The Bellini Card

41

She looked at him curiously. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?” she said.

“Trouble? I’m all right, Maria, thanks to you.”

“That’s what I mean, silly. You’d have let yourself be copped for that murder if I hadn’t spoken up. What did you mean by that? I was here all night. And now,” she added, “it’s a different story.”

Palewski had blushed, insofar as he was capable of blushing. “Not your affair, Maria. I didn’t want the commissario to get you into trouble.” He paused, and the girl shot him a droll look as if to say: you couldn’t get me into trouble. “What do you mean, a different story?”

“Well, I’d wondered. I thought, perhaps, you were saving your reputation, Signor Brett. But from what I gathered last night, Signor Brett hasn’t got a reputation to lose.”

Palewski unfolded himself and rose from his chair. “I see.”

“I don’t speak English, so I couldn’t understand what the boys were saying exactly. But Tibor-he was my choice, quite good-looking he was-said a few things in French, and I understand that a fair bit.”

Palewski felt weary. “And what, Maria, did you understand?”

Maria pressed her lips together, humorously. “I don’t know who Signor Brett is, but you’re a Polish count. You’re the Polish ambassador in Istanbul. Go on, I know it’s true.”

Palewski stood a long time at the window, looking out.

“I don’t know how it looks to you,” he said at last. “A long time ago, before you were even born, there was a country wrapped around a river. The Vistula. It had, what? Cities, towns, villages, little farms. Hills and mountains, too, but mostly plains, and marshes, and big, deep forests where you’d be afraid to go at night, Maria. There could be wolves in there. But foresters, too, and men burning charcoal all night long. And when it snowed, there were people all wrapped up in fur, whizzing along in the dark on sleighs, laughing and telling stories. And they spoke the language I learned to speak, the people in the towns, and the foresters, and the people rushing through the dark, too.”

Maria shivered deliciously.

“It wasn’t quite like Venice, Maria, when they came and took it all away. Venice is one city, and you can’t change that. You can go from the Arsenale to the Dorsoduro with the same joke, and everyone will laugh except the Austrians. But the Austrians took a part of my country, and the Prussians took another, and the Russians took the most because they are big and fierce like bears in the wood. Venice can disappear only if it sinks into the lagoon. But Poland will vanish if people forget. It needs anyone it can get. Even me, maybe, being its ambassador in Istanbul.”

He rubbed his chin.

“The fact is, Maria, I came here only to do a favor for a friend. If you turn me in to the authorities, I’d be sorry. Not for me-that’s all right. For the people I think of in the woods, and in the towns, and in the sleighs at night.”

He turned, and to his surprise he saw tears on her cheeks.

“Mio caro,” she said sadly, rising to slide her arms around his chest. “With you, it is like an evening at La Fenice.” She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “I will never betray you!”

Thank God for opera, Palewski thought, patting the girl on her pretty bare shoulder.