Alibi

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Mimi gave my mother her farewell lunch party. No one called it that-Celia was going to Paris to buy clothes and had asked her along-but all of us knew, I think, that she wouldn’t be back. They would take a water taxi to the station after lunch, slightly tipsy, and in a week or two she’d call to have the rest of her things sent on and leave me to close up the house. She had run out of reasons to stay. I had counted on her usual resiliency, but instead she’d turned listless and vague. Bertie said the trip would do her good, and in fact she seemed to rally at lunch, laughing with Mimi, her voice rising with some of its old buoyancy, but there were sidelong glances too, private moments when her mind went somewhere else.

It was a large party, too large to seat everyone in the dining room, so people passed down the long buffet table and then stood in small groups or huddled around the tea tables that had been set up all over the piano nobile. I spent most of the time watching Bertie, expecting him somehow to look different, tired, thinner, but there were no signs yet that anything was wrong. His illness, like my mother’s sadness, was locked away somewhere, not for public display.

“What’s this I hear about the police arresting somebody?” he said to me.

“Moretti’s son. You must have known him.”

“No.”

“The father, I mean. He was a friend of Paolo’s.”

“Oh, that Moretti. Well, a long time ago. Childhood, practically. But they didn’t stay friends-you never saw him around.”

“No, he became a Communist.”

“Really? Paolo’s friend?” He smiled faintly, then shook his head. “And his son killed Gianni? Why?”

“He thinks Gianni betrayed his father to the SS.”

“Gianni? You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

“The police do.”

“Oh, nothing they like better than a good vendetta. And how is this one supposed to have started?”

“I don’t know. Paolo’s death, probably.”

“Paolo again,” he said, his voice resigned. “All that’s supposed to be over. And look how it goes on.”

“Somebody I knew in Germany said it would be interesting to follow one bullet, see where it finally stops. You think it ends in somebody’s body, but really it keeps going, the people he knew, the way it changes things, on and on.”

“Poor Paolo. And he was so good-looking,” he said, as if he hadn’t been listening. “Not a thought in his head, but so good-looking.” He glanced over his glasses, back with me. “No, it doesn’t stop, does it? Look at Gianni. It didn’t stop with him. Your mother’s a wreck. Clothes with Celia, the new collections. They’ll probably have to roll the two of them off the train. And the lovely Giulia-what’s to become of her? One of the vestals, I suppose, keeping the flame going. You, of course, have already lost your mind. Our little policeman. Still, I suppose if you’ve caught him.”

“I didn’t say I thought he did it. I said the police did.”

“Oh?” he said, interested, wanting to hear more.

But what more could I say? I looked at Bertie, his lively eyes, suddenly wishing that we weren’t talking about it at all, that everything was back to the way it had been before I tiptoed around everything I said. I wanted to talk about his being sick, what it would mean. Is that why he wanted us all to go away, so we wouldn’t see? When all the gossip would be beside the point, not worth the effort? But he was staring at me, not that sick yet, waiting for an answer.

“They’ve made their usual leap to the wrong conclusion, is that it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Hm. Now you even sound like them. Never mind, I’ll ask Cavallini myself. If I can pry him away from Mimi.”

“He’s here?”

“Just. Made a beeline for our hostess. You don’t think he suspects-” He smiled to himself. “No, not possible. Celia, yes, I wouldn’t put it past her. But Mimi? Anyway, it was her party. When would she have found the time?”

“I heard that,” Celia said behind us. “Wouldn’t put what past me?”

“Just about anything, darling,” Bertie said, kissing her cheek. “Ready for the train?”

“It’s hours. Come have a drink. I never see you. Wait.” She fingered the lapels of his jacket, smoothing out his back collar. “There. Adorable. Sugar, you look more like Jiminy Cricket every day.”

“How I’ll miss you,” Bertie said.

“Adam, go say good-bye to your mother while we’re all still standing.”

Instead I went to find Cavallini, talking to Mimi.

“Something wrong?” I said.

“Oh, they want to grill everybody again.”

“So you’ll tell them?” Cavallini said, nodding to me as he spoke to her.

“Yes, yes. But after lunch. You can see, I’ve got a houseful.”

“Of course. After lunch.”

“Don’t tell your mother,” Mimi said to me. “It’s the last thing she needs.”

“What is?”

“Starting all this up again. Who was where when. I thought you’d got him.”

“We like to be certain,” Cavallini said blandly, telling me with his eyes to be quiet. “Till later then.”

He bowed to her, signaling me to follow.

“What?” I said as we headed for the stairs.

“Walk with me a little.”

“Something’s happened.”

“A witness.”

“Somebody saw Moretti?” I said, imagining Rosa leading him into the Questura.

“No. Somebody saw Dr. Maglione.”

We went out the calle entrance and walked away from the Grand Canal, as if we were headed to my mother’s house.

“Saw him where?”

“On his way to the ball. Come, I’ll show you. It’s important, where.”

We turned right on the Fondamenta Venier, bordering a canal so still it seemed to have no outlet. There was the faint, stagnant smell of wet plaster.

“She was there,” he said, pointing up. “The window looks to the bridge from San Ivo, so it’s busy here. She likes to watch the people. Of course, what she says is that she just happened to look out.”

I followed his finger to the window, then to the bridge. A few people were walking down its steps. The way Gianni would have come, turning right at the end toward my mother’s house.

“And she saw him?”

“Yes, in his formal clothes, that’s what interested her. She knew there was a big party. She wanted to see the clothes. You understand the importance of this? Now we have a time. And where. Before, we knew only that he left his house. Then what? It could have been anywhere. Now we have him seen here.”

“She’s just telling you this now?”

“She’s an invalid, she practices the economies. A friend saves the papers for her and then she reads. She says the delay doesn’t matter-anything important she hears from the street.”

“They must have talked about Gianni being missing.”

“Yes, but not what he looked like. For that, she had to wait for the papers. So now we know he came from Accademia through San Ivo. Along here, and then at the end, left to Signora Mortimer.”

He turned, facing the point where the fondamenta split, his eyes fixed in Mimi’s direction, as if he were actually following Gianni, listening for footsteps. But they would have echoed off to the right, on their way to Ca’ Venti. Without thinking, I looked toward the calle he’d really taken, then realized Cavallini had noticed and was now looking with me, thinking.

“Unless he was going somewhere else,” I said, forcing it out, waiting to see his response.

He kept looking for another minute, working it through, then shook his head. “But you called him at the hospital, yes? Go to Signora Mortimer’s. Where else would he go from here? I thought, you know, maybe a stop at the Incurabili-a doctor, after all-but he would have turned earlier in San Ivo. No, if he came this far, he was going to Signora Mortimer’s, just as you said. Now the question is, where was the boat?”

“The boat?”

“The boat is important. There had to be a boat, to take him so far into the lagoon. If he was killed here-right after the woman saw him, it would have to be, but I don’t like to tell her that-then the boat was also here. There is only this canal and that one, where it connects. It’s lucky, this part of Dorsoduro, so few. Anywhere else in Venice-” He spread his hands, indicating a web of canals. “But here they fill in the old canals. So it’s just this one.”

And what would happen when they turned up nothing? Another idea, just down the street in the opposite direction? I had to move him away.

“But he could have been put in a boat anywhere,” I said.

“It’s possible. But if he’s already hit, they don’t like to drag him far. Somebody sees.” He paused. “Of course, it’s possible he is killed after he gets into the boat.”

“After.”

“Yes. And I thought, but where is that likely to happen? Signora Mortimer’s. Boats coming and going. Moretti’s waiting with a message-he’s needed urgently. So he gets in the boat.”

“And that’s why you want to talk to the servants again.”

“Yes, everyone at the landing stage. Although I will tell you frankly, I doubt it was that way. Very risky for Moretti to show himself to so many people. It’s more likely that it happened here,” he said, pointing back down the fondamenta. “After the corner, I think, where it’s quiet. But that would depend on whether he found somewhere for the boat.” He smiled at my expression. “I can see you’re not a Venetian. It’s not so easy to tie up in this district-look, so few spaces. So we talk to people-what was free, who was gone? And if we’re lucky, someone saw. Then we have him.” He looked down the canal again toward the turn to Mimi’s. Where Gianni must have gone. “I will tell you,” he said, smiling, “some in the Questura will be surprised. There have been discussions.”

“They don’t think Moretti did it?” I said, alarmed, unaware that any doubts had been raised. Had they already started looking elsewhere?

“Well, it’s more accurate maybe to say they would prefer someone else. The kind of trial this will mean, once the newspapers-they want something simple. Not a show trial. So they’re suspicious of you.”

“Of me?”

“Making these trials. This is what you did in Germany, yes? They don’t want that here-it brings shame to people. Look at Rosa. She’s Italian and she makes this trouble for Italians. But you-I say to them, it’s not for trials, it’s personal with him. Like me. Rosa, that’s something else. But you don’t want to make trouble. Look how careful you were about Moretti. Be sure, be sure. So now maybe we can be sure. We find where he kept the boat.” He shook his head. “It’s a gift, this woman. Now we know when he was last alive and we know where to look.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance she made a mistake? Old woman, anybody in formal clothes-”

“No, no, sharp eyes, you know how they are, these women. Once she saw the picture, she knew. She identified Signorina Grassini too.”

“What?” I said involuntarily, like a twitch.

“In the funeral pictures. At Salute. That’s how I knew the eyes were sharp. She said she saw her the same night. Right here, coming from San Ivo, like Maglione. Half an hour or so later. And that’s right-it’s as you said. So I said, oh, she was going to the party too? No, no, she says, not dressed up at all. Normale. So that was accurate, because she dressed at your house, you said.”

He looked at me, the faintest hint of a question.

“That’s right. A dress of my mother’s.”

“Yes, I remember. Very beautiful. And the necklace. Well.” He raised his hand, glancing up at the building. “So, an accurate witness. Maybe watching now, who knows?”

He went on to San Ivo, and I started back along the narrow stretch of pavement where Gianni was supposed to have been attacked and bundled into a waiting boat. What would happen when Cavallini didn’t find the boat, when there were no more old women with sharp eyes? I looked to my right up the calle. But our house wasn’t visible from here-you had to make another turn, go deeper into the maze. There were no straight lines in Venice. Maybe if you lived here long enough your mind began to work that way too, seeing around corners, making leaps out of sequence, until you arrived at the right door. But Cavallini had turned left, to Mimi’s, the logical route. I looked down at the gray, sluggish water, my stomach turning. He wouldn’t stay there, though. The servants wouldn’t know anything. The boats would all be accounted for. It was personal with him. And now he had something to prove at the Questura. He’d see, finally, that it was a dead end and turn around to look somewhere else.

I got back just as Celia’s bags were being put into the taxi. My mother was standing at the water entrance with Bertie, and when she turned and hugged him for a second, I thought I saw him wince, pressed too hard maybe, where he felt sensitive. I wondered if he’d told her yet. But the embrace had been quick, fleeting, two friends at the station, not someone who thought it might be the last. Then he said something and she laughed and they were back in their own time again, cocktails and patter songs, before the war.

“Just in the nick,” my mother said, seeing me. “I thought I’d miss you.” She kissed my cheek. “Don’t get into any trouble.”

“Don’t buy any clothes,” I said back.

“All right,” she said, smiling, “a little trouble. Celia says I haven’t given Paris a chance. Not really. She says I left too soon.”

“So you might stay for a while.”

“Well, we’ll see. It’s odd here for me. And the trial. They’ll want to take my picture, and why? I have no position, really. I’m just someone he knew,” she said, her voice drifting a little.

“Don’t worry about anything. I’ll take care of the house.”

“You know all the papers are in my desk? I don’t know why I’m talking like this. We’ve got the house through spring, and I’ll probably be back in a week. It’s just-well, what’s here now?” She touched Bertie on the arm. “Except me pals,” she said in stage cockney.

“You’ll miss your train,” Bertie said, giving her another peck. “Have fun. Just don’t try to keep up with Celia. And no cinq a septs, please. It’s unseemly at our age.”

“Yours, you mean,” she said, laughing. Then she looked around, swiveling her head to take in the line of palazzos across the canal. “It is so beautiful, isn’t it?” Then she was hugging people and getting into the launch with Celia, waving to friends and settling in beside the stacks of luggage, leaning out the side of the boat for a last look as they headed up the canal.

I turned to Bertie, whose eyes, surprisingly, were moist.

“And you’ll be next, I suppose,” he said.

“Not yet.”

“That’s right,” he said airily, turning back to the house. “Otherwise engaged.” He started walking again. “You stick, I’ll give you that. Where is she, by the way? I thought she’d be here playing daughter.”

“Couldn’t. She’s working.”

“Working? Where?”

“In a shop.”

“A shop,” he said. “Adam. Really.”

She’d left the shop early, however, called back to the hotel. When I got there, she was already packing, moving things from the wardrobe to the bed, stopping in between to look out the window, her movements anxious and darting. A cigarette was burning in an ashtray on the end table, half forgotten in the rush.

“What’s going on?”

“The police were here. Back again, about that night. You think Cavallini’s a fool? Maybe not such a fool.”

“But I just saw him. It couldn’t have been him.”

“Another one, then. What’s the difference? They know something.” She went to the window and peeked out. “Why come again? The same questions. What time did I leave? They know.”

I walked over to her, taking her by the shoulders. “Calm down. It’s not that. They don’t know.”

“How do you know? Are you inside their heads now?”

“Just listen. They turned up someone who saw Gianni that night. That’s what I came to tell you. An old woman. She also saw you.”

“Saw me?”

“On your way to the house. At exactly the time you said. They’re just checking with the hotel to verify her story. Nobody suspects you of anything. They just want to make sure it all fits.”

Her shoulders, tense under my hands, softened a little.

“Yes?”

“Yes. Calm down.”

She went over to the night table and picked up the cigarette. “She saw him? Where?”

“Where she saw you. San Ivo. Out her window. She’s an invalid, watches the street.”

“Then they know where he was going.”

“It’s also the way to Mimi’s. Depends which way you turn.”

“Oh, so he turns one way and I turn another? You believe that?”

“They believe that.”

“And when it occurs to them that he could have gone the other way, like I did?” She started walking to the wardrobe, then turned back, her pacing like visible thought.

“It won’t. He went to Mimi’s. You came to me. That’s all there is to it.”

“No, not all. They’re looking again. They’re looking at me. Who hated him. Who follows him to your house-yes, that’s all the woman proves, that I was there too. Who better?”

“But you were with me.”

“Yes, doing what? How long before they see it?” Another move to the window, still anxious.

“Listen to me,” I said quietly, lowering my voice. “I’ve been over everything-the hall, the canal gate, the boat. Every inch. Everything’s been scrubbed. There’s nothing there, no evidence at all. Nobody saw him. Nobody can prove he was there except us.”

“So maybe there’s another invalid.”

“Nobody except us. All we have to do is keep our heads.”

“Oh, and I’m losing mine, is that it?” She went over to the wardrobe, turning her back to me. “It’s me they’re asking questions about, not you.”

“They’re just making sure about her,” I said calmly. “That’s all. They don’t suspect you.”

She kept her back to me, staring at the wardrobe, then reached in, pulled out a dress, and carried it over to the suitcase on the bed. “Yet. And now what?”

“Come home with me.”

She shook her head.

“My mother’s gone. She’s not coming back.”

“I can’t.” She looked up. “I can’t stay here, in Venice. Today, I thought, It’s getting closer. Oh, I know what you say, but I can’t help it. They’ll find out somehow. If I don’t leave now, I’ll never get out. So maybe it’s true they don’t suspect. But how much longer? And then we’re trapped here.”

“What do you mean, ‘leave now’?” I said, the only phrase I’d really heard.

“Now. Just get on the vaporetto and go to the station. Unless they’re watching,” she said, jerking her head toward the window. “But then at least I’d know.”

“I can’t leave now.”

“No,” she said, going back for another dress, then folding it into the case. She tucked a toiletries bag into the side, then looked around, the room suddenly bare, just a few hangers dangling in the wardrobe. “Look how easy it is when you don’t have anything. Remember how we left San Isepo? Not even an hour. You can pack up your whole life and leave.”

“And go where? It wouldn’t make any difference, you know,” I said, trying to keep my voice emotionless. “You’d have the same papers. If they really wanted to find you-”

“They would, I know. But then it’s easier to run. Where can you run in Venice? It’s a prison here. And they’re always looking. And, who knows, maybe someday they ask the right question: What if he turned the other way?” She stopped, then closed the lid of the suitcase. “Today it was like a warning. If I stay here-”

“But if you leave without me, they’ll wonder.”

“No, they’ll be happy for you. A woman like that, a puttana? What else would she do? That’s the way it is with them.”

“Stop it.”

“Then come. It’s our chance now, before it’s too late.”

“And leave Moretti to them? You could do that?”

She walked over to the window. “Today it’s him. Then something else. And we stay and stay. Under their noses.” She gestured out, as if the police were lurking beneath a tree in the campo. “This cat-and-mouse. Waiting to be caught.” She turned. “Maybe that’s what you want, to be caught. There are people like that. They want to be caught.”

I said nothing, waiting it out.

“But I don’t.” She looked away, then busied herself closing the wardrobe and checking the bathroom, her silence itself a kind of apology. When she came back to the window she looked up, across the roofs of San Polo to the campanile of the Frari. “And now it’s going to rain,” she said, weary, a last straw.

“Come and sit,” I said, moving the suitcase.

But she stayed at the window, looking out. “If I don’t go now, it’ll be too late. I’ll get caught in the rain.” She paused. “Listen to me. What difference does the rain make? I’m talking with my nerves. No sense.”

“No one’s going to get caught,” I said evenly, as if I were stroking her arm.

“But I’m afraid.”

“You? You’re not afraid of anything.”

“Yes, now I’m afraid all the time,” she said, facing me, moving away from the window, her hands so jittery that she folded them under her arms, holding herself to stay still.

“Of what, exactly?”

She began pacing again, but near the bed, in tighter circles. “Everything. That I’ll say something.” She stopped in front of me. “No. That you’ll say something.” She lowered her head. “I’m afraid you’ll say something.”

I looked up at her, stung, and for a minute neither of us spoke, everything fragile, even the air. “All right,” I said finally. “Then marry me.”

“What?”

“A husband can’t testify against his wife. Isn’t it that way here too? They could never use anything I say.”

For a second she froze, then her shoulders twitched, that peculiar shudder that moves between laughing and crying, unable to settle on either. She sank down onto the bed next to me.

“Wonderful,” she said. “Marry somebody to keep him quiet. To protect yourself.”

“No,” I said, reaching over and brushing back her hair. “For all the other reasons. The usual ones.”

“The usual ones,” she said, looking down at her lap. “With us, after this, the usual ones. But also just in case. Just in case. Brava.”

I dropped my hand. “I just meant you’d never have to worry.”

She stared at her lap for another minute, then got up, turning to me. “No, and then neither would you. Is that why you want to?” She went over to the night table and lit a cigarette, her eyes avoiding me. “A wonderful marriage. Because we’re afraid of each other.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Just the way I always imagined it.” She went back to the window, blowing smoke and staring out, letting the quiet settle over the room. “I was right,” she said finally. “Now it’s raining. Where did your mother go?”

“Paris.”

“So you want me to come to Ca’ Venti. Yes, why not. I can’t stay here.” She smiled wryly. “I was going, but-”

“You can still get a train if you want,” I said, staring at her. “You can do whatever you want.”

She came over to the bed and put her hand in my hair. “Oh, no strings.”

“No.”

“No. But it’s too late for that, isn’t it? We’re tied now, with this thing. No matter what. So why not Ca’ Venti? Maybe it’s my fate.”

“What is?”

“You. I never thought, when it started-” She took her hand away. “But that was before.”

We waited until the rain stopped, not saying much, then took a vaporetto to Accademia and walked the rest of the way home. In the downstairs hall she hesitated for a moment, looking through to the water entrance, and I saw that she was imagining Gianni there again, his head on the steps. But then Angelina appeared, wanting to take her suitcase, asking her where to put it, making us feel, oddly, as if we were checking into a new hotel.

Without my mother, the house seemed even larger than before, and instinctively we avoided the big reception rooms, staying in the sitting room with the space heater. At one point Claudia wandered out to the room where the engagement party had been, but it was empty and gloomy, barely lit, and there was nothing to see, not even in memory. She fiddled with the radio for a while, the static somehow like our own strained jumpiness, then made drinks. When we weren’t talking, you could hear the clock.

Dinner was roast chicken and a creamy polenta, nursery food, and afterward we sat with a fire and listened to the house quiet down, footsteps in the upstairs hall, running water, then nothing. When we made love later, I thought of how it had been after the ball, the clutching, everything unexpectedly exciting. Now it was more like having too much to drink, a grudging pleasure that made it easier to sleep. We stayed in my room, Claudia curled beside me, just what we’d always wanted.

We both slept fitfully. Claudia tossed next to me, restless, and I drifted in and out, sleeping and then lying on my side with my eyes open, making out shapes in the dark room. Nothing was wrong-we were safe-but my eyes stayed open, my mind picking over things at random. Moretti, who had to be saved somehow. Cavallini, searching the canal for the right mooring. Claudia in the hotel room, anxious, looking out the window to see if they were coming to get her.

I turned onto my back and looked up at the ceiling and the faint moving reflections of the moonlit water outside. It was back again, the uneasiness of those first weeks, waiting for the sun to come over the Redentore. But that had been the dread of being suddenly at loose ends, a kind of decompression. This was a formless worry. Claudia moved next to me, rolling to her side. Not formless. I saw her again in the hotel room, turning to me. And then neither would you. I’d always thought of it one way, me reassuring her, safe as long as I held her. But of course it had to work the other way. I was only safe as long as she held me. And now she was frightened, ready to run off, sure they knew. Afraid I would say something. Afraid she would say something.

She moved again, rolling farther away, and I slid quietly toward the edge, slipped out from under the blankets, and tiptoed toward the closet, grateful that the marchesa had scrimped on the squeaky parquet floors, a luxury for the public rooms. Here, on noiseless carpet, I could get my clothes and leave the room without a sound. I stopped at the door, checking, but Claudia hadn’t moved. I dressed and made my way to the stairs, not even aware of the dark, everything familiar from the sleepwalking nights.

But why would she say anything? For that matter, why would they believe her? I had lost a fortune-the one man in Venice Cavallini didn’t suspect. Unless he wanted to. Nothing was predictable. You met a girl at a party, and the next morning, on a boat, you have the first clear idea you’ve had in months. I thought of her as we pulled into Salute, intrigued, the start of it. Then looking out the hotel window for shadows. Lying in the same bed now, afraid of each other. But these were four-in-the-morning thoughts, irrational, gone in the daylight, like mist burning off. I turned the door latch carefully, making only a click as I stepped into the calle. Nobody was going to say anything.

It was breezy on the Zattere, and my head felt clearer, wide awake now. Across the channel the giant brick Stucky factory loomed over the gardens of the Giudecca. There were shouts and clanging sounds up ahead at the warehouses behind the maritime station. The city would be awake soon-bakers, the first dog-walkers, everything normal. I would check in with Cavallini. Maybe Rosa’s lawyers had managed to get Moretti out. If we could just get Cavallini to back away, the boy might not even be tried. A case any defense could fight, a trial nobody wanted. Then we could leave, go anywhere Claudia liked. I went into the workers’ cafe opposite San Sebastiano, feeling better. Nobody would say anything. The barman nodded, as if it had been a day, not weeks, since I’d last stopped in, and handed me a coffee still foamy on top. I stood at the window, looking across at the church. Veronese’s church, the dreary stone facade, then the riot of color inside.

She must have been standing outside the steamy door for a few minutes, hands stuck in her pockets, before I noticed the movement in the corner of my eye. She was biting her lip, not sure whether to smile, pleased with herself for having found me but slightly embarrassed. Or maybe waiting for me to be pleased. Then someone opened the door and she was in anyway, standing next to me.

“I thought you were asleep,” I said.

“I thought you were.”

“Coffee?”

She shook her head, then glanced around, taking in the other customers in their blue coveralls and caps.

“What is this place?”

“It opens early. I come here sometimes.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I couldn’t sleep, that’s all. How did you find me?”

“I looked out the window. I saw you on the Zattere. I didn’t know what to think.”

“I went for a walk.” I paused. “I was coming back.”

She looked away. “I just didn’t know where you were going. I was worried.”

I held up the coffee cup. “Sure?” She shook her head again and I finished it. “Come on,” I said, guiding her with a hand on her back. A few of the men turned, amused, making up their own stories.

“I didn’t want to be alone in the house,” she said outside, explaining. But it wasn’t the house. “It’s so stupid. To be like that,” she said, shaking a little, just as she had in the hotel.

“You’re cold.”

“There’s only the coat,” she said, drawing it closer. “I didn’t have time to dress.”

I glanced at her. Once it would have been fun, nothing underneath, our secret in the cafe, something to laugh about when we got back to bed, warming ourselves. Now I thought of her throwing it on, racing down the stairs, making sure of me.

“Come here,” I said, folding my arms around her. “You’ll freeze.”

She let her head fall against my neck, so that I could feel her breath, quietly shaking like the rest of her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, then tipped her head back, and I saw that there were tears, the shaking stronger.

“Claudia-”

She took a breath. “Nothing. It’s nerves.”

“Ssh,” I said, moving her closer. “It’s the cold, that’s all.”

She rubbed her face against my coat. “I didn’t want to be with anyone again. Remember, I told you? At La Fenice? I was afraid of that. And now? I’m afraid when you’re not there. So the joke is on me, yes?” She wiped her eyes.

“No joke,” I said, lifting her head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“No? So it’s what you wanted. You wanted us to be together.”

“Don’t you?”

“Oh, me,” she said, brushing the question away, another tear. She looked up. “You’re still so sure?”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly filled with it, a certainty you could touch. Seeing her face at the water gate, her eyes looking at me as we moved the tarp. And after, at the hotel, clutching each other, no one else, no doubt at all.

“Yes, and at the nurse’s, I saw your face. You thought for a minute-yes, you did-is it all a story? Something I made up. The hospital. The camp. What if she’s-”

What I had thought, just for a minute.

“Why would I make it up? But you thought that.”

“Claudia, I’m not going anywhere.”

She looked down. “So we can watch each other.”

“No,” I said.

She raised her head, waiting.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said again.

She looked at me, then nodded, a kind of concession, her eyes moist again. “No, we can’t. Not now. It doesn’t matter why, does it? It’s the only way we’re safe.”

“That’s not-” I said, but she was leaning into me, away from the wind off the Zattere.

“I know. It’s all right,” she said, her voice muffled. “So come home.” She turned, crooking her arm through mine, something she’d done a hundred times before, and suddenly I felt as if we had been snapped together. I looked down at the arm, curved around mine like a link in a chain. Tied now.