"Whoooo’s theeeerre?" called a high scratchy voice, floating down the staircase from the floor above. "Whoooooo’s there?…"
Carlo froze. He stepped lightly to the base of the stone staircase and peered up; through the hole to the next floor flickered a faint light. To put it better, it was less dark up there than anywhere else. More surprised than fearful (though he was afraid), Carlo opened his eyes as wide as he could
"Whoooooo’s theeeeeerrrrrrrre?…"
Quickly he went to the boathook, untied the rope, felt around on the wet floor until he found a block of stone that would serve as anchor for his boat. He looked out the window: boat still there; on both sides, white breakers crashed over the Lido. Taking up the boathook, Carlo stepped slowly up the stairs, feeling that after what he had been through he could slash any ghost in the ether to ribbons.
It was a candle lantern, flickering in the disturbed air — a room filled with junk
"Eeek! Eeek!"
"Jesus!"
"Devil! Death, away!" A small black shape rushed at him, brandishing sharp metal points.
"Jesus!" Carlo repeated, holding the boathook out to defend himself. The figure stopped.
"Death comes for me at last," it said. It was an old woman, he saw, holding lace needles in each hand.
"Not at all," Carlo said, feeling his pulse slow back down. "Swear to God, Grandmother, I’m just a sailor, blown here by the storm."
The woman pulled back the hood of her black cape, revealing braided white hair, and squinted at him.
"You’ve got the scythe," she said suspiciously. A few wrinkles left her face as she unfocused her gaze.
"A boathook only," Carlo said, holding it out for her inspection. She stepped back and raised the lace needles threateningly. "Just a boathook, I swear to God. To God and Mary and Jesus and all the saints, Grandmother. I’m just a sailor, blown here by the storm from Venice." Part of him felt like laughing.
"Aye?" she said. "Aye, well then, you’ve found shelter. I don’t see so well anymore, you know. Come in, sit down, then." She turned around and led him into the room. "I was just doing some lace for penance, you see… though there’s scarcely enough light." She lifted a tomboli with the lace pinned to it; Carlo noticed big gaps in the pattern, as in the webs of an injured spider. "A little more light," she said and, picking up a candle, held it to the lit one. When it was fired, she carried it around the chamber and lit three more candles in lanterns that stood on tables, boxes, a wardrobe. She motioned for him to sit in a heavy chair by her table, and he did so.
As she sat down across from him, he looked around the chamber. A bed piled high with blankets, boxes and tables: covered with objects… the stone walls around, and another staircase leading up to the next floor of the campanile. There was a draft. "Take off your coat," the woman said. She arranged the little pillow on the arm of her chair and began to poke a needle in and out of it, pulling the thread slowly.
Carlo sat back and watched her. "Do you live here alone?"
"Always alone," she replied. "I don’t want it otherwise." With the candle before her face, she resembled Carlo’s mother or someone else he knew. It seemed very peaceful in the room after the storm. The old woman bent in her chair until her face was just above her tomboli; still, Carlo couldn’t help,; noticing that her needle hit far outside the apparent pattern of lace, striking here and there randomly. She might as well have been blind. At regular intervals Carlo shuddered with excitement and tension; it was hard to believe he was out of danger More infrequently they broke the silence with a short burst of conversation, then sat in the candlelight absorbed in their own thoughts, as if they were old friends.
"How do you get food?" Carlo asked, after one of these silences had stretched out. "Or candles?"
"I trap lobsters down below. And fishermen come by and trade food for lace. They get a good bargain, never fear. I’ve never given less, despite what he said." Anguish twisted her face as the squinting had, and she stopped. She needled furiously, and Carlo looked away. Despite the draft, he was warming up (he hadn’t removed his coat, which was wool, after all), and he was beginning to feel drowsy….
"He was my spirit’s mate, do you comprehend me?"
Carlo jerked upright. The old woman was still looking at her tomboli.
"And — and he left me here, here in this desolation when the floods began, with words that I’ll remember forever and ever and ever. Until death comes…. I wish you had been' death!" she cried. "I wish you had." Carlo remembered her brandishing the needles. "What is this place?" he asked gently.
"What?"
"Is this Pellestrina? San Lazzaro?"
"This is Venice," she said.
Carlo shivered convulsively, stood up.
"I’m the last of them," the woman said. "The waters rise, the heavens howl, love’s pledges crack and lead to misery. I — I live to show what a person can bear and not die. I’ll live till the deluge drowns the world as Venice is drowned, I’ll live till all else living is dead; I’ll live…." Her voice trailed off; she looked up at Carlo curiously. "Who are you, really? Oh. I know. I know. A sailor."
"Are there floors above?" he asked, to change the subject.
She squinted at him. Finally she spoke. "Words are vain. I thought I’d never speak again, not even to my own heart, and here I am, doing it again. Yes, there’s a floor above intact; but above that, ruins. Lightning blasted the bell chamber apart, while I lay in that very bed." She pointed at her bed, stood up. "Come on, I’ll show you." Under her cape she was tiny.
She picked up the candle lantern beside her, and Carlo followed her up the stairs, stepping carefully in the shifting shadows.
On the floor above, the wind swirled, and through the stairway to the floor above that, he could distinguish black clouds. The woman put the lantern on the floor, started up the stairs. "Come up and see," she said.
Once through the hole they were in the wind, out under the sky. The rain had stopped. Great blocks of stone lay about the floor, and the walls broke off unevenly.
"I thought the whole campanile would fall," she shouted at him over the whistle of the wind. He nodded, and walked over to the west wall, which stood chest high. Looking over it, he could see the waves approaching, rising up, smashing against the stone below, spraying back and up at him. He could feel the blows in his feet. Their force frightened him; it was hard to believe he had survived them and was now out of danger. He shook his head violently. To his right and left, the white lines of crumbled waves marked the Lido, a broad swath of them against the black. The old woman was speaking, he could see; he walked back to her side to listen.
"The waters yet rise," she shouted. "See? And the lightning… you can see the lightning breaking the Alps to dust. It’s the end, child. Every island fled away, and the mountains were not found… the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living thing died in the sea." On and on she spoke, her voice mingling with the sound of the gale and the boom of the waves, just carrying over it all… until Carlo, cold and tired, filled with pity and a black anguish like the clouds rolling over them, put his arm around her thin shoulders and turned her around. They descended to the floor below, picked up the extinguished lantern, and descended to her chamber, which was still lit. It seemed warm, a refuge. He could hear her still speaking. He was shivering without pause.
"You must be cold," she said in a practical tone. She pulled a few blankets from her bed. "Here, take these." He sat down in the big heavy chair, put the blankets around his legs, put his head back. He was tired. The old woman sat in her chair and wound thread onto a spool. After a few minutes of silence she began talking again; and as Carlo dozed and shifted position and nodded off again, she talked and talked, of storms, and drownings, and the world’s end, and lost love….