The Bellini Card

98

“WonderfuL, wonderful,” Palewski murmured. He had his boots before the fire and a sheaf of drawings on his lap.

“Very good!” he said enthusiastically, holding a drawing of the cottage up before his eyes. He nodded vigorously, and his new friend chuckled and bobbed about.

Rather like having a child of one’s own, Palewski thought.

“Wonderful,” he said again, picking a new sketch out of the heap. “Maria, have you seen what our friend has done?”

Maria came over and leaned against his chair. Palewski felt the roundness of her breast against his cheek.

“This,” he said. “And this.”

Maria heaved a sigh. “Incredible! Like an angel!”

“Perhaps you’d like to sit here and look through them, Maria?”

“Yes, signore-but mamma wants the room swept and clean.”

“I could sweep.”

Maria laughed. A warm, happy laugh: it was the first time she’d laughed since she came home. “I think he really likes it when you look at his drawings.”

Palewski gave her an exasperated look. “I don’t think he’s all that fussy, Maria.”

But Maria had taken her broom and was banging it about under the table.

Palewski sighed. “But this is beautiful!” he said, to make Maria laugh again.

The odd young man nodded and gobbled and grinned.

Palewski felt a twinge of remorse. The fellow’s drawings were sublime: it was only that he produced them in such volume! His tongue always at the corner of his mouth, his eyes sparkling, his hand moving freely across the page. Time after time the young man had summed up whole scenes in a few lines: the tilt of a woman’s head, the atmosphere of a crowded room, the curve of a child’s cheek. Several times Palewski had recognized himself, down to the outstretched legs and the fashionable width of his lapel.

Sometimes the young man drew from memory-rapid sketches of the piazza filled with people, with the Austrian bandsmen just about to play; or the view from a high window, of rooftops and the lagoon and the distant Dolomites.

“Hello!” Palewski said, sliding another picture from the sheaf. “Here’s Barbieri!”