap. The going’s brutal on all the roads. His eye is so tic’d with tiredness that it runs hither and thither like a fly. As the carriage rattles and pounds down the roads, grinding his tender buttocks, he turns his mind back to unraveling the mystery of Tom’s death.
There have been new developments. It has come to his attention, via Dizzom’s inquiries, that the dark-haired Italian man who shadowed Mimosina Dolcezza at Tom’s wake has also been seen in London in his absence, and that this man has been making inquiries about the business of Valentine Greatrakes and the manner of his relations with the actress.
Dizzom sent men to intercept this Italian, but he evaded them, and the theory is that he too has now gone back to Venice, where he reports to some kind of underworld lord, some kind of Italian Valentine Greatrakes. But decked out in Venetian robes of state.
On hearing this, Valentine had summoned all those of his men who had seen the Venetian spy with their own eyes at the viewing of Tom’s corpse. The memory of the scene with Cecilia Cornaro had prompted in him a stream of questions.
Neck long or short? Hair straight or curled? Eyes long or wide?
The men, at first confused, soon fell into the game with gusto. They argued roundly among themselves, but when an answer finally came it was definitive and universally accepted. After a scant hour, Valentine had folded up a list of features so detailed that his own recollection of the man had been wonderfully refreshed. This list now lies in his valise and he will make use of it
as soon as he has liberated Pevenche and… dealt with… Mimosina Dolcezza.
All the way through France, Valentine plans those dealings, sadly distracted by the pains of a crop of hemorrhoids he can no longer pretend away, especially as they burn like torches with every rasping cough. It’s as if there’s a pulley and trap inside him solely devoted to wrenching his neck and unscrewing his spine. That cough of his has thickened. His companions are a noisome lot, who appear not to calculate the benefits of breath-comfits or soap. The fetid air of the carriage stuffs his loaded bronchia with a fresh income of phlegm. He coughs up greenish slime with each gusty sneeze. His nostrils are so impacted that he must breathe solely through his raw throat. After a while even the cough is besieged in his lungs—except at night, when it racks his sleep with its imperative effusion. He’d never stop if he had his way, but each evening the coach disgorges him at sordid but compulsory lodgings, some pasha always occupying all the best rooms with his secretaries and blackamoor footmen.
In the carriage on the last stage, from Padua, his discomfort peaks. Someone has packed a case of china carelessly, and it rattles without cease. The clinking of the china starts to chime with the jostling of his vertebrae, and his cough wakes up and adopts the rhythm, so he’s barking like a choleric puppy.
At Mestre he urges the gondola forward, first with gesticulations to the gondolier and then with imperceptible thrustings of his own body, despite the pain this occasions in his trews.
Although he remains unaware of it, Valentine communicates with great facility in Italian. He has that exuberant poetry of gesture that is normally reserved for their race. When he shrugs, it is with their fervent resignation; if he smoked, it would be with their avidity. Now that he is in a hurry, he expresses it with his hands, his feet, his nose, his eyes. The whole quayside at Mestre is alert to the fact that here is an Englishman who needs to be in Venice
this instant
, despite the distraction of a woman bewailing a case of broken china just unloaded from a carriage.
The sky is juicy, white, and luminous as a blind man’s eyeball. It makes his hot head ache. All the way through the oblating water he
counts the three-legged
bricole
that rise up like the truncated legs of outsize wading birds. He counts the vanilla-pod gondolas behind and before him. He counts the forty shades of green and blue in the waves. He counts the church towers pinpricking the horizon. He counts the gulls crying the news of his arrival. He counts the days he has spent apart from Mimosina Dolcezza.
By the time they reach the town itself, he is clutching the sides of the gondola, for a storm has swelled up to welcome him back to town. Thick thrills of lightning illuminate the Grand Canal. Rain boils into it. Like an impatient mother, waves are combing the long-eared seaweed that grows from the banks. Two weeks of painful trotting are erased from his mind. He is back in Venice.
And there is Smerghetto, waiting magically on the landing at San Silvestro, the faintest frown detectable between his brows, because while he is always happy to see Valentine Greatrakes, he does not like the sound of that cough, and he knows that it is not exactly business that has brought his master back so soon.
Take Coltsfoot water 6 ounces, white Sugar Candy powder’d 6 drams; Yolks of 2 Eggs, having beat them up together, and set well.
This Draught usually gives great Relief in a (let me call it) Guttural Rheumatic and Evening Cough, caused by catching Cold, which is pretty quiet all day, but returns at Night, especially when one lies down in Bed, incessantly disturbing, and vexatiously hind ring Rest. For by reason of its sweet unctuous Mucilage, it so defends the Larynx, that it feels not the pricking of the sharp irritating Serum, and so staves off the Cough, and dallies away the hour, till at length, the time of Coughing is slipp’d, and Sleep steals on.
That same afternoon he takes the list of the Italian’s features to the studio of Cecilia Cornaro. The girl is dozing on her
divano
when he enters, and eyes him with a sleepy good humor, without raising her head from its yellow silk cushion.
“Ah,
Signor
Englishman, back to see me? You have something new for me?”
There is no mistaking the pleasure in her voice. Three months ago, this would have been enough to plunge Valentine in pleasant speculations, but his nerves are worn to transparency and his eyes are gritty from lack of sleep. His rear end burns, and his cough, thickset and heavy in the daylight hours, is prancing in a lively fashion now, ready for its nocturnal pillaging of his viscera. He cannot conceive of giving pleasure, so he renounces the thought of taking it. And whatever Cecilia Cornaro intends by that softly mewing voice, he will not be distracted from his primary object.
No woman has been able to do that, he reflects, since he first laid eyes on Mimosina Dolcezza.
“I—I would like you to try again with the portrait,” he says, between coughs.
“Ah,” she pronounces. She has already risen from the divan and splashed water on her face. Droplets cling to her curls and she shakes them off. “What’s so different from last time, Mister Lord Valentine Greatrakes? Exactly? Remember,” and her voice is low and dangerous now, “I failed you before.”
He finds it hard to meet her eyes then; instead his own wander over the walls lined with painted faces. When last he came it had been night, and those faces bore the unmistakable look of sensual satiety. By contrast, in daylight, these same visages seem eager and desirous, even anxious to be about the business of love, lest it escapes them before the sun sets.
Cecilia Cornaro is awaiting his answer in no very patient manner. He knows she adores a novelty, so he offers her the new thing first.
“Now I would like you to draw a man for me. I have all the features.”
He flourishes the list like a child who has completed a laborious item of scholarship. Even that eddy of air provokes a fit of coughing. The artist turns her back on him and busies herself in a cupboard that seems to be a larder. She brings raw eggs and various powders and syrups to the table. She breaks the eggs into a goblet and stirs them vigorously. He thinks she is mixing up an egg tempera to commence the portrait, but she surprises him by thrusting it into his hand.
“Drink,” she says.
No one in the world addresses Valentine Greatrakes in this peremptory manner. Above all, he is used to more caressing tones in a woman. But he wants her to draw the murderer, so he drinks up the potion, which is loathsomely sweet and reeks of coltsfoot.
“A man?” she says, snatching up this list. “Have you seen him yourself? Gould you verify what I do?”
“Yes, indeed. I can see him even now!” Valentine is so weary that he almost thinks that the ghost of the murderous Venetian floats in
front of him, transported from the scene of Tom’s corpse in the depository. So carefully has he imprinted the man on his memory that it is almost impossible to evacuate the image from his mind. He takes back the sheet of paper and reads her the list, embellishing it with new inspiration. She rapidly transcribes his words into Venetian on a leaf of a blank book.
In moments, the girl has set up a piece of paper on her easel and is sketching with charcoal. Swiftly she covers the page with an outline cross-hatched with small lines. Repeatedly consulting her translation, she adds details. Her hand hovers over the sketch like a hummingbird. She asks him to read again from his own list. She is troubled with a few words of English, and he is obliged to explain them to her.
Watching the head materializing on her paper, Valentine knows that he has his man now. He is itching to rip that cruel face off her easel and to hand it to the
truncheoni
who will soon be on the trail like bloodhounds. No, those drumbling boys will never get it right. He will do it himself. The man is as good as found. In any case he doesn’t dare ask Cecilia Cornaro to grind out copies of this sketch. He has another favor to ask her, a more important one, an unusual one, of the kind it gives her so much pleasure to bestow.
He knows she is fascinated by him. This makes him shy. He has already presumed on her too much, and he guesses that she will not accept mere monetary payment. He will have to think of something more unusual than that to reward her. Novelty is the wine of life to this girl.
But his own need is too great to be contained: “I have had a thought. I presume that you keep studies of all the ladies you paint. You told me once that all the beautiful women of the city come to you while they are still lovely, so that there is a permanent memento of their beauty.”
She nods, smiling. Valentine does not realize it but he has just uttered four sentences without a cough.
He asks, “Rich and poor?”
“Noble and gutter. The Golden Book families come to add another little face to their family tree. The poor ones, if they are
beautiful, become the mistresses of rich men, who also want to immortalize the fact that they once were wealthy enough to bed such a lovely creature. A different kind of investment.”
“And do you keep studies, as I thought?”
She nods. She can see what he is seeking.
“Gould we… could I look through them?”
“Do you realise how many women I have painted? Also, I keep here the studies of my old master, Antonio, who used to be the most famous portrait artist in Venice. Before me, that is. His studies have preserved many family likenesses that I keep for my researches when I cannot myself discover what has gone into the making of a face.”
“I have as much time as it will take.”
“
Va bene,”
she smiles. “If she is to be found, then I am sure she will be here.”
She lights a row of candles and sets them on the table, then opens the window to monitor the water, the noise of which has risen noticeably.
“There’s a high tide coming,” she tells him. “Does anyone need to know where you are?”
He shakes his head—Smerghetto always already knows where he is—and moves to the window himself, looking down on the water that has started to steal the lower parts of the palazzi. He knows it is a childish thing, but Valentine has a foreign tourist’s love, a child’s craving for
acqua alta.
He thrills to feel the water churning up under the city, and to see it spill into the squares. He loves the drama and
confusione.
When he hears the water rising, he imagines the vagrant hands of the waves reaching out to haul themselves up to dry land. Millions of tiny hands, all grasping greedily at the inner edges of the island, as if trying to better themselves. When an
acqua alta
starts to abate he always grieves a little.
Cecilia Cornaro walks over to a huge cupboard and flings open the double doors. Floor to ceiling, Valentine beholds neatly stacked sheets of paper contained in large leather portfolios.
