Murder is a rarity in Venice. The savage attack on Susanna Gianni and the lack of any progress by the police in finding her killer provided the papers with their best story in years. A week later it was over as sensationally as it had begun. Anatole Singer, the leader of the school, a lean, balding Russian in his late forties, was found hanged in his suite in the Gritti Palace. In a suicide note Singer confessed to attacking the girl when she refused his advances. He had lured her to a remote meeting place near Piazzale Roma after the farewell party on the pretext of meeting an American agent who would find her work in New York. Susanna rebuffed him, and so he raped her in a drunken rage, then threw her, unconscious, into the water.
All this, it seemed to Rizzo, was described in a very pat, logical way for a man who was about to hang himself. As a criminal by trade, Rizzo believed that confession, under any circumstances, was a most unnatural act. Even if one did feel the need to make a clean breast of matters, why do so just before committing suicide? What was the point? Every crime needed a purpose. He had not murdered the cemetery superintendent lightly. The man’s death was required in order to save his own skin, since Massiter would surely kill him if he knew about the fiddle. And where was the gain in Singer’s confession? These doubts did not trouble the heads of the city detectives, however. They had declared the case closed. Within a fortnight, the Gianni story was dead, as dead as its apparent protagonists.
The last cutting in the file was a tribute to Susanna from Hugo Massiter himself. Rizzo stared at the decade-old picture of Massiter. He had only a little more hair and the same dress sense, with a neck scarf folded neatly over his throat. The article described Massiter as the “well-known international art expert and philanthropist.” Rizzo stifled a laugh. It was difficult to decide who was more stupid: the press or the police.
He picked up the phone and dialled the local number. A woman answered, then called Arturo to the phone. The familiar thin, reedy voice came on the line. Rizzo explained his proposition: $80,000, not a penny less.
“Give me time,” the thin voice said.
“Two weeks. There’s some guy in Rome who’s creaming himself for this thing.”
“Two weeks,” the voice repeated glumly. “Ciao. ”
In the small, dark apartment, Rizzo smiled. There was triumph in the air. He even knew Arturo’s full name. The servant had said it when she called to him.
“Ciao, Scacchi,” Rizzo said, then hung up.
12
The mysterious Levis
What should I have expected? The smell of incense in the air? Strange people in strange clothes eyeing this suspicious Gentile invader from the world outside? I had no idea. The very oddness of this task had banished imagination from my head. When I walked over that wooden bridge, I might have been ready to enter the Tower of Babel. Instead, I discovered ordinariness in abundance. The ghetto is much like any other corner of the city, only plainer. The towering buildings which line the circular perimeter of the island are just a few rooms deep. Beyond them is a small cobbled square with a well in its centre, a scattering of modest-sized trees, and — the only curiosity — men and women dressed uniformly in dark clothes, sitting on benches, toying with beads, and reading books.
I asked a young chap with a wispy black beard where I might find Dr. Levi (speaking very slowly and clearly so he might understand). He pointed with a long, pale finger at a house in the corner of the square, next to a curious jumble of buildings surmounted by what looked like the wooden cabin of Noah’s Ark. I crossed and entered by the downstairs door. There was the smell of cooking — potato and cabbage — and the noise of young families. I read the list of names on the wall, then climbed — and climbed — all six floors, past doors half-open, past arguments and banter, the bawl of infants, and, once, the unmistakable sound of sobbing, and was relieved when I reached the top to find myself in something that might pass for silence.
I knocked on the single door. It opened and a young man’s a fable face, clean-shaven, intelligent, with glittering brown eyes and a high forehead, met mine, smiling, with an amused expression upon it.
“Scacchi sends his lad,” he said to someone behind him. “Obviously not man enough for the job himself. Come in. We won’t bite. Like some tea?”
I entered the place and found myself in a tiny, ill-lit room requiring candles even in the middle of the day. There was a pleasant smell not unlike attar of roses. The floor was carpeted, and every seat was covered in some kind of soft drape. On the lone table stood a globe and several books. In the corner, obscured by the shadow cast from the window shutter, a lady sat most upright, as if observing me.
“I think we should be going, sir,” I answered. “Vivaldi abhors lateness.”
“Decisive, eh! I think they found you a man in the city at last, Rebecca. You will take good care of her… um?”
“Lorenzo, sir. Lorenzo Scacchi. My uncle sent me.”
“Quite. I am sorry I cannot cure his claw, by the way. Even Hebrew medics have their limitations.”
Some kind of debt was being repaid here, I gathered. I was risking my neck not just to ingratiate ourselves with the Red Priest but to save Leo a doctor’s bill.
“I am Doctor Jacopo Levi. You shall call me Jacopo,” he told me, extending a hand. “And your ward shall be my much-loved sister, Rebecca, Lorenzo. I’d do this myself, but that would only double the risk and I fear this city is too unruly for her to venture out alone. So be wary. I don’t want to rescue either of you from the Doge’s dungeons.”
“I will do my best, sir,” I replied earnestly, watching the lady rise from the corner and move towards us, into the narrow shaft of light that entered the room from the single, small window facing onto the square. “I will do everything in my power…”
And do you know? I haven’t a clue what I said after that. These next few moments are burned upon my memory, but they contain only images, nothing as mundane as words. I am back where I started when I tried to describe the wonder of St. Mark’s Basin on Ascension Day. Some things defy those clumsy old foot soldiers of the alphabet. Ovid could dedicate an entire work to this lady, and perhaps in another incarnation did, but all my humble pen can give you are facts.
Rebecca Levi is, she tells me, just turned twenty-five, though she seems to me closer to my own age. She is a touch beneath my height, very slim, but with an upright bearing, straight-backed, and a strong pair of shoulders (there’s the fiddle player for you). On our first meeting she wore a fine black velvet dress that ran from her neck to ankles, sleeves cut to the elbow, as plain as you might ask for. Around her slim white throat was a narrow band of roped gold, and from her ears fell two gems, each scarlet red, of what breed I haven’t a clue, nor could I care. Rebecca has no need of jewels. Her face shone out of the gloom like that of a Madonna painted by a master in order to enlighten some dank church corner (there goes my soul — perhaps this letter is not for posting after all).