The Bellini Card

26

Palewski went home to change his shirt and spent a few minutes in front of the mirror with his elbows out and his hands by his chest, flexing his torso from side to side.

“Psha!” he exclaimed aloud. “You’re an idiot, Mr. Brett!”

There was a note on the table below the mirror. It was from Ruggerio, regretting that he was unable to accompany Signor Brett that day. He suggested various places he might like to visit on his own-none of them, Palewski noted with amusement, likely to involve much outlay of cash-and the possibility that they might visit the Murano glassworks together the following day.

“The Murano glassworks! Twenty percent commission and a decent lunch!”

But why should he be led everywhere by Ruggerio? Why shouldn’t he go on his own? A leisurely ride across the lagoon was no less than he deserved after his energetic bout with the Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria.

But as the gondola moved out onto the calm blue waters of the lagoon and Palewski turned his head for a better view of the city, he remembered something about an Armenian monastery and changed his mind. The gondolier looked doubtful. Murano had been decided on, and he was looking forward to visiting a cafe on the island while his padrone toured the manufactories. When Palewski, mistaking the source of his indecision, promised to pay him ten lire more, he agreed to forgo the pleasures of Murano society and take his fare to San Lazzaro.

The truth was that Palewski, without quite realizing it, was suffering from homesickness. Many an evening he had spent with his friend Yashim, drinking bison-grass vodka and lamenting his lost homeland, ripped apart by the greed and brutality of its enemies. Yet Palewski’s desire for Poland, while genuine and deep, had an air of daydream about it. It was not visceral, as his feeling for Istanbul was turning out to be.

In another city-Paris, say, or even New York-the feeling might have been allayed by the excitement of novelty, but in Venice he was constantly running up against reminders of the city he called home. Venice, in the European mind, was a city half Oriental already, and certainly it made Palewski feel giddy, as though he were looking at a familiar scene down the wrong end of a telescope. Pacing the narrow alleys in Ruggerio’s wake, he would be struck by some grace note of Istanbul-in the effort of a cat, for instance, to catch a bat at dusk, or by a porphyry column no doubt looted from the same classical ruin that Constantine had looted for his city centuries before. Sometimes it occurred to him in the shape and dimness of a doorway, or it might be the sound of the Orthodox monks chanting in San Giorgio dei Greci. It was even a puzzle to decide whether Venice or Istanbul had more shoeshine boys, all ragged, all alike, squatting on the pavement behind their little wooden boxes.

In the Campo dei Mori he had seen a relief of a camel led by a man in a turban and almost burst into tears, without knowing why, and he had stared forlornly at the busted shell of the Fondaco dei Turchi, on the Grand Canal, for almost an hour, savoring its decline and its crumbling Byzantine fenestration. With its blocked-up arcades and bricked-in windows, the old palazzo of the Ottoman merchants looked like the survivor of some drawn-out siege.

To make matters worse, he inhabited the identity of a stranger, and an American to boot. He missed his embassy. Half overgrown with creepers, and in want of a new roof, it was still a comfortable sort of place for a man who enjoyed his own company and that of his books. He had now read Vasari three times and was beginning to feel a kind of mental restriction from prolonged acquaintance with the author, as if he had eaten nothing but potatoes for a week. He missed his friends. Here in Venice he was hounded in the most polite and remorseless way by waiters and gondoliers and landladies demanding-well, money, certainly, but he had enough of that. What exhausted him were their demands for a decision. At home he had only to think of tea, or a brandy after dinner, and it was there, in his hand.

Marta would fetch it for him, before he had even asked for it sometimes.

He took off his top hat and let the breeze ruffle his hair.

Venice from the lagoon was too flat to look like Istanbul, though the shoulder of Santa Maria della Salute, its great white dome, recalled the domes of Istanbul, and the rooftops looked crowded and orange like the roofs of the houses that crowded the shores of the Golden Horn.

He shaded his eyes and gazed ahead to a spire and a low red wall topped with greenery rising almost miraculously from the lagoon. The gondola advanced with a thudding swiftness while Palewski gazed almost blindly on the rosy apparition, lost in thought.

An hour later he wondered why he had come at all. The brightness of the lagoon had given him a headache. Now he strained his eyes to see the treasures that the gentle Armenian priest was lovingly laying out for his inspection in the dim scriptorium. At first, the thousands of ancient volumes in their shelves had heartened him, but, after all, they were all written in Armenian, except for a rather beautiful Koran. It was a gift to the monastery from the Aspi family, he noticed, its pages decorated with tendrils and lilies, and on the frontispiece a rendition of the pattern on the contessa’s floor. Palewski saw his hands were trembling.

He asked for a glass of water, which momentarily broke the flow of the priest’s gentle speech. He went out into the monastery garden to drink it and sat for a few moments beneath a tree in the shade.

“Come, signore,” the priest said softly. “I will take you to Father Aristo, who is doing a wonderful work. Our first Armenian-English dictionary. The great poet Lord Byron asked that this should be done. Peace to his memory. He studied here, for almost a year.”

“I’m afraid I’m not feeling very well,” Palewski said. Then, not to sound rude, he added, “Byron studied here?”

“Every week, efendi. He wanted to learn Armenian, for the good of his mind.” He paused, smiled. “I am afraid he was not a very diligent student.”

Palewski stood up. He felt light-headed. “Can you tell me where to find my gondolier?”

The priest nodded, disappointed. “I will take you to him, if you prefer.”

“Thank you.” Palewski reached into his pocket and brought out some banknotes. “You have been very kind.”

They went through a gate to the landing stage. In the gondola Palewski relaxed and closed his eyes. He unbuttoned his coat to feel the breeze and lay back against the cushions. The next time he opened his eyes he found himself in the Grand Canal again: he must have slept. His hands were cold.

Back in the apartment he paused only to pick up a card from beneath the mirror in the vestibule and to remove his shoes before he tumbled headlong onto his bed. He read the card at an angle: it was from the Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria, repeating her invitation to a reception that evening. After a few minutes he reached out and flicked up the counterpane, and in a moment he was asleep.