He stood a little under six feet tall, with flowing fair hair and a pleasant, innocuous face still somewhat unformed by adulthood. Hovering uncertainly in the airport hall, he looked like a trainee tour-guide waiting for his first assignment. Then a large man dressed in dark trousers and a baggy blue sweatshirt marched over, bent down to peer in his eyes, and inquired, “Mr. Daniel?”
Daniel blinked, surprised. “Signor Scacchi?”
The man laughed, a grand, booming noise that rose from somewhere deep within his vast stomach. He was in his late thirties, perhaps, and had the ruddy, weather-worn face of a farmer or fisherman. There was a bittersweet smell of alcohol on his breath. “Signor Scacchi! Do I look like a peacock? Do you think I can trill? Come! Come!”
Daniel followed this stranger out of the hall and found they were, within a few steps, by the side of the lagoon. A dozen or more sleek water taxis, each with finely polished wood decks, sat waiting for customers. They walked past them to the public jetty, where an old blue motorised fishing boat sat. In the prow, slumped against each other like lovers, were two slender men. In the mid part of the vessel, a woman wearing jeans and a purple T-shirt bustled over two plastic picnic hampers, her back turned. Next to her, a small, pure-black field spaniel with short ears and a compact nose peered curiously at the contents of the boxes and was shooed away, constantly and to little avail.
The large man looked at the passengers in the boat, waited for a moment to see if their attention would come his way, then, realising this was a lost cause, clapped his hands loudly and announced, “Please! Please! Our guest is arrived! We must welcome him.”
The smaller of the two men stood up. He wore a fawn suit, well-cut, and was, Daniel judged, in his late sixties. This was, he assumed, his host, Signor Scacchi. His face was tanned and lined, almost to the point of emaciation. He appeared ill, as did the younger man by his side, who now lay back on the pillows in the stern of the boat and favoured the newcomer with an expressionless glance.
“Daniel!” the old man said, smiling to reveal a set of too-white dentures. He was short, with a slight hunch. “Daniel! He has come! See, Paul. See, Laura. I told you. Ten days’ notice and us complete strangers. Still, he has come!”
The woman turned to face him. She had a fine, attractive face, with round, full cheeks tapering to a delicate chin. Her large eyes were an extraordinary shade of green. Her hair, long and straight, falling to her shoulders, was a subtle shade of auburn. She peered at Daniel as if he were a creature from outer space, but with a friendly curiosity, as if his presence somehow amused her.
“He did come,” she said in a soft voice only lightly coloured by the Venetian accent, then almost automatically reached into her handbag, took out a pair of large plastic sunglasses, and placed them on her face.
“Well, who’d have thought it?” Paul murmured. He was, Daniel thought, American. He wore a faded denim shirt and jeans of a similar colour. Sprawled in the front of the boat, he had the awkward lack of grace of a teenager and, at first glance, young looks, too, though a moment’s consideration showed them to be cracked and faded, like those of a fifty-year-old trying to appear thirty.
“Of course,” the large man said, then passed the luggage to Laura and extended a huge hand to help Daniel into the lazily shifting boat. “Who wouldn’t come to Venice when asked? I am Piero, since no one seems minded to conclude the introductions,” the man announced. “The fool of the family, though a distant relative so that scarcely matters. And this is my boat, the lovely Sophia, a lady who is loyal, true, and always starts when you need her, which means, I guess, she’s no lady at all. Not that I would know about such matters — there, I said it before Laura said it for me.”
The dog nudged at Daniel’s trousers. Piero reached down and ruffled its head with affection. “And this is Xerxes. So called because he is the finest general of the marshes you will find. No duck escapes his beady little eyes, eh?”
The merest mention of the word “duck” had set the dog’s stumpy tail wagging. Piero chucked him lovingly underneath the chin, then reached into one of the hampers and fed a small circle of salami into Xerxes’ gaping mouth.
Scacchi leaned forward, rocking the little motorboat, pumped his empty hand up and down in a drinking gesture, and announced, “Spritz! Spritz! Spritz!”
“Naturally,” Laura replied from behind the sunglasses, then reached into the second hamper, withdrawing a set of bottles.
“Seats, please,” Piero bellowed, then, with a tug on the starter rope, brought the small diesel engine into life and clambered to the rear to steer it. One of the water-taxi drivers sitting on his gleaming vessel stared at the grubby little boat and said something in a dialect which Daniel could not begin to understand. Piero replied just as unfathomably and extended a single digit at the man. The boat lurched back to clear the jetty, and then they were moving, out from the airport, out into the flat expanse of the Venetian lagoon. What had for years been an idea, an entire imagined universe inside Daniel Forster’s head, suddenly became real. In the far distance, rising from the sea like some bizarre forest, the outline of Venice, of campaniles and palaces, slowly became visible, growing tantalisingly larger as they travelled towards it.
“Spritz,” Scacchi repeated.
Laura gave the old man three bottles: one of Campari, one of white Veneto wine, and a third of sparkling mineral water. Then she made up five glasses with ice, a segment of precut lemon, and, from a small jar, a single green olive in each, and passed them to the old man.
Scacchi looked at him, and for the first time Daniel saw something sly in his face. “You know what this is?”
“I read about it,” he replied. “I wondered what it would taste like.”
“You hear that?” Scacchi declared. “Such a fine Italian accent! This is spritz, my lad, and it tells you much you need to know about this city. Look. Campari, for our potent blood. Wine for our love of life. Water for our purity — no laughing there, Paul. An olive for our earthiness. And, finally, lemon, to remind you that if you bite us, we bite back. Here.”
He passed him a glass, full to the brim with the dark-red drink. Daniel took a sip. It was mainly Campari, strong and with the same bittersweet aroma he had smelled on Piero’s breath.
Laura smiled at him as if expecting some reaction. “And food too,” she said, offering a plate full of flat breads filled with cheese and Parma ham. Daniel took one and realised he had no idea of her age. The plain, cheap clothes and obscuring glasses seemed designed to make her look older, and in this they failed. She was, perhaps, twenty-eight or even younger, not in the early to mid thirties which her dress seemed to indicate.
“To Daniel!” Scacchi announced. The four of them raised their glasses. Xerxes barked softly. The boat rocked a little. Scacchi wisely went back to his seat next to Paul. “May these next few weeks open his eyes to the world!”
“To Daniel!” they repeated.
“I’m honoured,” he said in return. “And I hope I shall do the job well.”
“Of course you will,” Scacchi said with a wave of his skeletal hand. “I knew that when I asked you. For the rest, I have fixed some amusements. All other time is your own.”
“I shall try to use it well.”
“As you see fit,” Scacchi said with a yawn.
Then the old man took a long swig from the glass, placed it on the wooden bench seat that ran around the interior of the boat, leaned his head against Paul’s shoulder, and, with no more ado, fell fast asleep in the prow.
The moto topo Sophia edged its way out towards the wide expanse of the lagoon, following the channel from the airport at first, then picking a shorter route to the miniature city perched on the bow. They fell into silence while Scacchi slept. Paul touched the old man’s hair occasionally. Piero drank. Laura offered Daniel a cigarette, seemed pleased when he refused, lit one anyway, and tapped the ash over the side. After a while Paul slept, too, curling his arms around Scacchi, placing his head against the old man’s in a fond gesture which seemed touched with sadness. Piero and Laura exchanged glances. She refilled Piero’s glass more than once. The July day was beginning to fade, casting the city ahead in a gorgeous pink-and-gold light.