Dead Lagoon

Saoner walked the length of one of the long straight canals which trisect the northern reaches of the Cannaregio, then turned down through the meandering passages leading to the Strada Nova. For a moment it looked as though he were retracing the route he had taken in the opposite direction earlier, but when he reached the Rialto bridge he turned right and crossed over to the market area. As Zen reached the peak of the bridge, the variously inclined roofs glittered in the moonlight as though covered in frost.

Saoner was now some way ahead, threading his way through the stripped framework of the stalls used for the bustling vegetable market and into the covered portico of the Pescheria. Here the cats were especially sleek and numerous. They massed like rats, lured by the lingering odour of the fish-heads and entrails on which they gorged themselves by day, when the counters were loaded with slithering heaps of red mullet, sea bass, sardines, plaice, eels, crabs, scallops, cuttlefish, clams, mussels and all the rest whose names Zen knew only in dialect: branzin, orada, tria, barbon, peocio, passarin, dental…

By the time he realized what was happening, the only trace of Saoner’s presence was a distant clatter of running footsteps, so distorted by the echoing walls all around that it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. Zen closed his eyes and did a rapid mental scan of the district. The only exit which Saoner would have had time to reach led via a narrow bridge to a quay on the other side of Rio delle Beccarie. From there, two lanes led away from the water. No, there were three — but one was a dead end.

Zen started to run, not in the direction Saoner had taken, but straight ahead, through the tiny Campo delle Beccarie, across the angled bridge and along the alley beyond. If he did not find Saoner in the next few seconds it would be too late, as the number of variables became so great that a solution would be impossible.

On reaching the first of the two alleys his quarry could have taken, he stopped dead, listening intently. Apart from the distant lapping of water, all was still. Zen’s eyes narrowed. He ran over his mental map again, satisfying himself that there were no other exits. The alley in which he was standing was lined with an unbroken succession of houses on either side. Zen crossed it and walked quickly to the next intersection.

In this street there were three openings, all to the left. Zen moved as quietly as he could to the first entrance and peered round the corner. This proved to be a short blind alley cut off at the next canal. He went on to the next opening, whose nameplate showed it to be the entrance to a courtyard behind the large palazzo which faced the street. Inside, all was dark. Zen took a hundred-lire coin from his pocket and tossed it into the passage, where it tinkled resoundingly. Seconds later, Tommaso Saoner scurried out of the other entrance and ran straight into Zen.

At first he made to turn back, then changed his mind and strode past without a word or a flicker of expression. Zen fell in behind him, keeping closer than before. The two men moved steadily through the fan tracery of alleys and canals centred on San Giacomo dell’Orio. A searchlight suddenly appeared in the darkness ahead, swinging this way and that like a stick. A moment later, a watertaxi rounded the corner and came burbling past them. As the noise subsided, a church bell struck midnight. Zen smiled grimly at this signal that his official tenure in the city was at an end. If his opponents had counted on him meekly packing his bags and going when told to go, they had seriously miscalculated. He felt a weight lift from his shoulders as the twelve ponderous chimes cut through the red tape and procedural minutiae in which he had been enmeshed. As a free agent, he was much more dangerous and effective than he could have been in his official capacity.

They eventually emerged on to the open quay opposite the long low facade of the railway station, where Saoner suddenly broke into a run. For the first hundred metres or so Zen managed to keep pace, but after that Saoner began to pull ahead. He leapt up the steps of the high bridge across the Rio Nuovo and disappeared, heading towards Piazzale Roma. When Zen reached the top of the bridge he had to pause for breath. Too much desk work had taken its toll of his physique. Nevertheless he forced himself to carry on, even though he now knew that he would be too late. He could already hear the engine of a waiting taxi ticking over to keep the driver warm. By the time he reached the rank, Saoner would be out of reach, roaring off across the Ponte della Liberta in some plush Volvo or Mercedes, having neatly escaped the psychological trap which Zen had prepared for him.

A short flight of steps lined with dingy bushes led up from the vaporetto landing-stage to the bare expanse of asphalt marked with lanes for buses and cars. At the far end, the neon sign of the multi-storey car park glimmered eerily. The entire place was deserted. A moment later, Zen realized that the engine he had been hearing was one of the water buses which maintained a skeleton service throughout the night. It grew to a roar as the skipper reversed the engines to hold the vaporetto in against the pier. Three young men disembarked and headed off, laughing and talking loudly, towards the car park. The deck-hand had already closed the gate and begun to cast off when a figure emerged from the bushes lining the steps and ran towards the boat. The gate slid open again and the man jumped aboard as the vessel started to move away from the landing-stage.

Zen sprinted for the steps, yelling to the deck-hand to wait, but his voice went unheard above the clamour of the engine. The gap between the bows and the quay opened rapidly as the skipper put the helm over, heading out into the wide basin between the car park and the railway station on the other bank. Zen ran straight down the pier and was just in time to leap on to the stern as it passed by. The deck-hand had disappeared into the wheelhouse at the other end of the cabin housing.

The whole craft lurched as the swell in the main channel caught it side on. Zen hung on grimly to the outside of the guard-rails aft as the propellers just below his feet thrashed the water until it foamed like spumante. Then a darkened figure appeared, silhouetted against the double glass doors of the cabin. The door opened and Tommaso Saoner stepped out on to the sunken afterdeck. Zen put his foot on the lower rail and started to clamber over, but he was still balanced precariously on the sloping grid of slippery metal when Saoner reached him, stretched out his hand and helped him to climb inboard.

Zen collapsed on one of the red plastic seats in the stern. He looked up at Saoner, nodding.

‘You see, Tommaso? You’d like to be ruthless and dashing like your hero Dal Maschio, but you’re not. You’re weak and decent. Dal Maschio would have pushed me in without a second thought, and left me to drown or be sliced up by the propellers. You couldn’t bring yourself to do that, but you still think you can run with the people who can, and have, and will.’

Saoner looked at him emptily, then turned away and walked back into the deserted cabin. Zen lit a cigarette with trembling hands, sheltering the flame against the wind as the boat turned out of the main channel, under a series of wide metal and concrete bridges and out into a broad canal running between a railway marshalling yard and the port area. The deck-hand appeared at the top of the companion-way leading up from the cabin.

‘Anyone for Santa Marta?’ he called.

Saoner stood up. There was a bump as the boat went alongside. Zen threw away his cigarette and followed Saoner ashore. Santa Marta was a bleak area, one of the new quarters built on reclaimed land at the turn of the century. Disused railway tracks ran between the hulks of salvaged boats propped up on concrete blocks. In the distance were redbrick blocks of flats, built to house the dockyard workers.

Blinding lights razored through the darkness and a speeding bulk flashed past with a blare of noise, missing Zen by a whisker. The experience seemed so utterly abnormal that for a moment he thought wildly of aliens in flying saucers and the like. It was several moments before he recovered enough to notice that the stretch of ground he had been crossing was a road providing vehicular access to the port area. He located the receding figure of Tommaso Saoner and started after him, smiling ruefully. He had not only come within an ace of being killed, but in a way that would have ensured that his name would always bring a smile to everyone’s lips. Aurelio Zen, the man who got run over in Venice.

On the graceful stone arch across the Arzere canal, Saoner paused briefly, perhaps uncertain which direction to take, or momentarily perturbed by the sight of the prison complex a little further along the canal. The reflection of the streetlamps rolled gently on the trace of swell carried in from the open waters of the lagoon. At the corner opposite, a man dressed in pyjamas was closing the green shutters of his bedroom window. He paused to stare at Saoner, who promptly turned right and set off at a cracking pace, as though he had decided upon a destination and was eager to arrive. But this appearance of purpose and urgency was contradicted by the circuitous course he took, weaving this way and that, first towards Campo Santa Margherita — where Zen closed up, fearing that he might try and rouse some of his NRV colleagues from their beds — and then east towards the Rio Nuovo, before finally doubling back by way of the gaunt church of Angelo Raffaele to emerge on the windswept shore of the Zattere.

The breeze had knocked the Giudecca channel into short, choppy waves which slapped resoundingly into the stone embankment, occasionally dumping swathes of water on the promenade. A faint mist dulled the light of the infrequent lamps, and the moon had disappeared behind a raft of cloud. To the right, the flares of the oil refinery at Marghera punctuated the darkness. As Zen followed Tommaso Saoner past the florid ocean terminal of the Adriatica line, he felt a sense of weariness and despondency creeping over him. He had been up since the crack of dawn, and it had not been an easy day. He began to realize that he couldn’t keep this up all night, as he had planned. He had to find some way to force the issue, to try and shake Tommaso’s blind devotion to Dal Maschio, if necessary by deceit.

As they rounded the curving prow of Dorsoduro, the lights of the Riva degli Schiavoni came into view on the other side of the broad channel of San Marco. Where they were, all was dark and deserted. The massive facade of the former Customs warehouses dominated the landward side, while to the right the expanses of the lagoon opened out into chilly vistas of windy immensity. Saoner seemed to have forgotten where he was, for he marched resolutely onwards until he was abruptly brought up short at the brink of the high stone quay forming the tip of the triangular island of the Salute.

Aurelio Zen caught up with Saoner as he looked down at the black water seething fitfully below. For a time they stood side by side in silence.

‘It’s a scam, Tommaso,’ Zen said eventually. ‘Can’t you see that?’

‘You think everything’s rotten, because you’re rotten yourself,’ muttered Saoner.

Zen looked at him.

‘Do you really think I’m rotten?’

Saoner nodded. He glanced at Zen.

‘You’ve spent too much time serving the old system, the old masters. But things are changing at long last. You can’t see that. When you look at someone like Dal Maschio, your first thought is to try and tear him down. He’s too new, too threatening. If you allowed yourself to actually listen to what he says, you might end up realizing that it all makes sense. You would have to change the habits and ideas of a lifetime, and that would be too much trouble.’

He wagged a finger at Zen.

‘You called me weak just now. Well, you’re lazy. You’d rather have the devils you know than a man who, whatever his faults, is worth more than the whole of the old gang put together!’

At their feet, the unquiet water swirled and splashed.

‘You talk of Dal Maschio like a lover,’ Zen murmured.

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘He’s won your heart, and you can’t understand why I can’t see what you see in him.’

He shrugged.

‘It’s an old story, and harmless enough in private life. But this is a question of politics. Remember those Greek lessons we sweated through at school, when it seemed the bell would never ring? Polis, a city. Polites, a citizen. It’s not your personal feelings about Dal Maschio that are at issue here, Tommaso. It’s your public duties, your responsibilities as a citizen.’

Saoner barked a laugh.

‘I don’t need moral lectures from you, Zen,’ he snapped, turning away.

The pursuit began again. At the same deliberate, purposeful pace, Saoner led the way along the other side of the Punta della Dogana, past the Salute church and into the tangled skein of alleys leading to the Accademia, where he crossed the bridge for the second time that night. When they reached Campo San Stefano, he stopped and seemed to hesitate. This was the spot where the leader of the Nuova Repubblica Veneta had taken leave of his acolytes earlier, and for a moment Zen thought that Saoner might try and make a dash to Dal Maschio’s house, and moved to the left to cut him off. In the event Saoner turned the other way, towards the Piazza, bringing them into a district quite unlike any through which they had passed so far, into streets lined with banks, restaurants, hotels and a succession of shops and boutiques catering to the needs of the international shop-till-you-drop brigade.

But the water seemed to be calling Saoner, and when they reached the lugubrious monstrosity of San Moise he veered right down a passage leading out on to the quayside. They walked past the ferry landing-stage and the harbour-master’s office, beneath a grove of trees where a mob of starlings squabbled invisibly and along a broad promenade curving away as far as the eye could see. As though in response to these unfettered vistas, Saoner increased his pace until Zen had difficulty keeping up with him.

They crossed the bridge over the canal leading to the Questura, and then the Rio dell’Arsenale. Here the lighting was sparser and dimmer, and at moments Saoner’s figure disappeared altogether into the rushing darkness. Zen began to lose all sense of reality, as though his night’s dreams, denied, were seeping out to taint his waking consciousness. He dimly remembered what he was doing and why, but only as one remembers some fact about a country one has never visited.

‘Tommaso!’

There was no response. Zen broke into a run.

‘Stop, Tommaso! Let’s talk!’

Saoner neither turned back nor changed his pace. Zen kept on running until he caught up with him.

‘This is ridiculous, Tommaso! Let’s not go any further.’

Like an automaton, Saoner kept striding on. By now they had reached the area laid out by the invading French as a formal public garden with walks, fountains and statues in a vain attempt to make an honest city of the Serenissima. In the depths of winter and the dead of the night, the place looked even more bizarre than usual. Zen grabbed Saoner’s arm and pulled him to a stop. The moon slid out from behind the cloud again, turning the darkness to dusk. The two men stood there breathing fog into the silvery air. The serried trees lining the promenade had been pruned back to an equal height, making them look like giant candelabra.

‘All this talk of morality!’ Saoner exclaimed bitterly. ‘You hypocrite!’

Zen stared at him, genuinely surprised.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know why you’re out to destroy Dal Maschio! Because you’ve got the hots for his wife, that’s why!’

‘That’s bullshit!’

‘She spent the night at your place on at least two occasions, according to my informants. They say you were fucking so hard it made waves in the canal.’

Forcing himself to remain calm, Zen took out a cigarette and lit up.

‘That’s very flattering, Tommaso, but unfortunately not true. Signora Dal Maschio and I met socially on a number of occasions — our mothers are close friends — but I’m afraid to say that her only interest in me was as a spy acting on her husband’s instructions to find out what progress I was making in the Durridge case.’

He released a rippling ribbon of smoke.

‘Mind you, in the course of our conversations she did let fall a few stray bits of information herself. I vividly remember her telling me some of her husband’s unguarded comments on his associates in the Nuova Repubblica Veneta. Would you like to hear what he thinks of you, Tommaso?’

Saoner stamped his feet, as though to warm them.

‘I know what Ferdinando thinks of me.’

‘I have to say that he was fairly dismissive of his supporters in general. “Clerks and shopkeepers hitting their mid-life crisis. The ones with balls have affairs, the rest give themselves to me.”’

‘Ferdinando would never talk like that,’ snorted Saoner.

‘As for his views on you in particular…’

Saoner turned brusquely away.

‘I don’t want to know!’

‘It’s not that bad,’ Zen chuckled, pulling him back to face him. ‘Cristiana told me that he’s very appreciative of all the work you’ve done so far. “We would never have got where we are today if it hadn’t been for men like Tommaso, simple and strong, dull but dependable, incapable of independent thought but quick to follow orders.” He’s aware of your shortcomings and limitations, you see, but he also fully appreciates your merits. That’s why he was initially so reluctant to get rid of you.’

Saoner flinched.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about the reshuffle he’s planning if he wins the election. Assuming the party does as well as expected, Dal Maschio’s whole political position will change completely. He’ll no longer be the leader of some fringe group, but mayor of one of the most important European cities, with a national and international profile and immense powers of patronage and persuasion. To deal adequately with that, he’s going to need a new set of men around him, men of vision and imagination, with quick wits and a nice television manner.’

Zen let his cigarette fall to the pavement and stepped on it carefully.

‘Mind you, I’m sure he’ll find some suitable role for people like you,’ he went on quickly. ‘Something which matches your talents and skills. Cristiana mentioned the possibility of a post with the department responsible for dredging the canals.’

‘This is all lies!’

Zen looked at him steadily and said nothing.

‘You’re making it all up!’ Saoner exclaimed in a tone of desperation.

‘You’re the ones who are making it up,’ Zen replied quietly. ‘You’ve made an inspirational leader out of an opportunistic mob-orator and you’ve remade the history of the city to fit in with his nonsense about a Venice cut off from the rest of Italy and Europe, inhabited by pure-blooded, dialect-speaking, one-hundred-per-cent Venetians.’

Saoner clenched and unclenched his hands in desperation.

‘That’s enough! I can’t bear any more. Why are you tormenting me like this?’

He started to walk away, mumbling to himself.

‘We were only trying to change things for the better. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I never meant to get mixed up in anything illegal. I don’t remember how that happened. I just don’t remember…’

He broke into a run, sprinting through the public gardens and across a bridge into a neighbourhood of turgid nineteenth-century apartment blocks like a chunk of Turin dropped down in the lagoon. Zen followed, calling out to him to stop. Down the broad, straight, eerily vacant moonlit streets the two men ran, their footsteps hammering on the flagstones. But Zen’s lungs were still raw from the cigarette he had just smoked, while Saoner was running with manic energy, like a man fleeing some unimaginable horror. As his quarry vanished over a bridge on to a grubby islet where the metal scaffolding of the football stadium reared up in the darkness, Zen gave up the chase.

Breathless and cold, he walked slowly back through the deserted streets of Sant’Elena and across the strip of scrubby pine forest to the vaporetto stop. An immense weariness overwhelmed him and he sank down on a bench. Scurries of wind plucked at his clothing like invisible fingers. He felt utterly despondent. He had done all he could do, and it had not been enough. He had lied to Tommaso in the most blatant and hurtful way about Dal Maschio’s opinion of him, but all to no avail. He had underestimated the hold a man like Dal Maschio could exercise over his followers, and the potency of the atavistic cravings from which he had concocted his ideological designer drugs.

The noise of an approaching ferry roused him from his stupor. Reluctantly he hauled himself to his feet and hobbled stiffly down the path to the landing-stage. Someone was already waiting there. Then Zen saw that the vaporetto was going to the Lido, not to the city. He was about to return to his bench when the waiting figure was caught in the boat’s lights as it nudged in alongside. It was Tommaso Saoner.

Zen hurried down the gangway just in time to climb aboard. Saoner had already gone below. The helmsman reversed engines to clear the landing-stage, then eased the craft out into the deep-water channel, passing astern of a car ferry also bound for the Lido. Zen edged round the deck until he came to a window with a view of the cabin. Tommaso Saoner sat bolt upright on his seat, staring straight ahead, seemingly oblivious to the tears streaming down his cheeks. Zen drew back into the darkness, wrapping his coat tightly around him. The wind had eased, but it was colder than ever. A shattered image of the moon tossed and bobbed on the lumpy seas, permuting its scattered fragments like a shaken kaleidoscope.

The wind dropped away as the ferry drew into the lee of the island. Zen waited to let Tommaso Saoner get off first, but it was not until the deck-hand went down to the cabin to rouse him that Saoner rose to his feet. At first he seemed unwilling to budge, but after a brief exchange with the mariner, who pointed out that the boat was going out of service, he climbed up the steps and went ashore.

Of all the topographical freaks in the lagoon, the Lido had always seemed to Zen the most disturbing. In summer, its vocation as a seaside resort lent the place an illusory air of normality, but in the bleak depths of February its true nature was mercilessly exposed. Here was a perfectly normal contemporary urban scene, with asphalt streets called Via this and Piazza that, complete with road signs and traffic lights. There was the usual jumble of apartments and villas, offices and hotels, the usual roar of cars and lorries, scooters, bikes and buses. Everything about the place was perfectly banal, in short, except that it was built on an isolated sandbar a few hundred metres wide between the shallow reaches of the lagoon and the open expanses of the Adriatic.

By the time Zen got ashore, Saoner was already fifty metres ahead, striding down the wide central avenue which led to the sea. Zen almost let him go, but at the last moment his curiosity got the better of him. A pair of headlights split the darkness at an intersection ahead. A car appeared and paused briefly before crossing the main street and disappearing to the right. It was immediately followed by a delivery van, three more cars, a lorry, and finally a milk tanker. Zen loped along the tree-lined pavement, trying to work out some rational explanation for this mysterious nocturnal convoy. Such was the state of his brain that it took him about a minute to realize that all the vehicles must have disembarked from the car ferry he had seen earlier. Satisfied, he scanned the street ahead to find that the figure he had been following had disappeared.

Despite his immense fatigue, he ran all the rest of the way to the huge piazza where the avenue joined the lungomare. During the summer this was the heart of the fashionable tourist area, but now the gardens looked drab and tatty and the wind made the trees shudder as though in pain. Zen looked all round, from the moth-balled hulk of the Grand Hotel des Bains to the gleaming strip of the boulevard skirting the beach where surf foamed dimly at the limit of vision.

‘Tommaso!’ he shouted.

The wind dismantled the word and flung the pieces away, but he called again and again.

‘Tommaso! Tommaso!’

He walked all around the piazza and along the road in both directions, but there was no sign of any other living soul. Fugitive traces of light were beginning to appear in the east before he finally gave up and turned away to begin the slow journey back to the city.

Winter sunlight, hard and brilliant, searched the grimy window and marked out a skewed square on the floor. Some vestige of childhood superstition made Aurelio Zen avoid setting foot in it as he went to and fro, collecting his belongings from all over the flat and returning them to the battered leather suitcase which had been the companion of his travels for almost thirty years.

The chore did not take long. He had brought only the bare minimum with him, and much of that he had never got around to unpacking in the first place. At a loss again, he sank down in a chair, gazing down at the glaring patch on the tiled floor. It was a beautiful day, everyone agreed, for the time of year. Overcome by exhaustion, Zen closed his eyes. The sun-struck square was still visible, branded on his retinas as a throbbing block of darkness.

He opened his eyes again, reached out a hand for the phone and dialled. Once again, no reply. He let it ring a long time, seeing the deserted apartment in Rome, hearing the bell shrilling periodically in the traffic-troubled stillness. At length he replaced the receiver and glanced at his watch. There were still almost two hours before his train left. He felt like a child again, waiting for school to end, for the bell to sound and real life to begin.

As if in response to his thoughts, a bell did ring, gurgling throatily in the stairwell. Zen looked up apprehensively. On the wall opposite hung a large canvas supposedly painted by his mother’s uncle. He realized for the first time that he had no idea what, if anything, the turbid whorls of colour were supposed to represent. It had never occurred to him to ask. He had taken the thing for granted all his life, as though it had come with the wall.

The bell rang again. He stood up and walked over to the window, but there was no one to be seen. He opened the window and dipped his face into the cold, clear air outside. On his doorstep, dressed in a grey tweed coat and a green headscarf, Cristiana Morosini stood gazing up at him. They looked at each other for a time without speaking. Then Zen turned back inside and pushed the door release button.

When she entered the room, he was still standing by the window, facing the door. Cristiana hesitated in the doorway for a moment, then walked a little way into the room, coming to rest with her feet in the patch of sunlight. She looked around nervously, opening and closing her lips several times without any sound emerging. Then she saw the open suitcase.

‘You’re leaving?’

Zen eyed her in silence for a moment.

‘Why didn’t you use your key to get in?’ he asked. ‘Or has your husband still got it?’

Cristiana waved her hands vaguely. Zen felt a sentimental stab of pity for those plump white fingers which had explored his body so thoroughly and so satisfyingly. Whatever had happened certainly wasn’t their fault.

‘I was going to phone and let you know he’d be here,’ Cristiana faltered, ‘but Nando said he wanted it to be a surprise.’

‘And what Nando wants, Nando gets.’

Her expression hardened slightly.

‘He’s still my husband.’

‘And what does that make me, Cristiana? What does it make you?’

His voice was so strident that it made the windowpane shiver. Cristiana shrugged peevishly.

‘I don’t know what to say, Aurelio. I thought it was just a fling. I liked you, and Nando had hurt me badly. I thought I deserved to get my own back, and to have a little fun too.’

Zen looked away, shaking his head in simulated disgust.

‘Oh come on!’ Cristiana exclaimed with something like anger. ‘Imagine what you’d be saying now if this had turned out the other way round, and I was being possessive and clingy when all you wanted was to go home and forget it ever happened. I knew all along you had someone in Rome. It never occurred to me that you were taking it seriously.’

‘Of course I wasn’t!’

He looked back at her with a fixed smile.

‘Apart from the sex, Cristiana, my interest in you was purely professional. I hoped you might let drop something about your husband which would be helpful to me in my investigation.’

She gazed numbly at him.

‘No doubt you cultivated me for precisely the same reason,’ Zen went on, ‘to keep dear Nando informed about the progress I was making. We were each using the other. No one got hurt and neither of us has any right to complain.’

‘That’s not true!’ Cristiana retorted. ‘You told me you were investigating Ada Zulian’s problems. Why on earth should Nando care about that?’

Zen shrugged.

‘Have it your own way. What does it matter, since you’ve won? I went to see Mamoli this morning. The judiciary is dropping the case. Bon and the others have been released. Your husband’s election triumph is assured and you can look forward to being Signora Dal Maschio, loyal wife of the local political supremo. Only you and I will know that you’re married to a kidnapper and a murderer.’

‘What?’

Her face was rigid with shock.

‘Didn’t he mention that little exploit?’ murmured Zen. ‘How odd. I’ll bet he tells all his other women. Just the sort of thing to get them going.’

Cristiana walked towards him.

‘What are you talking about? What are these horrible lies?’

Zen held up his hands.

‘Since you’ve branded me a liar, there’s no point my saying any more. Why don’t you ask Tommaso Saoner? He knows all about it.’

Cristiana stopped and stared at him, shaking her head slowly.

‘That’s an appalling thing to say.’

‘It was an appalling thing to do, Cristiana. Durridge may have been a war criminal, but…’

‘To joke about Tommaso like that, I mean!’

He frowned.

‘Like what?’

They confronted each other in silence.

‘Haven’t you heard?’ she said at last.

‘Heard what?’

‘It’s been on the local news and…’

‘What are you talking about?’ snapped Zen irritably.

Cristiana lowered her head.

‘He’s dead.’

‘Dead? Who’s dead?’

‘Tommaso Saoner.’

He laughed.

‘Don’t be ridiculous! Why, I saw him only…’

His voice trailed away.

‘The body was washed up at the Lido this morning,’ said Cristiana. ‘Nando is devastated. Tommaso was one of his closest and most trusted associates. They met just last night. Nando even walked part of the way home with him.’

She looked at Zen.

‘When did you see him?’

He turned to the window.

‘Oh… before that.’

There was a long silence.

‘What happened?’ he muttered almost inaudibly.

‘It looks like suicide. The body was fully clothed, and there was no sign of violence. But Nando says he seemed perfectly normal last night. He even made a joke about you.’

She shivered.

‘What could have suddenly driven him to do something like that? And what was he doing on the Lido in the first place? It doesn’t make sense!’

There was a long, sombre silence. Cristiana looked at Zen, who was still facing the window.

‘I thought he was supposed to be a friend of yours,’ she remarked sharply.

‘He used to be.’

‘Well you don’t seem to care particularly that he’s dead!’

This time the silence was even more oppressive.

‘I’m not sure I really know you,’ Cristiana muttered. ‘I’m not sure I really like you.’

Zen turned slowly and looked at her.

‘Neither am I,’ he said.

They exchanged a long glance, then Cristiana abruptly turned and walked out. The front door slammed shut. Zen stood gazing down at the quadrilateral of sunlight on the floor. It had moved slightly to the left, and was shorter and squatter than before. Zen stepped carefully around it and picked up the phone.

‘Mamma? At last! It’s me, Aurelio. I’ll be home this evening. In time for dinner, yes. Can you get Maria Grazia to make something really nice? I haven’t eaten properly all week. Rosalba? I ate there the first day, but since then… She’s fine. Who? Cristiana? She’s the daughter, isn’t she? I met her briefly. Anyway, how are you? Good. Are they? Glad to hear it. I’m looking forward to seeing you both this evening. You and Tania. What? What? Moved out? Where’s she gone? Why did she leave? I thought you two were getting on well together…’

He sat down on the sofa, the receiver clamped to his ear.

‘Me? What did I do? I wasn’t even there!’

His face gradually grew hard as he listened.

‘Sorry, Mamma, but I’ve got to go or I’ll miss my train,’ he said in a different voice altogether. ‘Goodbye. Yes. Goodbye. And you. Goodbye.’

He got out his crumpled pack of Nazionali and sat there smoking one cigarette after another until the packet was empty and the ashtray full. Then he put on his coat and hat, closed his suitcase, and left.

Out of the sun, the air was still chilly. Zen walked the length of the triangular campo without looking back, hefting his suitcase in his right hand, his shoulders hunched and his head lowered. As he rounded the corner into the long alley leading to the Lista di Spagna he collided with someone coming the other way. Zen muttered an apology and was about to pass by when the man spoke his name. Zen set down the heavy suitcase and looked at him, taking in the greasy grey hair, the shabby suit, the tartan carpet slippers, the non descript mutt trailing along at the end of a rope.

‘Daniele,’ he murmured without enthusiasm. ‘You must excuse me. I’m late for my train.’

‘You’re leaving?’

‘As you see.’

‘So soon?’

Zen picked up his suitcase again.

‘I should never have come in the first place.’

Daniele Trevisan scuttled up to him with amazing rapidity and grasped him by the arm.

‘You can’t go yet!’

Zen looked down at the elderly face, as shrivelled as an old nut.

‘Ever since I saw you last week, I’ve been wondering whether or not I should say anything,’ Trevisan went on hesitantly. ‘God only knows when you’ll be back, and whether I’ll still be alive.’

He shook his head helplessly.

‘I just don’t know what to do, Angelo.’

Catching sight of Zen’s expression, the old man hastily corrected himself.

‘Aurelio, I mean.’

Zen tried to tug himself free of the man’s fierce grip.

‘Let me go!’

‘Stop! Wait!’

Zen turned on him with a menacing glare.

‘Why can’t you leave me in peace?’ he shouted.

The old man stared back at him mutely.

‘What do you want with me?’ demanded Zen.

‘Why, nothing! I just…’

An ingratiating smile appeared on Daniele Trevisan’s face.

‘I only wanted to offer you a glass at Claudio’s new bar. Come on, Aurelio! You can’t leave Venice without having a last ombra.’

Zen looked at him.

‘Please!’ the old man added unexpectedly.

Zen glanced at his watch.

‘We’ll have to hurry. I’ve got a train to catch.’

When they reached the bar, Zen found to his surprise that he recognized it. He had been taken there many times by his mother to watch television, at a time when only the super-rich could afford a set of their own. By stretching his credit to the limit, a barista in the Lista di Spagna had managed to acquire a set and thus transform what had previously been a perfectly ordinary wineshop, frequented solely by elderly males, into the social hub of the community, where men, women and children from all over the neighbourhood flocked to watch Mike Bongiorno’s quiz show ‘Double or Quits?’ — having paid the exorbitant surcharge on drinks ordered during the transmission.

The television, in a more modern incarnation, stood on the same shelf at the end of the room, showing an American police series crudely dubbed into Italian, but the old magic had fled. The bar was empty but for scattered groups of foreign tourists who looked askance as Daniele Trevisan sidled up to the bar dragging his flea-ridden dog. Nor did Claudio seem particularly pleased to see them. He looked blank when Daniele introduced Zen.

‘Angelo’s son,’ prompted Daniele Trevisan.

Claudio shrugged.

‘You drink too much, Daniele.’

He set two glasses on the bar and filled them with the contents of an open bottle.

‘Take it down the back,’ he told them. ‘You’ll scare away the tourists.’

They made their way to a dim, grubby area at the rear of the premises, stocked with damaged chairs and tables and crates of empty bottles.

‘It was just like meeting you today,’ Daniele said once they’d sat down. ‘I’d popped round to see if Ada was all right, when suddenly there he was, walking along the canal towards me.’

He risked a smile.

‘ He wasn’t watching where he was going either. Must run in the family.’

The old man bit his lip.

‘I knew at once it was Angelo.’

Zen’s arm jerked convulsively, knocking his wine over. The glass rolled across the table and fell to the floor, bursting like a bulb. A moment later Claudio appeared, marching towards them with a furious expression.

‘Right, that’s it! Out!’

Zen got out his wallet and handed over a two-thousand-lire note.

‘It was an accident. That should cover it.’

‘I don’t want your money! I want you out of here! I’m not running a refuge for drunken louts!’

‘No,’ Zen retorted, ‘you’re running a cheap scam whose sole purpose is to rip off tourists who don’t know any better by selling them shitty sandwiches at ten times the proper price and wine that tastes like bat piss.’

The barman looked as though he were about to have a fit. He kicked away Trevisan’s dog, which was sniffing at the seat of his pants.

‘If you don’t get out of here right now I’m calling the cops!’

Zen flipped his wallet over, revealing his police identity card.

‘They’re already here.’

The barman’s shoulders slumped. He turned away, hastily palming the banknote. Zen plucked it back again.

‘People might think I was trying to bribe you,’ he smiled sweetly.

‘For a lousy two thousand lire?’

Zen shrugged and handed the note back.

‘You’re right. I could buy four like you for a thousand.’

Daniele Trevisan burst into malicious cackles as Claudio retreated.

‘That’s the way to treat them!’

The spilt wine had formed a puddle which was inching imperceptibly across the table towards Zen. He dipped his finger into it, creating a canal through which the liquid emptied itself safely over the opposite edge.

‘You were saying something about having seen my father,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s impossible, of course.’

His eyes averted, Daniele Trevisan shook his head.

‘It was him all right. Two years ago. Two and a half actually. July, it was. The city was sweltering.’

His eyes became vague and distant.

‘I spoke to him in dialect. At first he didn’t seem to understand, and answered me in some strange language. Then he began to speak, haltingly at first, like a child.’

Zen stood up.

‘You’re either mad or mischievous. Either way, I’m not going to listen to this pack of lies a moment longer.’

He picked up his suitcase and buttoned his coat, glancing from time to time at Trevisan. The old man did not look at him. After a moment Zen sat down again.

‘You’ve got ten minutes,’ he said coldly.

Trevisan stared into his wineglass as though it were a clairvoyant’s crystal ball.

‘He asked about you and your mother. I explained that you’d both moved to Rome. “We’ve already been there,” he said. He was with a group of Polish tourists on a cultural and religious trip. The borders had just been opened and they were taking advantage of the new freedom to visit Italy and see the Polish pope. “Don’t tell me you’ve turned religious, Angelo!” I said, but he said it was just that the tours organized by the Church were the cheapest. They’d driven all the way from some city with a name I forget.’

‘This is absurd!’ exclaimed Zen. ‘What has Poland got to do with it?’

‘That’s where he lives.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

Daniele Trevisan consulted his wineglass once more.

‘It seems he deserted from the army in the Ukraine. He and a couple of other lads from the city decided they’d had enough. Do you remember Fabio Fois and what’s-his-name, the elder of the two Vivian boys? I suppose you’d have been too young.’

He sighed.

‘They didn’t make it, of course. The other two died. Angelo was taken in by a peasant woman whose menfolk had all been killed. He stayed there, lying low, helping to work the farm, until the war was over. By that time the woman was pregnant. Later on they moved to the city. The Communists were in control and the borders had been sealed. That’s when Angelo learned that he was in Poland. And there he had to stay.’

Zen smiled in a superior way.

‘Even supposing this preposterous story were true, as a foreign national he’d only have needed to show his documents and they would have had to let him out.’

‘He’d destroyed his Italian papers when he was on the run, for fear of being shot as a deserter. He was passing as one of the woman’s dead brothers.’

Zen slapped his palm on the surface of the table.

‘He could have gone to the Italian embassy in Warsaw! He was a displaced person, for God’s sake, a refugee. He could have come home any time he wanted to!’

Daniele Trevisan looked at Zen for the first time.

‘Perhaps he didn’t want to.’

Their eyes clashed briefly.

‘I don’t believe any of this,’ Zen muttered in an undertone. ‘You’re making it up.’

‘It’s true, Aurelio. I swear it.’

‘So where is this person now?’

The old man shrugged.

‘Back in Poland, I suppose. The tour group was leaving that afternoon. I asked if he’d be coming back, but he said no. “It’s been too long,” he said. “It’s another life.” Then I asked him if he was going to…’

He broke off, fiddling with the stem of the glass.

‘Going to what?’ demanded Zen.

Trevisan gestured awkwardly.

‘If he was going to get in touch with you and your mother. But he said he wouldn’t. “They think I’m dead,” he told me. “It would only cause trouble.” I tried to argue with him, but he wouldn’t listen. He made me swear on my mother’s grave never to tell you or Giustiniana anything about this. And I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen you…’

He looked at Zen and nodded.

‘You’re right. You shouldn’t have come.’

Zen held the old man’s eyes for a long time. Then he picked up his suitcase and walked out. The street was packed with people heading to and from the station. Zen was immediately caught up in a large group calling animatedly to each other in some language which was opaque to him. A counter-current flowed back along the other side of the street. Where the two met there was an area of turbulence and confusion, while the drag caused by the shops and houses to either side created a further set of whorls and eddies. Several times a blockage momentarily slowed the progress of the human current, with a consequent backing-up and an increase in pressure which made everything move faster when the obstruction was finally swept aside.

At length the walls fell back. The crowd lost its cohesion and impetus, spreading out across the courtyard in front of the station. People wandered about, seemingly at random, looking bewildered and lost. Somewhere in the distance a massive, muffled voice read out a succession of unintelligible announcements. A gypsy beggar hunched over an accordion played a snatch of a military march over and over and over again. An excess of sunlight had blinded the clock. A child cried.

‘Excuse me!’

A middle-aged couple, oddly but neatly dressed, stood beaming at Zen. The man said something incomprehensible. Zen shrugged and shook his head. The man repeated the phrase more slowly, pointing to a map in the guidebook he was holding. Zen understood only that he was asking directions to somewhere in English. He closed his eyes and tried to summon up a few words in that language.

‘I’m sorry,’ he replied with an apologetic smile. ‘I’m a stranger here myself.’