“You know folk at that church, the one with the music?” Gobbo asked, prodding me with a conspiratorial elbow.
“We print material for Vivaldi from time to time.”
“Good,” he said, and leered in the most obscene of ways. “I reckon our French friend deserves a little entertainment before he quits this city for good. You, Mr. Scacchi, shall be my impresario.”
The gondola turned into the great bend of the Canal. Ca’ Dario bobbed towards us on the left, a small mansion, and one with a little tilt to it (no shame in that when you’ve spent 250 years with your toes in the Venetian mud).
The afternoon heat was fading. It was a splendid view. I thought of Reb— Ah, but I made a promise.
15
Dust and parchment
Laura insisted on joining Daniel for the first sortie into the bowels of the derelict warehouse next door. He was initially grateful for her company, if a little disconcerted by her mode of dress. During the day she wore a white nylon housecoat buttoned down the front, the kind favoured by shop assistants. It seemed to him a uniform, a statement that said: however much you make me part of this family, I remain a servant. She served breakfast in it. She wore it to hand out the evening glasses of spritz, which always arrived after the last chime of six from the bell of San Cassian over the rio. It was an object behind which she could hide, just like the sunglasses which were almost permanently fixed to her face the moment she left the house.
Their rooms were both on the third floor. Laura seemed to occupy most of the rear; he was in the small bedroom that sat next to the warehouse, the third window on the right as seen from the front. Each morning they met on the landing and exchanged pleasantries. Each time, too, he was unable to quell some odd discomfort at her presence, not least because of the uniform. It was the middle of summer and at times unbearably hot. Laura’s solution to this problem was to go naked beneath her housecoat except for underwear, then bustle about her business with a constant physical activity. A simple act — passing a glass, picking up a plate — was apt to reveal a small segment of tanned skin and a glimmer of bright white fabric.
In the cellar the pristine housecoat was filthy within minutes, which did little for her temper.
“I appreciate your help,” he told her. “But I really don’t want to put you to the trouble.”
“You mean you don’t want me here?”
“No,” he replied with some firmness. “I meant that I am being paid to sift through all this filthy junk, and you’re not. I’m grateful, but it really isn’t necessary.”
She threw a pile of ruined eighteenth-century news sheets to the floor. Almost everything of any promise appeared to be damaged by floodwater. Daniel’s hopes of sifting gold for Scacchi from the cellar had begun to fade after only fifteen minutes’ investigation. They had found two more electric lanterns; the four lamps now cast a reasonable amount of illumination but revealed little except dust and ruined parchment. Aladdin’s cave seemed bare of anything that had not been rendered useless by the passing of time and the insistent, seeping waters of the lagoon.
Laura walked over, stared him crossly in the eye, and folded her arms. “What is your problem, Daniel Forster?” she demanded, turning to shaky English, as if this would hammer home her point. “Are you uncomfortable being around me?”
“No! It’s just that I am used to working on my own.”
“Pah! What kind of skill is that? Are you to be a solitary man, then, Daniel?”
The arrow struck home. He was aware that there was a shyness in him, with good reason. He was only now emerging from “the sick years,” the time spent flitting between college and the small bedsit they had rented when his mother’s illness and their poverty coincided. There was a hiatus in his life which set him apart, though he was not yet ready to explain as much to Laura.
“It is,” he said a little testily, “a question of method.”
“Method! Method! What retentively anal English bullshit is this?”
“Logic, Laura. And that’s anally retentive, by the way.” She had, now he came to think of it, annoyed him. “Look,” he complained. “You walked in here and threw yourself all over the place. Picking up a sheet in that corner, cursing it, then wandering right across the room to do the selfsame there.”
Her eyes flared. “And why not? Look at this mess!” The cellar was huge and littered with piles of ancient documents, machinery under wraps, and empty wooden boxes. It was hard to walk in a straight line for more than a few feet. “Watch me,” she announced. “I’ll find Scacchi’s treasure.”
Then, her white housecoat getting filthier by the second, she raced around, snatching pages from each pile as she passed, leaping on heaps of documents as if they were stepping-stones, bumping into the misshapen corpses of mysterious machines, screeching nonsense as she went. Daniel watched her, feeling helpless. He had thought only of the hurt inside himself, never suspecting that some mysterious agony lived in Laura too. Finally, she bounced too hard into the large shape of the old press, yelped with pain, and fell to the floor, surrounded by her collection of pages.
He walked over, held out a hand, and persuaded her to sit on the nearest pile of ruined documents. She was covered in dust and crying. The tears made long, straight streaks through the dirt as they travelled down her cheeks. He sat next to her, placed a hand on her shoulder, and, ridiculous as he knew it to be, felt guilty that he had in some way provoked this outburst.
“It’s useless,” she said, forcing back the sobs. They both stared at the papers she had collected, all grey, mouldy pages and smeared ink. “There’s nothing here. We waste our time, Daniel.”
He offered her a clean handkerchief, which she snatched, wiped across her face, then rolled into a tight wad inside her fist.
“I’m sorry. Is it so important to him? To find something to sell?”
“So it seems.”
“But why?”
Daniel peered into her face. The anger was, he realised, directed at herself, not his sudden uncalled-for coldness. Laura was just as desperate as he to find Scacchi’s treasure.
“I don’t know. I am sorry. I should not take out my disappointment on you.” She looked at him with frank, intelligent eyes.
“Don’t apologise. It’s frustrating for both of us.”
She shook her head. “Of course I must apologise. You must not let people treat you so.”
“You may treat me how you like. I am grateful to be here, Laura. It is…the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.”
Her expression changed, from contrition to puzzlement. “Oh, Daniel. Is there so little for you at home that you find our small lives so interesting?”
“No.” He hesitated. “I mean, yes.”
“Your mother?” she asked. “You loved her very much.”
“Of course. And when she was ill, she would talk about Venice, of how happy she was when she was at college here. I believed…”
He felt surprised that this sudden, candid conversation was revealing something to him too. “I think that was why I chose Italian history as my field of study. Why I wanted so much to be here.”
Laura placed a finger on her lips, thinking. “And you studied so hard to please her, I imagine. To make her feel she would leave something worthwhile in the world.”
The accuracy of her insight took him aback. There were times, many times, when he wished to escape the dismal flat and the reek of illness. Yet he was incapable of abandoning her; that had occurred once in her life already, with the father he had never known, and the cruelty of the act never left them.