Yashim nodded. “I think we should plan to stay a little longer,” he said. “Someone offered a Bellini for sale. The sultan got to hear of it, at least, so I assumed that the painting was available. But you haven’t heard a thing in ten days.”
“No. And everyone keeps getting killed.”
Yashim held up his hand. “How did the sultan pick up the rumor? Who told him?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Let’s say it was your friend Alfredo. He created the whole scenario in order to get somebody out here-and double-cross him.”
“So there never was a Bellini?”
Yashim looked puzzled. “I don’t know. Someone was supposed to come to Venice. But then-why are people being killed?”
“Why do people get killed? Over money, or women.”
“Or because they know too much.”
Palewski started.
“Alfredo knew where to find me,” he said slowly. “The day after we saw the painting he was waiting by Florian, in the piazza.”
“Go on.”
“I’d simply told Ruggerio to meet me there for lunch. He was there, too, at a table.”
“I see. So Ruggerio told Alfredo where he could find you.”
“Yes. Maybe. It might have been a coincidence.”
Yashim flicked the end of his cigarette into the fire. “Perhaps. But one of them seems to have guessed something else: that you were not Signor Brett. Why else would they take Maria to be questioned?”
“Maybe the gang just wanted to be sure who they were dealing with. To be sure I could come through with the money.”
“No. A courtesan deals in ducats, not thousands in silver. They took Maria because they wanted a confession. Something intimate. They already suspected who you really were.”
Yashim found himself examining his friend. He saw a perfectly plausible visitor to Venice, like any other: well dressed, acceptably a la mode. Signor Brett, connoisseur!
“Are you-” He blushed. “Are you circumcised, Palewski?”
“No.”
Yashim glanced away, baffled, and his eye fell on something on the floor beside Palewski’s chair.
He sighed heavily. “Let me see your hat.”
“My hat?”
“There.” Yashim held the hat by the brim and invited Palewski to look inside.
“Well, I’m-! But I made no secret of the fact that I’d been in Istanbul.”
“That’s right-but casual visitors don’t get their hats in Istanbul. I wouldn’t buy my pantaloons in Venice, either. It isn’t conclusive, of course, but it would have raised Ruggerio’s suspicions.”
“Suspicions of what, Yashim? I don’t understand.”
“That you were the man from Istanbul.”
“The man from Istanbul,” Palewski echoed.
“Why would it matter so much to Ruggerio that you came from Istanbul?” Yashim tapped the hat against his palm. “There could be two possibilities. Either he was expecting someone from Istanbul-and couldn’t be sure if you were the one. He might have expected someone like me. Or-pah.” He shook his head and murmured, “Olmaz.”
“Impossible?” Palewski echoed.
Yashim’s eyes narrowed. “No. Ruggerio could also have been confused because he didn’t expect anyone from Istanbul.”
Palewski wrinkled his nose. “It’s been a trying day so far, Yashim. You’re getting tangled up in a double negative, or whatever. I mean to say, you can’t not expect someone to come from Istanbul. It may be unlikely, but that’s not the same thing, is it? Why shouldn’t Ruggerio expect someone to come from Istanbul?”
Yashim nodded and pinched his lip.
“Only one reason that I can see,” he said. “Because that someone was already here.”
Palewski folded his arms.
Yashim stared absently at his friend.
“In the painting. The man with the red arms. Did you notice anything else about him? Something odd?”
“Odd? I don’t think so. It’s very small.”
Yashim was on his feet. He dragged the painting from the wall.
“When I first saw it, I had the impression that the killer was a foreigner. Not Venetian, I mean.” Yashim squatted and squinted at the tiny figures. “I think I was right. Look.”
Palewski frowned at the painting. “Not much to him, is there? Except, well…”
“Well?”
“He’s shaven-headed, isn’t he? Except for the sort of topknot.”
“The topknot, exactly. And if I’m right, and he came from Istanbul?”
“In Istanbul,” Palewski said thoughtfully, “I’d take him for a Tatar.”
The Tatars were consummate horsemen from the steppe and for centuries they had been the Ottomans’ closest allies. But the Russians had seized their Crimean homeland. Since then many had fled the rule of the infidel czar, settling instead in the Ottoman Empire across the sea.
“He could be one of those Crimean exiles you see around,” Palewski continued. “Most of them come from the Black Sea coast, nowadays. It could be that-or a loose brushstroke.”
“Our painter is nothing if not precise.”
“But Venice is hardly awash with Tatars, Yashim. He’d stick out a mile.” He looked at his friend. “Unless he wore a hat.”
“Another hat.”
Palewski stood by the fire, his hands tucked behind his back.
“Why didn’t the Tatar see the man who painted him? He must have been in the same apartment.”
Yashim glanced at the sleeping figure on the mattress. “But we didn’t see him, either, did we?”
76
The name: now the time had come. He had come for the last name.
The man shivered in the sunlight.
It was about to end. They would take their little walk again, for the last time.
The assassin a few paces behind him, like a respectful bride.
Or like a hunter, stalking its prey.
Their last walk.
The last name.
The last death.
The man blew out his lips and told himself to think of the payment. They had promised him-enough. Like Venetians they had weighed, assessed, and judged him, as though they knew his price.
The fear of death, and the hope of gold.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and began to walk.
77
Apart from the cauldron, and the copper she had used for polenta the night before, Signora Contarini had an iron frying pan, a milk pan, and two earthenware pots-one was tall, with a narrow mouth, the other a broad dish, as in the fable of the stork and the fox.
Yashim decided to avoid the copper: it was too much the signora’s own, an altar to a household god.
He also decided, partly for the same reason, not to use her knife. The small kitchen knife that Malakian had given him, the damascene blade infernally bright even in the dim light of the signora’s kitchen, felt eager and balanced. It was a link to his world, too, away from this strange city of unbelievers and canals. Yashim had spent several days in Venice, and he had been confused, much of the time, by the mix of what was familiar and what was foreign.
He poured a few handfuls of chickpeas into the tall pot, covered them in water, and pushed the pot to the back of the fireplace.
Palewski seemed to have read his thoughts. “I never told you, Yash, but Venice made me ill for a day or so.”
“Ill?” Should he use the polenta board to chop onions? He thought not.
“Giddy. Dropped me off the map. When I got here I thought-Cracow. Rynek Glowny. Colors, shape of the windows, carved stone doors. Baby Gothic, I don’t know-we had it more grown up. And all these churches. Nuns-even in gondolas!” He laughed. “And then-then it tilted the other way, and everything I looked at felt like Istanbul. Sliding about on the water, and Armenians and Greeks, and sometimes the domes, too, with their lead and their curves. So the next time I saw those nuns-they reminded me of girls in chadors, taking a caique up the Golden Horn.”