Alibi

CHAPTER TWELVE

Are you crazy?” Claudia said.

“Maybe. But this way we know everything they’re doing.”

“Help them. What are you going to do? Help them catch us?”

“The closer I get, the more they look somewhere else. I’m making them look somewhere else.”

“No, digging a grave. Two. Not just yours.” Pacing now, drawing smoke in tight gulps, as if she were angry at the cigarette too.

“We want them to look somewhere else. You don’t want them coming back to that party.”

“Back to me, you mean.”

“Back to either of us,” I said, looking at her. “Either of us.”

“And now they won’t-because you’re there? Maybe they ask themselves, why does he do this?”

“Look, I was a kind of cop. Something like this happens in my family, they expect me to take an interest.”

“Not your family.”

“Close to me, then. They expect me to help. Cavallini asked me. Giulia asked me.”

“Oh, Giulia. The pretty sister. Now, not a sister. So there’s a convenience.”

“Stop.”

“What do you want to do, make it up to her? ‘I’ll find out who did it.’ Ha. Not as difficult as she thinks.”

“Claudia.”

“Maybe you want to show her what he was like. ‘Here’s your father. SS.’ You think she’ll thank you for that, your little sister?”

“Are you finished?”

She turned her back to me. “You said we would leave Venice.”

“We will.”

“Oh, but not yet. Not until it’s too late.”

I put my hands on her and turned her around. “Listen. This is how it works. I show Cavallini what Gianni did. I prove it. So it’s the logical answer, the only place he looks. Not here, not at you, not at me. Some partisan, someone Gianni betrayed.”

“And when there is no partisan?”

“But they’ll think there is. Maybe dead, maybe still out there-they don’t know exactly, we never find out, but we know who it has to be. The kind of crime. So they’re satisfied-it couldn’t be anyone else. And maybe it’s just as well they can’t get him. That way nothing has to come out about Gianni. No scandal. No disgrace. All covered up. Like his brother. All they want is an answer to what happened, something plausible. They don’t want to open anything up. Nobody wants to know.”

She was silent for a minute, then moved away, carrying her cigarette to the table. “Only you,” she said, putting it out. “You want to know.”

“Don’t you? I want to be sure.”

“Sure of what? You want to use the police to prove he was guilty? Why? So that it was right for you-”

“I want to lead them somewhere else.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ll lead them back to us.”

“The closer I am to them, the safer we are.”

She looked up. “Yes? Unless they use you.”

We stopped then, too tired to go any further, but the argument went on in different ways, a general prickliness that began to seep into the days.

Claudia had found a job in a lace shop near San Aponal.

“You don’t have to work.”

“Yes, I have to. What do I do, sit and wait? Besides, after the Accademia, maybe they think I have a grudge. No job. So it’s better.”

“No one suspects you.”

“Maybe I want to do it anyway. What else? Sit with your mother, waiting for her to guess?”

So we saw less of each other, busy being careful in public. I went through reports at the Questura-a staff member to translate, a desk that wasn’t officially mine but was always available-and Claudia made a point of not asking where I’d been. One night, leaving her hotel, I realized that we’d made love because we were expected to, as if our comings and goings were still being monitored, even sex now part of an airtight alibi, something noted for a file.

On Sunday the weather was still fine and we went to Torcello, an excuse to get away. The vaporetto wasn’t crowded-a few families going out to Burano and two American soldiers in Eisenhower jackets who sat inside with half-closed eyes, out late the night before.

The military had been a light presence in Venice during the occupation, and since the official changeover in December soldiers were even less visible, more like tourists passing through than conquerors. In Germany it had been rubble and jeep patrols and lowering your eyes when a soldier passed, keeping out of trouble. Here, in the close quarters of the boat, the Burano families stared openly, curious, as if they were sizing up customers. I thought of the Germans finishing coffee at Quadri’s. Now the Allies. Who might like a little Burano lace to send home.

Surprisingly, however, the GIs got off with us at Torcello. I looked at the sluggish canal, the lonely marshes beyond, and wondered if they’d made a mistake, but after a quick glance at a map they went straight toward the piazza. Claudia hung back, letting them go ahead. No one else was around. Somewhere on the island, on one of the farms, a dog barked. Otherwise it was quiet, no summer insects yet, just the wind moving through the reeds. By the time we caught up with the GIs, they were standing in the piazza, a worn patch of grass, looking as melancholy and lost as the shuttered buildings around it.

“There’s supposed to be a restaurant here,” one of them said. “Locanda. You know where that is?”

I pointed to the closed-up inn across from us.

“That’s the one Harry’s runs?”

“Yes, but only in the summer,” I said. “It’s too early.”

“Well, shit,” he said, then dipped his head toward Claudia, an apology to a lady.

“They didn’t tell you?”

“I never asked. I just heard about it. Shit.” He looked around the empty island. “What’s the rest, a ghost town?”

“No, people live here. Farms. It’s just a little early in the season. You’re welcome to have some of ours.” I pointed to the picnic bag.

“That’s okay, we’ll just catch the next boat.”

“That’ll be a while. You check the schedule?”

He shook his head, then grinned. “Never thought to look.”

We opened the wine and shared out the salami sandwiches, sitting on the steps of the Greek church, Claudia slightly away from us, uncomfortable. They were on furlough, trying to see something worth seeing before they headed back to Stuttgart. It was the usual service talk-where I’d been stationed, where they were from, when their separation papers were coming through.

“And I can’t wait,” he said. “I mean, I can’t fucking wait. They can keep the whole thing.” He spread his arm to take in all of Europe, then remembered Claudia and dropped it, embarrassed. Instead, as if it would explain things, he pulled out his wallet and showed us a picture of his wife, Joyce. Head tilted for the camera, blond, ordinary, holding a baby in her arms.

“A boy?” Claudia said.

He grinned back. “Jim junior. Haven’t seen him yet. Just this.”

“Well, but soon, yes? They’re sending everybody home now. We saw it in the newsreels,” she said. “All the boats.” Thousands of waving soldiers, the skyscraper shot, then running down the gangplank, arms open.

“You from here?” he said, intrigued by her accent, maybe the first Italian he’d met. He looked around. “What is this place, anyway?”

“It was the first Venice, where it started.”

“So what happened?”

“The canals silted up. Malaria too, I think.”

He gave her an “I’ll bet” look. “Anything here to see? I mean, you came out, and you knew the restaurant was closed.”

“The basilica is very old, eleventh century. The original was seventh,” Claudia said. “The mosaics are famous.” But she was losing them. They were already looking away, uninterested. “And, you know, for walks.”

“Right,” he said, nodding. “Walks.” A smile, just a trace of a leer. “And here we are, in the way.” He brushed off his trousers, standing up.

“But you don’t want to see inside?”

“Tell you what, you take a look for me. I never know what I’m looking at anyway. We’ll just go wait for the boat, let you be.”

“It’s a long wait.”

“Not in this sun. I could just soak it up, after Germany.” He grinned. “Fucking sunny Italy, huh?”

They took a photograph of us, then headed down the canal path to the pier, turning once to wave.

“So that’s who comes to Cipriani’s,” Claudia said, amused.

“Not usually,” I said, leaning back. A favorite of Bertie’s before the war. “I wonder how they heard about it.”

“Oh, how do people hear about anything? Somebody tells them.”

“Yes,” I said lazily, closing my eyes. “And who tells him?”

“Somebody else.”

“And him?” I said, playing.

“I don’t know. Maybe Cipriani.”

I smiled, letting the thought drift, then sat up, taking a cigarette out of my pocket. “So who told Gianni? I mean, how did he know?”

She looked at me blankly.

“Rosa said he wouldn’t know a partisan-somebody would have to tell him. Not the SS. If they already knew, why use him? Somebody else. Maybe I’ve been looking at this backwards.”

“How do you mean, backwards?”

“We’ve been tracking what happened after, and we’re getting nowhere. But what about before?” I bent over, lighting the cigarette, then saw her confused expression. “Look, the only one in that house who’d been in hospital was a man called Moretti. If there was a connection to Gianni, he’d be it. But he was discharged more than a week earlier. So where was Gianni all that time? There’s nothing to prove he was involved at all.”

“So maybe he wasn’t,” Claudia said calmly.

“No proof,” I said, not listening. “A few visits to Villa Raspelli. But if he did know about Moretti, how did he know? Maybe that’s what we should be looking for. The link before.”

“And if you don’t find that either?”

I exhaled some smoke. “Then we can’t prove he did anything.”

“He gave them my father.”

“But there’s no proof he did.”

“No,” she said, “only me.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“Just my word. And now he can’t answer. So how can you prove it? Maybe I made it up. The camp too. Maybe it’s all in my head.”

“I didn’t mean-” I said again.

But she was gathering things up, finished with it. “Let’s see the church.”

I put out my cigarette, still thinking, and followed her inside. Santa Maria Assunta had been built before churches became theaters-the walls were austere and the air was damp. We could see our breath in little streams. Venice was still primitive here, the island a mud bank with reeds again, the world full of mystery and fear. But then there were the mosaics at the end, cold and glittering, spreading over the chancel in an arch of colored light. People would have knelt here on the rough stone floors, dazed.

“You see the tear on her cheek?” Claudia said, pointing. “Mary crying. It’s unique.”

We studied the Apostles for a while, then walked slowly back to the west wall and the big mosaic of the Last Judgment, the afterlife arranged in tiers, a medieval sorting out, with hellfire on the bottom. Dying wasn’t enough for the early Christians-there had to be punishment too. Claudia stood before it with her arms folded across her chest, working her way down through the levels of grace to the figures on the lower right, engulfed in flames.

“So this is what happens after,” she said. “But they didn’t want the Jews to wait. They burned us here.”

The chill of the old stone followed us out into the piazza, not quite as sunny as before. We took one of the footpaths leading away from the canal, waving to the GIs, who were still waiting on the dock for the Burano boat. “Why are they laughing?”

“They think we’re going parking.”

“Parking?”

“Kissing. In a car. People drive somewhere to be alone.”

“America,” she said. “Everyone has a car.”

“Will you like that? You’ll have to learn to drive.” An unexpected thought, jarring, because I had never imagined us beyond Venice, anywhere outside her room.

“Drive,” she said, maybe jarred too. “Here, no one does.”

Except Gianni’s brother, I thought. Who had actually pushed him off the road? Maybe a connection. Something to ask Rosa.

We passed the farm with the dog, then turned onto a path that led down to the water, a cleared patch of dry land that looked back through the reeds to the campanile. In summer, lovers would come with picnics. Now we pulled our jackets tight against the wind.

It was only after his brother’s death that Gianni had made the house calls to Villa Raspelli. Younger, but head of the family, Father Luca had said. His brother’s keeper.

“So you’re thinking again,” she said. “Why is this so important to you?”

“I don’t want to be wrong.” I turned to her. “Then it’s just personal-something I did for myself.”

She stopped in the path. “He was trying to kill you.”

I looked over the reeds. His eyes, hesitating, about to stop, then the slippery stairs, my hand underneath, getting cold as I held him there, my breath ragged.

“What?” she said.

“No, I wanted to do it,” I said finally. “I wanted to do it.”

She came over to me. “You know what he was.”

“If he was. I was wrong about him and my mother. He was never after her money, never. Anyway, it turns out there isn’t any.”

“No?” she said, then started to smile, raising her hand to brush at my hair. “So it’s lucky I found the lace shop.”

“I was wrong,” I said, not letting go.

She brushed my hair again. “It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t change anything.”

“Of course it matters.”

“Why? So you can blame yourself? And then what? For you it’s like the mosaic.” She tossed her head toward the church. “Always a judgment. There is no judgment. No one is judging. No one is watching.” She stopped, dropping her hand. “No one is watching.”

“Then we have to,” I said.

“Oh, like he did,” she said, annoyed, moving away. “Play God. Of course, a doctor, they’re used to that, aren’t they? Then he plays it with my father. Bah.” She waved her hand. “But that’s not enough for you. How guilty does he have to be? Before it’s all right?”

She walked to the end of the clearing where it was sunny and faced the water, using her back to put an end to the conversation. I went over to her, not saying anything.

“That’s Jesolo,” she said, pointing, meaning nothing, not expecting a response.

I took out my cigarettes and offered her one, waiting for her lead. But she seemed to enjoy the silence, turning her face to the sun, then squatting down to test the ground for dampness, sitting, and lying back. I sat down next to her.

“This is better. All week in the shop, never any sun,” she said.

I stretched out, leaning on my elbow to prop up my head as I looked at her.

“You don’t have to work there,” I said, going along. “I mean, with your English. They’re always looking for translators. Joe would hire you in a second.”

“For the army? No, not even yours. Not carabinieri either. Or police. No uniforms.” She glanced over. “I don’t work for the police. One of us is enough.”

I turned and lay on my back, squinting at the bright sky. In the distance was the faint sound of a boat’s motor, maybe the GIs’ vaporetto. “What’s wrong?” I said. “All week. It’s not Cavallini, not really. What?”

“I don’t know.” She paused. “I’m worried.”

“About what? I’m telling you, they don’t know.”

She shook her head. “Not that. It’s different between us. At first, it made us closer. And now, already we’re quarreling.” She turned to me. “You can’t change it. What it is. You want to make it better. Nothing makes it better.”

“I know.”

“But you keep thinking, maybe. It’s in your head.” She lay on her back again.

“Nothing’s different between us. I just want to know about him, that’s all. It’s important.”

She closed her eyes, another way of turning her back, and said nothing for a few minutes, then sighed, not much louder than the moving reeds.

“They have sun in Georgia?” she said. “Where that soldier lives?”

“Nothing but.”

“So he’s happy there. But not you,” she said, thinking aloud. “You don’t want to go home.”

“I’m happy here.”

“No. Something else. Those men on the ship-in the film, remember? So excited. It’s over for them.” She turned, opening her eyes. “But not for you.”

I said nothing, remembering Rosa wagging her finger between us, both of us still with files.

“Maybe it takes an ocean, and then it’s gone,” she said. “Oh, I want-”

I looked over at her. “What?”

“What? What do I want?” she said to herself. “I want to be Joyce. The girl in the picture. Make curtains. Wait for the ship. Feed the baby.” She stopped, her voice drifting off. “Think how wonderful, not to know about any of it. Not any of it.”

“And that’s the life you want,” I said, teasing. “Joyce.”

“No.” She turned. “Anyway, I can’t. No babies. So that’s something you should know,” she said, her voice tentative, waiting for a response.

“Oh,” I said finally, trying to sound easy.

“Do you mind about that?”

“No.”

“No?”

Another pause, this time waiting for her.

“I got rid of it myself, in the camp. I knew that if he found out, he’d send me. And there was no one to help, so I did it myself. That’s why.”

I looked at her for a minute, not saying anything. Then she moved to brush off a blade of grass, pushing at her sleeve, and for an instant I saw Rosa’s arm again with its jagged patch of white. Visible scars, reminders. But what about the others, the ones you couldn’t see? Years of them, nobody unblemished now.

I reached over and touched her hand. “I don’t want Joyce.”

“So it’s lucky for me.” She closed her eyes. “But now there’s this. Maybe you enjoy it, being police. But it’s both of us they’ll catch. Why do you have to know?”

“I held him under, Claudia. Me. What if-?”

For a minute she didn’t say anything. Then she took a breath. “When it happened, I thought you did it for me. So they wouldn’t take me. I thought my heart would stop. Imagine, someone doing that for me. Everyone else wanted me dead, and you-” She moved her hand away and sat up. “But now it has to be something else, I don’t even know what. You can’t change what happened, whatever he was. Say you did it for me. Isn’t that enough?”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“But you still want to know.”

I sat up, looking straight at her. “I saw the body. What he looked like after. I can’t explain-it’s different when you see what it really means.” I dropped my head. “It won’t take long. Nobody suspects.” I ran my hand over the grass. “How else are we going to live with this?”

She smiled slightly, giving up, a movement of the lips, not really a smile at all. “Oh, how. You can live with anything. Anything.”

“What was Paolo like?”

“Paolo? A puppy,” Bertie said. “Why Paolo all of a sudden?”

We were having coffee in Santo Stefano, a chance meeting on my way to Ca’ Maglione, where Giulia was waiting with Gianni’s papers. The sun was bright enough for umbrellas at the cafe tables, but the air was still cool. Bertie was wearing a three-piece oyster-colored suit, perfectly pitched, like the weather, somewhere between winter and summer.

“I don’t know about him. About any of Gianni’s family, for that matter.”

“ Now you want to know?”

“It might help.”

“Who? Your friends at the Questura? I hear you’re thick as thieves. Is this an official visit?” he said, his voice rising slightly, like an arched eyebrow.

I smiled. “I’m just trying to help. It was Giulia’s idea.”

“Oh, Giulia’s idea. The fair Giulia.” He looked over at me, then tilted his head, his eyes beginning to twinkle. “No, it’s too penny dreadful. Still.”

“Having fun?”

“I admit it’s a little novelettish, but think how suitable.”

“Well, don’t.”

“And Grace the dogaressa after all.” He giggled.

“Bertie.”

“Oh, I know, I know. Very bad. It’s just a thought. Anyway, you’re otherwise attached. As we know. There’d be that to contend with, wouldn’t there?” His voice casual, Claudia still an inappropriate affair to him, unaware we were joined by blood now, our hands streaked with it.

“Yes, there would.” I leaned forward, serious. “Bertie, tell me something. What happened at the Accademia?”

“Me? Why ask me?”

“Because you know.”

“I don’t always, you know. Better not to. Venice is a very small town. You don’t want to be telling tales out of school-people don’t like it.”

“Tell this one.”

He looked at me, then nodded. “I don’t want any reactions, please. It’s not perfect, the world, not even here.” He glanced around the sunny campo, the terra-cotta planters sprouting bits of white, the first spring flowers. “Some attitudes-not very nice, but they just don’t go away overnight, either. And at first, of course, no one thought to ask. There’d never been any, you know, not in the curatorial department.” He let it hang, awkward, and took a sip of coffee.

“Are you trying to tell me they fired her because she’s Jewish?”

“I didn’t say that,” Bertie said quickly. “And I don’t want you saying it either. I merely said they didn’t think she was-suitable.”

I thought of the Montanaris. Just a look.

“Who didn’t?”

“Oh, what does it matter? All right, old Buccati, if you must know. He’s nearly ninety. At that age, all you’ve got is old ideas, whatever they are. Mostly he just naps away the afternoon, like an old tabby, but this time he pricks up his ears and makes a fuss. And of course it is Buccati, so they can’t very well say no. What a tear. Even me, if you please. Because I’d recommended her. Which I only did because Emilio asked. I thought, a cousin. And then not even that. I had no idea-”

“But how did he hear? Buccati?”

“Hear what? About her? Well, who didn’t, after that awful scene?”

“But Gianni didn’t say anything?”

“Gianni? Adam, what are you talking about?”

“I thought Gianni might have had something to do with it.”

“What, at the Accademia? Gianni never looked at a painting in his life. I doubt he’d ever been inside, much less-what? Do you think he was prattling away to old Buccati? What for?”

“To get her fired.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have blamed him-so unpleasant, that business at the party-but no. No. Nobody’s even suggested it. This was Buccati’s own particular nonsense, and what a mess. I’m sorry about the girl, of course, but think of me. And the staff. Nervous as hens now that they see what he’s really like.”

“So you don’t think it was Gianni,” I said, partly to myself.

“No, I don’t,” he said steadily. “And I would have heard.”

I finished the rest of the coffee, thinking. “He showed me some frescoes once,” I said.

“And? Adam, I’m having a little trouble following.”

“You said he never looked at pictures. But he knew these.”

“Where?”

“At the hospital.”

“Well, the hospital. And Ca’ Maglione. I’m sure he knew every wall. And I’d still bet he’d never been inside the Accademia. Adam, he was a doctor. They’re all a bit Home Counties, really, aren’t they? He was a very conventional man. He wasn’t really interested in-” He waved his hand to take in the city. “You know, this.”

“But he loved Venice.”

“As property. Not as-this extraordinary thing. No eye, none. He was just a conventional man.” He paused, putting down his cup. “Except for Grace, I suppose. I’ve been thinking about it since-well, since-and you know, she’s the one thing that doesn’t make sense in his life. He does his work. He cares about his family-oh, that dreary wife, the marriage must have been a penance. Everything what it should be. Except for her. Maybe she was this for him,” he said, waving his hand again at the campo. “This whole other side that must have been there. I never saw it, but it must have been, don’t you think? Mad for her, even years later. I think she was the only idea he ever had about-whatever it was that was missing.”

I looked out at the square, the faded red and melon plasterwork warm in the sun. This extraordinary thing.

“You’re a romantic, Bertie.”

He smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I just like a good mystery story. It’s the ultimate mystery, isn’t it? People. Not who done it. Who they are. Of course, you’re one of the ‘done it’ people, you and your friends at the Questura. Somebody done him in. Well, yes, but who was he? That’s what I want to know. Here’s a man I’ve known for-well, if I did. Anyway, who wants to know his doctor? And it turns out I didn’t. Sometimes I think we’re all little mysteries, whirling around.” He moved his finger in a circle. “And none of us has the faintest clue about the other. Think of it. Gianni in love. I didn’t know he was capable of it. But I suppose he was. Then murdered. What could he have done to make somebody want to do that?”

“That’s what they’re trying to find out.”

“Are they? Well, good luck. Cavallini couldn’t catch a fly.” He shook his head. “And you. Such nonsense. You’d be better off getting Grace out of here. Mooning about with Mimi and Celia and probably getting sloshed, if I know my Celia. Talk about the bad penny turning up. Oh, I know,” he said, seeing my look, “her heart’s broken, but it so happens I don’t believe in broken hearts.” He peered over his glasses. “I’m not that romantic. What she needs is a change. But here you are, playing Father Brown. What a world.”

“How do you know Cavallini?”

“I had to report during the war-all the neutrals. I’ve told you this. All present and accounted for, you know. Make-work. Actually, he was nice about it-he’d come to me. Of course, that was right up his street. He’s a policeman who likes a canal view.”

“Maybe he’s better than you think. He’s talked to everybody. I’ve seen the reports.”

“Oh, I’ve heard. The poor servants, over and over. I suppose one conked Gianni on the head in a fit of pique. He can’t be serious.”

“He’s just being thorough. The house, the hospital. He’s doing the patients now. He’ll probably get around to you any day,” I said, teasing.

“As a suspect?”

I smiled. “As someone who knew him.”

“But why should it be anyone who knew him? A thief wouldn’t-”

“Because it wasn’t robbery. He still had his money on him. His watch.”

“Really,” Bertie said, then looked over at me. “What else?”

“All we know is what it wasn’t. And if it wasn’t robbery, then it was about him somehow. Who he was.” I fiddled with my coffee cup. “Your little mystery. We need to know more about him.”

“Such as?”

“Anything. Paolo, for instance. Tell me about Paolo.”

“Oh, we’re back to Paolo. But he didn’t count for anything. Awful thing to say, isn’t it? But he didn’t. Simply didn’t matter.”

“But Gianni was upset when he died. Everyone says so,” I said, trying it out.

“Do they?” Bertie looked away, thinking. “I suppose he was. Family, after all. That was important to him, probably more than Paolo was, really. But now that you mention it, he did take it hard. Went all quiet and monkish for a while. But they do that here.”

“So they were close?”

“Only in the sense of Paolo’s being there all the time-we’re talking about the early days now. He was always around. You know, at the beach, parties, whatever.”

“Like a puppy, you said.”

“Yes. Whatever Gianni wanted, he’d fetch it. It was like that.”

“But he was the older brother.”

“Well, what’s there to that? I’m an only child and I’ve always been sociable. Anyway, he didn’t seem to mind. He looked up to Gianni.” He reached over to the cigarettes on the cafe table and took one out. “Is that what you want to know? I can’t think why.”

“So Gianni was distressed when Paolo died?”

“Well, yes,” Bertie said, striking the match and cupping it at the end of the cigarette. “Why wouldn’t he be? Awful way to go, a crash like that. So young. And so typical, I must say, so careless, although of course one didn’t say it.”

“You know there are rumors that it wasn’t an accident.”

Bertie looked at me through the smoke, not saying anything.

“That he was killed by partisans.”

“And?”

“And if he was, there might be a political angle to this murder too. Gianni’s murder.”

“Oh, both now. Very Il Gazzettino of you. Is that the line you’re taking down at the Questura?”

“Did he ever say anything to you about Paolo’s death?”

“No, he didn’t,” Bertie said, tapping the end of his cigarette, his voice prickly. “And if he had, I wouldn’t have listened. I don’t listen to rumors either. Political angle. I don’t listen and I don’t know. All I want is to be left alone. I have no politics. None. I’m the most neutral man in Venice. And it’s very wrong of you to go on about it. Badgering people. Even Cavallini didn’t do that. And that was during the war.”

“I wasn’t asking about your politics, I was asking about Gianni’s,” I said quietly.

He leaned his head back, reprimanded, or surprised at his own reaction.

“Well, how would I know?” he said.

“Because you do,” I said, looking at him.

He made a face, peevish. “Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t. Oh, Adam, what politics? Gianni didn’t have any politics. He just blew with the wind. We all did. The only party he ever cared about was the Maglione family. That was his politics.”

“His brother worked for the Germans.”

“Do you know that?”

I nodded. “And so did Gianni.”

He looked away, then put out his cigarette and picked up his hat from the table. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said finally. “But it’s got nothing to do with me.” He lifted a finger. “And it’s got nothing to do with you, either. Watch you don’t make a mess of things. All this huffing and puffing. Shall I tell you something? You will never understand this society. This isn’t even Italy. It’s Venice. Nothing has been real here since Napoleon. Nothing.”

“But it happened anyway. He worked for the Germans. He was killed. It happened.”

“Not where I live.” He stood, putting on his hat and looking out onto the square. “You see this? It’s like a jewel box. Beautiful. And nothing gets in.”

“And you’re the jewel, I suppose.”

He smiled. “You could do worse. Anyway, it’s what I like. Just the way it is. As far as I’m concerned, Paolo was a slow-witted boy who drove too fast. Gianni was a perfectly respectable man who gave the most boring Sunday lunches you can imagine. Once would do it. And that’s all. If they weren’t, I don’t want to hear it. Politics. Murk. You want to make everything murky. Well, I don’t. Not here.”

Gianni’s papers took no time at all. His businesses were all in the hands of managers, and Giulia, his heir, had already been to their offices, looking through the accounts.

“I thought it could be someone afraid of being caught. Everybody took a little during the war, to survive. But not enough to kill.”

How much was that? I wondered, but let it drop, not really interested in the businesses anyway. But the personal papers were disappointing too-a neat drawerful of bank statements and house accounts; another of official documents, birth, death, and accreditation, crowded with elaborate seals; some hospital paperwork; a few letters, none revealing; a small pile of receipts; a program from La Fenice; clipped articles from professional journals put aside for a rainy day. A blameless life, anybody’s.

We sat at the big mahogany desk in the library, a dark room that backed onto a side calle, away from the canal. Giulia had turned on the desk lamp, making the polished wood gleam. The house was as perfectly waxed and still as it had been after the funeral, maybe the way it would always be now, a convent quiet.

“But did he keep everything here?” I said, rummaging through the deep bottom drawer.

“Yes, I think so. And the albums over there on the shelf. Where I found the pictures for your mother. Maybe you should see the rest. What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. Him. People he knew.”

“There’s an address book,” she said, bringing it over.

For a few minutes we looked at it together, flipping pages. “That’s a patient, that one,” she said, and so, I assumed, were the others. And friends and dinner partners and tradesmen, all Italian. But what had I expected? Extension numbers at the Villa Raspelli? Checkmarks and combination letters, a coded secret life? I closed the book.

“Any diaries, anything like that?”

She shook her head. “No, only the Maglione books, from the old days.” She pointed to a shelf behind her, scrapbooks and odd-shaped journals, some bound in leather, others in gathered-together, yellowing folios. A few boxes, meant to look like books, for stacks of letters bound with ribbon. “They kept everything. For their history.”

“It must have stopped with him.” I closed the drawer.

“Well, my uncle did the notes. I remember him writing. My father was too busy for that.”

“But letters? There must be some letters. Your mother?”

“No. They never wrote. Or they’re gone.” She looked over at me. “Before-I never thought about it. They didn’t love each other. Maybe that’s why.”

We looked at the photo albums-stiffly posed grandparents, then the Maglione childhood, Gianni and Paolo in sailor suits, the usual. Then the book from which she must have got my mother’s pictures-sunny days on the Lido in wet wool bathing suits, groups lolling in front of changing cabanas.

“Which is your mother?”

“They didn’t meet till later. Look, Luca, before he became a priest.” A plump boy with a grin, years from piety. “I don’t know this one.” Standing next to Gianni.

“That’s my father,” I said.

“Oh.” She looked up at me. “Yes, I see it now. It’s strange, our parents together. Like the same family, but not the same.”

My father was squinting into the sun, but both of them were smiling. A day at the beach, a casual snapshot, no hint at all of anything to come, their lives twisted together.

“But where’s Paolo?”

“He was always taking the picture, I think,” she said, smiling. “No, here, the tennis one. My father didn’t like tennis, so maybe it was his turn with the camera.”

I took the picture out of the album and brought it nearer, looking at it closely. No hint here either-no Order of Rome, no politics, none of Bertie’s murk. He was standing against the net in tennis flannels and a white sweater with a chevron neck, his arm draped over the shoulder of another player, both of them holding their rackets at their hips.

“It’s sad to look at them,” Giulia said, moving away. “Everyone so happy. Does that make sense?”

I nodded. “What was he like?”

“Paolo? Uno vitaiolo. You know, always for the pleasure. Tennis. Those cars. Of course, when I was a child I thought this was wonderful. Another child, you know?”

“And then?”

“And then I wasn’t a child anymore.” She turned, facing me. “He was a Fascist. You’re surprised I say that? I know. Today, no Fascists. We were all in the resistance. I think we even believe it.”

“How do you mean, Fascist?”

“Fascist. He liked Mussolini. He liked the parades, dressing up, all of that. He was on committees-you know, they liked him because of his name. Of course no one listened to him, but it made him feel important to go to meetings. And after, the tennis. So not so serious-how could Paolo be serious? And then it’s the war, and everything’s serious. He’s too foolish to see what is happening to us, that it’s a catastrophe. He thinks the king will save us, make peace with the English king. Because he’s a king too. Imagine the foolishness of it. Well.”

“And after that?”

“After that, the Germans. And Paolo? He supports the Salo government, against the CLN, the partisans. It interests you, Italian politics?”

“It confuses me.”

“Yes,” she said. “But at the end it’s not difficult. If you’re with Salo, you’re with the Germans. So Paolo was too. Sometimes I think it was good that he died, before it was a disgrace to the family. Even for my father it was too much. Paolo was his brother, so that’s something sacred to him, but it wasn’t the same between them. The Germans, that’s something my father would never forgive.”

I looked over at her, expecting irony, but she seemed utterly sincere, guileless.

“They had a fight?”

“A distance. Maybe a fight, I don’t know. I was at school. And of course I wouldn’t speak to Paolo then. You know, the students, the way we felt-I was too angry with him. Maybe ashamed, too. My own family. So I didn’t speak.” She came back to the desk and looked down at the picture. “And then after he died, I remembered him like this. When he was so nice. My father too, I think. So quiet, days like that. You know, whatever he did, still a brother.”

“What about your father, his politics?”

She smiled. “Was he this, was he that? Nothing-he wanted to survive them. That’s what he used to tell me. Stay out of it. Keep your head down. So of course we would quarrel. You know, at that age. He was afraid, I think, that I would get involved in the resistance. So many of the students-”

“Did you?”

“No. I wanted to, of course, everybody did, but in the end-I don’t know, a coward maybe. Too much a lady, my friend used to say, my mother’s daughter. So maybe she was right.”

“But not your father’s?”

“Oh, a little bit. I think secretly he admired the resistance too. But he was afraid of it. For him it was simple-the family, Venice. The Church-well, maybe that was for my mother. He believed in those things. And what was the resistance? Maybe a threat. Something else to survive. So he kept his head down. No sides.” She turned at a soft rap on the door, an even quieter opening. “Ah, Maria,” she said, “thank you.” Not surprised.

The maid, in a starched linen collar and apron, carried a coffee tray to the table in front of the reading chairs. The cups and pot lay on a white doily, also starched, as if it had been meant to match her uniform. Shy smiles and murmurs in Italian, part of the ceremony of getting the tray on the table.

“I’ll pour, shall I?” Giulia said, at once dismissing Maria and taking up the pot in her hand, poised, her mother’s daughter.

I sat on the other side of the low table. It was the funeral all over again, nothing extra, everything as it should be, sure of its own taste. Even her dress, I noticed, was suitable, black without any purple frills, a discreet mourning-mourning because I had held his head under. Now we were drinking coffee, polite.

“But it must have been hard in the war, not taking sides,” I said.

She took a sip, then held the cup in her hand, thinking. “Of course in the end you do. It’s your country. I didn’t have the courage, maybe, but I had money. So I helped with that. We were alike that way. Keep your head down, but do it anyway. No sides, but he helped the partisans.”

“He told you that?” Maybe as plausibly as he’d told it on the fondamenta, but why?

She shook her head, then smiled. “Well, I didn’t tell him about the money either. But I know. He made it a question of medical ethics-what’s the right thing to do? You know, they do this in the law school too. So it’s good training for me. But this is his way of telling me. A man is brought in with a gunshot wound, a man you know. The law says you must report all such wounds. But you know that the only way he could have been shot is in the fighting, a partisan. If you report it, the government will kill him. If you don’t, maybe it goes badly for you, for helping a traitor. The man begs you-‘Help me, don’t give me up.’ What do you do?”

“And what did he do?” I said quietly.

“We agreed that the first obligation must be to save the man.”

“Even if he’s a traitor.”

“But if the government itself is illegal-”

“And who decides that?”

“Yes, who? You see how it goes on? He liked these questions. Well, I liked them, so he would ask.”

“And how did it end, this one? What did he do?”

“Oh, he said you can make it complicated if you like, but the simple fact is, if you know a man, you can’t give him up. So I know he didn’t.”

I put down my cup. “What if you gave up someone else instead?”

“Someone else?”

“To save the first. Your friend. If you gave up someone in his place.”

She looked at me for a second, then down at her cup. “What makes you ask this?”

“It’s a question he once asked me.”

“And you think,” she said, stirring her cup, still not looking up, “this was his way of telling you something.”

For a minute we were quiet, still enough to hear the clock.

“Do you think he did that?” she said finally, sitting up straight, braced.

I hesitated, then sat back, moving away from it. “I think it was just a question.”

“It’s a terrible thing.”

“Yes.”

“Why would he ask that?”

“As a moral dilemma, maybe. An impossible choice.”

“But you can’t choose someone’s death.” She was looking at me now, her face longer, more severe, like her mother’s again. “That’s murder.” Sure, admitting no exceptions.

I said nothing, kept quiet by her stare. Then her face began to change, no longer as properly arranged as the tray, and I saw that she was distressed, waiting for me to say something.

“He wouldn’t do that,” she said. “You knew him. Do you think he would do that?”

“I think it was just a question.”

“Then why-”

“Something may have put it in his mind. Something that actually happened. The story about the partisan-when did he tell you that?”

“When? Last year,” she said, composed again, interested.

“After the war?” I said, confused.

“No. I mean the year before. Forty-four. When he came to see me. I remember he told me at lunch.”

“When was this, exactly?”

“Autumn. October, maybe.”

“Why did it come up? I mean, why do you think he told you?”

She smiled a little, shaking her head. “Maybe to make me like him. Always we were arguing then. So maybe this was his way of saying, You see, Papa’s not so bad. I’m on the right side too.”

“But he never actually said he’d done this.”

“No, but that wasn’t his way. He never talked about himself. Maybe he thought it wasn’t dignified. He was private, a Maglione. My mother was like that too.”

“Secretive?”

“No. Private,” she said, making a distinction to herself. “I never knew what he was thinking. But what does a child know? All those years, here we are in this house, a family, and I never knew-” She leaned forward, placing the cup on the tray. “Maybe a little secretive. A doctor has to be, you learn that. You don’t talk about your patients. I used to ask him things and he’d say, ‘That’s not my secret to tell.’ Always somebody else’s secret. ‘I won’t tell,’ I’d say, and he’d wag his finger, like this,” she said, demonstrating, so that I looked up, seeing Gianni. “You know the old saying.” She lowered her voice, becoming him. “Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.” She paused. “So I didn’t ask. And then it turned out he must have had one of his own.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was murdered. Do you know why? No. So it’s still his secret.”

I sat back, looking around the room to avoid her gaze. “Well, it’s safe here. There’s nothing else? Files?”

“At the hospital. His real life was there, I think,” she said, her voice wistful. “Not here.”

There was an awkward pause.

“I should go,” I said, getting up. “Maybe there’ll be something in the patient files. That’s next. He seems to have erased himself everywhere else.”

“Yes, he was good at that. He didn’t like to keep things.”

I smiled, glancing around the old library, virtually an archive.

“Oh, this was Paolo. Poor Paolo, Papa erased him too. Threw out his books. You know, he was always writing in those books- appunti for the family history, and Papa said they were rubbish. Well, what did he expect? Mazzini from Paolo? But, you know, now it just stops. Unless I write it, I suppose,” she said, her voice diffident, as if she were talking to herself, suddenly alone.

“Wait. Paolo kept notebooks and your father threw them out?”

“Not all. Just the ones with his activities. ‘What will people think later?’ he said. It was an embarrassment for him.”

“But where are they?”

She gestured toward the shelves.

“Paolo kept them here?”

She looked at me, puzzled. “It was his house.”

“Yes, I forgot. But you all lived here?”

“Of course. The family.”

“All during the time they-?”

“Yes. There was an agreement-no political talk at dinner.”

I imagined them sitting at the starched table, private, talking politely, each one whirling in his own mystery.

“Can I see them?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, walking over to the shelf. “I’m sorry. I thought, my father’s papers. It didn’t occur to me. These are Paolo’s.” She ran her hand along a line of leatherbound spines.

The books weren’t histories so much as diaries, the kind a fourteen-year-old might write, full of underlinings and exclamation marks, the world a theater with himself, luckily, at center stage. Even with my poor Italian, I could understand Gianni’s reluctance to have them fill the family library’s shelves. But here they were, not all of them thrown out. Why not?

I skimmed through a few, trying to get a sense of why these had survived. Innocuous? But here was Mussolini, a trip to Rome with friends to hear a speech, dinner afterward at the Eden-a time capsule mix. Not embarrassed here, at any rate, by the fascism or Paolo’s comments. The speech had been inspiring, Rome itself a new city. A nightclub after dinner had featured Somalian dancers. Venice now seemed a backwater, dowdy. I flipped pages. Less exalted excursions-a drive to Asolo, dinner in a villa. The Maglione history now mostly idle days. Committee meetings, just as Giulia had said. Recording it all for posterity. The war, somber fourteen-year-old’s thoughts on what it would mean. The Albanian fiasco. The Allies in Sicily. And then it stopped. Gaps here and there before, then nothing after 1943. A war with no Germans at all. But why the earlier gaps? What else had Gianni culled out?

Giulia had been hovering next to me, reading as I flipped, no doubt taking it all in more quickly. “But what do you see?” she said.

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. Can I borrow these? Just the last few?”

“You want to read them?”

“I want to see where the gaps are. Look, here, for instance, he just ripped the pages out. So why here and not there?”

But before she could answer there was another rap on the door, and this time Maria was carrying an old telephone with a long cord, her eyes wide with apprehension.

“ Polizia,” she whispered, pointing to me, then plugged the cord into a jack behind the desk.

Had Cavallini tracked me here? I picked up the phone and then must have registered the stunned dismay I felt as he spoke, because when I hung up, Giulia said, “My god, what is it? What’s happened?”

“Cavallini,” I said, my own voice an echo, hollow. “They’ve arrested somebody for the murder.”