The Bellini Card

44

“Signor Brett.”

Palewski glanced around and recognized Alfredo. They walked in step, neither man saying anything, until Alfredo gestured to a pontoon.

He walked to the rail and leaned on it, looking out toward Giudecca, and then half turned toward Palewski and smiled.

“What do you know about the Bellinis, Signor Brett? As a family, I mean?”

“The Bellinis? Father, Jacopo. Good painter, highly regarded in his day. Two sons-Gentile and Giovanni. Vasari says they were very loving. Giovanni was working on the frescoes in the Doges’ Palace when Mehmet’s invitation to the best Venetian painter arrived, and Vasari suggests that the Senate didn’t feel they could spare him. So Gentile was sent.”

“Oh, I think Gentile was good enough for the job, Signor Brett. We should allow him that. When Bellini left, Mehmet gave him a title.”

“He didn’t use the title.”

“Of course not. Mehmet also gave him a gold belt, weighted with coins. It was kept by the Bellini family for many years.”

Palewski leaned on the rail. “Well?”

“Signor Brett.” Alfredo seemed amused. “My patron has spoken at some length to the very owner of the painting you seek.”

“The portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror? By Gentile Bellini?”

“My patron saw it several months ago. And again this morning. Before that-well, it has to do with those gold coins, Signor Brett, and also Tiziano, your Titian. He was a pupil of Bellini.”

“Of Giovanni, surely?” Palewski had not spent those hours reading and rereading Vasari for nothing.

“Of Giovanni, yes, but they were a close family, Signor Brett. And I think, more importantly, we should remember how close the Venetians and the Ottomans were. When Venice sent a bailo to Istanbul, it sent the best, and there were many other merchants, too.”

“Someone bought the portrait and brought it back?”

“Someone who would have known the quality of the work.”

“Who?”

Alfredo smiled and spread his hands. “A little too direct, signore. I cannot tell you the name now-but of course, in due time…”

“And what is the deal?”

“Sixteen thousand kreuzers. Just under six thousand sterling, if you prefer.”

Palewski turned to the rail. Six thousand pounds! Enough, he supposed, to keep a palazzo for a lifetime, with a gondolier in perpetual attendance! Less than the sultan spent in a month on candles, too, no doubt.

“I do not wish to influence you,” Alfredo remarked. “Believe me, I understand it is a lot of money. But my patron has sold many paintings for very much more. Bellini is not in fashion, to be honest. Tiepolo, Titian, Veronese-very well. We sold a Titian last year to an Englishman for fifteen thousand.”

Palewski gave an imperceptible nod. He had done some homework: Alfredo was right.

“Fashions change,” the dealer observed. “Canaletto-once, two thousand, three thousand. Now you can buy him for eight hundred. There is always another, if you miss one.” He shrugged. “But a Bellini-that, Signor Brett, you can buy only once. If you permit me, I shall leave you with your thoughts. You can find me in Costa’s little bar-it’s close to the end, down a few steps. The evening is getting chilly.”

They shook hands. “Thank you, Alfredo. Give me five minutes.”

Italians, he smiled to himself: always afraid of the cold. Then he remembered something he had not thought of for many years-a companion he’d loved, a man who joked and was generous and knew how to fight. But when Ranieri had lost his horse on the long retreat, he died before Palewski found him blue and stiff in the Russian snow.

He blew out his cheeks and leaned against the rail. The sunlight was gradually dragging itself from the Giudecca, dropping the spires and the old faded housefronts slowly into the shade. A grayer tide was moving in from the east as the still waters lost their sparkle: the gray ordinary light of all cities in the early dusk, when they lost their beauty and had not gained the shimmering jeweled presence of the night.

He hunched his body against the rail, thinking of another age, when the sun over Italy had set on promises and hope: the promises of a tyrant and the hope of simple men. He had never expected to come back, had he? The gesticulations, and the imprecations soon forgotten, the musical staccato of the language, and beneath his hands the heartbreaking dent of a woman’s back as they walked together in the evening light.

Now he was back, and soon he would be gone.

He touched the scarf closer to his neck, wondering if the Italians were right and if there was a coldness about the dusk.

Six thousand sterling. Yashim would be pleased.

And a man in a wineshop, ready to talk terms.

Stanislaw Palewski patted the rail and turned back to the Zattere, and made his way along it toward a darkening sky.