The Bellini Card

40

The stadtmeister shuddered. A head on a plate? A drifting gondola with a severed trunk inside? It was outlandish, warped-like everything in this dreadful town, wreathed in mist, drifting on its horrible flat lagoon. Ach, for the mountains, where the water was clear and you tramped the forests with proper rock under your feet! And where a former stadtmeister in the service of the emperor was a figure of respect and awe.

He frowned and pulled back his shoulders slightly.

“I have not lived among these Latins for so many years, Herr Vosper, without gaining some useful insights into the Venetian mind.”

Vosper drew his heels together and gave a short nod that might have been a bow.

“It is, I think I may say without fear of contradiction, a degenerate mind. Here and there one finds representatives of the old type, but they are unfortunately rare.” He placed his fingertips together and contemplated the ceiling.

“In the aim of understanding the representative characteristics of a people, what are the preliminary indices that must be established, Herr Vosper?”

“I beg your pardon, Stadtmeister,” Vosper replied, shuffling his feet. “I am afraid I don’t understand the question.”

The stadtmeister sighed. “What is the most important influence?”

“Climate, sir.”

“Because people from the north are tall and fair, like birch trees, yes. They work hard, in teams. Ice demands unremitting teamwork. People from the south are dark and short. They are more indolent, also.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We can observe this phenomenon operating both on the large and the small scale, Herr Vosper. The Nordic type and the Mediterranean type. On a smaller scale, it is true to a lesser degree that the southern Italian peninsula is chiefly associated with indolence and dishonesty, while the northerly regions-of which Venice is a member-are more hardworking and upright. Do you follow?”

Vosper nodded. He could have given the speech himself.

“But we must allow for the interplay between large and small scale, as between the movement of men and history. We must-and do-allow for this!”

He leaned forward. His face was growing red.

“This is what the anticlimatic idiots will not try to understand! Science is a subtle system, Herr Vosper. Subtle but irrefutable, when the evidence is allowed.” He balled his fists and pressed them together over his leather-topped desk. “Interplay is a crucial element in the system. How else can men change?”

He paused to consider his own rhetorical question.

“For as long as Venetians represented the northern type within their own, smaller world, they were unmatched for acumen and fair dealing. But for several centuries they have been drawn farther into the orbit of the great northern landmass that is Europe. They have become, in this sense, southerners. Am I correct?”

“Quite correct, Stadtmeister.”

“So one observes the corruption of the Venetian mind as a matter of course. We cannot entirely blame them for this, although I believe that the Venetians must also have married too many southerners for their own good. Observe, Vosper, how the traits degenerate. What was once commercial acumen has become mere slyness. The bold trading initiative of the medieval Republic-has it disappeared? Not exactly. It has merely degenerated, on the one hand into a capacity for petty jealousy, on the other into an addiction to bright and pretty things. We see the Venetians of today like children, Herr Vosper. They appreciate pageantry and glitter and pretty women. Hrrmph. Once the Venetians were famous for their forethought, but now? Let us not delude ourselves, Herr Vosper. They think of the next hour, at most the next day!”

“Quite so, Stadtmeister. And you once mentioned that someone was the representative of the old type, I forget his name, Farinelli?”

“Falier. A doge.”

“But the new Venetian was Casanova.”

“I may have said so, Herr Vosper, yes,” the stadtmeister said testily. Could it be possible that Vosper was laughing at him? Casanova was the only Venetian literature he had read, many years before, in a translation eagerly passed around the officers’ mess.

But Vosper’s empty blue eyes revealed nothing. He was a good man, Finkel thought, good Alpine stock. German-speaking, too. A degree of altitude of course tempered the general climatic theory.

“You mark my words, Herr Vosper,” he said, jabbing a finger across the desk. “This will be a crime of passion. Cherchez la femme,” he added and then, seeing a look of incomprehension on his subordinate’s face: “Look for the woman. After that, we can uncover the dead man’s rival, and all will be plain.” He sat upright and sucked in his stomach. “As I say, it is necessary to understand the Venetian mind. As it now is.”

Vosper looked uncertain. “Isn’t this Signor Brunelli’s department, Stadtmeister?”

“Herr Vosper, let us understand each other. You work for me. Through me, for the Kaiser.” He paused, to relish the happy juxtaposition. “We do not question our orders.”

“Of course not, Stadtmeister.”

“Very good.”

When Vosper had gone, Stadtmeister Finkel let himself relax in his chair. He had nothing against Brunelli. A good officer, no doubt, and less prone than others of his class and nation to let the soft haze of the lagoon penetrate his mind; but there it was. Vosper was, like him, an outsider-and Brunelli? Na und, a man was the product of his climate.

He took up a scrap of paper from his desk and squinted at it, puzzled. The writing was very small and it was written in a language that Gustav Finkel, Stadtmeister von Venedig, rather imperfectly understood.

It contained, as far as he could judge, nothing new, nothing he was entitled to do anything about.

Someone was afraid and wanted help.

He tore the paper into little pieces and tipped them into the waste-paper basket.